Lord Curzons
Farewell Speeches
o
^
LORD CURZON'S
FAREWELL TO INDIA.
BEING SPEECHES DELIVERED
AS VICEROY & GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF INDIA.
DURING SEPT. -NOV. 1905.
BY
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
LORD CURZON OF KEDLESTON.
P.C.. G. M.S.I.. G.M.I.E.. M.A.. F.R.S.
TO WHICH IS ADDED
THE SPEECH AT THE PILGRIMS* DINNER:
LONDON, APRIL 19O6.
EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION. OCCASIONAL NOTES AND
ESSAYS ON CERTAIN ASPECTS OF HIS VICEROYALTY BY
R. P. KARKARIA.
" Let India be my Judge ! "
SPEECH BEFORE BYCULLA CLUB, p. 14 ///.
u India will become the lode-star of our memories as she
has hitherto been of our duty?'
SPEECH BEFORE UNITED SERVICE CLUB, SIMLA, /;. 24.
" There is not an impartial man in India, who docs not
know that no Englishman ever stepped on to the shores of
India, who had a more passionate devotion for this country^
than he who is now bidding it farewell ^
SPEECH BEFORE BYCULLA CLUB, i>. 13.
BOMBAY.
TllACKER AND Co., L-D.
Pi:ivn;n AT THK CAXTON \VOKK>. I;OAIUAY,
1907.
C.%3
Dead Peeress, living Power, if that, which lived
True life, live on ... if what we call
7 he spirit flash not all at once from out
1 ''his shadow into substance then perhaps i
The mellow'd murmur of the people's praise
From thine own state, and all our breadth of realm,
Where love and longing dress thy deeds in light
Ascends to thee. . . .
Where is he can swear
But that some broken gleam from our poor earth
May touch thee, while remembering thee, I lay '
At thy pale feet this volume of winged words -
Of thy husband, and- his work in the East ?
TENNYSON.
PREFACE.
I thought that the Indian public would like to have in a perma-
nent and separate form, the various speeches in which Lord
Curzon, during the last months of his office, bade farewell to the
classes and masses who compose this Indian Empire, and delighted
as well as astonished them during two months last year. I am
enabled to carry out the idea in the present little volume by the
great kindness of Lord Curzon, to whom my thanks are in a great
measure due. He was also kind enough to direct that the
official text of the speeches should be supplied by the office of the
Private Secretary to the Viceroy. Unfortunately this text was
received too late for some of the speeches ; but care has been
taken to print the best available text, and to present the noble
orator's words in a worthy form.
To these farewell speeches in India I have added the speech
which was delivered in London at the Pilgrims' Dinner in April
last, because it was akin to them, as in it also he spoke of the
nature of the work that he had done in India, and also because it
summed up the lessons which his high office in an Eastern
Government had given him. The concluding portion of this
speech is worth close attention from the democracy of England,
as containing in a few weighty words the moral of his Viceroyalty
in India. This speech is printed from the Times, to whose editor I
am also indebted for the text of the beautiful poem, '* Welcome,"
which first appeared in the columns of his paper last December.
To the gifted author of this poem, the venerable Dr. William
Alexander, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of all Ireland,
my sincere thanks are due for the great kindness with which he
readily acceded to my request to publish his poem here. His
Grace, who is now in his eighty-third year, is very widely known
as one of the best of our living sacred poets, and I am sensible
of the obligation he has conferred on me by allowing his poem to
appear in this volume, whose interest is much enhanced thereby.
All the speeches are given in their entirety, unabridged, and. it
may be added, that some of them do not appear in the excellent
selection from Lord Curzon's speeches recently published by
Messrs. Macmillan. I have added the headlines and a few
notes. I have also added, in the second part, a selection of such
of my articles in the Calcutta Review, the Times of India, the
Madras Mail, the Pioneer and elsewhere, as I thought would
interest the readers of Lord Curzon's speeches. To the editors of
all of them my hearty thanks are due for the permission they have
kindly accorded me of reprinting them here. One of them, the
Rev. Canon Saunders Dyer, sometime Archdeacon of Calcutta,
has, indeed, passed beyond the reach of human thanks, while the
book was passing through the press, and the Anglo-Indian literary
IV
world is decidedly the poorer by the loss of this truly gifted and
pious man.
I had hoped to present this little volume, when ready, to Lady
Curzon, who has left a deep impress upon the hearts of my
countrymen, as Lord Curzon has undoubtedly left on our heads.
But alas ! before it could be ready, she has passed beyond pur
reach from sunshine to the sunless land. I can now only inscribe
it to her memory.
" Ah ! how soon to die !
Her quiet dream of life this hour may cease,
Her peaceful being slowly passes by
To some more perfect peace."
TARDEO, BOMBAY, R. P. K ARK ARIA.
i2th August igo6.
CONTENTS.
Dedication , i
Preface ^ iii
Contents ... v
Introduction vii
Poem by the Archbishop of Armagh xiii
Speech at the Byculla Club, Bombay i
Speech at the United Service Club, Simla 15
Speech before the Secretariat Clerks at Simla 25
Speech to the Simla Municipality 27
Speech at Lahore ... ~ 30
Speech at Agra 32
Speech to the Delhi Municipality 34
Speech at Jammu on the Installation of the Maharajah
of Kashmir 36
Speech at the Daly College, Indorc 40
Speech on Education 47
Speech at the Pilgrims' Dinner, London 5*
(For contents of Part 1L see separate Table prefixed to that part)
INTRODUCTION.
Several Viceroys before Lord Curzon had bidden farewell to
this country on leaving it, and a few of such speeches also
attracted attention, like Lord Dufferin's memorable utterance at
the St. Andrew's Dinner at Calcutta in December 1888. But
none of them had bidden such an elaborate farewell to so many
classes, had put so much of his heart into these speeches, had
touched also the hearts of his hearers and beyond them of the vast
number of his readers, as Lord Curzon. Words are but an inade-
quate expression at the best of what we think, and still more of
what we feel. But however inadequate they may be to express
all that he thought and felt in India during the last months of his
stay here, they are yet significant of this fact above all others that
here India had at last found a ruler who was worthy in every way
of her, sympathetic, enthusiastic, with his whole heart in the
work, responsive to every chord that this country of a historic
past and a bright future, so much misapprehended by friends and
foes alike, can touch in his heart. Even his bitterest critics, those
who have delighted to hit him below the belt, will, if they are
candid, admit that if words mean anything, these speeches certainly
meant a sympathy with the people of this country and an interest
in their present state and future prospects, which they rarely
have the good fortune to find in their rulers in anything approach-
ing the degree they found in him. There are some passages in
them which he would be a very hardened person, dead to all
our finer feelings, who can read without emotion, without being
sensible that he is reading the words of a man who, whatever his
shortcomings may -be. speaks here straight from the heart
and is full of sympathy for the toiling millions of this country.
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin ; and there are
several such touches throughout his utterances, which at once
proclaim his kinship with the Indian peoples.
There is also another quality which marks these speeches, and
distinguishes them from the utterances of most of his predecessors.
Lord Curzon possesses imagination to a great extent, and this
imagination has helped him considerably in understanding
properly the people of this strange mysterious land, and in winning
their regard and esteem. Indians have usually the reputation of
being apathetic and irresponsive to their rulers. But Lord Curzon
has shown, what was formerly known only to a few, by his career,
that this apathy is much misunderstood, and that if the proper
chord is touched by a master hand who instinctively knows of the
secret of the Oriental mind and heart, they are not slow to respond.
He was quick to seize the opportunity offered by plague and
famine for this, and endeared himself by his personal presence in
their midst, by making not merely ceremonial tours but real hard
Vlll
peregrinations throughout the country, encouraging and cheering
those who were fighting these dread calamities by his own
example. The imagination of the real people of India is never
struck by political concessions, and those who cry out for these
in their name, do them injustice, for they rarely benefit by them.
What they understand and can appreciate is the alleviation of their
suffering, the checking of the petty but grinding tyranny of small
officials who to them represent and are the Government. By
stricter supervision over such minor officials and by safeguarding
the people against such tyranny as was brought to light by, among
others, Sir Anthony Macdonell's Famine Commission, Lord
Curzon did much more for the real people of India than would
have been effected by many a political concession loudly demanded
by a certain small section of educated natives. To this educated
class also he has been fair and sometimes more than fair. Beyond
setting his face against their demand for political privileges, which
he in common with nearly all Englishmen and many of the
thinking natives themselves, did not think it wise or statesman-like
to grant at present, when Indians are yet in the first state of
pupillage, he has done little to merit the obloquy with which he
has been assailed. But as he has himself well pointed out (p. 10)
this obloquy is impartially bestowed on every Viceroy during the
latter part of his office, and it can do harm only to themselves.
He has been the steady friend of this educated class whenever he
could, compatibly with his duty to the Indians as a whole. He
has, for one thing, employed them in increasing numbers in
Government offices, that goal of most of this class.
Lord Curzon's rule marked a new departure in many things in
Indian Administration. But in none was this more marked than
in the matter of taking the people into his confidence by speeches
explanatory of the policy and intentions of his Government. The
Government had maintained an oracular silence more or less up
to his time, broken latterly now and then by a speech on the
budget in the Legislative Council from the Viceroy. This annual
speech and a few others delivered on some ceremonial occasions
were the sum-total of Viceregal utterance in former days. Lord
Curzon boldly broke through this undue reserve, and seized every
occasion of clearly expounding his policy, of explaining
misunderstandings, and sometimes of refuting objections. In the
eyes of some, he sometimes carried this tendency to excess. He
may sometimes have been too zealous in championing his views,
and may sometimes have forgotten his surroundings and imagined
himself back in the House of Commons. But on the whole this
policy of frank and outspoken confidence in the non official classes
both Anglo-Indian and Native, has done undoubted good, and
generated trust ; and nothing helps so much in governing an
alien and mixed population, such as that of this country, as
mutual confidence between the rulers and the ruled generated by
such intercourse. Lord Curzon has set the vogue in this matter
of speeches, which it would be hard for his successors not to
follow. He has accustomed us to look to the head of the Govern-
IX
ment on nearly every occasion to give out the views of his
Government on important matters of policy freely and frankly.
And if future Heads will not do this, cr do it haltingly and
revert to the policy of most of his predecessors, the public will
have a legitimate grievance.
Of the several individual speeches not much need be said here.
Nothing has marked Lord Curzon's rule so much as the thorough
and far-reaching reforms which he has peacefully initiated in the
entire system of education in India. It was therefore but fitting
that he should address a special farewell speech to the Directors
of Public Instruction, by whose hearty co-operation he was
enabled to carry out these epoch-making reforms. He was here,
as he happily said, like a general, addressing his marshals for the
last time before he unbuckles his sword and retires into private
life. Along with the famous Resolution on educational policy
issued by him on nth March, 1904, this speech (pp. 47-57) will
long be read and referred to by all those who desire to find out
the principles underlying his policy in this important subject in
all its various branches. He has begun a movement which we
may well call with him the renaissance of education in India ; and
if it is properly kept up by his successors, it will fulfill all his best
hopes.
On one particular branch of education in which he had in-
terested himself deeply, that of the proper training of the sons of
Native Chiefs and Princes, on which much of the future of Native
States depends, Lord Curzon took occasion to speak specially at
his farewell speech at the Daly Chiefs' College, at Indore (pp. 40-
46). Therein he has clearly announced the policy of Government
towards such Chiefs' Colleges, and urged emphatically on old-
fashioned Sirdars and Thakors the indispensable necessity of
bringing up their sons in modern ways. The education oi the
people and the princes, of the ryat as well as the Raja, ought
clearly to proceed hand in hand. Education ought not to be the
monopoly, as it has been practically in the immediate past, of a
small section of the middle class, which has done so much to
reduce unnaturally the weight that is their due in the
politics of the country of these princes and peasants. The
farewell message to the Indian Princes which this speech
contains (p. 42 ) shows the cordial nature of his relations
with the Native Princes of India, and his anxious solicitude
during his rule that they should exert that weight and
influence in all matters relating not only to their States but also in
Imperial Councils, which is clearly their due. This subject of the
relation of Native Princes with the paramount power he also
handled in his speech (pp. 36-39) on the installation of the
Maharajah of Kashmir, a thoroughly loyal ward of the British,
and one specially deserving of their protection, as he holds the
state of Kashmir as a free gift granted to his grandfather Golab
Sing less than sixty years ago by the English. The occasion was
indeed unique, for it was the first instance in the entire history of
English relations with the feudatory States of the conferring of an
enhancement or restitution of powers on a Native Prince. It is
by such speeches, mingling advice with encouragement, that
Lord Curzon has succeeded in winning the confidence of these
Princes and States ; which, in the present position of the country,
ought to be a valuable asset of the Indian Empire, making for
stability as against the noisy discontent and unrest manifested by
the small educated class.
It was Lord Curzon's good fortune throughout the seven years
of his labours in this country to receive the hearty and zealous
support and co-operation of all his colleagues in the administration
of both the Civil and Military Services. He well knew that to this
co-operation was due in a great measure the success with which his
efforts had been crowned, despite the strong prejudice which a
reforming Viceroy always excites. Lord Curzon ran many a time
counter to the vested interests and prejudices of the great
Services. It is therefore very creditable to them that they should
have worked with him with a will to make his administration
such a brilliant success. All this Lord Curzon sought a special
opportunity to acknowledge, and such an opportunity was given
him by the United Service Club at Simla. The splendid eu-
logium which he has there pronounced on his colleagues and
lieutenants (pp. 16-22) is worthy of the speaker and still more of
the recipients. The Indian Services, especially the Civil Serv/ice,
have been the honoured recipients of praise by several distinguish-
ed laudatis viris, and among these they will no doubt value very
highly the well weighed words of studied praise pronounced deli-
berately by Lord Curzon. They are fully worthy to rank by the
side of these memorable words uttered by that philosopher-states-
man. Sir Henry Maine, a little before his death as the deliberate
opinion of a long life spent in the service of India both here and
at home. "The 'Indian Bureaucracy' is merely a barbarous
foreign phrase applied with gross inaccuracy to as remarkable a
group of public servants as any country has produced, engaged in
administering the affairs of a vast population under perfectly
definite and intelligibly stated rules. If Government be an art
an ' Old Indian ' is constantly a man who has practised it with
more success and under far more difficulties than the foremost
English statesman." (Sir H. Maine, in Ward's Reign of Victoria,
Vol. I p. 524, 1887).
At the present time, when we are all reading Mr. John Morley's
notable recent Budget speech, and his words, " he had met
Military Officers and men who were described as 4 sun-dried
bureaucrats,' and he had discovered that the * sun-dried bureau-
crat ' was a man eminent for his experience, knowledge and
responsibility faithfully and honourably discharged." are ringing
in our ears, we are forcibly reminded of the words of Lord
Curzon uttered ten months ago. No three more eminent men,
-eminent as statesmen as well as men of letters and thought, could
be found among Englishmen than Maine, Mr. Morley and Lord
Curzon, and when they unite in praising Indian administrators,
XI
it is surely presumptuous in iar lesser men to prate about " sun-
dried bureaucrats. '
Nor did the higher services alone monopolise Lord Curzon's
attention or his praise. It was quite characteristic of him that he
should not forget the humble clerks who work day and night in
the various Secretariats, those silent, unseen and therefore un-
appreciated workmen, underground as it were, who send up
baskets of ore from which others make their gold and name and
fame. It illustrates the qualities of imaginativeness and sym-
pathy above referred to, that Lord Curzon should have bestowed
a thought on these men during his last crowded and busy days at
Simla, and have set apart an hour to address to them a
singularly touching little speech (pp. 25-26). The speech is
thoroughly characteristic of the man, who ruled over the hearts of
men with a heart of his own ; and words like the following explain
the secret of his popularity with the masses of the people of India
which no amount of obloquy raised by a certain class of critics
has been able to cloud from our sight; " As the final court of
appeal on every case, great or small, amid the vast population of
India, a Viceroy has chances that occur to but few. I think that
he ought to take them. I have tried to do so. I can recall long
night hours, spent in the effort to unravel some tangled case
of alleged misconduct resulting in the dismissal of a poor unknown
native subordinate. Perhaps those hours have not been the worst
spent of my time in India, and the simple letters of gratitude
from the score of more of humble individuals whom I have thus
saved from ruin have been equally precious in my eyes with the
resolutions of public bodies or the compliments of princes."
(p. 26).
The Coronation Durbar held at Delhi in 1903, was a grand
event in Lord Curzon's rule, and that city, as well as its sister of
Agra, appealed specially to the historic imagination with which
he is gifted in an eminent degree. The short speeches (pp. 32-35)
which he delivered to the citizens of both these cities, fitly allude
to the work of archaeological restoration, which he had begun in
India, wherever there were ancient monuments to be preserved,
but which he personally supervised in those imperial cities of the
Moguls, so full of renowned architectural buildings that had fallen
into ruin. The Punjab felt itself somewhat humiliated during
Lord Curzon's rule, because he had carved out the North-West
Frontier Province chiefly from its territories, and placed it under
a separate administration directly under the Government of India.
Its amour propre must have been somewhat appeased by the
Coronation Durbar being held within its province at Delhi. Lord
Curzon further propitiated it by making a short farewell speech
(pp. 30-31) at Lahore, its capital.
But the best speech was reserved, as was but fitting, for
Bombay, the first city in India in name as well as reality, though
not its capital. Bombay had perhaps of all Indian cities watched
Lord Curzon's rule most keenly, and partly from its position at a
distance viewed it in proper perspective. Partly on account of
Xll
the sobriety which always distinguishes its political activity, and
partly on account of the strong leaven of Anglo-Indian society
which prevails here much to its benefit, Bombay has been able to
do the retiring Viceroy greater justice than other cities and
provinces. Here the famous Byculla Club, which is proud to
receive Viceroys and other great Indian statesmen and citizens
as its guests, set the hall-mark of its approval on Lord Curzon's
work in India, and entertained him at a magnificent banquet. The
approval of this Club meant not only that of the large and very
influential Anglo-Indian public, but also, beyond that, of a great
part of the native public, especially the mercantile, trading and
landowning classes. Hence, in his speech before this Club, Lord
Curzon was truly speaking before the whole Indian public, and
not as in his preceding farewell speeches, before this or that class
or certain sections of the public, however exalted. Here he
touched the high-water mark of his oratorical powers. It is not
an apologia pro reguo suo, as some have supposed; it is not even
a vindication : he was too conscious of the dignity of his high office
ever to attempt that. It was a clear exposition, candid and manly,
of the principles that ever were present before his mind's eye and
that guided his policy throughout. He had, indeed, disclosed those
principles piecemeal on former occasions throughout his career
here, whenever he had an opportunity for so doing and indeed,
as we have said before, his Viceroyalty is marked by nothing so
much as this characteristic of taking the people into his confidence
by frank outspoken utterance. But here we have them all, and
we are shewn in a masterly way their application in all departments
of state. And all this is done with consummate skill, and over it
all breathes an earnestness that would extort admiration even from
professed and determined opponents. From a person who was so
wilfully and bitterly criticised, it would have been expected that he
would have been at least to some extent bitter, especially as it was
the last occasion when he could speak with the authority of a
Viceroy. But there is not a word of bitterness, nothing in the tone
to which his bitterest critic could take exception. In the speaker
there stands truly revealed the man, magnanimous, tender-hearted,
sympathising with the sorrows of the famine-stricken peasant, the
impoverished luckless ryot, and the plague-stricken inhabitant of
towns. He has the satisfaction of having done as much as
a single ruler can do to alleviate, in however small a degree,
the woes of the poor population of India. And what is more, the
poor of this land know and appreciate it as far as they can know
and appreciate such work at all.
Thou, who the grandest crown hast taken off
With thine own hand, our first of men can wear,
O full of toil beyond the taunt of scoff,
Welcome, high welcome, to our wintry air
Full well our English instinct knows a man ;
What worthy wreath of words shall we prepare ?
Not lights of speech and flowers what all may scan
Some words of thee well-loved, majestic, calm,
Of an august simplicity that can
Outlive all our comparison a psalm,
Whose life is told by thousands of our years
Heaven-high, yet full of home's familiar balm.
So to our race in India full and strong
Fell from thy lips that phrase no time outwears,
' Thou hast loved righteousness and hated wrong "
Thus spake our great men of the olden time,
Who grandly spoke, because they grandly thought
Whose spirit first, then speech, became sublime !
Colossal brevity as by magic wrought,
Catching the difficult ear of after time ;
Restraint and not effusion dearly bought
Now, when our politic armies in their place
Stand clamouring by the fires along their line,
Each battle sees the other's angry face,
Come now with utterance of the men of old.
Come thou, be judged of all this land of thine
Not with a pomp of colour and of gold ;
Thy speech is not like those who fain would try
Moonbeams through glass a lovely impotence,
Lustrous but lifeless, fading firelessly ;
Thou who has instinct of a mighty work,
Of the great utterance of the days gone by.
Superb as Chatham, steadfast- souled as Burke.
WILLIAM ARMAGH.
[In this poem which the Most Reverend Dr. William Alexan-
der, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of all Ireland contribu-
ted to the Times on Monday, December 4, on Lord Curzon's return
to England, and which is here reproduced by His Grace's kind
permission, and that of the Editor of the 7tmes, reference is made
to the quotation from the Psalms xlv., 7, and Hebrews i. 9, m
the farewell speech at the Byculla Club ]
SPEECH AT THE BYCULLA CLUB.
ON Thursday November i6th, Lord Curzon was entertained
at dinner by the Byculla Club, Bombay. Their Excellencies the
Governors of Bombay and of Madras. Lord Lamington and Lord
Ampthill, were also present. Mr. Leslie Crawford, President of
the Club, having proposed his health in felicitous terms, Lord
Curzon replied in the following speech, in which his great oratori-
cal powers may be said to have worthily culminated :
Mr. President, Your Excellencies and Gentlemen, Three
times have the Byculla Club honoured me with an invitation to
dinner. The first occasion was when I was leaving India at the
end of my first term of office in April 1904. The second was when
I returned to India for my second term in December, 1904; and
this is the third, when I am finally departing. I have esteemed
this triple compliment most highly. For ordinarily Bombay
does not see or know much of the Viceroy except what it reads in
the newspapers, which is not perhaps uniformly favourable ; and,
with a Governor of your own, you cannot be expected to take as
much interest in the head of the Supreme Government as other
communities or places with which he is brought into more fre-
quent contact. In respect of Bombay, however, I have been un-
usually fortunate in my time, for apart from the four occasions
of arrival or departure, I have been here once in Lord Sandhurst's
and once in Lord Northcote's time, and again a week ago, so that
this is my seventh visit in seven years. Here I made my first
speech on Indian shores and here it is not unfitting that I should
make my last. Calcutta did me the honour of inviting me to a
parting banquet, and so did the Civil Service of Bengal, and I was
greatly touched by those compliments. But I felt that, having
accepted your invitation, I owed a duty to you, and that I should
only become a nuisance if I allowed myself either the luxury or
the regret of too many farewells.
Gentleman, it is no exaggeration to say that my several visits
to this city have given me an unusual interest in its fortunes. I
have seen it in prosperity and I have seen it in suffering ;
and I have always been greatly struck by the spirit and
patriotism of its citizens. There seems to me to be here
an excellent feeling between the very different races and
creeds. Bombay possesses an exceptional number of public-
spirited citizens, and the sense of civic duty is as highly developed
as in any great city that I know. If there is a big movement
afoot, you lend yourselves to it with a powerful and concentrated
will and a united Bombay is not a force to be gainsaid. Let me
give as an illustration the magnificent success of your reception
and entertainment of T. R. H. the Prince and Princess of Wales.
Moreover, you have the advantage of one of the best conducted
and ablest newspapers in Asia. My recollections of Bombay are
THE IMPORTANCE OF BOMBAY.
also those of uniform kindness towards myself, a kindness which
has found active expression on each occasion that I have visited
the city, and that has culminated to-night in this splendid enter-
tainment and in the reception that you have just accorded to my
health.
As to the speech of the Chairman, to which we listened just
now, I hardly feel that I know what I ought to say. He seemed
to me to be so familiar with all the details of my administration
that I felt that if I ever wanted a biographer it is to Bombay and
to the Byculla Club that I must come to find him. But bis
account of what I have done or perhaps I should rather say
endeavoured to do was characterised by so generous an insis-
tence on the best, that I almost felt that a rival orator should be
engaged to get up and paint the opposite side of the picture. I
know of several who would have been prepared without a gratuity
to undertake the congenial task only in that case I should not
perhaps have enjoyed the hospitality of this gathering ! I must
therefore leave things as they are, and content myself with thank-
ing the Chairman for his great and undeserved kindness in his
treatment of the subject of his toast. Gentlemen, I have thus
endeavoured to express my acknowledgments of your kindness,
and I must include in these acknowledgments those of Lady
Curzon. Your gracious reference to her presence greatly touched
my heart.
Gentlemen, I have expressed my acknowledgment of your
kindness. May I also take this opportunity through you of
thanking all those communities and persons who, from all parts
of India, have, during the past three months, showered upon me
expressions of esteem and regret ? I think I am justified in
assuming, both from the quarters from which they have emanated
and also from the language employed, that these have not been
merely conventional expressions. From a departing Viceroy no
one in India has anything more to ask or to expect ; his sun is
setting, and another orb is rising above the horizon. If in these
circumstances, from representative bodies and associations, from
the leaders of races and communities, from princes, and from
unknown humble men, such messages, couched in such unaffected
language as have crowded in upon me, while he cannot but feel
very grateful for all this kindness, there may also steal into his
mind the comforting reflection that he has not altogether laboured
in vain, but has perhaps left some footprints that will not be
washed out by the incoming tide.
Gentlemen, it is almost seven years ago that I stood upon
the neighbouring quay on the morning that I landed to take up
my new office. Well do I remember the occasion and the scene :
the Bunder gay with bunting and brilliant with colour ; the back-
ground of the acclaiming streets with their tens of thousands,
and the setting of the stateliest panorama in Asia. I do not deny
that to me it was a very solemn moment, for I was coming here
to take up the dream of my life and to translate into fact my
higher aspirations. In that spirit I endeavoured to respond to
the address of the Corporation, and were I landing again tomorrow,
POSITION OF THE VICEROY. 3
I would use the same language again. Oceans seem now to roll
between that day and this ; oceans of incident and experience, of
zest and achievement, of anxiety and suffering, of pleasure and
pain. But as I stood there that morning and the vista spread out
before me, I said that I came to India to hold the scales even, and
as I stand here to-night seven years later, I dare to say in all
humility that I have done it have held the scales even between
all classes and all creeds sometimes to my detriment, often at a
cost that none but myself can tell, but always with such truth and
fidelity as in me lay. I further said that the time for judgment was
not when a man puts on his armour but when he takes it off. Even
now I am fast unbuckling mine, in a few hours the last piece will
have been laid aside. But, gentlemen, the test. Can I survive
my own test ? The answer to that I must leave to you among
many others, and by your verdict I am willing to abide.
Gentlemen, when I came here seven years ago, I had some
idea, but not perhaps a very complete idea, of what the post of
Viceroy of India is. Now that I am in a position to give a more
matured opinion on the subject, 1 may proceed to throw a little
light upon it. There are, I believe, many people at home who
cherish the idea that the Viceroy in India is the representative of
the Sovereign, in much the same way as Viceroys or Governors-
General in other parts of the British Empire, except that India
being in the East, it is considered wise to surround him with
peculiar state and ceremonial, while in a country which is not a
constitutional colony but a dependency, it is of course necessary
to invest him with certain administrative powers. No conception of
the Viceroy's position and duties could well be wider of the mark.
Certainly the proudest and most honourable of his functions is
to act as representative of the Sovereign, and this fact is invested
with unusual solemnity and importance in a society organised
like that of India upon the aristocratic basis, where the Throne
is enveloped in an awe that is the offspring of centuries, and is
supported by princely dynasties in many cases as old as itself.
The consciousness of this responsibility should, I think, always
act both as a stimulus and as a check to the Viceroy, a stimulus
to him to act in a manner worthy of the exalted station in which
for a short time he is placed, and a check to keep him from
inconsiderate or unworthy deeds. But that is of course only the
beginning of the matter. The Viceroy very soon finds out that
the purely Viceregal aspect of his duties is the very least portion
of them, and the Court-life in which he is commonly depicted by
ignorant people as revelling, occupies only the place of a compul-
sory background in his everyday existence. He soon discovers
that he is the responsible head of what is by far the most perfected
and considerable of highly organised Governments in the world ;
for the Government of China, which is supposed to rule over a
larger number of human beings, can certainly not be accused of a
high level of either organisation or perfection. So much is the
Viceroy the head of that Government that almost every act of his
subordinates is attributed to him by public opinion ; and if he is of
an active and enterprising nature, a sparrow can scarcely twitter
4 DUTIES AND WORK OF THE VICEROY.
its tail at Peshawar without a response being detected to master-
ful orders from Simla or Calcutta. This aspect of the Viceroy's
position makes him the target of public criticism to a degree in
excess, I think, of that known in any foreign country, except
perhaps America. I think that in India, this is sometimes carried
too far. When the Viceroy speaks, he is supposed to remember
only that he is the representative of the Sovereign. But when
he is spoken or written about it is commonly only as head of the
adminstration, and then nothing is sometimes too bad for him. I
only make these remarks because this seems to me rather a one-
sided arrangement, and, because I think anything to be deprecated
that might deter your Viceroys from taking the supreme and active
part in administration which it seems to me to be their duty to do.
You do not want them to be figureheads. You want them to pull
the stroke oar in the boat. You want English Ministries to send
you their very best men, and then you want to get out of them
not the correct performance of ceremonial duties, but the very
best work of which their energies or experiences or abilities may
render them capable. Anything, therefore, that may deter them
from such a conception of their duties or confine them to the
sterile pursuit of routine is, in my view, greatly to be deplored.
However, I am only yet at the beginning of my enumeration
of the Viceroy's tale of bricks. He is the head, not merely of the
whole Government, but also of the most arduous department of
Government, namely, the Foreign Office. There he is in the exact
position of an ordinary Member of Council, with the difference that
the work of the Foreign Department is unusually responsible, and
that it embraces three spheres of action so entirely different and
requiring such an opposite equipment of principles and knowledge,
as the conduct of relations with the whole of the Native States of
India, the management of the frontier provinces and handling
of the frontier tribes, and the offering of advice to his Majesty's
Government on practically the entire foreign policy of Asia, which
mainly or wholly concerns Great Britain in its relation to India.
But the Viceroy, though he is directly responsible for this one
Department is scarcely less responsible for the remaining. He
exercises over them a control which is, in my judgment, the
secret of efficient administration. It is the counterpart of what
used to exist in England, but has died out since the days of Sir
Robert Peel with consequences which cannot be too greatly
deplored. I earnestly hope that the Viceroy in India may never
cease to be head of the Government in the fullest sense of the
term. It is not one man's rule, which may or may not be a good
thing that depends on the man. But it is one man's supervision,
which is the very best form of Government, presuming the man
to be competent. The alternative in India is bureaucracy,
which is the most mechanical and lifeless of all forms of adminis-
tration.
To continue, the Viceroy is also the President of the Legisla-
tive Council, where he has to defend the policy of Government
in speeches which are apt to be denounced as empty, if they in-
dulge in platitudes, and as undignified, if they do not. He must
A NOBLE OFFICE. 6
have a financial policy, an agricultural policy, a famine policy, a
plague policy, a railway policy, an educational policy, an indus-
trial policy, a military policy. Every body in the country who
has a fad or a grievance, and how many are there without either,
hunts him out. Every public servant who wants an increase of
pay, allowances, or pension a not inconsiderable band appeals to
him as the eye of justice; everyone who thinks he deserves
recognition, appeals to him as the fountain of honour. When he
goes on tour he has to try to know nearly as much about local
needs as the people who have lived there all their lives, and he has
to refuse vain requests in a manner to make the people who asked
them feel happier than they were before. When he meets the
merchants he must know all about tea, sugar, indigo, jute, cotton,
salt and oil. He is not thought much of unless he can throw in
some knowledge of shipping and customs. In some places electri-
city, steel, and iron and coal are required. For telegraphs, he is
supposed to have a special partiality ; and is liable to be attacked
about the metric system. He must be equally prepared to dis-
course about labour in South Africa or labour in Assam. The con-
necting link between him and Municipalities is supplied by water
and drains. He must be prepared to speak about everything and
often about nothing. He is expected to preserve temples, to keep
the currency steady, to satisfy third class passengers, to patronise
race meetings, to make Bombay and Calcutta each think that it is
the capital city of India, and to purify the police. He corresponds
with all his lieutenants in every province, and it is his duty to
keep in touch with every Local Administration. If he does not
reform everything that is wrong, he is told that he is doing too
little, if he reforms anything at all, that he is doing too much.
I am sure that I could occupy quite another five minutes of
your time in depicting the duties which you require of the Vice-
roy in India, and to which I might have added the agreeable finale
of being entertained at complimentary banquets. But I have
said enough perhaps to show that it is no light burden that I am
now laying down and that it is not perhaps surprising if seven
years of it should prove enough for any average constitution.
And yet I desire to say on this parting occasion that I regard the
office of Viceroy of India, inconceivably laborious as it is, as the
noblest office in the gift of the British Crown. I think the man
who does not thrill upon receiving it with a sense not of foolish
pride but of grave responsibility, is not fit to be an Englishman.
I believe that the man who holds it with devotion and knows how
to wield the power wisely and well, as so many great men in India
have done, can for a few years exercise a greater influence upon
the destinies of a larger number of his fellow creatures than any
head of an Administration in the Universe. I hold that England
ought to send out to India to fill this great post the pick of her
statesmen, and that it should be regarded as one of the supreme
prizes of an Englishman's career. I deprecate any attempt,
should it ever be made, to attenuate its influence, to diminish its
privileges, or to lower its prestige. Should the day ever come
when the Viceroy of India is treated as the mere puppet or mouth-
6 PRINCIPLES UNDERLYING HIS POLICY.
piece of the Home Government, who is required only to carry
out whatever orders it may be thought desirable to transmit, I
think that the justification for the post would have ceased to exist.
But I cannot believe that the administrative wisdom of my country-
men, which is very great, would ever tolerate so great a blunder.
And now, Gentlemen, after this little sketch of the duties of
a^Viceroy, you may expect to hear something of the manner of
fulfilling them. I have been told that on the present occasion I am
expected to give a sort of synopsis of the last seven years of
administration. I am sure you will be intensely relieved to learn
that I intend to disappoint those expectations. List of laws, or
administrative acts, or executive policies, may properly figure in
a budget speech ; they may be recorded in an official Minute, they
may be grouped and weighed by the historian. But they are
hardly the material for an after-dinner oration. Besides which I
have been spared the necessity of any such review by the gene-
rous ability with which it has already been performed for me by
the press.
Inasmuch, however, as all policy that is deserving of the
name must rest upon certain principles, perhaps you will permit
me to point out what are the main principles that have underlain
everything to which I have set my hand in India. They are four
in number. The first may sound very elementary, but it is in
reality cardinal. It is the recognition that for every department
of the State, and for every branch of the administration, there
must be a policy instead of no policy, that is a method of treating
the subject in question which is based upon accepted premises,
either of reasoning or experience, and is laid down in clear lan-
guage, understood by the officers who have to apply it, and intel-
ligible to the people to whom it is to be applied. It is in fact the
negation of a policy of drift.
Years ago I remember coming to India and commencing my
studies on the Frontier Question. I enquired of everyone I met
what was the Frontier Policy of the Government of India. I even
mounted as high as Members of Council. No one could tell me.
I found one view at Calcutta, another at Lahore, another at
Peshawar, and another at Quetta,and scores of intervening shades
between. That is only an illustration; but that absence of a policy
cost India thousands of lives and crores of rupees. Of course, in
our attempt to fashion or to formulate policies my colleagues and
I may not always have been successful our policy need not
have been uniformly right. We make no such claim. All that
we say is that the policy is now there, not hidden away or en-
shrouded in hieroglyphics, but practically laid down, in most cases
already given to the world, and in every case available for imme-
diate use. There is not a single branch of the administration,
internal or external, of which I believe that this cannot truthfully
be said. I will give you a few illustrations drawn from spheres
as widely separated as possible.
Take Foreign Affairs. The Government of India can hardly
be described as having a Foreign Policy of their own, because our
foreign relations must necessarily be co-ordinated with those of
FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 7
the Empire. But we can have our views and can state them for
what they are worth ; and there are certain countries in the close
neighbourhood of our frontiers where the conduct of affairs is
necessarily in our hands. Thus, in respect of Tibet the Govern-
ment of India have throughout had a most definite policy which
has not perhaps been fully understood, because it has never been
fully stated in published correspondence, but which I have not
the slightest doubt will vindicate itself, and that before long.
Similarly with regard to Afghanistan, our policy throughout my
term of office has been directed to clearing up all the doubt or
misunderstandings that had arisen out of our different agreements
with the late Amir, and to a renewal of those agreements, freed
from such ambiguity, with his successor. Itwas to clear all these
doubts that the Mission was sent to Kabul, as the Amir found
himself unable to carry out his first intention to come down
to India ; and for all the widespread tales that the Mission
had been sent to press roads or railroads or telegraphs and
all sorts of unacceptable conditions upon the Amir from which
the Government of India or myself was alleged to have been
only with difficulty restrained by a cautious Home Government,
there was never one shred of foundation.
Perhaps in Persia, a subject which is perhaps better appre-
ciated and is certainly better written about in Bombay than
in any other city of the Empire, we have been able to do most
in respect of a positive and intelligible policy. Resting upon
Lord Lansdowne's statesmanlike and invaluable dictum as to
the Persian Gulf, from which I trust that no British Government
will ever be so foolish as to recede, we have been able to pursue
a definite course of action in defence of British interests at
Muscat, Bahrein, Koweit, and throughout the Persian Gulf.
The same applies to Mekran and Seistan, and I believe that
I leave British interests in those quarters better safeguarded
than they have ever before been. I will not trouble you further
about Foreign affairs to-night though I might take you round
the confines of the Indian Empire and show you an Aden
Boundary determined, largely owing to the ability of the officers
serving under my noble friend [Lord Lamington], our relations
with Sikkim and Bhutan greatly strengthened, and the final settle-
ment of the China-Burmese boundary practically achieved.
Neither will I detain you about the tribal frontier of India,
although the fact that I can dismiss this almost in a sentence is
perhaps more eloquent than any speech could be. The point is that
the Government of India, the local officers, and the tribesmen now
know exactly what we are aiming at, namely, in so far as we are
obliged to maintain order, to keep up communications, or to
exert influence in the tribal area, to do it, not with British
troops but through the tribes themselves. The other day I saw
the Chief Commissioner of the North-West Frontier Province,
and asked him if he could sum up the position on the Frontier.
Yes', he replied, 'I can, in a single word, and that is " Confidence.'* '
Confidence at Hunza, confidence at Cbitral, which, when I came
out to India, I was told by the pundits at home that I should
8 MILITARY POLICY.
have to evacuate in a year, but which is now as tranquil as the
compound of the Byculla Club, confidence in the Khyber and
the Kurram, confidence all down the frontier of Baluchistan.
Gentlemen, that is no mean boast. I observe that all the persons,
who have for years depicted me as a somewhat dangerous
person, and who were kind enough to warn India seven years
ago of the terrible frontier convulsions that she was in for under
my rule, have found it a little difficult to account for the seven
years' peace that has settled down on the land. Two explana-
tions have, however, lately been forthcoming. The first is that
the tribes were so severely handled by my predecessor that they
have not had a kick in them left for me. The second is that
having concentrated all my unholy propensities in the direction
of Tibet, where, however, for some unexplained reason I did not
begin until I had been in India for four years, I had nothing
left for the tribes. I do not think that I need be disturbed by either
of these criticisms. I can hand over the frontier to my successor,
with the happy assurance not only that matters are quiet, but
that the principles determining our action, whether as regards
tribal militia, or border military police, or frontier roads and
railways, or tribal control, are all clearly laid down, and are
understood. If these principles are departed from, if the Govern-
ment of India were to go on for a policy of cupidity or adventure,
then the confidence of which I have spoken would not last a
month. Otherwise I do not see why it should not be enduring.
We have also for seven years pursued a very consistent-
military policy, nor differing therein in the least from the distin r
guished men who preceeded us, but using the much large g
opportunities that have been presented to us by recurrin
surpluses to carry out measures of which they often dreamed, b ut
which they had not the funds to realise. I am not one of those
who think that the Indian Army is a bad one. I believe it to be
by far the best portion of the forces of the British Crown : and
certainly such work as it has been my duty to ask it to undertake,
whether in South Africa or China or Somaliland or Tibet has
been as good as any in the history of the Empire. We have
done a good deal to render the Indian Army, I will not say more
efficient, but more effective. We have entirely re-armed every
section of it. We have reorganised the horse and field artillery
from top to bottom. We have created a new transport organisa-
tion, we are now making our own gunpowder, rifles, gun-carriages
and guns ; we have added 580 British officers and are proposing
to add 350 more, we are doubling the Native Army reserves
and all these measures are independent of the schemes of re-
organisation and redistribution of which you have heard so much.
If due attention continues to be paid to the idiosyncrasies of the
Native Army, and if it is treated sympathetically, I believe that
we shall continue to receive from it the splendid level of service
which is its tradition and its glory.
In the sphere of internal politics we have adopted a slightly
different method, though with the same end, for there we have
as a rule not framed our policy without a most exhaustive
INTERNAL AFFAIRS. 9
preliminary examination of the data upon which it ought to rest
conducted by the most expert authorities whose services we could
command. Thus we did not proceed to draw up a plague policy
until the Plague Commission had reported. Our new Famine
Code and Manuals, the methods by which the Government of
India will grapple with the next famine when it comes, and the
preventive methods which we have been bringing into operation
one by one are the results of the Commission over which Sir
Antony MacDonnell presided. The great programme of Irriga-
tion schemes for the whole of India to which we have committed
ourselves, at a cost of thirty millions sterling in twenty years, was
similarly not arrived at until Sir Colin MoncreifFs Commission
had spent two winters in India. I did not undertake University
reform until I had carefully sifted the facts of the case by a
Commission upon which the highest authorities had seats. Nor
did we charge ourselves with the reform of the Police until we
had conducted a most searching enquiry into the facts of existing
administration in every Province by Sir Andrew Fraser's Commis-
sion. Finally, we did not propose to create a Railway Board or to
revolutionise our railway management until we had obtained the
advice of an expert from home. Thus, wherever possible, we
have proceeded upon the same plan : first, the ascertainment
from the information at our disposal, from the representations of
the public, and from the known facts, that there was a case for
reform ; secondly, the appointment of an influential and re-
presentative body to go round the country and take evidence ;
thirdly, the critical examination of their report, accompasied by
consultation of Local Governments and of public opinion ;
fourthly, the accomplished reform. I remember very well I dare
say you do also, gentlemen, when the present administration
was ridiculed as one of Commissions that were always sitting
but whose egg never hatched out. I held my peace, but I sat
all the harder. Time was all I wanted ; and now I can say
that not a single Commission has sat and reported in my time
without its results having been embodied with the least possible
delay in administrative measures or in legislative Acts. If you
want to know the Educational Policy of Government you can
find it in the published Resolution of March 1904. I recapitulated
it in a recent farewell speech at Simla. If you want to know our
Land Revenue Policy, it is similarly enunciated in two published
Resolutions dealing with the principle of assessment and collec-
tion, which will presently be followed by two others dealing with
subsidiary branches of the question. These will then be a corpus
or Code of Land Revenue law and policy, such as has never
previously existed in India, and which will constitute a charter
for the cultivating classes. If you want to know our Fiscal Policy
it is contained in the published Despatch of October 1903. Thus
wherever you turn, I think you will find my claim justified, the
case examined, the principles elucidated, the policy laid down,
action taken and already bearing fruit.
The second principle that I have held in view has been this.
Amid the numerous races and creeds of whom India is composed,
10 THE HUMBLE SILENT MILLIONS.
while I have sought to understand the needs and to espouse the
interests of each, to win the confidence of the Princes, to en-
courage and strengthen the territorial aristocracy, to provide
for the better education and thus to increase the opportunities
of the educated classes, to stimulate the energies of Hindu, Maho-
medan, Buddhist, and Sikh, and to befriend those classes like
the Eurasians who are not so powerful as to have many friends
of their own my eye has always rested upon a larger canvas,
crowded with untold numbers, the real people of India, as distinct
from any class or section of the people
" But thy poor endure
And are with us yet ;
Be thy name a sure
Refuge for thy poor,
Whom men's eyes forget. ''
It is the Indian poor, the Indian peasant, the patient, hum-
ble, silent millions, the eighty per cent, who subsist by agriculture,
who know very little of policies, but who profit or suffer by their
results, and whom men's eyes, even the eyes of their own coun-
trymen too often forget to whom I refer. He has been in the
background of every policy for which I have been responsible,
of every surplus of which I have assisted in the disposition. We
see him not in the splendour and opulence, nor even in the
squalor, of great cities : he reads no newspapers, for, as a rule,
he cannot read at all : he has no politics. But he is the bone and
sinew of the country, by the sweat of his brow the soil is tilled,
from his labour comes forth the national income : he should be
the first and final object of every Viceroy's regard.
It is for him in the main that we have twice reduced the
salt tax, that we remitted land revenue in two years amounting
to nearly two and a half millions sterling : for him that we are assess-
ing the land revenue at a progressively lower pitch and making its
collection elastic. It is to improve his credit that we have created
co-operative credit societies, so that he may acquire capital at
easy rates and be saved from the usury of the money-lender.
He is the man whom we desire to lift in the world, to whose
children we want to give education, to rescue whom from tyranny
and oppression we have reformed the Indian Police,andfrom whose
cabin we want to ward off penury and famine. Above all let us
keep him on the soil and rescue him from bondage or expropria-
tion. When I am vituperated by those who claim to speak for
the Indian people, I feel no resentment and no pain. For I search
my conscience and I ask myself who and what are the real Indian
people ; and I rejoice that it has fallen to my lot to do something
to alleviate theirs, and that I leave them better than I found
them. As for the educated classes, I regret if because I have
not extended to them political concessions more places on
councils and so on, I have in any way incurred their hostility. For
I certainly in nowise return it ; and when I remember how im-
partially it is bestowed on every Viceroy in the latter part of his
term of office, I conclude that there must be something wrong
about all of us which brings us under a common ban. I also re-
POLICY OF OPBN CONFIDENCE. 11
member that in a multitude of ways, even as regards places and
appointments, I have consistently befriended and championed
their cause. I have not offered political concessions, be-
cause I did not regard it as wisdom or statesmanship in the
interest of India itself to do so ; and if I have incurred odium for
thus doing my duty I have no apology to advance.
And yet in one respect I venture to think that the classes of
whom I am speaking have found in me their best friend. For I
have endeavoured to pursue with them the third principle of
action to which I before alluded, namely to be frank and outspoken,
to take them into open confidence as to the views and intentions
of Government, to profit by public opinion instead of ignoring it,
never to flatter or cozen and never to mystify or deceive. I have
always held that Governors are servants of the public, and that
policies are not such high and holy things as not to admit of clear
exposition and candid argument for all who care to hear. I
cannot say that I have everywhere been rewarded for this con-
fidence. But I have pursued it as part of a definite policy, for
there has not been an act or an aim of Government whose
sincerity I have not been prepared to vindicate, and to me there
is something manlier in treating your critics with respect than in
pretending that you are unaware even of their existence. And
my last principle, Gentlemen, has been everywhere to look
ahead ; to scrutinize not merely the passing requirements of the
hour, but the abiding needs of the country, and to build not for the
present alone but for the future. I should say that the one great fault
of Englishmen in India is that we do not sufficiently look ahead.
We are so much absorbed in the toil of the day that we leave the
morrow to take care of itself. But it is not to-morrow only
but twenty years hence, fifty years hence, a hundred years
hence. That is the thought that has never left my mind. I
have had no ambition to cut Gordian knots or to win ephe-
meral triumphs. I am content that all my work should go
that is not fitted to last. Some of it will go of course. But I
hope that a solid residuum may remain and take its place
as part of the organic growth of Indian politics and Indian
society. To leave India permanently stronger and more pros-
perous, to have added to the elements of stability in the national
existence, to have cut out some sources of impurity or corruption,
to have made out dispositions that will raise the level gf admi-
nistration not for a year or two but continuously, to have lifted
the people a few grades in the scale of well being, to have enabled
the country or the Government better to confront the dangers or
the vicissitudes of the future that is the statesman's ambition.
Whether he has attained it or not, will perhaps not be known
until long after he has disappeared.
I need say but few words about my resignation or the causes
that led to it. I desire only to mention one cause that did not.
It seems to have been thought in some quarters at home that
this was a personal quarrel, and that I resigned on personal
grounds. No one who has the least acquaintance with the facts
of the case, and I would fain hope to one who has any acquaint-
12 GREAT PRINCIPLES FOR WHICH HB RESIGNED.
ance with myself, could commit this error. The post of Viceroy
of India is not one which any man fit to hold it would resign for
any but the strongest reasons. When you remember that to me
it was the dream of my childhood, the fulfilled ambition of my
manhood, and my highest conception of duty to the State, when
further you remember that I was filling it for the second time,
a distinction which I valued much less for the compliment than
for the opportunity afforded to me of completing the work to
which I had given all the best of my life, you may judge whether
I should be likely heedlessly or impulsively to lay it down. No,
Sir, there is not a man in this room who does not know that I
resigned for a great principle, or rather for two great principles :
first, the hitherto uncontested, the essential, and in the long run
the indestructible subordination of military to civil authority in
the administration of all well-conducted States, and secondly, the
payment of due and becoming regard to Indian authority in
determining India's needs. I am making no vain boast when
I say that in defending these principles as I have sought to do,
and in sacrificing my position sooner than sacrifice them, I have
behind me the whole of the civil services in India, the unanimous
weight of non-official English opinion in this country, an over-
powering preponderance of Indian opinion, and I will add, which
is more significant still, the support of the greater part of the
Indian Army. I have not one word to say in derogation of those
who may hold opposite views ; but speaking for the last time as
Viceroy of India I am entitled to say why in a few hours I shall
cease to be Viceroy in India ; and I am also entitled to point out
that in speaking for the last time as Viceroy of the country which
I have administered for nearly seven years, I am speaking, as I
believe no single one of my predecessors has ever been able to
speak toa similar extent, with the whole of that country behind me.
And, Gentlemen, you may depend upon it, the principles have not
vanished, though they have momentarily disappeared. They will
reappear, and that before very long.
It is a much pleasanter subject to turn from myself to the
nobleman whose ship is hourly drawing nearer to these shores
and who the day after to-morrow will take over the task that I
lay down. It is a pleasure to me to be succeeded by a lifelong,
friend. But it is a much greater pleasure to know that India
will gain a Viceroy of ripe experience, of a strong sense of duty,
of sound judgment, and of great personal charm. I hope that the
rough seas through which I have sometimes ridden may leave
smooth waters in which his keel may glide, and from the depth of
my heart I wish him a tranquil and triumphant Viceroyalty.
And now, as the moment comes for me to utter the parting
words, I am a little at a loss to know what they should be. A
week ago, a man said to me, ' Do you really love India ? ' I
could not imagine if he was jesting. * Love India ! ' I replied, * why
otherwise I should have cut myself adrift from my own country
for the best seven years of my life, why should I have given to
this country the best of my poor health and strength, why should
I have come back in the awful circumstances of a year ago, why
PASSIONATE DEVOTION TO INDIA. 13
should I have resigned my office sooner than see injury done to
her now ? ' * Good ' he said, I was merely trying you I knew it
as well as every one else.'
Gentlemen, you all know it. There is not a man in this room,
there is not an impartial man in India, there is not a Bengali
patriot who now denounces me for giving him the boon for which
he will one day bless my name, who does not know that no Eng-
lishman ever stepped on to the shores of India who had a more
passionate devotion for the country than he who is now bidding
it farewell. Nor will any Englishman ever have left it more
resolved to the best of his humble abilities and strength, to con-
tinue to do justice in England to India India who after two
hundred years still stands like, some beautiful stranger before
her captors so defenceless, so forlorn, so little understood,
so little known. She stands in need as much as ever perhaps
more than ever when such strange experiments are made by
many whose knowledge of her does not extend beyond the
fringe of her garment, of being championed and spoken for
and saved from insult or defamation. Perhaps my voice for India
may not always be identical with that of all her sons, for some of
them, as I have said, see or speak very differently from me. But
it will be a voice raised on behalf not of a section or a fraction,
but so far as the claim may be made, of all India. And in any
case, it will be of an India whose development must continue to
be a British duty, whose fair treatment is a test of British character,
and whose destinies are bound up with those of the British race.
So far as in me lies it will be a voice raised in the cause of
impartial justice and fair dealing; and, most of all, seeing that
Indian interests are not bartered away or sacrificed or selfishly
pawned in the financial or economic adjustments of Empire.
A hundred times in India have I said to myself, Oh, that to
every Englishman in this country, as he ends his work, might be
truthfully applied the praise, ''Thou hast loved righteousness
and hated iniquity !''* No man has, I believe, ever served India
faithfully of whom that could not be said. All other triumphs
are tinsel and sham. Perhaps there are few of us who make
anything but a poor approximation to that ideal. But let it be
our ideal all the same. To fight for the right, to abhor the im-
perfect, the unjust or the mean, to swerve neither to the right
hand nor to the left, to care nothing for flattery or applause or
odium or abuse it is so easy to have any of them in India never
to let your enthusiasm be soured or your courage grow dim, but
to remember that the Almighty has placed your hand on the
greatest of his ploughs, in whose furrow the nations of the future
are germinating and taking shape, to drive the blade a little
These words are directly taken from the Epistle of St. Paul to the Heb-
rews : "Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God,
even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows."
( I. 9. ). But of course they are an echo of the stirring words of the Psalmist:
"Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness ; therefore God, thy God,
hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows." (XLV. 7.)
The Archbishop of Armagh has referred to this quotation in his poem
welcoming Lord Curzen on his return home.
14
LET INDIA BB MY JUDGE.
forward in your time, and to feel that somewhere among these
millions you have left a little justice or happiness or prosperity, a
sense of manliness or moral dignity, a spring of patriotism, a
dawn of intellectual enlightenment, or a stirring of duty where it
did not before exist that is enough, thai: is the Englishman's
justification in India. It is good enough for his watchword
while he is here, for his epitaph when he is gone. I have worked
for no other aim. Let India be my judge.
SPEECH AT THE UNITED SERVICE
CLUB, SIMLA.
ON September 3oth, Lord Curzon attended the dinner given
in his honour by the United Service Club at Simla. There
was an unusual attendance. His Honour the Lieutenant Gov-
ernor of the Panjab, Sir Charles Rivaz, was among those present.
The Honourable Mr. Hewett, Member of the Viceroy's Council,
presided, and in a happy little speech proposed his health.
Whereupon Lord Curzon responded as follows :
Mr. Hewett, Your Honour and Gentlemen : I desire to
thank the members of this Club for the distinguished compli-
ment that they have paid to me in inviting me to be their guest
at this dinner to-night and also for the large and, as I believe,
unexampled numbers that have collected within this room to do
me honour. I have listened with much gratitude though not
without a good deal of compunction, to the kind remarks that have
fallen from the lips of the chairman, the Hon. Mr. Hewett. I feel
it is my good fortune that the task of proposing my health on
this parting occasion should have fallen into his hands ; for in
one capacity or another, Mr. Hewett has been one of my foremost
colleagues during the last seven years. When I came out to India
as Viceroy, he was Home Secretary, one of the most important
posts in our administration. Then he became head of a Local
Government proceeding to the Central Provinces, that well-
known threshold to higher office. Finally, when it became
necessary to appoint the new Member for Commerce and
Industry he was the one Civilian pre-eminently well qualified
for the post.
Thus he has seen many sides of the work of Government
during recent years, and if he can speak, as he has done, of
that which has been attempted, and in part accomplished, the
compliment is all the greater because of the man who utters it.
There was one remark in Mr. Hewett's speech by which I
could not fail to be personally touched and that was the sen-
tence in which he spoke of Lady 'Curzon as my comrade.
It is true that in the arduous and, as he remarked, isolated
position which the Viceroy of India is compelled to occupy,
he is sustained by the solace of those who are nearest and
dearest to him. In this way, my work has been lightened
by the influences that have always been at my side. The part
which India fills in the memory and affections of Lady Curzon
is not inferior to that which she occupies in my own, and when
we have left this country, my heart will not alone be left behind
but a considerable portion of hers will be here also. Gentlemen, I
do not stand here to-night to discuss controversial topics. They
will work out to their appointed issue by processes which we can-
not discern or, at any rate, cannot at present discern. History will
10 FAITHFUL SUPPORT OF THB SERVICES.
write its verdict upon them with unerring pen and we need not
to-night anticipate the sentence. I stand here rather as one
who has laboured and wrought amongst you to the best of his
ability through long and stirring years and who rises for the last
time to address the comrades who have shared his toil, and, if
he has anywhere conquered, have enabled him to conquer.
I cannot approach such a task without emotion and I
cannot feel sure of being able to discharge it with credit. I have
referred to the position of peculiar isolation in which the
Viceroy stands, and I prefer rather, in what I have to say to-
night, to turn my attention to those aspects of his work which
bring him into contact with others. The relation of the Viceroy
to the services in India is one of a peculiar and unexampled
description. He is over them, but not of them ; he is not
attached to them, as a party politican in England is to his party,
by the ties of long fellow-service in a common cause. His link
with them is one of official rank, not of personal identity, and it is
limited to a few years, at the most, instead of being spread over a
lifetime. He is almost invariably from the nature of the case a
stranger, brought out from England and placed for a short time in
supreme charge. I always thought it a remarkable thing in these
circumstances, and a proof of the loyalty and devotion to duty
which is instinct in Englishmen, that the Indian Services should
extend to the Viceroy the fidelity and the support which they do.
In my own case, my feeling for the Indian Service was formed and
wasstated many years before I came to this country as Viceroy, and
I cannot be suspected, therefore, of any after-thought, in declaring it
now. When I brought out my book about Persia more than thirteen
years ago, having written it, in the main, in the interests of Indian
defence, I dedicated* it to the Civil and Military Services in India,
and, there immediately after the title page, I spoke about them
in language which represented my profound conviction then and
represents it still. You may imagine, therefore, with what pride
I found myseJf placed at the head of these Services seven years
ago, and given the opportunity of co-operating for great ends with
such strenuous and expert allies.
It will always, I think, remain the greatest recollection of
my public life that for this, not inconsiderable, period, I was per-
mitted to preside over the most efficient and the most high-minded
public service which I believe to exist in the world. Gentlemen,
our official generations in India move so quickly, particularly in
the higher ranks, that a Viceroy who has been here seven years
ends by finding himself the doyen of the official hierarchy, and feels
that he is old almost before he has ceased to be young. Such
has been my own experience, though the Viceroy has
colleagues in his Cabinet or Council, lately revised, to the normal
duration of five years.
^ have served with no fewer than twenty Councillors in my
time, and in the ten local Governments, I have well co-operated
with nearly thirty Governors, Lieutenant-Governors and Chief
* See note at the end of this speech, p. 24
DEVOLUTION WITH CENTRALISATION. 17
Commissioners. Perhaps, therefore, I may claim an exceptional
right to speak. It does indeed seem to me a remarkable thing
that work, pursued under the conditions of pressure which have
characterised our recent activities, and with responsible agents so
varied, so important, and so numerous, should have been carried
on with so much smoothness and good feeling and, if I may
speak for the treatment which I have personally received, with
such generous consideration and personal regard. I venture
to assert not as a boast or as a compliment, but as a fact, that
there has never been a time when the relations between the
Supreme Government and the Heads of the local Governments
have been so free from friction or so harmonious. In the odd
volumes of our proceedings, which it has been my duty to study
at midnight hours, I have sometimes come across peppery
letters or indignant remonstrances, and have seen the spectacle of
infuriated Proconsuls strutting up and down the stage. We now
live not in the iron or stone age, when implements of this descrip-
tion were, at any rate figuratively, in constant use, but in the age
of milk and honey when we all sit down together to devour the
grapes of Eshcol, by which I mean the surpluses that are pro-
vided for us by the Finance Department. Even that Department
has ceased to be a nightmare to the good as well as a terror to
the evil, and has assumed an urbanity in harmony with the spirit
of the time.
No doubt, these results are partially due, as I have hinted, to
the more prosperous circumstances through which we have been
passing, and to the greater devolution of financial responsibility
upon local Governments that we have carried out. But they also
reflect a positive desire on our part to be everywhere on the best
of terms with the local Governments and their heads, and to
avoid nagging interference and petty overruling ; and they have
everywhere been met by a loyalty and a friendly co-operation on
their part, which I should like to take this opportunity to acknow-
ledge, and which have made the relations between the Viceroy
and the Governors and Lieutenant-Governors with whom he
has served, one of the most agreeable episodes of my term of office.
I am not one of those who hold the view, that local Govern-
ments are hampered in their administration by excessive cen-
tralisation, or that any great measures of devolution would produce
better results. In so far as there has been centralisation in the
past, it has been in the main because, under the quinquennial
contract system, the local Governments had not the means with
which to extend themselves, and there cannot be much autonomy
where there are not financial resources. Now that we have
substituted permanent financial agreements for the termin-
able agreements, and have placed the local Governments in
funds, they can proceed with internal development with as much
freedom as can be desired. I am not in favour of removing alto-
gether, or even of slackening the central control, for I believe
that, with due allowance for the astonishing diversity of local
conditions, it is essential that there should be certain uniform
principles running through our entire administration, and nothing
18 CENTRAL CONTROL ESSENTIAL.
could be worse, either for India or for British Dominion in India,
than that the country should be split up into a number of separate
and rival units, very much like the Austro-Hungarian Empire
in Europe, where the independent factors are only held together
by the nexus of a single crown.
The various enquiries that have been conducted into Ad-
ministration in my time, notably into education, famine, irrigation
and police, have shown how easy it is for central principles to be
forgotten, and for indifference at head-quarters to breed apathy
and want of system lower down. I believe, therefore, in a strong
Government of India gathering into its own hands and control-
ling all the reins ; but I would ride the local Governments on the
snaffle and not on the curb, and I would do all in our power to
consult their feelings, to enhance their dignity, and to stimulate
their sense of responsibility and power. The head of a local
Administration in India, and I speak in the presence of one to-
night, possesses great initiative and an authority which is scarcely
understood out of India. Sometimes in the past, these prerogatives
have been used to develop dissension, and the Supreme Government
has, so I am told, scarcely been on speaking terms with some
of its principal lieutenants. I have been lucky in escaping all such
experiences, and every Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, or Chief
Commissioner whom I have known, has exerted himself with equal
loyalty to conform to the general policy rather than to pursue his
own. This, however, is rather a digression into which I have
wandered, and I must get back to my subject at the point at which
I left it.
Even more than with the heads of local Governments, have
I necessarily been brought into contact with my own colleagues
in the Government of India. I speak primarily of the Members of
Council and secondarily of the Secretaries to the Government of
India, which is governed not by an individual but by a committee.
No important step can be taken without the assent of a majority
of that committee, which in practice cuts both ways. It is the
tendency in India, as elsewhere, but much more in India than
anywhere else that I have known, to identify the acts of Govern-
ment with the head of the administration. The Viceroy is
constantly spoken of as though he, and he alone, were the Gov-
ernment This, of course, is unjust to his colleagues who are
equally responsible with himself, and very often deserve the credit
which he unfairly obtains. On the other hand, it is sometimes
unfair to him, for he may have to bear the entire responsibility
for administrative acts or policies, which were participated
in and perhaps originated by them. In these rather difficult
circumstances, which perhaps work out on the whole in a fair
equation, it is a consolation to me to reflect and this is the only
Cabinet secret that I am going to divulge, that during my
seven years of office, there has not been a single important question
whether of internal or external politics, in which the Government
of India have not been absolutely unanimous, unless you except
the last of all where the unanimity was scarcely broken.
I believe this to be unexampled in the history of Indian
HARMONIOUS RELATIONS WITH ALL COLLEAGUES. 19
administration. In the previous records of Indian Gov-
ernment, I have often come across sparring matches between the
illustrious combatants, and contentious minutes used to be fired
off like grape-shot at the head of the Secretary of State. I can
only recall three occasions on which a minute dissenting from the
decision of the majority of the Council has been sent home in
the whole of my time, and I venture to think that with a Council,
representing so many different interests and points of view, this
indicates a very remarkable and gratifying unity. Certainly,
it has not been purchased by any sacrifice of independent
judgment The Viceroy has no more weight in his Council
than any individual member of it. What it does show is, that
the Government of India, in approaching the work of reconstruc-
tion and reform with which we have charged ourselves, has been
inspired by a single spirit and has pursued a common aim.
I recall with pride that in every considerable undertaking we have
been an absolutely united body, united not merely in identity of
opinion but in a common enthusiasm, and on this parting occasion
it may be permissible for me to say, both of the distinguished
Civilians and the eminent soldiers with whom it has been my
privilege to serve, that I thank them with a gratitude, which it would
be impossible to exaggerate, for a co-operation that has converted
the years of toil into years of honourable pleasure, that will always
remain one of the happiest recollections of my life.
Then I turn to the Secretaries to Government, those faithful
and monumental workers, who dig in the mounds of the past
and excavate the window of our ancestors, who prepare our
cases for us and write our official letters and despatches, and
generally keep us all from going wrong. I have served with
many Secretaries to Government in my time, and I do not
believe that in any administration in the world is the standard
of trained intelligence or devotion to duty, in the service which
they represent, so uniformly high. My consolation in thinking
of them is that a better reward than my poor thanks lies before
them. As they gradually blossom into Chief Commissioners
and Lieutenant-Governors and Members of Council, they will
earn the fuller recognition to which they are entitled, and in
my retirement, I shall for years to come, have the pleasure of see-
ing the higher posts of Indian Administration filled by men, with
whom I have been privileged to work, and of whose capacity for
the most responsible offices I have had such abundant opportunity
to convince myself. Some paper at home said the other day that
I had not founded a school. There was no need to do that, for it
was here already. But I have assisted to train one, and if the tests
have sometimes been rather exacting, I may perhaps say in self-
defence, that I have never imposed upon others a burden which I
was not willing to accept myself.
What I have said of Members and Secretaries is not
less true of the officers who have served under them in the Depart-
ments of Government. When I came to Simla I observed that
I regarded this place as the workshop of the Administration, and
such indeed during the last few years I believe it has truly been.
20 INDIA ADMINISTERED FROM THE PLAINS.
It was Burke who remarked in one of his speeches that there is
one sight that is never seen in India, and that is the grey head of
an Englishman. As I look about me, I begin to think that we must
live in a rather different and degenerate age, and I am not sure
that a certain guilty consciousness does not steal over my mind.
I must confess that I have heard it whispered that Simla has
acquired in recent times an unenviable reputation for staidness
and sobriety, and I believe that invidious epithets have even been
applied to the hospitable and once light-hearted institution in which
I am now privileged to be entertained. Gentlemen, must I offer an
apology for this alleged falling-off from the standards of the past ?
No, I do nothing of the sort ; I do not allow for a moment that we
have pursued duty at the cost of the amenities of life. I most
certainly have not done so. We have all had our hours of gaiety
and ease at Simla, and very pleasant they have been ; but we have
certainly set work before play, we have spent more time in school
than out of it, and for my own part I believe that an incalculable
benefit has been conferred upon the entire Service by the example
of those public servants who used to be accused of idling away
their time on the hills, but who now make up for the refreshing
altitude in which they labour by the arduous and unremitting
character of the labour itself.
We have finally killed the fallacy, perhaps never true at all,
and certainly least of all, true now, that the summer capital of
Government is a place where it is all summer and not much gov-
ernment; and if a Royal Commission were sent round to investigate
the Factories of the Empire, I should await with perfect equanimity
the place that Simla would occupy in its report. Gentlemen, there
is one error against which I think that we ought very particularly to
be on our guard. I should not like any of us, because we happen to
be at the head-quarters of Government, to delude ourselves into
thinking that we are the only people or even the principal people
who run the Indian machine. It would be quite untrue. India may
be governed from Simla or Calcutta, but it is administered from
the plains. We may issue the orders and correct the mistakes,
but the rank and file of the army are elsewhere ; and if we make
the plans of battles they fight them. Let me not forfeit this
opportunity of expressing my feelings towards the entire Civil
Service of India for the loyal co-operation that I have received
from them. At the beginning I believe, they thought me rather
a disturbing element in the economy of Indian official existence ;
but when they saw that my interests were theirs, and theirs mine,
because there is no one who so much benefitted by increased
efficiency in administration as the administrator himself, they gave
me every assistance in their power, and no one is more sincerely
conscious than myself, that if success has anywhere been obtained
it has not been in the Secretariat alone, but in the District office,
in the court, and, I would even add, in the fields.
Gentlemen, what is the secret of success in the Indian Services,
Civil and Military alike ? It lies not in systems or rules.not even ex-
clusively in training or education. It consists in the man. If revenue
assessments are to be fair and equitable to the people, it will not be
PERSONALITY OF OFFICERS COUNTS FOR MOST. 21
because of the resolutions which the Government of India have
issued to regulate them, but because a sympathetic settlement-
officer has been sent to carry them out. If one Division or District
is discontented and another tranquil, it will usually be because
one has the wrong man at the head and the other the right
one; if one young chief degenerates into extravagance or
dissipation, while another develops into a statesman and a
ruler of men, it will probably be found that the former has
a weak political officer or an incompetent tutor, while the
other has been in strong and capable hands; if one regiment
is efficient while another is soft or has a bad record, look to
the commanding officer and you will commonly find the clue.
Therefore, I say, in India, as elsewhere, but most of all in India,
give me the man, the best that England can produce, the
best that India can train. To every head of an Indian Ad-
ministration, to every chief of an office, I would say, pick out the
best men, run them to the front, give them their chance that is
the whole secret of administration. I have said a hundred times,
and I say it again, that there is no service in the world where
ability, and character quite as much as ability, are more sure
of their reward than the Indian Service. Nothing can keep
them down, for they are the pivot and fulcrum of our rule.
So long as we can continue to send to this country the pick of
the youth of our own, so long as they are inspired by high stan-
dards of life and conduct, so long as each officer, Civil or Military,
regards himself in his own sphere as the local custodian of
British honour and the local representative of the British name,
so long we are safe and India is safe also. For the good man
makes other men good, the efficient officer spreads efficiency
about him, and the sympathetic officer diffuses an atmosphere
of loyalty and contentment.
Gentlemen, perhaps I may be allowed to interpolate a word in
this place, about the particular branch of the Service of which I
have been more especially the head : I allude to the Political
Department. The Viceroy, as taking the Foreign Office under his
personal charge, has a greater responsibility for the officers of that
Department than of any other. A good Political is a type of officer
difficult to train, indeed training by itself will never produce him,
for there are required in addition qualities of tact and flexibility, of
fibre and gentlemanly bearing, which are an instinct rather than an
acquisition. The public at large hardly realises what the Political
may be called upon to do. At one time he may be grinding at
the Foreign Office, at another he may be required to stiffen the ad
ministration of a backward Native State, at a third he may be
presiding over a Jirga of unruly tribes on the frontier, at a fourth
he may be defining a boundary amid the wilds of Tibet or the
sands of Seistan. There is no more varied or responsible service
in the world than the Political Department of the Govern-
ment of India ; and right well have I been served in it from
the mature and experienced officer who handles a Native Chief
with velvet glove, to the young Military Political who packs up
his trunk at a moment's notice and goes off to Arabia or Kurdistan.
22 HIGHER LEVEL OF EFFICIENCY THROUGHOUT.
I commend the Political Department of the Government of India
to all who like to know the splendid and varied work of which
Englishmen are capable, and I hope that the time may never
arise when it will cease to draw to itself the abilities and the finest
characters that the Services in India can produce.
Gentlemen, I have been speaking so far of the agents with
whom I have been permitted to work. Let me add, if I may, a
few words about the work itself. If I were asked to sum it up in
a single word, I would say : Efficiency. That has been our gospel,
the key-note of our administration, i remember once reading in
a native newspaper, which was attacking me very bitterly, the
sentence; " As for Lord Curzon he cares for nothing but efficiency."
Exactly, Gentlemen; but I hardly think that when I am gone this
is an epitaph of which I need feel greatly ashamed. There
were three respects, in which a short experience taught me, that a
higher level of efficiency under our administration was demanded.
The first was in the despatch of business. Our methods were
very dignified, our procedure very elaborate and highly organised,
but the pace was apt to be the reverse of speedy. I remember in
my first year settling a case, that had been pursuing the even
tenour of its way, without, as far as I could ascertain, exciting the
surprise or ruffling the temper of an individual for sixty-one
years. I drove my pen like a stiletto into its bosom, I buried
it with exultation and I almost danced upon its grave. Gentle-
men. I really think that not merely the new rules that we have
adopted, but the new principles that are at work, have done a good
deal to assist the despatch of business, and I hope that there may not
be any backsliding or relapse in the future. It was one of Sir John
Lawrence's sayings, that procrastination is the thief of efficiency
as well as of time, and though I would not say that an administra-
tion is good in proportion to its pace, I would certainly say
that it cannot be good if it is habitually and needlessly slow.
Our second object was the overhauling of our existing ma-
chinery, which had got rusty and had run down. There is scarcely
a department of the Government, or a branch of the Service, which
we have not, during the last few years, explored from top to bottom,
improving the conditions of service where they were obsolete or
inadequate, formulating a definite programme of policy or
action, and endeavouring to raise the standard and the tone.
And, thirdly, we had to provide new machinery to enable India
to grapple with new needs.
Perhaps, there is nothing which the public has shown so
general an inability to understand, as the fact that a new world of
industry and enterprise, and social and economic advance is dawn-
ing upon India. New continents and islands leap above the
horizon as they did before the navigators of the Elizabethan Age ;
but if I am right, if agriculture and irrigation and commerce and
industry have great and unknown futures before them, then the
Government which in this country is nearly everything, must be
ready with appliances to enable it to shape and to direct these new
forms of extension. You cannot administer India according to
modern standards but on the old lines. Some people talk as though,
LIFE AND THE ORGANISATION OF LIFE. 23
when we create new departments and posts, we are merely adding to
the burden of Government. No, we are doing nothing of the sort.
The burden of Government is being added to by tendencies and
forces outside of ourselves, which we are powerless to resist, but
not powerless to control. We are merely providing the mechanism
to cope with it. Of course we must not be blind to the considera-
tion that progress is not a mere matter of machinery alcne, and
that life and the (organisation of life are very different things.
There is always danger of converting an efficient staff into a
bureaucracy, and, while perfecting the instruments, of ignoring the
free play of natural forces. Against that tendency I would implore
all those who are engaged in work in India, to be peculiarly on
their guard, for it may be said of reforms everywhere, and here
perhaps most of all, that what is contrary to nature is
doomed to perish, and that what is organic will alone survive.
Gentlemen, I am afraid that I am becoming too philosophic
for the dinner table, and I will revert to the concrete. Of the
actual schemes that we have undertaken, with the objects that
I have attempted to describe, I will say nothing here. You know
them as well as I do ; you are the joint authors of many of them,
and time alone will show whether they have been the offspring of
a premature and feverish energy, or whether they have taken root
and will endure. I desire no other or fairer test. In some
cases it is already in operation, sifting the good from the bad,
and giving glimpses of the possible verdict of the future. I will
only take one instance, because it is familiar to you all and because
there may be officers here present who were orginally doubtful
about the wisdom or propriety of the change. I speak of the
creation of the North-West Frontier Province, which was carved
out of the Punjab more than four years ago. You will all re-
member the outcries of the prophets of evil : it was going to inflict
an irreparable wound upon the prestige of the Punjab Government,
it was to overwhelm the Foreign Department with tiresome
work, it was to encourage ambitious officers to gasconade upon
the frontier; it was the symbol of a forward and "jingo"
policy and would speedily plunge us into another campaign.
We do not hear so much of these prophecies now, and I venture to
assert that there is not an officer here present, from the
Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab downwards, who would go
back upon the decision of 1901. It has given peace and content-
ment upon the border, and has substituted the prompt despatch
of frontier cases for endless perambulations and delays.
But the creation of the Frontier Province did not stand by
itself. It was merely one symptom of a frontier policy which we
have been pursuing quietly but firmly for seven years. will
utter no prophecy to-night and will indulge in no boast I am
content with the simple facts, that for seven years we have not
had a single frontier expedition, the only seven years of which this
can be said since the frontier passed into British hands,-
whereas in the five years, from 1894 to 1899, the Indian tax-payer
had to find four-and-a-half million pounds sterling for frontier
warfare, the total cost of military operations on the entire North-
24 " INDIA WILL BE THE LODESTAR OF MY MEMORY !
West Frontier in the last seven years has only been ^"248,000, and
that was for the semi-pacific operation of the Mahsud blockade.
And now, gentlemen, I must not detain you further. This
is one of the last speeches that I shall be called upon to make in
India, and I have made it, through you who are present here to-
night, to the Services which I have captained and which I
have been privileged to lead. We have worked together in
good report and in evil report. India is in some respects a hard
task-master. She takes her toll of health and spirits and endurance
and strength. A man's love for the country is apt *ometimes to
be soured by calumny, his passion for work to be checked by the
many obstacles to be encountered, his conception of duty to be
chilled by disappointment or delay. Such have sometimes been
my own feelings, such I daresay have often been the feelings of
those whom I am addressing ; but this is only an ephemeral
depression. When it comes upon us let us cast it off, for it is not
the real sentiment of the Indian Service. As the time comes for
us to go, we obtain a clearer perspective. It is like a sunset in the
hills after the rains : the valleys are wrapped in sombre shadow,
but the hill-tops stand out sharp and clear. Our Indian career,
be it long as it has been or will be in the case of many
who are here to-night, or relatively short as in mine, we feel that
we can never have such a life again, so crowded with opportunity,
so instinct with duty, so touched with romance. We forget the
rebuffs and the mortification, we are indifferent to the slander
and the pain. Perhaps if we forget these, others will equally
forget our shortcomings and mistakes. We remember only the
noble cause for which we have worked together, the principles of
equity and justice and righteousness for which we have contended,
and the good, be it ever so little, that we have done, and India
becomes the lodestar of our memories as she has hitherto been
of our duty. For us she can never again be " the Land of
Regrets."
NOTE. The Dedication of Lord Curzon's book on Persia,
1892, referred to by His Lordship on p. 16, is as follows:
TO
THE OFFICIALS, CIVIL AND MILITARY, IN INDIA
WHOSE HANDS UPHOLD
THE NOBLEST FABRIC YET REARED
BY THK GENIUS OF A CONQUERING NATION
I DEDICATE THIS WOKK
THE UNWORTHY TRIBUTE OF THE PEN TO A CAUSE
WHICH BY JUSTICE OR WITH THE SWORD
IT IS THEIR HIGH MISSION TO DEFEND
BUT WHOSE ULTIMATE SAFEGUARD IS THE SPIRIT
OF THE BRITISH PEOPLE
SPEECH BEFORE THE SECRETARIAT
CLERKS AT SIMLA.
ON October i3th, Lord Curzon received an Address from the
subordinate officials of the Secretariat at Simla, to which he replied
in the following words, which made a deep impression on those
assembled and were most enthusiastically received by them :
Gentlemen, Among the many hundreds of expressions of
compliment and regard that have reached me from all classes
of the community during the past few weeks, there is not
one to which I attach a higher value than the tribute which is
now offered to me by yourselves, as the representatives of the
ministerial establishments of Government or what are often
genericaily described as the European and Native clerks. The
tribute is the more affecting and valuable in my eyes because,
as you tell me in your address, it is unprecedented in the annals
of your service, and because I have the best of reasons for know-
ing that it springs spontaneously from the hearts of those who
tender it. Every man who vacates an office, however great, in
which he has been placed above his fellow-creatures, likes to think
that if regret is anywhere felt at his departure, it is not confined
to those in high place or station alone, but is shared by the much
larger number to whom fortune has assigned a lowlier, though
not necessarily a less responsible position in his surroundings.
Gentlemen, ever since I came to India, my heart has been
drawn towards the subordinate officers of Government. In the
first place, it seemed to me that they were a most industrious
and painstaking body of men, labouring for long hours at a task
which, though it tends to become mechanical, is very far from
being lifeless, but demands qualities of diligence and accuracy
and honesty of no mean order. I have often remarked that the
best Indian clerk is, in my opinion, the best clerk in the world,
for he is very faithful to detail and very unsparing of himself.
Secondly, I observed that many members of the class to which I
am referring are obliged to serve the Government at a distance
from their homes, sometimes in places that are uncongenial and
expensive, and that their work is apt to be pursued amid rather
monotonous and depressing surroundings.
And thirdly, I found, after a little experience, not merely
that these classes were rather forlorn and friendless, but that there
was a tendency when they made mistakes or were guilty of
offences to be somewhat hard upon them, and on occasions to
hustle them out of employment on pension upon hasty and inade-
quate grounds. I set myself, therefore, to try to understand the
nsition and, if possible, to alleviate the lot of the classes of whom
lave been speaking, and the new rules which we have passed or
systems that we have introduced about the abolition of fining in
the Departments of Government, the observance of public holi-
days, the leave rules of the subordinate services, the rank and pay
of the higher grades among them, and the allowances and pen-
sionary prospects of all classes, have, I hope, done a good deal to
mitigate some of the hardships that had been felt, and to place
26 "WE ARE HERE TO GIVE JUSTICE."
them in a more assured and comfortable position in the future.
It was on similar grounds that I pressed for the appointment of
the Committee to deal with Simla allowances, and although I do
not know if it will be possible for me to pass final orders upon the
subject before I go, yet the main thing is that the question has been
seriously investigated and cannot now be dropped. Personally;
I have taken, if possible, an even warmer interest in the oppor-
tunities that have presented themselves to me of investigat-
ing memorials and grievances, and now and then of rescuing
individuals from excessive punishment or undeserved disgrace.
You know, Gentlemen, for I have often stated it in public, the
feelings that I hold about the standards of British rule in this
country. We are here before everything else to give justice, and
a single act of injustice is in my view a greater stain upon our
rule than much larger errors of policy or judgment. I have some-
times thought that in dealing with subordinates, and particularly
native subordinates, there is a tendency to be rather peremptory
in our methods, and to visit transgression or suspected transgres-
sion with the maximum of severity for flagrant misconduct,
whether among the high or low, European or native. I have
never felt a ray of sympathy, but I have always thought that
a small man, whose whole fortune and livelihood were at stake,
deserved just as much consideration for his case, if not more so,
than a big man, and that we ought to be very slow to inflict a
sentence of ruin unless the proof were very strong. The most
striking case, in the history of the world, of mercy in high places,
is that of Abraham Lincoln, the President of the United States,
who was assassinated. He was sometimes condemned for it at
the time, but it is one of his glories in history. A Viceroy of
India has no such opportunities as occur to the head of a great
Government at a time of civil war. Yet as the final court
of appeal on every case, great or small, amid the vast popula-
tion of India, he has chances that occur to but few. I think
that he ought to take them. T have tried to do so. I can recall
long night-hours, spent in the effort to unravel some tangled case
of alleged misconduct resulting in the dismissal of a poor un-
known native subordinate. Perhaps those hours have not been the
worst spent of my time in India, and the simple letters of grati-
tude from the score or more of humble individuals, whom 1 have
thus saved from ruin, have been equally precious in my eyes with
the resolutions of public bodies or the compliments of princes.
Gentlemen, you may be sure that in bidding you farewell
I don't forget the faithful though silent services that you have
rendered to me. Far down below at the bottom of the pit you
have striven and toiled, sending up to the surface the proceeds
of your labour, which others then manipulate and convert to
the public use. I hope that the Government will always be
considerate to you and mindful of your services. For my own
part, it will remain one of my pleasantest recollections, that I
was able during my time in India to show you some practical
sympathy, and that you came forward of your own accord at the
end to testify your recognition.
SPEECH TO THE SIMLA MUNICIPALITY.
ON October 17th, Lord Curzon was presented with an Address
by the Municipality of Simla, on which occasion His Excellency
took his farewell of the Summer Capital in the following speech :
Gentlemen, It is just six and a half years ago since I drove
up to Simla by the tonga road and was received by the President
and members of the then Municipality upon my arrival at Vice-
regal Lodge. In a few days' time Lady Curzon and I will be
driving down for the last time by the same road. Not that we
are indifferent to the advantages of the railway, of which I have
on several occasions availed myself, but as we came, so we like
to go, preferring that Simla should remain in our memories as a
place, a little detached from the bustle and hurry of modern life,
which sweeps us all into its vortex as it rushes along. When I
came here, I rather ignorantly defended the summer migration of
Government to Simla. I say ignorantly, because I do not now
think that the movement required defence. Certainly the railway
has taken away the last valid argument of aloofness, and anyone
who is aware of the enormous rise in the population of this place
in recent years, cannot rightly accuse it of being any longer
inaccessible to the outer world. The danger is entirely in the
opposite direction, namely, that the rush of people to Simla will
one day be too great and will be in excess of the capacities of the
place either as regards accommodation or health. It is to these
large questions of development that those who are responsible for
the administration of Simla, both now and in the future, must
turn their attention.
A hill-station that requires in the summer to provide a habi-
tation for 4,000 Europeans and 39,000 natives on the slender
edges of a number of hills, ithat were certainly not intended by
nature for any such purpose, necessarily suggests very difficult
problems of housing, sanitation, water supply and lighting. These
problems are in my judgment only in their initial stages, and they
will need the application of very wide views and the introduction
of corresponding changes, before they are satisfactorily solved. I
have often pictured to myself the Simla of the future with its
suburbs spread out over the surrounding hills instead of huddled
together on the central summits, connected with its outskirts by
some mechanical means of traction, combining the amenities of
town and country, and administered on bold statesmanlike lines.
These schemes will be realised, if ever they are realised, at a later
date. In the meantime the Government of India during my time
has done what lay in its power to promote expansion on intelli-
gent principles, by the very large grant of twenty lakhs that we
made last year to the local Government from Imperial funds, to
extend your boundaries and improve your communications, and
28 CHURCH AND TOWN HALL.
by insistence whenever possible upon the anticipation of future
requirements not less than upon the satisfaction of existing
needs.
For my own part, I can truly say that I have taken the
keenest personal interest in the external appearance of the buildings
of Simla, and with the artistic assistance of that very talented
architect, Sir Swinton Jacob, I have succeeded in bequeathing to
Simla what I unhesitatingly describe as the finest public building
at a hill station in India. I allude to the new Secretariat on
Gorton Hill, which may appropriately be contrasted with the
painted card-board structures, which the taste of an earlier gene-
ration thought an adequate setting for the labours of the military
authorities. Our new building would not do discredit to the
castle-crowned Highlands of Bavaria or to the banks of the Rhine.
I also did my best in conjunction with the Bishop of Lahore, a
few years ago, to provide Simla with a new Church more befitting
the needs and dignity of the Capital of Government ; but the
forces against us were too strong and we even encountered some
persons who thought the existing fabric beautiful. There is one
public work that I bitterly regret never having had the oppor-
tunity of taking in hand, and that is a new Town Hall.
When the earthquake took place this year, I looked fondly
to its powerful co-operation to provide me with a legitimate
excuse by levelling the structure in which I am now speaking
to the ground ; but the earthquake failed lamentably at the critical
moment, and the last sight of Simla that I shall catch from the
tonga road as I turn the final corner, will be the first that arrested
my eye as I came up six years ago, namely the gaunt and graceless
protuberance against the sky line within whose walls I have
enjoyed so much pleasure, and where I am now receiving at your
hands this final compliment, but whose external appearance is so
unworthy both of the character of the station and of the purposes
to which it is applied. Another considerable building that has
been erected in my time has been the Walker Hospital. I wish
that we had constructed an edifice more in harmony with the
liberality of the donor. That hospital renders great service, but in
a better locality and with finer buildings might, I think, render
even greater.
During our stay in Simla, Lady Curzon and I have invari-
ably been treated with the greatest courtesy and kindness by
every class of the community. We have endeavoured to the
best of our ability to identify ourselves with your interests, and
wherever we go or whatever becomes of us, there are features and
incidents in Simla life that can never be obliterated from our
minds. The familiar drive round Jakko, the still more beautiful
ride round Summer Hills, the sudden bursting of green on the
hills after the first week of the rains, the undulating downs of
Naldera and the full moon riding at midnight above the deodar
spires, the September sunsets over the weltering plains, and
finally the first reappearance of the long lost snows in October
coming simultaneously with the crisp exultation of the autumn
air, all of these are scenes or sensations that are a part of our life
HAPPY ASSOCIATIONS OF SIMLA. 29
for ever. With them, just as much as with the toil and moil of
administrative work and official routine, Simla will be associated
in our memory. Associated, too, will it always be with acts of
kindness received from great and small, European and native, and
with the hundreds of happinesses that compose the serenity of
domestic life. These are the things that we shall always remember,
and that are aptly summed up on this parting occasion in the
graceful and a sympathetic language, with which you have
attended here this morning to bid us farewell.
Gentlemen, I thank you most sincerely on Lady Curzon's
behalf, and on my own, for the compliment which is an official
echo of the spontaneous reception, accorded to us a week ago, by
the townspeople, as we drove to the parting entertainment given to
us in this building. Both of these tributes have touched us
greatly.
SPEECH AT LAHORE.
ON October 27th, Lord Curzon, on his arrival at Lahore, the
capital of the Punjab, so much favoured by Jahangir the Great
Mughal, and afterwards the chief seat of the power of Ranjit
Singh, the Sikh Lion of the Punjab, received the Address from
its Municipality to which he replied as follows :
Gentlemen, I greatly appreciate the compliment, that you
have bestowed upon me, in addressing me for a second time on the
eve of my departure from India. It is pleasant to learn from your
own lips that my term of office has coincided with a period of
uninterrupted progress both for this city, and for the whole pro-
vince of the Punjab. I believe that a better service was never
wrought to the province than when the tantalising and anxious
burden of the Frontier management was taken from its shoulders,
and it was left to pursue its own agricultural and commercial and
industrial development on progressive and unhampered lines.
The growth in prosperity and population, that has followed in the
main from the construction of new canals and the colonisation of
the reclaimed areas, has no parallel in the history of modern India.
Not even plague, which has smitten you with so heavy a hand,
has managed to retard this advance, and it must be a source of
gratificaticn to your Lieutenant-Governor, Sir C. Rivaz, to find
that his devotion to the province, and his sympathetic rule of it,
have been rewarded by such remarkable symptoms of progress.
The two great things in the Punjab are, in my view, to main-
tain the old class of yeomen immemorially connected with the soil,
and to keep alive that sturdy and martial spirit that has given us
the pick of our armed forces. I should think badly of any legisla-
tion or any administrative or political changes, that tend to sap
either of these sources of vitality and thereby to lower the reputa-
tion of the Punjab before the world. I believe that the Land
Alienation Bill, which I assisted to pass in the early part of my
administration, has already done a good deal, and will do more, to
keep upon the soil the hereditary owners. As for the army, I trust
that increasing wealth and the higher standards of modern life
will not in any degree diminish the military spirit of the races
who dwell in these parts of India, or stop the flow of recruits to
the Indian army. That army is required not merely to preserve
internal order and to guard our frontiers, but also as a field of
honourable employment for the masculine element in the popula-
tion. It would be the greatest misfortune to India, if they became
effeminate or if they were to desist from the hereditary and manly
pursuit of arms.
Lately the province has suffered from another calamity, which
has sufficed to show how well its citizens, official and private,
could rise to the level of a great emergency, and also how much
common feeling exists everywhere throughout the Indian conti-
LADY CURZON'S WORK FOR INDIAN WOMEN. 31
nent. I speak of the earthquake in Kangra. In the early days,
when the subscriptions seemed to becoming in rather slowly, I was
afraid that we might not obtain the sums we required. But the
most sanguine estimates, both of the Lieutenant- Governor and the
Executive Committee and myself, were finally exceeded, and I
calculate that the total sums, contributed both in this country and
in England to the Civil and Military funds, must have amounted
to over ^110,000, which is, I think, both a very handsome and a
very creditable total. The Government has helped the generosity
of private donors, and so far as official and non-official patriotism
in combination could avail to repair the disaster, this has certainly
been done.
Gentlemen, I am glad to hear from you so good a record of
Municipal progress in Lahore. Municipal training is the best
form of education for public responsibilities, and Municipal ad-
ministration, though not the most showy, is perhaps the most
useful of the forms of government admitted in our constitution, I
always rejoice to hear of native gentlemen throwing themselves
with energy into the service of their fellow citizens, for, although
for scientific and sanitary knowledge the training of the European
expert is frequently necessary, it is the inhabitants of the country
who ought to be most thoroughly cognizant of the needs and
desires of their countrymen. You speak of the harmony with
which your own Municipal institutions are worked, and from this
I conclude tjhat both of these classes co-operate heartily for the
common good.
Lady Curzon is very grateful to you for the paragraph in
your address, which you have devoted to her labours on behalf of
her own sex in India. She has realised throughout that an English-
woman in this country, arid particularly one in high official station,
has a duty towards her fellow-women just as definite as a male
official has towards his fellow-men. That duty is to leave them if
possible a little better than she found them. And no higher
reward could she have than the feeling that both the institution
which she inherited from one of her predecessors, Lady Dufferin,
and that which she initiated herself, in memory of the late Queen
Victoria, for the provision of Indian midwives, have done
something to alleviate the sufferings or add to the comforts of
Indian women. It only remains for us both to express our thanks
to the members of the Municipal Committee for their combined
welcome and good-bye to us this morning, and for me to say that
this city, which I have four times visited as Viceroy, has always
held, and will continue to hold a firm place in my affections, as the
fit capital of not the least splendid and vigorous among the
provinces of the Indian Empire.
SPEECH AT AGRA.
ON October nth, Lord Curzon arrived at Agra, the city of
the Taj Mahal, and was presented with an Address by the Muni-
cipality, to which he replied in the following words :
Gentlemen, It is very good of you to address me a second
time, and a reference to what passed between us on the previous
occasion just six years ago, is of interest as marking the distance
that has been travelled by both of us since December 1899. You
have given to me this afternoon a record of your Municipal pro-
gress in the interval. The central position of Agra and its greatly
improved railway connections are a source of no small advantage
which all your competitors do not equally enjoy. Successive
Lieutenant-Governors, and notably in recent years Sir Antony
MacDonnell and Sir James La Touche, have devoted the closest
personal attention to the city and its buildings. You can never
fail to attract visitors, and in my judgment are certain to attract
them in rapidly increasing numbers. With a Municipality, there-
fore, that is devoted, as yours appears to be, to the conscientious
pursuit of its duties, which;consists in making life here as healthy
as possible for your residents and citizens, and with a reasonable
immunity from the scourges of plague and famine by which you
are liable to be, and have been, seriously afflicted, Agra is as cer-
tain as any place in India of a future of steadily advancing
prosperity. It is a proud trust therefore that you have in your
hands, and it must have been rendered all the easier and more
agreeable to you, by the fact that Agra is one of those places
which from its exquisite beauty and its many physical advantages
cannot fail to excite, in a peculiar degree, the love and the local
patriotism of its inhabitants.
You will shortly have the honour of welcoming here Their
Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales, and I have
confidently assured them that there is no place in India where
their stay will be more pleasant or which will leave a more abiding
impression upon their memories. My own connection with Agra
has, as you know, been mainly archaeological during the past six
years. I think that in my numerous visits here, and in the labours
of renovation and repair that we have undertaken, I have learned
to love this place more than any other spot in India. Here it is
always peaceful and always beautiful, though sometimes, I must
admit, a little warm ; and with each successive visit I have felt
the sense of something accomplished and of visible progress made.
This has been due to the enthusiasm with which the Lieutenant-
Governors, the local officials, the Public Works Engineers and
the Director-General of Aachaeology, Mr. Marshall, and his
subordinates, have all thrown themselves into the task. To every
one of them it has, I am convinced, been a labour of love, and all
of us have felt that we were not merely atoning for the errors of
WORK OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESTORATION. 33
our predecessors, but leaving something that will recover or in-
crease the fascination of Agra for those who come after us.
It is just eighteen years since 1 first drove up to the Taj
through dusty lanes and a miserable bazaar, since I first was
conducted over the Fort, where the Jahangir Mahal and exquisite
buildings anterior to the time of Shah Jahan were either in the
occupation of the military or were not shown to visitors at all, and
since [ visited Sikandra, then a deserted wilderness, and Fateh-
pur Sikri, glorious in its beauty but crumbling to decay. As I
visit all those places again, and note their renovated condition,
their orderly approaches, and the spirit of reverence with which
they are now preserved, I cannot help feeling that the work is
one of which we may feel proud. There is this also to be said
about the work of archaeological restoration throughout India,
that it is one in which European and Indian can, and do, equally
join. There is nothing to which the inhabitants of this country
are more attached than their antiquities, there is nothing by
which they were more distressed than their desecration and decay,
and few things, I am convinced, have done more to bring the two
people together, than the consciousness that the English are
devoting themselves with sincerity and ardour to the restoration
of the monuments of a race and a religion which are not their
own, but for which they feel the most profound respect and
veneration. No co-operation of this description is to be despised,
for it has a value greatly in excess of its immediate or concrete
results.
Gentlemen, Lady Curzon and I rejoice to be spending our
last days in India in your midst, and we are grateful to you for
joining in a farewell by the cordiality and unanimity of which we
have been greatly impressed.
SPEECH TO THE DELHI MUNICIPALITY.
Lord Curzon being: unable to visit Delhi the historic City
so memorably connected with his Viceroyalty by the great Im-
perial assemblage held there at the commencement of 1903, in
honour of the Coronation of our King Emperor, and the old Capital
of the Great Moghuls as well as of the old Hindu Kings owing
to indisposition, the Municipality of that City sent a Deputation
to Agra, where he was then staying, to present its Address. After
the presentation of the address on November I3th, Lord Curzon
spoke as follows in reply :
Gentlemen, I am exceedingly sorry that I was not able to
receive you at Delhi itself, where I had looked forward to spending
three half days, when my recent illness came on, and where there
was some important work that I desired to complete. It is very
good of you to have travelled down here to present me with your
address in person and I gratefully accept it at your hands. When
I paid my first official visit to Delhi as Viceroy six years ago, I
remember congratulating the members of the Delhi Municipality
upon the model character of the address which they did me the
honour of presenting. Then my work in India lay before me and
both the Municipality and I could only speak in the future tense.
Now it is finished and I cannot but feel a sense of pride that from
the representatives of an ancient city that was the capital of an
Empire and the possessor of an undying renown, I should have
been thought worthy of such a tribute as that which you have just
rendered.
Your remarks have related principally to archaeology and to
the many occasions on which I have been drawn to Delhi during
the past six years in connection with antiquarian or other work.
You are right in saying that I have taken a great interest in the
place, because of its Imperial traditions and the beauty of its
remains. You have particularly alluded to the restorations and
repairs that have been undertaken in the shrines and tombs out-
side the City, principally those of Humayun, Safdar Jung, Isa
Khan and Nizamuddin. I like to think that these famous men
of the past still have their last resting places properly tended, and
further, that the buildings so noble and the surroundings so
gracious and fair are not allowed to fall into decay by the apathy
or slovenliness of later generations. In the Fort a great deal more
remains to be done. A considerable portion of the garrison is to
be moved outside the city, and I hope we shall thus gradually get
rid of those monstrous barracks which are now such an eyesore
and offence. We are at present engaged in restoring the palace-
gardens of the Moghul Emperors, of which the pavilions and
water-courses still exist or can be reproduced.
I have, as you know, brought out a Florentine artificer in
mosaics to replace the marble incrustations at the back of the
THK DELHI DURBAR. 35
throne, and I hope that a few years hence the interior of the
Fort may present some slight resemblance it cannot, I fear,
be more, for so much has perished irretrievably to what it was,
not in the later days of the Moghuls when the moribund con-
dition of the Empire was typified in the squalor and decay of
the court, but in the resplendent times of Shah Jehan and
Aurangzib. When the interior of the Fort has been renovated, I
have always hoped that the artificial glacis outside, which was
thrown up for defensive purposes after the Mutiny, may be removed,
and that the magnificent red walls may then be seen to their base
as they were up till fifty years ago.
You have alluded to the great pageant of the Coronation Dur-
bar that was held at Delhi nearly three years ago. We are now
engaged in commemorating with the assistance of Sir Aston Webb,
one of the foremost of English architects, the common site of
the two Durbars of 1877 and 1903 ; and when these works, which
will combine architectural features with landscape gardening,
have been completed, Delhi will possess a twentieth-century monu-
ment that will, I hope, compare favourably in beauty and impres-
siveness with the relics of earlier ages. I often see in unfriendly-
papers and speeches, a repetition of the old calumny that our
Durbar in 1903 was a costly extravagance. The people who said
it was going to cost two crores. became so enamoured of the phrase,
that they have gone on ever since declaring that it did cost two
crores, and one would almost imagine that some of them believe
it, although the actual figure^ require to be multiplied no fewer
than seven times in order to sustain the illusion You who are
on the spot are cognizant of the facts, and the view which you
entertain is that which will permanently commend itself to the
judgment of history, namely, that the Durbar was a just and
befitting celebration of the great event which it was intended to
commemorate.
I will not now dwell upon the generous terms in which you
have spoken of the general character of my administration, but
will merely thank you for the unsolicited compliment you have
concluded by expressing both a hope and a conviction that my
affection for India will some time bring me out again. Who
knows but that it may be perhaps as a simple tourist I may one
day wander in a ticca gharry among the buildings and monuments
that I loved, and to which, while responsible for them, I endea-
voured to devote so true and reverent a care. However that may
be, I can never forget my seven happy visits to Delhi as Viceroy
or the courtesy and consideration which I have on so many
occasions received from its inhabitants.
SPEECH AT JAMMU ON THE
INSTALLATION OF H. H. THE MAHA-
RAJAH OF KASHMIR.
ON October 26th Lord Curzon arrived at Jammu, in Kashmir,
specially to perform an unique ceremony, that of investing the
young Maharajah of Kashmir with enhanced powers of adminis-
tration as a Ruling Chief. This was the first time, as His
Excellency pointed out, in the history of the Foreign Office, that
this was done to a Native Prince. In the Durbar that was held
Lord Curzon made the following speech. In his reply the
Maharajah thus alluded among other things to Lord Curzon's
work for India and its Native Princes : " It is only in the fitness
of things that the closing days of your Excellency's Viceroyalty,
which throughout has been distinguished for the most deep-
seated sympathy for the teeming millions of India and the most
passionate desire to promote their happiness, prosperity and
contentment, should be marked by such an actual proof of
solicitude for the welfare of one of the premier States in India."
Subsequently the Maharajah came all the way from Kashmir to
Bombay, a distance of 1,200 miles, to bid farewell personally
to Lord Curzon.
Three times since I came to India as Viceroy have I been pri-
vileged as representative of the Government to instal an Indian
Prince, but I have never before enjoyed the pleasure of conferring
an enhancement or restitution of powers upon a ruling Chief, and
in the annals of the Foreign Office we can discover no record
of such a ceremony ever having taken place. The present occa-
sion is therefore unique in its character as well as agreeable in
its relation both to the Prince who is the recipient of the compli-
ment and to the people who share in the honour that is being
conferred upon their Ruler. This ceremony may be looked upon
from a threefold point of view, either as typifying the policy of
the Paramount Power, or as affecting the fortunes of the Maha-
raja, or the destinies of his State. Let me say a word upon all
these aspects of the case.
The position which is occupied by the British Crown towards
the Feudatory Princes of India is one of the greatest responsibi-
lities that is anywhere enjoyed by a Sovereign Authority. Some-
times it may impose upon that authority unwelcome or distaste-
ful obligations. But far more often it is the source of a relation-
ship which is honourable and advantageous to both, and which
associates them in bonds of a political union without any parallel
for its intimacy or confidence in the world. As one who has repre-
sented the Sovereign Power for an unusual length of time in India,
I can speak with some right to be heard when I say that anything
A POLICY OF PRESERVATION. 37
that enhances the security or adds to the dignity of the Indian
Princes is above all things welcome to the British Government.
Titles and honours and salutes it is in the power of the supreme
authority in many countries to bestow, and it is from no vain or
childish instinct that the world in all ages has attached value to
these emblems or rewards. But surely amongst them the most
dignified distinction to offer and the proudest to receive must
be the augmentation of governing powers bestowed upon a ruler to
whom they are given, not as a matter of course, but because he
has merited them by faithful devotion to the interests of his
people and by loyal attachment to the Paramount Power. Such
an act is even more congenial to the latter, if it marks the rescision
of an attitude that may have been called for in different circum-
stances, but that might be thought to carry with it the suspicion
of distrust. It gives me therefore the highest pleasure to be here
to-day to confer this particular honour upon one of the foremost
of the Indian Princes. But the pleasure is enhanced by the
circumstances of the State and of the Ruler to whom it is offered.
I know not why it is, but the State of Kashmir, so fertile in all
its resources, has always been more productive of strange rumours
than any other Native State in India. Thus in Lord Lans-
downe's day, it was widely circulated that the State was about
to be taken over by the Crown. Similarly a few years ago, at the
very time when I was first considering with your Highness the
restoration of your powers, it was actually spread about that I
was discussing with you a territorial exchange, by which the
Kashmir valley should pass into the hands of the Government of
India, and that the British officials were to come, even after the
manner of the old Moghuls, and spend their summers at Srinagar
or Gulmarg. Only the other day a fresh crop of silly rumours
had to be formally denied, namely, that in handing back to you
the first place in the Government of your State, we had imposed
conditions as regards the tenure of property by Europeans in
Kashmir, for which there was not one word of foundation. Your
Highness, is not the action which I am taking to-day the most
eloquent commentary upon these absurd fictions ? Does it not
testify in the most emphatic manner to the rectitude and good
faith of the British Government? If excuses for a different
policy, for a policy of escheat or forfeiture in Native States, were
required, history will supply cases in which it has sometimes
not been lacking. But we have deliberately set ourselves to
carry out the opposite political theory, namely to retain the
Native States of India intact, to prolong and fortify their separate
existence, and to safeguard the prestige and authority of their
rulers. Such has been our attitude towards Kashmir ever since the
end of the first Sikh war, when we made over to your grandfather,
already the ruler of the State of Jammu, the much more valuable
possession of Kashmir. Since that day there has been no
departure from this policy, and there has been no more striking
evidence of it than the step which I am taking to-day, and which
I consider it my good fortune that before I leave India I am in a
position to take. It shows conclusively, if any further proofs
38 AN ENVIABLE STATE.
were required, that it is our desire to see Kashmir and Jammu a
single and compact State in the hands of a ruler qualified to
represent its dignity and authority before all India.
Your Highness, there is a third reason why I have found this
act so agreeable, and that is personal to yourself. Since I arrived
in India, when you were the first Ruling Chief to greet me upon
the steps of Government House at Calcutta, we have met on
many occasions and have constantly corresponded. You have
been a guest at Calcutta, and it is only a series of accidents,
first the flood in 1903, and then the delay in my return from
England last year, and finally the circumstances attending my
departure in the present autumn, that have prevented me from en-
joying the princely hospitality, that you have so frequently pressed
upon me, at Srinagar. However, though these opportunities have
been wanting, there have not been lacking many others, not merely
of acquiring your Highness' friendship, but of forming a personal
regard for yourself and a high opinion of those qualities of head
and heart which will now find an even wider scope for their
exercise.
I feel that I am the indirect means of honouring a Prince who
will so conduct himself as to be worthy of honour and who will
never cause my successors to regret the step which I have taken.
The State of Kashmiris, indeed, a noble and enviable dominion of
which to be the ruler. Its natural beauties have made it famous
alike in history and romance, and they draw to it visitors from the
most distant parts. It possesses a laborious and docile population.
Its industrial resources are already growing rapidly and are cap-
able of immense additional expansion. Its accounts have been
placed in excellent order; its land settlement has been effected on
equitable lines; its revenues are mounting by leaps and bounds. It
is about be connected with India by a railway and will thus lose the
landlocked condition, which has often.been the source of economic
suffering without, I hope, sacrificing the picturesque detachment
that renders it so attractive to visitors. Your Highness will
remember that this railway was my first official suggestion to you
at Calcutta in January 1899, an d though nearly seven years have
since elapsed, I am pleased to think that the alignment and gauge
are now fixed, the shares to be borne in the undertaking by the
Government of India and the Durbar are determined, the money
is forthcoming, and there only remains to commence work.
Finally, your State possesses a mountain frontier unequalled in
diversity of race and character of natural beauty, and in political
interest, and towards its protection you make-the largest contribu-
tion of any State in India to Imperial defence. I allude to the
Kashmir Imperial Service troops, of which your Highness is so
justly proud, and whose service to the Empire has already won
for your Highness the exalted rank of a British General.
Such are the features and the prospects of the State of which
your Highness is the Ruler, and of which you are now given this
supreme and responsible charge. Henceforward the State Council,
which for the last sixteen years has administered the affairs of the
State, will cease to exist, and its powers will be transferred under
A GREAT AND SPLENDID FUTURE. 39
proper guarantees to yourself. You will be assisted in the dis-
charge of these duties by your brother, Raja Sir Amar Singh,
who has already occupied so prominent a position in the adminis-
tration, and who will be your Chief Minister and right hand
man. I am convinced that he will devote his great natural
abilities to your faithful service, and it will be your inclination as
well as your duty to repose in him a full measure of your trust.
In all important matters you will be able to rely upon the counsel
and support of the British Resident, who, owing to the peculiar
conditions of Kashmir, has played so important a part in the recent
development of the country, and whose experience and authority
will always be at your command and will assist to maintain the
credit of the State. I feel convinced that your Highness will
exercise your powers in a manner that will justify the Government
of India for their confidence, and that will be gratifying to your
people and creditable to yourself. You rule a State in which the
majority of your subjects are of a different religion from the
ruling caste, and in which they are deserving of just and liberal
consideration. You rule a State in which the cultivating classes
are poor and liable to sudden vicissitudes of fortune, so that there
is frequently a call for leniency in treatment. You rule a State
which is much before the eyes of the world and is bound to
maintain the highest standard of efficiency and self-respect.
Finally, you rule a State which has a great and splendid future
before it, and which should inspire you with no higher or no lower
aim, than to be worthy of the position of its ruler and thus to add
fresh lustre to the proud title of Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir.
SPEECH AT THE DALY COLLEGE,
INDORE.
On November fth, the ceremony of laying the foundation-
stone of the renovated College for Chiefs and Thakurs in Central
India, called after the late Sir Henry Daly, a popular Agent to
the Governor-General in Central India, whose son Major Daly
was present on this occasion, was performed at Indore, after which
Lord Curzon was to have addressed the audience in the following
speech, which was read for him, owing to his weak state of health,
by Mr. S. M. Fraser, late Foreign Secretary
Major Daly, Your Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, I have
been asked to read the following speech by the Viceroy written in
his own words :
I greatly regret that a sudden attack of illness has prevented
me at the last moment from coming to Indore to fulfil my long
standing engagement with the Chiefs of Central India to lay the
foundation stone of the new Daly College and to bid you all
good-bye. I regret this both for my own sake, and also on account
of the great trouble, and I fear, disappointment caused to the
Princes who have gathered in such numbers at Indore to do me
honour. In these circumstances I have deputed by late Foreign
Secretary, Mr. Fraser, to attend at Indore on my behalf, and to
read to you the remarks which I should otherwise have made
myself. The following is what I had intended to say.
This is the last occasion, I imagine, on which I shall ever
address an assemblage of Indian Chiefs, But it is perhaps not
the least important, since we are founding or refounding, here
to-day, one of those institutions in whose welfare I have always
taken the deepest interest, because in their success is bound up
the success of the princely class, whose sons will be educated
within its walls, and who will stand or fall in the future according
to the character that is in them from their birth and the shape
that is given to that character by education. The old Daly Col-
lege was founded here as long ago as 1881 in the time of that
excellent and beloved Political Officer, Sir Henry Daly. It was a
College for the scions of the princely and aristocratic classes of
Central India, and it did its work, within certain limits, fairly well.
But its scope was too narrow, it was not sufficiently supported by
those for whom it was intended, and it gradually dwindled in
numbers and utility. It became overshadowed by the Mayo Col-
lege at Ajmer, and nearly four years ago, when I presided over the
conference on Chiefs' Colleges at Calcutta, we all felt that the best
thing to do would be, not exactly to merge the Daly College in the
larger institution, but to maintain it as a feeder to the latter and
to encourage the Central India Chiefs to give it their support and
to send their sons for the finishing stages of their education to
WHAT THE COLLEGE IS MEANT FOR. 41
Ajmer. Then two unforeseen things happened. In proportion as
our interest and expenditure on the Mayo College began to
strengthen and popularise that institution, turning it into a Chiefs'
College worthy of the name and drawing its recruits, not from
Rajputana only, but from the whole of Northern and even some-
times from Southern India, so did a spirit of emulation and
pride begin to stir in the bosoms of the Central India Chiefs, and
they said to themselves : " Are we merely to be the handmaid of
Ajmer? Shall we not have a pukka Chiefs' College of our own?
May we not revive the glories of the Daly College and prove to
the world that in the modern pursuit of enlightenment and
progress Central India is not going to lag behind ? " The second
occurrence was this : I sent Major Daly as Agent to the Governor-
General to Indore, and he speedily made the discovery that the
Central India Chiefs were anxious, not indeed, to withdraw their
support from Ajrner, but to give it in independent and larger
measure to a College of their own, and to find the money and
provide the guarantees that would raise the Daly College to a
level of equal dignity and influence, Imbued with natural ardour
and with the additional desire to resuscitate and vindicate his
father's original aim, he pushed the matter forward, as did also
Mr. Bayley in the interval before he left Central India for Hydera-
bad, and pressed the claims of the new scheme upon the Govern-
ment of India.
Thus, in the energy of these two Officers and still more in the
enthusiasm and liberality of the Central India Chiefs, notably
those of the wealthier States of Gwalior, Indore and Rewa, we
have the origin of the movement, which we are carrying forward
to-day to a further stage, and the secret of the rejuvenated Daly
College, which, Phcenix-like, is about to spring from the unex-
hausted ashes of its predecessor and to start its new existence in
the handsome and dignified setting of which I have just laid the
first stone. But what, it maybe asked, Your Highnesses, is this
College to do for your sons ? I think I know what you want, and
I am sure I know what the Government of India want, and I
believe that we both want the same thing. We both desire to
raise up a vigorous and intelligent race of young men who will
be in touch with modern progress, but not out of touch with old
traditions, who will be liberally educated, but not educated out of
sympathy with their own families and people, who will be manly
and not effeminate, strong-minded but not strong-willed, acknow-
ledging a duty to others instead of being a law unto themselves,
and who will be fit to do something in the world instead of settling
down into fops or spendthrifts or drones. How are we to
accomplish this ? The answer is simple. First, you must have
the College properly built, properly equipped, and properly en-
dowed. Then you must have a good staff of teachers carefully
selected for their aptitudes and adequately paid, and a Principal
who has a heart as well as a head for his task. Then you must
have a sound curriculum, a spirit of local patriotism and a healthy
tone. And finally, you must have two other factors, the constant
support and patronage of the Political Officers who live in this
42 EFFECTS UPON THE ARISTOCRACY OF INDIA.
place and in the various Central India States, and above all the
personal enthusiasm, the close supervision, and the vital interest
of the Chiefs themselves. I say above all, because the lesson
which the Chiefs of India have to learn, if they have not learned
it already, is that these Colleges will depend in the last resort not
upon Government support, but upon their support, and that the
future is in their hands much more than in ours.
Well, I have named rather a long list of requirements, and it
contains a good many items, but there is not one of them that is
not realisable by itself, and there is not the slightest reason why
they should not all be realised in combination. You have a good
model in the Mayo College not so far away. This meeting of to-day
shows that the sympathies of the Chiefs are in the undertaking,
and if only you adhere to your present spirit and temper, success
should be assured. 1 look forward to the day as not far distant
when each State, instead of having to come to the Government of
India for any form of expert assistance that it may require,
whether it be a Dewan, or a Councillor, or an educational officer,
or an estate manager, or an officer of Imperial Service Troops, or
an engineer, will have in its midst a body of young men sprung
from itself, living on its soil, and devoted to its interest, who
will help the Chief or the Durbar in the work of development
or administration. The old-fashioned Sirdar or Thakor, who has
followed the ways of his ancestors and is often unacquainted with
English, will tend to disappear, and will be replaced by a younger
generation with new ideals and a modern education. The change
will sometimes have its drawbacks. But it is inevitable, and on
the whole it will be for good. You cannot have a number of these
colleges, scattered about India. There will now be four principal
ones, namely those at Ajmer, Lahore. Rajkot and Indore, as well
as many subsidiary institutions. You cannot turn out annually
some scores of highly educated young Indian gentlemen, brought
up with the sort of training that is given in these institutions
without producing a far-reaching effect upon the aristocracy of
India. People do not see it yet, because they hardly know what
we are doing at these places or the immense strides that are being
made. But in India I am always looking ahead, I am thinking of
what will happen fifty years hence, and I confidently assert that
from these years of active labour and fermentation there must
spring results that will alter the face of Native States and will
convert the Indian Nobility and land-owning classes into a much
more powerful and progressive factor in the India of the future.
And now, your Highnesses, in this my message of farewell to
the Indian Princes, what shall I say? They know that, throughout
my term of office, one of my main objects has been to promote
their welfare, to protect their interests, to stimulate their energies
and to earn their esteem. Nothing in this wonderful land, which
has fired the impulses and drained the strength of the best years
of my life, has appealed to me more than the privilege of co-opera-
tion with the Chiefs of India, men sprung from ancient lineage,
endowed with no ordinary powers and reponsibilities, and possess-
ing nobility of character as well as of birth. It seemed to me
SYMPTOMS OF POSITIVE ADVANCE. 43
from the start, that one of the proudest objects which the represen-
tative of the Sovereign in India could set before himself, would be
to draw these rulers to his side, to win their friendship, to learn
their opinions and needs, and to share with them the burden of
rule. That is why I called them my colleagues and partners in
the speech that I made at Gwalior six years ago, why I bade them
to Delhi, and have frequentl}' been honoured by their company at
Calcutta, why I have personally installed this chief and enhanced
the powers of that, have gone in and out among them, so that there
is scarcely an accessible Native State in India that I have not
visited, have corresponded with them and they with me, until at
the end of it all, I can truthfully speak of them, not merely as
colleagues and partners but as personal friends. For the same
reason I am here to-day, so that almost my last official act in India
may be one that brings me into contact with the princely class to
whom I am so deeply attached, and who have shown me such
repeated marks of their regard, never more so than during the
past few weeks in connection with my approaching departure.
Your Highnesses, what is it that we have been doing together
during the past seven years, what marks or symptoms can we
point to of positive advance ? To me the answer seems very
clear. The Chiefs have been doing a great deal and the Govern-
ment have been trying to do a great deal also. When their
States have been attacked by famine, the Chiefs have readily
accepted the higher and more costly standards of modern admin-
istration, and the Durbars have courageously thrown themselves
into the struggle. There has been a noticeable raising of the
tone and quality of internal administration all round; many of
the Chiefs have reformed their currency and have devoted more
funds to public works and education ; they have learned to
husband instead of squandering their resources, and have set
before themselves a high conception of duty. When we have had
external wars, the Princes have freely offered assistance in troops
horses and supplies. I cannot readily forget the hospital ship
which that enlightened Prince, the Maharaja Scindia, who is here
to-day, equipped at his own expense and took out to China. Severa
of th? Chiefs had volunteered their own services also. When I
addressed them last year about the Imperial Service Troops, they
replied to me in language of the utmost cordiality and encourage-
ment. There have been other services that cannot be omitted.
When we have internal calamity or distress, as in the case of the
recent earthquake, the purses of the Chiefs are always open to
help their suffering fellow-creatures in British India. Do we not
all remember the princely benefaction of the Maharaja of Jaipur,
who started the Indian Peoples' Famine Trust with a gift of twenty-
one lakhs, which was subsequently increased by the contributions
of some of his brother Chiefs. There never was a more noble or
magnanimous use of great riches.
Finally, there were the splendid donations made by the
Indian Princes to the Queen Victoria Memorial Fund, from
which is in course of being raised, at the capital of the
Indian Empire, a building worthy to bear her illustrious name.
44 THE IMPERIAL CADET CORPS
When we began that great enterprise there were plenty of
critics to scoff and jeer, and not too many to help ; but now
the tide has turned, The foundation stone of the main build-
ing will be laid in Calcutta in a few weeks time by the Prince
of Wales, and he will see in the collection already assembled in
the Indian Museum and afterwards to be transferred to the hall,
such an exhibition of interesting and valuable objects as will
make the Victoria Hall not only a fitting memorial to a venerated
Sovereign, but a National Gallery of which all India may well be
proud. During the past summer I have, as you know, addressed the
majority of the Indian Princes as regards the objects to be gathered
for this exhibition, and from their treasuries and armouries and
toshakhanas, they have willingly produced, on gift or on loan, such
a number of historical and valuable articles as will convert the
Princes' Gallery of the future into a microcosm of the romance
and pageantry of the East. When the Victoria Hall has been
raised and equipped, the Princes will be proud of their handiwork,
and there will, perhaps, be one other individual far away who will
have no cause to feel ashamed.
I have described to you the work of the Princes in recent
years. Let me say a word about the work of the Government.
It has been our object to encourage and stimulate all those
generous inclinations of which I have spoken. For this purpose
we have lent to the Chiefs officers in famine times, officers for
settlement, officers for irrigation programmes, officers as tutors
and guardians. We would never force a European upon a Native
State, but if a European is asked for or wanted, I would
give the best. We have lent money on easy terms to such
States as were improverished, in order to finance them in
adversity, and have remitted the interest on our loans. Then
there are all the educational projects of which I have spoken and
of which this is one. When I look at the Chiefs' Colleges as they
are now, with increased staff, with a revised curriculum, with
enlarged buildings, with boys hurrying to join them, with the
Chiefs eager to support them, and contrast this with the old state of
affairs, the contrast is great and gratifying indeed. Then there is
that favourite of my own heart, the Imperial Cadet Corps, now in
existence for over three years, turning out its quota of gentlemanly
and well-educated young officers, four of whom have already
received commissions in the army of the King-Emperor, already
acquiring its own esprit de corps and traditions, assisted by the
framework of beautiful buildings and surroundings at Dehra Dun,
and about to send its past and present members down to Calcutta
to escort the son of the Sovereign in the Capital of India.
With a full heart I commit to my successor and to the Princes
of India the future of the Cadet Corps, trusting to them in combi-
nation to look after it and to keep its reputation bright
and its efficiency unimpaired. I am also glad to think of the
encouragement that I have been able to give to the Imperial
Service Troops in my time. It has fallen to me to be the first
Viceroy to employ them outside of India, and though I would not
have dreamed of such a step except at the earnest solicitation of
THE IMPERIAL SERVICE TROOPS. 45
the Chiefs to whom the contingents belonged, I yet regarded it
as an honour to concede this fresh outlet when it was sought by
their ardent patriotism. I have already mentioned the personal
appeal that I addressed to all the Chiefs last year about their
Imperial Service contributions, and their generous and gratifying
response to it. When this matter has been settled, I hope that
the Imperial Service Troops will have been placed on a firmer
and broader basis than the present, without departing one iota
from the sound principles that were formulated in the first place
by Lord Dufferm and Lord Lansdowne more than fifteen years
ago. Those principles are essential to its vitality. The Imperial
Service Troops must remain the forces of the Chiefs, controlled
and managed by them under the supervision of the Viceroy.
They must not be swept into the Indian Army or treated as though
they were the mercenaries of the Crown. They are nothing of
the sort. They are the free and voluntary contributions of the
Princes, and the Princes' troops they must remain. During my
term of office there were also a few stumbling-blocks that it has
been a source of pride to me to have assisted to remove. Foremost
among these was the time-honoured difficulty about Berar, which
the sagacious intelligence and the sound sense of the Nizam
enabled both of us to dispose of in a manner that neither has any
reason to regret. I hope also to have facilitated the solution of the
difficult and complex questions that have arisen out of the
Sea-Customs in Kathiawar.
There is only one other big measure that I had hoped to
carry in the interest of the Chiefs in my time, but which, if it is
permitted to bear fruit, I must now bequeath to my successor. I
hope that he will love the Chiefs as I have done, and that they
will extend to him, as I am sure that they will do, the confidence
and the support which they have been good enough to give, in
such generous measure, to me. As regards the particular audi-
ence whom I am now addressing, I had intended, as Major Daly
knows, to make a somewhat extended tour in Central India this
winter. The majority of the Central India Chiefs I have already
visited, and the Maharajas of Gwalior, Orchha and Datia, the
Begam of Bhopal and the Raja of Dhar have received me in their
homes. The remainder I had met at Delhi or elsewhere, and had
hoped to see some of them again in the course of my tour. Now
that this has had to be abandoned, in consequence of my ap-
proaching departure, it has been a great compensation to me to
receive your pressing invitation to come here to-day, and to meet
you on such an important occasion for the !ast time. I may
congratulate you also that, in a few days' time you will all be able
to welcome their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of
Wales in this place. It must be gratifying to you that they
are paying a special visit to Central India, and that you will all
have the honour of meeting and conversing with the heir
to the throne
Your Highnesses, in a fortnight from now I shall be leaving
this country, and the official tie that has united me for so long to
the Princes and Chiefs of India, will be snapped. No longer
40 PARTING WISH /FOR THE STATES.
shall I have the official right to -interest myself in their States,
their administration, their people, tkeir institutions, their
families, themselves. But nothing can take away from me the
recollection of the work that has been done with them. Nothing
can efface the impression left upon me by their chivalryi and
regard. Long may they continue to hold their great positons,
secure in the affection of their own subjects and assured of the
support of the Paramount Power. May they present to the
world the unique spectacle of a congeries of principalities, raised
on ancient foundations and cherishing the traditions of a famous
past, but imbued with the spirit of all that is best and most
progressive in the modern world, recognizing that duty is not
the invention of the school-master but the law of life, and united
in the defence of a Throne which has guaranteed their stability
and is strong in their allegiance !
SPEECH ON EDUCATION.
On September 2oth, Lord Curzon addressed the Directors of
Public Instruction, who had assembled from the various Provinces
at Simla for an Educational Conference, in the following speech,
wherein he re-stated his Educational policy and reviewed the
work done in the last few years under him :
I was very much gratified when I learned that it was the
desire of the Directors of Public Instruction who are assembled
in Conference at Simla, that I should attend one of their meet-
ings to say a few words of farewell. This desire was conveyed
to me by Mr. Orange in language so flattering that I could not
resist it, for he said that he spoke for all the Directors, and that
they spoke for the whole service of which they are members.
Accordingly I accepted the invitation, and that is why I am here
to-day. I feel rather like a general addressing his marshals for the
last time before he unbuckles his sword and retires into private life ;
for the task which has engaged so much of our energies during
the past seven years, has been like nothing so much as a campaign
marked by a long series of engagements which we have fought
together, and though I am about to resign my commission, you
will remain to carry on, I hope, the same colours to victory on
many another well-won field. To you therefore, I need make no
apology for offering a few final remarks on your own subject. It
would almost be an impertinence, if I were to address you on any
other. In a well-known work of fiction, one of the characters is
made to groan over that bore of all bores, whose subject has no
beginning, middle or end, namely, education. Here, however,
where we all belong to the same category, I must accept the risk
of inflicting that form of penance on others, in the hopeful assur-
ance that I shall not be found guilty by you.
Gentlemen, when I came to India educational reform loomed
before me as one of those objects which, from such knowledge of
India as I possessed, appeared to deserve a prominent place in any
programme of administrative reconstruction. I thought so for seve-
ral reasons. In the first place, vital as is education everywhere as
the instrument by which men and nations rise, yet in a country like
India in its present state of development, it is perhaps the most
clamant necessary of all. For here education is required not pri-
marily as the instrument of culture, of the sourceof learning, but as
the key to employment, the condition of all national advance and
prosperity, and the sole stepping-stone for every class of the com-
munity to higher things. It is a social and political, even more
than an intellectual demand, and to it alone can we look to provide
a livelihood for our citizens, to train up our public servants, to
develop the economic and industrial resources of the country, to fit
the people for a share in self-government which is given to them
48 LEVER FOR RAISING THE MORAL LEVBL.
and which will increase with their deserts, and to fashion the
national character on sound and healthy lines. The man in
India who has grasped the education problem has got nearer to
the heart of things than any of his comrades, and he who can
offer to us the right educational prescription is the true physician
of the State.
There is another reason for which education in India is
a peculiarly British responsibility. For it was our advent in
the country that brought about that social and moral up-
heaval of which Western education is both the symbol and
the outcome. As regards religion, we sit as a Govern-
ment in India, ct holding no form of creed but contemplating
all ;" we have deliberately severed religion from politics, and
though we have our own church or churches, we refrain, as an act
of public policy, from incorporating Church with State. But we
do not therefore lay down that ethics are, or should be, divorced
from the life of the nation, or that society, because it does not rest
upon dogmatic theology, should lose the moral basis without which
in all ages it must sooner or later fall to pieces. For education is
nothing unless it is a moral force. There is morality in secular
text-books as well as in sacred texts, in the histories and sayings
of great men, in the examples of teachers, in the contact between
teachers and pupils, in the discipline of the class-room, in the
emulation of the school life. These are the substitutes in our
Indian Educational system for the oracles of Prophets or the
teaching of Divines. To them we look to make India
and its people better and purer. If we thought that
our education were not raising the moral level, we
should, none of us, bestir ourselves so gravely about it.
It is because it is the first and most powerful instrument of
moral elevation in India, that it must for ever remain a primary
care of the State. The State may delegate a portion of the burden
to private effort or to Missionary enterprise, but it cannot throw
it altogether aside. So long as our Government in India is what
it is, we must continue to control and to correlate educational
work, to supply a large portion of the outlay, to create the requisite
models and to set the tone.
As soon as I looked about me, but little investigation
was required to show, in the words of a familiar quotation,
that there was something rotten in the state of Denmark.
For j'cars education in India had been muddling along with
no one to look after it at head-quarters or to observe its symp-
toms, till the men who had given up their lives to it were sick
at heart and well-nigh in despair. It was not that splendid and
self-sacrificing exertions had not been devoted to the task. It
was not that any class, European or Indian, was indifferent to
its claims ; for I believe, that in India there is a genuine passion
for education among all classes. It was not that there had been a
deliberate or conscious neglect. But there was a deplorable lack of
co-ordination. There was a vagueness as to fundamental princi-
ples. Slackness had crept in ; the standards had depreciated ; and
what was wanting was the impulse and movement of a new life.
SIMLA CONFERENCE OF 1901. 49
It was for these reasons that I threw myself, with a burning zeal,
into the subject of Educational Reform. I knew the risks that
had to be run. There was not one among them that could be
apprehended that has not been incurred. I was aware of all the
taunts that would be levelled ; that we should be accused, when
we were merely raising a debased standard, of wanting to shut the
doors of Education in the face of the people ; and when we felt it
our duty to assert the proper control of Government of desiring
to aggrandise the power of the State; and many other equally
unfounded charges. But the object seemed to me to be worth the
risk. The allies and fellow-workers were there who were only too
ready and anxious to join the struggle, and it merely remained to
formulate the plan of action and to go ahead.
For the first two years we surveyed the ground and
reconnoitred the position of the opposing forces and then we
began. I look to the meetings of the Simla Conference in the
month of September 1901, just four years ago, as the first
act in the real campaign. That Conference has often been
denounced by those who knew not the real nature of its
labours, as a sort of Star Chamber conclave, that was
engaged in some dark and sinister conspiracy. Some of you were
present at its meetings, and you know how much of truth there
was in that particular charge. I do not hesitate to say that a
Conference more independent in its character, more sincere in its
aims, or more practical and far-reaching in its results, never met
at the head quarters of the Indian Government. The meeting
was a body of experts, non-official as well as official, convened in
order to save Government from making mistakes and to assure me
that we were advancing upon right lines. Our programme
was laid down in the published speech with which I opened
the proceedings. We covered the whole field of educational
activity in our researches, and we laid down the clear and
definite principles which so far from being concealed were
published at full length later on in the Education Resolution of
March 1904, and which, for years to come, will guide the policy
of the State. Then followed the appointment of a Director-
General of Education, most fully justified by the devoted labours,
the informed enthusiasm and the unfailing tact of Mr. Orange.
Next in order came the Universities Commission presided over
by my former colleague, Sir Thomas Raleigh, in 1902. Then
followed the Universities Legislation of 1903-04, of which,
looking back calmly upon it, I say that I do not regret the battle
or the storm, since I am firmly convinced that out of them has
been born a new life for Higher Education in India. Finally came
the comprehensive Resolution, of which I have spoken. Since
then the policy of reform laid down by the Simla Con-
ference has been carried into execution in every branch
of educational effort, until at last the Directors of Public
Instruction from every province have been sitting here for a week
in Conference, to compare notes as to what has already been
accomplished and discuss fresh plans for the future. These are
the main landmarks of the great enterprise upon which we have
50 DEFECTS IN THE EXISTING SYSTEM
all been employed for so long, and a moment has arrived when
it is not impossible, to some extent, to reckon up the results.
What was the affairs that we had to redress ? I will
try to summarise it. As regards Primary or Elementary
Education, t.e. Education of the children [of the masses in the
vernaculars, the figures which appeared in the Resolution were
sufficiently significant. Four out of every five Indian villages
were found to be without a school. Three out of every four
Indian boys grow up without any education; only one Indian
girl in every forty attends any kind of school. These figures are,
of course, less appealing in a continent of the size, the vast
population, the national characteristics and the present state
of advancement of India, than they would be in any Western
country ; but they are important as illustrating, if not the
inadequacy of past efforts, at any rate the immensity of the field
that remains to be conquered. W T e found Primary Education
suffering from a divergence of views as to its elementary functions
and courses, and languishing nearly everywhere for want of funds.
In Secondary Education we found schools receiving the privilege of
recognition upon most inadequate tests, and untrained and in-
competent teachers imparting a course of instruction devoid of life
to pupils, subjected to a pressure of examinations that encroached
upon their out-of-school hours, and was already beginning to sap
the brain power as well as the physical strength of the rising gene-
ration. Inferior teaching in secondary schools, further, has this
deleterious effect, that it reacts upon College work and affects the
whole course of University instruction of which it is the basis and
starting-point. We found these schools in many cases accommo-
dated in wretched buildings and possessing no provision for the
boarding of the pupils. As regards the vernaculars, which
must for long be the sole instrument for the diffusion of know-
ledge among all except a small minority of the Indian people,
we found them in danger of being neglected and degraded in the
pursuit of English, and in many cases very bad English, for the
sake of its mercantile value. By all means let English be taught
to those who are qualified to learn it, but let it rest upon a solid
foundation of the indigenous languages ; for no people will ever
use another tongue with advantage, that cannot first use its own
with ease.
But in Higher Education the position was still worse: for here
it was not a question so much of a blank sheet in the education of
the community, as of page scribbled over with all sorts of writing,
some of it well formed and good, but much of it distorted and
wrong. We found in some of the affiliated Colleges a low standard
of teaching and a lower of learning ; ill paid and insufficient
teachers, pupils crowded together in insanitary buildings, the cut-
ting down of fees in the interests of an evil commercial competition,
and management on unsound principles. Finally, coming to the
Universities, we found courses of study and a system of tests which
were lowering the quality while steadily increasing the volume
of the human output : students driven like sheep from lecture-
room to lecture-room and examination to examination, text-books
REFORMS EFFECTED 51
badly chosen, degrees pursued for their commercial value ; the
Senates with over-swollen numbers selected on almost every
principle but that of educational fitness, the Syndicates devoid
of statutory powers, a huge system of active but often misdirected
effort, over which like some evil phantom seemed to hover the
monstrous and maleficent spirit of Cram.
Of course, there were better and reassuring features in the
picture and there were parts of the country where the merits
greatly exceeded the defects. But we had to correct the worst,
even more than to stimulate the best, and like a doctor it was
our duty to diagnose the unsound parts of the body, rather than
to busy ourselves with the sound. Moreover, there were some
faults that were equally patent everywhere. It is recorded of
the Emperor Aurungzeb, after he had seized the throne of the
Moghul Empire, that he publicly abused his old tutor for not
having prepared him properly for these great responsibilities.
"Thus," he said, " did you waste the precious hours of my
youth in the dry, unprofitable, and never-ending task of learn-
ing words." That is exactly the fault that we found with every
phase of Indian Education as we examined it. Everywhere it was
words that were being studied not ideas. The grain was being
spilled and squandered while the husks were being devoured. I re-
member a passage in the writings of Herbert Spencer in which he
says that to prepare us for complete living is the true function of
education. That is a conception which is perhaps as yet beyond
the reach of the majority of those whom we are trying to educate in
this country. But in the rut into which it had sunk, I doubt if
European Education in India, as we were conducting it, could
be described as a preparation for living at all, except in the purely
materialistic sense, in which unhappily it was too true. But of real
living, the life of the intellect, the character, the soul, I fear that
the glimpses that were obtainable were rare and dim.
Of course, all these tendencies could not be corrected straight
away. It would be a futile and arrogant boast to say that we have
reformed Indian Education. There is equal scope for educational
reformers now, to-morrow, next day and always. Education is never
reformed. It may advance, or remain stationary, or recede. It
may also advance on right lines, or on wrong lines. Our claim is
merely to have rescued it from the wrong track, and given it a
fresh start on the right one. If we have set up a few milestones
on the path of true progress, we shall have done something for it
and perhaps made further advance easier for our successors.
What I think we may claim to have effected has been the fol-
lowing. In primary education we have realised that improvement
means money. We have laid down that Primary Education must
be a leading charge on provincial revenues, and in order to supply
the requisite impetus, we gave in our last budget a very large per-
manent annual grant of 35 lakhs, to be devoted to that purpose
alone. This will be the real starting-point of an advance that
ought never to be allowed henceforward to slacken. Most of
the money will go in building to begin with, and a good deal in
maintenance afterwards. Thousands of new primary schools are
52 TESTS FOR OFFICIAL RECOGNITION
already opening their doors under these auspices, and in a few
years' time the results should be very noteworthy. In building we
lay stress upon the provision of suitable and airy school-houses,
in place of the dark rooms or squalid sheds in which the children
had previously been taught. Training schools for teachers are
similarly springing up or being multiplied in every direction.
We have denned the nature of the object lessons that ought to
be taught to the children in Primary Schools and the courses of
study and the books that are required for the instruction of the
cultivating class. We have everywhere raised the pay of primary
teachers where this was inadequate, and are teaching them
that their duty is to train the faculties of their pupils and not to
compel them to the listless repetition of phrases in which the poor
children find no meaning. I look as the result of this policy to
see a great development in Elementary Education in the near
future. It is apt to be neglected in India in favour of the louder
calls and the more showy results of Higher Education. Both are
equally necessary, but in the structure of Indian society one is
the foundation and the other the coping stone ; and we who are
responsible must be careful not to forget the needs of the voiceless
masses, while we provide for the interests of the more highly
favoured minority who are better able to protect themselves.
In Secondary Education the faults were largely the same, and
the remedies must be the same. Also more teachers are the first
desideratum, more competent teachers the second, more inspectors
the third. The increase that we have everywhere effected in the
inspecting staff is remarkable. Next comes reform in courses
of study and buildings. All these necessities are summed up in
the duty which we have undertaken of laying down sound
tests for official recognition. From this we pass on to
the development of the commercial and industrial sides
of these schools as against the purely literary, since there are
thousands of boys in them who must look to their education to
provide them with a practical livelihood rather than to lead them
to a degree ; and above all to the reduction of examinations. That
is the keynote everywhere, Have your tests, sift out the good
from the bad, furnish the incentive of healthy competition, but
remember that the Indian boy is a human being with a mind to be
nurtured and a soul to be kept alive : and do not treat him as a
mechanical drudge, or as a performing animal which has to go
at stated intervals through the unnatural task to which its trainer
has laboriously taught it to conform.
I hope that the Government of India will not be indifferent to
the claims of Secondary Education in the future. When the Univer-
sities and the Colleges have been put straight, we must look to the
feeders and these feeders are the High Schools. Indeed, we can-
not expect to have good Colleges without good Schools. I
am not sure, if a vote were taken among the intelligent middle
classes of this country, that they would not sooner see money
devoted to Secondary Education than to any other educa-
tional object. The reason is that it is the basis of all industrial
or professional occupation in India. There is just a danger that
REFORM IN HIGHER EDUCATION 53
between the resonant calls of Higher Education and the pathetic
small voice of Elementary Education the claims of Secondary
Education may be overlooked, and I therefore venture to give it
this parting testimonial.
When we come to Higher Education, our policy, though based
on identical principles, assumes a wider scope, and has, I hope,
already effected an even more drastic change. It is very difficult
to carry out substantial reforms in Higher Education in India,
because of the suspicion that we encounter among the educated
classes that we really desire to restrict their opportunities and, in
some way or other, to keep them down. There is, of course, no
ground whatever for suspicion. Not only does it run counter
to the entire trend of British character and to all the teachings of
British history, but it would be a short-sighted and stupid policy
even if it were adopted. For Education, to whatever extent it may
be directed or controlled, is essentially an organic and not an
artificial process ; and no people, particularly a highly intelligent
and ambitious people like the educated classes in India, could pos-
sibly be confined, so to speak, in a particular educational compart-
ment or chamber, because the Government was foolish enough to
try and turn the key upon them. What has been in our minds,
though it has not always been easy to explain it to others, has been
firstly, the conviction that those who were getting Higher Educa-
tion were getting the wrong sort of it, because they were merely
training the memory at the expense of all the other faculties of
the mind, and that it could not be good for a nation that its in-
tellect should be driven into these lifeless and soulless grooves;
and secondly, the belief that reform was to be sought by making
educationalists more responsible for Education in every depart-
ment, giving them power on Senates and Syndicates, improving
the quality of the teaching staff, and providing for the expert
inspection of Colleges and Schools. Let me put it in a sentence :
Higher Education ought not to be run either by politicians or by
amateurs. It is a science, the science of human life and conduct,
in which we must give a fair hearing and a reasonable chance to
the Professor.
If our reforms are looked at in this light, it will be seen
that they are based upon a uniform and logical principle. We
swept away the old overgrown Senates or bodies of Fellows,
and reconstituted them on lines which should make educational
interests predominate in the government of the Universities.
Similarly, we placed experts in the majority on the executive
committees, or Syndicates. It is these bodies who will draw up
the new courses, prescribe the text-books and frame the future
standards of education. Of course, they may go wrong, and Gov-
ernment retains the indispensable power of putting them right
if they do so. But the initial and principal responsibility is theirs,
and if they cannot make a better thing of Higher Education in
India, then no one can. Similarly, we carry the expert into the
mojiissil. If we are to improve the affiliated institutions, we must
first prescribe, as we have done, sound and definite conditions
of affiliation, and then we must send round sympathetic inspect-
54 RENASCENCE OF INDIAN EDUCATION
ing officers to detect local shortcomings, to offer advice and to
see that the new conditions are observed. Simultaneously, if
sustained efforts are made, as we are making them, to improve the
quality of the teachers and give them opportunities when on
furlough of studying other systems ; and if at the other end of the
scale, we provide for the proper entertainment of the boys in
well-managed hostels, or boarding houses, then it seems to me
that we have created both the constitutional and the academic
machinery by which reform can be pursued, and that if it be not
accomplished it must be for some reason which we have failed
to discern. Anyhow, I can see nothing in the objects or processes
that I have described to which the most sensitive or critical of
Indian intelligences need object ; and the most hopeful guarantee
of success is to be found, in my view, in the fact that the best and
most experienced Indian authorities are entirely on our side.
Personally, therefore, I regard our University legislation and
the reform that will spring from it as a decree of emancipation.
It is the setting free for the service of Education, by placing
them in authoritative control over Education, of the best intellects
and agencies that can be enlisted in the task, and it is the casting
off, and throwing away of the miserable gyves and manacles that
had been fastened upon the limbs of the youth of India, stunting
their growth, crippling their faculties, and tying them down. In
my view we are entitled to the hearty co-operation of all patriotic
Indians in the task, for it is their people that we are working for
and their future that we are trying to safeguard and enlarge.
Already I think that this is very widely recognised. The old cries
have, to a large extent, died away. Among the valedictory
messages and tributes,'., which I have received in such numbers
from native sources during the past few weeks, have been many
which placed in the forefront the services which I am generously
credited with having rendered to the cause of Indian Education.
One of the most gratifying features in this renascence in the his-
tory of Indian education, as I hope it may in time deserve to be
called, has been the stimulus given to private liberality, showing
that Indian Princes and noblemen are keenly alive to the needs
of the people and are in cordial sympathy with the movement that
we have striven to inaugurate. The Raja of Nabha called upon
the Sikh community to rouse themselves and put the Khalsa
College at Amritsar on a proper footing for the education of their
sons, and they responded with contributions of 20 lakhs. In
Bengal there have been handsome gifts for the proposed new
College at Ranchi. The Aligarh Trustees continue to improve
their magnificent College, and, last year, I believe, achieved a
record subscription list in their Conference at Lucknow. In the
United Provinces the enthusiasm of Sir J. La Touche, has kindled
a corresponding zeal in others. The College at Bareilly is to be
shifted from a corner of the High School buildings to a new building
on a fine^site, given by the Nawab of Rampur. When I was at Luck-
now in the spring, I saw the site of the new residential College in
the Badshah Bagh, to which the Maharaja of Balrampur has given
a donation of three lakhs. Government has not been behindhand
FEMANE EDUCATION 55
in similar liberality; and apart from the 25 lakhs which we promised
and are giving to assist the Universities in the work of reconstruc-
tion, we have assisted the purchase of sites for University
buildings in many places, and are prepared to help them in other
ways. It is a truism in Higher Education, as elsewhere, that the
first condition of progress is money, and this is being provided
both by Government and by private effort in no stinted measure.
I might detain you, Gentlemen, much longer by discussing the
various measures that we have taken with regard to other branches
of Education in India, for it is to be confessed that the
aspirations which I set before myself and before the Simla
Conference were not confined to the sphere of Primary, Secondary
and Higher Education alone, but embraced the whole field of
educational reform. There is no corner of it where we have not
laboured and are not labouring. We have not in our zeal for
Indian Education forgotten the cause of European and Eurasian
Education in this country ; we have revised the Code, we
have made a most careful examination of the so-called Hill
Schools, and are re-establishing the best among them on an
assured basis. We are giving handsome grants-in-aid and scholar-
ships. We are appointing separate inspectors for these institutions
and are starting a special Training College for teachers.
Then there is a class of Education, which deserves and has
attracted our particular attention viz., that which is intended to
qualify its recipients for the professional occupations of Indian life.
Here our Agricultural College at Pusa, which is intended to be
the parent of similar institutions in every otherj province, each
equipped with a skilled staff and adequate funds, has been specially
devised to provide at the same time thorough training in all
branches of agricultural science and practical instruction in estate
management and farm work. These instructions will, I hope,
turn out a body of young men who will spread themselves
throughout India, carrying into the management of states and
estates, into private enterprise, and into Government employ, the
trained faculties with which their college courses will have
supplied them. Agriculture in India is the first and capital in-
terest of this huge continent, and agriculture, like every other
money-earning interest, must rest upon Education.
Neither have we forgotten Female Education, conscious that
man is to a large extent what woman makes him, and that an
educated mother means educated children. Since the Simla
Conference, Bengal has already doubled the number of girls under
instruction. The female inspecting staff has been overhauled in
most provinces, and some ladies possessing high qualifications
have been sent out from England. Good model girls' schools and
good training schools for the female teachers are a desideratum
everywhere. It will take a long time to make substantial progress,
but the forward movement has begun.
There remains the subject of Technical Education which has
occupied an immense amount of our attention both at the Simla
Conference and ever since. We have had Commissions and
reports and enquiries. We have addressed Local Governments
56 TECHNICAL AND INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION
and studied their replies. But we are only slowly evolving
the principles under which Technical Instruction can be
advantageously pursued in a country where the social and
industrial conditions are what they are in India. Whether we
look at the upper or at the lower end of the scale, this difficulty
is equally apparent. People wonder why Mr. Tata's Institute
of Science comes so slowly into being, and in a country where it is
the custom to attribute anything that goes wrong to the Govern-
ment, all sorts of charges have been brought against us of apathy
or indifference or obstruction. No one would more readily
acknowledge than Mr. Tata himself that, so far from discourage-
ment or opposition, he met with nothing at the hands of Govern-
ment but sympathy and support. But Mr. Tata wisely wants not
merely to start the magnificent conception of his father, but to
make it practical and to ensure its success, and I can assure you
that the rival views that prevail as to the best method of accom-
modating this great idea to the necessities of India are extra-
ordinary. We have experienced similar difficulties in our own smal-
ler undertakings. As is generally known, we have instituted a num-
ber of technical scholarships of ^'150 each for Indian students in
Europe and America : but, strange as it may seem, it has not invari-
ably been easy, at first, to find the candidates to fill them. How-
ever, we now have a number of Indian scholars from Bengal, who
are studying mining at Birmingham, and our latest step was to
grant three scholarships for Textile Industries in Bombay. Other
attempts will follow, and in a short time there will, in my view,
be no lack either of candidates or subjects. Similarly with
Industrial Schools, which we have been anxious to start on a large
scale for the practical encouragement of local industries, there is
the widest diversity of opinion as to the principles and the type.
For it must be remembered, that although India is a country with
strong traditions of industrial skill and excellence, with clever
artisans and with an extensive machinery of trade guilds and
apprentices, these are constituted upon a caste basis which does
not readily admit of expansion, while the industries themselves
are, as a rule, localised and small, rendering co-ordination dif-
ficult. We are, however, about to make an experiment on a large
scale in Bombay and Bengal, and I have every hope that upon
the labours and researches of the past few years posterity will be
able to build.
Upon these, and many other subjects, I might discourse to
ru at length. But you are better acquainted with them than
am, and I have addressed myself to-day, not so much
to details as to the principles that have underlain the great
movement of educational activity, upon which we have together
been engaged. To you and to your successors I must now
commit the task. It is a work which may well engage your best
faculties and be the proud ambition of a lifetime. On the stage
where you are employed there is infinite scope for administrative
energy, and what is better for personal influence 1 : while in the
background of all your labours, stands the eternal mystery of the
East with its calm and immutable traditions, but its eager and
FUTURE OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
57
passionate eyes. What the future of Indian Education may be,
neither you nor I can tell. It is the future of the Indian Race,
in itself the most hazardous though absorbing of speculations.
As I dream of what Education in India is to be or become, I recall
the poet's lines :
" Where lies the land to which the ship would go ?
Far, far ahead is all her seamen know.
And where the land she travels from? Away
Far, far behind is all that they can say."
In the little space of navigable water for which we are re-
sponsible between the mysterious past and the still more
mysterious future, our duty has been to revise a chart that was
obsolete and dangerous, to lay a new course for the vessel and
to set her helm upon the right tack.
SPEECH AT THE PILGRIMS'
DINNER, LONDON, ON APRIL 6, 1906.
LORD CURZON was entertained after his return to England at
a dinner given in his honour by the Pilgrims in London. Lord
Roberts presided, and Lord George Hamilton, who was Secretary
of State for India during the greater part of Lord Curzon's rule
as Viceroy, proposed his health, after which His Lordship replied
in the following speech which may be said to be his last farewell
to India and its Viceroyalty :
I need hardly assure you that I appreciate most highly the
great honour which you have conferred upon me this evening, and
the manner in which you have just received the toast of my
health. If a pilgrim is still, as he always used to be, a person
who wanders abroad for a definite object at a distance from his
native land, then as a wanderer of this character for many years
I may perhaps claim that there is something not inappropriate in
my being entertained by a Society of Pilgrims. And if, as I
understand, this particular association of pilgrims, who are
gathered round these tables, consists of Englishmen and Americans
who are banded together to promote goodwill between these two
great wandering races or perhaps I should rather say between
these two great branches of the same wandering race, because,
after all, English and Americans are now and henceforward one,
then may I not claim a further justification in the fact that the
best pilgrimage I ever made in my life waste the other side of the
water in order to persuade an American pilgrim to execute a life
pilgrimage in my company ? I was not the first Governor-General
of India to take this prudent step. Nearly 100 years ago there
was another Governor-General Lord Wellesley who also
married an American woman, but who only did so after he had
returned from India, and in the latter part of his life, when the
union of which I speak happened too late to exercise any influence
upon his Indian career.* I, wiser in my generation, took the step
* Marquess Wellesley married in 1825, twenty years after his administration
of India, as his second wife, Marianne Caton, of Baltimore, U. S. A., who was the
grand-daughter of the American patriot Carrol of Carrolstown, who was one
of the signatories of the Declaratidn of Independence. His first wife, whom he
had married in 1794, was a Frenchwoman named Hyacintbe Roland. She died
in 1816. Vide Pearce, Memoirs of WelUsley, Vol. III. p. 387, Vol. I. p. 127-8,
THE VICEROY AND THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT. 59
earlier in the day, with what consequences in my administration
the speech of Lord George Hamilton has sufficiently shown.
But, my lords and gentlemen, there are, I think, other
connections between America and India less accidental than
the matrimonial sagacity or the matrimonial felicity whichever
it be of two Governors-General nearly a century apart. I
have always heard that when Christopher Columbus discovered
America he was in reality on the look-out for an eastern extension
of India, and it was that particular discovery that he thought he
had made. Hence those extraordinary solecisms of the West
Indies and the North American Indians which we continue to
employ at the present day. From this point of view America
may, I think, be described as a sort of historical and geographical
afterthought of India, although perhaps this is an aspect of the
case upon which it will not be wiseffor me to lay too much stress
upon the present hospitable occasion. But there are other links,
I think, between America and India that are closer still. In India
we have been engaged for 1 50 years or more in making with
greater or less success I myself think with greater the same
experiment which America is undertaking in another part of the
same continent, and in which we who have served in India or been
resident in India wish her the good fortune which we have
enjoyed. A little earlier in the evening we drank the toast of
" The Sovereign of the British Empire and the President of the
United States." I have often thought myself that, although there
is the greatest difference in the world between the constitutions
of America and India, yet there is a greater similarity between
the positions of the President of the United States and the British
official who is placed in charge of the destinies of India, than thre
is between the position of any two political functionaries in the
world. Both hold their office for a limited term, both exercise,
as Lord George Hamilton has pointed out, an immense authority,
and have the power of exerting a great, and let us hope benefi-
cent, influence over vast multitudes of their fellow-men, both
have higher authorities above or behind them with which some-
times they are so unfortunate as to disagree in the one case
there is the Senate of the United States and the House of Repre-
sentatives, and in the other case there is the Secretary of State
and his Majesty's Government, both when they descend from
their official pedestals relapse into the tranquil obscurity of private
citizenship, and from having been the man at the helm become
that apotheosis of commonplace the man in the street. Of course
the President of the United States occupies a greater position,
for he is the elected ruler of a self-governing people of his own
race, and that perhaps the mightiest people in the universe. But
I am not sure that the Governor-General of India has not in his
time had the opportunity of exercising an even greater influence
over those who are committed to his charge ; for he has been
placed in custody for the time being of the lives and fortunes, as we
have had pointed out to us, of nearly 300,000,000 of human beings,
or approximately one-fifth of the human race and they are not
one people, one community, one language, one race, or one reli-
60 BRITISH EMPIRE AN ASIATIC EMPIRE.
gion, they are a 'continent, an empire, almost a universe. They
are people who, in the dispensation of Providence, have been
handed over to the dominion of the British power with all the
romance and wonder of their amazing history, with all the pro-
blems which come up before us for solution from day to day, and
with the infinite mystery of their unknown future. My lords and
gentlemen, I own that when I speak about India before any
assembly I can scarcely avoid the language of emotion. I was
reading the other day in one of the newspapers that as many as
400.000,000 of the population of the world were the subjects of the
British Crown. That is an amazing reflection, in itself a fact
which makes one pause and think. But when you remember that
three out of every four of these subjects of the King are in India
that Calcutta, the capital of India, is the next city in size to
London in the whole British Empire, that, with the possible
exception of China, India is the largest and most populous politi-
cal aggregation in the universe, then I think you begin to realize
to what extent the British Empire is an Asiatic empire, and how,
if we cut out the Asiatic portion of it, it would infallibly dwindle
in scale and in importance. I sometimes like to picture to myself
this great Imperial fabric as a huge structure like some Tenny-
sonian "Palace of Art," of which the foundations are in this
country, where they have been laid and must be maintained by
British hands, but of which the Colonies are the pillars, and high
above all floats the vastness of an Asiatic dome.
Think of the nature of the human mechanism with which
we maintain this great possession ! When I was in India I
had certain inquiries made with regard to our officials, applying
the test of salaries, than which I know no better test or dis-
tinction between higher and lower appointments. We find that
there are only 1,200 official Englishmen in India drawing
salaries of 800 or over ^"800 a year ; while of those drawing
6v or more than 60 a year, which is going very low, we
find there are only 6,500 English officials in India. In other
words there is but one English official to every 140,000 natives.
These figures, eloquent in their simple condensation, explain how
it is that none of us who have been engaged in the work of
administration in India can speak of it without exultation or
abandon it without regret. I am sure there are many persons at
this table who share to the full the feeling which I am now
expressing. If I were to ask the illustrious Field-Marshal who
is presiding to-night, what has been the part of his great and
eminent career of which he is most proud, 1 am certain he would
reply in the title which his own literary labours have rendered
classical * Forty-One Years in India." If I were then to turn to
Lord George Hamilton, whose official connection with India in
England was greater than that of any living statesman, and who
conducted the administration of India with an urbanity and
sympathy which made it a positive delight to serve under him,
and if I were to ask him what is the most valuable
experience that he has acquired in his long and distinguished
official career, I am sure he would say his connexion with India.
STRENUOUS LIFE OF THE VICEROY IN INDIA. 61
The soldier serving in India would say there is no soldiering like
it so earnest, so instinct with actuality. The Indian Civil
servant would say there is no administration in the world so
efficient and so unselfish as that of India. Their experience is my
experience also. There is no one who has served in India who
regrets one day or one hour that was given to it. Whatever of
health or strength one may have sacrificed to it, and the sacrifice
sometimes is not inconsiderable, we have gladly rendered it.
And though when we come back to this country we occasionally
find that nobody quite knows where we have been and still less
what we have been doing, we feel that our experience
in India, whatever it may have been, is something with which
we would not part for anything else the world has to offer, and
that we have played a part, however humble, in the greatest work
that can be given to human beings.
The other day when I was thinking over what I, should
say at this dinner to-night. I took up a book about India to
acquire some information to lay before this assembly. In it
there was an article about the work and position of the
Viceroy. When I read it to you you will realize how far fiction
can be carried from facts. *' The Viceroy of India leads a pleasant
life, having a charming summer residence in a lovely mountain
retreat, with the full prestige of representing the British Crown
and provided with a splendid personal staff and furnished with a
luxurious railway carriage ready to convey him to his Calcutta
Palace in the winter, or to waft him about among beautiful land-
scapes and old historic cities. He is always in the prime
of life, assisted by Councillors who act as his Ministers in
the different departments and relieve him of all responsibility in
administrative details. In the charge of the Army he is aided by
the experienced officer who commands the Indian Forces."
Generally speaking, the whole of that is true, individually true.
I profited by every one of those advantages. And yet it is
impossible to imagine a paragraph which, though the individual
items of it may be correct, could give a more inadequate
description of the position of the Viceroy. I read in a speech
that was made by a member of the present House oi Commons
that the administration of India was one of pomp and pageantry.
The observation appears to have captivated even the sagacious
intellect of the present Secretary for India. Such is the baleful
influence that is exercised by alliteration on the literary mind.
I turn to the speech which has just been delivered by Lord
George Hamilton, and say, " There is my answer." It is perfectly
true that we did celebrate with becoming pomp and dignity the
Coronation of King Edward at Delhi, and I thank Heaven that
that there is one part of the Empire that is not so drab and
colourless as this dingy and grimy section of the realm. I do not
think there was much pomp and pageantry in the part of the life
of the Viceroy that was described by Lord George Hamilton.
I remember working through the long hours of the day and far
into the night. I count the working days of the Viceroy as 365 in
the year, if not more; and if my friend Mr. Winston Churchill
62 FATE OF DALHOUSIE: ABSIT OMEN!
were here this evening I should have to present him with this
description of the life of the Viceroy, and of my administration
in particular, as a more striking example of terminological
inexactitude than anything that has yet been achieved by the
party of which he is so distinguished an ornament. Lord George
Hamilton referred to the discussion on the education question
which was held at Simla, and was kind enough to point out that
the 150 resolutions passed by the Conference were framed by
myself. I am afraid there was the suspicion of autocracy in that
assertion. The resolutions were not 150 but 175. And more
remarkable still, whether they were drawn up by myself or not,
every one was passed by the unanimous vote of the whole of
the gentlemen seated at the table. May I commend that as a
study in administrative methods to his Majesty's present
advisers ? There was only one other passage in the speech to
which I shall allude. Lord George Hamilton paid me the
greatest compliment which it is possible to pay to any man in
my post by drawing a comparison between the administration
of Lord Dalhousie and that of myself. Since Warren Hastings,
I regard him as incomparably the greatest administrator ever
charged with the destinies of India as having an administrative
genius greater almost than that of any other Englishman of our
time, though perhaps I ought to say that he was a Scotsman.
Had he lived and devoted his genius to the service of his country,
it must have lifted him to the first rank of English statesmen.
While I regard the comparison as a compliment, therefore, I
cannot help finding in Lord Dalhousie's experience a sad omen ;
and I only hope that there may await me in future a different
fate from that which befell him coming back worn out in the
exercise of his great duties and incapable of giving to his country
at home that which he had given to it abroad, and wasting away
in retirement the few years which should have fulfilled the
supreme ambition of his existence.
I believe that when a proconsul returns from abroad he is
permitted for a short period to philosophize for the benefit of
his countrymen. I am not sure that sometimes his experience
does not make a very great call upon any resources of philosophy
that he may possess. If I were asked to sum up what were the
lessons which Eastern government had given me, I should say
they were these. In the first place, remember always that you
are not in India or in any foreign dependency, any more than the
Americans are in the Philippines, for the benefit of what in
diplomacy is called your own "nationals." You are therefor
the benefit of the people of the country. In the old conception
of colonies and dependencies the people did not occupy a pro-
minent part. They were a mere physical feature of the country
an ethnographic excrescence on the surface of the soil. In
school-days we used to read of the Roman Empire and its
colonies, and how the Roman Government ended its letters to
its proconsuls with the words " Si tu exercitusque valetis, bene
est." Now we add to " exercitus," or substitute for it where
we can, the word " populusque." That is the spirit in which all
THE MEANING OF EMPIRE. 63
administration of dependencies which is to succeed must be
carried on. That is the spirit in which South Africa was admi-
nistered by Lord Milner. It is the spirit in which Egypt is being
administered by Lord Cromer. It is the spirit in which India
has been administered by a long succession of Viceroys and in
which, I hope, it will continue to be administered. The second
thing I would wish to say to high officers of State and the
members of the Government is this. As far as you can, trust
the man on the spot. Do not weary or fret or nag him
with your superior wisdom. They are loyal to you do not have
any fear about that. They are running your show, not their
own. They claim no immunity from errors of opinion or judg-
ment, but their errors are nothing to be compared to } ours.
Still less do they claim any immunity from supervision and
control. They know perfectly the part that is played in the
Constitution by the Imperial Government and the Parliament
of this country. I have often heard of " a prancing proconsul."
I have never myself known a proconsul to prance, except in a
Radical peroration. But, after all, remember that these men
know more of the local facts than you can do yourself, and that
their judgment, on the whole, is likely to be more correct. Thirdly,
never sacrifice a subject interest that is, the interest of a subject
dependency or possession to exclusively British interests. Do
not force upon your dependencies a policy which may be distaste-
ful or unsuitable to them, merely because it is advantageous
to yourselves. The meaning of empire is not to impose on
dependencies the will of the Mother Country or master power,
but to effect a harmonious co-ordination of the interests of the
whole. I read in the papers this morning that last night a
member of Parliament said that the British Empire could get
on very well without Natal or West Ham. I cannot personally
speak for West Ham. It is just conceivable to me that the
Empire might survive its loss. But Natal, no ! And why ?
Because if you lose one colony like Natal, the process does not
end there, but goes on, and you find before long that you have
lost the British Empire itself. Lastly, I would say both to our
own people and to all other peoples who may be engaged in
empire making, send out to this task the best men you can tempt or
train send them out to India, to Egypt, to South Africa, to West
Africa, to the uttermost ends of the earth. Do not be frightened by
distance. Do not let them be dismayed by exile. In far-off
lands, amidst alien peoples, in unfriendly solitudes, under burning
suns, your sons, the offspring of your race, will still do good
work, work that is good for themselves, good for the country that
has sent them out, and good for the community in which they
are placed. They will lead clean and healthy lives and have
opportunities for doing noble and unselfish deeds. Wherever
the unknown lands are waiting to be opened up, wherever the
secrets or treasures of the earth are waiting to be wrested
from her, wherever peoples are lying in backwardness or barbar-
ism, wherever new civilizations are capable of being planted
or old civilizations of being revived, wherever advance is possible
64 TRUE SUMMONS OF THE ANGLO-SAXON.
and duty and self-sacrifice call there is, as there has been for
hundreds of years, the true summons of the Anglo-Saxon races.
May we hope, in this assemblage of Englishmen and Americans,
that neither of the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon
race, now so happily reunited, may ever fall below the dignity
of our high calling.
PART II.
ESSAYS.
CONTENTS.
Lord Curzon i
Lord Curzon and Marquess Wellesley 14
Viceroy and Commander-in-Chief in Lord Lawrence's
Time 20
Dispute between Lord Canning and Lord Ellenborough 24
Sir A, Lyall on England's Retention of India 33
LORD CURZON.
Lord Curzon has resigned the high post which he has
held for nearly seven years amid almost universal regret, and
Lord Minto is appointed to succeed him. It cannot be said that
in this case an Amurath an Amurath succeeds, for it would be
hard to find another ruler who combines in himself all those
qualities, mental and moral, which Lord Curzon brought to his
difficult task 'of governing this vast country, really a continent,
with its three hundred millions of widely differing races and creeds.
It is no disrespect to the new-comer to say that he does not
possess the genius with which his predecessor is gifted without
doubt. In the eyes of common-place men this will perhaps be
his greatest qualification. The Ministry that have selected him
do not, it seems, want in this post a brilliant man of genius with
the courage of his convictions to withstand the new policy they
are forcing on this country of military autocracy, but require
merely one who can subserviently carry out this policy without
saying nay to any demand of the Commander-in-Chief, provided
he makes it in the name of that new shibboleth, which has gained
currency since the Boer War, military efficiency. Whether Lord
Minto is the proper person to play this subordinate part which
the Ministry seem to have marked out for him, or whether when
once fairly installed in the post he will not rise to its full height
and refuse to carry out Lord Kitchener's commands, even like
his immediate predecessor, remains to be seen. He has one
thing in his favour : he has an hereditary and almost family
interest in India. His great-grandfather, the first Earl of Minto,
held, nearly a century ago, the high and responsible post to
which his illustrious descendant has been now called. His
great-grand-uncle, Sir Hugh Elliot, the brother of the first Earl,
was ruler of Madras. His maternal grandfather was a famous
Commander-in-Chief of Madras, Sir Thomas Hislop, who helped
greatly to render the rule of the Marquis of Hastings famous by
his brilliant victory of Mehidpore over Scindia ; whilst several
Elliots have served or are serving still in the Civil and Military
services of this country. He himself is no stranger to India, having
served in the second Afghan War a quarter of a century ago. He
served under Lord Roberts there and also was Private Secretary to
him when that great soldier went to South Africa in 1881, only,
however, to return without even landing there, as an inglorious
peace had hurriedly been made by Mr. Gladstone, a peace that
he was destined later to avenge by his splendid victories. He
may thus be supposed to share Lord Roberts' views on the
present regrettable incident between the Viceroy and the
Commander-in-Chief ; and these views, as declared in his great
speech in the House of Lords, are decidedly against Lord
* Calcutta Review, October, 1905.
Kitchener's pretensions, though he himselt once rilled the same
high post as the latter and might naturally be supposed to
sympathise with him.
Though these are good auguries, one expects troublous times
during the coming years of Lord Minto's Viceroyalty. Lord
Kitchener requires an exceptionally strong Viceroy to control
him in the militarism which will now grow very aggressive after
the first easy victory just scored. Where Lord Curzon has failed
one need not be called too pessimistic if he does not expect Lord
Minto to succeed. The very circumstances under which he has
been appointed probably tend to show that he is not meant to
succeed. The present Ministry is at the very end of its career of
office. The alliance with Japan has been just renewed for
another ten years, and thus the only cause, which, according to
its own showing, prevented it from resigning, is removed. The
appointment of a new Viceroy by such a Ministry must have been
made with the full consent and co-operation of the other party
which is very likely to come into power next. Otherwise there
may be a repetition of the untoward events of 1835, when Lord
Heytesbury, who had been appointed Governor-General by an
outgoing party, was a few months later told by the party that
succeeded it not to proceed to India, and his appointment was
cancelled under humiliating circumstances by the sending
out of Lord Auckland, the choice of the party that had come into
power. (Vide Thornton, Hist, of British India, Vol. VI., pp. 22-50.)
The ostensible reason for this was that Lord Heytesbury was
known to be very intimate with the Czar Nicholas I. of Russia.
(Dr. R. Garnett in East and West, August, 1905, p. 798. ) But the
real reason was that the new Ministry wanted to carry out its
preconcerted policy of aggression, which in the end proved so
futile and disastrous, in Afghanistan and Central Asia, and for
that purpose sent out its own Governor-General with the express
mandate of wantonly interfering in Afghan matters and of thus
checking, as it thought, Russian intrigues. Otherwise, the fact that
Lord Heytesbury was intimate with the Czar would have been in his
favour, as he would have carried on the negotiations involved by the
supposed intrigues of Russia on the Indian frontier, amicably, and
brought them to a peaceable issue which the new Ministry delibe-
rately avoided. It may be taken for granted that Lord Minto has not
allowed himself to be put in the humiliating position of Lord
Heytesbury, and that he will continue to be the Viceroy under the
Liberals also. The advent of the Liberals, however much it may
be wished for by the Young India party here, bodes nothing good
in the matter of the dispute between the Viceroy and the Com-
mander-in-Chief. Lord Kitchener is the chosen pet of the Liberal
party, and Lord Rosebery has often in his speeches paraded him
as the heaven-sent saviour of the nation and extolled his schemes
of re -organization of the Army. One therefore cannot look for
relief from this quarter. The military incubus will sit tighter
upon poor India and exhaust her treasury.
Only in one case does one see relief. Lord Rosebery and his
followers may see reason to recall Lord Kitchener, not in dis-
grace but in triumph, and set him the task of re-organising the
Army in England, which from all recent accounts, has been made
a mess of, giving him the free hand, devoid of any control, that
he so much hankers after. No one in India, not even Young
Bengal which from interested motives is now exultantly jubilant
over his triumph, would grudge England the glorious services of
her great, her u only general," and most would join in wishing
him godspeed. That would be the best solution for India of the
present difficulty, and then Lord Minto would reign without the
danger of being overshadowed by an imperious personality who
would brook no brother near the throne. Or if the English
nation is so very willing to try the experiment of giving full sway
to military autocracy not, however, on herself but on the
cor pore vtli of poor India, why is not Lord Kitchener at once
made Viceroy and Governor-General as well as Commander-in-
Chief, as m former times Lords Wellesley and Hastings were
Commanders-in-Chief as well as Governors-General ? In those
days the military situation was considered so critical that to the
Civil ruler was also entrusted military authority. At the present
day, in the opinion of the English Ministry, things are supposed to
have come to such a pass that the Civil authority must be ren-
dered perfectly subordinate to the Military. Silent leges inter
arma was a sound maxim. But now, it seems, laws of control and
check ought to be silent in times of profound peace. It would,
in the long run, be better to hold the post of Viceroy in abeyance
for a time than to degrade this supreme office, which ought to be
second to none in this country, by rendering it subordinate, for
that is what the resignation of Lord Curzon really means. He
has risen to the full height of his great character when he has
proudly declined to hold this " Imperial appointment, which is the
greatest honour England has to give, except the Government of
herself," on any terms inconsistent with its supreme controlling
power. It has been his misfortune that he hands over to his
successor this high post shorn of an essential part of its power.
But it is his misfortune only ; he has had no hand in bringing
about this diminution of the Viceregal authority. He has
resigned rather than submit to it. He had but a few months
more of office here. In any case he was to have left our scores
next April. He goes a few months earlier now, a fact which
affects him personally but little. A few months more or less of
office are a matter of indifference to such a high-souled man as
Lord Curzon has abundantly shown himself to be.
The renewal of his term of office last year was not of his
seeking. His continuance in India has been a sacrifice of his
ambitions which, as we all know, lie towards English politics. But
he has sacrificed these ambitions to his sense of duty towards the
Empire and towards India in particular. He had undertaken
several tasks in the best interests of the land and its peoples, and
those best able to judge knew that his presence here was required
if they were to be brought successfully to a close. In this sense,
and with this object, he consented to come out again for a fresh
term. That he leaves now some of those objects unaccomplished
or but half accomplished is through no fault of his own. The
responsibility of placing him in circumstances where no alter-
native was possible but resignation, lies on other shoulders.
There are occasions when a statesman must relinquish the
noblest aims for higher considerations and in preference to princi-
ples from which he cannot swerve. Nobody can doubt that such
a rare occasion arose in the case in which Lord Curzon found
himself placed. And melancholy as are the circumstances
under which so splendid a Viceroyalty has ended somewhat
prematurely, one cannot but rejoice that he was found equal to
the occasion and has acquitted himself during this crisis in a
manner worthy of his past career and of the best traditions of
English statesmanship. He did not stoop to palter for power.
Nor t on the other hand, did he assume an unpractical and un-
compromising attitude under a mistaken notion of duty, as
sometimes happens. He did not resign at once, but tried to
bring round the Ministry by conceding something in order to save
the principle, in which he was throughout firm as a rock, of the
final controlling authority of the Viceroy in military matters.
But when he saw clearly that it was the settled purpose of the
Ministry to give carte blanche to Lord Kitchener and to raise him
above the control of the Viceroy, he recognised manfully that
further opposition on his part would be useless, and refused to
be a party to such a strange departure from constitutional
methods.
Those who affect to see in Lord Curzon's resignation nothing
but personal pique and resentment at the tactless conduct of
Mr. Brodrick, do gross injustice to him and show a strange
want of knowledge of his character. If the present writer has
read his character aright, not so much from his words as his works,
a high sense of duty must be said to form its strongest feature.
Duty first to England and then to India has inspired his whole
policy and every act which he has done in furtherance of that
policy. Sometimes he might have been mistaken in his notions
of that duty. Those of my countrymen who have first blamed
him and then abused him, till now they have come to hate him
as if he were their worst enemy, are eminently unreasonable,
and therefore it is useless to argue with them. But to those
Indians who admit that he did some good to India but did
also great harm by his retrogressive measures, it may be
pointed out that they are judging by a false standard and
from a different point of view to that of men like Lord Curzon.
With men like him England is and ought to be first and
foremost in their affections : their duty is and ought to be
towards England first and foremost. It is their dearest object
to make England's Empire over the world stronger and wider,
and their first notion of duty is to help that object forward.
Now Indians, because they are Indians, can never look upon
England and her Empire with the same eyes as these
Englishmen. But if they have imagination they can put them-
selves in their position and judge accordingly. This they fail
to do in most cases and hence their unjust criticism and censure
of men like Lord Curzon. They judge an English Viceroy from
a purely Indian point of view ; it is natural that he should hardly
satisfy them. In the case of Lord Curzon, who is thoroughly
English and Imperialist to boot, it is very natural that they
should not be satisfied with him at all. The Englishman and
Indian are so much at variance in their standards and their
standpoints. An Indian cannot be expected to feel much for
the Empire on which an Englishman sets so much store and
for which his fathers have in days gone by suffered so much.
Even the so-called " Little Englander " who affects to belittle the
Empire feels at heart for it and would resent the slightest injury
to it meditated by others. In spite of the cant that is being
talked by some on the subject, the truth must be recognised and
looked full in the face by Indians that England governs India
as part of the British Empire first for herself and then for the
Indians.
Nothing in contemporary politics does so much harm as the
blinking of this fact by Indians and the consequent confusion
of points of view. And none do more mischief than those
<( benevolent " Englishmen who encourage Indians in blinking
this fundamental fact and thus help the confusion. They are to
my mind not the true friends of India or of England either,
who help the notion that England governs India solely for the
benefit of Indians regardless of her own interests ; that when
her interests conflict with those of India they must give way
before the latter. It is some such notion that Indian politicians
have got into their beads ; and it is by some such impossible
standard that they judge our Viceroys. They consider England
to be a purely philanthropic country which undertakes the burden
of ruling millions upon millions of subject peoples in a mis-
sionary spirit regardless of her own interests. They forget that
she has sunk capital, and, what is more precious than capital,
the lifeblood of her sons, in rearing her Empire in India as
elsewhere, and that she expects a legitimate return from all
this, somewhat as a merchant does from the business that
has been built up by the firm of his fathers. In all political
transactions they are apt to look to Indian interests alone and
to lose sight of the fact that England has any interests of her
own in India. This is the fundamental fallacy of these Indian
politicians and publicists who judge of English Viceroys and
their policy and acts, from a wholly and purely Indian
standpoint. India for the Indians is their impossible standard of
measuring the English Rule, and no wonder that English Rule
fails to satisfy them. They forget that India is a subject country,
and think that they ought to be on the same level as their English
subjectors. They forget that the Indian Empire is a sort of
partnership in which the predominant partner is England, and
that in cases of a conflict of interests those of the predominant
partner must prevail. This is a fact, an inconvenient fact no doubt,
but it must be borne home upon the Indian mind. It must be
clearly understood by Indians that England means to govern India
and to keep it as her possession and that she will do everything
that can strengthen her hold upon this country. She is rather shy
of proclaiming this fact, but all the same her conduct towards
India is based on this. She will not allow anything that tends to
weaken her hold upon India.
Now Lord Curzon throughout his career had this one fixed
object in his mind : to render India impregnable without as well
as within and to eliminate as much as possible the factors that
make for disruption. In pursuing this policy firmly and unflinch-
ingly he displeased many and especially Indian politicians. But
the task of an English Viceroy is not to please or displease persons
or parties, but to do his duty to the Empire and to India to the
best of his abilities and according to his lights. If he is so
fortunate as to please the Indians whilst doing his duty, it ought to
be considered a lucky coincidence. He should not for the sake
of pleasing them and gaining their momentary applause, swerve
from the thorny path that duty points him, His foreign policy
has been much criticised by his Indian critics. But they are not
and cannot, in the nature of things, be in a position to judge of it
fairly in all its bearings. Even if they had the will, they lack the
necessary knowledge of foreign politics which alone can enable
them to be fair and well-informed critics. India comes in contact
at some point or other of its vast land fromier with three first-class
powers, Russia, France, and China, besides two second-class states
like Afghanistan and Persia. The ruler of India has to conduct
the delicate negotiations which this contact involves. He must
have an eye to what is going on at St. Petersburg or Peking, an
ear for what is passing at Cabul and Teheran. Much of this
knowledge is necessarily kept from the public gaze Action based
on this taken under such complicated circumstances is not
transparent to the outside world. The Viceroy is bound not to
disclose his justificatory knowledge in cases where his actions
and policy are criticised freely by ignorant and irresponsible
critics. He is like a person who is fighting with his right hand
bound behind his back.
No part of his foreign policy has been so bitterly attacked
by Indian critics as his attitude towards Tibet and the expedition
to that country. It was throughout a game of sheer ignorance
and misrepresentation on their part, displayed against a man who
they knew very well could justify his policy to the hilt if he was
permitted to disclose the real facts, which were, of course, kept
a State secret. But enough was let out to make it quite clear
that Russia was playing her old hostile game behind Tibet and
that she was merely using the weak and worthless Dalai Lama
as her pawn to annoy and, if possible, hurt India, and through
India, the British Empire. We know to our bitter cost in two
Afghan wars what the game of Russia is ; and that Viceroy
would be culpably wanting in his duty if he quietly allowed
Russia to make of Tibet what she had made of Afghanistan not
long ago, and use it as a means of perpetual threat to us on our
northern frontier. Lord Curzon boldly grappled with the
awkward situation which Russian diplomatists had created at
Lhasa, and nipped the danger in the bud which would otherwise
have grown to large proportions and complications in a short
time. By a master stroke of policy he discomfited the refractory
little politician-priests, proud and insolent in their ignorance of
the outside world, and showed them the true nature of Russian
promises of support at just the time when Russia was entangled
in a life and death struggle with her Far Eastern rival. It is a
pity that our Indian critics saw in all this nothing but a fresh
example of England's insolence to weaker powers, and an illustra-
tion of might overcoming right. This explains how utterly unfit
are such critics to take broad views, especially when the Empire is
concerned, and how little able they are to rise above village
politics. That Lord Curzon is criticised by such ought to be his
greatest praise. If past English rulers had been guided by their
views and encouraged by their applause, there would probably be
no British Empire in India or elsewhere left to be ruled by Lord
Curzon or anyone else.
Turning to internal and domestic affairs, we find Lord Curzon's
policy still more fiercely criticised, and even himself personally
attacked by the Indian critics. The reason of this will be again
found to redound to his credit as an English statesman. They
admit that he came out to this country with no hostility to its
peoples : one would like to know what English ruler ever comes
out with such hostility. Even Lord Lytton, the worst criticised of
our Viceroys, is allowed to have had sympathy for the people..
But Lord Curzon is credited with no such sympathy during the
latter part of his rule. The Indians praised him during the first
years of his rule, and there were loud cries of his being the best
the most sympathetic Viceroy, about his being another Lord Ripon
and so forth. Nemo fit repente turpissimus. Yet suddenly he seems
to have grown extremely unpopular. But here we must distinguish.
Unpopularity amongst the Indian peoples is a different thing from
the unpopularity so ostentatiously expressed by certain prominent
Indian politicians and their following. One may be extremely
unpopular with the latter without being at all unpopular with the
former, because the real Indian peoples are almost voiceless. We
believe this to be really the case with Lord Curzon. We know
from various signs that with them he is not only not unpopular,
but so far as they can appreciate him he. is even popular. They
know that he has stood up for curtailing needless expenditure and
for rendering India greater justice than before at the hands of
English politicians. They know that he alone of the last several
Viceroys has appreciably reduced the taxpayer's burden, and twice
within two years has lowered the salt tax, a tax felt particularly
by the lower classes They know that although throughout his
rule plague, famine, and other disasters have been raging, he has
taken very efficient measures for relieving their suffering, and has
cheered them by his genuine sympathy.
But with the small class of educated Indians Lord Curzon is
not popular. And the real reason of this unpopularity, almost
hostility, is not far to seek. It is owing to his having passed the
Universities Bill. There are many educated Indians, and the
present writer is of their number, who consider it a good measure
calculated to do great benefit to the country. But the class which
thinks thus is small and, moreover, not an adept in the prevalent
methods of political agitation. Indian public opinion is very hard
to ascertain. What calls itself by this grand name is a mere
travesty. What exists and asserts itself is mere political ventri-
loquism, the multiplication of the opinion of one individual or class
in many ways and forms, in the press, on the platform and even at
the council board. Chiefly the educated few voice their opinions
everywhere, and by making the most noise create the impression
that there is no other opinion beside theirs. They are mortally
offended with Lord Curzon because he would not let them have
their own way in the vital matter of education. They were very
cleverly using education as a means of weakening the tie which
binds India to England with the view of finally initiating a
separatist movement. Indeed, some enthusiasts have already
formed an Indian Home Rule League in England with all the
consequences which such a movement involves. With this purpose
they were gradually absorbing the whole educational machinery
in the country into their own hands, very subtly and quietly but
steadily. Beginning with the schools, they proceeded to the colleges
and finally they captured the Universities. These latter have
become anything but educational ; they are really political insti-
tutions engineered by Congress politicians. This has been going
on for a long time past ; those who keenly observed raised a warn-
ing voice long ago. The Universities and colleges were assuming
the aspect of similar institutions in Russia and elsewhere, and were
being prepared silently to work similar harm to the authorities in
course of time. Many Viceroys were aware of this grave menace.
But none of them had the courage to take up the task boldly and
arrest the menace before it grew to grave proportions. Each of
them realised its importance, but left the damnosa hcereditas to his
successor. Lord Dufferin made some attempts towards the
solution of this grave problem. But even he shrank from it. The
task was peculiarly ungrateful to a statesman steeped in English
traditions, who shrinks from all methods of repression. But unless
he is prepared to see the grave of the English connection with
India, he is bound to do something to arrest this movement
effectually. We can well believe that Lord Curzon undertook
this task with no great eagerness. If he had consulted his own
ease and popularity, he would have shirked it and been content to
let it drift towards some future successor of his. That he tackled
it shows not only his courage, but his statesmanship of a high
order which refuses to tinker at reform.
By the Universities Bill Lord Curzon restored the controlling
power in the Universities, and through them over the colleges, to
the State, gently wresting it from the politicians who had usurped
it too long. We say restored, for when the Universities were
created nearly half a century ago this power .'was reserved in the
hands of the State and for a time exerted by it. But gradually
Government neglected its proper function, and, of course, it was
willingly relieved of it by other persons we know of. If former
Governments had done their duty, that of Lord Curzon would not
have been called on to perform this unpleasant task of restoring
to the State its proper control in educational matters. The
Universities, and the colleges affiliated to them, would not have
become, as they are now, the strongholds of Indian Radicalism
and outposts of the Congress movement, in time to grow into the
Home Rule movement for India. By this Bill the government of
Universities is to be in the hands of proper educational authorities
and no longer in those of irresponsible politicians who took to
education only as a means to their own end. This was enough to
make the Indian politicians, who hoped to turn the Universities to
still better account in the near future but for this awkward blow
to their hopes, the bitter foes of Lord Curzon. They made a
desperate attempt to get into the governing bodies or Syndicates
of the Universities through some technical flaw in the Bill. But
their adversary was not to be thus foiled. He passed the famous
Validating Act ; and this completed in the eyes of his foes the
measure of his offence. They have persecuted him bitterly ; they
have reviled him, (lampooned him mercilessly. But all this did
not make him swerve by a hair's breadth from what he thought to
be right and expedient for India as well as England. For India
would be the first to suffer if the attempt of interested parties
were to succeed in changing the educational character of the
Universities, making them political institutions pure and simple,
using them as machinery of agitation against the Government and
the authorities.
A country situated in the circumstances of India at present
would gain nothing, but on the contrary would be much harmed
by poisoning the mind of the rising generation, which is specially
the charge of the Universities and colleges, against British rule
and India's connection with England. It was surely not with these
objects that they were founded by England ; she generously and
wisely thought that education would be her greatest support and
bulwark in this land of many castes, creeds, and races, that if she
could succeed in training the youth in her own Western ways
they would sympathise with her and help her in the task of ruling
their ignorant brethren. When these objects were perverted,
when Englishmen saw that education, instead of being a help was
used as a hindrance, instead of proving a uniting bond was used
as the means of sowing discord between the rulers and the ruled,
there was assuredly time to call halt and to reform the educational
system that had gone wrong. Any other country but England
would not have allowed the system to go so very wrong, but would
have taken in hand the work of reforming it long ago. Nowhere
else, not even in countries which boast of the freest institutions,
was liberty in these educational matters so scandalously abused.
In all well ordered Governments the education of the youth is the
special object of State control. The French Republic neglected
it for long, with the result that doctrines inimical to its existence
were found to be alarmingly widespread, owing chiefly to the
priests having had the education of the French youths in their sole
hands. At last the Republic was thoroughly alarmed and the
recent stringent measures against the Church and especially its
10
influence in education were passed. Every Government has the
right to adopt whatever measures it thinks proper for its saiety
and stability. The British Government in India has assuredly
that right, and those who preside over it ought not to be blamed for
exercising that right, occasionally even in a somewhat harsh
manner. It should not be called upon to look on unconcernedly
when its foundations are being slowly and subtly yet steadily and
insidiously sapped. That the educational system as it is worked
at present is doing this, is my firm conviction, and those who know
something of its working from the inside would be disposed to
agree with this opinion.
Though I am an Indian, yet I make bold to state that it is
unworthy of Indians to abuse thus the magnanimity of England,
and to use the undoubted benefits of British Rule to sap the founda-
tions of that Rule. It is not only unworthy, but also disastrously
shortsighted and suicidal. For better for worse the fortunes of
India are bound up with those of England. Her strength is our
strength and we ought to rejoice in it even out of selfish motives.
Anything that weakens her and lowers her in the estimation of the
world is sure to react on us terribly. India cannot stand by itself;
this has been proved over and over again in her past history. She
must be taken in tow by another country. If England were to give
her up, another power, Russia, Japan, France would pounce upon
her at once. She cannot have Home Rule ; she is not fitted for it.
She must have English Rule or the rule of some other power.
That English Rule is better than that of any other power will be
admitted in their calm and reasonable moments by even its
bitterest critics. It is the bounden duty not only of British but
also of Indian politicians, if they really feel for India and if they
are really far-sighted, to do everything that tends to strengthen
the connection of England with India, and still more to avoid doing
anything that would weaken it. Surely he is not a real Indian
patriot who like Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji says intemperately : u The
British people stand charged with the blood of the perishing
millions and the starvation of scores of millions, not because they
desire so, but because the authorities to whom they have committed
the trust, betray that trust and administer expenditure in a manner
based upon selfishness and hypocrisy and most disastrous to the
people " ( " Poverty and un- British Rule in India," 1901, p. 386) ;
or who, like him, compares the English in India to robbers and
stranglers, the Thugs cf old : u Let them withdraw their hand
from India's throat, and then see whether the increase in
population is not an addition to its strength and production
instead of British-made famines and poverty," (Ibid. p. 388.)
Language such as this comes not from an irresponsible individual,
but from one who is the chosen champion and mouthpiece of
educated Indians, and who, from his position, may be supposed to
have well weighed his words and the influence they would have
on the rising generation of Indians. What is worse, these Indians
find Englishmen in England to encourage them in their wild talk,
and set them a pernicious example which they seem but too
willing to follow. According to the late Mr. William Digby, the
11
English connection with India, is as ruthless and immoral as the
conquests of those Tartar " brutes," Timur and Genghiz ! " If an
absolutely impartial judge, with a full knowledge of all the
circumstances in each instance, were to place side by side the
wrong and human suffering caused by Timur the Tartar or
Genghiz Khan, with the mental, moral, and physical misery endured
in India during the past fifty years, the ill consequences properly
debatable against Christian Englishmen, who have a high place
in the National Valhalla, would be as great as those for which
the ruthless brutes of ancient days have had to answer to history,
and maybe to God!" (Prosperous British India, 1901, p. 4.) It is
melancholy to reflect that these are the words of an Englishman
about his countrymen's work in India work which, according to a
great French thinker, De Tocqueville, is their greatest claim on
the gratitude of civilisation.
But diatribes like these of Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji and Mr.
William Digby are eagerly accepted by Indian critics, and the
books in which they occur are subsidised and scattered broadcast
by the Congress. One may ask sober Indians whether this is to
continue, and whether the British Government should go on
producing as the results of its educational system such specimens
as Mr. Dadabhai and his younger followers. The educational
system should be thoroughly overhauled if it is to produce such
fruits. It may conceivably be fit for a very advanced country with
free institutions and strong enough to stand by itself and wise
enough to govern itself. India is not such a country. What is
meat for one is poison for another. And assuredly the results
which education as at present carried on in this country produces,
do not bode any good to anyone, and least of all to Indians them-
selves. Lord Curzon, let it be said to his lasting credit, saw all
this, and seeing this he did not sit still like some of his predecessors,
but began to take action in the proper direction. He began with
overhauling the Universities which had become the stronghold of
misguided and mischievous political activity. He has aimed at
restricting them strictly to their proper sphere by placing their
management in the hands of educationists alone, and taking it out
of the hands of those with whom political aims were foremost. A
stricter control than now obtains is to be kept by the Universities
over colleges and high schools, and care is to be taken about what
is to be taught in them and by whom. It may be objected that
this is officialising the Universities. Let it be frankly admitted
that this is the case. Res dura et regni novitas talia me cogunt
moliri, may well be said by Lord Curzon in justification. The
difficulty and novelty of such an experiment as the introduction of
Western education in an Eastern country have compelled him to
proceed warily. And the results of this experiment so far, as we
have cursorily seen, are such as to make a statesman with his
sagacity more than usually cautious.
This is not a question to be decided by the approbation or
disapprobation of Indian politicians. In this matter they are, as
it were, in the position of the accused. Their disapprobation and
denunciation are natural. Until now they alone have had a hear-
12
ing, and we have heard much of the dire consequences which are to
befall the Universities owing to this measure. There is time now,
since Lord Curzon's personality is to be withdrawn from our midst,to
judge the question dispassionately in the dry light of reason. And
we think the judgment of sober enquirers will justify the man and
his measure. The Universities are to be officialised, and what of
that ? Is not nearly every department in India official or
officialised ? And is not this required by the condition in which
education now is and will remain for a long time to come ? Does
not everything in India, and the East generally, fall within the
province of Government ? The Congress itself clamours every
year that the State does not do enough for this and for that, and
for education in particular, that it does not spend enough on this
object. It wants the State to do everything for education except
control it. They want men, they want money, they want the State
to give them more colleges and schools, and even universities.
But they do not want that there should be State control over all
these. They point to foreign countries to show how much they
spend on their educational institutions, and how little does the State
here. But they forget that these foreign countries exercise a far
more rigorous control over these, than the British Government
thinks of exercising in this country. One may recommend these
critics to study deeply the Prussian system of education in this
connection. India is not nearly so advanced as Prussia, yet there
the education of the youth is entirely an affair of the State, and
the whole system from the lower schools to the Universities is
under efficient and rigid control of Government officials.
The head and front of Lord Curzon's offence in the eyes of
his Indian critics lay in this that he dared to interfere with the
license that was raging in our educational system, especially in its
higher branches, and tried to introduce the reign of law there,
hurtful to no legitimate liberty but, on the contrary, giving full
scope to their energies if they want to use them in the right
direction for the benefit of both England and India. The irritation
caused to them is too deep to pass away soon. But pass
away it will one day, and then, sensible men as some of these
Indian critics are, they will acknowledge that the change
which Lord Curzon has brought about was urgently needed,
and is on the whole beneficial to their country. At present
they are blinded by their great prejudice on account of
this education question, to the great merits of the brilliant
statesman who is passing from a splendid career of useful and
conscientious work in India to a still higher sphere with nobler
ambitions that awaits him, where the experience gained in our
midst will be more widely available for the Empire at large whose
good he has so much at heart. It is but seldom that England sends
out such a statesman with such rare accomplishments to govern
India. During the whole of the last century she sent out three or
four such, and in the long roll of England's proconsuls in
India, the place of Lord Curzon will be beside Wellesley and
Hastings, Dalhousie and Canning. Contemporary opinion in the
case of all these men was in violent conflict. Wellesley was
13
hampered and hindered at every turn by the East India Company
at home, as his great successor of our day has been hampered and
hindered by an unsympathetic Secretary of State towards the end
of his career. There was a petition from India for the recall of
Canning, just as there has been a petition from Bengal for the
recall of Lord Curzon. Torrents of unmerited obloquy occasioned
by the breaking out of the Mutiny, for which he was not only not
responsible, but which would have been averted had the measures*
he strongly recommended been taken, broke but could not bend
the haughty head of Dalhousie, confident in his own righteousness
of the power of posterity to do him that justice which his
contemporaries denied him in their ignorance or perverseness.
Marquess Wellesley lived to see the Directors of the East India
Company, who were ready to recall him in 1804, render him
justice more than thirty years later, when they voted for a statue
of him to grace their hall, and presented him with an address in
which they called him a great benefactor of their Indian Empire.
Lord Curzon is still young, and he may live to receive a like
tribute of tardy gratitude and admiration from the people he once
ruled so wisely and well.
At present he leaves the country under a passing cloud and
the sun of his fortunes, which had become almost proverbial, is
suffering a partial eclipse. It is some satisfaction to contemplate
that the circumstances that have cast their shadow on him are
entirely honourable to him. It is only a shadow from which he
will emerge unsullied. The military autocracy, in the struggle
with which he has been worsted, is bound in the long run to
collapse. England cannot long remain in the present state of
military hypnotism. The spectre of military inefficiency is
haunting her, and she is deluded by the will o' the wisp of army
reorganisation. It is only in such a state that she has consented
to such an overthrow of the civil power and triumph of militarism
as is implied by the fall of Lord Curzon. But she will be soon
herself again. Militarism has never for any length of time gained
the upper hand in her concerns. The instincts of the nation are
against it. The Indian army, also, is assuredly not in such a parlous
state as is made out by rampant partisans of militarism. And
surely it is an irony of fate that that army should be so much
decried for want of efficiency, at just the time when it is least
wanted to fight the traditional foe, who has been menacing the
peace of India for a century, but who at this moment is lying low
and is not in a position to injure us for many years to come ; and
that the ruler who has done so much to safeguard the interests of
the Indian Empire and to render it less assailable from without,
in whose time Russia has been exhausted as she has never been
before in our time, without any effort on our part, should himself
fall a victim to the panic he has done so much to remove.
September, 1905.
* This has been conclusively shown in the masterly Life of Lord Dalhousie
with which Sir William Lee-Warner has recently enriched Anglo-Indian litera-
ture. See a review by me in the Calcutta Review, January 1905, pp. 164-172.
LORD CURZON AND MARQUESS
WELLESLEY.
Lord Curzon has laid down his high post after nearly seven
years of arduous work and embarks for England. Exactly a hun-
dred years ago another great statesman laid down the same post
after also seven years of hard and brilliant work to embark for
England, in August 1805. There is a great resemblance between the
two statesmen, both in their outward circumstances and still more in
the nature of their work for this country and the empire at large ;
and we purpose just to touch on it here. Marquess Wellesley
and Lord Curzon are exactly a century apart when their
careers in India are ended. But what is more remarkable, both
were born also almost a century apart, and Lord Curzon is now of
almost the same age as Wellesley when he resigned his high post.
Wellesley was born on June 20th, 1760, and Lord Curzon on January
nth, 1859. Wellesley landed in India in May 1798 at the age of
38, at which age the present Viceroy landed in our midst during
Christmas of 1898. Both have been here for seven years, Welles-
ley a few weeks over and Lord Curzon a few weeks under seven
years. Welle&ley was forty-five when he left India ; his successor
forty-six. Weliesley lived for thirty-eight years longer, dying at
the advanced age of 83 on September 26th, 1842. We hope and
wish that the parallel between the two men will be complete in
this respect, and that Lord Curzon will attain a similar old age.
The bent of both is towards foreign politics, and Wellesley became
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs within four years of retiring
from this country. Lord Curzon is likely to enter the Cabinet as
Foreign Minister in even a shorter time. Wellesley was originally
an Irish peer like his successor to-day. But while Lord Curzon
is not only content to be an Irish peer but is one by choice, his
great predecessor was in great anguish of mind when the King
promoted him to an Irish Marquisate in 1800 for his annihilation
of Tipu. In a letter which Lord Rosebery has printed for the
first time in his brilliant monograph on Pitt, that great statesman
was at considerable pains to soothe his ruffled spirits at this
fancied slight and supposed underrating of his services to the
Empire in India, by conferring on him the inferior honour of the
Irish Peerage. (Rosebery. "Pitt " pp. 211-216.) Lord Macartney
had, fifteen years before, declined the Governor-Generalship to
which, on his return to England from Madras, where he had been
Governor, he had been appointed in January 1786 to succeed
Warren Hastings, because his Irish peerage would not be ex-
changed for a peerage of the United Kingdom. (Barrow, 4< Public
Life of Macartney," Vol. I. pp. 327-330, 1807.) Pitt, a few years
later, endeavoured to obtain from the King the highest reward
15
for Wellesley when about to quit India. But circumstances
prevented Pitt from obtaining the Garter for his friend, who
attained to the honour of the blue ribbon a few years later in
1810. Lord Curzon may hope for this signal mark of His
Majesty's favour sooner.
Lord Curzon had not to encounter foes like Tipu and the
Marathas whom Wellesley crushed in his day ; his generals have
no victories like those of Seringapatam and Delhi, Assaye and
Laswari, to boast of. But peace has its triumphs more glorious
than war, and the statesman just retiring can look back on an equal-
ly arduous if less brilliant record of work done in the field of reform.
He had to fight more insidious foes than those arrayed on the
battle-field. But in one important respect the work the man of our
day had to do has been curiously alike to that of his predecessor of
a hundred years ago. In the midst of all his internal pre-occupa-
tions he has been ceaselessly vigilant over the movements of
Russia, and always on the alert to check her diplomacy directed
against us in Tibet, in Persia, in Afghanistan. When his rule
shall come to be viewed in due perspective, as time advances, his
foreign policy shall come out as the most useful of his several
works. Wellesley had the same foe to encounter not only at the
foreign courts of Teheran and Cabul, but at the internal courts of
Tipu, of the Peishwa and Sindia, and of Ranjit Singh. Persia
was even then firm in the grip of its northern neighbour, from
which the English had slowly to disentangle it by means of
delicate negotiations. Sir Harford Jones, and a little later Sir John
Malcolm, carried out Wellesley'b policy in Teheran, and kept
up that kingdom against Russia.
Napoleon was then our greatest foe, and after subduing
Russia he used Russian policy and resources to baffle us in
Persia, Turkey. Egypt ; and in India itself French machinations
were rife at the various native courts. The treaty ot Bassein
with the Peishwa was aimed really against French influence.
A similar treaty had before been offered to Tipu, but made
reckless by promises of French support, he rushed on his ruin.
Sindia and Holkar similarly opposed us with troops aided by
French generals and French armaments, and were fortunately
routed and compelled to sue for peace. In the north timely alliances
were made with the independent courts of the Afghans and ol the
Sikhs under Ranjit Singh, and the Russian and French menace was
successfully warded off. That already, a century ago, the European
enemies of England recognised that India was the most valuable
part of the Empire, and that they thought even then to wound her
easily there, may be seen from the following extract from a
memoir drawn up by a French Officer in India for his Government,
which came into the hands of our envoy in Persia, Sir Harford
Jones. " The power of the English in India is the most precious
portion of the British Empire. It equals in extent, population and
riches, the first powers in the world ; but you would form a very
erroneous opinion of its strength or solidity if you should calculate
these from her possessions. It is consoling to me to be able to
assure you that this source of wealth, so dangerous to our peace
16
and happiness, may be divided and dried up more easily than is con-
ceived." (Castlereagh Correspondence, Vol. V. p. 408.) Wellesley
did all in his power to disabuse England's enemies of this notion of
her vulnerability in India ; and when, a little while after he left this
country, Napoleon allied himself with Russia by the treaty of Tilsit,
with India as the distinct objective of both, it was by pursuing the
policy that he had boldly laid down that the first Lord Minto was
able to guard against the danger. In our time, we have found a
new ally against Russia in Japan much stronger than Wellesley had
in Ranjit Singh and his Sikhs, and in Cabul and Persia. History
will reveal what share Lord Curzon had in bringing about this
alliance ; but meanwhile we may satisfy ourselves with the remark
that some such union of England and Japan is shadowed forth in
his book on the Far East published more than ten years ago.
Moreover, it is a former Indian Viceroy, Lord Lansdowne who is
identified with this triumph of English diplomacy.
But the chief resemblance between the two statesmen lies in
the fact that both were hampered in their work during the latter
part of their careers as rulers of India by unsympathetic and
more or less hostile authorities at home. In the case of Lord
Curzon, it must be said that this opposition is of much shorter
duration; in fact only the last year of his rule has been marked
by the partial disapproval of his policy in Tibet, and in the late
notorious incident. Wellesley, it might be said, was for a series
of years hampered and hindered and even thwarted in his policy.
It was not an unsympathetic or jealous Secretary of State or the
minister who then carried on his functions, the President of the
Board of Control, who delighted in putting a spoke every now and
then in his wheel. Wellesley worked harmoniously enough first
with Dundas and then with Castlereagh, who successively filled that
office in the Cabinet ; of the latter's cordial support of him Welles-
ley has himself spoken in generous terms towards the close of his
life in 1839. "Although he differed with me in some points
connected with the origin of the war, he most zealously and
honourably assisted me in the conduct of it, and gave me his
powerful support in Parliament against all the assaults of my
enemies. He at once saw the great objects of policy which I
contemplated, and which have since been so happily accom-
plished ; and with a generosity and vigour of mind not often
equalled, he gave me every aid in the pursuit of a plan not his
own, and afterwards every just degree of honour and praise in its
ultimate success." (Alison's " Life of Castlereagh," Vol. I., p.
I79-)
But at that time and for long afterwards, till 1858, there was
associated with the President of the Board of Control, another
power, in the end subordinate to him, but capable of making itself
heard, and very often obeyed, in Indian affairs. It was the Court
of Directors, mostly composed of merchant princes, having a
commercial interest in India. They took the narrowest financial
view, and showed themselves very often incapable of seeing the
great objects of Imperial policy. The grand schemes of Welles-
ley whereby he aimed at strengthening the Empire, they did not
17
understand and could not be brought to sympathise with. He
several times resigned, and was called upon to continue at his post
till his high plans should be fully developed and matured. Writing
about his resignation to Dundas in the beginning of 1802, he
expresses himself thus : " A due consideration of the relation in
which I stand towards the Court of Directors, as a servant of the
East India Company, and a sense of the propriety of observing
a submissive and respectful deportment in all my official
communications with the Court, has induced me to abstain
from any official record of the real and efficient causes of
my resignation." (Wellesley Despatches, Vol. III., p. iv.) And
he proceeds to enumerate categorically these causes to his
friend. Among these are some which might well be enumerated
by Lord Curzon as his own. "The Court of Directors has
recently been pleased to interfere directly in several of the
most important details of the local executive government
of India ; in the dismission of persons employed with my full
confidence and approbation for the ordinary despatch of business,
and in the selection of others, in whom I cannot confide, and
whose appointment is entirely contrary to my judgment ; and
that the Court has plainly disclosed an intention of pursuing a
similar system of direct interposition in the future local govern-
ment of these possessions and in the choice of persons to be
employed in the subordinate executive departments of this
Empire." The Directors on this occasion pressed him to continue
at his post at least a year longer, and wrote to him in these terms:
4< We cannot avoid expressing in the strongest terms our con-
viction that the interests of the East India Company will be essen-
tially promoted by his continuance in India for another year for the
purpose of bringing to a conclusion the various arrangements ; we
therefore entertain a confident reliance that the Governor-General
(adverting only to the obligation of superior moment which these
considerations impose) will cordially join with us in feeling the
importance of his stay in India until these objects shall have been
accomplished, and that he will in consequence postpone his
departure from thence." (Ibid. Vol. III. p. xxv.)
But the friction continued to arise on various pretexts, and
the President of the Board of Control found it very hard to preserve
harmony between the Governor-General and Court of Directors.
At length Pitt, the Prime Minister, who had the warmest
personal regard for him, had to write to him at the end of 1804
to come away, as things could not be smoothed between him and
the Directors of the Company. "Even if you have not already
started," wrote Pitt, " what you will learn by the present con-
veyance of the temper and disposition which prevails at the India
House, will naturally lead you to a determination not to remain
longer than you may find necessary to complete such arrange-
ments as you may think it most material to bring to a conclusion
before your departure. Things are brought to a point at which
it seems to be the clear opinion of your brother and of Lord
Melville and Lord Castlereagh, as well as my own, that you could
no longer have the means of carrying out tjie Government in a
18
way either creditable or satisfactory to yourself, or advantageous
to the public service. It therefore seems to us clearly desirable
that you should carry into execution the intention you have
expressed of returning home (if you have not done so at an earlier
period) in the course of next year." (Rosebery, l< Pitt," p. 219.)
Lord Cornwallis was expressly sent out with a mandate to reverse
his splendid policy, an inglorious task on the threshold of which
the weary old man of nearly seventy, who had come out at that
age under a mistaken notion of duty, sank into a grave in this
strange land just a hundred years ago in October 1805.
A generation passed away and Marquess Wellesley's Admin-
istration passed into history ; even ordinary people saw it in its
proper perspective in the light of events which followed. His policy
had a fair trial, after some years, at the hands of his successors,
notably Marquess Hastings, and it had time to develop itself and
work out its own good results. Old animosities which it had
roused died away. A new Court of Directors had grown up in
1841, whose dividends were no longer adversely affected by his
policy, and they voted to erect a marble statue of him as u a
public, conspicuous and permanent mark of the admiration and
gratitude of the East India Company." (Pearce, " Memoirs of
Wellesley," Vol. III., p. 434.) Wellesley was fortunate enough
to see this day when the Court reversed its own former judgment
and passed the verdict of history. Lord Curzon is still young,
and we may be permitted to hope that he may live to see the
judgment which a section of the Indian peoples has hastily and
thoughtlessly passed on his rule reversed by themselves at a later
date in the dry light of reason, and his administration of India
pronounced by history as worthy to rank by the side of those of
Wellesley and Dalhousie.
Barring this small section, his rule has received the emphatic
and enthusiastic approval and approbation of all communities,
English and Indian, in every town and province during the past
three months. Our city of Bombay has been conspicuous among
these. In this it is but following the example set by its citizens
a hundred years ago. The citizens of Bombay, English and
Indian, in August 1805, assembled under the presidency of a
famous man whom our city was then proud to call her own, Sir
James Mackintosh, a noted Whig, be it noted, and opposed to
Wellesley's principles, which he called those of a Sultanised
Englishman ; and voted him an address and a statue, the latter
of which we have in our midst, we are sorry to say, in a very
neglected and dilapidated condition. In this address, in which
we plainly see the master hand of Mackintosh, it was said : ''The
British character is not so far corrupted in us that we can pay
homage to mere power and greatness. It is therefore with
pleasure that we choose this unsuspected moment for declaring
our unfeigned sense of the claims on public admiration and
gratitude which your splendid abilities and unwearied exertions in
the cause of your country have so justly gained for you during
your memorable government of India.'' We cannot do better than
apply these words of our predecessors of a century ago to the
19
statesman who is leaving us this week for good. And the parting
words in which Bombay men took their final leave of Marquess
Wellesley are even more applicable to Lord Curzon to-day.
" We are confident that your Lordship will ever find a happiness
worthy of you in the memory of your important services, in the
renewal of your intercourse with illustrious and accomplished
friends in literature, which you have not only liberally patronised
but most successfully cultivated ; and above all in the perfor-
mance of those duties, public as well as private, of which the
number is increased and the obligations strengthened by your
distinguished talents and eminent station, and the active
discharge of which is the safest and most pure source of enjoy-
ment which it has pleased Divine Providence to allot to mankind."
(Asiatic Annual Register for 1800, p. 75.)
November, 1905.
^K^Pff^M%^ i *--iX r '-.
THE DISPUTE BETWEEN THE
VICEROY AND THE COMMANDER-IN-
CHIEF IN LORD LAWRENCE'S TIME.
The recent unfortunate dispute between Lord Curzon and
Lord Kitchener forcibly recalls to our mind at the close of 1905
the words written in 1883 by Mr. Bosworth Smith, the worthy
biographer of Lord Lawrence, in connection with a similar dispute
which his hero had as Viceroy with the Commander-in-Chief of
his day. "In a country like India," says he in his admirable
Life of Lord Lawrence, " it is difficult under the best of circum-
stances human nature being what it is for the Governor-
General and Commander-in-Chief to pull well together. It is
impossible, unless there be an extraordinary amount of forbear-
ance, tact, and good sense on both sides. The discipline of the
army is the proper function of the Commander-in-Chief, and it is
absolutely necessary, in all questions relating to its distribution,
its pay, and a hundred other matters in which he is deeply
interested, that the Civil Governor and not the Commander-in-
Chief should be supreme. But it has often happened that the
Commander-in-Chief has failed to recognise the fundamental
condition of his existence. He resents as encroachments on the
part of the civil power a control which is essential to its very
existence ; a control without which India would be subject to a
military despotism such as is not tolerated in the most despotic
country in the world, not even in Russia. Hence the strained
relations which have not unfrequently existed between Governor-
General and Commander-in-Chief in India, and which, owing to
the strong characters of the two men, were brought into special
prominence in the case of Lord Dalhousie and Sir Charles
Napier." (Vol. II. p. 309, ed. 1885.)
The strong characters of the two protagonists in the present
struggle might will be likened to those of Dalhousie and Napier,
and in both cases the denouement has been the same, resignation
of one party of Napier, the fiercely stubborn Commander-in-
Chief, in the one, and of Lord Curzon, the placidly firm Governor-
General, in the other. But the prolonged struggle between Lord
Lawrence and his Commander-in-Chief, though equally persistent,
did not come to a dramatic issue, and has therefore been for-
gotten. But it deserves to be recalled, especially on the present
occasion, when the question of supremacy of the Civil power over
Military authority has again come to the front so acutely.
Mr. Bosworth Smith, has touched upon the subject and has
given us the Viceroy's own version of the affair, as contained in
his letters to the Secretary of State of his day, Sir Charles Wood,
21
afterwards Lord Halifax. Sir Hugh Rose was a distinguished
soldier, and had won his crowning laurels during the Mutiny in
his celebrated campaign in Central India. He was appointed
Commander-in-Chief first of Bombay in March, and then of India
in June, 1860. His military renown was great and fresh, like that
of Lord Kitchener who came straight to India from the South
African War. He too, had a great zeal for the reorganisation of
the Army after the great crisis through which it had just then
passed, namely the Mutiny. He carried things with a high hand.
Lord Canning, who was then at the end of his rule, allowed him
to have his own way. Lord Elgin died before he could make his
influence felt. But when Lord Lawrence came out as Viceroy,
at the beginning of 1864, Sir Hugh had to count with an excep-
tionally firm man, whose knowledge of India was not rivalled by
any one. Lord Lawrence at once proceeded to check the undue
reforming zeal of his Commander-in-Chief and to keep it within
bounds. He found this a severe and irksome task ; and it
produced constant friction till the Commander-in-Chief retired in
March, 1865, at the end of his term. For fifteen months this
tension between the Viceroy and the Commander-in-Chief lasted,
and in every matter, even small ones, the soldier tried to assert
himself over the civilian. And it tried all Lord Lawrence's
patience and perseverance to keep Sir Hugh from gaining undue
ascendancy.
That the quarrel did not blaze forth into a scandal was
greatly due to the tact of the Secretary of State, Sir Charles
Wood, a statesman very different from Mr. Brodrick. At the
same time, he was very firm. Indeed, no Secretary of State was
ever firmer. He was called " Maharajah Wood." But he knew
how to glove his iron hand. It would seem that once Sir Charles
Wood suggested very much the same plan that Mr. Brodrick has
actually carried through, in order to put a stop to the wrangles
between the Viceroy and the Commander-in-Chief. But Lord
Lawrence so ably pointed out its mischievousnessthat Sir Charles
at once withdrew his suggestion. This letter is so important just
now that we may well give it here :
" I certainly see and feel that Sir Hugh Rose and I do not get
on well together. I fully admit that there is, and has been, more
or less antagonism between the Governor-General of the day and
the Commander-in-Chief. I see the probability of great mischief
and incovenience arising in consequence of this state of things.
But I am sorry to say that I do not think that the changes you
propose will mend matters. On the contrary, it appears to me
that they will greatly aggravate them. By your plan, the Queen's
Officer who would be sent out to India would be War Minister and
Commander-in-Chief. He would thus have all the power, all the
prestige, all the influence attached to the present office of Com-
mander-in-Chief, added to that which the War Minister as Member
of Council would possess. He would work and influence all the
details of any important military question as Commander-in-Chief,
and then carry it through or report it Home as Member of Council
working the Military Department. He would be Sir Hugh Rose
22
and Sir Robert Napier (then Military Member of Council) together.
I don't see, for instance, how we could send a Despatch Home
which was not in accordance with his views. In a word, by the
combination of the two powers the authority of the Military ele-
ment would overshadow and paralyse that of the Civil power.
As Commander-in-Chief, the War Minister would have the same
Staff to enable him to carry on the struggle with the Governor-
General whenever his views were not admitted." (Life of Lord
Lawrence Vol. II. p. 311.)
Lord Lawrence suggested as the remedy that the Com-
mander-in-Chief should not have a seat in the Council. " He
should be a high executive officer distinctly subordinate to the
Governor-General-in-Council. His views and arguments would
then all, as circumstances dictated, be put on record, and would
go Home bearing the authority and influence which they deserved,
and no more. In the meantime, he would be required to obey
the orders he might receive. I see no other change which would
prove beneficial. We must. I presume, have a Commander-in-
Chief in India. A War Minister alone would not be thought
sufficient. If it would, I would be willing to try the plan. But then
he should be, like any other Member of Council, with no Staff and
no Secretariat but that of the Government of India. Whether
the present system of a modification, such as I have indicated, be
introduced, much must depend on the Officer who is sent out.
He should be eminently a resonable man ; one who could see
and admit that Military arrangements must be subject to modifi-
cations in reference to Civil and Political considerations."
The remarks which Lord Lawrence makes as to his position
as Viceroy, compared to that of the Commander-in-Chief, will
also be found interesting just now: " I myself cannot see how it
is possible to suppose that I can influence a Commander-in-Chief
of strong views who is fully satisfied that he is in the right. I
do not select him ; nor have I any voice in his selection. He
has nothing to hope or fear from me. He has been brought up in
a perfectly different school. He has little sympathy with my
feelings and thoughts. He as a rule does not see the difficulties
and dangers which are apparent to me. In what mode, then,
am I to work ? The Governor-General, nowadays, has no bed
of roses, I can assure you ! He is beset by difficulties on every
side. The unofficial classes have no sympathy with him.
Many of the Civilians are discontented. His patronage is nearly
all gone. That of the Commander-in-Chief is very great,
with all the advantage of belonging to and being supported by a
powerful profession. Why, the Governor-General cannot even
recommend an Officer for the honours which he may think are
fairly due, without the concurrence of the Commander-in-Chief !
What, then, has he to support him ? Only the sense of honour
and duty in his Councillors, and public opinion, which, in this
country is, perhaps, more uncertain than in England " (op. cit.
Vol. II. p. 313).
All these remarks of Lord Lawrence in his letters to
Sir Charles Wood, then Secretary of State, have a special
23
significance for us in view of the present situation, so similar to
that in his own days, and will be read with great interest. One
thing comes out strongly in all these disputes. It is as true to-
day as when Lord Ellenborough, certainly not very remarkable
for taking it to heart, observed before the Select Committee on
Indian Affairs in 1852, that " India is a country in which personal
feelings are allowed to have very great weight." ("Minutes of
evidence before the Commons' Committee," 1852, p. 233).
Personal feelings being what they are, we want a Secretary of
State with the tact of Sir Charles Wood.
August, 1905.
THE DISPUTE BETWEEN LORD CAN-
NING AND LORD ELLENBOROUGH.
The harsh tone of certain recent despatches of Mr. Brodrick,
which are likely to become historical, has been compared to that
of a famous, or rather notorious, despatch which Lord Ellen-
borough, Mr. Brodrick's predecessor of long ago, addressed to
Lord Canning in the matter of what is known in history as the
Oude Proclamation of the latter. But we have never seen the
despatch quoted in full anywhere in this connection, nor has this
curious incident, which though meant as a " snub " to the Gover-
nor-General and calculated to compel his resignation, only
brought about in a sudden and startling manner the fall of the
imperious and tactless President of the Board of Control, been
related anywhere with the fullness and accuracy it deserves as a
close parallel to what has happened in our day. We have un-
earthed this despatch in its entirety from the file of the London
" Times" for 1858, very rarely to be met with in India, which
gives the five paragraphs suppressed in the official copy in the
Blue-book ; and we give it at the close of this article. We are
also enabled to narrate this incident properly with the help of
materials gleaned from Sir Theodore Martin's " Life of the Prince
Consort," the Memoirs of Lord Malmesbury, and Hare's " Life
of the Countess Canning."
Immediately after the relief of Lucknow by Sir Colin Campbell
in March, 1858, Sir James Outram, the Chief Commissioner of
Oude, issued Lord Canning's Proclamation, declaring that with
the exception of only six Talookdars who had remained perfectly
loyal, all the proprietary right in the soil of that province was
confiscated to the British Government, which would dispose of
that right in such manner as may seem fitting. This was judged
too harsh and impolitic by many, including Outram himself, who
wrote to Canning a letter of remonstrance, without, however,
succeeding in bringing about any substantial change. Canning
had forwarded the draft of this Proclamation home, and it had
been approved by the President of the Board of Control, Mr.
Vernon Smith, afterwards Lord Lyveden. But soon after this the
Whig Ministry of Lord Palmerston went out of office, and were
replaced by the Tories under Lord Derby, who were sworn in on
February a6th. This was not known in India for nearly two
months, and Canning issued his proclamation on March 3rd. Lord
Ellenborough replaced Mr. Vernon Smith at the India Office, and
when he first saw the Proclamation on April i2th, he strongly
disapproved of it, and on April 1 8th wrote out and sent to India
his celebrated despatch, condemning it in terms, not of grave
censure alone, but of studied invective. In twenty short para-
25
graphs he proceeded in curt offensive terms not only to disapprove
entirely of the proposed action with regard to the Oude Talook-
dars, but also to condemn the annexation of Oude itself, just
when the English were in the middle of a crisis like the Mutiny.
He showed this despatch to none of his colleagues in the Ministry,
not to Lord Derby his chief, nay, not even to her Majesty the late
Queen. He sent it straight to India without informing anyone.
And what was still more inexplicable, he communicated copies of
it fully three weeks before it could reach Canning, to certain
persons in England. But the climax was reached when he
allowed his Under-Secretary, Mr. Baillie, to lay it in its entirety
on the table of the House of Commons; whilst in the copy that he
himself presented to the House of Lords were omitted, with
ostentatious care which only set in relief his indiscretion, those
five paragraphs which condemned in severe terms the annexation
of Oude, a fact accomplished two years before and whose publi-
cation was, under the circumstances, mischievous in the extreme.
This despatch, as presented to the Commons, was withdrawn,
but the mischief had been done, as it was printed in the
" Times " and was likely to be thence copied in the journals of India
when it would reach that country. The ' Times " thus commented
severely on the conduct of Lord Ellenborough, and it well reflected
the opinion of contemporaries. " The letter which Lord Ellen-
borough has sent out, and which even before it was moved for in
the Lords or the Commons, was already in the hands of his
political allies in this city, is calculated to counteract the force of
this measure (the Oude Proclamation), and go far to paralyse the
operations of our army. It is calculated to aggravate the sense
of wrong, to provoke the foe to more desperate and fanatical
resistance, to expose our friends in Oude to shame and confusion
as the objects of our own political contempt, to protract the war,
to entail future losses on ourselves, and above all to add tenfold
to the calamities certain to overtake the unfortunate people of
Oude. Nobody can doubt for an instant that the end will be the
same, whatever the political party of the statesmen governing
India. Lord Canning's course is the best, the surest, the shortest,
and as we also think, the most honest way to that result.
Perhaps it may have spoken too plainly. Perhaps its language is
political, when the stern warnings of the warrior were rather
required. But substantially it is the best and only course, and
we don't envy her Majesty's present advisers the use they have
made of it to snub the distinguished nobleman who had to preserve
our Indian Empire in a season of unexampled difficulty, hitherto
with no want of humanity, and on the whole, with very great
success." The Cabinet were at first disposed to stand by Ellen-
borough, and Disraeli, their Chancellor of the Exchequer,
announced in the Commons, that the Government disapproved the
policy of the Oude Proclamation in every sense. This important
announcement of the Leader of the House and spokesman of the
Cabinet was, as Lord Canning complained on lyth June, instantly
carried by the telegraph over the length and breadth of India.
But the Whigs, who were disunited then, came to the rescue
26
of their Governor-General, and Lord Palmerston and Lord John
Russell patched up their personal differences and brought up the
matter for discussion in Parliament on May I4tb. Mr. Cardwell
in the Commons and Lord Shaftesbury in the Lords moved votes
of censure on the Ministry. The former was to the effect that
" the House has seen with regret and serious apprehension that
her Majesty's Government have addressed the Governor-General
of India through the Secret Committee of the Court of Directors,
and have published a despatch, condemning in strong terms the
conduct of the Governor-General; and is of opinion that such a
course on the part of the Government must tend, in the present
circumstances of India, to produce the most prejudicial effect, by
weakening the authority of the Governor-General, and encourag-
ing resistance of those who are in arms against us." Lord
Shaftesbury, the famous philanthropist, bore already then a very
high character, and was considered to be above party politics.
Disraeli alluded to this in his picturesque manner in his speech at
Slough before his constituents. u The cabal, which had itself
rather a tainted character, chose its instruments with pharisaical
accuracy. I can assure you that, when the Right Honourable
gentleman who brought forward the motion in the House of
Commons rose to impeach me, I was terrified at my own short-
comings, and I listened attentively to a Nisi Prius narrative,
ending with a resolution which I think must have been drawn up
by a conveyancer. In the other House, a still greater reputation
condescended to appear upon the human stage. Gamaliel
himself with broad philacteries upon his forehead, called upon
God to witness in the voice and accents of majestic adoration,
that he was not as other men were, for that he was never
influenced by party motives." ("Annals of Our Time," Vol. I.
P. 5'9)'
But a greater personage intervened. The late Queen
thoroughly disapproved of Ellenborough's harsh conduct, and
wrote to Lord Derby to that effect ; and this must be said to have
brought about in the main the resignation of that talented but
eccentric politician. " When these facts came to the knowledge of
the Queen," says Sir Theodore Martin, in his " Life of the Prince
Consort," a Her Majesty felt deeply the unfairness and irregularity
of the whole prcceeding, and the danger likely to ensue from the
diffusion of the document throughout India. Meanwhile the
sensation created in the political world by the wilful act of Lord
Ellenborough, adopted without even consulting his colleagues,
very quickly brought home to Lord Derby the consciousness
that a fatal mistake had been committed. On the gth May
the Queen wrote to him that while she was anxious not to add to
Lord Derby's difficulties, she must not leave unnoticed the fact
that the Despatch in question ought never to have been sent,
without having been submitted to the Sovereign. v{ She hopes,"
her Majesty added, ''that Lord Derby will take care that Lord
Ellenborough shall not repeat this, which must place her in a
most embarrassing situation." But Ellenborough had repeated
this conduct, and sent another despatch to India without first
27
laying it before the Queen. But this Despatch was very sensible,
and approved by the Queen, though she could not help observing ;
" It is a great pity that Lord Ellenborough, with his knowledge,
experience, energy, and ability, should be so entirely unamenable
to general rules of conduct. The Queen has been for some time
alarmed at his writing letters of his own to all the most important
Indian chiefs and kings, explaining his policy. All this renders
the position of a Governor-General almost untenable, and that of
the Government at home very hazardous." The soundness of
this view, says Sir Theodore, was brought painfully home to Lord
Derby and his Cabinet. " A strong feeling that Lord Canning
had been most unfairly dealt with had sprung up immediately on
the Secret Despatch being made public ; and it was felt that the
task of restoring peace in Oude had been enormously increased by
the language in which our annexation of that province had been
spoken of. The Ministry were inculpated, in the general opinion,
along with Lord Ellenborough," ( u Life of the Prince Consort,"
Vol. IV. p. 226.)
Seeing all this storm raging, Lord Ellenborough resolved upon
sacrificing himself to save Lord Derby and the Cabinet. In a
letter to the Queen on May loth, he tendered his resignation, and
then informed his chief that he had done so. This the latter
caught at very eagerly to get out of the scrape. But the Queen
rightly considered the whole Government responsible. As she
wrote to Lord Derby : u The fact of the Governor-General
having been publicly reprimanded and his policy condemned,
remains the same, although the Government have done what they
could to mitigate the consequences of what could not be undone."
The resignation was of course accepted. The " Times " remarked
upon this resignation in these very strong, but not too strong,
terms : " All of Lord Ellenborough's acts show a man not to be
left alone, and hardly capable of acting for himself. It was a step
of no small risk to give such a man the greatest opportunity of
doing mischief at the disposal of Government. But even then, if
the man had been watched like a wild beast, or a madman, he
might have been found a good servant, though a bad master.
Yet strange to say, after all these warnings, Her Majesty's
present Ministers appear to have given this eccentric nobleman
their absolute confidence. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was
quite delighted to inform the Commons that his lordship had sent
out a letter censuring Lord Canning's proclamation in every sense.
Lord Derby entirely justified the publication of the despatch as
a measure of necessity, now the proclamation was in people's
hands and also known to be under censure. All this promised at
least a fair stand-up fight. But all at once the courage of the
whole Cabinet oozes out at their fingers, and we are informed that
Lord Ellenborough has been thrown overboard and is now at the
mercy of the waves."
The resignation of the peccant Minister succeeded in its
object of saving his colleagues. Ellenborough said in the Lords
" To accuse my colleagues of any misconduct with respect to
the publication of that letter is to raise a constitutional
28
fiction. I am responsible, and let me alone bear whatever censure
may be attributed to the act of publication." In the Lords,
Shaftesbury's vote of censure was thrown out. In the Commons,
Cardwell withdrew his motion after a very animated debate of
several nights. The Tories were jubilant. Disraeli described
the scene of this collapse in one of his most striking similes in a
memorable speech. " I can only liken the scene to the mutiny
of the Bengal army, regiment after regiment, corps after corps,
general after general, all acknowledged that they could not march
through Coventry. It was a convulsion of nature rather than any
ordinary transaction of human life. I can only liken it to one of
those earthquakes which take place in Calabria or Peru ; there was
a rumbling murmur, a groan, a shriek, a sound of distant thunder.
No one knew whether it came from the top or the bottom of the
House. There was a rent, a fissure in the ground ; and then a
village disappeared ; then a tall tower toppled down ; and the
whole of the Opposition benches became one great dissolving
view of anarchy." Though Disraeli could speak thus to inspirit
his followers, he knew better than to think that the Opposition
was really so disorganised as he described it to be. Lord
Malmesbury. who was Lord Derby's Foreign Secretary and a
colleague of Disraeli, thus records the latter's real sentiments in
his Memoirs: " I regret the withdrawal, as a vote of censure is
like an attack on a man's honour, that ought to be met and
defeated, not evaded. Disraeli defends the course he has taken
of allowing the motion to be withdrawn, by saying the feeling of
the House was decidedly in favour of it, the debate having from
the first day taken a much larger view of the question than the
motion indicated, and turned upon the policy of the Oude Pro-
clamation and of the Government's disapprobation of the policy it
ennunciated." The Ministry of Lord Derby was saved, and had
a fresh lease of life for a year, during which it successfully trans-
ferred the Government of India to the Crown. Ellenborough,
who was then sixty-eight, held no other ofHce till his death in 1871,
and had no more opportunity for those blazing indiscretions which
were quite a habit with him, and which were the cause of his
recall from the Governor-Generalship of India fourteen years
before this incident happened.
Whilst all this was happening in England, Lord Canning
was lying seriously ill of fever at Allahabad. He knew that since
his party had gone out there was greater disposition on the part
of the new Ministers to criticise his rule in India in an unfriendly
spirit. He had sent home a private letter explaining his Procla-
mation and its motives to Mr. Vernon Smith, the Whig President
of the Board of Control, but it is said this was not seen by Lord
Ellenborough when the latter wrote his despatch. The real
reason of that ill-considered and ill-natured document seems to
have been Elienborough's opinion that he was striking at the late
Whig Government through it, and he thought little of its effects
in India. Lord Malmesbury says that it was believed that the
Proclamation was sent to Canning from England by the late
Government ; and he also says that he could not credit it. But
29
Ellenborough believed it, and hence with youthful rashness,
though he was sixty-eight, he penned the despatch, thinking he was
scoring over his adversaries at home. That was also the reason
why he was in such a hurry to publish it in London before it
could reach India, and why he had introduced those stinging
paragraphs about the Oude annexation, for which Palmerston's
Whig Ministry was responsible.
A short telegram, which is said to be very unpleasantly
worded, was the only intimation Canning had received of the
despatch. The telegraph was then in its incipient stage, and had
been used that very year in a tentative and roundabout way.
A lady of his household thus writes of its receipt here: tfc I am
surprised that any one in England could write that Despatch as
to itself, independent of the marvellous insult and unheard-of
conduct in publishing it. But then no one in England can
comprehend the enormous amount of mischief such words will do
through the length and breadth of the land. When the mail
arrived Lord Canning was only beginning to recover from his
attack, and I trust Charles (his Secretary) kept the Despatch
back till letters from warm friends could lessen the insult and
worry. No one can conceive the work he has done of late the
terrific work." (Hare, '"Two Noble Lives," Vol. II. p. 448).
He received many such letters even from his political
opponents. Lord Malmesbury, who was in the Ministry of Lord
Derby and at the time Foreign Secretary, wrote as follows soon
after he came to know of the indiscretion of his colleague. " My
dear Canning I am sure you will believe that as perhaps your
oldest friend, I am much annoyed at the events of the last few
days. I must by the laws of ' solidarite,' take my share of blame
in acts which, though marked with inexcusable indiscretion, had
no motives of personal hostility to yourself. I never saw the
Proclamation nor Lord Ellenborough's despatch until I read both
in the " T mes " of two days ago, for neither came before the
Cabinet. I consider that I am justified, although a Minister of
the Government that has committed towards you and the country
the blunder of publishing Lord Ellenborough's secret despatch,
in advising you as a private friend, not to follow the bent which
your mind may probably take at first, if it be that of resigning
your post. Neither Lord Derby nor any of your party wish it, and
the whole country is ready to give you all the credit you merit for
having so well encountered the extraordinary difficulties of your
position. To resign on a point of party and political honour at
the moment when you have all but consummated your work
would be sacrificing your future fame to a temporary provocation,
which ought to weigh an ounce in the balance. The Opposition
are to bring in the subject this week in the most hostile form, and
may very likely turn us out ; but if we remain in office, I repeat
that Lord Derby and the Cabinet are friendly towards you. I told
the Queen last night that I should write to you in this sense, and
she seemed very anxious that I should do so. You will consider
this advice as very strictly confidential." (" Memoirs of an Ex-
Minister," Vol. II. p. 118.)
30
This frank and honourable letter seems to have had great
weight in deciding Canning's conduct. He replied to the Despatch
in dignified terms showing a firm attitude. "No taunts or
sarcasms," wrote he, u come from what quarter they may, will turn
me from the path which I believed to be my public duty. I believe
that a change in the head of the Government of India at this time,
if it took place under circumstances which indicated repudiation,
on the part of the Government of England, of the policy which
has hitherto been pursued towards the rebels of Oude, would
seriously retard the pacification of the country. I believe that
the policy has been from the beginning merciful without weakness,
and indulgent without compromise of the dignity of the Govern-
ment. Firm in these convictions, I will not in a time of un-
exampled difficulty, danger, and toil, lay down of my own act the
high trust which I have the honour to hold." (Hare, op. cit. Vol.
II. p. 453.) Canning remained at his post of duty three years
longer, returning home at the end only to die in three weeks.
LORD ELLENBOROUGH'S DESPATCH.
The Secret Committee of the Court of Directors of the East
India Company to the Governor-General of India in Council.
April 19, 1858.
1. Our letter of the 24th of March, 1858, will have put
you in possession of our general views with respect to the treatment
of the people in the event of the evacuation of Lucknow by the
enemy.
2. On the I2th instant we received from you a copy of the
letter, dated the 3rd of March, addressed by your Secretary to the
Secretary of the Chief Commissioner in Oude, which letter enclosed
a copy of the proclamation to be issued by the Chief Commissioner
as soon as the British troops should have command of the city of
Lucknow, and conveyed instructions as to the manner in which
he was to act with respect to different classes of persons, in
execution of the views of the Governor-General.
3. The people of Oude will see only the Proclamation.
4. The authoritative expression of the will of the Government
informs the people that six persons, who are named as having
been steadfast in their allegiance, are henceforward the sole here-
ditary proprietors of the lands they held when Oude came under
British rule, subject only to such moderate assessment as may be
imposed upon them ; that others in whose favour like claims may
be established will have conferred upon them a proportionate
measure of reward and honour ; and that with these exceptions the
proprietary right in the soil of the province is confiscated to the
British Government.
5. We cannot but express to you our apprehension that this
decree, pronouncing the disinheritance of a people, will throw
difficulties almost insurmountable in the way of the re-establish-
ment of peace.
6. We are under the impression that the war in Oude has
31
derived much of its popular character from the rigorous manner
in which, without regard to what the chief landholders had become
accustomed to consider as their rights, the summary settlement
had, in a large portion of the province, been carried out by your
officers.
7. The landholders of India are as much attached to the
soil occupied by their ancestors, and are as sensitive with respect
to the rights in the soil they deem themselves to pcssess, as the
occupiers of land in any country of which we have a knowledge.
8. Whatever may be your ultimate and undisclosed inten-
tions, your Proclamation will appear to deprive the great body of
the people of all hope upon the subject most dear to them as
individuals, while the substitution of our rule for that of their
native sovereign has naturally excited against us whatever they
may have of national feeling.
*g. We cannot but in justice consider that those who resist
our authority in Oude are under very different circumstances
from those who have acted against us in provinces which have
been long under our Government.
*io. We dethroned the King of Oude and took possession
of his kingdom by virtue of a treaty which had been subsequently
modified by another treaty under which, had it been held to be in
force, the course we adopted could not have been lawfully pursued ;
but we held that it was not in force, although the fact of its not
having been ratified in England, as regarded the provision on
which we rely for our justification, had not been previously made
known to the King of Oude.
*n. That sovereign and his ancestors had been uniformly
faithful to their treaty engagements with us, however ill they may
have governed their subjects.
*i2. They had more than once assisted us in our difficulties
and not a suspicion had ever been entertained of any hostile
disposition on their part towards our Government.
*i3. Suddenly the people saw their king taken from amongst
them and our administration substituted for his, which however
bad was at least native, and this sudden change of Government
was immediately followed by a summary settlement of the revenue,
which in a very considerable portion of the province, deprived the
most influential landholders of what they deemed to be their
property ; or what certainly had long given wealth and distinction
and power to their families.
14. We must admit that under these circumstances, the
hostilities which have been carried on in Oude have rather the
character of legitimate war than that of rebellion, and that the
people of Oude should rather be regarded with indulgent con-
sideration than made the objects of a penalty exceeding in extent
and severity almost any which has been recorded in history as
inflicted upon a subdued nation.
15. Other conquerors, when they have succeeded in overcom-
ing resistance, have excepted a few persons as still deserving of
punishment, but have, with a genuine policy extended their
clemency to the great body of the people.
1 6. You have acted upon a different principle. You have
reserved a few as deserving of special favour, and you have struck
with what they will feel as the severest of punishment the mass
of the inhabitants of the country.
17. We cannot but think that the precedents from which
you have departed will appear to have been conceived in a spirit
of wisdom superior to what appears in the precedent you have
made.
1 8. We desire that you will mitigate in practice the stringent
severity of the decree of confiscation you have issued against the
landholders of Oude.
19. We desire to see British authority in India rest upon
the willing obedience of a contented people ; there cannot be
contentment where there is a general confiscation.
20. Government cannot long be maintained by any force in
a country where the whole people is rendered hostile by a sense of
wrong; and if it were possible so to maintain it it would not be
a consummation to be desired.
The paragraphs marked with an asterisk 9 to 13, were sup-
pressed as soon as they were inadvertently published in the Des-
patch as laid on the table of the House of Commons. They are not
to be found in the Blue-book (Vol. XLIII. 1857-8 p. 410) ; and are
given here from the " Times " of May 8, 1858.
SIR A. LYALL ON ENGLAND'S
RETENTION OP INDIA.
On England's right to hold India and her continuance there,
briefly touched upon by me in a previous page, Sir Alfred Lyall has
some remarks so full of political wisdom that they may be given
here, especially as they occur in one of his unsigned contributions
to the famous Edinburgh Review (cf. Laughton, "Life of Reeve, 1>
Vol. II. p. 329.) These articles of the most philosophic among
living Anglo-Indians are valuable contributions to the theory and
practice of Indian politics, and deserve the closest attention, which
they have not generally received on account of the accident of
their anonymous appearance in a Review which still adheres
rigidly to the rule of preserving the incognito of its writers. I have
had the pleasure and the privilege of calling attention very recently
in the Pioneer (Dec. 23, 1905) to these articles, which I trust may
soon be collected in a separate volume by their distinguished author.
No contributions to periodical literature deserve this better.
" We are aware that proof of the legitimacy of our govern-
ment will not altogether satisfy those who question whether it is
morally profitable, and whether our retention of the country is for
the benefit of the Indian people. But it is most inexpedient,
because almost impossible, to argue this question upon the basis
of reason and utility. We can only say that the English have in-
contestably substituted a higher and better condition of existence
for the state of things that our conquest swept away, that we
have set up a moral standard far beyond that of any other govern-
ment in Asia, and that the withdrawal of our dominion, within
any period that can now be foreseen, would have the effect cf a
political earthquake shaking everything to its foundations, and
would probably throw all Asia into confusion. To go further, and
to encourage the disposition that is showing itself in England, and
is being imitated in parts of India, of treating the morality of our
rule in India as an open question of ethics, will only lead the
discussion away into a region of fallacies, illusions, and disap-
pointments. The plain fact of conquest not only silences but
satisfies the warlike races of India, who submit willingly and are
fairly loyal to a strong and just rule, and who are no mean judges
of political realities. But in those parts which have been longest
under our civilising processes, where the recollection of what went
before our time has been rubbed out of the memory of the oldest
inhabitant, and especially in provinces that have no political ties
or traditions of their own, there is a natural disposition to follow
the example now set by one political party in England, of treating
the retention of India by the English as a debatable matter, as a
claim needing to be constantly explained and justified ; or else as
34
a temporary arrangement for managing the affairs of India during
its period of tutelage.
"Upon this view of the situation we feel bound to remark
that, however essential it may be to keep constantly before our eyes
the moral purpose running through the existence and conservation
of our dominion in India, yet to stake our title to this great posses-
sion upon grounds of morality or temporary expediency, is to risk
it upon an unstable, because always a questionable foundation.
In all settled governments it is a great advantage, almost a
necessity, that the supreme authority should be personified in
some ultimate idea or institution placed in the common estimation
beyond discussion ; and from the English point of view this
fundamental principle should be the permanency and indisputable
right of the Queen's dominion in India. It may be proper for the
nation to entertain as a remote eventuality the notion of trans-
ferring India to the Indians whenever they become competent for
autonomy, and to regard it, in the abstract, as a consummation to
be devoutly wished for ; but if this intention be constantly
proclaimed publicly and authoritatively, we are very likely to
delay and defeat our own ends. For, in the first place, the
question as to the precise stage and degree of moral and material
progress at which the Government may be safely handed over to
the natives of India would soon become a matter of frequent
discussion, recurring with increased animation, and causing
chronic divisions and uncertainty. Government upon such a
provisional theory as this has never yet been intelligible to the
greater part of mankind ; and in India, where everything has
hitherto rested upon direct authority, to make the right to rule a
matter of argument and demonstration would be like the building
of the Tower of Babel ; the whole enterprise would break down
amid the confusion of tongues. In the second place, although
no English statesman would hesitate to grant India all the in-
dependence and autonomy that she can fairly earn and exercise
under the British Crown, yet we are bound to take heed lest we
promise more than we are able to perform, or raise premature
expectations in regard to a political future that no one can yet
foresee. History affords very few precedents warranting the
belief that any country has ever been trained and disciplined from
a low level up to a high standard of self-governing capacity and
social union, by the deliberate tuition of a superior governing
race ; and in a country like India, of vast extent and population,
full of manifold elements of discord and disunion, the experiment
is surrounded by extraordinary difficulties. That we shall do our
best to promote the political elevation and welfare of our Indian
fellow-subjects, is certain ; but we are likely to succeed better by
encouraging an active principle of amalgamation and cohesion
than by pointing to the goal of eventual separation. We must
deal with India as with an integral part of our empire, that is to
grow steadily into closer connection and common interest with
England ; not as with a dependency that is to be schooled up to a
certain point and then turned out into the world to shift for itself.
To delude the inexperienced Indians with vague promises of
35
setting them up on their own account in political life, as soon as
they shall have learnt our lessons, is not political morality. The
immense majority of those who listen to such professions are
puzzled or incredulous ; the advanced party of educated natives,
eager and sanguine, do not consider that the reversion of India,
if ever we become tired of holding it, would in all probability fall
to the Indians, a race supremely intellectual and philosophic, but
deficient in the political faculty. Two powerful States, full of
energetic and adventurous races, are at this moment overhang-
ing the northern frontiers of India : Russia which commands all
North-West Asia ; and China which has for ages ruled the richest
and most populous regions of the North-East : while on her long
seaboard, India, as soon as she is left to herself, will be again
exposed to attack from all maritime powers. A country so
situated must take a very high degree in the art of political
consolidation before it can establish itself as a self-sacrificing,
self-preserving commonwealth or federation of States within its
natural boundaries. For the present, therefore, the less we in-
dulge in pledges or speculations as to the final outcome of our
administration of India, the better it will be for all concerned. If
the English are content to declare that they hold India by a just
and valid title, and that they intend to preserve and improve their
heritage, having the welfare of the people as their paramount
object, that is a position plain and profitable to us all. If they
propound for academic debate the thesis as to the moral justifica-
tion of their government, and if they persist in asserting that they
only desire to remain so long as India may require their good
offices, they may soon get worsted in argument, and later they
may find themselves elbowed, more or less politely, altogether
out of the CQ\miry"(Edinbttrgh Review, Vol. CLIX. pp. 38-41.)
Biographical Notice of Mr. R. P. KARKARIA in
" Dictionary of Indian Biography " by Mr. C. E.
Buckland, C.T.E., I.C.S., etc., London: Sonnens-
chein, 1906.
KARKARIA, RUSTOMJI PESTONJI.
11 BORN at Bombay, May i6th, 1869 : educated at St.
Xavier's School and College: B.A., 1888: Senior
Fellow : Ass. Professor of English and History, 1891 :
Examiner to the Bombay University in History, Geo-
graphy, Logic, Moral Philosophy, Political Economy :
"helped to found, in 1896, the Collegiate Institution :
became its Principal and Professor of English Literature :
his action in obtaining the recognition of private Colleges
led partly to the Universities Act of 1904 : Fellow of the
Royal Historical Society, 1898 : M. R. A. S., Bombay,
1888 : M. R. A. S., London, 1900 : Member of the
American Oriental Society, 1897: has contributed
papers to many Journals of Societies, also to the Anglo-
Indian and English newspapers on Indian subjects :
discovered and published Carlyle's Lectures on European
Literature, with notes : author of works on Indian
History and Politics, Sivaji, Akbar, Essays on English
History, India under Victoria, on the Native Press :
translated the Parsi Sacred Book, the Dinkard : served
on Committees of the Parsi Community to consider
questions of Religious Education, of Social Amelioration
of admitting Proselytes, and other subjects on which
he has written largely/' (P. 129.)
The Notice in WHO'S WHO latest edition; 1906, (p. 929).
Adam and Charles Black, London.
" KARKARIA, R. P.; born Bombay, i6th May 1869 ;
B. A., 1888 ; Fellow and Professor, St. Xavier's College,
Bombay, 1891 ;. Principal, Collegiate institution, 1898;
'Examiner in History and Philosophy, Bombay Univer-
'sity'; F. R. Hist. S., (1898); M. R. A. S. PUBLICATIONS:
Edited Carlyle's Lectures on European Literature, and
'Parnell's Poems; India Forty Years of Progress and
: Reform, India since the Mutiny, Historical Sketch of the
Parsis, Shiyaji, Akbar and other Essays ; Bibliography
of Bombay,; Translated Parsi Sacred Book, the Pahlavi
Dinkard ; Death of Shivaji. Contributes to leading
Anglo-Indian Papers ancl English. Reviews ; Member
of various Commissions appointed by the Parsi Com-
'munity on Religfous Education, on Proselytism, on
Religious. Trusts, etc^ Is engaged -on writing -a Histori-
cal .Work on the Parsis on; an extensive scale, RECREA-
TIONS ":, Book-hunting and Coin collecting. ^ADDRESS :
Tardeo, Bombay.". (P. 929.)"
Opinions of some Scholars and of the Press
on Mr. R. P. Karkaria's Writings.
LATE RIGHT HON. PROF. F. MAX MULLER, P. C., says:
" See an excellent account by Karkaria."
Auld Lang Syne, II Series, page 121.
M. AUGUSTIN FlLON, THE EMINENT FRENCH WRITER, IN A*
LONG ARTICLE IN THE " JOURNAL DBS DfiBATS," THE
LEADING FRENCH NEWSPAPER, says :
" Again there is another reason to speak of Mr. Karkaria.
By talent and literary gifts he is a real writer. With one
exception, no native who uses English to express his
thought handles it with such ease and distinction. His book
is a book indeed, and there are few volumes published in
England of which we can say as much. But the principal
reason for hearing Mr. Karkaria is that he lays before us a
new point : entire confidence and enthusiastic gratitude
towards the English . . . ."
THE HON'BLE MR. E. GILES, M.A., C.I.E., DIRECTOR OF
PUBLIC INSTRUCTION, BOMBAY, IN HIS REPORT TO
GOVERNMENT ON INDIAN PUBLICATIONS, says :
" Under the heading of poetry, Mr. R. P. Karkaria's
* Selections from Parnell ' deserve mention. Probably few
have learnt or remember the name of Parnell, the Irish poet
of the early part of the eighteenth century, and Mr. Kar-
karia's excellent Preface is perhaps as instructive as the
three short poems which it introduces. He at least main-
tains by this little volume his established character for intel-
ligent research.*'
THE RIGHT HON'BLE W. E. H. LECKY, AUTHOR OF "HIS-
TORY OF ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY," writes:
"... I have been much interested by your ' Essays
in English History,' and am flattered by finding that I have
been able to contribute something of them."
SIR GEORGE BIRDWOOD, K.C.I. E., writes in the
Bombay Gazette :
. . . In conclusion, permit me to express the hope
that Mr, Karkaria may devote himself to the continuation of
the labours of the late James Douglas in gradually recover-
ing from oblivion all that is of good report and that tends
to instruction and edification in the local history of the loyal
Town and Island of Bombay. He seems to be equipped
with every necessary implement for the work."
MR. R. W. FRASER, LL.B., I.C.S. (RETIRED), IN HIS " LITE-
RARY HISTORY OF INDIA," says :
"In his book R. P. Karkaria thus points out from an
Indian point of view the tendencies so apparent to all in
one direction of the continued contact with a new and West-
ern civilization .... In the same work the opinion is
given on this problem of the future, the most momentous
not only for India but for the whole civilised world. . . ."
(pp. 442-3).
MR. A. T. CRAWFORD, C.M.G., I.C.S. (RETIRED), IN HIS
" OUR TROUBLES IN THE DECCAN," says :
" This graphic description is now shown, on very excellent
authority, to be not quite accurate, not quite fair to Shivaji.
Mr. R. P. Karkaria, a Parsi historian of high repute, has
hunted out old ' bakhars ' (documents) of undoubted
authenticity, and proves in an able work on Pratapghad
that . . . ." (p. in).
THE LATE DR. G. O. LEITNER, EDITOR OF THE "ASIATIC
QUARTERLY REVIEW," says in his Review :
" Our learned contributor, from whose pen we hope to
receive a continuance of valuable contributions to Indian
history, has on the special subjects
so ably dealt with by Professor Karkaria We
shall be much interested in learning from the distinguished
author of the above "
[The TIMES, London.]
" Mr. Karkaria, the author of the present book, is a Parsi,
and has already obtained an honourable place in English
literature as Editor of Carlyle's unpublished Lectures from
the original manuscript."
iii
[The DAILV NEWS.]
" The author has already distinguished himself as a writer
on Anglo-Indian history. . . . The Professor, one of the
most eminent of native scholars, exemplifies in his own
person the result of that interaction between English and
Native influences which he proposes to elucidate."
[The SATURDAY REVIEW.]
*' From the literary standpoint Mr. Karkaria's work is
unexceptionable. He writes English easily and gracefully."
[The ATHENA UM.]
' He has done his work honestly and well. He writes
English fluently, and judiciously goes to best authorities
for his facts and ideas.
[The LITERARY WORLD.]
" This work merits attention from the light it throws upon
the present state of religious and social movements in India.
The writer, a native of Bombay, uses the English language
with wonderful facility and skill, yet seems to have retained
his hold on native thought and action in spite of his acquisi-
tion of a polished English style."
[The MANCHESTER GUARDIAN.]
" Mr. Karkaria's book is well and thoughtfully written
throughout and is a very able representation of the princi-
ples of the quieter school of Indian liberalism . . .
In this connection we may recommend some very thoughtful
remarks by Mr. Karkaria on the general subject of Chris-
tianity in India."
[The GUARDIAN.]
"It is pleasantly written and contains in the interstices
of biography, as it were, much information respecting the
tendencies of thought in modern India The late
Dr. Wilson to whose benevolent zeal for education Mr,
Karkaria bears the most honourable testimony. "
[Literature (published by the London TIMES).]
" Professor Karkaria is one of the most typical represen-
tatives of English culture in India, and his book will be a
valuable source of information about our great dependency.
He had the strange good fortune to discover the long-lost
MS. of the Lectures of Carlyle . . . ."
[The GLASGOW HERALD.]
" Mr. Karkaria, besides writing in a wonderfully good
English style, shows a wise liberalism of thought, which, if
shared by many of his educated countrymen, is a good omen
for the future of India. . . . His remarks on the present
state of native opinion in India are not the least valuable
part of his book, and well deserve the attention of our
public men. "
[The WESTMINSTER GAZETTE.]
" A most interesting sketch which will, we trust, be very
widely read. v
[COLONIES AND INDIA.]
" The author handles his subject well, and the way in
which all the good points are brought out in the book is
simply marvellous, while the language is clear and concise.
The author is to be congratulated on the successful way in
which he has written a work not alone of an interesting
character, but one full of valuable and useful information to
the reading public. "
[INDIA (LONDON).]
" Mr. Karkaria has already done excellent service to
literature by rescuing, from the records of the Bombay
Asiatic Society, Carlyle's unpublished Lectures . . . He
now takes another step in advance, and presents to English
readers a concise, clear and effective sketch "
[The PIONEER.]
" What is the age of another Anglo-Indian word now
equally popularised 'grass widow'? Mr. R. P. Karkaria,
a Bombay scholar, brings the question forward in a note in
the Athencsum apropos of its appearance in the fourth
volume of the New Oxford English Dictionary just pub-
lished. In this the earliest quotation given for the word is
Lang's Wanderings in India, published in 1859. Mr. Karka-
ria, however, is able to produce an instance fifteen years
earlier than that. "
{The MADRAS MAIL.]
" In the thoughtful article on 'The Oldest Paper in India' in
the Calcutta Review^ Mr. R. P. Karkaria touches on an
important point in the concluding paragraph, namely, the
encouragement that might and should be given by Govern-
ment to native newspapers of good standing. "
[The HINDU, Madras.]
" Mr. R. P. Karkaria, who is, we believe, a Parsi gentle-
man, seems to be a gifted writer. The volume is certainly
very interesting and, besides showing considerable literary
ability, contains shrewd and edifying observations by the
author on the present condition of Indian society ....
. . On the whole Mr. Karkaria has written an exceedingly
readable book, and if he is an Indian, we might add,
he has brought credit to the literary capacity of an educated
Indian mind. "
[The RAST GOFTAR, Bombay.]
" We are extremely glad to see that among the subjects
to be treated in the Dictionary of National Biography
edited by Sir Leslie Stephen and Mr. Sidney Lee the name
of the late Mr. Curwen, editor of the Times of India and a
distinguished writer, has been included, and this pleasure
is increased by the fact that our distinguished Parsi man of
letters, Mr. R. P. Karkaria, a close friend of the late Mr.
Curwen, has been entrusted with the biography in this
monumental work. Mr. Karkaria is the only Indian writer
who has had the honour done him of being invited to take
a part in this grand work of sixty-four volumes, which will
prove, for generations to come, a monument of the triumph
of literary skill and combination on the part of our best
writers, and generous enterprise on the part of the munificent
publishers, Messrs. Smith and Elder. Nearly all the best
English writers of to-day have written for this great work,
which is more representative in this respect than even the
Encyclopedia Britannica^ and we are greatly gratified to
find one of our writers associated with them. "
[The INDIAN MIRROR, Calcutta.]
Mr. R. P. Karkaria, the writer of this valuable sketch, has
acquitted himself very creditably indeed. Master of a
facile pen and keen observer of the signs of the times that
he is, he has clothed his work literally in 'thoughts that
breathe and words that burn'."
[The PIONEER.]
" The current number of the Calcutta Review contains a
most interesting article by Mr. Karkaria entitled ' 1837 an ^
1897, two years of calamities.' The succession of coinci-
dences is certainly remarkable and suggests not a few re-
flections. . . . Perhaps the most striking parallel be-
tween the two years, which are separated by sixty years,
the space allotted to two generations of men, is the existence
of Plague in India in the year 1837, the measures taken to
prevent its spread, and the reception given to these measures.
We rubbed our eyes as we read the passages of the article
dealing with this subject and wondered whether we were
not suffering from ocular delusion, whether, in fact, We were
not reading the comments of a modern journal. Mr. Karka-
ria quotes Metcalfe's distinguished biographer to this effect.
We join with Mr. Karkaria in regretting that Metcalfe's
minute was not published in the selections made by his
biographer, Kaye. A copy, if not the original, is probably
in existence, and we trust that it will be published. It would
be extremely interesting at the present time. For further
details our readers will do well to consult Mr. Karkaria's
article."
[The PIONEER.}
" Some time ago in connection with an interesting article
by Mr. Karkaria in the Calcutta Review we said it would be
interesting to have the minute on the Plague promulgated by
Sir Charles Metcalfe in 1837 reproduced at the present time.
By the courtesy of Mr. Karkaria, who has unearthed a copy,
we are now able to give the document, which presents
many interesting points of comparison.
" The minute on the Plague which Sir Charles Metcalfe
wrote while Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West Pro-
vinces in 1837, is reproduced elsewhere, a copy having been
placed at our disposal by the courtesy of Mr. R. P. Karkaria,
of Bombay."
[From the " INDIAN MAGAZINE AND REVIEW," ISSUED BY THE
NATIONAL INDIAN ASSOCIATION, ED. Miss MANNING, London.]
"Mr. R.P. Karkaria, the learned Parsi historical scholar,
who has written on Shivaji, Mahmud of Ghazni and other
Indian historical subjects and whose new book 'India : Forty
Years of Progress and Reform,' recently published by the
Clarendon Press, Oxford, has been welcomed by the press
in England, France and India, delivered a very interesting
lecture before the Bombay Royal Asiatic Society on the
subject of ' Akbar and the Parsis,' in which he investi-
gated the subject of that enlightened monarch's connexion
with the famous religion of Zoroaster. The lecture was the
second of a series which will form the chapters of
Mr. Karkaria's forthcoming book on Akbar's New Religion"
Mr. Karkaria examined exhaustively the whole
subject and showed that Akbar was affected much by the
pure faith of Zoroaster, and that -the honour of impressing
it upon him is due to Ardeshir, a learned and pious priest
from Kerman in Persia, who has been expressly mentioned
in this connexion by the Dabislan, the chief authority on
the subject of Akbar's religious views. "
The TIMES OF INDIA, in the Course of a
Leading Article, says :
" There is now no need to introduce Mr. Karkaria to the
public for, as the London Times said the other day in a long
and appreciative notice of this new book, he has obtained
an honourable place in English literature by his scholarly
edition of Carlyle's unpublished lectures from the original
manuscript. He is, moreover, well known by his series of
Indian historical studies as a conscientious original inyesti-
gator of history ; and the important new light he has thrown
on some obscure episodes and characters of Indian history
mark him out as a critical historian of no mean order.
Critical researches among recondite sources have the repu-
tation of being dull and dry-as-dust even in the hands of
good historians ; but Mr. Karkaria has a rare gift of style
which makes his writings so eminently readable and interest-
ing ..... We did not expect that he would do it in such a
way as to produce a book of absorbing interest to English-
men and Indians alike, teeming with pictures of life, character
sketches, shrewd observations on men and movements, clothed
in a style which makes every page readable and enjoyable.
It gives a manly, readable, reliable account of several
phases of Indian development of the present day by one who
has observed at first hand the movements that he describes,
and wno brings his wide and accurate knowledge of litera-
ture and of other countries and periods of history to bear
upon his own. It may well be called a substantial contribu-
tion to the philosophy of the history of India under the
Queen, and we hope the author may extend his scope and
give us on a larger scale such a complete philosophical his-
tory of our own times as he is engaged at present in giving a
critical history of the past .... Mr. Karkaria's book
explains to us all this, and is indispensable to any one who
wants to be acquainted with the currents and under-currents
of the Indian life and thought of our day. The political move-
ment is so noisily prominent that it is all that most observers
think of as existing. But Mr. Karkaria, while he gives it its
due both of praise and criticism, shows us there are social
and religious aspects also of what he well calls the renas-
cence of the Indian intellect under our rule, and these, though
quieter, are far more important. On the religions he has to
say a great deal that is eminently sensible, fair-minded and
instructive. His chapter on Christianity in India, and its
influence on the educated Indians could only have been writ-
ten by a high-minded and intimate observer who has seen
the great good of that religion, yet who thinks it unsuited
to the Oriental mind in its present state. All his remarks on
this momentous subject are deeply interesting, and should be
closely pondered over by those who would evangelise India.
.... We congratulate Mr. Karkaria on the success he has
achieved, and hope he will one day give us a larger
history of the India of this century on the plan and style
which distinguish his present work. Mr. Karkaria's book, if
translated into the Vernaculars, will also prove interesting to
the Indians themselves as showing what the best minds among
them think about the most important questions and move-
ments of the day."
[The TIMES OF INDIA.]
" Mr. Karkaria has shown the way to Mahratha scholars
by his interesting and in some points startling studies about
Shivaji, and by diving into the recesses of Mahratha
archives brought out facts hitherto not known to the English
reading public. We are glad to welcome a new edition of
his ' Shivaji and the Pratabghad Tragedy', which has ere
now attracted considerable notice both here and in Europe.
It has been well called the most noteworthy recent contribu-
tion to Indian history, and everyone who now writes about
Shivaji and the early Mahratha history must take account of
it and consider the facts and arguments adduced by
Mr. Karkaria. These facts and arguments were lately the
subject of criticism at the hands of a correspondent in our
columns, but so far as we can see they were not much
affected by it. ... This broad-mided and eloquent esti-
mate of the historian's duty with regard to heroes of a rude
bygone age ought in itself to show that the vindication of
the great Mahratha hero is in extremely skilful and com-
petent hands."
[The BOMBAY GAZETTE.]
" Mr. R. P. Karkaria has been elected a Fellow of the
Royal Historical Society. Mr. Karkaria was nominated by
the Right Hon'ble Professor Max Miiller and the Right
Hon'ble Prof. Lecky, the distinguished historian. The Royal
Historical Society is incorporated by Royal Charter, having
the Queen for its patron, and is the leading Society for his-
torical research. We congratulate Mr. Karkaria on this
honour done to him by this learned body for his historical
scholarship."
(iQth Nov. 1898.)
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