Lord Lawrence

English Men of Action LORD LAWRENCE

BY SIR RICHARD TEMPLE London MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1889 The right of translation and reproduction is reserved



John Laird Mair Lawrence was born in 1811 and died in 1879, being sixty-eight years of age. Within that time he entered the Civil Service of the East India Company, governed the Punjab then the most difficult province in India, took a very prominent part in the War of the Mutinies, was by many called the saviour of the Indian empire, and became Viceroy of India. By reason of his conduct in these capacities he is regarded as a man of heroic simplicity, and as one of the best British type, to be reckoned among our national worthies.
I shall write the following account of him as a man of action, partly from authentic records, but chiefly from personal knowledge. I was his Secretary during some of the most busy and important years when he was governing the Punjab, and one of his Councillors when he was Viceroy. My acquaintance with him began in 1851, and continued on intimate terms till 1870, from which time until his death I was separated from him by distance. Thus I have been in great part an eyewitness of what is to be related of him. My knowledge, too, of his views is derived, not from correspondence nor from private letters, but from verbal communication. For several years it was my chief duty so to imbue my mind with his policy and opinions that I might be able to express them in writing at a moment’s notice.
He was a man of action as distinguished from a man of letters. He did not write a book nor contribute to periodical literature. Among his predecessors and successors in high office amidst the imperial affairs of India, some have been men either of letters or of literary culture; as for instance, Warren Hastings, Wellesley, Teignmouth, Mountstuart Elphinstone, Lytton. Though neither unlettered nor uncultured, he had no literary training nor did he possess that which would nowadays be called culture. Again, some of his predecessors and successors had acquired a considerable position either in political and parliamentary life at home or in imperial affairs abroad, as for example Amherst, Ellenborough, Hardinge, Dalhousie, Canning, Elgin, Mayo, Northbrook. But he derived his position solely from experience of India, knowledge of her people, and services rendered within her limits. The son of a poor and hardy veteran officer, he was essentially a self-made and a self-taught man. It is therefore interesting to learn how he came to make and teach himself thus grandly, and what was the process of the making and the teaching. For he had no wondrous gifts of intellect or imagination and few external graces. He never enjoyed the advantages of high education, of family connection, of contact with political life, of guidance from the lights of the age. He had to raise himself by his own up-heaving force, and to propel himself by his own motive power. Before him many great men have been singled out for greatness by every observer from their youth onwards. But he as a young man was never deemed remarkable, and almost up to his middle life he was not expected by his best friends to acquire greatness. Then the hour of difficulty came, and was followed by other hours harder and harder still; and he was found more and more to be the man for them all. From a good magistrate of a comparatively old district he became the administrator of a newly-annexed territory. Thence he rose to be Resident at a Native Court in time of trouble, and virtual governor of an arduous province. While thus occupied he was overtaken by the desperate tempest of the Mutinies, and he rode on the crest of every wave. Thence he was promoted in natural order to the supreme command in India. Thus he rose not by assumed antecedents nor by collateral advantages, but by proved merit in action. Doing lesser things very well he was tried in greater things, and he did them with equal efficiency. Tested in the furnace of fiery danger he showed the purest metal. Lastly, when elevated to the highest office he was still successful.