Page:The Marquess of Dalhousie.djvu/103

Rh top to bottom, an administration by thoroughly good men working on lines laid down by himself. 'You shall have the best men in India to help you,' he wrote to Sir Henry, — 'your brother John to begin with.'

During the two following years — the years which converted the Punjab from a powerful enemy's country into a prosperous British Province — the three members of the Board exactly fulfilled the expectations which Lord Dalhousie had formed of them. Mansel did his work quietly if not very strongly, gave no trouble to the Governor-General, and acted often as mediator, sometimes as peacemaker, between the two other members. John Lawrence, with a wider grasp and swifter hand, frequently took an independent view; but having frankly laid it before Lord Dalhousie, he without a moment's wavering carried out Lord Dalhousie's decision, and made that decision his own. Henry Lawrence, with a more sensitive personality and perhaps a finer genius than his more illustrious brother, could not so subordinate his will to another man even more masterful than himself He had more than once to be reminded by Lord Dalhousie, in very plain words,that there must be but one ruler of the Punjab, and that that ruler must be the Governor-General, and not Sir Henry Lawrence.

The new Province was promptly divided into convenient districts, each under a carefully-selected