of his seniors; but it was promotion that was fully justified by events.
He was not wanting in self-confidence, and the tone of some of his
letters to the Secretary at head-quarters might seem boastful, had not
his whole career shown that he could more than make good his promise.
'So far as I am concerned as supervisor,' he says, 'I could easily
manage double the extent of country'; and then, comparing his district
with another, he continues: 'I only ask you to wait six months, and then
contrast the civil management of the two charges.' As a fact, during the
three years that he held this post, he was often acting as deputy for
his brother Henry at Lahore, during his illness or absence, and this
alone clears him of the charge of idle boasting. J[=a]landhar was
comparatively a simple job for him, whatever it might be for others; he
was able to apply his knowledge of assessment and taxation gained at
Et[=a]wa, and need only satisfy himself. At Lahore, on the other hand,
he had to consider the very strong views held by his brother about the
respect due to the vested rights of the chiefs; and he studiously set
himself to deal with matters in the way in which his brother would have
done. The Sirdars or Sikh chieftains had inherited traditions of corrupt
and oppressive rule; but the chivalrous Henry Lawrence always looked at
the noble side of native character; and, as by his personal gifts he was
able to inspire devotion, so he could draw out what was good in those
who came under his influence. The cooler and more practical John looked
at both sides, at the traditions, good and evil, which came to them from
their forefathers, and he considered carefully how these chiefs would
act when not under his immediate influence. Above all, he looked to the
prosperity and happiness of the millions of peasants out of sight, who
toiled laboriously to get a living from the land.
The second Sikh war, which broke out in 1848, can only be treated here
so far as it affected the fortunes of the Lawrences. Lord Gough's
strategical blunders, redeemed by splendid courage, give it great
military interest; but it was the new Viceroy, Lord Dalhousie, who
decided the fate of the Punjab. He was a very able, hard-working Scotch
nobleman, who devoted himself to his work in India for eight years with
such self-sacrifice that he returned home in 1856 already doomed to an
early death. But he was masterful and self-confident to a degree; and
against his imperious will the impulsive forces of Charles Napier and
Henry Lawrence broke like waves on a granite coast. He was not blind to
their exceptional gifts, but to him the wide knowledge, coolness, and
judgement of John Lawrence made a greater appeal; and when, after the
victory of Chili[=a]nw[=a]la and the submission of the Sikh army in
1849, he annexed the Punjab, he decided to rule it by a Board and not by
a single governor, and to direct the diverse talents of the brothers to
a common end. He could not dispense with Henry's influence among the
Sikh chieftains, and John's knowledge of civil government was of equal
value.
Each would to a certain extent have his department, but a vast number of
questions would have to be decided jointly by the Board, of which the
third member, from 1850, was their old schoolfellow and friend Robert
Montgomery. The friction which resulted was often intolerable. Without
the least personal animosity, the brothers were forced into frequent
conflicts of opinion; each was convinced of the justice of his attitude
and most unwilling to sacrifice the interests of those in whom he was
especially interested. After three years of the strain, Lord Dalhousie
decided that it was time to put the country under a single ruler. For
the honour of being first Chief Commissioner of the Punjab he chose the
younger brother; and Sir Henry was given the post of Agent in
R[=a]jput[=a]na, from which he was promoted in 1857 to be the first
Governor of Oudh.
It was a tragic parting. The ablest men in the Punjab, like John
Nicholson and Herbert Edwardes, regarded Sir Henry as a father, and many
felt that it would be impossible to continue their work without him. No
Englishman in India made such an impression by personal influence on
both Europeans and Asiatics. As a well-known English statesman said:
'His character was far above his career, distinguished as that career
was.' But there is little doubt, now, that for the development of the
new province Lord Dalhousie made the right choice. And there is no
higher proof of the magnanimity of John Lawrence than the way in which
he won the respect, and retained the services, of the most ardent
supporters of his brother. His dealings with Nicholson alone would fill
a chapter; few lessons are more instructive than the way in which he
controlled the waywardness of this heroic but self-willed officer, while
giving full scope to his singular abilities.
The tale of John Lawrence's government of the Punjab is in some measure
a repetition of his work at P[=a]n[=i]pat and Delhi. It had the same
variety, it was carried out with the same thoroughness; but on this vast
field it was impossible for him to see everything for himself. While
directing the policy, he had to work largely through others and to leave
many important decisions to his subordinates. The quality of the Punjab
officials--of men who owed their inspiration to Henry Lawrence, or to
John, or to both of them--was proved in many fields of government during
the next thirty years. Soldiers on the frontier passes, judges and
revenue officers on the plains, all worked with a will and contributed
of their best. The Punjab is from many points of view the most
interesting province in India. Its motley population, chiefly
Musalm[=a]ns, but including Sikhs and other Hindus; its extremes of heat
and cold, of rich alluvial soil and barren deserts; its vast
water-supplies, largely running to waste; its great frontier ramparts
with the historic passes--each of these gave rise to its own special
problems. It is impossible to deal with so complex a subject here; all
that we can do is to indicate a few sides of the work by which John
Lawrence had so developed the provinces within the short period of eight
years that it was able to bear the strain of the Mutiny, and to prove a
source of strength and not of weakness. He put the right men in the
right places and supported them with all his power. He broke up the old
Sikh army, and reorganized the forces in such a way as to weaken tribal
feeling and make it less easy for them to combine against us. He so
administered justice that the natives came to know that an English
official's word was as good as his bond. And, with the aid of Robert
Napier and others, he so helped forward irrigation as to redeem the
waste places and develop the latent wealth of the country. In all these
years he had little recognition or reward. His chief, Lord Dalhousie,
valued his work and induced the Government to make him K.C.B. in 1856;
but to the general public at home he was still unknown.
In 1857 the crisis came. The greased cartridges were an immediate cause;
there were others in the background. The sepoy regiments were too
largely recruited from one race, the Poorbeas of the North-west
Province, and they were too numerous in proportion to the Europeans;
vanity, greed, superstition, fear, all influenced their minds.
Fortunately, they produced no leader of ability; and, where the British
officials were prompt and firm, the sparks of rebellion were swiftly
stamped out; Montgomery at Lahore, Edwardes at Pesh[=a]war, and many
others, did their part nobly and disarmed whole regiments without
bloodshed. But at Meerut and Cawnpore there was hesitation; rebellion
raised its head, encouragement was given to a hundred local discontents,
little rills flowed together from all directions, and finally two great
streams of rebellion surged round Delhi and Lucknow. The latter, where
Henry Lawrence met a hero's death in July, does not here concern us; but
the reduction of Delhi was chiefly the work of John Lawrence, and its
effect on the history of the Mutiny was profound.
He might well have been afraid for the Punjab, won by conquest from the
most military race in India only eight years before, lying on the
borders of our old enemy Afgh[=a]nist[=a]n, garrisoned by 11,000
Europeans and about 50,000 native troops. It might seem a sufficient
achievement to preserve his province to British rule, with rebellion
raging all around and making inroads far within its borders. But as soon
as he had secured the vital points in his own province (Mult[=a]n,
Pesh[=a]war, Lahore), John Lawrence devoted himself to a single task, to
recover Delhi, directing against it every man and gun, and all the
stores that the Punjab could spare. Many of his subordinates, brave men
though they were, were alarmed to see the Punjab so denuded and exposed
to risks; but we now see the strength of character and determination of
the man who swayed the fortunes of the north. He knew the importance of
Delhi, of its geographical position and its imperial traditions; and he
felt sure that no more vital blow could be struck at the Mutiny than to
win back the city. The effort might seem hopeless; the military
commanders might hesitate; the small force encamped on the historic
ridge to the west of the town might seem to be besieged rather than
besiegers. But continuous waves of energy from the Punjab reinforced
them. One day it was 'the Guides', marching 580 miles in twenty-two
days, or some other European regiment hastening from some hotbed of
fanaticism where it could ill be spared; another day it was a train of
siege artillery, skilfully piloted across rivers and past ambushes;
lastly, it was the famous moving column led by John Nicholson in person
which restored the fortunes of the day. Through June, July, August, and
half of September, the operations dragged wearily on; but thanks to the
exertions of Baird Smith and Alexander Taylor, the chief engineers, an
assault was at last judged to be feasible. After days of street
fighting, the British secured control of the whole city on September
20th, and Nicholson, who was fatally wounded in the assault, lived long
enough to hear the tale of victory. Without aid from England this great
triumph had been won by the resources of the Punjab; and great was the
moral effect of the news, as it spread through the bazaars.
This success did not exhaust Lawrence's energy. For months after, he
continued to help Sir Colin Campbell in his operations against Lucknow,
and to correspond with the Viceroy, Lord Canning, and others about the
needs of the time. More perhaps than any one else, he laboured to check
savage reprisals and needless brutality, and thereby incurred much odium
with the more reckless and ignorant officers, who, coming out after the
most critical hour, talked loudly about punishment and revenge. He was
as cool in victory as he had been firm in the hour of disaster, and
never ceased to look ahead to rebuilding the shaken edifice on sounder
foundations when the danger should be past. It was only in the autumn of
1858, when the ship of State was again in smooth water, that he began to
think of a holiday for himself. He had worked continuously for sixteen
years; his health was not so strong as of old, and he could not safely
continue at his post. He received a Baronetcy and the Grand Cross of the
Bath from the Crown, while the Company recognized his great services by
conferring on him a pension of £2,000 a year.
From these heroic scenes it is difficult to pass to the humdrum life in
England, the receptions at Windsor, the parties in London, and the
discussions on the Indian Council. He himself (though not indifferent to
honourable recognition of his work) found far more pleasure in the quiet
days passed in the home circle, the games of croquet on his lawn, and
the occasional travels in Scotland and Ireland. Four years of repose
were none too long, for other demands were soon to be made upon him.
When Lord Elgin died suddenly in 1863, John Lawrence received the offer
of the highest post under the Crown, and, before the end of the year, he
was sailing for Calcutta as Governor-General of India.
In some ways he was able to fill the place without great effort. He had
never been a respecter of persons; he had been quite indifferent
whether his decisions were approved by those about him, and had always
learnt to walk alone with a single eye to the public good. Also, he had
such vast store of knowledge of the land and its inhabitants as no
Viceroy before him for many decades. But the ceremonial fatigued him;
and the tradition of working 'in Council', as the Viceroy must, was
embarrassing to one who could always form a decision alone and had
learnt to trust his own judgement.
Many of Lawrence's best friends and most trusted colleagues had left
India, and he had, seated at his Council board, others who did not share
his views, and who opposed the measures that he advocated. Especially
was this true of the distinguished soldier Sir Hugh Rose; and Lawrence
had to endure the same strain as in 1850, in the days of the Punjab
board. But he was able to do great service to the country in many ways,
and especially to the agricultural classes by pushing forward large
schemes of irrigation. Finance was one of his strong points, and any
expenditure which would be reproductive was sure of his support owing to
his care for the peasants and his love of a sound budget. The period of
his Viceroyalty was what is generally called uneventful--that is, it was
chiefly given up to such schemes as promoted peace and prosperity, and
did not witness any extension of our dominions. Even when Robert
Napier's[19] expedition went to Abyssinia, few people in England
realized that it was organized in India and paid for by India; and the
credit for its success was given elsewhere.
[Note 19: Created Lord Napier of Magdala after storming King
Theodore's fortress in 1868.]
But it is necessary to refer to one great subject of controversy, which
was prominent all through Lawrence's career and with which his name is
associated. This is the 'Frontier Policy' and the treatment of
Afgh[=a]nist[=a]n, on which two distinct schools of thought emerged.
One school, ever jealous of the Russian advance, maintained that our
Indian Government should establish agencies in Afgh[=a]nist[=a]n with or
without the consent of the Am[=i]r; that it should interfere, if need
be, to secure the throne for a prince who was attached to us; that
British troops should be stationed beyond the Indus, where they could
make their influence felt beyond our borders. The other maintained that
our best policy was to keep within our natural boundaries, and in this
respect the Indus with its fringe of desert was second only to the high
mountain chains; that we should recognize the wild love of independence
which the Afgh[=a]ns felt, that we should undertake no obligations
towards the Am[=i]r except to observe the boundaries between him and us.
If the Russians threatened our territories through Afgh[=a]nist[=a]n,
the natives would help us from hatred of the invaders; but if we began
to establish agents and troops in their towns, we should ourselves
become to them the hated enemy.
One school said that the Afgh[=a]ns respected strength and would support
us, if we seemed capable of a vigorous policy. The other replied that
they resented foreign intrusion and would oppose Great Britain or
Russia, if either attempted it. One said that we ought to have a
resident in K[=a]bul and Kandah[=a]r, the other said that it was a pity
that we had ever occupied Pesh[=a]war, in its exposed valley at the foot
of the Khyber Pass, and that Attock, where the Indus was bridged, was
the ideal frontier post.
No one doubted that Lawrence would be found on the side of the less
showy and less costly policy; and he kept unswervingly true to his
ideal. The verdict of history must not be claimed too confidently in a
land which has seen so many races come and go. At least it may be said
that the men who advocated advance were unable to make it good. Few
chapters in our history are more tragic than the Afgh[=a]n Wars of
1838-42 and 1878-80, though the last was redeemed by General Roberts's
great achievements. Our present policy is in accord with this verdict.
There is to-day no British agency at K[=a]bul or Kandah[=a]r; and the
loyalty of the Am[=i]rs, during some forty years of faithful adherence
on our part to this policy, have been sufficiently firm to justify
Lawrence's opposition to the Forward Policy. To-day it seems easy to
vindicate his wisdom; but in 1878, when the Conservative Government
kindled the war fever and allowed Lord Lytton to initiate a new
adventure, it was not easy to stem the tide, and Lawrence came in for
much abuse and unpopularity in maintaining the other view.
But long before this happened he had returned to England. His term of
office was over early in 1869, and his work in India was finished. His
last years at home were quiet, but not inactive. In 1870 he was invited
to become the first chairman of the new School Board for London, and he
held this office three years. Board work was always uncongenial to him,
and the subject was, of course, unfamiliar; but he gave his best efforts
to the cause and did other voluntary work in London. This came to an end
in 1876, when his eyesight failed, and for nearly two years he had much
suffering and was in danger of total blindness for a time. A second
operation saved him from this, and in 1878 he put forth his strength in
writing and speaking vigorously, but without success, against Lord
Lytton's Afgh[=a]n War. In June, 1879, he was stricken with sudden
illness, and died a week later in his seventieth year. It was hardly to
be expected that one who had spent himself so freely, amid such stirring
events, should live beyond the Psalmist's span of life.
He had started at the bottom of the official ladder; by his own efforts
he had won his way to the top; and his career will always be a notable
example to those young Englishmen who cross the sea to serve the Empire
in our great Dependency with its 300 million inhabitants. How the
relations between India and Great Britain will develop--how long the
connexion will last may be debated by politicians and authors; it is in
careers like that of John Lawrence (and there were many such in the
nineteenth century) that the noblest fruit of the connexion may be
seen.
JOHN BRIGHT
1811-89
1811. Born at Greenbank, Rochdale, November 16.
1827. Leaves school. Enters his father's mill.
1839. Marries Elizabeth Priestman (died 1841).
1841. Joins Cobden in constitutional agitation for Repeal of Corn Laws.
1843. Enters Parliament as Member for Durham.
1846. Corn Laws repealed.
1847. Marries Margaret Leatham (died 1878).
1847. Member for Manchester.
1854-5. Opposes Crimean War.
1856-7. Long illness.
1857. Unseated for Manchester. Member for Birmingham.
1861. Supports the North in American Civil War.
1868. President of Board of Trade in Gladstone's first Government.
1870. Second long illness.
1880. Chancellor of Duchy of Lancaster in Gladstone's second Government.
1882. Resigns office over bombardment of Alexandria.
1886. Opposes Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill.
1889. Dies at Rochdale, March 29.
JOHN BRIGHT
TRIBUNE
The word 'tribune' comes to us from the early days of the Roman
Republic; and even in Rome the tribunate was unlike all other
magistracies. The holder had no outward signs of office, no satellites
to execute his commands, no definite department to administer like the
consul or the praetor. It was his first function to protest on behalf of
the poorer citizens against the violent exercise of authority, and, on
certain occasions, to thwart the action of other magistrates. He was to
be the champion of the weak and helpless against the privileged orders;
and his power depended on his courage, his eloquence, and the
prestige of his office. England has no office of the sort in her
constitutional armoury; but the word 'tribune' expresses, better than
any other title, the position occupied in our political life by many of
the men who have been the conspicuous champions of liberty, and few
would contest the claim of John Bright to a foremost place among them.
He, too, stood forth to vindicate the rights of the _plebs_; he, too,
resisted the will of governments; and in no common measure did he give
evidence, through forty years of public life, of the possession of the
highest eloquence and the highest courage.
[Illustration: JOHN BRIGHT
From the painting by W. W. Ouless in the National Portrait Gallery]
His early life gave little promise of a great career. He was born in
1811, the son of Jacob Bright, of Rochdale, who had risen by his own
efforts to the ownership of a small cotton-mill in Lancashire, a man of
simple benevolence and genuine piety, and a member of the Society of
Friends--a society more familiar to us under the name of Quakers, though
this name is not employed by them in speaking of themselves.
The boy left home early, and between the ages of eight and fifteen he
was successively a pupil at five Quaker schools in the north of England.
Here he enjoyed little comfort, and none of the aristocratic seclusion
in which most statesmen have been reared at Eton and Harrow. He rubbed
shoulders with boys of various degrees of rank and wealth, and learnt to
be simple, true, and serious-minded; but he was in no way remarkable at
this age. We hear little of his recreations, and still less of his
reading; the school which pleased him most and did him most good was the
one which he attended last, lying among the moors on the borders of
Lancashire and Yorkshire. In the river Hodder he learnt to swim; still
more he learnt to fish, and it was fishing which remained his favourite
outdoor pastime throughout his life.
When school-days were over--at the age of fifteen--there was no question
of the University: a rigorous life awaited him and he began at once to
work in his father's business. The mill stood close beside his father's
house at Greenbank near Rochdale, some ten miles northward from
Manchester, and had been built in 1809 by Jacob Bright, out of a capital
lent to him by two members of the Society of Friends. Here he received
bales of new cotton by canal or from carriers, span it in his mill, and
gave out the warp and weft thus manufactured to handloom weavers, whom
he paid by the piece to weave it in the weaving chamber at the top of
their own houses. He then sold the fully manufactured article in
Manchester or elsewhere. In such surroundings, many a clever boy has
developed into a hard-headed prosperous business man; material interests
have cased in his soul, and he has been content to limit his thoughts to
buying and selling, to the affairs of his factory and his town, and he
has heard no call to other fields of work. But John Bright's education
in books and in life was only just beginning, and though it may be
regrettable that he missed the leisured freedom of university life, we
must own that he really made good the loss by his own effort (and that
without neglecting the work of the mill), and thereby did much to
strengthen the independence of his character.
In the mill he was the earliest riser, and often spent hours before
breakfast at his books. History and poetry were his favourite reading,
and periodicals dealing with social and political questions; his taste
was severe and had the happiest effect in chastening his oratorical
style. To him, as to the earnest Puritans of the seventeenth century,
the Bible and Milton were a peculiar joy; no other stories were so
moving, no other music so thrilling to the ear. In his family there was
no want of good talk. His mother, who died in 1830, was a woman of great
gifts, who helped largely in developing the minds of her children.
After her death John continued to live with his sisters, who were clever
and original in mind, becoming the leader in the home circle, where
views were freely exchanged on the questions of the day.
The Society of Friends was adverse to political discussion, as
interfering with the religious life. But the Brights could not be kept
from such a field of interest; and during these years theirs, like many
other quiet homes, was stirred by the excitement roused by the fortunes
of the Reform Bill.