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216 setting aside the bold and capable family that had seized power, in favour of the most feeble and incapable of all the effete Saddozái race. The negotiations with Lahore, the arrangements with Ranjít Singh and Sháh Shujá, the successful commencement of the enterprise and the overwhelming catastrophe of its close, have all been told in detail elsewhere. Here there is no space to dwell upon them. The campaign was eminently distasteful to the Mahárájá, who recognised that it was undertaken with the intention of circumscribing his power in the directions of Sind and Afghánistán, as formerly it had been limited on the Sutlej. But, so far as he was able, he furthered the plans of the Government as explained to him by Sir William Macnaghten in May, 1838, and prepared to bear his share of the burthen of the campaign if only he was permitted by his chiefs, with whom any co-operation with the English was specially obnoxious. For the personal influence of the Mahárájá was waning, and the Jammu Rájás Dhyán Singh and Ghuláb Singh were all-powerful at Lahore.

In the cold weather of 1838, when the British army destined for the Afghán campaign was concentrated at Firozpur, and the Governor-General, Lord Auckland, was visiting the Mahárájá in great state at Lahore, a second stroke of paralysis, caused by excesses, anxiety and excitement, warned Ranjít Singh that the time had come when he must leave the scene of his conquests for ever. From this time