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236 This is the secret of its great prosperity at the present day. Nowhere in India are the peasantry more flourishing and contented, as it was Lord Lawrence's policy fifty years ago to make them—to become the bulwark of the Indian Empire in the north. His Royal Highness the late and lamented Prince Albert Victor of Wales, on his visit to Lahore in 1890, when replying to the address presented to him there, felicitously referred to the Punjab as "the soldiers' land," adding, "There is no province in India that can boast, as the Punjab can, that it is the bulwark of defence against foreign aggression, or that can be termed with the same significance the guard-room of the Eastern Empire."