and beneficence; but if resistance
to constituted authority shall again be attempted--if violence and
turbulence be renewed, the governor-general warns the people of the
Punjaub that the time for leniency with them has passed away, and that
their offence will be punished with prompt and most rigorous severity."

As soon as matters were placed on a footing of order as to the
government of Lahore, Moolraj was brought to trial before a special
military commission, consisting of four British and two native officers,
and a colonel of the Sikh army. The charges against him were:--"1.
Having aided the murderers of Mr. Van Agnew and Lieutenant Anderson; 2.
Having been an accessory to that crime before the fact; 3. Having been
an accessory after the fact."

The object of pressing the one charge of murder in a three-fold form was
to prevent the captive obtaining a verdict of not guilty, if only
the first form expressed the charge. He was allowed the service of an
advocate; Captain Hamilton performed that office in a very able and
ingenious manner. After a trial which lasted fifteen days, he was found
guilty on all the charges, and sentenced to death. The sentence was
commuted by the governorgeneral into imprisonment for life at Singapore.
This was not accepted by the captive as a favour, who demanded rather to
die like a soldier than live a captive. He had borne up with the noblest
manhood, and received with a slight smile and composed countenance,
but without any bravado, the announcement that he must die; but the
commutation of his sentence caused the most passionate lamentations.
He desired to be shot at Mooltan, or, if he must he a captive, there
to spend his captivity; but to be a prisoner, and expatriated, was
intolerable, and he craved to die. The orders of the governor-general
were not, however, affected by the patriotic desires of the
murderer--for such Moolraj was. His heroic conduct in honourable war
won the admiration of the British officers, civil and military, but
they could not forget that he murdered in cold blood their brethren.
Intelligence of these events caused much joy in England, for the
disturbed state of the continent, the distressed and agitated state of
Ireland, and in part of England, caused apprehensions that a foreign war
might possibly break out, and this at such a time would render conflict
with the Sikhs a perilous matter to the empire, as they were the only
remaining power dangerous to British i