The repeated acts of insubordination of the Sikh soldiery and the evident and serious risks to which they had exposed the British power in India, determined the governor-general to put a final end to them. On the 29th of March a proclamation was issued which recounted how the long peace and alliance which had been in force between the two governments had been twice broken through the treachery of the Sikh troops. Consequently, it had become necessary, the proclamation stated, to declare "the kingdom of the Punjaub at an end, and that all the territories of Maharajah Dhuleep Singh are now and henceforth a portion of the British empire in India." The proclamation promised due honor to the Maharajah and the few chiefs who had not engaged in hostilities against the British, and guaranteed to all the people, whether Mussulman, Hindoo, or Sikh, the free exercise of their own religion, but forbade any one to interfere with that of another.
The Sikhs accepted the inevitable, and submitted gracefully to the superior power of the British. The event made less excitement in Hindostan than in England, where the greatness of the addition to the British empire in India by the conquest of the Punjaub was appreciated at its full value. Since that time the Sikh soldiers have proved themselves the best and most faithful of all the Asiatics serving under the English banners in India. During the mutiny of 1857, they remained to a man loyal, and their splendid fighting qualities undoubtedly saved to Great Britain her possessions in the Indian peninsula, or at any rate preserved her from any serious reverses.
At present, the population of the Punjaub is not far from twenty-three million, additions having been made to the original territory. The country is one of the richest and most prosperous of all the Indian possessions of Great Britain, and covers an area of nearly two hundred thou-
