The administration, known as that of the Lawrences in the Punjab, was in its day famous throughout India, and those engaged in it were too busy to reflect upon its characteristics. But after the lapse of a whole generation, or more than thirty years, a retrospect of that epoch may be calmly taken in a summary divested of technicalities. In 1852 the Board caused a report to be drawn up of their administration; which is known in Indian history as “The First Punjab Report.” But it would not now suffice to state, in the words of this document, that internal peace had been preserved, the frontier guarded, and the various establishments of the State organised; that violent crime had been repressed, the penal law executed, and prison discipline enforced; that civil justice had been administered in a simple and popular manner; the taxation readjusted and the revenue system reformed; that commerce had been set free, agriculture fostered, the national resources developed, and plans for future improvement projected. Some further explanation is needed to indicate the true position of the Board in the administrative annals of India. For, together with due acknowledgment of the zeal, capacity and knowledge, evinced in all these cardinal matters, it must yet be remembered that these are the very matters which have always been undertaken either promptly or tardily, and with more or less of success, by every administration in every province that has within this century been added to the Indian empire. Nevertheless the Punjab Board had an unsurpassed, perhaps even an unequalled merit; and it is well to note exactly in what that merit consisted; for through this merit alone was the province subdued, pacified and organised in time, so as to be prepared for the political storm which it was destined to confront within eight short years. Time indeed was an essential element in the grand preparation. Upon this preparedness, as we shall see hereafter, the issue was to depend, either for victory or for wide-spread disaster, to the British cause in Northern India.