1 The Second Sikh War. 209
2 cannot but bear in mind how completely they brought
3 their fate upon themselves. They embarked on
4 the first Sikh war in the belief that the British
5 were meditating the annihilation of the Khalsa.
6 Their defeat laid their kingdom prostrate at the
7 feet; of the British Government; but the latter,
8 instead of annihilating it, employed every means in
9 its power to give it life, strength, and permanence.
10 They had confessed their inability to administer
11 their own affairs, and had themselves begged for
12 the establishment of a British protectorate. The
13 request was a wise one, and was complied with ;
14 after which only one thing was necessary to enable
15 the British Government to carry out its purpose of
16 handing over, in 1854, a " much improved and
17 prosperous kingdom " to Maharaja Dhulip Singh.
18 That one essential thing was the co-operation of
19 the Sikh people. Without this, the Khalsa was
20 doomed ; with it, there was hardly a limit to the
21 prosperity to which it might attain.
22 But the Sikhs gave no thought to the future.
23 They were conscious only that an alien hand was
24 usurping their powers, restricting their liberties, and
25 disbanding their arhiies, and in this they saw, not the
26 future greatness of the Khalsa, but only their
27 present humiliation. They had asked for the
28 protectorate ; but as soon as it became an ac-
29 complished fact, and they saw a British officer
30 virtually in possession of the throne of Ranjit Singh,
31 they repented of what they had done. The measures
32 of the new administration galled them, not because
33 they were strange or irksome, but because they were
34 (1,841) 14