BOOKS.

THE ESSAYS OF SIR HENRY LAWRENCE.*

PennArs the greatest loss India, and, through India, England sustained in the rebellion and war of 1857-8 was the loss of Sir Henry Lawrence Many died who had done well; many whose acts and characters gave promise of still better things fell in that fatal period ; but few who had done so well, and none whose ripe experience and indefatigable vigour would have been equal to the great work of building on the ruins of the mutiny a solider and wiser system of civil and military government. For in Sir Henry Lawrence we lost the only known man strong enough and gentle enough to have taken the highest post in our great dependency with almost the certainty of success. No man living in India in the spring of 1857 was more fully alive to the virtues and defects of Indian Government. No man had shown a greater power of mastering difficulties by wise, strong, yet gentle action. In him- self Sir Henry combined the soldier and civilian in a very high degree ; and was not less alive to the weak points of the one than of the other. He had sympathies, wide and deep, and could therefore touch men through their affections. His mind was of great capacity, he saw the relations of cause and effect more dis- tinctly than most men ; he could therefore appeal to their reason, and generate new convictions in the minds of those capable of having convictions. And when he saw the right clearly before him, and found reason and affection powerless before stupidity and callousness, he was robust enough to apply force, the last argument to which a great soldier-statesman will ever resort. In Sir Henry Lawrence we lost, therefore, one who would have been a legitimate representative of Queen Victoria in her oriental dominions, because in him were united those qualities which give a man the best right to rule over his fellows ; and, had he sur- vived, we much question whether the energetic expression of public and private opinion would not have insisted on his appoint- ment to the Viceroyship of British India.

He is gone, and vain is all lamentation. He has left behind him a handsome monument of deeds whereon his reputation stands like the statue on the pedestal. He has left behind him, also, the next best thing to deeds—words, sometimes eloquent, always sensible, and often wise. In the midst of the cares of govern- ment he found time to take part in the political and military dis- cussions of the day, entering into the public arena, and setting forth his views and opinions through the medium of the Calcutta Review. From time to time we have read the essays he published therein, in part or whole, and from time to time portions of them have been doled out to the public to support this and that argu- ment, and they have told heavily in the scale. That section of the public which takes an interest in the welfare of India, and it is now larger than formerly, will eagerly welcome the present collec- tion of Essays reprinted from the Calcutta Review. They are six in number. The first in the series was written in 1844, and treats of the military defence of our Indian Empire. The second and third. bear the date of the next year, and deal with political matters of great moment—Dude and the Mahrattas. The fourth is a vigorous sketch of the administration of Lord Hardinge and a vindication of that statesman ; it was penned in 1847. A gap of nearly ten years now intervenes. We are on the eve of the mutiny. The trials and sufferings of our army in the Crimea, as we all know, gave a stimulus to military reformation on all sides, and especial attention was called by Jacob and others to the state of the Bengal army. In 1855-6 and in 1856 Sir Henry Lawrence penned two essays on this vital question ; essays re- markable, not less for insight into the grave defects of the Bengal system, than for the remedies they suggest. The next year the merits of the army could no longer support the defects ; the whole institution dissolved in anarchy ; and one of its earliest victims was he who had been its just, but generous critic. And it is sad to reflect that had the military reforms advocated by Lawrence in 1844 been adopted, we should probably not have had the mutiny of 1857.

For in 1844, Lawrence saw that the strength of the army did not depend on numbers but efficiency ; a truism which all will admit, but how few really and fully comprehend. He saw the defects in the practical education of European officers ; he saw the absurdities and dangers of the system of promoting Native officers, so old and stupid, that they were an incumbrance in-war, and had nothing to do in peace but brood over their position, while men of better parts were fretting their hearts out in the ranks, or seeking among the Native princes the position they were de- barred from filling in our own army. He saw that our Sepoys came too much from the same parts of the country ; that there was too much clanship among them ; that they were liable to be misled by designing Brahmins. He wrote, "there is no doubt that whatever danger may threaten us in India, the greatest is from our own troops." And here we may quote a passage which ap- plies to our British army now as much as it applied to the Bengal force in 1844. "If commanders cannot manage their regiments, they should be re- moved from them, and that quickly, before their corps are irremediably destroyed. How much better would it be to pension, and to send to Eng- land, such men as we have in command of some corps, than to allow thew to remain a day at the head of a regiment to set a bad example to their men. We could, at this moment, point out more than one commander answering • Essays, Military and Political, written us India. By the late Sir Henry Montgomery Lawrence, R.C.B., Chief Commissioner in Chide, and Provisional

Governor-General of India. Published by Allen and Co.

our description, and we would seriously call the attention of those in high places to the injury that even one such officer may commit. He may drive a thousand men into discontent, and that thousand may corrupt many thou- sands—and all this may be done by a man without any positive evil in him ; but simply because he is not a soldier, has not the feelings of a soldier ; frets the men one day, neglects them the next : and is known by them all to care for nothing beyond his personal interests and his own hisab-kitab."

Sir Henry saw through the boasted Irregular Horse sys- tem ; not the system developed in Scinde, but the system developed in Bengal; pointed out the fatal defects of the latter, and at once recognized the superiority of the former. Nor did he forget, in his zeal to improve the defective Native army, to criticize with a kindly seventy the European troops. "How little is done," he writes in 1844, " or at least how much more might be done, for the comfort and happiness of the men, and by the saving of their lives, for the pocket of the Government." He desired to post them in the hills, to give them healthy employ- ments, to improve their barracks, to educate their children, to make them good men and therefore good soldiers ; and he dis- tinctly saw the only agency whereby good soldiers can be made. In one of his eloquent passages he says- " We do not judge the European soldier harshly, when we say that the ave- rage standard of barrack morality is very low, for we cheerfully admit, at the same time, that the temptations to excess are great ; the inducements to good conduct small ; the checks wholly insufficient. It would be a wonder of wonders, if, neglected as he is, the European soldier were to occupy a higher place in the scale of Christian morality, but whatever he may have to answer for, it is almost beyond denial that the responsibilities of the officer are far greater than his own. The soldier's sins of commission are not so heavy as the officer's sins of omission, from which they are the direct emanations. The moral character of a regiment, be it good or bad, fairly reflects the amount of interest taken by the officers in the well-being of their men. The soldier wanders out of garrison or cantonment and commits excesses abroad, because he has no inducements to remain within the pre- cincts of the barrack square. He goes abroad in search of amusement— and he finds not amusement but excitement ; he makes his way to the vil- lage toddy-shop, or to the punch-house ; he seeks other haunts of vice ; and when both money and credit are gone, perhaps he takes to the high road. This would not happen, if regimental officers really did their duty to their men. It is not merely the duty of an officer to attend parade, to manoeuvre a company or regiment, to mount guard, to sanction promotions, to see the pay issued, to sign monthly returns, and to wear a coat with a standing collar. The officer has higher duties to perform ; a duty to his Sovereign ; a duty to his neighbour ; a duty to his God, not to be discharged by the simple observance of these military formalities. He stands in loco paren- tis; he is the father of his men ; his treatment of them should be such as to call forth their reverence and affection; and incite in them a strong feeling of shame on being detected by him in the commission of unworthy actions. It is his duty to study their characters ; to interest himself in their pursuits ; to enhance their comforts; to asasist and to encourage, with counsel and with praise, every good effort ; to extend his sympathy to them in distress ; to console them in affliction—to show by every means in his power, that though exiles from home and aliens from their kindred, they have yet a friend upon earth, who will not desert them. These are the duties of the officer—and duties too which cannot be performed without an abundant recompense. There are many idle, good-hearted, do-nothing officers, who find the day too long, complain of the country and the climate, are devoured with ennui, and living between excitement and reaction, per- haps, in time sink into hypochondriasis—but who would, if they were to follow our advice, tendered not arrogantly but affectionately, End that they had discovered a new pleasure; that a glory had sprung up in a shady place ; that the'day was never too long, the climate never too oppressive ; that at their up-rising and their down-sitting serenity and cheerfulness were ever present—that in short they had begun a new life, as different from that out of which they had emerged, as the sunshine on the hill-top from the gloom in the abyss. Some may smile—some may sneer—some may acknowledge the truth dimly and forget it. To all we have one answer to give, couched in two very short words—Try it."

Efficient commanders for regiments—no incapables—was his cry alike in 1844 and 1856. The same system had gone on. Some good had been done but not enough ; and if we pass at once from 1844 to 1856, we shall see how earnest the writer had become. In 1844 he points out defects and suggests remedies. In 1856 he implores the authorities to amend in time. The style is keener, closer, more fervid. The exhortations it embodied came too late for the India of 1857 ; but they are not too late for the India, nor we may say the England, of 1859. Good commanding officers ! we want them as much as the Indian army did. We, too, want to do away with " adjutants' regiments." We, too, have routine and incapacity to overcome. Listen to Lawrence and apply the lesson.

"Genius is heaven-born. Strategy, tactics, and all else must give way on occasion. A general must understand rules and principles, but not be the slave of them. Neither rules nor principles require the term of a life to learn. He must have moral and physical courage, and ready aptitude to apply his resources. These qualifications are somewhat akin to genius. They are te be cultivated, though not to the best advantage under dry rou- tine. The India Government has seldom the power of selection from generals who have commanded divisions. It is limited to select between commanders of regiments, and men who, like Generals Patrick Grant and Cheape, and Colonels Tucker and Birch, though of known ability, not only never led a regiment into action, but never commanded one for a day. Or the selection may be extended to a third class, to men distinguished in youth as soldiers, but afterwards employed as civilians ; to the Broadfoots, Edwardes', Lakes, Beehers, and Nicholsons of India ; to the Hardinges,

Raglans, and Cathearts of the Royal Army. •

Few soldiers in India have witnessed much strategy ; but many have wit- nessed the failure of tactics in the presence of the enemy, aye. and every day witness it on their own parade grounds, when adjutants' regiments' in the hands of routine lieutenant-colonels and majors, even though they may' have never been on leave for a day for thirty years,' are clubbed up and tortured in every conceivable way. [The men who never go on leave are not the beat officers. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.] The card system fails. The man who never reflected in his life cannot be expected to reflect on an emergency. An inequality or contraction of ground puts him out ; the unexpected appearance of a crabbed brigadier finders him; the whirlwind rush of a Sir Charles Napier down the line, frightens him out of his senses ' • cards, manuals, catechisms, and all other

helps are forgotten, and the unhappy i appy field officer is like a babe in a wood.' He loses his senses, and is alike the laughing stock of his sable soldiers, and of his younger countrymen. Is such a man,—and there are scores of them, —the fitting leader of a brigade through the Bolan or the Khybur ; up the Persian Gulf, or to China or Burmah? Yet they are the men so sent, daily so selected. Can such men be expected to preserve their senses in the present's of the enemy ? That such men have not lost armies is no fault of the present system, but is attributable to the courage and skill of subor- dinates, and to the Ikbal of the company. But let not Providence be too long tempted. Rome lost her legions when commanded by generals who were soldiers only in name."

These words were almost prophetic. Providence was tempted too long, and England lost her legions when commanded by offi- cers who were soldiers only in name. But if we lost our legions we more than retrieved our name, vindicated the superiority of race, and showed what European energy could do when released by fate from the fetters of regulation and routine. But at what a fearful cost ! Setting aside all higher considerations, how much cheaper would prevention have been than cure.

We might go on quoting passage after passage from these noble essays illustrative of the foresight, ample benevolence, and politi- cal wisdom of Sir Henry Lawrence. But there is not room for all. We conclude with an extract which displays the chivalric and ungrudging nature of the man, who was as prompt to recog- nize the merits of others as he was always silent respecting his own. For this purpose we might have selected a passage refer- ring to the Bayard of India, the noble Outram. But while Out- ram lives honoured, as he deserves, John Jacob, now dead, was not honoured in life as he deserved to be. It is, indeed, not the least of Sir Henry Lawrence's claims to our affectionate admira- tion that he was so ready to appreciate contemporary worth ; and it would not be possible to pay anyone a higher tribute than is paid by Sir Henry Lawrence to John Jacob in the following passage.

After speaking of the Native soldier, and the discipline suited to him, Sir Henry says-

" The European soldier is a different creature, and requires a "'rioter discipline. The day of great severity has happily passed away ; the day when the remedy for every error was the lash. The law of kindness has however yet to be tried. Let British soldiers be dealt with as reasonable beings. Relieve them from espionage, keep them strictly to their duty, but let them have all reasonable indulgence when off duty. Let Jacob s scheme be tried with European soldiers, as with Native horsemen, with rifles, and with cannon. V e are glad again to quote Jacob's words- " The attempt to govern English soldiers by fear of bodily pain is as wise ash the cramping of our men's bodies by absurd clothing and accoutrements. . . . Ap- peal to the highest and noblest faculties of man.

" Jacob thinks that fifty thousand elite English peasantry and yeoman in the ranks, treated, and trained, and armed on rational principles, would be a match for a world in arms.' Again we go very far with Colonel Jacob, and heartily wish he were the Lord Panmure ' of India."

Would that Sir Henry had lived to be Governor-General of India, and that John Jacob had lived to be, not his Lord Pan- mure, but his Sidney Herbert.