The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1872-10-12 00:00:00

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THE DEATH OF FIELD-MARSHAL SIR
GEORGE POLLOCK.
Field Marshal Sir George Pollock died suddenly at
Walmer on Sunday. He was born in 1784, and was
three yearn the junior of his brother, the late Lord
Chief Baron. Sir George entered the military service
of the East India Company in 1802, and served under
Lord Lake at the capture of Dieg in 1803, and at the
assult on Bhurtpore in 1805. He was also engaged in
the Nepaulese campaign of 1817. In 1842 Sir George
was placed in command of the troops despatched to
Peshawar in the hope of saving, or rather recovering,
our position in Afghanistan, and having forced the
Khyber Pees by a series of brilliant and skillful opera-
tions, he marched to the relief of Sir Robert Sale and
the garrison of Jellalabad, defeated the Afghan forces
at Nlnniookail, Juglulluck, and, finally, all the troops
under Akhbar Khan, took possession of Calm', and
effected the release of the English prisoners. For these
services Sir George was appointed a G.C.8., and re
ceived the thanks of both Hounes of Parliament, and
the Court of Directors of the East India Company
settled on him for life a pension of £l,OOO, a year.
On the death of Sir John Burgoyne last year Sir
George Pollock was appointed Constable of the Tower
of London.

The Time', in s leader, , in remarking upon the death
of the Constable of the Tower, observes that our
Anglo-Indian history has been so fertile in great
names that the disappearance of one among many may

not be deemed an event of public erignificance. The
career of the late field-marshal, however, covered so
critical and eventful a period in the history of
India that his decease may be noted as the breaking
of a remarkable link with the past. The survivor
of three brothers, David Frederick, and George,
who thee to distinction out of a saddler's shop
at Charing cross two generations ago Sir George
Pollock has not long survived his equally
eucceesful and eminent brother, the late Lord Chief
Baron of the Exchequer. The eldest brother of the
three, David. became an Indian judge of distinction,
but Frederick and George rose to the highest rank in
their respective professions—After a rewind of the ,
military career of Sir George Pollock, The Times says '
that the death of such a man should not page without '
notice. His life was a link between the oil order and
the new, between the period when Eugland held her
own in India soli ly by the point of her sword and
the modern phase of polity in which rho governs
mainly by even-handed justice. But for Sir George
Pollock and men like him we should never have had
the opportunity of testing and carrying out this
modern system of Anglo-Indian government. If
the Alfghans had succeeded in inflicting upon us an
unrepaired humiliation, if we had never passed the
Khyber as conquerors, if we had succumbed in
North-Western India to the violence and fanaticism
of the native powers, we should have been com-
pelled to face the ordeal of the mutiny with vastly
inferior forces to those we gathered around us in 1857.
We should, if we had turned back defeated from
Affghanietan, have been obliged to endeavour to tern-
porter with the Sikhs instead of sulxluing them, and
we should very probably have failed. 'I he struggle
which resulted in our acquisition of the Punjaub would
has e been fought out under far less favourable circum-
stances, and perhaps our army would have even been
driven back discredited and vanquished into Bengal.
In such an event would the population and the native
troops of Bengal have held to their allegiance? It
is at least possible that they would not have done so;
but that they would have thrown off, as some of
them did a few years later, every vestige of loyalty
and have rushed into open and savage rebellion.
The English power in India was never so weak, the
English fame was never so low. If the revolt of 1857
had happened ten or twelve years before, the whole
course of Anglo-Indian history might have been
changed; and it is in great part due to Sir George
Pollock's coolness and persistence that the revolt of
1857 was not possible s decade earlier. The late CM'
stable of the Tower was one of an illustrious fraternity,
but the legal and scientific learning of his distinguished
-other, the late Chief Baron, will hardly be re-
embered so long as the exploits of the gallant soldier
who carried the English flag in triumph to the capital
of Affghanistan and taught the unruly tribes of Central
Asia how far the arm of England could reach.