'We have determined therefore not to make any such movement at present, but we shall proceed to make the necessary preparations for enabling us, as soon as the season will permit, to enter on operations which we consider imperatively necessary for punishing the causeless rebellion of Mulráj, and for exacting ample reparation from the State of Lahore for the insult offered and the deep injury inflicted on your Government in the base murder of your faithful servants through the treachery, desertion, and crime of the servants of the Mahárájá of Lahore.'
This was the minute of Lord Dalhousie; and it was thoroughly in accordance with the views of Lord Gough, if not based on them, and was also, it is understood, concurred in by Sir Frederick Currie.
Such steps were thus deliberately avoided as might have crushed the outbreak at its start, as Henry Lawrence had done with the Kashmir attempt. Obviously the outbreak was assumed to be a premeditated Sikh movement, putting aside all idea of the continuance of a friendly Punjab. And the Government practically elected to run the risk — many held it to be the certainty — of the flame of insurrection spreading over the Province; of rousing afresh that spirit in the Khálsa, to the soothing and repression of which all Hardinge's and Lawrence's efforts and policy and precautions had been so strenuously and keenly directed, and filling it with a wild desire to try conclusions again with the British military power.
The view that this decision of Government would inevitably lead to this result proved correct. Many held it to be so obvious that there could be no other
