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82 sity of bringing the Sikh nation under effective control involved the supersession of their boy-Maharaja, Dhulip Singh. But after anxiously considering the necessities of the case, he thus writes: 'When I am fairly convinced that the safety of our own State requires us to enforce subjection of the Sikh nation, I cannot abandon that necessary measure, merely because the effectual subjection of the nation involves in itself the deposition of their Prince. I cannot permit myself to be turned aside from fulfilling the duty which I owe to the security and prosperity of millions of British subjects, by a feeling of misplaced and mistimed compassion for the fate of a child.' The child was amply provided for by a pension of £50,000 a year, and the titular dignity of prince.

'While deeply sensible of the responsibility I have assumed,' continues Lord Dalhousie, '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.'

The annexation of the Punjab was deliberately approved of by the Court of Directors, by Parliament, and by the English nation. But perhaps what gave him more pleasure, was the weighty opinion of Lord Hardinge, who, at the end of the first Punjab War in 1846, had inaugurated the