1 120 A Short History of the Sikhs.
2 acted at the meetings with Lord William Bentinck and
3 Lord Auckland. Nevertheless the proceedings, both at
4 Rupar and at Lahore, though confined on each
5 occasion to the exchange of ceremonial greetings,
6 were by no means devoid of useful results. They
7 served not only to ratify and strengthen the friend-
8 ship which already existed between Ranjit Singh and
9 the paramount power, but they were the means of
10 advertising that friendship to the world at large and
11 thereby strengthening the hands of both parties.
12 The maintenance of cordial relations with his English
13 neighbours was the key-note of Ranjit Singh's foreign
14 policy. " His political sagacity," says Sir Lepel
15 Griffin, " was great, and was shown in nothing more
16 convincingly than in his determined friendship with
17 the English, when he had once realized that they
18 were safe friends and very dangerous enemies." The
19 sincerity of this friendship was proved by the best of
20 all tests: it held when a strain was put upon it, and
21 more than once the strain was heavy. This was
22 strikingly illustrated during the transactions of the
23 British Government with the country of Sind, when
24 the Maharaja, rather than break the pledge he had
25 given more than a quarter of a century before and
26 despite the angry protests of his sirdars, co-operated
27 with his ally in furthering a policy with which he
28 had no sympathy, and which necessitated the abandon-
29 ment of a scheme that for years past he had been
30 longing to carry into effect. A detailed account of
31 the circumstances which led, in 1843, to the annexa-
32 tion of Sind to British India must be sought for
33 elsewhere, but the main events of the story as they