Page:The Marquess of Dalhousie.djvu/101

Rh Governor-General, his action was firmly prescribed by the Governor-General. At the end of those four years, when Lord Dalhousie had to choose between John and Henry Lawrence as his Chief Commissioner in the Punjab, he chose John. But he found an appointment of equal dignity for Henry in an adjoining territory, and made his salary equal to that which he had drawn in the Punjab.

Lord Dalhousie having, in 1849, clearly shown the Lawrences that he intended to govern the Punjab on principles and methods of his own, so arranged the local governing body as to secure that its guidance should remain in his own hands. Instead of appointing one or other of the brethren Chief Commissioner, he constructed them together with a third officer into a Board. The plan seemed to on-lookers particularly unsuitable for the control of a newly conquered province. Sir Charles Napier shot out his bitter word at it. 'Boards rarely have any talent,' he wrote, 'and that of the Punjab offers no exception to the rule.' Less unfriendly critics remarked 'that it was self-condemned from its birth.' To Sir Henry Lawrence's biographer it naturally appeared a 'contrivance calculated only to enhance the ordinary faults of divided councils, and to eventuate in compromises where action was required, in ill concealed differences and final disorganisation.' Lord Dalhousie was, as we shall see, no admirer of Boards, and was perfectly aware of the