Page:James Thomason (Temple).djvu/69

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LIFE AS A DISTRICT OFFICER
61

else could impart. As a Governor he will be endowed with an advantage which Governors do not always enjoy, in that he will call upon others to do only that of which he understands the doing, because he has himself done it.

During these years he found opportunities to march through the neighbouring Native State of Oudh. Though observant of its faults and shortcomings, he hesitated to pronounce against it in unmeasured terms, and was chary in accepting Native reports of an adverse character, lest they should be given partly in order to natter him by a comparison favourable to British rule. Herein he showed cautious discrimination, as well as generosity in judgment, respecting Native princes and chiefs.

At this time (1836) the Upper Provinces had been formed into a separate Government, with the name of the North- Western Provinces, under a Lieutenant-Governor, Sir Charles (afterwards Lord) Metcalfe, with his headquarters at Agra. Early in 1837 Thomason was appointed Secretary to the Agra Government.

During his life at Azamgarh, his wife had been continuously with him, and their children were now seven in number[1]. On the eighth anniversary of their marriage, 1836, he indites to her a passage couched in language of grace and beauty. Inter alia, he writes, 'seven years of uninterrupted happiness are

  1. Of these several will be mentioned in the succeeding chapters. One only is surviving, General Charles Simeon Thomason, of the Royal Engineers, now residing at Náini Tál, in northern India.