Henry Lawrence's call; and nothing that Sir John
Lawrence might have done could have prevented our losing, for a time,
the whole of the country north of Calcutta, had not the men of the
Punjab and the Derajat[*] remained true to our cause.

[Note *: Tracts beyond the Indus.]

It has been suggested that all outward signs of the Mutiny should
be obliterated, that the monument on the Ridge at Delhi should be
levelled, and the picturesque Residency at Lucknow allowed to fall
into decay. This view does not commend itself to me. These relics of
that tremendous struggle are memorials of heroic services performed
by Her Majesty's soldiers, Native as well as British; and by the
civilians who shared the duties and dangers of the army. They are
valuable as reminders that we must never again allow ourselves to be
lulled into fancied security; and above all, they stand as warnings
that we should never do anything that can possibly be interpreted by
the Natives into disregard for their various forms of religion.

The Mutiny was not an unmitigated evil, for to it we owe the
consolidation of our power in India, as it hastened on the
construction of the roads, railways, and telegraphs, so wisely and
thoughtfully planned by the Marquis of Dalhousie, and which have
done more than anything to increase the prosperity of the people and
preserve order throughout the country. It was the Mutiny which brought
Lord Canning into closer communication with the Princes of India, and
paved the way for Lord Lytton's brilliant conception of the Imperial
Assemblage--a great political success which laid the foundation of
that feeling of confidence which now, happily, exists between the
Ruling Chiefs and the Queen-Empress. And it was the Mutiny which
compelled us to reorganize our Indian Army and make it the admirable
fighting machine it now is.

In the account I have given of our relations with Afghanistan and
the border tribes, I have endeavoured to bring before my readers
the change of our position in India that has been the inevitable
consequence of the propinquity upon our North-West Frontier of a
first-class European Power. The change has come about so gradually,
and has been so repeatedly pronounced to be chimerical by authorities
in whom the people of Great Britain had every reason to feel
confidence, that until recently it had attracted little public
attention, and even now a great majority of my countrymen may scarcely
have realized the pro