1 Annexation — and After. 215
2 British India. It remains only to notice very briefly
3 the effect of the annexation of the Punjab (1) on the
4 province as a whole, and (2) on the Sikh people. As
5 a result of the two Sikh wars, a territory of
6 nearly ninety thousand square miles was added to the
7 British dominions, and Lord Dalhousie at once took
8 measures for its pacification and for the establishment
9 of a strong and beneficent system of government.
10 The accomplishment of this task was entrusted to
11 a Board of Administration consisting of three members
12 — Henry Lawrence, in charge of the political and
13 military departments and President of the Board ;
14 John his brother, in charge of revenue and finance ;
15 and Charles Mansel (later succeeded by Robert Mont-
16 gomery), as chief of the judicial branch. Amongst the
17 officers selected to serve under this Board were Herbert
18 Edwardes, John Nicholson, Reynell Taylor, George
19 Lawrence, Abbot, Daly, and others whose names
20 have become household words in the Punjab.
21 " With singular success and in the most thorough
22 detail," says John Lawrence's biographer, " the Board,
23 in a country totally destitute of the machinery of
24 government, created and established in a period of
25 four years a system of administration complete in all
26 its branches, military, civil, and financial, in addition
27 to which it provided roads, canals, and jails, put an
28 end to thuggy and dacoity, codified the laws, refined
29 the coinage, and promoted agriculture." It is owing
30 to the labours of this famous triumvirate that the
31 Punjab is able to-day to look back upon sixty-five
32 years of continuous peace, of steady progress, and
33 save for the occasional vicissitudes of famine, of un-