16
SIR HENRY LAWRENCE
policy and by justice to the former, wanting though they had no doubt become generally in the exercise of the corresponding duties and functions. Acquiescing also in the policy of most of the older school of Indian statesmen — and markedly of Sir John Malcolm — he was an advocate for the retention, on an extensive scale and whenever just and feasible, of the rule of native states by their hereditary native rulers. His first political employment on the Punjab frontier, when he became the disciple of Sir George Clerk, not only strengthened his views on this point, but led to his prominent position in the school of foreign politics which desired the retention of independent buffer states on the North-Western frontier.
