Page:Sir Henry Lawrence, the Pacificator.djvu/134

Rh points which Sir Henry advocated in opposition to his brother, in regard to the retention by the chiefs, in the disputed cases, of their old jágírs.

There, is no doubt that Sir Henry felt this decision of Lord Dalhousie's very keenly, however gracious the terms in which it was conveyed. On the one hand, as a personal matter, he could not admit the implied incompetence to rule the Province when the situation was easy, after he had managed it so successfully in the trying times that followed on the Sutlej campaign, and after he, as head of the later administration, subsequent to the annexation, had brought it into such exceptional estimation and repute. And, on the other hand, as representative of the military and political branch of the service, he repudiated the idea that that profound experience of the details of civil administration of one part of the Empire was essential for the charge of another part, in the same sense that a trained medical man is needed for medical work, or a trained lawyer for the exposition of the law.

Nor was the Punjab yet in such a state of confirmed and ingrained tranquillity, of settled repose and contentment, that the style of administration hitherto carried on could be with safety set aside and replaced by more high and dry methods.

Now that Sir Henry was about to quit the Punjab, the gravity of the position lay, as already suggested, in the probability that there could be little hope of the arrangements for the jágírdárs, for which he had been so long striving, being fulfilled in their integrity;