own weakness. Nepál, under a sagacious Minister, and with a Thibetan War on hand, was little likely to break the peace she had observed for forty years. The Chieftain whom, in an unlucky moment for humanity, the British Government had placed on the throne of Kashmír had laid hold of the great Pro-consul's dress in Darbár and cried: 'Thus I grasp the skirts of the British Government, and I will never let go my hold.' A treaty concluded in 1855 with the Amír of Kábul bound him to common friends and foes, and Lord Dalhousie could report that every portion of our Western frontier was covered against hostile attack by the barrier of a treaty with a friendly power. But an Empire within whose confines, either by conquest, failure of heirs, or the stern decree of paramount authority, four kingdoms and various minor principalities had in less than a decade been merged, could scarcely fail to contain much smouldering disaffection or to provide the occasion which would fan it to a blaze. Oudh, the latest acquisition, lying in the very heart of the North-Western Provinces, was full of explosive material. The King had yielded without a blow; but the results of a century of anarchy were not to be effaced by the heroic remedy of annexation. The administration had been supremely corrupt; the patrons of corruption were numerous and influential. The disbandment of the royal army sent 60,000 peasants back to their homes, stripped of their livelihood and ripe for disturbance. The local magnates, following the
