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88 hands. Happy for England that the three brethren proved worthy of the responsibility thus intrusted to them!

But it was a responsibility which no Governor-General, in the full vigour of his working powers, would deem right to make over to a single family, however distinguished. An officer even of Council rank could declare that, in connection with the Lawrences and Lahore, his own 'convenience is a thing which has never been consulted.' Lord Hardinge, men said, 'had set up a triumvirate of Lawrences' in the Punjab. The old soldier, in the last days of his rule, seems to have been not unconscious of the charge. When Henry Lawrence took sick-leave to England at the end of 1847. Lord Hardinge declined to confirm his brother John as Resident at Lahore, and appointed an experienced officer, Sir Frederick Currie, from Bengal. On hearing of the Sikh rising in the following summer, Henry Lawrence, now Sir Henry, threw up his sick-leave in England, as we have seen, and hastened back to India.

He returned in a very sensitive frame of mind. Honestly believing his presence in the Punjab to be of the highest importance, he made the mistake of supposing himself indispensable to the Government. The Court of Directors had received with official calm his eager offer to start back at once for Lahore. Sir Henry writes that he 'was disap-