Meanwhile, however, Lord Dalhousie had succeeded him in 1848. No improvement took place in Oudh, but the new Governor-General resolved before carrying out the sentence passed on the King by Lord Hardinge, to give the native dynasty one more chance. His Majesty was again remonstrated with, but Oudh was not brought under British management in 1849. The king used the delay as a renewed license for oppression. At length in 1851, Colonel Sleeman, an officer of well-known sympathies for Native States, reported as Resident of Lucknow, in terms which compelled the Governor-General to ask himself whether he could any longer be responsible for such a spectacle of human misery and callous misrule.
Still Lord Dalhousie hoped against hope. It was not till 1854 that he found himself absolutely compelled to request Colonel Outram, then representing the Government of India at the Court of Lucknow, to report whether the evils described by previous Residents had been abated or the reforms carried out for which Lord Hardinge had, in 1847, allowed a period of two years. Colonel Outrams report proved that not only had no real improvement taken place, but that Oudh was now completely delivered over to anarchy and the most cruel forms of oppression.
In June 1855, Lord Dalhousie thus summed up
