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68 'No Governor-General has ever taken charge of the Government of India under such peculiar and advantageous circumstances,' wrote another and more distinguished editor. 'The youngest ruler who has assumed the responsibilities of this empire, he receives it from his predecessor in a state of tranquillity which has hitherto no parallel in our Indian annals. He arrives at a time when the last obstacle to the complete, and apparently the final, pacification of India has been removed; when the only remaining army which could create alarm has been dissolved; and the peace of the country rests upon the firmest and most permanent basis. The chiefs whose ambition or hostility have been the source of disquietude to his predecessors, have one and all been disarmed .'

Exactly three months after these words were written by the leading newspaper of Bengal, a terrible tragedy had taken place 1200 miles off, on the bank of the Indus; a tragedy which, after some of the greatest, and one of the most disastrous, battles in the history of the British army, led within fifteen months to the annexation of the whole Punjab. Lord Hardinge as a sequel to the first Sikh war in 1846 had, as we have seen, placed the Punjab under a regency of Sikh nobles,