'He had perfect confidence in his arrangements, and he declared that the insurrection could never assume any serious importance. But he was uneasy for the safety of persons living in isolated parts, and about the small bands of villains who would use a political disturbance as a shelter for local crimes. He said: "I dread more than anything else that a panic will be fed by newspaper reports, and that an outcry may get up that Ireland ought to be declared in a state of siege, and military law proclaimed. To this I will never yield, although I know my refusal will be misrepresented, and may for the moment intensify the alarm."'
It is unnecessary in a personal narrative to repeat what followed in the Fenian camp. 'The insurrection,' continues his colleague, 'if it may be dignified by that name, was immediately stamped out. Lord Naas put it down in his own way, yielding neither to threats nor entreaties; acting wisely and firmly, and allowing himself to be influenced neither by newspaper panics, nor by patriots in the House of Commons, nor by rebels outside it. When he returned to London, he went on with his Government Bills precisely as if nothing had happened, and no fewer than eighteen of his measures prepared in that year received the Royal assent.'
In January, 1867, his mother died. His father survived her only six months, and on 12th August, 1867, Lord Naas succeeded as sixth Earl of Mayo.
Meanwhile, the Conservative Ministry were in aminority in the House of Commons. It became clear in 1868 that a general attack might be expected, and that the Opposition would select Irish ground. Accordingly, in that session Mr. Maguire, then member for Cork, moved for a committee of the whole House to consider the state of Ireland. On this occasion Lord Mayo was made the mouthpiece of the Government. His speech, although not successful as a Parliamentary utterance at the moment, forms a most valuable contribution to the political history of Ireland.
'This speech,' writes one who was then associated with him, 'required very careful preparation. Lord Mayo proposed to show how, notwithstanding Fenianism and local disaffection, the general prosperity of Ireland was steadily increasing. This he unquestionably proved by facts, statistics, and arguments. The collecting and arranging of the facts would have tried a man in full health. And unhappily, Lord Mayo was at that time very far from well. The day before, he could not leave his house, and the day of his speech he was only a trifle better. He spent the whole twelve hours in checking his materials and figures, and, according to his custom while thus engaged, ate nothing. When he rose to speak, he was both ill and weak, and at one time could hardly proceed. It may be easily understood that he failed to give life or pleasantness to the dry details with which he had to trouble the House. As a matter of fact, the speech, although sound and complete initself, proved a long and heavy one to the listeners. But when read afterwards, it struck us all as forming, in point of knowledge, truth, care, and logic, a complete answer to the charges brought by the Opposition.'
Lord Mayo himself felt very unhappy about it for some days. The fact seems to have been, that it was one of those speeches which, from the number and complexity of the details involved, are better read than heard. It is now an accepted authority regarding the state of Ireland, and a permanent storehouse of facts to which both parties resort.9At the time it led to a rumour that Lord Mayo was leading on to the policy known as 'levelling up.' 'It was his wish,' writes one who knew his mind, 'that grants of public money might be made to institutions without respect to creed, whether Catholic or Protestant, established for the education, relief, or succour of his fellow-countrymen; and that no school, hospital, or asylum should languish because of the religious teaching it afforded, or because of the religion of those who conducted it. He would even, I think, have gladly seen such of the revenues of the Irish Church as might not be absolutely wanted for its maintenance applied to these purposes. So far, but so far only, he was for levelling up.'
9See, for example, Earl Russell'sRecollections and Suggestions,p. 344.
The feeling which, ten years before, forced itself on him during his second tenure of office, as to the difficulty of doing any real good for Ireland, haddeepened since. The interval in opposition, and his experience as Chief Secretary for the third time, impressed him more strongly than ever with the necessity of Irish reform, and at the same time more keenly with the unlikelihood of his being permitted to effect it. So far as I am competent to hazard an opinion, it seems to me that his views went too far for his own friends, and not far enough to take the matter out of the hands of the other great party, to whom the task of more radical legislation for Ireland soon afterwards fell.
The sense of the English nation, moreover, appears to have been that the work would be best done by those whose general policy identified them with liberal measures. Lord Mayo believed intensely in the need of such measures for Ireland; but he did not belong to the reforming party in England, nor was it possible for him to frame a plan which would satisfy that party and at the same time retain the support of his own. It only remained for him to go on with his work faithfully, with however heavy a heart. Estimated by the number of Acts which he prepared and passed through Parliament, or by the executive improvements made in the Irish Administration, these three years (1866-68) were the most useful ones in his English career. But, judged by what he had hoped to effect, and what he now felt it impossible to accomplish, they were years of frustration and painful self-questioning. Shortly afterwards, with the bitterness of this period fresh in his memory, hewrote to a brother who had just entered Parliament for an English constituency: 'I advise you to leave Ireland alone. There is no credit to be got by interfering with her politics, and your position does not make it your duty to do so.'
But the way in which he bore up amid these difficulties, and the actual work which he managed to do in spite of them, had won the admiration of administrators unconnected with the party government of England. In the first half of 1868, one of the leading members of the India Council, a man of tried experience both in India and in the direction of her affairs at home, spoke to a brother of Lord Mayo as to the likelihood of his succeeding Lord Lawrence as Viceroy. He said that the feeling in the Indian Council pointed to him as the fittest man. On this being repeated to Lord Mayo, he replied: 'Not a bit. So-and-so is as fit as I am, and has a better claim.' But, later in the session, he one day said to his brother: 'Well, Disraeli has spoken to me about India! He mentioned that Her Majesty had asked him whom he thought of nominating for the office of Viceroy, should we still be in office when it became vacant; that he had brought forward my name among others, and that Her Majesty had expressed herself very graciously about the way I had conducted Irish affairs.' About the same time the Prime Minister mentioned to Lord Mayo that the Governor-Generalship of Canada would also be vacant, and gave him to understand that he might have that at once,while it was by no means certain that the Ministry would be in power next January, when the Viceroyalty of India actually demitted.
So the matter remained for some weeks. Lord Mayo struggled between his love for his children, whom he could take with him to Canada, and the more splendid sphere of activity offered in India, where he would be separated from them. At length he decided on the wider and more independent career, and made up his mind to refuse Canada on the chance of India being offered to him when the time arrived. A few months afterwards the offer was made, and Lord Mayo's Parliamentary life came to an end.
Mr. Disraeli, in addressing the Buckinghamshire electors in the same November, thus spoke of the recent labours of that life, and of the reasons which had induced Her Majesty to reward them: 'With regard to Ireland, I say that a state of affairs so dangerous was never encountered with more firmness, but at the same time with greater magnanimity; that never were foreign efforts so completely controlled, and baffled, and defeated, as was this Fenian conspiracy, by the Government of Ireland, by the Lord-Lieutenant, and by the Earl of Mayo. Upon that nobleman, for his sagacity, for his judgment, fine temper, and knowledge of men, Her Majesty has been pleased to confer the office of Viceroy of India. And as Viceroy of India, I believe he will earn a reputation that his country will honour; and that he has before him a career which will equal thatof the most eminent Governor-General who has preceded him.'
During his twenty-one years of Parliamentary life (1847-68), Lord Mayo spoke upwards of 140 times, filled the office of Chief Secretary for Ireland thrice, prepared and introduced 36 Bills, and carried 33 Acts to completion through the House. His 133 principal speeches fill 524 columns of Hansard, and deal with every subject connected with the administration of his native country.
It was, however, in the executive details of that administration, rather than in his Parliamentary appearances, that the value of Lord Mayo to his party lay. In his legislative measures the apprehension constantly harassed him that he was going farther than many of his friends would approve of, and yet not far enough to disarm their political opponents. This divergence from formerly warm allies grieved him deeply, and drew from him several letters, in which self-reliance is curiously mingled with regret and pain. In one such letter to Lord C——, in 1868, he defends his catholicity of spirit towards the conflicting creeds of his native country. The paper is too lengthy to be reproduced in full, but it reads like an amplification of Matthew Arnold's maxim, that the State should be of the religion of all its subjects, and of the bigotry of none of them.
To the outward world, Lord Mayo's career had seemed a fortunate one. Elected for his own county on his first start in public life; appointed ChiefSecretary for Ireland while still a very young man; re-appointed to that post on each of the two occasions on which his party had subsequently held power; a favourite in Parliament and among his country neighbours; a Cabinet Minister, with considerable patronage passing through his hands; he had succeeded to his family estates while still in the prime of life, and become the head of an ancient and a noble house. With a well-knit frame, and unwearied power alike of physical and mental enjoyment, he now possessed a fortune adequate to his place in the world, but not involving the responsibilities incident to the administration of one of the great incomes of the English peerage.
Yet the divergence steadily widening between Lord Mayo and the party with whom he had set out in life, made him at this period a very unhappy man. 'I remember,' writes a friend, 'one summer evening we sat till late together, and for the first time he let me see his inner self. I felt much for him, for I knew how well and hard he had worked for Ireland, and how poor had been the acknowledgment. Then, too, I saw how greatly he longed for some sphere of usefulness in which he could show the world what he was made of, and test the strength which he felt in him, but never had had the chance of putting forth as he wished.' In such moods Lord Mayo turned towards his family as a refuge from the frustrations which beset his public life. He had always tried to make himself the friend of his children; and in 1868 his letters breathe a peculiar tender playfulness which,considering his own state of mind at the time, is not without pathos.
Wherever he might be, and whatever the pressure of his anxieties or his work, he always found time for his boys. Some of his notes are scribbled from the House of Commons, others from his office; many from country houses where he had run down for a day's hunting or shooting. Throughout they bear the impress of a kindly, genial man, who had the sense to see the policy of making his children his companions and allies.
One of his sons is always 'My dear old Buttons,' another 'My dear old President,' or 'My darling old Boy,' and so forth. From one who appears to be starting on a rowing-excursion on the Thames, he wishes to know, 'What day do you go on your great voyage?' and so, 'Good-bye to my Powder Monkey, and tell me what day you leave Eton.' To another he is 'very sorry to hear that you are in the Lower School, as it will keep you back sadly hereafter; but the only thing now is to work very hard, and get a remove every half, or even a double remove.' 'I send you my Address,' he writes from the Conservative borough of Cockermouth; 'stick it up in your room, and lick any Radical boy that laughs at it.' 'I am glad you like your school, though I am somewhat afraid, by your liking it so much, that you are neither worked very hard in your head nor birched on the other end.' To another, 'I send you thirty shillings for your subscription. The Eton beagles will have togo precious slow if your old toes can carry you up to them.'
He could give advice when needful. 'My dear old Boy,' he writes to one of his sons, who he heard was making some not quite desirable acquaintances, and who had replied in a spirited letter that he could not desert his friends, 'I liked your letter very much, because you spoke out your mind, and told me what you thought. I do not want you to give up your friends, or to do anything mean; but I did hear that you were intimate with one or two fellows who were not thought much of in the school, and not your own sort at all. This annoyed me; for I should hate to think any boy of mine was not able to hold his own with his equals. I think that you had better extend your acquaintance, and, without giving up any of your old friends, mix more generally with the boys, and let them see you are as good as any of them. It is a bad thing to be always chumming up with one or two chaps, as it leads to jealousy and observation, and prevents you from studying the characters of many whom you will have in after life to associate with or to struggle with. Those are my sentiments. I know you will try and follow them.'
Lord Mayo found another resource against the vexations of a public career in his love of country life and field sports. In England he was an ordinary politician, not distinguished by commanding wealth or by any great hereditary influence, and deficient rather than otherwise in oratorical graces, who madehis mark by strong common sense, and the power of mastering details and of doing hard work. In Ireland he was known as an indefatigable sportsman and a most joyous country neighbour, whose time and purse were always at the service of his friends. His famine-work had made a name for him in County Kildare, and his genuine kindliness of heart, with a happy Irish way of adapting himself to his company, steadily increased his popularity as he went on in life. No sketch of Lord Mayo would be complete which overlooked this side of his character. It was the aspect in which he was best known to a large proportion of his friends; and his country tastes helped in no unimportant way to keep his temper sweet and his nature wholesome, at a time when he began to feel somewhat keenly the difference between what he had hoped to do for Ireland, and what he would be permitted to accomplish.
Lord Mayo was a sportsman in more than the ordinary sense. To a keen physical relish for many forms of manly exercise, he added a less common industry in the branches of knowledge collateral with them. He was not content with enjoying hunting; he studied it. At Palmerstown he set on foot and personally managed an association for improving the breed of horses and cattle. His work as M. F. H. will be presently noticed. He familiarised himself with the country which he hunted, as a general would study a district which he had to hold or to invade; and, indeed, he used to say laughingly, that he thoughthe might do very well some day as Commander of the Forces in County Kildare.
When Lord Naas accepted the Mastership of the Kildare Foxhounds in 1857, he found that a succession of hard winters had left the hunting country destitute of good coverts, the severe frosts having killed the gorse. Just before he became Master, the huntsman, after a blank day in the centre of the county, had declared that he could not tell where they should find a fox the next season; and gentlemen who knew Kildare felt that it would not afford two days' hunting a week for many years to come.
Lord Naas set himself to bring about an equilibrium in the finances, and to do this he felt he must give value to the subscribers for their money. He rejected a friendly proposal to hunt only twice a week for the first season, declaring that Kildare should never sink into a two-day-a-week county in his time, and he laboured to make up for the poverty of the coverts by good management and hard work. One day, during his first season, a firm supporter said to him: 'Well, you have now drawn two turnip-fields, three hedgerows, and one highroad. Have you a covert for the evening?' He said he had, and gave a fine run. His industry and popularity soon began to tell on the funds. By the end of his first season the subscriptions had risen from £900 to £1450, and the field-money from £250 to £358, thus quenching a deficit of £500, and leaving a surplus of £150 instead.
More than twenty new coverts were formed duringhis five years, and at least thirty others rehabilitated. 'In fact,' writes a Kildare gentleman, 'the whole country was re-made during Lord Naas' Mastership, through his personal exertions, and by means of the great enthusiasm which he created among his supporters.' Before he gave up the hounds, in 1862, he had placed the hunt on such a basis as to warrant the expenditure being fixed at £1900 a year, and to enable his successor to hunt seven days a fortnight from the first.
'As Master of the Kildare hounds,' writes one of his brother sportsmen, 'Naas had a good deal against him in his public capacity as a politician, with the farmers and others; but his innate goodness of heart, his thorough love of Ireland and Irishmen, and his wondrous enthusiasm for sport, soon made him loved by all who knew him. There are many farmers who have not hunted since his time, and he made many a man hunt who never thought of it before. He was never once in a field without knowing it ever afterwards, and how to get out of it. He remembered every fence in the country; and one day, having lost his watch in a run, he next day walked over the ground, part of which he had crossed alone, and found it. He reckoned that the greatest compliment paid to him while Master was by the farmers of the Maynooth country. One of them gave the land, and they all turned out with men and horses, and made a stick covert for him in a single day. Nothing ever gratified him more. But, indeed, there were men inKildare among all classes who were devoted to him, and with whom he had marvellous influence—men of different religion and of different politics from himself.
'Lord Naas drew very late, and was always delighted, when it was very late, if somebody asked him to draw again. He often went to the meet when the country was deep with snow and hard frost; but if it was thawing he always hunted, even with no one out. He never had a very bad fall; and when he had an ordinary one, he never cared. Those who saw him at Downshire jump into a trap filled with water will not easily forget his joyous whoop when we ran to ground, and his fine manly figure and happy face as he scraped the mud off his coat.
'To sum up: Lord Naas took the country in 1857 with poor funds, no coverts, and few foxes. In five years he gave it up with all the coverts restored, full of foxes, and with a balance of money in hand—the subscriptions having increased by £500 a year. The gentlemen of the county are solely indebted to him for the present satisfactory state of the county as a great hunting country. He advocated the admission of members who would not have been admitted under the old rules, and did much thereby to popularise the Hunt.' The same friend remarks in a private letter:10'We are indebted to Lord Naas for Kildare as it is—for its good sport and good-fellowship.' Perhaps a too enthusiastic estimate of the services of any single man; but Lord Mayocarried so intense a vitality alike into his work and his play, that he was apt to infect with enthusiasm all who came near him.
10Written in 1874.
To return to his public career. As the session of 1868 gradually disintegrated his party, Lord Mayo's difficulties increased. It may well be imagined, therefore, how he began to look forward to the independence held out by the Indian viceroyalty. 'He had but a single regret,' writes a colleague; 'he feared that his appointment would mortify a friend who (he thought) wanted it. I was struck by the manly self-reliance, and at the same time the becoming modesty, of his bearing. How strong he felt himself, and yet how fully he realised the responsibilities and difficulties before him! But the one great feeling which seemed to animate him was joy at being at last free—to do, to think, and to act as he himself found to be wisest. He seemed to me to be like a man who, having been for some time denied the light of the sun, was suddenly brought into the open day. The only expression which could give utterance to all that was passing within him were the two words, "At last."'
The tottering state of the Ministry throughout the session of 1868 strongly directed public criticism to their having appointed one of themselves to a great office which would not fall in till January 1869. The reason of its being intimated early in the autumn was that Lord Mayo desired to visit the chief political centres in India before assuming office, with a viewto studying on the spot certain large questions then pending. How thoroughly he accomplished his purpose was realised by every one who, during the early months of his Viceroyalty, had to discuss those topics—ranging from the Suez Canal to the state of local feeling on important matters in Bombay and Madras. The moment the appointment was made, and while still in England, he threw himself into his new destiny. He denied his heart its last wish to spend the remaining weeks in Ireland; attended the India Office at all hours; held daily consultations with the leading Indian authorities; toiled till late in the night on the documents with which they supplied him; and employed those about him in collecting books and papers bearing upon India.
To the public, however, it seemed doubtful whether the Conservatives would be in power when the Indian Viceroyalty actually demitted; and, as a matter of fact, they had resigned before that event took place. Nor had Lord Mayo's Parliamentary appearances been sufficiently commanding in the eyes of the English Press to secure him from personal criticism. With the exception of a very few speeches on India, China, and Australia, he had confined himself entirely to Irish business. He had displayed no great amount either of interest or of knowledge in the current subjects of English politics. His one speciality was Ireland, and it was a specialty which at that time neither attracted the sympathy nor won the applause of the English public. Indeed, except on rare occasions,an Irish debate was then an affair of empty benches—pretty much as an Indian debate, except at moments of special excitement, is at present. The statesman who had filled the chief Parliamentary office for Ireland on each occasion that his party came into power during twenty years, was less known to the English public than many a young speaker sitting for his first time on the Treasury benches.
A tempest of clamour accordingly arose in the Press, and spent its fury with equal force on Lord Mayo's colleagues and on himself. Some of the criticisms of those days read, by the light of later experience, as truly astonishing products of English party spirit. It is only fair to add, that the very papers which were most bitter against his appointment afterwards came forward most heartily in his praise. In that outburst of the English sense of justice which followed his death, our national journal of humour stood first in its generous acknowledgment of his real desert, as it had led the dropping fire of raillery three years before:—
11Punch,February 24, 1872.
Lord Mayo felt the hostility of the Liberal journals the more keenly, as in Irish matters (his real business in life) he had been half a Liberal himself. But as usual his vexation was less for himself than for the Ministry which stood publicly responsible for the appointment. 'I am sorely hurt,' he wrote to Sir Stafford Northcote, 'at the way in which the Press are abusing my appointment. I care little for myself, but I am not without apprehension that these attacksmay damage the Government, and injure my influence if ever I arrive in India. I am made uneasy, but not daunted.' Again: 'I did not accept this great office without long and anxious consideration. I leave with a good confidence, and hope that I may realise the expectations of my friends. I was prepared for hostile criticism, but I thought that my long public service might have saved me from the personal abuse which has been showered upon me. I bear no resentment, and only pray that I may be enabled ere long to show my abusers that they were wrong.'
Rancour or revenge never for a moment found lodgment in that well-poised mind. In October, 1868, while quivering under partisan attacks, he dictated the following words in his Will:—'I desire that nothing may be published at my death which is calculated to wound or to annoy any living being—even those who have endeavoured by slander and malignity to injure and insult me.' 'Splendid as is the post,' he said to his constituents at Cockermouth, 'and difficult as will be my duties, I go forth in full confidence and hope that God will give me such strength and wisdom as will enable me to direct the Government of India in the interests, and for the well-being, of the millions committed to our care. In the performance of the great task I ask for no favour. Let me be judged according to my acts. And I know that efforts honestly made for the maintenance of our national honour, for the spread of civilisation, andthe preservation of peace, will always command the sympathy and support of my countrymen.'
During this trying time Lord Mayo derived much comfort from the stedfast friendliness of Mr. Disraeli. Afterwards, when looking back from the calm level of accomplished success which he reached in India, his memory retained no sense of bitterness towards his opponents, but simply a feeling of gratitude for the unwavering courage and constancy of his leader. Mr. Disraeli had chosen his man, and he supported him in the face of an unfounded but a very inconvenient out-cry.
Lord Mayo, whether as Irish Secretary or as Indian Viceroy, was himself the very type and embodiment of this loyalty to subordinates. He conscientiously judged his men by their actual work, silently putting aside the praise or dispraise of persons not competent to speak, and penetrating his officers with a belief that, so long as they merited his support, no outside influences or complications would ever lead to its being withdrawn. On a somewhat crucial occasion he quietly said: 'I once asked Mr. Disraeli whether newspaper abuse was injurious to a public man. He answered: "It may retard the advancement of a young man, starting in life and untried. But it is harmless after a man has become known; and if unjust, it is in the long-run beneficial."'
In October he ran over to Ireland, and wandered in pathetic silence among the scenes of his boyhood. The day before he left these scenes for ever, he chosea shady spot in a quiet little churchyard on his Kildare estates, and begged that, if he never returned, he might be brought home and laid there. '13th October,' says the brief entry in his Journal—'Left Palmerstown amid tears and wailing, much leave-taking and great sorrow.'
On Wednesday, the 11th November, 1868, Lord Mayo looked for his last time on the Dover cliffs, and reached Paris the same night. The delicious repose of the voyage to India lay before him; his time was still his own, and he resolved to see everything on the way that could shed light on his new duties. Among other matters, the neglected state of the Indian Records had been pressed upon him at the India Office, and in a then recently published work. With the richest and most lifelike materials for making known the facts of their rule, the English in India still lie at the mercy of every European defamer. Their history—that great story of tenderness to pre-existing rights, and of an ever-growing sense of responsibility to the people—is told as a mere romance of military prowess and government by the sword. When Chief Secretary for Ireland, Lord Mayo had introduced and passed the Act on which the whole Irish Record Department subsists. To that end he had personally studied the method adopted in England, and deputed his friend, Sir Bernard Burke, to report on the French system.
His attention being now directed to the neglected state of the Indian Records, and the necessity for some plan for conserving them and rendering themavailable for historical research, he resolved to examine this Department in Paris with his own eyes. 'Went to the Archives,' says his diary of the 14th November, 'and was received by the Director, who showed us all through the rooms. They are in magnificent order, and are situated in the old Hôtel Soubise, with a museum of curious letters and documents for the amusement of the public, divided into the different epochs of the Ancient Kings, the Middle Ages, the Republic, the Empire, and the Monarchy after the peace. The republican documents are kept incartonswhich now number upwards of sixty thousand. The arrangement is simple, and access easy. There is a reading-room for the public down-stairs, but small, and the facilities given do not appear to be very great. It is within the power of the Director to refuse access to any document, if he sees fit. There is an enormous safe for the most valuable documents, such as Napoleon's Will, and the last letters of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette; also a secret drawer containing letters of some of the kings of France, which are not allowed to be seen by any one. There does not seem to be any calendaring going on for the purposes of publication, beyond facsimiles of curious documents.'
The feeling of rest, which is the unspeakable charm of the Indian voyage to a busy man, soon descended on Lord Mayo. He found every hotel good, and his whole route beautiful, as the fragmentary entries in his diary attest. On his railway journey throughFrance he stopped at St. Michel to see an eminent engineer who had Indian experience of a valuable kind. With the help of a special train, he carefully examined the works for the Mont Cenis tunnel then in progress. Her Majesty's shipPsycheconveyed the Viceroy-elect and his suite from Brindisi to Alexandria, with a pleasant break in the harbour of Argostali in Cephalonia, which he describes in his diary as 'very pretty, land-locked on all sides, and large enough to hold the whole English fleet.'
In Egypt he received every attention which the Pasha could bestow upon an honoured guest. His diary amusingly relates how he very nearly tumbled off the loosely-girthed saddle of the 'fiery little Arab belonging to the Minister of War,' on which he rode to the Pyramids. Another of the party 'was not so fortunate, for as soon as he got on, his horse turned round sharp and he rolled off on the road, but was not hurt.' But sight-seeing occupied only a small part of Lord Mayo's stay in Europe. His diary is full of observations, derived from the most competent engineer officers and civil administrators, as to the condition of Egypt and the great public works then in progress. He inspected the unfinished Suez Canal with great patience, and many pages of his diary are devoted to recording his impressions, with criticisms on what he saw and heard. The Indian Government steamerFerozelay waiting for him at Suez.
Presently he becomes too lazy to keep up his diary, and he dismisses the seven days from Suez to Aden inas many lines. At Aden he woke up again, and tried to master the facts regarding this first out-post of the Indian Empire. Many pages are devoted to summarising the results of his inspection of that Station, as a military fortress and as a great coaling depôt for England's commerce in the East.
He thus ends his long and exhaustive review of the situation. It must be remembered that his words were written twenty-two years ago (1868), and that many of his suggestions became, under his influence, accomplished facts.
'The conclusions I have come to regarding Aden are,'—[N.B.—many searching and adverse criticisms on individual works are here omitted.]
'(1) That the military defences may be considered as non-existent against an attack from armour-plated ships, or even ordinary vessels carrying heavy guns.
'(2) That, except as against native tribes and land forces unsupplied with siege artillery, it is not a fortress at all.
'(3) That the cheapest and most effective mode of defence would probably be by iron-plated monitors carrying heavy guns, with some heavy guns placed in sand batteries or on Moncrieff gun-carriages.
'(4) That, as a very large development of trade and consequent increase of the population are certain to occur, the question of the water-supply must be immediately faced.
'(5) That the position of Little Aden ought to be acquired with the least possible delay.
'(6) That a railway, the materials for which are almost on the spot, should be made from the Cantonment and Isthmus position to Steamer Point. This would render the defence of Aden possible by a comparatively small number of troops.
'(7) That, as the Suez Canal promises to be completed so soon, and as it is impossible to estimate the effect it will have in bringing large numbers of armed European steamers to these waters, there is no time for delay; and if Aden is to be maintained at all, an adequate defence and a sufficient supply of water ought to be provided at once. It might, however, be sufficient for the present to consider only the defences of Steamer Point, the coal-stores, and the entrance to the harbour; and it would be easy to cut off that portion of the position from the remainder. There would then be no inducement to a hostile power to attack the Cantonment and the Isthmus position, which without the coal-depots have no commercial or political importance.'
I would again remind the reader that these words were written twenty-two years ago. Much has been done since then in the directions indicated.
The next ten days were passed upon the Indian Ocean, from Aden to Bombay, and have left no memorials behind. Lord Mayo spent the time in reading books about India, and discussing Indian questions with Lord Napier of Magdala, who accompanied him on the voyage.
'Off Bombay, Saturday 19th December, 1868,' sayshis diary. 'At twelve o'clock we sighted land, and after wavering about a good deal, made the red revolving light and took a pilot on board. Heard for the first time about the change of Ministry, which was a matter of great astonishment, as it never occurred to me that Disraeli would have found it impossible to meet Parliament.'
It is scarcely needful to say that Mr. Gladstone and the Liberal Ministry declined to take advantage of the party clamour against Lord Mayo's appointment, and duly gave effect to their predecessor's nomination.
On the 20th December, 1868, Lord Mayo landed in state at Bombay as the guest of the Governor. During the next ten days he inspected everything which was of public interest in Bombay, from the House of Correction, the Central Jail at Jiranda, the dock-yards, cotton-presses, barracks, and the Vehár Water-works, to a small regimental school in the Native Infantry lines, the Municipal Market, and the sewage out-flow. He also gave interviews to people of every class, from the High Priest of the Pársís ('a fine old man,' as his diary records, 'who was presented with a large gold medal by Her Majesty for his loyalty during the disturbances') to the Inspector of Cotton Frauds. His remarks upon the defences of Bombay, the octroi duty, and the great expense of the military buildings, form the starting-point of subsequent important action in these matters during his Viceroyalty. On his visit to the rock-temples of Elephanta, while mentioning the disgust of one of his companions 'on finding thecave occupied by some drunken British soldiers, and an American party, one of whom was playing on a banjo,' he also records: 'This day enabled me to form an estimate of the works, military and naval, in the harbour of Bombay.'
On the 30th December, Lord Mayo and his suite left Bombay and sailed down the coast to inspect the harbours of Kárwár and Beypur. From Beypur he crossed India by railway to Madras, where in addition to his inspection of public institutions, he had a morning's hunting, another morning at the races, and the ceaseless evening festivities of Government House. He was constantly at work, from very early morning till late at night. His diary of the 3rd January ends the day thus:—'Had a long talk after dinner on public works and irrigation with the heads of those departments. They brought their plans and maps, showing how completely dotted over with tanks the greater part of the Madras Presidency is.' But, indeed, every page has such notices as the following:—'Had a conversation with Colonel Wilson on the proceedings and movements of the Karnátic Family.' 'Had a long talk with Mr. Arbuthnot on the decentralisation of finance, the officering of the police, and the position of the Native army.'
On the 6th January, he again embarked on theFeroze,this time for Calcutta, after a brilliant but exhausting visit. On his voyage his diary records on the 8th January:—'Paid the penalty of my imprudence and over-exertion at Madras, being attackedsharply by fever this morning.' The sea-breezes were, however, a potent medicine. There was no look of feebleness about Lord Mayo, when on the 12th January, 1869, he landed at Calcutta, under the salute from the Fort, and with 'God Save the Queen' playing, as he drove through the lines of troops, and amid the vast multitude which formed a living lane along the whole way from the river-bank to Government House.
The reception of a new Viceroy on the spacious flight of steps at Government House, and the handing over charge of the Indian Empire which immediately follows, forms an imposing spectacle. On this occasion it had a pathos of its own. At the top of the stairs was the wearied veteran Viceroy, Sir John Lawrence, wearing his splendid harness for the last day; his face blanched and his tall figure shrunken by forty years of Indian service; but his head erect, and his eye still bright with the fire which had burst forth so gloriously in India's supreme hour of need. Around him stood the tried counsellors with whom he had gone through life, a silent calm semicircle in suits of blue and gold, lit up by a few scarlet uniforms. At the bottom, the new Governor-General jumped lightly out of the carriage, amid the saluting of troops and glitter of arms; his large athletic form in the easiest of summer costumes, with a little coloured neck-tie, and a face red with health and sunshine.
As Lord Mayo came up the tall flight of stairs witha springy step, Sir John Lawrence, with a visible feebleness, made the customary three paces forward to the edge of the landing-place to receive him. I was among the group of officers who followed them into the Council Chamber; and as we went, a friend compared the scene to an even more memorable one on these same stairs. The toilworn statesman, who had done more than any other single Englishman to save India in 1857, was now handing it over to an untried successor; and thirteen years before, Lord Dalhousie, the stern ruler who did more than any other Englishman to build up that Empire, had come to the same act of demission on the same spot, with a face still more deeply ploughed by disease and care, a mind and body more weary, and bearing within him the death which he was about to pay as the price of great services to his country.
In the Chamber, Sir John Lawrence and his Council took their usual seats at the table, the chief secretaries stood round, a crowd of officers filled the room, and the pictured faces of the Englishmen who had won and kept India in times past looked down from the walls. The clerk read out the oaths in a clear voice, and Lord Mayo assented. At the same moment the Viceroy's band burst forth with 'God Save the Queen' in the garden below, a great shout came in from the people outside, the fort thundered out its royal salute, and the 196 millions of British India had passed under a new ruler.
In the evening, at a State dinner given by SirJohn Lawrence, Lord Mayo appeared in his viceregal uniform, the picture of radiant health. His winning courtesy charmed and disarmed more than one official who had come with the idea, derived from the attacks in the English partisan newspapers, that he would be unfavourably impressed by the new Governor-General. As Lord Mayo moved about in his genial strength, people said that at any rate Mr. Disraeli had sent out a man who would stand hard work.
THEACTUALPROCESS OFVICEREGALGOVERNMENT
THEACTUALPROCESS OFVICEREGALGOVERNMENT
Lord Mayo took his oaths as Viceroy on the 12th January, 1869. The same evening he set to work with characteristic promptitude to learn from his predecessor what personal duties were expected of him, and by what methods he could discharge them most effectively, and with the strictest economy of time.
The mechanism of the Supreme Government of India consists of a Cabinet with the Governor-General as absolute President. The weakness of that Government in the last century, down to the time of Lord Cornwallis, arose from the fact that the Governor-General was not absolute within his Cabinet, but merelyprimus inter pares,with a single vote which counted no more than the vote of any other member, except in the case of an equal division, when he had the casting-vote. This attempt at government by a majority was the secret of much of the misrule which has left so deep a stain on the East India Company's first years of administration in Bengal.Sir Philip Francis and his brother Councillors appointed by the Regulating Act of 1773, brought the system to a dead-lock. The hard task then laid upon Warren Hastings was not only government by a majority, but government in the teeth of a hostile majority. It is to the credit of Lord Cornwallis that before accepting the office of Governor-General in 1786, he insisted that the Governor-General should really have power to rule.
The new plan subsisted with little change till 1858, the last year of the East India Company. While the Governor-General retained the power of over-ruling his Council, as a matter of fact he wisely refrained, except in grave crises or emergencies, from exercising his supreme authority. Every order ran in the name of the President and the collective Cabinet, technically the Governor-General in Council. And under the Company every case actually passed through the hands of each Member of Council, circulating at a snail's pace in little mahogany boxes from one Councillor's house to another. 'The system involved,' says a former Member of Council, 'an amount of elaborate minute writing which seems now hardly conceivable. The Governor-General and the Council used to perform work which would now be disposed of by an Under-Secretary.'
Lord Canning, the first Viceroy under the Crown, found that, if he was to raise the administration to a higher standard of promptitude and efficiency, he must put a stop to this. He remodelled theGovernment 'into the semblance of a Cabinet, with himself as President.' Each Member of the Supreme Council practically became a Minister at the head of his own Department—or the 'Initiating Member' of the Department—responsible for its ordinary business, but bound to lay important cases before the Viceroy, whose will forms the final arbitrament in all great questions of policy in which he sees fit to exercise it.
'The ordinary current business of the Government,' writes Sir John Strachey, 'is divided among the Members of the Council, much in the same manner in which, in England, it is divided among the Cabinet Ministers, each member having a separate Department of his own.' The Governor-General himself keeps one Department specially in his own hands, generally the Foreign Office; and Lord Mayo, being insatiable of work, retained two, the Foreign Department and the great Department of Public Works. Various changes took place in the Supreme Government even during his short Viceroyalty, but the following table represents thepersonnelof his Government as fairly as any single view can. It shows clearly of what the 'Government of India' was made up, apart from the immediate staff of the Viceroy. But it should be mentioned that Lord Mayo was fortunate in having in Major (now General Sir) Owen Tudor Burne, a Private Secretary of the highest capacity for smoothly and effectively transacting business. Major Burne did much to lighten the personal labour of the Viceroy, and became his most intimate confidante and friend.