and political; had watched closely and intensely the working of the several branches of the administration with which he had come in contact; had eagerly studied the ways, and feelings, and modes of thought of the native community of all classes; and thus had in his later years acquired, as was universally recognized, a perfectly unique influence over the people and an exceptional insight into the defects and requirements of the Administration.
His experiences in the Burmese war, and with the Kábul disasters during the subsequent campaign, as well as in the battles on the Sutlej, had impressed him gravely with the shortcomings in the military system and arrangements then in force, and the chronic dangers resulting from them.
His six years of service in the Revenue Survey, with the close contact into which his methods of work brought him with all classes of the people — chiefs, gentry, and peasantry, official and non-official, the corrupt and the simple-minded — opened his eyes to the benefits that would ensue from a change in the system and tone of civil administration — from the high and dry school, from the oppression of middlemen and of legal formalities, to one of direct contact with the people — which he introduced into the Punjab, and carried out with the strong support and valuable help of his brother John.
It was in those days also that he formed his views of the natural and real relations between the upper and lower classes, and of what was due both by
