prosperity of millions of British subjects, by a feeling of misplaced and mistimed compassion for the fate of a child. . .

Although I have more than once stated to you that the Government of India did not desire, and ought not to desire, the conquest of the Punjab, I do not wish, by any means, to convey to you the impression that I regard the Punjab as a possession which it would be seriously difficult for us to maintain, or which would be financially unprofitable.

You are well aware that the Sikh people form comparatively a small portion of the population of the Punjab. A large proportion of the inhabitants, and especially the Mahomedan people, peaceful in their habits and occupations, will hail the introduction of our rule with pleasure.

I have thus fully laid before you the grounds on which I have formed the conclusion that, having regard to events which have recently occurred, it is indispensable to the security of the British territories, and to the interests of the people, that you should put an end to the independence of the Sikh nation, and reduce it to entire subjection.

After interviews with the Members of the Council, a public Durbar was held, when the Note addressed to the Regency by the Governor-General was read; the Terms granted to the Maharaja, which had been signed by the Council, were ratified by His Highness, in like manner as the Treaty of Lahore; and a Proclamation was issued, declaring the Punjab to be a portion of the British Empire in India.

While deeply sensible of the responsibility I have assumed, I have an undoubting conviction of the expediency, the justice, and the necessity, of my act.

What I have done I have done with a clear conscience, and in the honest belief that it was imperatively demanded of me by my duty to the State.

(Arnold, Dalhousie's Indian Administration, i. 205.)

136. THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE PUNJAB

From the Court of Directors to the Governor-General, 26th Oct. 1853.

1. Your letter dated 2nd July, 1850, transmits to us a general report on the administration of the Punjab, nominally for the years 1849-50 and 1850-51 (being the first two years after the annexation of the province to the British dominions), but bringing down all the main results to the close of the third year.

2. The various divisions of the report, and of its enclosures, will be taken into special consideration in the several departments to which they relate. We will not, however, delay to express to you the high satisfaction with which we have read this record of a wise and eminently successful administration.

3. In the short period which has elapsed since the Punjab became a part of the British dominions, results have been achieved such as could scarcely have been hoped for as the reward of many years of well-directed exertions. The formidable army which it had required so many battles to subdue has been quietly disbanded, and the turbulent soldiery have settled to industrious pursuits. Peace and security reign throughout the country, and the amount of crime is as small as in our best administered territories. Justice has been made accessible, without costly formalities, to the whole population. Industry and commerce have been set free. A great mass of oppressive and burthensome taxation has been abolished. Money rents have been substituted for payments in kind, and a settlement of the land revenue has been completed in nearly the whole country, at a considerable reduction on the former amount. In the settlement the best lights of recent experience have been turned to the utmost account, and the various errors committed in a more imperfect state of our knowledge of India have been carefully avoided. Cultivation has already largely increased. Notwithstanding the great sacrifices of revenue, there was a surplus after defraying the civil and the local military expenses, of 52 lacs in the first, and 64 lacs in the second year after annexation. During the next ten years the construction of the Bari Doab Canal, and its branches, and of the great network of roads already in rapid progress, will absorb the greater part of the surplus; but even during this interval, according to the Board's estimate, a balance will be left of more than double the amount of the cost of two corps, at which the Governor-General computes the augmentation of the general military expenses of India due to the acquisition of the Punjab. After the important works in question are completed, the Board of Administration, apparently on sound data, calculates on a permanent surplus of fifty lacs per annum applicable to general purposes.

4. Results like these reflect the highest honour on the administration of your Lordship in Council, and on the system of Indian government generally. It is a source of just pride to us that our services, civil and military, should have afforded

men capable, in so short a time, of carrying into full effect such a series of enlightened and beneficent measures. The executive functionaries in the subordinate ranks have proved themselves worthy of the honourable career which awaits them. The members of the Board of Administration, Sir Henry Lawrence, Mr. John Lawrence, Mr. Mansell, and Mr. Montgomery, have entitled themselves to be placed in the foremost rank of Indian administrators.

(Arnold, Dalhousie's Indian Administration, i. 404.)

137. THE DOCTRINE OF LAPSE

From Lord Dalhousie to the Court of Directors, 1848

I take occasion of recording my strong and deliberate opinion, that, in the exercise of a wise and sound policy, the British Government is bound not to put aside or to neglect such rightful opportunities of acquiring territory or revenue as may from time to time present themselves, whether they arise from the lapse of subordinate states, by the failure of all heirs of every description whatsoever, or from the failure of heirs natural, where the succession can be sustained only by the sanction of the Government being given to the ceremony of adoption according to Hindu law.

(Arnold, Dalhousie's Indian Administration, ii. 119.)

138. SATTARA

The Treaty of 1819.

1. The British government agrees to give the country or territory specified to the government or state of His Highness Maharaja Chatrapati. His Highness . . . and His Highness's sons and heirs and successors are perpetually to reign in sovereignty over the territory.

(Aitchison, Treaties and Sanads, vii. 440.)

From Lord Dalhousie to the Court of Directors, 1848.

66

The words heirs and successors "must be read in their ordinary sense, in the sense in which they are employed in other treaties between states. And in the absence of all evidence or reasonable presumption, founded on known facts,

or on some special wording of the English instrument, in favour of a wider interpretation, those words cannot be construed to secure to the Rajas of Sattara any other than the succession of heirs natural, or to grant to them the right of adopting successors to the raja without that sanction of the sovereign state, which may be given, or may be withheld, and which, by ordinary and invariable practice, is necessary to the validity of such an act of adoption by the prince.

(Arnold, Dalhousie's Indian Administration, ii. 120.)

139. NAGPUR

From Lord Dalhousie to the Court of Directors, 1853.

The

The case of Nagpur stands wholly without precedent. We have before us no question of an inchoate, or incomplete, or irregular adoption. The question of the right of Hindu princes to adopt, is not raised at all by recent events at Nagpur, for the Raja has died, and has deliberately abstained from adopting an heir. His widow has adopted no successor. State of Nagpur, conferred by the British Government in 1818, on the Raja and his heirs, has reverted to the British Government on the death of the Raja without any heir. Justice, and custom, and precedent, leave the Government wholly unfettered, to decide as it thinks best. Policy alone must decide the question.

(Arnold, Dalhousie's Indian Administration, ii. 163.)

140. SURVEY OF A GREAT PROCONSULATE

Minute by Lord Dalhousie, 28th February 1856.

(The following are the most important passages of the famous Minute which Lord Dalhousie wrote at the close of his long Governor-Generalship.)

2. When I sailed from England in the winter of 1847, to assume the government of India, there prevailed universal conviction among public men at home that permanent peace had at length been secured in the East. Before the summer came, we were already involved in the second Sikh war. That we were so, was due to no precipitation or fault of The murder of the British officers at Multan, and the open rebellion of the Diwan Mulraj, were not made pretext for

ours.

quarrel with the Government of Lahore. On the contrary, the offence of the Diwan Mulraj was sedulously distinguished from national wrong. The Sikhs themselves were called upon to punish Mulraj as a rebel against their own sovereign, and to exact reparation for the British Government, whose protection they had previously invoked.

But when it was seen that the spirit of the whole Sikh people was inflamed by the bitterest animosity against us; when chief after chief deserted our cause, until nearly their whole army, led by sirdars who had signed the treaties, and by members of the Council of Regency itself, was openly arrayed against us; when, above all, it was seen that the Sikhs, in their eagerness for our destruction, had even combined in unnatural alliance with Dost Mahomed Khan and his Mahomedan tribes; it became manifest that there was no alternative left. The question for us was no longer one of policy or of expediency, but one of national safety.

Accordingly, the Government put forth its powers. After a prolonged campaign, and a struggle severe and anxious, the Sikhs were utterly defeated and subdued; the Afghans were driven with ignominy through the mountains, and the Punjab became a British province.

3. When little more than two years had passed, the Government of India again was suddenly engaged in hostilities with Burma.

Certain British traders in the port of Rangoon had been subjected to gross outrage by the officers of the King of Ava, in direct violation of the treaty of Yandabu.

Holding to the wisdom of Lord Wellesley's maxim, that an insult offered to the British flag at the mouth of the Ganges should be resented as promptly and as fully as an insult offered at the mouth of the Thames, I should, under any circumstances, have regarded it as sound policy to exact reparation for wrong done to British subjects from any native state. But our relations with the Burmese Court, and the policy it had long pursued towards us, imposed upon the Government of India, at the time to which I refer, the absolute necessity of exacting from it reparation for the systematic violation of treaty, of which British traders had now made formal complaint.

Of all the Eastern nations with which the Government of India has had to do, the Burmese were the most arrogant and overbearing.