GULAB SINGH ACQUIRES KASHMIR 153
been ceded us, after a hard and strenuous cam- paign, we should ever have parted with it for the paltry sum of three-quarters of a million sterling. The reasons are to be found in a letter from Sir Henry Hardinge to the Queen, published in The Letters of Queen Victoria. The Governor-General, writing from the neighbourhood of Lahore on 18th of February 1846—that is nearly three weeks before the treaty of Lahore was actually signed— says it appeared to him desirable “to weaken the Sikh State, which has proved itself too strong—and to show to all Asia that although the British Government has not deemed it expedient to annex this immense country of the Punjab, making the Indus the British boundary, it has ‘punished the treachery and violence of the Sikh nation, and exhibited its powers in a manner which cannot be misunderstood.” “For the same political and military reason,” Sir Henry Hardinge continues, “the Governor-General hopes to be able before the negotiations are closed to make arrangements by which Cashmere may be added to the possessions of Golab Singh, declaring the Rajput Hill States with Cashmere independent of the Sikhs of the Plains,” “There are difficulties in the way of this arrangement,” he adds, “but considering the
