1 AFFAIRS AT LAHORE. 545
2 ‘more properly to his dungeon. It was indeed
3 highly mortifying to every friend of both Go-
4 vernments to see the successor of so celebrated
5 a ruler as Ranjeet Singh so miserably treated ;
6 and that the British Government, which had
7 made so many pledges of friendship and pro-
8 -fessed such a sincere and lasting regard for the
9 government ef his father, should have remained
10 a passive spectator of the bloody deeds of his
11 grandson to destroy the rightful authority of his
12 own son. What is the world to think of such
13 a policy ?*
14 Every dread of the displeasure of the British
15 Government or its officers being removed, the
16 Court of Lahore now became a scene of in-
17 * The motive was non-interference; but its undoubted
18 effect’ was anarchy and confusion, brought about by a
19 succession of personal struggles for power, which, having
20 caused the extermination, by the assassination of each other
21 of the principal actors, destroyed the vital principle of the
22 State, and led to an assumption of its authority by a
23 mutinous soldiery, productive of a state of disorganization
24 in its affairs, on which we have ultimately justified a
25 military interference in them, which a timely exercise of
26 our political influence would have averted.