English Men of Action
LORD LAWRENCE
[Illustration: colophon]
[Illustration: LORD LAWRENCE
Engraved by O. LACOUR after a Photograph by MAULL AND POLYBANK]
LORD LAWRENCE
BY
SIR RICHARD TEMPLE
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND NEW YORK
1889
_The right of translation and reproduction is reserved_
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER II
EARLY LIFE, 1811-1829 7
CHAPTER III
THE DELHI TERRITORY, 1829-1846 15
CHAPTER IV
THE TRANS-SUTLEJ STATES, 1846-1849 27
CHAPTER V
PUNJAB BOARD OF ADMINISTRATION, 1849-1853 45
CHAPTER VI
CHIEF COMMISSIONER OF THE PUNJAB, 1853-1857 69
CHAPTER VII
WAR OF THE MUTINIES, 1857-1859 92
CHAPTER VIII
SOJOURN IN ENGLAND, 1859-1863 137
CHAPTER IX
THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA, 1864-1869 148
CHAPTER X
CONCLUSION, 1869-1879 190
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
John Laird Mair Lawrence was born in 1811 and died in 1879, being
sixty-eight years of age. Within that time he entered the Civil Service
of the East India Company, governed the Punjab then the most difficult
province in India, took a very prominent part in the War of the
Mutinies, was by many called the saviour of the Indian empire, and
became Viceroy of India. By reason of his conduct in these capacities he
is regarded as a man of heroic simplicity, and as one of the best
British type, to be reckoned among our national worthies.
I shall write the following account of him as a man of action, partly
from authentic records, but chiefly from personal knowledge. I was his
Secretary during some of the most busy and important years when he was
governing the Punjab, and one of his Councillors when he was Viceroy. My
acquaintance with him began in 1851, and continued on intimate terms
till 1870, from which time until his death I was separated from him by
distance. Thus I have been in great part an eyewitness of what is to be
related of him. My knowledge, too, of his views is derived, not from
correspondence nor from private letters, but from verbal communication.
For several years it was my chief duty so to imbue my mind with his
policy and opinions that I might be able to express them in writing at a
moment’s notice.
He was a man of action as distinguished from a man of letters. He did
not write a book nor contribute to periodical literature. Among his
predecessors and successors in high office amidst the imperial affairs
of India, some have been men either of letters or of literary culture;
as for instance, Warren Hastings, Wellesley, Teignmouth, Mountstuart
Elphinstone, Lytton. Though neither unlettered nor uncultured, he had no
literary training nor did he possess that which would nowadays be called
culture. Again, some of his predecessors and successors had acquired a
considerable position either in political and parliamentary life at home
or in imperial affairs abroad, as for example Amherst, Ellenborough,
Hardinge, Dalhousie, Canning, Elgin, Mayo, Northbrook. But he derived
his position solely from experience of India, knowledge of her people,
and services rendered within her limits. The son of a poor and hardy
veteran officer, he was essentially a self-made and a self-taught man.
It is therefore interesting to learn how he came to make and teach
himself thus grandly, and what was the process of the making and the
teaching. For he had no wondrous gifts of intellect or imagination and
few external graces. He never enjoyed the advantages of high education,
of family connection, of contact with political life, of guidance from
the lights of the age. He had to raise himself by his own up-heaving
force, and to propel himself by his own motive power. Before him many
great men have been singled out for greatness by every observer from
their youth onwards. But he as a young man was never deemed remarkable,
and almost up to his middle life he was not expected by his best friends
to acquire greatness. Then the hour of difficulty came, and was followed
by other hours harder and harder still; and he was found more and more
to be the man for them all. From a good magistrate of a comparatively
old district he became the administrator of a newly-annexed territory.
Thence he rose to be Resident at a Native Court in time of trouble, and
virtual governor of an arduous province. While thus occupied he was
overtaken by the desperate tempest of the Mutinies, and he rode on the
crest of every wave. Thence he was promoted in natural order to the
supreme command in India. Thus he rose not by assumed antecedents nor by
collateral advantages, but by proved merit in action. Doing lesser
things very well he was tried in greater things, and he did them with
equal efficiency. Tested in the furnace of fiery danger he showed the
purest metal. Lastly, when elevated to the highest office he was still
successful.
All this while, his qualities were for the most part those which are
commonly possessed by British people. He evinced only two qualities in
an uncommon degree, namely energy and resolution. But if he was not a
man of genius in the ordinary acceptation of the term, there must have
been a certain genius in him, and that was virtue. Such genius is indeed
heaven-born, and this was the moral force which combined all his
faculties into a harmonious whole and made him a potent instrument for
good, a man of peace or of war, according to the requirements of right
and justice. His virtue was private as well as political, domestic as
well as public. He was a dutiful son, a faithful husband, a kind father,
an affectionate brother, a steadfast friend. There have been men eminent
in national affairs over whose life a veil must partially be thrown; but
his conduct was unassailable even by those who assailed his policy and
proceedings. However fiercely the light might beat on him, he was seen
to be unspotted from the world. Again there have been statesmen who,
vigilant as regards the public interests, have yet neglected their own
concerns; but he was a good steward in small things as well as in great.
He always found the means of meeting charitable demands; he was ever
ready with trusty counsel for his friends; he managed a fund formed by
himself and his brothers as a provision for their widowed mother. But,
while upright and undaunted before men, he was inwardly downcast and
humble before the all-seeing Judge. He relied on divine mercy alone,
according to the Christian dispensation. Apart from the effect of his
constant example in Christian action, he made no display of religion
beyond that which occasion might require. In this cardinal respect as in
all lesser respects he was unostentatious, excelling more in practice
than in precept. Amidst the excitement of success in emergent affairs,
he would reflect on the coming time of quiet and retirement. In the
heyday of strength and influence he would anticipate the hour when the
silver cord must be loosed and the golden bowl broken; when surrounded
with pomp and circumstance, he would reckon up the moments when the
splendid harness must be cast aside. In a word, massive vigour,
simplicity and single-mindedness were the keynotes of his character.
In the following pages, then, the development of this character will be
traced through many striking circumstances in distant fields of action,
through several grave contingencies and some tremendous events. The
portrait will, indeed, be drawn by the hand of affection. Nevertheless
every endeavour will be made to preserve accurately the majestic
features, to pourtray the weather-beaten aspect, to depict the
honourable scars, the wrinkles of thought, the furrows of anxiety. In a
word he is to be delineated as he actually was in gentleness or
ruggedness, in repose or activity, in sickness or health.
His course, from the beginning to the end of life, should have a
spirit-stirring effect on the middle class from which he sprung. For to
his career may be applied the Napoleonic theory of a marshal’s baton
being carried by conscripts in their knapsacks during a campaign. With
virtue, energy and resolution like his, British youths of scanty means,
winning their places by competition, may carry with them to the Eastern
empire the possibilities of national usefulness and the resources for
conquering fortune in her noblest sphere.
Moreover, a special lesson may be learnt from him, namely that of
endurance; for he was, in the midst of energetic life, often troubled
and sometimes even afflicted by sickness. In early life he seemed to
have been born with powerful robustness; but as a young man he suffered
several times from critical illness, and in middle age ailments,
affecting chiefly the head, grew upon him like gathering clouds. As an
elderly man he was prematurely borne down to the dust of death, while
according to ordinary hope he might yet have been spared for some years
to his family his friends and his country. If anything could add to the
estimation in which he is held, it is the remembrance that when he
magnificently swayed the Punjab his health was fitfully uncertain, that
it was still worse when he stemmed the tide of the Mutiny and Rebellion,
that it had never been really restored even when he became Viceroy, and
that during the performance of deeds, always arduous and often heroic,
he had to struggle with physical pain and depression as well as wrestle
with public emergencies.
But though he might have added something to the long list of his
achievements had his life been prolonged, still the main objects of his
existence had been fulfilled, and he died neither too early nor too late
for his fame. Even if it cannot be said of him that he lived long enough
to be gathered to his fathers like a full shock of corn, still there is
a fulness and a completeness in his career. To his memory may be applied
the lines of Schiller on a dead hero: “He is the happy one. He has
finished. For him is no more future here below. For him destiny weaves
no webs of envy now. His life seems spotless, and spreads out with
brightness. In it no dark blemish remains behind. No sorrow-laden hour
knocks to rouse him. He is far-off beyond hope and fear. He depends no
longer on the delusive wavering planets. For him ’tis well for ever. But
for us, who knows what the dark-veiled hour may next bring forth!”