Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/479

Rh violent disorder, tumults, brigandage, and widespread oppression of the people.

In fact, the kingdom was sustained artificially under a series of incapable rulers only by the external pressure of the British dominions surrounding it, and by the presence of a subsidiary British force at the capital. The formal and even menacing warnings sent from time to time by the Governors-General to the Oudh government were as ineffectual as such intimations usually are when addressed to persons without strength or inclination to profit by them. It was impossible that the support of British troops stationed within the country could continue to be given to such a régime, while to withdraw those troops and disown all responsibility would only have let loose anarchy. And as the alternative of the temporary sequestration of the king's authority was rejected, on deliberation, as a dangerous half-measure, the British government determined to assume the administration and to vest the territories of Oudh in the East India Company. This was done by proclamation in February, 1856; and before the end of that month Lord Dalhousie made over the Governor-Generalship to Lord Canning.

The British empire seemed now to have reached its zenith of peace, power, and prosperity, for the territory under its direct government had been very greatly enlarged, its frontier line had crossed the Indus on the northwest and the Irawadi on the southeast, and throughout all this vast dominion law and order appeared to prevail. But those peculiar symptoms of