6. It may seem strange that Dalhousie, whose great maxim was "the good of the governed" should have done so much to extend the British Empire in India. This was partly due to the fact that wars were forced on him, and partly to the fact that he believed that people were better off under British rule than any other. This consideration led him to take advantage of every opportunity to substitute British rule for that of a native prince. When, for instance, a native ruler died without offspring, instead of allowing his adopted son, as was the custom in India, to succeed him, Dalhousie annexed the territory thus left kingless. 7. Our governor-general also dethroned unworthy rulers, including the King of Oudh, whose realm was naturally the fairest province of all India. It may be remembered that in all the dependent states a British official resided at court to give his advice, and to watch over British interests. The British resident at Lucknow, the capital of Oudh, reported to Dalhousie that under its native ruler, Oudh knew neither law nor justice, that "great crimes stain almost every acre of land in his dominions." The strong, he said, everywhere preyed upon the weak, and what might be the garden of India was fast becoming a wilderness, whilst the king amused himself in the company of fiddlers, singers, buffoons, and dancing girls. After a solemn warning, and a reprieve of five years, the corrupt monarch was deposed and his kingdom added to our Indian Empire. 8. During Dalhousie's rule much was done to bring the different parts of this great empire into closer touch with each other. A cheap uniform postage was introduced, by which a letter could be sent from one end of India to the other for half an anna, about three farthings. A short railway was laid down as an experiment, and it proved highly successful. The new mode of travelling rose at once into favour with the natives of India. They soon saw the advantage of cheap travelling at the rate of twenty or thirty miles an hour in carriages drawn by the "English fire-horse." 9. Lord Dalhousie then drew up a scheme for laying down 4000 miles of rails between the great centres of population and the seats of government. And he succeeded in getting the necessary capital for this vast undertaking by offering it to public companies with the guarantee, on the part of the Indian Government, of a fair profit on their outlay. So great was the success of this scheme that in the course of the next quarter-century £100,000,000 were spent on Indian railways.