Sutlej and the Kháibar than I. I have done all that man could do to support such a Government and to sustain that policy — I no longer believe it feasible to do so.'
This is bold and clear language. Lord Dalhousie's language always was so. But was it sound, and did it indicate a real knowledge and recognition of past circumstances? The whole basis of the arrangements then in force under the treaty of Bhairowál was the avowed inability of the Darbár to control the Sikh army, and the support they were in consequence to receive from the British force to keep it in subjection till its temper should have been subdued and proper discipline and content introduced. When Mulráj's misconduct led to the crisis in the Sikh army, was Lord Dalhousie's deliberate abstention from using the British troops to suppress the evil tendency in real accordance with his assertion that he had 'done all that man could do to support the (Sikh) Government'?
It seems impossible to avoid the conclusion that he had not learnt to distinguish, and to regard separately, the three discordant elements in the Sikh polity — the Court, the Sikh aristocracy or chiefs, and the Sikh army — and that instead he looked on them as one body, so united in action and interests as to require to be all dealt with on the same footing. Nor in his haughty anger at their daring to war against the British Government did he show any inclination to make allowances for the grave temptations to which the Sikh army had been subjected by the military
