Page:The Marquess of Dalhousie.djvu/113

Rh Lord Dalhousie's policy of consolidation brooked neither interruption nor check. At the end of 1850, Mr. Mansel having laid the foundations of the judicial system, was relieved of his difficult intermediate position between his conflicting colleagues, and was promoted to the Residency of Nágpur. Sir Robert Montgomery succeeded him at the Board. After another two years the Board itself was dissolved, and Lord Dalhousie entrusted its management to John Lawrence as Chief Commissioner of the Punjab. But even in the hands of so completely trusted a lieutenant, the mainspring of the Government of India's policy in the Punjab was the Governor-General himself. I cannot do better than to quote, although at some length, the account which Lord Lawrence's biographer gives of his relations to Lord Dalhousie, while Lawrence was Chief Commissioner of the Punjab.

'The Punjab, John Lawrence's charge, was Lord Dalhousie's pet province. It was his own child, his own creation. John Lawrence might be its Chief Commissioner, but woe be to him if he ever forgot that he [Lawrence] was not its supreme ruler! If he ever did forget this, and if, acting on his own responsibility, he invited a friend to serve within its sacred precincts, or became involved in a frontier disturbance beyond them, without first applying to the Governor-General, he too was called to account, and felt what might be the weight of Lord Dalhousie's heel. But here his tact and his loyalty to superior authority came in. His notions of duty to