Page:Sir Henry Lawrence, the Pacificator.djvu/148

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HIS PERSONALITY AND VIEWS
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end all but worshipped, after their Oriental fashion, by the natives.

On leaving the Punjab, one friend wrote of him: —

'He will be regretted by all, both European officers and natives. With the latter, who can supply his place? The sardárs and jágírdárs will lose their only friend and benefactor, and grieve most bitterly for his loss. Loid Dalhousie has struck out the keystone from the arch of the Punjab administration. For the future, fortiter in re will be the character of the rule, without much of the suaviter in modo which has hitherto accompanied it, and has been the chief element of its success.'

Another wrote: —

'The Sikhs have always known him as a friend. He has been ever a staunch and hardy comrade to their troops, a source of honour to their chiefs, and of justice to their labouring classes; and thus it is that, at this moment (when he is leaving the Punjab), the placeless ministers, powerless sardárs, jágírless jágírdárs, disbanded soldiers, and other fragments of Ranjít's broken court and army find in Sir Henry Lawrence a natural representative such as they can find nowhere else, and must inevitably be disfranchised by his loss, A people's respect, however, is a ruler's reward, and the kindly memory of him and his good deeds, in thousands of Punjab homes, will follow after him as a blessing.'

Of his influence and position in the Punjab, in supervising the annexation, it was said: —

'The powers of mind — the watchful benevolence — the Catholic charity — the wisdom, far-seeing, provident, and sound, which calculated every contingency and provided for every emergency — combined the whole machinery of the administration into one of the greatest of triumphs of