In the spring of 1859 John Lawrence took up his residence in London, with his wife and his family, now consisting of seven children. He assumed charge of his office as a member of the Council of India in Whitehall, to which he had been nominated by Lord Stanley during the previous year, when the functions of the East India Company were transferred to the Crown. Though in some degree restored by his native air, he found his head unequal to any prolonged mental strain. Nevertheless his bearing and conversation, and his grand leonine aspect, seem to have struck the statesmen and officials with whom he had intercourse in England. A man of action—was the title accorded to him by all. During the summer he received the acknowledgments of his countrymen with a quiet modesty which enhanced the esteem universally felt for him. The City of London conferred on him formally, in the Guildhall, the Freedom which had already been bestowed while he was in India. This was one of the two proudest moments in his life. On that occasion he said: “If I was placed in a position of extreme danger and difficulty, I was also fortunate in having around me some of the ablest civil and military officers in India.... I have received honours and rewards from my Sovereign.... But I hope that some reward will even yet be extended to those who so nobly shared with me the perils of the struggle.” The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge granted him their Honorary Degrees. He was honoured by an invitation to Windsor Castle, and it appears that he must have had several important conversations with the Prince Consort.
On June 24th he received an address signed by eight thousand persons, including Archbishops, Bishops, Members of both Houses of Parliament, Lord Mayors and Mayors, Lord Provosts and Provosts. The national character of this demonstration was thus set forth in a leading-article of the Times of the 25th: “Of the names contained in the address hundreds are representative names,—indicating that chiefs of schools and of parties have combined to tender honour to a great man, and that each subscriber was really expressing the sentiments of a considerable body.”
The chair was taken on the occasion by the Bishop of London (Archibald Campbell Tait, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury). Addressing John Lawrence, and recounting the work in the War of the Mutinies, he said:
“When we recollect that at the commencement of the recent mutiny it was not uncommonly said that one cause of our weakness in other parts of India was the necessity which existed of concentrating our forces for the purpose of occupying the Sikh territory; and when we remember on the other hand that through your instrumentality that province which had been our terror became one of the sources of our strength, that instead of concentrating the British forces in the Punjab you were able to send men to aid in the capture of Delhi, so that the weapon which seemed so formidable to our power was by you so wielded as to be our best defence; when we reflect that those very soldiers, who but a few years ago were engaged in mortal conflict with our own, became under your superintendence our faithful allies,—there appears in the whole history something so marvellous that it is but right we should return thanks, not so much to the human instrument, as to God by whom that instrument was employed.”
This passage in the Chairman’s speech shows an accurate appreciation of the position of the Punjab during the crisis. In the address itself, after due allusion to the war and its results, there comes this special reference to the despatch regarding Christianity in India, which has been already mentioned in a previous chapter.
“You laid down the principle that ‘having endeavoured solely to ascertain what is our Christian duty, we should follow it out to the uttermost undeterred by any consideration.’ You knew that ‘if anything like compulsion enters into our system of diffusing Christianity, the rules of that religion itself are disobeyed, and we shall never be permitted to profit by our disobedience.’ You have recorded your conviction that Christian things done in a Christian way will never alienate the heathen. About such things there are qualities which do not provoke distrust nor harden to resistance. It is when unchristian things are done in the name of Christianity, or when Christian things are done in an unchristian way, that mischief and danger are occasioned.’ These words are memorable. Their effect will be happy not only on your own age but on ages to come. Your proposal that the Holy Bible should be relieved from the interdict under which it was placed in the Government schools and colleges, was true to the British principle of religious liberty and faithful to your Christian conscience.”
Some passages may be quoted as extracts from Lawrence’s reply as they are very characteristic. Expressing gratitude for the good opinion of his countrymen, and again commending his officers to the care of their country, he thus proceeds:
“All we did was no more than our duty and even our immediate interest. It was no more than the necessities of our position impelled us to attempt. Our sole chance of escape was to resist to the last. The path of duty, of honour, and of safety was clearly marked out for us. The desperation of our circumstances nerved us to the uttermost. There never, perhaps, was an occasion when it was more necessary to win or to die. To use the words of my heroic brother at Lucknow, it was incumbent on us never to give in. We had no retreat, no scope for compromise. That we were eventually successful against the fearful odds which beset us, was alone the work of the great God who so mercifully vouchsafed His protection.”
This passage will probably be regarded as effective oratory, indeed few orators would express these particular points with more of nervous force. Thus an idea may be formed of what his style would have been, had he received training when young, and had he retained his health. But though he had at this time, 1859, frequently to make speeches in public, on all which occasions the modesty, simplicity and straightforwardness of his utterance pleased his hearers, yet he was not at all an orator. In his early and middle life he had never, as previously explained, any practice or need for public speaking. Had he been so practised, he would doubtless have been among speakers, what he actually was among writers, forcible, direct, impressive, not at all ornate or elaborate, perhaps even blunt and brief. In short he would have been an effective speaker for practical purposes, rising on grave occasions even to a rough eloquence—inasmuch as he had self-possession and presence of mind in a perfect degree. But now, as he was fully entered into middle life, all this was impossible by reason of physical depression. Had this depression been anywhere but where it actually was, it might have failed to spoil his public speaking. But its seat was somewhere in the head, and any attempt at impromptu or extempore delivery seemed first to affect the brain, then the voice and even the chest. He could no doubt light up for a moment and utter a few sentences with characteristic fire; or he could make a longer speech quietly to a sympathetic audience; but beyond this he was no longer able to go. As his health improved, his power of speaking increased naturally, still it never became what it might have become had he been himself again physically.