Page:Sir Henry Lawrence, the Pacificator.djvu/150

Rh His Views and Policy.

Sir Henry's views and policy on most points, and his grounds for them, have been generally described in the preceding pages in dealing with the events and circumstances with which they were concerned. But their importance and bearing — if not also their soundness — have, in many cases, become more apparent and prominent in later days, and it may therefore be well to refer to them briefly in this chapter.

The prominence that has attached to the adoption question and the jágírdár question has been apt to lead to the conclusion that he was a partisan of the upper classes of the native community in preference to the peasantry and lower classes. That this was not the case he showed in his settlement of Kaithal. He was a staunch supporter of the principle of light assessments and of material improvements. But the incidence of the system of settlement in force in his late years, tending as it did to bear heavily on the native aristocracy, made him practically a leader in the defence of that class. No one recognized more fully than he did the degenerate state of life and habits into which most of them had fallen; but his view of their proper treatment was — not that they should be made to disappear, but that they should be educated and raised — not that they should be deprived of their customary rights and privileges, but should be taught to act up to them and exercise their proper functions and influence in the community. 'We must keep free,'