Page:The Marquess of Dalhousie.djvu/112

104 and moral reforms — reforms backed by the resolute will of Lord Dalhousie.

The measures detailed in the preceding pages, and many others which I can barely mention in passing, formed part of a complete scheme of consolidation designed by Lord Dalhousie, and worked out by his lieutenants under his watchful eye. Lord Dalhousie was not content with throwing a paper constitution at the heads of his subordinates. He dealt personally, indeed with his own pen, with each question as it arose: personally inspected each part of the province; and personally resided for many months a year at the comparatively new hill-station of Simla within it. He found the Sikh territories disunited by a confusion of civil and criminal laws, by a confusion of taxation and finance, by a confusion of coinage, by a confusion of languages, and by the absence of roads and means of communication. He bound together those disunited territories into the British Province of the Punjab by uniform systems of civil and criminal justice, by a common system of taxation and finance, by a single coinage, by a recognised language for public business in each of the natural divisions of the country, and by the strong cohesive force of roads and highways.

Whatever might be the constitution of the local Punjab Government, whoever might be the members of the Board, or whether there was a Board at all,