n (*BANTIQUlS MBRmjiBBB ■ mm m : r'€v<M'i LIBRARY UNIVfR' :ALIFORHIA LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. THE LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE BART., G.C.B., F.R.S., Etc. By JOHN MARTINEAU. To evr]6es, oh to yzvvouov irAe'tffTOV /ueTexei. Thucydides, iii. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON : JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 1895. DA n v.i LONDON : PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. PREFACE " I HAVE always felt, that of those who wrote and spoke most strongly against the course I had taken in South Africa, some did so in blind reliance on party leaders, and all from very imperfect knowledge of facts, and I felt sure that in time, though not perhaps in my time, my country- men here would do me the same justice as they who live in South Africa have done me from the first." Thus Sir Bartle Frere wrote to a friend about a year before his death. To do him this justice, nothing but a plain statement of facts is needed. That such a statement was not and could not be made in his lifetime is due to several causes. As regarded himself and his own treatment, he had at once too much modesty and too much self-respect to urge a personal grievance. And as to his policy, he could not, as an official, publicly challenge the acts and conduct of the governments under which he had served. Nor could he appeal to documents which were protected as confidential, many of which — though by no means all — are now, by lapse of time, or by the death or leave of their authors or their representatives, set free for publication. Members of the House of Commons fourteen years ago were already losing something of their ancient independence ; and whenever the two great parties were, through ignorance or VI PREFACE. interest, both committed to any definite policy, it was becoming next to impossible for any private member to obtain a hearing for the case against it. The task, even now, of writing his life has been a very difficult one. The events in which he took a leading part during his official career were so momentous, so beset by conflicting views on the part of the actors in them, and so multifarious and diverse in their nature and locality, that an unusually protracted and laborious investigation was required to grasp the surrounding circumstances, and to present the facts and documents in their right order and relation, so that they might tell their own story with but little comment. In transcribing letters the question arose how to deal with the variations which occur in the spelling of Indian and other names. The obvious course was to copy the spelling as it stood. But for the text it was of course expedient to adopt a uniform standard ; and on the whole it seemed best for the sake of consistency, and in order to prevent confusion occurring from different spellings of the same place, to adopt a uniform standard for both letters and text, altering the former when necessary. The one adopted is that generally employed by Sir Bartle Frere. But he is not always consistent ; he writes, for instance, indifferently, Scinde and Sind, Punjaub and Punjab, Affghan and Afghan, Muscat and Maskat. Some inconsistencies may still have escaped notice, and especially in the case of obscure places not traceable on the map mistakes may have crept in. If so, the fault is mine. I must express my sincere thanks to the many friends of Sir Bartle Frere who have given so much time and shown so much patience, in personal interviews and in writing, in order to assist me, and without whose help my task would have been an impossible one. To give a complete list of PREFACE. Vll these names would exceed the appropriate limits of a preface, but amongst many others, I would especially mention the following : Sir Henry Acland, Admiral Adeane, Mr. John Arthur and Mrs. Arthur, the late Sir George Balfour, Sir George Birdvvood, Sir Frederic Goldsmid, Sir Henry Green, Colonel Malcolm Green, the late Sir William Mackinnon, Sir Charles Mills, Mr. John Murray, the late Sir Lewis Pelly, the late Sir Herbert Sandford, Sir Gordon Sprigg, and the late Rev. George Stegmann. To Lady Frere, Miss Catherine Frere, and Miss Georgina Frere my best thanks are due for continual assistance rendered during the progress of the work. With untiring industry, the Miss Freres have devoted the ten years since Sir Bartle's death to collecting and arranging the records of his life. Their systematic arrangement of his letters, and of the other papers and documents, has alone enabled me to grapple with a mass of material which, without such aid, would have been too voluminous and miscellaneous to be comprehended. My deepest debt of gratitude of all is due to one at whose suggestion I first undertook the task, whose clear and delicate penmanship lightened the mechanical work, whose encouragement and whose judgment — calmer than my own — have helped me almost to the end, and whose approval, could I have won it, I looked forward to as my highest and most coveted recompense. Park Corner, Heckfield, December, 1894. CONTENTS OF VOL. I. CHAPTER I. BIRTH AND EDUCATION. PAGE Birth — Parentage — Childhood at Clydach — School-days at Bath — Haileybury — Departure for India — Malta — Egypt — Red Sea — Arrival at Bombay ... ... ... ... ... i CHAPTER II. LIFE IN THE DECCAN. Bombay — Traditions of Mountstuart Elphinstone's rule — Frere assistant to Mr. Goldsmid — Appointed Assistant Revenue Commissioner — Mr. Lionel Ashburner's and Sir T. Gore Browne's reminiscences — Richard Frere — Occupation of Affghanistan — Death of Richard Frere ... ... ... 17 CHAPTER III. THE ANNEXATION OF SATTARA. Sir George Arthur Governor of Bombay — Frere appointed his private secretary — His marriage — Goes to England for two years — Returns to Bombay and is made Assistant Com- missioner in the Customs Department — Appointed Resident at Sattara —Death of the Raja— Sattara annexed — Frere made Commissioner ... ... ••• ••• ... ... 4: X CONTENTS. CHAPTER IV. SIND. PAGE The annexation of Sind — Napier and Outram— Frere made Commissioner in Sind — Ali Morad— Natural features of the country — Its backward condition — Kurrachee harbour — Lord Dalhousie — Personal and departmental responsibility — Kurrachee and Kotree railway — Roads and bridges — Speed- money — Postage stamps — Dak bungalows — Kurrachee Fair —Canals — Sindee language — Letters to his children ... 77 CHAPTER V. THE WARDENS OF THE MARCHES. Frere's person and character — His cold-weather tours — Sir H. Green's and Sir F. Goldsmid's reminiscences — Shet Naomul — John Jacob — Jacobabad — Jacob's frontier system — The Sind Horse 129 CHAPTER VI. THE MUTINY. On sick leave to England — Returns to Sind — Is met by news of outbreak of Mutiny — His prompt action — Despatches troops to Punjab — Lieutenant G. B. Tyrwhitt — The camel- dawk — Native newspapers — The treaty with Dost Mahomed — Question of abandoning Peshawur— Outbreaks at Hydera- bad, Kurrachee, and Shikarpur ... ... 170 CHAPTER VII. THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER. General exhaustion — Malcolm Green's campaign — Macauley's campaign — The Khan of Kelat — Ouetta — Major H. Green's expedition against the Murrees — Recovery of Major Clib- born's guns — Death of Jacob ... ... ... 224 CHAPTER VIII. RECONSTRUCTION. Religious teaching in Government schools — Principles of adminis- tration — Proportion and organization of native army — Nuggur Parkur — Frere appointed to the Supreme Council at Calcutta — Leaves Sind ... ... 255 CONTENTS. XI CHAPTER IX. CALCUTTA. I'AGK Settles at Calcutta — Mr. Mackinnon — Indian finance — Mr. James Wilson— Income-tax — Sir C. Trevelyan — Death of Wilson — Sir Robert Napier — Military Finance Commission — The Arms Bill — Constitution of Legislative Council ... 293 CHAPTER X. LORD CANNING'S POLICY. India best governed in India — The Nil Durpan incident — Wuzzeeree Campaign — The annexations — The Adoption Despatch — Star of India — Lord Canning leaves India — Frere appointed Governor of Bombay ... ... ... 349 CHAPTER XL BOMBAY. Arrival at Bombay — Cotton cultivation and transport — Road- making — Friction with Calcutta Public Works Depart- ment — Conference of Engineers at Poona — Death of Lord Elgin — Sir John Lawrence Governor -General — Frere's Minute on Frontier Policy — Relations of Lawrence and Frere — Kattywar — Income-tax repealed — Minute on Local Taxation ... ... ... ... ... ... 393 CHAPTER XII. THE REBUILDING OF BOMBAY. Sanitary state of Bombay — Census — The City rebuilt — Its defences — The Thule — Railways — Education — Address to Deccan Sirdars ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 459 CHAPTER XIII. MASTERLY INACTIVITY. The two Pensioners of the Bramshill Lodges — Relations with Affghanistan — Death of Dost Mahomed — Letter to Sir John Kaye — The Wahabees — Colonel Pelly in the Persian Gulf — Sir W. Merewether at Aden 481 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Sir Bartle Frere. From a portrait by Sir G. Reid, P.R.S.A. ... ... ... Frontispiece Mehemet Ali playing Billiards ... \ Scene in the Cabin of the S.S. "Delta" \ •■■ To face 48 Sketches by Sir B. Frere ) summerhouse in the palace gardens \ Sat Manjli ... ... ... ... Bijapur „ 55 Sketches by Sir B. Frere ) Gun on the Oopuree Brooj \ The Mulook Juft ... | Bijapur ... ... „ 56 Sketches by Sir B. Frere ) Map of Coast, South of Bombay ... ... „ 76 General Map of Sind ... ... ... ... „ 128 Main Bazaar, Hyderabad, from the Gateway of the FORT. Sketch by Sir B. Frere ... ... „ 208 Wressil Lodge, Wimbledon. From a sketch by Miss C. F. Frere ... ... ... ... ••• 223 Map of Sind, showing Affghanistan and Beloo- chistan Boundaries ... ... ... To face 240 Government House, Parell, Bombay ... ... 394 Map of Sind and N.W. Frontier ... ... At End. General Map of India ... ... ... ... „ THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. CHAPTER I. BIRTH AND EDUCATION. Birth — Parentage — Childhood at Clydach — School-days at Bath — Haileybury— Departure for India — Malta — Egypt — Red Sea — Arrival at Bombay. Henry Bartle Edward Frere, sixth son and ninth child of Edward and Mary Anne Frere, was born at Clydach House, Llanelly, in the county of Brecon, on March 29, 181 5. John Frere, the earliest known ancestor of their name from whom the Freres trace direct descent, was living at Thurston, near Bury St. Edmunds, in 1268; since which date portions of the estates at present owned by the family in Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex have been in their continuous possession. A branch of the family, settled at Harleston, on the borders of Norfolk and Suffolk, emigrated to Barbadoes in the seventeenth century. This branch, in political opposition to the rest of the family, was strongly Par- liamentarian, Tobias Frere being a member of Crom- well's second Parliament, and secretary to the Committee VOL. I. B 2 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. I. of Sequestrations for Norfolk and the City of Norwich. John Frere was acting governor of Barbadoes about 1720, and Henry Frere in 1790. The Royalism of the other branch of the family does not seem to have been ardent enough to affect its fortunes; for in 1656, when the Royalist cause was at its lowest, John Frere purchased the manor and advowson of Finningham, in the heart of Puritan Suffolk, and in the following year Thwaite Hall in the same parish. Here he and his descendants lived for more than a century, till in 1760 Sheppard Frere bought Roydon Hall, near Diss, six or seven miles distant, which has since been the residence of the eldest branch of the family. Thwaite Hall was pulled down soon afterwards, and nothing now remains to mark its site but a half-filled moat. A broad belt of cold, level, featureless clay-land, sparsely inhabited, and crossed by few and unfrequented roads, surrounds the little village of Finningham, which lies like an oasis in the desert, with its neat timber-built seventeenth-century houses, sheltered by luxuriant elms, from amongst which rises the flint-built tower of a small fifteenth-century church, remarkable amongst towers of that period for standing without a buttress to mar its modest dignity. The church is full of Frere monuments — less florid and grandiose, it is pleasant to notice, than was the fashion of their time — and has an air of having been preserved more carefully, and by the care of the present rector, Canon Frere, restored more wisely and reverently than has been the fate of most churches. At Cambridge the name of Frere has been distinguished for nearly two centuries. Edward Frere, born in 1680, was a Fellow of Trinity in Bentley's time, and seems to have been a partisan of his in his disputes with other members of the college. The name of his grandson, John Frere, 1815.] PARENTAGE. 3 was bracketed with that of Paley for the place of Senior Wrangler in 1763. This honour, it appears, was in those days not always given impartially according to merit, and Bishop Watson, who was Moderator, takes some credit to himself for causing the two to be re-examined in each other's presence, and finally conferring the honour on Paley as being proved the best man. John Frere became an active magistrate, and in 1799 was elected Tory member for Norwich. He married, in 1768, Jane, daughter of Mr. John Hookham, of Bedington, Surrey. There were seven sons and two daughters of the marriage, the eldest of whom was John Hookham Frere, poet, man of letters, politician, and diplomatist, best known as envoy to the Spanish Govern- ment during the early part of the Peninsular War, but more distinguished, perhaps, in his literary than in his political career, though few of his writings, except his contributions to the Anti-Jacobin, are much read now. He was a man of strong and sterling character, greatly loved and respected by his brothers and sisters, and by the younger generation of nephews and nieces. Frequent allusions to him, and to his kindly interest in the different members of the family, occur in Bartle Frere's letters — an interest which was maintained unabated when he went to live in Malta, where the latter years of his life were passed. From him Bartle in some measure derived his early political ideas, and learnt the veneration for Pitt and Canning which he always retained. Edward Frere, Hookham Frere's next brother, had been married in 1800 to Mary Anne, daughter of James Greene, M.P. for Arundel. They had fourteen children, of whom ten survived them. At the time of the birth of their sixth son, Bartle, the subject of this memoir, Edward Frere and his wife were living at Clydach House, five miles from Aber- gavenny. He is described as six feet three in height, strong, 4 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. I. handsome, and graceful. " I have often heard my father," writes Miss Frere, " speak with admiration of his father's magnificent aspect, and of his and his brothers' boyish pride, when walking down a street with him, at seeing the passers-by turn round to look at him." In character he was brave, generous, chivalrous, and sincerely religious, with a genial temper and great power of attracting others. He had a retentive memory, had read much, and had great powers of observation ; in his walks not a bird or insect, not a plant or rock, escaped his notice. He had been educated at Eton, had studied metallurgy at St. Ouentin, in France, and had afterwards worked under Mr. Crawshay before going to Clydach to set up as an ironmaster on his own account. Possessing much mechanical ability and enterprise, he seems to have been the first to use iron as a material for boat-building. A barge or boat of iron was built by him in 1811 to ply on the canal at Clydach, all the country-side coming to see it, incredulous of anything constructed of iron being made to float. His wife, Bartle's mother, was small, gentle, and quiet, in her youth fond of riding and dancing. Together with strong common sense, she had a very beautiful and sympathetic character, and was devotedly loved by her husband and children. Their eldest daughter, Mary Anne, is said to have been like her father in character, and, being several years older than Bartle, had much influence over him in his childhood and boyhood. Of his other brothers and sisters, his favourite and inseparable companion was Richard, two years younger than himself, who had the same brave, guileless, amiable nature. Bartle's Welsh nurse, Molly Cadwallader, played her part in the formation of his character. i822.] CHILDHOOD. 5 "She told him stories of the giants and Pwccas that haunted the hillside, and of her own Welsh ancestors ; she taught him the wonderful history of ' Betty Contriver,' and endless other nursery rhymes ; and many of her witty sayings were quoted by him to the day of his death. Molly was by no means beautiful, and always wore a mobcap, and carried a crutch, having been lame from her infancy. Those unaccustomed to the sight used to be alarmed to see her as she went hopping down the stairs at Clydach, with the reigning baby on one arm and her crutch under the other ; but for any such alarm there was no cause, for the ponies on her native mountains were not more sure-footed. She was thoroughly trustworthy, truth- ful, and reliable. " When Bartle Frere was about three years old, riots broke out among the workmen in South Wales, gangs of whom, often several hundreds strong, used to traverse the country, compelling those who had not already joined them to blow out the furnaces and cease from work. The Clydach men, who thoroughly respected and trusted Mr. Frere, and by whom he was greatly beloved, would have continued to work contentedly had he permitted it. This, however, he would not allow [lest they should suffer for it]. . . . " On one occasion, when my grandfather had gone out to meet and reason with the invading rioters, having heard they had been out for days and were half-starving, ... he told them to ' go to Clydach House and ask Mrs. Frere for something to eat;' which they accordingly did. Rachel Davis, the nursery-maid, and bravest of the young servants, was appointed to hand the contents of the two great baskets of bread and cheese to the rioters, piece by piece, out of the staircase window, which, being a few feet from the ground, was judged a safer vantage-ground than the steps to the hall door ; ' by her side stood Bartle, much delighted with the novelty of the scene.' Some of the men were fierce and sullen enough, but when they saw the pretty little fearless child squeeze himself in between his nurse and the open window to help her to hand them out the viands, and show his approbation by taking a little nibble at the cheese by the way, they laughed, and raising a hearty cheer in his honour, went away in perfect good humour. . . . " In 1822, the family migrated to near Bath, mainly for 6 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. L the purpose of procuring greater advantages for the education of the children than were attainable in the remote district of Clydach. . . . Adverse circumstances had much straitened their income. . . . They took a little cottage, called Widcombe Cottage, near Prior Park, where they lived for five years. . . . Widcombe Cottage being incon- veniently far from Edward VI. 's Foundation School, whither Bartle and Richard Frere were to be sent as day- scholars, it was quitted in 1827 for Sydenham Cottage, a pretty thatched house, bounded on one side of the garden by the river Avon. In 1829 Sydenham Cottage was burnt down, from the thatch catching fire. The boys were at morning school at the time, when the mother of one of their schoolfellows called, and begging to see ' Master Frere,' told him that ' his father's house was burnt down, and whether any one was killed she did not know.' The boys, getting leave, rushed home at once. ' I think I see them now,' writes their sister Frances, ' rushing in and throwing themselves into their mother's lap, who was in a neighbouring house ; Bartle with some power of self- control ; Richard, two years younger, and a very nervous boy, sobbing violently.' . . . The family found a new home in Norfolk Buildings, Bath. In 1833 they left this for Bitton Rectory, a curious and interesting old house, formerly the property of the Seymours and afterwards of Sir Thomas Fremantle." * Bartle Frere was twelve years old when he and his brother Richard were sent as day-boarders to the Bath Grammar School, a school of some reputation, numbering among its most distinguished former pupils Sir Sydney Smith and Sir Edward Parry. The head-master was the Rev. James Pears, whom Frere afterwards described as "a great scholar, a great friend of Irving and Wilberforce, * This and subsequent extracts in this chapter are taken from an obituary notice of Sir Bartle Frere written by his daughter Mary, and, at the request of the Royal Historical Society, published in their "Transactions." The account of his journey to India is chiefly summarized from the same paper ; most of the details were furnished to Miss Frere by Sir F. Horn and Captain Chambre\ Frere's own journal of his journey to Kossier, which he there entrusted to his servant to post from Malta, was lost, and the man was never heard of again. 1827-32.] BOYHOOD. 7 and of many good and accomplished men of his way of thinking in Church matters." The two brothers spent their playtime less in games than in fishing and walking over the country, with an occasional lift in a coach to see any old church or castle, or other object of interest, till they knew the whole neighbourhood thoroughly. His first sight of the Queen was when the Princess Victoria opened the Victoria Park at Bath. His boyhood was evidently in every sense a happy time with him. For a boy of such strong character and will, he had a singularly modest, unselfish, genial, and happy temper. A cousin and early companion of his says that, being a delicate child, she was so accustomed to having her own way that she invariably quarrelled with all her other playfellows, but never with Bartle Frere. His family affections were very strong, and as he lived at home through his school-days, and no break in his home- life occurred till he went to Haileybury, at the age of seventeen, there was nothing to check their natural growth, to chill their warmth, or to interfere with the strong influence which they exercised on his character. Thus he gathered in a store of happy memories and unfailing sympathies which cheered and strengthened him when the inevitable day of separation came, and months and years had to be spent in lonely service and apart from all equal companionship. And to his boyhood thus passed in the society of both sexes, and of his elders as well as his equals in age, in a home of such exceptional brightness, intelligence, and affection, may also be attri- buted in some degree his entire freedom from self-con- sciousness, conceit, or shyness, and the frank simplicity and courtesy of speech and manner which distinguished him through life, and exercised so potent a charm on men and women of all races and conditions. 8 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. I. " ' Never, I believe,' said their sister, ' were there two such school-boys as Bartle and Richard, before or since — so boyish, and yet so thoughtful beyond their years. Bartle's pet name amongst us was " the Doctor," by reason of his skill in mending our dolls ; as John's was " the Admiral ; " Richard's was " the Major." ' Bartle's wish was to be a soldier, a missionary, a doctor, or anything that would ensure his being a traveller ; but the current of his plans was changed in 1832 on his being given a nomination to Haileybury by Mr. Astell, M.P. for Bedford- shire, and chairman of the Court of Directors." At Haileybury he remained for a year and a half, gaining medals and prizes in several departments, and being 'highly distinguished' in all the other subjects which he took up. On leaving, in December, 1833, he was placed first in the list of students then leaving the college. Having the choice of Presidencies, he chose Bombay, because his brother William was already there. " I well remember," writes his sister Frances, " the arrival of Bartle and his medals. My mother was sitting at her work-table when he came in, knelt on the footstool at her feet, and, after kissing her, took the medals out of his waistcoat pockets and put them on the table beside her. I am sure he had thought most of her in working for them." His prize copy of Paley's works, given by him to his mother on going to India in 1834, was inscribed by Mrs. Frere as — " The gift of her beloved son H. B. E. Frere, when he left the home which he had cheered and brightened to every member of it." Small, comparatively, as Haileybury was — there were generally about thirty students — it had at that time a very distinguished staff of professors, who were on friendly and intimate terms with the students, and moreover often gathered together men and women of distinction, 1832-3.] HAILEYBURY. 9 and culture, whom the latter had the privilege of meeting at their houses. The sense of comradeship in a common service, and the knowledge of each other's character, which the Haileybury life fostered, was of great value afterwards in India. It enabled each to have a better knowledge of the special qualities of those with whom they had to work, and to reckon beforehand on whom, in time of stress, they would be able to rely. It may well be doubted whether the Indian Civil Service did not suffer a great loss by the abolition of the Haileybury training, for which a course at a university, with its bewildering choice of studies and its manifold distractions, is but an indifferent substitute. In a letter to the Guardian, nearly forty years after- wards, Frere writes as follows of Dr. Jeremie : — "June 17, 1872. " When he was selected as one of the most brilliant and learned of the junior Fellows of Trinity College, Cam- bridge, and joined the college where all the civil servants of the East India Company were then educated, he found himself associated with men all distinguished in their own particular way and in their several lines of literature. Dr. Batten shared with Jeremie the charge of the classes in classics and English literature. Le Bas, with Jeremie as his sub-dean, looked after the college discipline and lectured in mathematics, with Smith and subsequently Heaviside, both, I believe, Senior Wranglers, as his colleagues. Empson, who subsequently edited the Edin- burgh, occupied the chair of law which Macintosh had just vacated. Malthus taught history and political economy, and was succeeded, before Jeremie left the college, by Jones, one of the first and ablest of Poor Law Com- missioners. The professorships of Oriental languages also were filled by the most distinguished working Oriental scholars then in England. . . . "When it was Jeremie's turn to preach, even aegrotats would be superseded and exeats given up. He was always extremely nervous. . . . His physical powers were of the 10 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Cn. I. smallest, his voice extremely weak. . . . But as he warmed to his subject, his mental energy overcame all physical weakness, and every syllable was eloquent to his rapt hearers. I have seen him end his sermon when there was scarcely a dry eye among the students — ay, or for that matter among the older professors." To his school and to Haileybury Frere owed his know- ledge of Greek and Latin, and his grounding in Oriental languages. But it was at home, and from his father, mother, and eldest sister, that he received the most valuable part of his education. His natural powers of observation were quickened and assisted by the example of his father, who had considerable acquaintance with natural science, and he early acquired the habit of closely observing the natural features of whatever country he was in, and some knowledge of botany and geology. Either then or later he gained some knowledge of French and Italian, though he never learnt to speak either of these languages correctly. When quite a boy he acquired a facility in rapid and accurate sketching. His home-letters were frequently profusely illustrated with clever spirited sketches of figures or landscape, and with carefully drawn maps and plans. This habit he kept up to the end of his life, and always had a reed pen and sketch-book in his pocket ready for use. The first packet sent home to his mother from Bombay contained forty sketches taken at different places on his journey out. Thus from the exceptionally happy surroundings of his home he stepped forth to begin his work in the great lonely world of India equipped with a more serviceable, varied, and extensive stock of knowledge, and — what was of still more importance — having higher ideals, and a character more formed and developed, than would have been probable, or even possible, had his boyhood been passed under the Procrustean influences, and the too often i»34-] DEPARTURE FOR INDIA. II perverted ambitions and hero-worship of a public school. He was no longer a boy, as most Englishmen are at his age, but a man. At that time going out to India meant a four months' voyage in a sailing-ship, touching at the Cape of Good Hope, and perhaps also at Madeira, St. Helena, and the Comoro Islands. The extinction of piracy in the Mediter- ranean, and the progress of commerce and intercourse along its shores and amongst its islands, was turning attention to the question whether it would not be possible to avoid going all round Africa by opening up the ancient highway through Egypt and by the Red Sea. The chief difficulty was in the navigation of the Red Sea. Not only was it very dangerous from the coral reefs which stood up in deep water without any warning shoal or lighthouse, but, owing to the prevalence throughout the year of a wind blowing almost always in the same direction, navigation up the Red Sea was excessively tedious as well as dangerous, ships being sometimes many months in sailing from Aden to Suez. But steam would change all this, and the then Governor-General of India, Lord William Bentinck, proposed to send an experimental steamer from India up the Red Sea to Suez, "to meet there any adventurous persons coming from England, so that the feasibility of the much-questioned overland route might be decided." This proposal appealed directly to Frere's aspirations towards geographical exploration. He applied to the Court of Directors for permission to go out to join the experimental steamer ; and, after being at first refused on the ground of the risk he would be running, he at length obtained leave, on the understanding that he went on his own responsibility, and must not expect to be searched for if he disappeared. 12 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. I. He left Falmouth, therefore, in the Firefly, bound for Malta, on May 3, 1834. Malta was as far on his way as any steamer then went, and there he spent a month, at The Pieta, the house of his uncle, Hookham Frere, of Spanish and Anti-Jacobin reputation, who had made his home there, and brought thither his pictures and his magnificent library, and where he gathered together in increasing numbers, as the Mediterranean became more and more •one of the world's great highways, all the most dis- tinguished men and women, English and foreign, who passed that way. Here Frere set to work to learn Arabic, having for his teacher Dr. Joseph Wolff, the celebrated traveller, and succeeded so far that at the end of his month's stay Dr. Wolff pronounced him capable of " scolding his way through Egypt." He sailed on July 7, in the Greek brigantine Corriere, for Alexandria. On the voyage he wrote to his little sisters at Bitton, describing amongst other things the flowers and trees at Malta. "July 12, 1834. "There is also that tree which bears the jujube, some- thing like a whitethorn with little green flowers ; the berry is about the size of a small nut. Now ask my father the reason of what I am going to tell you, which, as it was told me by my uncle, must be true. The fruit used always to drop off his jujube trees before they were ripe, for which he could find out no reason, till one day he observed the trees in the garden of a Maltese lady loaded with stones, and was told they were necessary to make the fruit stay on the trees till it was ripe. He accordingly ordered the gardener to load his trees with stones, since which time the jujubes have ripened very well, and never fallen off. The stones are as big as your head, and placed so as to stick in the branches, or else tied on. " Though this brig is reckoned the finest Maltese trader, yet her sailing is her only good quality, for the decks are 1834-] THE OVERLAND ROUTE. 1 3 so crowded that there is no room to walk about, and my only way of writing- is by sitting doubled up [in] a little cabin, where every now and then the ship gives a heel which rolls me and my boxes, pens, ink, and paper, with a great basket of bread, into a heap ; but for a short time this is very amusing, so I have no cause to growl." At Malta or at Alexandria Frere met with four others on the same errand as himself — Mr. (afterwards Sir F.) Horn and Mr. Chambre, of Her Majesty's 20th Foot, then in India ; Mr. Patrickson, of the Madras Artillery ; and Mr. Ouandborough, a midshipman in the Indian navy. The five travellers agreed to travel together. They took a native boat, and were towed up the canal to Cairo. Here they made the acquaintance of Osman Effendi, a Scotchman, who, when a private in the 68th, had been wounded and taken prisoner at the capture of Alexandria. To save his life he had turned Mahometan, and, having been an assistant in the regimental hospital on board ship, he was promoted to be " Hakim " to the Pacha, and became a man of influence. He introduced the travellers to Abu Effendi, in the absence of Mehemet AH, away in Syria, acting Pacha of Egypt, who had been educated in France, and who gave them every facility for seeing the sights of Cairo, — then not so easily accessible to Europeans as afterwards, — the mosques, the tombs of the kings, the dancing dervishes, the court of the massacre of the Mamelukes, etc. ; and, what dwelt most in Frere's memory, the slave-market, consisting of two rooms in which the Abyssinian slaves were crowded together ; and the mad-house, or street of madmen, a terrible sight, the inmates being chained naked in dens like wild beasts and nearly starved. No tidings of the steamer having been received, they determined to make their way to Kossier, a port in 14 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. I. Upper Egypt, on the Red Sea, about three hundred and fifty miles from Suez, where they hoped to meet it, or to find some other means of getting to India. Kossier is situated at the nearest point of the Red Sea to the Nile, the distance of the caravan track thither across the desert from the bend of the river at Kenneh being rather less than a hundred miles. They therefore went in a boat up the Nile, seeing Thebes and other notable places by the way, although it was the hottest time of year, and the daily temperature under the roof of the cabin was about 112 . Reaching Kenneh in a fortnight, they went some fifty miles higher up the river to see Luxor and Carnac, and returned to Kenneh, where they procured camels, a tent, and the necessary provisions for their journey, eastwards, across the desert to Kossier. They travelled by night, about fifteen miles each night, the heat being greater than ever, and reached Kossier in six or seven days, on August 12. Nothing had been heard there of the expected steamer. It turned out that she not only never entered the Red Sea, but never got beyond Ceylon. The only way for the travellers to get to India without going back to England, was by some means to make their way down the Red Sea, and endeavour to get a passage from Mocha to India. By the help of the British Consul, an Arab, they chartered a ship's long-boat, which had been in use as a fishing-boat, to take them to Mocha, a distance of more than nine hundred miles. The stern of the boat was decked over for about seven or eight feet, and here the luggage was placed under cover ; but there was no awning, and the thermometer under the deck used to stand at about 115°. Those who have experienced the heat of the Red Sea, modified by all the luxurious appliances of a modern I334-I THE RED SEA. 1 5 Indian steamer, can understand what it must have been like to sail down the sea in the month of August in a small open boat with no awning — Frere, for one, having till this year had no experience of any climate hotter than an English summer. They crossed over to the east coast, and coasted down it, amongst the innumerable coral islands, reefs, and sand- banks with which it is studded, generally landing to cook and sleep at night. Touching at Yembo, the port of Medina, they lay at anchor near a Turkish barrack, and were surprised at hearing a Turkish military band play the overture to "The Caliph of Bagdad." From Jiddah, the port of Mecca, they sailed at sunset, and were caught in a violent storm which blew them away from the land, and were in considerable danger of being swamped. " The sailors hung a heavy pig of lead over the bows to deaden the way, took down sail and mast, and then sat down and howled." By three in the morning the storm lulled, and they found themselves at daybreak close to some sand- banks, beyond which was a small fortified island, where they remained a day to set things straight. Here several Arabs came up to them, whom Frere overheard inquiring in Arabic of the crew whether the property on board was worth robbing. The fact of the boat having been chartered by the Arab Consul at Kossier probably saved them from attack. Touching at Hodeida, they reached Mocha on August 31, sixteen days from Kossier, and landing the following day, put up at the house of Sheik Taib, the Consul and East India Company's Agent. Here Patrickson found a vessel bound for Madras, in which he took a passage. An Arab dhow, the last vessel which was to sail that season for Bombay, had left that morning with twenty pilgrims on board returning from Mecca to Surat ; but she was still in sight, and the Consul 1 6 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. I. sent after her a small boat, which succeeded in recalling her. The four remaining travellers embarked in the dhow, engaging the stern cabin, and laying in provisions for fourteen days, which was supposed to be the limit of the time likely to be required to sail the two thousand miles before the monsoon to Bombay. But for some reason the vessel sailed slowly, and the voyage was protracted to twenty days ; the provisions ran short, and the cap- tain and crew began to despair of reaching Bombay. Although they had no chronometer but an old silver watch, and steered by the aid of Frere's pocket-compass, they must have made a good course, for at last, one night, Frere, being on the look out, perceived a light which proved to be that of the Bombay lighthouse. Frere, on landing (September 23), went to his bankers to get some money and to inquire the way to the house of his brother William, a civil servant, who was living in Bombay. But no ship from England had arrived, and his story of the way he had come was scarcely believed. When he went to Messrs. Forbes' he was detained in conversation, while a clerk was sent to the harbour to make inquiries ; and he could not for some time estab- lish his identity. He next went to his brother's house ; but they had not met for four years ; William Frere did not recognize the tall figure and sunburnt face, and Bartle had to tell him his name before he realized that he was not a stranger. CHAPTER II. LIFE IN THE DECCAN. Bombay — Traditions of Mountstuart Elphinstone's rule — Frere assistant to Mr. Goldsmid — Appointed Assistant Revenue Com- missioner — Mr. Lionel Ashburner's and Sir T. Gore Browne's reminiscences — Richard Frere — Occupation of Affghanistan — Death of Richard Frere. CIVILIANS on their arrival in India had to pass an exami- nation in native languages before receiving an appointment. Frere took up his abode with his brother William, already a civil servant of some distinction in the judicial branch, and worked with a moonshee. At the end of three months he had passed his examina- tion, and was ready for an appointment. Attracted by the accounts he had received of the bison-shooting which was to be had in Belgaum, he applied to be appointed there. It was the first and last request for any appoint- ment or preferment for himself which he ever made during his whole career, and unfortunately it could not be granted. A good opportunity occurred for learning his work under Mr. Mills, a distinguished revenue officer at Poona, and the Governor, Lord Clare, who took an interest in him, and had shown him some kindly notice, thought he had better begin there at once. Accordingly he was sent to Poona, without even the " leave " which was generally given at this stage ; and there, as junior supernumerary, VOL. I. C 1 8 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. II. he had charge of the gaol and treasury until the arrival, a month or two afterwards, of Mr. Hart, an old Haileybury colleague, and afterwards to be married to one of his sisters. In a letter written from Poona, about five months after he landed, he gives a minute description of Bombay, which would hardly be recognized by any one who did not know the city more than twenty-five years ago. In the course of it he says — " February 4, 1835. " The western part of the Esplanade towards the sea is covered with tents from November to June, even permanent Bombay residents often pitching tents for that time ; and towards the south-western corner there are squares marked off with cane fences, one of which is given to each of a certain number of great people, who have the privilege of building in it a temporary bungalow of boards and thatch, and filling the space round the house with shrubs in pots, etc., as soon after the rains as they like, but everything must be cleared away by the 6th of June." The greater part of that portion of the Bombay Presi- dency, in which his lot was now cast, was of comparatively recent acquisition. The country, in many parts rugged and broken, presents more positions of strength, and is less easily overrun by an invader than the plains of Northern India. The Mahometan Empire of the Moghuls, never firmly or permanently established in the Deccan, had been resisted and forced back in the seventeenth century by a return-wave of Hindoo powers, the Mahratta Con- federacy, under Sivaji. But the Mahratta Empire, depend- ing for its strength and coherence on the character of its chief, was too loosely composed to have any lasting power. Its nominal head was the Rajah of Sattara ; but his autho- rity soon passed into the hands of the Peshwas, hereditary ministers who gradually established a court at Poona,. 1835] THE DECCAN. 19 which became the head-quarters of the confederacy. By the end of the eighteenth century the authority of the Peshwas had in its turn become little more than nominal. Each of the three great Mahratta chiefs, Sindia, Holkar, and the Rajah of Nagpur, depended on his own strength and his own alliances, and was ready to fight for his own hand. But as the name and traditional authority of the Peshwa was still a power in the land, each sought to bring him under their influence and to rule in his name. It was not commercial enterprise or the desire of acquiring territory that brought the English upon the scene. In the last year of the eighteenth century, Lord Wellesley was Governor-General, and Napoleon was in Syria. At that period of his career, so it was generally believed, Napoleon's ambition was to found, not a European, but — to begin with, at any rate — an Asiatic Empire. French influence was at that time paramount in several of the native Indian states, French officers held commands in their armies, and Sindia had French troops in his service. Napoleon might at any time arrive and put himself at their head. The immediate danger passed away when he was repulsed at Acre, and afterwards abandoned his army in Egypt. But it was likely enough to recur ; and Lord Wellesley set before himself as his first object to dominate the external relations of the native states, and to exclude absolutely French and all other foreign European influence from India. An opportunity of carrying out this policy soon occurred. Two of the Mahratta chiefs, Holkar and Sindia, were at war, the army of the latter being united with that of the Peshwa Bajee Rao. In October, 1802, was fought the battle of Kirkee, close to Poona, the Peshwa's capital, in which he and his ally were completely defeated. He fled for his life to the coast, and escaped on 20 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. II. board an English ship to Bassein, near Bombay. In this extremity he was glad to be allowed to conclude a treaty — known as the Treaty of Bassein — by which, in return for restoration to his capital, and protection and support against his enemies, he agreed to receive and pay a British force at Poona, and to be guided in all his relations with other states by the advice of a British Resident. This arrangement was carried out, and lasted till it was discovered that the Peshwa had broken faith, and was plotting against the British Government. In the end he had to be deposed and pensioned, and his territory annexed ; and, to take his place and to conciliate the Mahrattas, the Rajah of Sattara, the descendant of Sivaji and feudal head of the Mahrattas, was brought from obscurity and re-established at Poona under British pro- tection. But the name and traditional authority of the Peshwa were not to be easily effaced from native memory. Forty years afterwards, Bajee Rao's adopted son, the notorious Nana Sahib, founded upon it his claim to native support during the mutiny. The British Resident under whose direction these changes had been effected was Mountstuart Elphinstone, statesman, diplomatist, historian, scholar, and, when occa- sion required, general and soldier. He had been secretary to Sir Arthur Wellesley, had ridden by his side at Assaye, and as a volunteer had climbed the breach at the assault of the fortress of Gawilghur. It was he and his lieutenants who laid the foundations of law and order in this distracted land, working in patriarchal fashion, with a free hand, and subjected to little or no control from Calcutta or from England. He was a leader in the great school of Indian statesmen, who, adopting a sympathetic rather than a hostile attitude towards native institutions and forms of administration, and scrupulously careful not I83SJ MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE. 21 to offend local and social susceptibilities, sought to instil a new motive force into the old machinery rather than to substitute models of a European pattern. To Frere, who possessed in a high degree the quality of veneration, and who was ever on the look out for men to whom he could look up as guides and teachers, Mountstuart Elphinstone was from the first the statesman whom he set before himself as his hero and pattern. Five and twenty years later, hearing of his death, he wrote to Lord Elphinstone — "February, i860. " I cannot help taking the first opportunity, after I heard of Mr. Mountstuart Elphinstone's death, to tell you how very deeply I have felt his loss. I was quite a lad when my uncle, Mr. Hookham Frere, pointed him out to me as the Indian statesman to be followed and imitated rather than any of the noisy Indian celebrities of that day ; and from the first day I went to Cutcherry, and had as my first charge to pay pensions to old men who had fought and laboured, some under him, some against him, but who all loved and venerated him, and who all asked if I could tell them where and how he was, I never heard his name mentioned but in terms which made me feel proud that I was a countryman of his. Since then many an idol of my earlier days has been shattered, and I have changed many opinions I once thought immutable, but I never found him wrong, and had come to regard the wisdom of his opinions with a feeling akin to that of a disciple of one of the inspired sages of old." It was on the scene and amidst the traditions of Mount- stuart Elphinstone's labours that Frere began his career. Life and property being now comparatively safe, the next question was that of taxation. The one annual payment made by the cultivators of the soil answered to rent, rates, and taxes in one, and as it was based on a fixed valuation, a just and moderate assessment was a matter of vital importance to them. In the Bombay territory villages 22 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. II. and districts were generally assessed at amounts supposed to be based upon an estimate of one-third of the produce, for which the head-men were responsible, and which they collected pretty much as they pleased. The assessments were often obsolete and very unfair, and large remissions had to be made, especially in bad years, amounting sometimes to more than half the revenue. These remissions often found their way into the pockets of the native functionaries, instead of relieving the ryots, and the confusion of village management became so great as to necessitate a complete change of system. It was thought that a regular survey and assessment would remedy defects, and accordingly a revenue-officer, Mr. Pringle — afterwards First Civil Commissioner of Sind, in succession to Sir C. Napier — undertook and prepared elaborate estimates of the produce of different kinds of soil, and, after allowing for expenses of cultivation, a certain proportion, fifty-five per cent., of the remaining net produce, was taken as the assessment. But, owing partly to defects in the system, partly to dishonesty among the native subordinate officials, this was not successful. In the first year less than half the revenue was raised. What was worse, it transpired that in the Indapore district the native collectors of revenue had, under the orders of a Mamlutdar, been guilty of inflicting the most horrible and almost incredible tortures on the ryots, to make them pay. The Revenue Commissioner of the Bombay Presidency at this time was Mr. Williamson. When these matters came under his notice, he deputed his Assistant Com- missioner, Mr. Henry Goldsmid, a civilian of two or three years' standing, to go to Indapore and investigate them. Mr. Goldsmid required an assistant, and asked that Frere might be appointed to this post. This was in June, 1835 ; and though it was the beginning of the rainy season, when 1835.] ASSISTANT TO GOLDSMID. 23 travelling was almost impracticable, they began their work at once. Writing to his young brother Arthur at school, Frere thus describes his manner of life : — " Camp Dhaling, near Indapur, June 21, 1835. " This is the first letter that I have written since leaving Poona. The place where Goldsmid and I now are is a small village on the right hand of the river Beema, about eighteen miles from Indapore, which is the chief town of this district. We are at present living in what is called a durrumsala, which is a room, attached to a temple, for travellers. I am at present sitting in a room in front of the temple, of which this is a scratch. [Here is a pen-and- ink sketch.] You are supposed to be looking in at the Deo, or god, which is a nearly shapeless mass of stone, painted red and placed in a niche in a dark little inner room, the roof of which is supported by pillars. The outer room, which is supported in the same way, is generally used as a place for travellers to cook their dinners in, but we use it as a sitting-room, and there you see Goldsmid, with a long black beard, lying down and writing some report or other — not, as you might suppose, from any orientally luxurious habits, but because I am at present sitting on the only chair. The pillars, beams, etc., are of rough wood, the roof of small pieces like short laths covered with a thick coating of mud ; and as it looks like rain, and there are some cracks in it, a man has just been sent to put on a little more mud. The room is open to the west, and through the opening you may see something like scratch number two [another sketch], on the left of which you see the durrumsala, in which you see my father's canteen and the iron bed, then a tree under which some natives are sitting, then a kind of altar-like place where there are two large images, and on which the people who are waiting generally sit ; close to that the servants' tent, and on the right the corner of our bathing tent, and in the distance the huts of the villagers. To the right, though not in the picture, is the Beema, a very fine river, just beginning to rise with the rains. I have often looked at it with a wistful eye, and wished I could take a swim in it as Richard and you and I used to do in the Avon ; but it is broad and deep, and 24 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. II. inhabited by alligators, which, though never known to attack people, are by no means pleasant companions in a swimming party. As there are no bridges in this part of the country, the people have some difficulty in getting across, when the rains begin and the fords are no longer passable ; at some places they pass on a float of earthen pots ; at others, about this neighbourhood especially, on one made of gourds tied together, there being but very little wood in this part of the country. There are a good many places about Bath very like this country indeed. Marlborough Downs are exactly like it, and you could not have a better idea of the higher parts of the country. . . . You must also remember that, instead of green hills covered with clumps of wood and dotted with farmhouses as a background to the plain, you have here low rocky gravelly hills, the abode of boars and jackals ; and instead of cows and sheep feeding on the pastures, you start deer or antelopes, which bound away directly you come near them, and stand to gaze at you as soon as you get to a safe distance. Being rather in want of something to tell you (news in this place being very scanty), I have drawn you a scratch of a ryot, or farmer [here is another sketch], who is now waiting about some petition he has presented ; though his only clothing is the turban on his head and the white cloth wrapped round his waist, he is perhaps a man of some property, paying ten or twenty pounds a year to Government as the rent of his land. This part of the country has been very much mismanaged lately by the native servants of the Company, and some of the villages have been deserted. Goldsmid and I rode through one yesterday in which there was hardly one house out of twenty inhabited ; he has, however, already done a great deal of good, and is in hopes he will be able soon to put all this to rights. . . . When I left Poona, everybody was in a great hurry getting their building and repairing finished ; for when once the rain sets in there is no possi- bility of going on building, and as one of the chief materials is sun-dried brick, if your house is not very well roofed in, the rain soon soaks through, and then your wall crumbles away as if it were built of salt." The special work at Indapur in which Frere assisted Mr. Goldsmid lasted about four months — till October, 1835. 1835.] DECCAN REVENUE SURVEY. 25. It proved to be the beginning of a much larger work which required to be done in organizing and carrying out an entirely new system of collecting the revenue, based on a new and careful survey ; and in order that he might devote himself specially to this work, Goldsmid, who had originated the scheme, was relieved of his office as Assist- ant Revenue Commissioner, and made Acting Collector of Indapore and subsequently of other districts. With him was associated Lieutenant (afterwards Sir George) Win- gate, an engineer officer, to carry out the survey. The work grew under their hands, and in 1838 was organized as a separate department, under the name of the " Deccan Revenue Survey." To ascertain the value of the land, every field was inspected separately, and the country mapped out into divisions of about fifteen acres each, like squares in a chessboard, and each division classified as belonging to one of nine different qualities of soil. To fix the assess- ment, a calculation was made of the cost of labour required to cultivate each kind of soil ; and this, and a variety of other circumstances, were taken into account in assessing the value, which when ascertained was fixed for thirty years. The Deccan Revenue survey and settlement was a great success, an enormous boon to the natives, not to mention the increased revenue which it produced. Its success eventually led to its extension through the rest of the Bombay Presidency — to Sind, to the Berars, to Mysore, and to many of the native states. Twenty years afterwards, just after Mr. Goldsmid's death, in January,. 1855, Frere writes of his old friend and first chief, and of Win gate — " How the officers employed succeeded can be known to few who did not know the districts in their former state. . . . Nor will those who now see them for the first time readily recognize the great improvement which has taken place. 26 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. II. Yet something may be learned if they will ask the old and middle-aged how they fared and how matters were managed before Goldsmid and Wingate Sahib's time, before the assessment was fixed, and how they fare now. And should they chance to hear, as I have heard, ten years after the Sahibs had left the place, the same names introduced into the doggerel lay which the Maharatta housewife chants to lighten her daily task of grinding grain, they would confess that there is such a thing as native gratitude, and that Goldsmid had gained the highest honours which a simple and uneducated race could pay to their benefactors." To the post of Assistant Revenue Commissioner, thus vacated by Goldsmid, Frere was at once appointed. He served under Mr. Williamson and worked with him for three years. They were both hard workers, and were throughout on the most cordial terms. Henceforth his duties were not confined to a single district. There was at that time only one Revenue Com- missioner, and his authority extended over the whole Presidency. The executive officers were under his con- trol. For the six years and a half during which Frere held the office of Assistant Revenue Commissioner, he travelled about the country during two-thirds of the year, generally on horseback, sometimes on a camel — never, as was sometimes the custom elsewhere, in a dooly ; sleeping in a tent or in such travellers' bungalows or huts as were to be found, often without seeing an English face or speaking a word of English for weeks together. It was only during the rainy season that his camp broke up, and he returned to a roofed dwelling — generally at Poona, where for some years he had a house with his sister and brother-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Hart. His work consisted in overlooking the revenue work of the collectors, examining into the collection, remission, etc., of the revenue, and the work of the revenue survey £835-3 MR. LIONEL ASHBURNER. 27 officers also passed through his office. And besides this, there was the judicial work which in those days was attached to officials in his position, as representatives of Government. The following reminiscences by Mr. Lionel Ashburner, of the Bombay Civil Service, of his experiences in the same country, though they relate chiefly to his own work as a collector — an office which Frere never held — describe the mode of life in Western India at the time, and the way in which the country was governed : — "The Bombay districts are much larger than those in Bengal or the north-west of India. Some of them have an area of a thousand square miles, with a population of about a million, and paying a revenue of forty or fifty lacs of rupees. " To several, extensive tracts of non-regulation districts were attached, which were not subject to any written law. They were governed by the personal influence of the col- lector as political agent, who had powers of life and death. " The executive consisted of a collector and two or three assistants. They were not merely fiscal officers, but the representatives of Government, and the only outward and visible sign of the authority of Government that the people had any cognizance of. "The country was often in a very disturbed state, and they had frequently to lead the police or troops in an attack on some turbulent chief, to arrest outlaws, and to take a personal part in preserving the peace of their districts. Many districts were infested with tigers, and in Guzerat lions were common. Not the least important of a collector's duties was to exterminate wild beasts, which sometimes depopulated whole villages, and by the de- struction of cattle rendered cultivation impossible. The long rows of tigers' skulls which to this day adorn many of the district bungalows, attest how zealously this duty was performed. " Many lives, European and native, were lost in this exciting sport. When elephants were not available, tigers were attacked and killed on foot. The manly Rajpoots and Mahrattas were always ready to join the Sahibs and 28 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. II. to share the dangers. Instances have been known in which they have killed a tiger with their swords only, though sometimes at the cost of several lives. . . . Big game shooting and hog-hunting were the sports of the men of that period, and Sir Bartle Frere threw himself into them with characteristic energy. He was in the habit also of driving the jungles for bison, sambre, or bears ; but if the prospects of sport were not good, he would often be found sitting in the shade of some big tree, surrounded by the Patells of the neighbouring villagers, hearing their grievances and settling disputes on the spot, which would have produced a beautiful crop of litigation if allowed to go into the courts. " It was the duty of the collector to determine the amount of revenue to be paid by each village or district. . . . The whole agricultural population assembled annually at the camp of the collector or his assistant for what was called the Jummabundy Settlement. . . . The collector had before him a record of the past payment of each village or ryot from the time of the Peishwa, but he was also assisted by hereditary officers of position and influence, whose duty it was to inquire into and report upon the condition of each village or holding. They were, however, sometimes corrupt, and the collector had to be careful, by personal inspection of his charge, that he did not sacrifice the interests of Government. The credit of a Patell in his own village depended on his making a good bargain with the collector. One would represent that the monsoon rains had failed, that the locusts or wild hogs had destroyed the crops, or the tigers the cattle ; another would complain that a neighbouring village had robbed them of their water-supply; and a third would boast that the Peishwa had never levied a rupee of revenue from his village except at the point of the sword, and that he could not without loss of honour break through the long-established custom of his ancestors. Many would refuse to sign the Jummabundy papers till the collector had gone through the form of ordering them off to prison. They would then sign under protest, and boast to their friends of the fight they had had with the Collector Sahib. "The successful settlement of a district required local knowledge, great patience, tact, and a fluent command of the colloquial patois of the country. All these qualifications 1835-8.] LIFE IN THE DECCAN. 29 Frere possessed in a high degree, and his early success may be traced to their influence. He spoke the Mahratta language fluently. " Living amongst the people, joining in their field-sports, and sympathizing in all their joys and sorrows, created a kindly feeling towards the people of India which Sir Bartle Frere retained to the last. I have frequently heard him express his admiration for the sterling qualities of the Mahrattas. The same kindly sentiment was, I think, shared to a great extent by the whole of the official class in the Presidency, and had an important effect during the mutinies. " The more cordial relations between Europeans and natives in Western India is very remarkable to one who has been long accustomed to the attitude of cringing humility which is observed in other parts of India. I have heard the remark that natives were never seen to laugh except in the west of India. This is, of course, an exagge- ration, but it contains a germ of truth. " At the period of which I am writing, assistants lived in their districts throughout the year, and if they could not find quarters in the old Mahratta forts, they built houses for themselves. Outram's house is still standing at Durrangein, in Kandeish. It indicates the conditions of district life at this period ; the walls of the garden are loopholed for musketry, and it was capable of resisting any sudden attack. Sir Bartle at one time occupied the rooms in the bastion of the Fort of Burgaun in Kandeish. Owing to the want of what would now be called proper accommodation, much of the business of the country was carried on not only in public, but in the open air, for it was cooler and more convenient than a tent or any house available in those days. Carpets would be laid in some shady spot, the villagers would gather round, chairs would be given to the more dignified, and criminals would be tried coram populo. The people would often make murmurs of approval or dissent, and sometimes suggestions that a witness, who was evidently lying, should be sworn on the cow or on some local shrine. These hints were often of great value to an inexperienced assistant, who was learning to be a ruler of men. I feel sure that Sir Bartle's early education in the patriarchal school had an important influence on his character and future career." 30 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Cn. IL Frcre writes to his cousin, Miss Judith Frere (now Mrs. Merivale) — " From Nuggur we went north-east to a place with the well-omened name of the ' happy valley ; ' and a very pretty place it is, though I dare say you would not think so in England, but, as I think I told you in my last letter, the Deccan is in general as uninteresting-looking a country as can well be imagined, very like what Hungary is described to be : one wide plain follows another, with now and then a chain of low rocky hills crossing them — nothing like a tree visible for miles round, except where the banbrel, a low thorny bush, makes a cover for the wild hog, and where a few gardens and trees surround the villages, which are usually built in fertile hollows ; compared with such places, the ' happy valley ' is certainly pretty, being shut in by rather picturesque hills, covered with fields and gardens, and well wooded with large and handsome mango trees. . . . We then passed clown a ghaut, the road through which is said to have been formed by Sir Arthur Wellesley in 1804. This part of the country was once reckoned the finest part of the Peishwa's Maharatta dominions, but for three or four years before it fell into our hands it had been the constant scene of the ravages of the Pindarries, and afterwards of the Bheels and other wild tribes, who had succeeded in almost completely depopulating it, and though it is now recovering, yet we rode for miles together over long plains of the finest rich land without seeing a single human being, and when we did get to a village it was often no easy matter to find out the inhabited houses in the labyrinth of ruins. At Phool- tamba there was a sad scene of decay, but of a different sort ; the town is situated on the Godavery, next to the Ganges, I believe, the most sacred stream in India, and under the Maharattas was the resort of those great people who, from age, misfortunes, discontent, disgrace at court, or any other cause, chose to give up the world and pass the remnant of their days in meditation and ablution in the holy stream. There were also numbers of Brahmins living in the town, as attendants on the temples, copyists of the Shasters, etc., besides pilgrims and devotees of all descrip- tions. When this part of the country was ravaged by Holkar, about thirty-two years ago, just before he was 1838.] MR. WILLIAMSON. 3 1 driven out by Sir A. Wellesley, this town was for a fort- night the scene of continued violence and plunder. Those of the better classes who were so unfortunate as to be caught were tortured to death unless they told where their money was hid ; all who could, devotees included, fled for their lives, and only a few of the cultivators and shop- keepers have ever returned ; the town was not, however, burned, and you pass street after street of immense houses still almost entire, but as silent as the grave and tenanted only by jackals. We stayed here for a couple of days, and during our walks and shooting expeditions saw two sights quite new to me : Bheels and wild peacocks. About the former I want to say a great deal to you, but I must keep it for some other letter, and will at present only tell you that their features are decidedly Welsh, and that they put me very much in mind of the descriptions of North American Indians, at least as far as their taciturnity and a rather dignified slowness of manner went, though this quietude is very much belied by a bead-like black eye, which glows like a coal when any game gets up." In the autumn of 1838 Mr. Williamson returned to England. Frere writes to his mother a description of him, which a few years later might almost have been written of himself. "October 2, 1838. " This steamer takes home the two best friends I have in the country out of my own family, Mr. Williamson and Mr. George Malcolm. The former, as you know, has been my constant companion for three years, living together the greater part of the time, and often seeing no other European for months together. . . . Since I have been working with Williamson as his assistant, working himself, and making me work as hard as we well could, he never once said or wrote a word to let me know he was master, and any one would have supposed, from his way of expressing himself and bringing me forward whenever he could, that I had as much to do with, and was as much interested in the success of his measures as he was himself. It is true that this is the best way of getting work out of people, but it is not one man in five hundred who does so ; and, with respect to Williamson, this was, I think, one of the many things 32 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. II. which proceeded from real good feeling and kindness of heart." In another letter to Mrs. Merivale, he says — "March I, 1841. " I do think that after reading the political history of India, from the time that our representatives here ceased to be a body of almost independent and irresponsible ad- venturers till now, you would come to the conclusion that, after making every allowance for our being our own his- torians, few portions of history of similar length and im- portance would show the constantly advancing dominant party in so favourable a light, where the ambition of the leaders has been so little selfish, their forbearance under the insults of really weak but inordinately vain and in- solent neighbours so great, and their desire for the improve- ment of the conquered (however mistaken the means they may have adopted) so disinterested and sincere. You will think me a not unprejudiced judge ; but it might, I think, be shown that such a result was not improbable from pecu- liarities in the English system of governing in India, which have been very mischievous in many other ways (especially as regards the management of our own subjects), but which, as regarded our intercourse with other states, has tended to prevent individuals who had the direction of affairs out here from having any great personal interest in the conquest of a state." Mr. Williamson was succeeded by Mr. Vibart, a pleasant companion and a good sportsman. The following reminiscences are by the late Colonel Sir Thomas Gore Browne, who shortly after marched with his regiment under General England to Candahar, and served through the Affghan campaign, under Nott : — " [Frere] at that time was very young, and in appearance slight, and very like what he was in later years. " He was assistant to Mr. Vibart, the Revenue Com- missioner. They had reached Surat, where I had gone on a shooting tour, and Mr. Vibart invited me to join him on his tour through Catteywar. " I remember that he was a very good Oriental scholar I839-] SIR THOMAS GORE-BROWNE. . 33 even then, and used to interpret the legends which Vibart's chief clerk, a Brahmin, and rather a remarkable man, used to tell us in Guzerati, as we rode along before daylight in the morning. He was also a fearless rider, and very good at all sorts of sport, from hog-hunting to lion-shooting. I remember that one day we brought four lions on our cart as the result of the day's sport, to the great admiration of the villagers. " In after-years he told me that he had recounted this day's sport to the Prince of Wales's party, who scarcely believed him, and that he wished I, the only survivor, had been present to corroborate his account. I remember his prowess as a hog-hunter, and on one occasion his having followed a wounded lion on foot (the elephant having been unable to follow through the broken ground), and my own satisfaction at finding the lair empty, and only a pool of blood to show that the lion had just left. " In spite of enjoyment of these pursuits, he was always a reading man, and occupied every spare hour in reading. " We dined at sunset in Vibart's large tent, and imme- diately after dinner his and our day tents were sent on to the next camping-ground, under an escort of horse and foot, and we retired to sleep in our bichotas [little tents], which came on in like manner after we had left them. Before daylight we started on horseback, and Vibart gave us each two of his mounted guard (of Guzerat Irregular Horse) to guide and protect us to the new camping- ground. We shot whatever we could find on either side of the road, and reached camp in time to wash before breakfast, which was at nine o'clock. After breakfast he was engaged with Vibart in giving audience to chiefs and other natives, and continued so until near dinner-time, unless when news was brought by the villagers of game marked down, which I think the natives enjoyed as much as we did." The following extract is from a letter of an old native gentleman, who was asked by Mr. Ashburner to write down his recollections of Frere at this period. " My recollection of that eminent statesman dates from the time he landed in Bombay, and was appointed as an VOL. i. D 34 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Cn. II. assistant to the then Revenue Commissioner, Mr. Thomas Williamson, i.e. in October, 1835. In those days there was only one Revenue Commissioner, under whom there was a covenanted European assistant, and a native officer denominated the Dafterdar. This was Mr. Narso Laxu- man, a competent officer of wide experience, and con- versant with all the details of revenue matters. It was from him that Sir Bartle Frere, then young in years, received an insight into the practical working of the revenue affairs of this Presidency. Unlike the officers of the present day, young Frere was always seen sitting on the carpet by the side of old Narsopant Tatia, for whom he entertained the highest respect, and to whom he used to call by the respectful name of ' Kakaje ' (elder uncle). Whatever difficulties Sir B. Frere had, he used to ask for a solution thereof unreservedly to Mr. Narsopant. He studied the Mahratta language, and so great was his mastery over it that he read all manuscript official papers himself, without the aid of a shirastidar. He used to rise early in the morn- ing, take a walk for an hour or so, and then return home, after which he used to sit with his Munshi for learning Urdu and Persian, and his Pandit the Guzerati and Kanarese lan- guages, for a couple of hours, then he used to bathe, have the morning nasta (breakfast), and go to office, where he used to work till 4 or 4.30 p.m. every day. Afterwards he used to go riding for purposes of recreation. " In the office his gentle and sweet disposition was highly remarkable, so much so that all the subordinates appreciated it extremely. When a clerk, or karkun, or peons asked him any question, Sir Bartle was ready with his reply, and that too with the utmost courtesy, so rare in modern official life. In the matter of promotion, he always had at heart the welfare of his own subordinates, whom he promoted to a higher pay and sent them to other offices, and in return picked up others, and brought them up in his own. So he kept every one pleased. His private servants, even, were treated with the utmost con- sideration and civility. " Shikaring, or animal sport, was a fond amusement with him. But when engulfed in the pressure of office work, or engrossed in the study of the languages mentioned above, he did not think of it. At the earnest request of friends he used to go sometimes for shooting near Poona. On 1839.] RICHARD FRERE. 35 one occasion he had brought a female elephant from Talligaon belonging to the Senapati of the Peishwa, viz. Dabhade. I remember the incident very well. Sir Bartle, Captain Marriott, and myself (then employed under him) took our seats in the houdah, and we started for shikar, far off from Poona, in the dense forests which were then infested with tigers, as the railway had not penetrated through the ghauts and other thick caverns round about the limits of the Deccan capital. After looking here and there, our elephant discovered a ferocious full-built tiger, who was lying asleep in a thicket, on which she struck her trunk forcibly, when he awoke and furiously sprang on her, jumping over the trunk with full speed, and was about to pounce us in his jaws, so near he was, but Sir Bartle Frere's presence of mind stood in good stead. He at once aimed at him the pistol he had, and with one shot killed the tiger on the spot. If this would have missed — providentially it did not — the result would have been disastrous. We three and the mahout (driver) were in tremendous terror during the conflict. Our life was in imminent peril. Such was the incident. . . . " In all his itinerations he did not fail to inquire into the condition of the ryots. He talked with them freely in the vernacular, inquiring who they were, what profes- sion they followed, what they wanted, and so on. In the case of the agriculturists, he took precious good care to know from them if there was any distress prevailing ; and when he found any, he reported such cases to Govern- ment, and afforded the necessary relief by way of Takavi advances, etc., for which the people liked him much, and bless his memory up to this day." Early in 1837 Richard Frere arrived with his regiment at Calcutta. A little younger than Bartle, he was his favourite brother. They had been inseparable as boys at school, spending their half-holidays together, keeping a common purse, using the same scrap-book for their sketches and composition ; and now, in these latter years, each full of pride in each other's powers and accumulating honours. They were nearly six years in India at the same time, yet never met ; but they were in constant correspondence, and 36 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. II. henceforward, and especially through all the critical events in Afghanistan, Bartle Frere's letters home contain more about his brother than about himself. Fear of the power of Russia, and of the hostile influence which Russian emissaries might exercise on the tribes on the Indian frontier, was beginning to affect English statesmen, and in 1838 led to intervention in Affghanistan with the object of strengthening British influence there. Between our frontier at that time and Affghanistan lay the Punjab and Sind, large states in which we had no authority or foot-hold, and which, therefore, had to be overawed or conciliated before Affghanistan could even be approached by a British force. Runjeet Singh, the ruler of the Punjab, was an able and powerful sovereign, possessing a large, well-disciplined army, officered by Europeans, and was much too formidable to be made an enemy of. And so a tripartite arrangement was made, according to which the dominant ruler of Affghanistan, Dost Mahomed, was to be deposed, and a weak rival, Shah Soojah, put in his place. Shah Soojah was to surrender Cashmere and Peshawur and some other places hitherto under Affghan rule to the Punjab, to conciliate Runjeet Singh ; and Sind was to be coerced into acqui- escence by the joint action of Runjeet Singh and the British, and was to pay tribute to Shah Soojah. It was an elaborately constructed diplomatic scheme, which looked well enough until the shock came and tested the foundation on which it rested. From the first, Runjeet, though not unfriendly, declined to allow British troops to pass through his country. The whole force, therefore, had to traverse the burning plains of Sind and Beloochistan, and defile through the rugged, barren rocks of the Bolan Pass to Quetta. Here the Bombay and Bengal contingents were united under the command of Sir John Keane, and i$39-] AFFGHAN WAR.' 37 entering Afghanistan seized Candahar, stormed Ghuznee, and finally occupied Cabul, the capital, and went into quarters there, with comparatively little resistance. Richard Frere was with his regiment, the 13th (Somer- setshire) Light Infantry, which formed part of Sir Robert Sale's brigade. Bartle writes to Miss Judith Frere — "May 17, 1839. " You may be glad to hear that Richard writes they have got safe through the formidable Bolan Pass. From Shirkarpur they marched to the eastern end of the pass ; of this twenty-seven miles was over a desert, without a shrub, bird, or sign of animal life in sight, and Richard describes the silence round them as perfectly awful. The pass is a narrow valley at first, between hills of clay and gravel, five or six hundred feet high, and further on between high limestone rocks. The bottom of the valley is the bed of a torrent, covered with large boulder-stones, and these, added to the necessity of crossing the stream (which was still flowing, though much shrunk when compared with what its bed showed it to be in the rains), in one case as often as twenty times in thirteen miles, rendered the march exceedingly fatiguing for all, and very difficult for the artillery and baggage. They at length (I think on the fourth day) found themselves clear of the pass on a small plain, the hills surrounding which, and on either hand of their next march, were capped with snow. The tropical vegetation had quite disappeared, the ground was covered with a plant like southernwood in appearance and smell, and with it were growing tulips, anemones, dandelions, clover, and other European plants. Cypresses, rhododen- drons, and geraniums were found on the sides of the hills, and they recognized many of the birds as old European friends. They were to halt at Quetta or Kote, the place whence his letter was dated (March 28), till joined by Sir J. Keane and the advance of the Bombay army." He writes to his mother — " I wish you had heard the account which Mr. W , of the Artillery, who has just returned from Cabul, gave of the conduct of the 13th at the storm of Ghuznee. He said when 38 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. II. the explosion took place, instead of waiting to hear whether the gate was blown in, the whole of them rushed forward as fast as they could form — though had it not been blown in, their doing so exposed them to a deadly fire — and he said that, without exception, he never saw a finer soldier than Colonel Sale, or a more dashing corps than ' ours.' " Two years after this time (in October, 1841), the 13th, and Richard Frere with it, left Cabul with Sale's brigade, to reopen communications with Jellalabad as a resting- place on the way to Peshawur. They fought their way thither through the mountain-passes, and occupied and held it against Akbar Khan and all comers through the winter and spring, being for months on short rations, short of ammunition, with defences half shattered by repeated shocks of earthquake, and cut off from all communication with the world outside. At Cabul, before the winter set in, Sir Alexander Burnes had been massacred in his house, and Sir William Macnaghten (just nominated Governor of Bombay) assassinated in open day and with impunity by Akbar Khan, in the presence of his sirdars. In January the fatal blow fell. The British army at Cabul, surrounded in its cantonments, and unable to ob- tain supplies for its subsistence, began its retreat. Within a few days the whole force, four thousand soldiers and twelve thousand camp-followers, lay dead on the snow in the Tezeen valley. One man only escaped, and, half dead with wounds and exhaustion, arrived to tell the tale to the garrison of Jellalabad. Lord Ellenborough, the new Governor-General, had landed at Calcutta in February, 1841. Self-reliant and energetic, but inexperienced and arbitrary as he was, it was well for India that he was too far from the seat of war to exercise any effectual control over the movements of the generals. Pollock entered Afghanistan by the Khyber 1842.] THE JELLALABAD GARRISON. 39 Pass from Peshawur, relieved and took with him the brave and hard-pressed garrison of Jellalabad, and, proceeding to Cabul, reached it twenty-four hours before Nott, who, by a free interpretation of his orders to retire from Afghan- istan, had advanced thither from Candahar. Thence the two armies retired together through the Khyber Pass and the Punjab to India. Frere, now private secretary to the Governor, writes to his father from Bombay : — "May 28, 1842. " This packet is a heavy one, but I am sure you and my mother will think it worth more than its weight in gold. The dear Major's * letters are so full and particular that I cannot add anything to what he says, and abridgment will only mar it. I am sure we all, here and with you, shared in the gratitude to God which induced him, dear fellow, to beg that you will have thanks returned in his name in Bitton Church. It is not more than one would have expected from him ; still there is something very striking in the way in which one so sensible to the charms of military glory as Richard is, gives the praise to Him to whom alone it is due ; and that, too, at a time when all India, from the Governor-General down to the last cadet from England, are in ecstasies of admiration at the conduct of the • Illustrious Garrison.' " And to his mother — " November 1, 1842. " As you will be very anxious about the dear Major, I enclose you the latest letter we are likely to get from him this month, which I have just received. I do not think the whole army can contain such another correspondent, so full and so regular, even when the chance of his letters arriving safe at their destination seemed the slightest. It is very singular that it has happened at least five times that the latest news which Government had to send home was that contained in the dear Major's letters ; and on two occasions it has been very important, viz. when Akbar Khan closely invested jellalabad, and when the army * Richard's family nickname. 40 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. II. under General Pollock heard of the removal of the prisoners to Bamian." Alas ! there were to be no more proud, happy letters about "the Major." Bartle Frere writes to Mr. G. T. Clark— "Bombay, January i, 1843. " My last letter home on the 1st of December told my family that General Pollock's force had safely cleared the Khyber Pass, and that Richard, with the leading brigade, had started, after a short halt near Peshawur, to march across the Punjab, and I had every hope that I shouid by this steamer be able to tell of his safe arrival at Ferozepoor, of his participation in all the hardly earned honours which the Governor-General has gone there to confer on Sir Robert Sale's force, and possibly of Richard's having settled the day for his departure to visit us at Bombay. It pleased God, however, to order it otherwise. A letter I sent home by the last steamer, dated the 10th of November, told me that he had been prevented from writing to many in England by a fit of, as he thought, rheumatism, which gave him much pain in his right side. On the 6th of December I got a letter from his friend and brother-officer Mr. Sinclair, telling me that on the 16th of November they had become alarmed, though up to the 18th they did not despair, but that on the evening of that day ' Richard sank quietly to rest,' at Rawul Pindee, in the Punjab, not far from Attock. You, who knew him so well, need not be told what we have lost. To have had him taken from us in the midst of perils which I hardly dared hope he would escape, would have been a sore trial, and I cannot sufficiently thank God that He enables me to say and feel, ' It is well,' though my dear brother was cut off at the moment when we hoped he had entirely escaped from all the dangers which for more than a year past had so imminently and daily threatened him." It was a terrible loss to him. Writing years afterwards, his sister, Mrs. Hart, says — " I remember one expression he used when writing of Richard's early death, about two years after it occurred : 1843.] DEATH OF RICHARD FRERE. 4 1 ' Had the earth opened and swallowed me up, I could not have felt more utterly alone than I did then.' " Richard's sword always hung, and hangs still, over the chimney-piece of the dining-room of Bartle's English home. His grave at Rawul Pindee Bartle was not able to visit till thirty-three years afterwards. CHAPTER III. THE ANNEXATION OF SATTARA. S ir George Arthur Governor of Bombay — Frere appointed his private secretary — His marriage — Goes to England for two years — Returns to Bombay and is made Assistant Commissioner in the Customs Department — Appointed Resident at Sattara — Death of the Raja — Sattara annexed — Frere made Commissioner. THE new Governor of Bombay, sent out in 1842 to take charge of the Presidency at the crisis of affairs in Affghanistan, was Sir George Arthur. His career had been a highly distinguished one, such as in later days, when more attention is directed to events in the colonies and dependencies, would have won him a larger and juster share of reputation. Entering the army in 1804, he had seen active service in Italy, Egypt, and Sicily. He had served with his regiment in the attack on Flushing, and with his single company taken prisoner three hundred men and five officers, for which he was thanked in General Orders, and promoted on the Field. He was afterwards Lieutenant-Governor of Honduras, where he had to deal with a serious revolt of the slave population, which he suppressed in such a manner as to earn the gratitude of the inhabitants, and at the same time the approbation of such zealous friends of the negroes as Wilberforce and Stephen. For more than twelve years he was Governor of Van Dieman's Land ; and it is there, perhaps, that his name is best remembered, though the very name of 1842.] SIR GEORGE ARTHUR. 43 the colony has been changed, and the convict-system, which he reduced to order and cleared of its worst abuses, has long since passed away, and though the last of the aborigines, for whose protection and welfare he did so much, has long been dead. Returning to England in 1837, he was sent out the same year, at the crisis of the rebellion, as Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, and commander of the forces in Canada. After suppressing the rebellion, he remained in Upper Canada till 1841, when he returned home, and for a few months was un- employed. Unsupported as he was by any influential family connection, that he should have been selected at this extreme crisis of Indian affairs for the civil and military command of the Presidency nearest to where the danger lay, and under so notoriously arbitrary and impul- sive a chief as Lord Ellenborough, shows how fully his high qualities were acknowledged by those in authority, including Lord Ellenborough himself, who was most anxious for his appointment. He left England for Bom- bay at the end of April, 1842, accompanied by Lady Arthur and his family ; and by Colonel Proctor, an able and accomplished officer, as his private secretary. Going on shore at Aden, while the vessel was coaling, Colonel Proctor was brought back on board struck down by sun- stroke, and died before the vessel reached Bombay. Thus Sir George's first need on arrival was to provide himself with a private secretary. Lord Clare, whose term of office as Governor had expired in 1835, had furnished him, before he left England, with confidential information about some of the Govern- ment officials in the Presidency, and amongst the memo- randa was one * mentioning Frere in such terms of praise * The memorandum was as follows : " H. B. E. Frere is an ornament to the service ; his superior abilities are of a useful, practical 44 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. III. that he was sent for by the Governor from Poona, and after an interview offered the post, which he at once accepted. In the absence of any letters or other records concerning Frere's life at this time, some reminiscences of Mr. G. T. Clark, of Talygarn, an old and intimate friend, with whom he frequently corresponded throughout his life, are given here. Mr. Clark, since known to the world in connection with the Dowlais Iron Works, and as an eminent archaeolo- gist, came out to Bombay about this time at Frere's sug- gestion, for there seemed to be a good opening for him there as a civil engineer. He projected the Bombay and Baroda Railway, which in later years was carried out, though not by him, and other important public works, which Sir George Arthur was anxious to see undertaken. But the obstacles thrown in his way, because he was not a member, civil or military, of the Indian Service, were such that he could do nothing. Mr. Clark writes of Frere — "He was' far more than a mere secretary, though he was ever careful not to obtrude his opinion, and, indeed, rather given from shyness to withhold it. ... I used to be much impressed by the way in which he answered attacks, and how, as much by his manner as by his ability, he disarmed hostility, and often converted distrust into confidence. . . . His demeanour was so quiet and gentle, and he listened so patiently to all that was advanced, and his replies, though forcible, were so moderate in tone, that men went away half thinking they had talked him over, kind, ever devoted to worthy objects. His views are at once correct and enlightened, and though he has not been many years in India, he has acquired a thorough knowledge of the languages, customs, tenures, manners, and resources of almost every province in the Bombay Presidency. He is competent to answer any questions on the above important subjects, and there is no person in the whole service who could be consulted on them with more advantage or confidence, he is so strictly conscientious and honourable." 1842-4.] PRIVATE SECRETARY TO SIR G. ARTHUR. 45 and only perceived on reflection the full force of what he had said. " I should say that the character of his mind, though very even and unprejudiced, was rather active than con- templative, and eminently practical. His intellect was clear and acute ; he was quick tc apprehend, but in a general way slow to decide ; very industrious and pains- taking, seldom in a hurry, and anxious to be quite sure he understood the matter in hand before he gave an opinion upon it. He was not a reserved man, nor usually reticent, but if he held a secret — and as secretary he held many — no one could discover from his speech or manner that there was any secret to be kept. " He had a remarkably fine temper. I have often seen him vexed by the follies of others, but I never saw him really angry. He was careful in his speech not to give unnecessary offence, or to indulge in the sort of talk likely to be misrepresented or to make mischief. I never heard him speak ill of any man, not even of those he could not commend, but he was rather given to notice any good qualities. . . . " He had a great deal to do with the introduction of railways into India. It was a subject he took up and pressed forward when he became private secretary, and he and Sir George Arthur, at his suggestion, promoted in every way a scheme for a short line across Salsette, which eventually became absorbed into the more extensive line finally executed. Also when in England on leave, after his marriage, he lost no opportunity of pressing the im- portance of railways upon the Indian Directors and the Secretary of State for India. Few but those immediately concerned were aware how much India owed to him in this respect. . . . " In those days he was a bachelor with a good income, but he was always open-handed even beyond his means, and the kind of man to whom a friend in difficulty naturally turned, and not in vain, for aid. I remember one instance which I thought highly characteristic of the man. Some young officer who had been recommended to him had, as he heard, got into debt. He found on inquiry it was so, and the plea given was the necessity for keeping a horse. Frere said nothing, but quietly made an addition to his own stud, and then, sending for the youth, told him that 46 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. III. he had a horse that he did not use, and he would be glad to have him exercised daily. I forget how I heard this, but certainly not from Frere himself. He always took an interest in young officers and civil servants just arrived in the country. They came, of course, to the Governor's public breakfasts, and also, of course, saw the private secretary. He always had something to say to them, and helped many of them with something more than good advice. " His religious convictions were strong. He was a Churchman of the old school, untroubled by doubts or theological difficulties. His faith was firm and simple, and though very tolerant of other opinions, and a liberal donor to many societies outside the Church of England, his attachment to her was affectionate. He was, I believe, a man of great personal piety, living ever as under the great Taskmaster's eye, and carrying his conscience into every act of his life. So pure and simple was he, that I doubt whether he ever did an act that he thought wrong ; ' blameless and harmless ' might truly be said of him, were it not that such praise might be thought to imply weakness, whereas his character was a strong one, and his opinions well defined and stoutly held. "There was nothing of the ascetic in his composition. He was excellent company in all societies, very strong in friends, both a full and a ready man, with a great appre- ciation of the ridiculous, and great enjoyment of the ordinary amusements of life. He was a thorough patriot, loyal to the heart's core to his Queen and country, and not least to the land in which his lot was cast. He knew the native character well, both its virtues and its faults. He was a steady promoter of native education and of native self-government so far as it could at that time be car- ried. He thought Mountstuart Elphinstone's views on the employment of theDeccan nobles to be sound and good, and much regretted that they had not been acted on when we took possession of that country. . . . " His private character was among the most perfect that I have known." When he had been for two years private secretary, the time for the long-desired visit to England drew near. A civilian's furlough was due at the end of ten years, in which 1844.] MARRIAGE. 47 time, before the overland route was established, was included the four or five months taken up by the voyage out. Year by year and month by month he had been looking forward to May, 1S44, as the happy time when he would return to revisit his father's home. But when the time came near, the pressure of work was so great, and so many civilians were on leave of absence, that he was con- strained to postpone his furlough for awhile. In April, 1844, came the second great sorrow of his life — the intelligence of his beloved father's death. But his health was giving way. In June he had a severe illness from inflammation of the liver, which left him so weakened that the doctors ordered hirn off on sick leave to England ; and unwilling as he was to leave Sir G. Arthur at a busy and anxious time, he had no choice but to go. He was not, however, to go home alone. He had become intimate with Sir George Arthur's family, and was engaged to Catherine, his second (and eldest then unmarried) daughter. Miss Arthur, in her father's home, had already had a varied experience of life in Van Dieman's Land, in Canada, in England, and in India, and, accustomed to help him in his correspondence and in his hospitalities, was especially well qualified by her early training and associations for the duties she was afterwards called upon to perform. They were married October 10, 1844. During the performance of the marriage ceremony intelligence arrived of an outbreak, which led to the Southern Mahratta war, and Sir George Arthur was called away from the church door to preside at a council to consider the necessary measures to be taken, the wedding festivities being suspended for an hour or more till it was over. 48 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. III. A few days later, on November i, 1844, they sailed from Bombay on their way to England. On November 25 he writes to his mother — " We hope to be at Malta to-morrow evening, my dearest mother, and so I am getting this ready to go by the Marseilles Packet, to tell you that we have got thus far in safety after a very prosperous voyage. . . . We reached Suez after a voyage shorter by two hours than any other vessel had ever made, and landing early in the morning of the 20th, lost no time in getting into the vans — a curious mixture of a Mumbles car, a baker's cart, and an Irish car, carrying, as a Parsee in Bombay said of his carriage, ' four stouts or six thins.' We, i.e. Kate and her sister and servant, Mrs. Melvill, Sir Robert Oliver, and self, were all ' thins ; ' so we were stuffed in, the interstices closed with pillows and carpet bags, and after the four little rats of Barb horses which were intended to draw us had backed, kicked, and turned round, and looked in at the windows till they were tired, away we went over the track, which had been cleared of stones, which here bestrew the desert. The desert itself has but little shifting sand. It looks very much like any part of the downs in the South of England, without grass — high, bare, white hills in the distance, the country near the road undulating hills of hard sand, with a few ravines here and there scantily sprinkled with stones, and with a few stunted thorny bushes in some of the hollows. There were three station-houses, with servants and provisions, and a stable for changing horses at and between each — eight stages in all. We left at nine in the morning, and got in about two the next morning. Compared with what travelling in the Egyptian desert was when I went out, the whole affair was very luxurious, and, for an able-bodied man in good health, not attended with any danger or discomfort. But with the means now at hand the Transit Company might easily make it safe and easy travelling for ladies, which it certainly is not now. However, thank God, we got through without accident, and arrived safe at Cairo — the first of all our party, many of whom were less fortunate than we were. After a vain attempt to sleep out the remainder of the night, and an equally ineffectual endeavour to get clean next morning, we went in the afternoon to see the Pacha's MEHEMET ALI, AS WE FOUND HIM PLAYING BILLIARDS WITH IBRAHIM PACHA IN THE SHUBRA PALACE. November 21, 1844. 2^>— JWia: 'ft//* 1844-6.] SICK LEAVE TO ENGLAND. 49 garden, at Shoubra, where, while Kate and her sister and Mrs. Melvill walked in the beautiful gardens, I went in with Sir Robert Oliver and Colonel Barnett, the Consul- General, to try to get a glimpse of the Pacha. We found him playing billiards with Ibrahim, and after seeing them finish their game, went into the divan, where the old Pacha,* whether from having given his son a beating, or from some other cause, was in such spirits as Colonel Barnett said were of late quite unusual. He talked and laughed with the Colonel and Sir Robert, and all his observations and questions impressed me with the idea that, whatever else he might be, he was a very well-informed and shrewd old gentleman for a Turk." Frere was too much out of health to make it expedient for him to return to England in the midst of winter. He and Mrs. Frere, therefore, remained some time at Malta, staying at the house of his uncle, John Hookham Frere. Thence they travelled slowly through Italy, spending three weeks at Rome, and stopping wherever they found any- thing to interest them ; Frere keenly enjoying and appre- ciating all that he saw, this being his first visit to Italy. They travelled through Siena, Florence, Pisa, Genoa, and thence through France, in a carriage — for it was before the days of railways — to England, and to the old home at Bitton, where, writes Lady Frere, " I can never forget the joy at his return ; it was clouded only by the gaps in the family circle caused by the death of the father, who had so longed to see his beloved son's return, and of the two dear brothers.f The whole family seemed to rest in the fact of his being among them." His health did not permit of his returning to India so soon as he had intended. His leave had to be extended to two years, and he did not go out again till November, 1846. During that time he travelled a good deal about * Mehemet Ali. t Richard, and his eldest brother Edward, Rector of Finningham. VOL. I. E 50 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. III. England with Mrs. Frere, visiting relations and friends, and his first home at Clydach, where he found his old nurse, Molly Cadwallader, still living. Bitton was his head-quarters, and here,* in January, 1846, his mother died, and he had the comfort of being with her to the last. The following April, Sir George Arthur was compelled by ill health to leave India and return to England. Thus, when, in December, 1846, Frere returned to Bombay, his appointment as private secretary had ceased. The only office that at that time could be offered to him was an Assistant Commissionership in the Customs Department at Bombay. His friends thought he would have waited till something more suitable to his standing in the service fell vacant. But not wishing to remain unemployed, he accepted it, and, entering on his duties at once, found his work absorbing and interesting. He made inquiries as to the way certain matters were managed at the Custom House in London from a cousin who was engaged there, and was thus able to introduce some reforms and improve- ments in the Bombay Custom House. In this office he remained till April, 1847, when the new Governor of Bombay, Sir George Clerk, offered him the appointment of Resident at Sattara, a native State in the Deccan, in succession to Colonel (afterwards Sir James; Outram, who was going to England. This he accepted, and at once took up his residence at Sattara, which is in the midst of a pleasant and interesting country, with a good climate, and within easy reach of Mahabuleshwar, the hill-station most resorted to in the hot months by Europeans in the Bombay Presidency. No official duties are more elastic, more susceptible of indefinite expansion, than those of a Resident at an Indian native court. He may, under ordinary circumstances, con- fine himself, if so disposed, to keeping up a friendly inter- 1847J SATTARA. 5 1 course with the reigning prince, and to adjudicating on such cases as come before him judicially. But under favourable circumstances a Resident may also become the adviser of the court, not only in matters of external policy, which is his special function, but of domestic politics also, so as to become practically the Prime Minister and something more. For in an Indian native State there is little private enter- prise, and almost all public works and improvements originate with the Government. A more favourable field for such influence than the State of Sattara presented at this time could hardly have been found. It had only within a few years been rescued from a condition of oppression and lawlessness. A good begin- ning had been made, and a favourable impression of British power, justice, and good will produced by Mountstuart Elphinstone, Ovans, and Outram ; but in internal adminis- tration — the organization of justice, police, and public works of all kinds — much remained to be done. The Rajah, restored to power by the English in 1818, and confided in his earlier years to Captain Grant Duff's tutorship, had turned out faithless ; and as he persisted in intriguing against the Government, he had been, in 1839, deposed and sent as a State prisoner to Benares, and his brother Shaji, or Appa Sahib, placed on the throne in his stead. Appa Sahib proved an intelligent and benevolent ruler, who did much for the improvement of his people. Though imbued with the ideas, habits, and superstitions of a Hindoo, he was willing and anxious to receive advice and assistance from the British Resident, and was always faithful to the Government, notably so during the Southern Mahratta war in 1844, when he offered a passage through his territory to the British troops. There grew up at once a good understanding and friendship between him and Frere. 52 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. III. How unsettled parts of the country still were may be gathered from the following extract from a memorandum of Frere's on the police of Sattara, written in December, 1847 :— " Mixed with the Mahratta villages, but perfectly distinct in locality of habitations and all their religious and social habits, are large communities of Ramoosies, Mangs, and other castes, whose professed mode of life in the last generation was either robbery or the wages of abstinence from robbery ; and who still, under the pressure of want, take to plunder as their natural occupation. The number of Ramoosies alone, according to the last census, was, if I recollect right, between fifty and sixty thousand souls. " Besides, there is a considerable vagabond floating population of gipsy- like tribes, whose mat huts may be seen outside every fourth or fifth village. . . . They have all some ostensible callings . . . but all occasionally live on their neighbours ; while some tribes furnish the most persevering of those plunderers who habitually and sys- tematically practise gang robbery." Frere's papers of this date show how numerous and varied were the matters he had to deal with. There is official correspondence about various charges of murder and highway robbery, and on petitions from individuals alleging wrongs, private and public, the evidence being very difficult to sift in the midst of a state of morality where falsehood is scarcely held to be a fault. And there are suggestions for the distribution of New Orleans cotton- seed, for the adoption of a new model of a cotton-gin, and for the introduction of an improved breed of sheep ; and plans for irrigation, for sanitation, and the prevention of cholera, as to which last there is a long exhaustive report, going minutely into every detail of the various causes of the epidemic, and of the measures to be taken for its pre- vention. And there are suggestions for the preservation of the ancient buildings and library at Bijapur, for the 1847-50-] SATTARA. 53 making of roads, and as to the whole system of law and the administration of justice throughout the State. In each case the subject is dealt with in minute detail, often explained by reference to its origin centuries ago, so that many of the letters are complete treatises on the origin, growth, present state and practicable methods of dealing with the matter in question. The late Colonel Sir Herbert Sandford, R.A., who, as a young artillery officer, was intimately associated with Frere during nearly all his time at Sattara, writes of the life there as follows : — "I first met Frere in August, 1847, when ordered to Sattara to command the Field Battery of Bombay Native Artillery, which, with a regiment of Bombay Native In- fantry, formed the British garrison. I remember being struck with the youthful appearance of the Resident, with his very intellectual and refined expression and gentle manner. As I came to know him better, I noticed also his lover-like devotion to his young wife, who, both then and in after years of hard work and many trials, proved herself so worthy of his attachment both as wife and, I may truly say, as coadjutor in his public and social duties. Frere had a fascination about him which drew my heart at once, and a request he soon afterwards made to me to examine and report on the Rajah of Sattara's siege and Field Artil- lery . . . led to the commencement of those intimate terms which lasted between us for nearly forty years. In the following April (1848) I was appointed Acting As- sistant Resident, and I served under Frere's control till his departure for Sind at the end of 1850. His unosten- tatious but deep piety, his intense family affection, and his warm-hearted, generous feelings towards those whom he honoured with his friendship, were notable characteristics. The hearty grasp of his hand at all meetings and partings was but an index of Frere's kind nature. He was of a most cheerful disposition, and delighted in fun. In money matters, that great test of a man's character, Frere was most open-handed and generous. . . . " He was too much occupied with official duties when at 54 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. III. Sattara to go on 'shikar' or sporting expeditions, though some parts of the province in those days abounded in large game ; almost the only exception to this being on one morning when, by way of a break in the early office work, we went to the outskirts of the city and shot a large panther. . . . " The society was small in those days, but the hospitality exercised by the Resident and Mrs. Frere brought us con- stantly together. The monsoon, or rainy months, from June to October, was the 'season/ and the life, though a happy one, would be considered but dull in the present days of perpetual excitement. An early morning ride, the friendly gossip round the tea-table in the verandah to discuss the contents of the Bombay newspapers, usually received at that hour two days old, in those days, though less than two hundred miles from the Presidency capital, an occasional picnic at Euteshwur, the Sattara fort, or at one of the neighbouring romantic spots, frequent dinner- parties and a very occasional ball, formed our social inter- course. Frere also introduced evening receptions at the Residency, where the Rajah, his court, and the native nobility and gentry mixed with the European society. Sattara being on the main road from some of the principal stations to Mahabuleshwar, the sanitarium of Bombay, re- ceived many passing visitors in May and October, from the Governor downwards, and the advent at these seasons of the venerated Bishop Carr was announced in those times by a salute of thirteen guns. The bishop, who was the most retiring of men, always thanked the artillery officer as if he had been paying a personal compliment instead of obeying orders. Divine service was at that time held at Sattara in an unconsecrated building, which had thirty years previously been used as a European artillery hos- pital. One of Sir B. Frere's best-remembered acts for the benefit of his fellow-countrymen at Sattara was his initi- ating and carrying out the erection of a handsome church on a prominent site, visible to all the surrounding country. A good library for the use of the English residents was maintained by the liberality of the Rajah, who assigned certain grass lands for providing the requisite funds. . . . " The Rajah of Sattara himself was, as Mr. Frere often mentions, one of the most benevolent and enlightened rulers of his time. He lent a willing' ear to the Resident's sCS^W g S847-50.] BIJAPUR. 55 suggestions on the subjects of education, public works, conservancy, etc. Sattara itself was a model city in these respects, even in the Rajah's lifetime. Amongst other public works was a well-made road from Sattara to the frontier of the Poona Collectorate at Neera. The making of this road, under the supervision of an English engineer in the Rajah's employ, Mr. Smith, caused the building of the first bridge in India over the sacred river Krishna, which in Hindoo belief is destined ere long to supersede the Ganges in sanctity. As this bridge enabled unbelievers to cross the river wearing their leather defiling shoes, great was the wrath of the Brahmins, who always took off their sandals when using the bridge." About a hundred and forty miles from Sattara, on a fertile plain, stands the ancient city of Bijapur, with its massive lava walls and innumerable mosques, palaces, and tombs. One dome, built of brick, is larger than that of St. Paul's, and is the largest in India. Equal in splendour to Agra and Delhi, Bijapur was captured by Aurungzebe two centuries ago, and since then has gradually become a city of the dead. Successive Residents at Sattara, begin- ning with Mountstuart Elphinstone, took an interest in its preservation ; and Frere ultimately succeeded in obtaining a grant of five thousand two hundred rupees from the Bombay Government for repairs to the most important buildings, and the rescue of a valuable library and manuscripts from destruction. Sir Herbert Sandford continues — "Among other restorations was that of an arch in the beautiful Ibrahim Rosa, which lies outside the lofty and massive city ramparts. Aurungzebe took the Ibrahim Rosa buildings for his head-quarters during the last siege of Bijapur, in 1688 ; and the great gun which for two centuries was the heaviest piece of ordnance in the world, and even now ranks high with our largest cannon, was turned on the Emperor, and now lies pointed at the broken arch repaired by Frere's orders. This gun, or rather howitzer, weighs forty-two tons, and is of very fine metal, 56 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. III. ringing like a bell when struck, with much silver in the alloy. It was cast at Ahmednuggur, from whose Maho- medan sovereign one of the Bijapur kings wrested the gun, and having conveyed it over some two hundred miles of roadless country, finally mounted the immense mass on a rampart sixty feet high by mechanical means of which there is no record. . . . There were some curious super- stitions in Bijapur respecting the effects of this gun being fired, and the Hindoos were in the habit of worshipping the monster, burning a light perpetually before the muzzle, until this was put a stop to with some difficulty. " When Frere took charge of Bijapur, there were some ten thousand inhabitants living in the hamlets at the various gateways. He gave an immediate impetus to the prosperity of the ancient city, by instituting a weekly market at the principal of these gateways, at which no octroi was to be taken. As heavy octroi duties were then being levied at all the neighbouring markets or fairs, most of them being outside English limits, the effect was imme- diate and great. Population rapidly increased, and a very considerable trade sprung up. A railway now runs through Bijapur, and the head-quarters of the Collectorate of the new Zilla of Bijapur are located in the former citadel." The pressing and critical question at Sattara, which for the time overshadowed all others, was that of the succession. The Rajah was childless. He was the repre- sentative of the old Mahratta dynasty, the descendant of the great Sivaji who had founded the Mahratta power more than two hundred years before. All the pride of race, all the instincts which induce a man of wealth and power to bequeath his inheritance to a chosen heir, were present, and, in addition to this, a still stronger motive, arising out of the Brahmin superstition which entails a long period of purgatorial suffering on a man who dies without an heir — whether natural or adopted makes no difference — to perform certain obsequies at his funeral.* * " The son," says the great Hindoo lawgiver, "delivers his father from the hell called Put. There are, he tells us, different kinds of sons ; 33? Breech. Muzzle. GUN ON THE OOPUREE BROOJ AT BIJAPUR (IRON). January 14, 1848. THE MULOOK JUFT (il CUBITS LONG). 1848.] SATTARA. 57 The treaties of 1819 and 1839 secured the sovereignty of Sattara to the Rajah, "his heirs and successors." The question was, Did these words, "heirs and successors," imply the right to adopt, and include an adopted as well as a natural heir ? If they did not, it was claimed that the sovereignty reverted to the English Government. It was unfortunate that that Government had to be judge in its own case. Frere writes to the Governor of Bombay, March 21, 1848, to inform him of the serious illness of the Rajah. " Though I had an engagement to visit him in the after- noon, he desired I might be sent for immediately. " His Highness appeared to be suffering severe pain, and was evidently in great alarm about himself. ... It was long before our united efforts could restore him to any degree of composure, and he then told me, in broken sentences, that he felt he was most seriously ill, and had many things to say to me. . . . "He then told me that ' this was the State of Sevaji there is the son begotten, the son given, the son by adoption, and other filial varieties. It is the duty of the son to perform the funeral obsequies of the father. If they be not performed, it is believed that there is no resurrection to eternal bliss. The right of adoption is, therefore, one of the most cherished doctrines of Hindooism. In a country where polygamy is the rule, it might be supposed that the necessity for adopting another man's offspring would be of rare occurrence. But all theory on the subject is belied by the fact that the princes and chiefs of India more frequently find themselves at the close of their lives without the solace of male offspring than with it. The alternative of adoption is one, therefore, to which there is frequent resort ; it is a source of unspeakable comfort in life and in death ; and politically it is as dear to the heart of a nation as it is personally to the individual it affects. . . . " No power on earth beyond a man's own will can prevent him from adopting a son, or can render that adoption illegal if it be legally performed. But to adopt a son as successor to private property is one thing, to adopt an heir to titular dignities and territorial sovereignty is another. Without the consent of the paramount state, no adoption of the latter kind can be valid." — Kaye's " Sepoy War," quoted in the Ranee of Sattara's Memorial. 58 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. III. and Shahoo Maharajt ; that it was for the Government who had so long upheld it to take such steps as it saw fit to uphold it still ; ' and then, with still deeper feeling and a more impressive manner, said 'that he committed to the keeping of the British Resident Bulwant Rao Raj Adnega, the boy he had taken under his protection,' and made the child put his hands in mine." On a subsequent visit, ten days later, Frere found the Rajah worse. "April ii, 1848. " He then said he had hoped to have been able to meet the Honourable Governor at Mahabuleshwar, and there to have asked his advice as to the course he should pursue, but that he felt he could not hope to do so now ; that he trusted that the same motives which had originally induced the British Government to maintain the throne of Sivaji and Shahoo, would now induce them to consent to let him continue the succession in the usual manner by adoption ; . . . that he had always acted on the assurance that the presence of the British Resident was as though the sovereign was there in person ; that he did not feel assured for a day what would happen to him, and he therefore trusted that I would sanction or obtain the Governor's sanction to the adoption." Frere told him that a matter so important would have to be referred to the Court of Directors in London ; and as to the boy whom he proposed to adopt, he was a foundling and a stranger ; and Frere pointed out how unfit any one of low origin, out of whose dish the Rajah could not eat, would be to succeed to the throne of Sivaji. He at once admitted the force of this, and said that if he got permission to adopt, he would select some one of the family of Bhonslay, after due inquiry as to the purity of his blood, the qualities of the child, and the prognostics derivable from his horoscope. Frere went at once, according to the Rajah's request, to see the Governor at Mahabuleshwar. Before he had been 1848.] DEATH OF THE RAJAH. 59 there two days, he received an urgent summons to return. He mounted at once and rode at speed, but he was too late. In his absence, feeling his end approaching, the Rajah had sent for the Residency doctor, Dr. Murray, and told him that, having chosen a boy of the Bhonslay family, he was going to adopt him, and that he wished the adoption to take place in Dr. Murray's presence. In vain the doctor, taken by surprise, and shrinking from the responsibility, begged him to await Frere's return. He shook his head, and saying that no time was to be lost, put pen and paper in the doctor's hands, bidding him write down in English the exact translation of the words he spoke in Mahratta. He then said, slowly and distinctly, " I have not the slightest hope of living till the Resident's arrival. I therefore now adopt this boy " — calling him into the room. After a few minutes the ceremony of adoption took place, in the presence of forty or fifty of the Durbar, and lasted about a quarter of an hour. On its conclusion the Rajah was lifted up in bed, and having had a turban put on his head and a shawl thrown over him, the adopted son made obeisance to him, and afterwards, at his request, ate sugar out of the doctor's hand, and from the hands of some half-dozen others. Taking Dr. Murray's hand, the Rajah said, " You must mention to Mr. Frere all that has passed, and all that I have said. Mr. Frere must arrange and manage everything after my death ; from him all my people are sure to receive justice and kindness." His words " were now scarcely audible, and shortly afterwards he expired, amid the lamentations, not only of his family and attendants, but also of the numerous assemblage of people who were congregated within and around the precincts of the palace." * Frere's official letter carries on the story : — * Memorandum by Dr. Murray, April 5, 1848. 60 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IIL " It was after dark when I reached the palace ; a vast crowd had assembled in the square in front of it, and the whole of his Highness's retinue was assembled as for a State procession ; I was received by Mama Sahib Sena- puttee, his Highness's maternal uncle, one of the oldest and most respected of the Sirdars, who led me to the gateway, where the corpse was placed in a sitting posture, dressed as in Durbar, and prepared to be carried forth. " After the first clamorous expression of grief was somewhat calmed, the boy who had been adopted was brought forward. " I told the assembled chiefs that . . . the Governor had expressed his approval of the advice which I had given his Highness to await the answer of Government to his application for leave to adopt, and not to complicate the question by proceeding to any adoption pending the arrival of that answer ; . . . that what had happened was now beyond remedy, but that it was out of my power to recognize the act till I received the orders of Government ; that in the mean time I was instructed ... to take charge of the administration, and to conduct it on exactly the same principles and through the same agency as during his Highness's lifetime, till the decision of the Govern- ment of India should arrive. " With this they seemed perfectly satisfied, several declaring that they entirely trusted to the British Govern- ment, the late Rajah's best friend, and were content to abide by whatever it might think best. " They then asked leave, which I of course gave at once, for the procession to move on, which gave occasion for a fresh burst of grief from the crowd. The adopted son, as chief mourner, preceded the corpse, carrying the fire for the pile. Mama Sahib then begged me to go upstairs to where the Ranees were sitting, and he led the way, followed by about twenty of the principal officers of the State and household. " The lady was sitting wrapped in shawls, between the two younger Ranees, close to the wall, and seemed quite to understand all I said, but it was repeated in her ear in the usual way by her dewan. In so doing I observed he omitted or altered every expression which implied any doubt as to the recognition of the adoption ; and painful as it was, I considered it was, taking all circumstances into 1848.] FUNERAL CEREMONIES. 6l consideration, the less cruel course to recapitulate, and caused to be explained to the Ranees, very distinctly, the reasons which made it impossible for me to recognize the act or to pledge myself to the decision of the Government on the subject. . . . "When taken ill in the morning, among other ex- pedients resorted to in the hope of prolonging his Highness's life, the Brahmins suggested the gift in charity of his Highness's weight in silver. As he was too weak to submit to the ordinary process, fifteen thousand rupees were taken, as the probable weight, and given by his Highness." Sir Herbert Sandford continues the narrative : — " Eight days after the funeral the customary presents to priests were made to ensure repose to the Rajah's soul. In Hindoo private life these consist in models of house- hold furniture and such-like, with a few rupees given ; but in the case of the Rajah one or more of every animal or article in any way used by the Rajah was presented. The recipient could only be a Brahmin, and as the belief was that the more valuable the gift, the greater were the number of the Rajah's sins which the vicarious presentee had to bear, there really was considerable difficulty in finding men to accept those of a more expensive character. In particular, no one for some days could be found to accept an elephant, till at last a very holy Brahmin who was living a hermit's life, but who had a son for whose marriage ceremonies he required money, was persuaded to take the elephant on condition of receiving also a sum of five hundred rupees. The elephant was given with a white or unlucky mark on its head, and was sold by the holy man to a Mahomedan. Not only were native manufactures given, but also European articles, such as a gun, and an English carriage and pair of horses, which latter had to be accompanied by a present of three hundred rupees. The ceremony took place where the Rajah's body had been burnt, where also in former times the Brahmin widows had been consumed with their husbands' bodies — sacrifices which the late Rajah had himself abolished on coming to the throne. The Resident, accompanied by several officers from the camp, was seated on a special platform, and it excited some of the younger military men 62 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. III. to see valuable property, such as silver bedsteads, hand- some riding horses, etc., carried off by the priests, with bags of rupees as an inducement for them to do so. One officer was heard to exclaim that he would take all the Rajah's sins for nothing, if the carriage, horses, and guns were given to him ! The ceremony closed with the pre- sentation of three splendid-looking cows, whose influence was in some mysterious manner to enable the Rajah's soul to cross three rivers on his way to the Hindoo heaven." Pending the final decision of the Court of Directors whether the adoption would be sanctioned or refused, and the province annexed, Frere was instructed to assume charge, and to act as ad interim Rajah ; and the Bombay Government sent off a detachment of troops to support him. He, however, on hearing of it, at once took measures to have them recalled before crossing the Sattara frontier, as he preferred to depend on moral force alone. Sir H. Sandford describes the official life at Sattara at this time ; — " Soon after daybreak we drove or rode to the palace, in the heart of the city, and in a large hall of one of these buildings found assembled the ministers of State, attended by their secretaries. . . . Each minister or head of department had, on large sheets of paper with wide margins, precis of all letters or reports received by him. The decision on each subject was written on the margin and initialed by the Resident or his assistant ; and letters were then prepared for the minister's seal, or Mr. Frere's signature, according to their importance. " After two or three hours of this we returned, and for the rest of the day Mr. Frere worked at the Residency, in the forenoon as Resident, and afterwards as Civil Judge, disposing of appeals, or as Criminal Judge, trying the cases prepared by me as magistrate. There were upwards of three hundred untried prisoners in the gaol at the Rajah's death, so that this, with the current criminal work, was of itself enough for any ordinary official. The completion of the trial of these prisoners brought out one of the traits in Frere's character which must have been often noticed 1848.] SATTARA. 63 in the larger fields he was soon called to, by the assistants who had the good fortune to work under him — namely, how, in making any reports to Government, he always brought prominently forward the assistance he had received from his staff, even when, as in my case, this was trifling compared with his own share in the work. ... It may be imagined what a spur to zeal and what a bond of affection was created in the hearts of his assistants when their chief wrote commendation, in such terms, of success which he had in reality been mainly instrumental in creating. "The work of which I have given a sketch was frequently varied by visits to the three widows in the palace, who, partly from their own natural anxiety, and partly as mouth- pieces of the numerous dependents concerned, were con- stantly urging the claims of the adopted son and the necessity for a speedy decision. The greatest tact was also required, in deciding many of the questions coming before the Resident, to hold a neutral position, so as on one hand not to give rise to false expectations that the adoption would be allowed, nor on the other hand to extinguish their hopes, and give openings for the work of intrigue, or even for plotting against the Government, in which some of their advisers, as was afterwards evident in 1857, had both the will and the power to involve the Rajah's family. " When the fair season set in, Mr. Frere went frequently into the districts, leaving me on such occasions in charge at head-quarters, and himself made all the annual revenue settlements — a work which was afterwards distributed among three officials. " The Ryotwarree system was in force, involving separate dealings by the revenue authorities with thousands of small holders of land. As most of the land was rack- rented, the full amount of rent could never be paid except in very exceptional years. The Rajah's system was to give but small permanent remissions, but not to exact full pay- ments, leaving an immense amount of arrears due from the ryots. All these arrears were afterwards wiped out, and the European officers in charge of districts saw every tenant and signed the cancelling memorandum in the debtor's book ; but Frere, in both 1848-9 and 1849-50, him- self made the settlements, so that only what had to be paid was actually demanded, and gave at once remission 64 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. III. of the balance. To settle what this remission should be required an immense amount of clerical labour, and a general survey of the condition of the crops, and the super- vision of this work Mr. Frere transacted in addition to his other constant duties." On the question of adoption Frere writes to the Governor of Bombay — "April 12, 1848. " It is right I should inform Government that very great anxiety exists among all classes about the town as to the future, and no act is so trifling but that I hear it has been interpreted in various ways, favourable or unfavourable to the continuance of the State according to the hopes or fears of the party. Government will not be surprised at this when it is considered that the bread of almost every one in and about the city depends more or less on the decision. Besides the holders of jagheers, imans, etc., who may feel more or less secure according to the tenure on which they hold their possessions, there are at least ten thousand individuals directly supported by salaries from the Court, and most of these have probably many persons dependent on them for subsistence ; on the expenditure of such Government servants mainly depends the trade of the city, and there are few of the cultivating classes even throughout the territory to whom the extinction of the dynasty of Sivaji would be matter of indifference. Most of those near Sattara, and all the more respectable families at a distance, have some relative in some situation or other in his Highness's service, and all for many miles round participate more or less in the benefit of the expenditure caused by the Durbar." And in his Report to the Bombay Government he says — " September 23, 1848. " The late Rajah having been a just and humane, a liberal and a popular ruler, any supposed want of equity in the appropriation of his dominions, whether by absorption into the Company's dominion or by a transfer to a rival and inimical party, will lack the popularity which a similar measure, whatever its grounds, would always find among i8 4 8.] QUESTION OF ADOPTION. 6$ the industrious and peaceful inhabitants of a State delivered from anarchy and oppression. Moreover, as he was cele- brated for his attachment and submission to the British Government, the measure will not find the excuse which all men make for a power ridding itself, even by means they disapprove, of a troublesome or dangerous neighbour." As an instance of the veneration in which the late Rajah's memory was held, his servants, after his death, intimated to Frere their wish to erect some permanent memorial to him. Frere suggested the erection of a market-place with stone arcades for fruit and vegetables. The subscriptions came to so large a sum that not only was this carried out, but there was enough in addition to make a tunnel — said to be the first tunnel made in India — connecting the town of Sattara with a valley from which it was separated by a mountain spur : this formed a direct route to the sea coast, communication having been hitherto by a circuitous road. The decision as to the adoption was long postponed, and all India waited, anxious ; for it was a crucial case. It was felt that the destiny, not only of Sattara and the race of Sivaji, but of many another native State, in the event of a like crisis occurring, hung in the balance. The old system, by which the English Government left native States independent, while exercising influence or control over them by means of its Residents, had of late been falling into disrepute. It had been established in earlier times mainly for the purpose of maintaining peace, and of spreading British influence without interfering with native administration. Generally speaking, the conditions were that the native ruler was to be maintained and protected on his throne by the British power, in return for which he was to contract no alliances and to wage no wars without leave, and to listen to the advice of the Resident in other matters. Where the ruler was not wholly vicious, VOL. I. F 66 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. III. and the English Resident had force of character and tact, it worked well. English ideas of justice and good govern- ment prevailed under the old forms, and without wounding native susceptibilities. The blot in the system was that it tended to make the rulers independent of their people, to leave them unlimited power over their subjects while lessening their responsibility, and to deprive the oppressed of the only remedy for a bad Oriental despotism, the power of rising in revolt and killing or deposing their oppressors. The condition of the kingdom of Oudh and of the province of Nagpur were flagrant instances of misery, misrule, and oppression flourishing in spite of our advice and warning, but under the shadow of our protection. The English power had so grown that it was now strong enough to bid the grosser forms of tyranny to cease from one end of India to the other. Was it not, it was said, mere criminal pedantry to abstain from using that power out of an over- strained respect for the hereditary rights of despots to rule their people ill ? The idea was in the ascendant that the true policy was annexation of the native States, as oppor- tunities afforded, to the British Empire. Others, again, who were fully alive to the dangers and difficulties attendant upon an extension of frontier, were anxious to annex, when a fair opportunity offered, any native States that intervened between portions of our own territory, so that all the country within our external frontier might be consolidated under British rule. These views had a powerful advocate in the person of the newly arrived Governor-General, Lord Dalhousie. His upright, honourable, and chivalrous character, and the transparent integrity of his political life, raised him above any suspicion of selfish or unscrupulous ambition to obtain applause or credit for himself by adding to the part coloured as British on the map of India. His policy, right 1848.] SATTARA ANNEXED. 6j or wrong, was founded not on expediency alone, but on a conviction that it was just and right. But his training as a statesman had been in England, not in India. He was destitute of the experience and knowledge which can be acquired only by long and intimate personal intercourse and sympathy with the natives, and which was essential to the formation of a right decision on a question of this kind. Necessarily his opinion was formed at second hand. And if a majority of those with whom the decision lay were in favour of the annexation of Sattara, the minority, which was opposed to it, comprised men of the highest authority. Amongst others, Sir George Arthur, the late Governor of Bombay ; Sir George Clerk, who was Governor at the time of the Rajah's death ; and the three men of all others best qualified to judge — Mountstuart Elphin- stone,* who had had the chief authority in concluding the treaty in question ; Mr. Grant Duff, who actually con- cluded it, and Frere himself — were strongly opposed to * Sir T. E. Colebrooke, in his life of Mountstuart Elphinstone, says, " I do not remember ever to have seen Mr. Elphinstone so shocked as he was at this proceeding. The treatment of the Sattara sovereignty as a jageer, over which we had claims of feudal superiority, he regarded as a monstrous one ; but any opinion of the injustice done to this family was subordinate to the alarm which he felt at the dangerous principles which were advanced, affecting every sovereign State in India, and which were put forward both in India and at home." Mr. Elphinstone, in a letter on the question, says, " The succession, I conceive, was an internal affair, in which the British Government could not interfere, unless in a case which might affect the foreign relations of the State or the general tranquillity of the country. This, I conceive, was the general impression in India when I was in that country. There was no native State to which the recognition of its succession by the British Government was not of the highest impor- tance ; but none of them, I conceive, ever imagined that that Govern- ment had a right to regulate the succession as feudal lord, or had any pretentions to the territory as an escheat on the failure of heirs to the reigning family." — " Life of the Hon. Mountstuart Elphinstone," by Sir T. E. Colebrooke, Bart., M.P., vol. ii. pp. 390, 392. 68 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. III. annexation. As little disposed as Lord Dalhousie to allow the hereditary claims of a dynasty to override the welfare of the people, they were convinced that, whatever interpretation statesmen or lawyers might give to the words of the treaty, annexation would be regarded, not only by the Court, but by the people of Sattara, and throughout India, as a breach of faith, and an act of oppression exercised by the strong over the weak. Even if it was the case — which was at least doubtful — that Sattara would gain in material prosperity, they urged that the gain would be far more than counterbalanced by the shock to the feeling of loyalty to the ancient dynasty, and still more by the weakening of that confidence in the honour and good faith of the British Government which is the corner-stone of its influence and power for good. At length, thirteen months after the death of the Rajah, a majority of the Court of Directors, after a long and animated debate, decided, in accordance with Lord Dal- housie's opinion, to disallow the adoption and to annex the country. Strongly as Frere felt on the matter, he was keenly alive to the necessity of the decision, whatever it might be, being loyally supported and carried out by the servants of the Company, and so carefully did he abstain from expressing any opinion which could possibly become known to the people of Sattara, that even the widowed Ranee, the person most concerned, did not, till twenty-five years afterwards, when the question was reopened, know which way his opinion inclined. Privately he writes to Mr. G. T. Clark — " One of Sir George Clerk's last acts was to propose that the adoption of a son by the late Rajah should be respected, and his colleagues voted against it. Pendente lite I was told to administer the Government so as to be prepared for either Rajah or Company. For twelve months the I849-] FRERE'S CONCEPTION OF EMPIRE. 69 question was discussed, and finally decided against the adoption. I battled hard, believing the absorption to be a gross breach of the treaty made by Mr. Elphinstone ; Mr. Elphinstone thought so too ; and the opinions of Sir J. Malcolm, Lords Clare and Ellenborough, Sir R. Grant, Sir J. Carnac, and Sir G. Arthur, were all, I believe, the same way ; but and prevailed, and there is an end of the House of Sivaji. It is an iniquitous business, and one of these days we shall have to pay the reckoning. However, everybody laughs at me for this. I hope they may prove right. . . . Lord Falkland tells me he means to keep me as Commissioner to drill the 1,320,000 Mahrattas to regulation. Of course I shall do my best, but I well know the result must be disappointing, unless the Govern- ment will do many things to develop the resources of the country, which I well know they will not do. Hitherto I have kept the peace ; whether I can continue to do so is, I think, doubtful. All this is for your private ear." Frere's conception of the Imperial authority, of its ex- tension and its bearing on native States and on races of inferior civilization, is well exemplified by the position he took on the question of Sattara. To Lord Dalhousie and his school the ideal British Empire in India was a compact territory within a ring-fence, to be extended at every just and convenient opportunity, and ruled in as homogeneous a manner as possible by British officials, taking their in- structions, not only in important matters, but in details, from the Governor-General and his secretaries at Cal- cutta. Frere's ideal of empire was a pervading influence rather than a system of administration — a power which, though inevitably spreading, aimed at no extension of the red line on the map which marked the limits of British territory, and which would rather be indicated by a colour gradually paling and shaded off indefinitely far beyond it. Full of quick sympathetic appreciation of all that was good and venerable in the habits, institutions, and traditions of the various peoples and races with whom 70 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. III. he came in contact, he shrank from imposing on them the rigid forms and the dead level of a foreign and alien ad- ministration, and paid scrupulous respect to native sus- ceptibilities and native traditions of rank and precedence, supporting and utilizing for the government of the country existing institutions and the chiefs whom he found in authority. But he insisted that in any territory, annexed or unannexed, over which the British protectorate ex- tended there must be no uncertainty whether the European or the native power is the strongest. A civilized and a comparatively uncivilized power cannot, he held, exist peaceably side by side — as two European nations can — unless the uncivilized power distinctly recognizes that it is the weaker of the two, and that it must in essentials conform to the civic standard of right and wrong of the other. The "Pax Britannica" must be assured ; the loyal and law-abiding man, white or coloured, civilized or savage, must be protected, effectually, by the moral force of the imperial name. This conception of empire is the key-note of Frere's ad- ministration and policy from first to last. He held to it at the Sattara crisis, in dealing with the wild Beloochees of the Sind frontier, in coercing the 'Arab slave-dealers of the Persian Gulf and Zanzibar, in toiling, often un- supported and thwarted, in the cause of peace and civilization in South Africa, Its pursuit amid the turbid waves of public opinion sometimes brought him honour ; in the latter part of his career, alas ! misunderstanding and abuse. But never was a lifelong ideal more clearly perceived, more consistently, unswervingly, and loyally pursued. The decision to annex Sattara brought Frere's appoint- ment of ad interim Rajah to an end. Henceforth it became a British province, governed by a Commissioner. It was 1849.] COMMISSIONER OF SATTARA. 7 1 natural to suppose that the choice of the first Commissioner would fall upon some one who had approved the change, and not upon an opponent of it. It was creditable to the Bombay Government that no such consideration in- fluenced it. The transfer to be effected was a delicate, if not a dangerous matter, and to carry it out without dis- turbance and bloodshed required firmness, tact, and know- ledge of and sympathy with the feelings and traditions of the Mahrattas. It was felt and acknowledged that no one combined these qualifications in an equal degree with Frere. He did not hesitate for a moment to accept the post. He had been unable to prevent the annexation, but he could at least do his best to make it as little galling as possible. There would be a continuity in his friendly personal re- lations with the late Rajah's family, and also in practical matters of administration, which would help to smooth matters. He was given (continues Sir H. Sandford) — "the assistance of Mr. Coxon of the Bombay Civil Service for the judicial work, and of myself and Captain Nicholson, soon afterwards succeeded by Lieutenant (now Lieutenant-General) Parr, for revenue, police, and magis- terial duties. This was a very small staff for the intro- duction of the British rule into a province as large as any of the Bombay presidency collectorates, particularly when so much additional work was involved connected with the palace and jageerdhar ; but Frere was equal to the occasion, and, not content with keeping things going, he found time to initiate and partly carry out some great reforms, which much improved the country in matters regarding the public peace, the health of the people, and the opening out of the districts for the promotion of commerce. "Sattara, during the Rajah's reign, was much disturbed by one of the old curses under Mahratta rule — the perpe- tration of gang robberies. These averaged about one a week, committed by armed gangs sometimes twenty in 72 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. III. number, who occasionally attacked villages, bearing torches and sounding horns in the most open manner, made for the house of the richest man, often a banker, and if not at once satisfied they would tear the earrings and jewels from the persons of the women, and torture the owner till he disclosed his treasure. Frere put this down by re- forming and stirring up the police, by severe punishments when any ringleaders were captured, particularly by cor- poral punishment, and by reinstituting the old system of watch and ward, which obliged the village police and a certain number of the inhabitants to sleep at the village watch-house, to go the rounds thrice during the night, and to see that all suspicious characters, of whom a roll was kept, either answered to their names when going the rounds, or slept at the watch-house. " The effect of these measures, which were maintained after Frere left, was remarkable, and we sometimes had only one or two gang robberies in the course of the year. " An attempt, soon after the annexation, was made by the Brahmins of Sattara to browbeat the Commissioner as they were occasionally apt to deal with their late Hindoo ruler, but they found there was a firmer will than they had the least idea of beneath Frere's affable demeanour. Until the Rajah's death neither a bullock nor a cow was ever per- mitted to be killed in the military bazaar of Sattara, and we could only obtain beef in the neighbouring town of Wace, where, although the town was the greatest Brahminical stronghold in the country, a Mahomedan butcher held a sunnud, conferred on his ancestors by a former Mussulman ruler, to kill cows — probably granted as a punishment of the Brahmins for some uprising like what was threatened under Frere. " For necessary police reasons the Commissioner had ordered a cow to be destroyed, and had had it removed into the military bazaar, where his instructions were at once carried out. The news of this order soon spread through the city, and next morning a vast assemblage of excited Brahmins, not aware that they were too late, even if justified in remonstrating, surrounded the Residency in a threatening mood. The officer commanding the troops at once offered military assistance, but Mr. Frere refused, and only consented to agree that if he lowered the flag, then a company of infantry was to be despatched. Mean- 1849-50.J ADMINISTRATION OF SATTARA. 73 while he invited the spokesmen to come on to the Residency, and after they had given their names, he informed them that for this attempt at intimidation they would each be fined fifty rupees. He then spoke good-naturedly to the people, and made jokes with them about their dinners being ready, and that they should return to their homes. Finally he walked into the grounds with his umbrella over his head, for the day had then become very hot, and quietly forced the crowd back and back for more than half a mile, till he reached the entrance of the city, where they dispersed. ... It was a marvellous exercise of tact and personal influence which subdued these angry men, and prevented what might, if otherwise managed, have been a serious riot ending in bloodshed. " The Rajah was in such dread of the Brahmins that he never would sanction the execution of a murderer of that caste. There was one notorious Brahmin criminal who, whenever convicted and imprisoned in the Rajah's time, starved himself till he seemed to be at the last gasp, and then obtained his release by acting on the Rajah's fears of being guilty of a Brahmin's death. This man tried the same plan when imprisoned by Mr. Frere, and reduced himself to a mere skeleton, without power to raise his head. Frere visited him in the hospital when in this con- dition, and took no notice. The Brahmin then took food again, and was soon afterwards working on the public works in chains, quite well and strong. "Visitations of cholera were among the chief enemies to be met, and Frere found many towns and villages with every measure taken to welcome instead of repel the foe. Dense walls, or rather ramparts, of prickly pear abounded, often fostered round the villages to keep off the attacks of robbers in old days. There were no roads or drains, and much water-pollution ; the streets, particularly in Brahmin quarters, were in such a condition as to defile the ground and the atmosphere. Orders were given for the cutting down and burning of the prickly pear, and the pecuniary value of the labour voluntarily given for this purpose must have been very large. The orders were gradually thoroughly carried out, and in a year or two British as distinguished from Jagheer villages, or those belonging to chiefs like Scindia or Holkar which were not in the Sattara province, could be at once recognized by the absence of prickly pear. 74 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. III. " In order to provide funds for the village roads, wells, bridges, and such like, Frere introduced municipalities, the first in India. There were many petty and vexatious taxes on houses and trade which, having obtained the sanction of Government, he abolished, on condition that the town or village retained the least objectionable, such as octroi, for municipal purposes. Municipalities were partly elected, partly nominated, and in the course of a year or two every town and every large village had its municipal fund, and showed the benefit of the works thereby undertaken in comfort, convenience, cleanliness, and health. "Throughout his whole career Mr. Frere showed his states- manship in no more conspicuous manner than in the pro- motion of public works. Except the road already mentioned to the Poonah frontier and those in Sattara itself, besides one from Sattara to Mahabuleshwar, there was not a road in the province. The municipalities soon had roads and bridges in the towns and villages. But the great traffic which even then existed between the province and the coast below the Ghauts passed over mountain-paths on thousands of Brinjarrie bullocks. Mr. Frere found time, somehow, to draw up a scheme for great arterial roads throughout the country, some of which were begun in his time, but all of which, on the lines he laid down, have been since carried out at great expense, but with wonderful results in opening out the province to cart traffic. " In the midst of beneficial labours like these, of which the above is a mere sketch, Mr. Frere, to the gain of the larger province, but to the loss of Sattara, was appointed Commissioner of Sind. The grief both of natives and of his European friends and staff was most evident, and showed the man more than any words can describe. I saw men of both nationalities in tears ; and in after-years, when at the Cape of Good Hope, I again witnessed the same feeling displayed by the English and Dutch, when Sir Bartle was about to return home. . . . " Though Mr. Frere left Sattara some years before the mutinies, yet the events of these days proved his prescience as regards the bad effects on the people of the refusal to sanction the adoption of a son by the Rajah ; and also showed that had it not been for the firm but conciliatory manner in which Frere carried out a highly unpopular 1849-50.] SATTARA. 75 measure, there would probably have been considerable disturbances in 1848-9. For the wish, the men, and the means were all to hand, but were controlled by his tact and sagacity. The Government of Bombay wished to reinforce the British garrison at Sattara on the annexation, and a weaker man might have been glad to save himself from responsibility by ruling with the aid of strong battalions, but Frere was of a sterner and more reliant nature, and his self-confidence was not misplaced." In June 1857, a Mahratta in the Native Artillery at Sattara, which was composed principally of high-caste men from Oude, gave information to Sir H. Sandford of an intended mutiny and outbreak. It was prevented by the prompt removal of the battery to the island of Perim, near Aden. The conspiracy proved to be a formidable and extensive one, and (continues Sir H. Sandford) " was gradually traced to the two palaces, containing the adopted son of the ex-Rajah and last Rajah of Sattara. The former was a mere tool in the hands of his adoptive mother the ex-Ranee, who was a woman much resembling the Ranee of Jhansi, equally bloodthirsty, determined, and able. She was removed with her son to confinement near Bombay, on which occasion the great quadrangle in front of the palaces, where such a dramatic event took place at the Rajah's death, witnessed a very different scene. While still dark on a monsoon morning, I led, by the directions of Mr. Rose, the magistrate, a body of troops under the command of General Sir G. Malcolm, consisting of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, into the city, where, just as the day was breaking, we surrounded the palace of the ex-Ranee, known to contain many armed retainers. The family were at once despatched in carriages to Bombay, relays of dragoons and horses being ready, and as the last of his race was being driven through the city, two devoted servants tried to accompany the carriage, bearing the ' moorchubs ' or emblems of royalty. A dragoon on each side of the carriage snatched these emblems from the servants' hands, and threw them on to the roofs of the houses which they were then passing. It was a most 76 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. III. significant token of the passing away of an old dynasty. . . . "Years afterwards I was assured by a distinguished official, who had been visiting Sattara with special reference to old family connections, that he found the anti-English feeling stronger there than in any other part of India, and this not from the people disliking our rule per se, but owing to resentment at the recognition of the adoption, which Frere so strongly urged, not having been made." 73 Longitude East frojn 74? Greenwich- Xorvdorv; John. Murray, Albemarle. Strut . F.S.Weller.F.RGS. CHAPTER IV. SIND. The annexation of Sind — Napier and Outram — Frere made Com- missioner in Sind — Ali Morad — Natural features of the country — Its backward condition — Kurrachee harbour — Lord Dalhousie — Personal and departmental responsibility — Kurrachee and Kotree railway — Roads and bridges — Speed-money — Postage stamps— Dak bungalows — Kurrachee Fair — Canals — Sindee lan- guage — Letters to his children. If additions to British territory in India were to be classified into those which have been justly and those which have been unjustly acquired, that of Sind would have to take its place in the latter class. Up to the date of the Affghan expedition in 1838, all attempts to make a settlement of any kind in the country had met with failure and rebuff. The Meers of Sind, if they were agreed about nothing else, were agreed in keeping strangers out of the country. But when the occupation of Affghanistan became with Lord Auckland an object to which all other considerations had to yield, and when the shortest and easiest way thither through the Punjab was closed by the refusal of Runjeet Singh to allow an army to pass through his country, Sind became the only possible base of operations ; and the occupation of so much of the country as was required to secure the communications, especially the passage of the Indus and the access to the Bolan Pass, became abso- lutely necessary before the expedition could proceed. It was difficult to find any justification for such an yS THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IV. occupation. The best that can be said is that the Meers' title was not a very old or a very good one, and that their government was not much better, as far as the people were concerned, than licensed plunder. Anyhow, it was part of the programme, and it was done. And when, a few months later, the Meers, in natural anger, rose and plundered the British stores at Hyderabad and drove away the Resident, this was made an excuse for the imposition of the treaty of February 5, 1839, which bound them to receive a subsidiary British force, to contribute £30,000 a year for its support, to provide facilities for the passage of troops to Affghanistan, and to abolish tolls on the Indus ; and in spite of Colonel Pottinger's remonstrances, Kurrachee, which had been attacked and occupied during the negotia- tions by a British force, was retained. Early in 1840, Major (afterwards Sir James) Outram succeeded Colonel Pottinger as political agent in Lower Sind, and a year and a half later he was placed over Upper Sind and Beloochistan in addition. As long as all went well in Affghanistan the Meers observed the treaty, but, as might be expected, when disaster came to the British they were found to be plotting and intriguing. The Affghan war and immediate danger over, Lord Ellen- borough determined to call them sharply to account. Sir Charles Napier was made General commanding in Sind, and conducted the war which followed not only with great military skill, but, in spite of his advanced years and frequent severe bodily suffering, with fiery energy and with a clear conviction that the conflict in which he was engaged was a necessary and righteous one. Without defending the manner in which the treaty of February, 1839, had been obtained, he was convinced that it was now right and necessary that it should be enforced. There could be no going back to the former state of things. The Meers had 1S43-] SIR CHARLES NAPIER IN SIND. 79 forfeited whatever claim they ever possessed to be reinstated in their former authority by betraying each other, and selfishly making the best procurable terms each for himself. Nor had they any friends, any national party in the country. "The Ameers," says Sir William Napier, Sir Charles Napier's brother and biographer, " governed by the sword and by no other law. The Beloochees were their troops ; the Sindians and Hindoos their subjects, their victims ; up to the battle of Meeanee, any Belooch might kill a Sindian or Hindoo with impunity, for pleasure or profit. They dealt largely in the slave-trade, and so did all their feudal chiefs, both as importers and exporters." They depopulated whole districts for the sake of the game. They extracted money from merchants by torture ; and they drove mechanics and artisans out of the country by forcing them to work for starvation wages. On the other hand, the British stations furnished an asylum to oppressed multitudes, and the shadow of British authority was a refuge from wrong and outrage. Hence the treaty by lapse of time had " acquired by degrees that secondary moral force which belongs to utility irrespective of abstract justice." * Napier's campaign opened with the battle of Meeanee, which was followed by that of Hyderabad. Both were won in fierce hand-to-hand conflict against odds which are astonishing, even in the record of Indian battles ; for the Beloochees were brave and stubborn men, who fought to the death. The annexation of Sind, for which Lord Ellen- borough was responsible, was the consequence, and the Meers were banished from the country. Then followed a long and angry controversy over the question whether the war and the annexation were necessary and justifiable. It is remarkable that the foremost and * " Conquest of Scinde," by Major-General Sir W. F. P. Napier, p. 91. 80 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IV. angriest champions on each side of the question, Napier and Outram, were not unlike each other in many points of character. Both were upright, fearless and chivalrous to a fault, intolerant of wrong, tender to the weak, self-reliant, confident and impatient of control. Lord Ellenborough, the Governor-General, who had appointed Napier, not only supported him in everything, but carried on a confidential correspondence with him on all subjects of importance, without the knowledge or inter- vention of the Commanders-in-Chief either at Calcutta or at Bombay, or of any department of Government or of the military staff. This was quite unprecedented, and caused much dissatisfaction. Sind was dependent on Bombay and its services for its troops, its supplies, and the greater part of the officials who administered its government ; and the consequences of this new departure in administration would have been serious, had not Sir George Arthur, instead of taking offence, set himself, with rare self-abnega- tion and tact, to smooth difficulties and remove ill feeling. In the controversy between Napier and Outram he carefully abstained from even expressing an opinion. The annexa- tion was done, and it was irrevocable, and it was every one's duty to support the Government and to obey orders. Frere, as private secretary to Sir George Arthur, was more or less behind the scenes, and had the best opportunities for observing what was going on. His sympathies seem to have been on the whole with Outram, the " Bayard of India," for whom he had the warmest admiration, and against the annexation.* In a letter to his mother, of April 4, 1843, he says incidentally — * Afterwards, however, he inclined to a different opinion. He writes, October 29, 1883, to Sir Alexander Arbuthnot, " I am bound to say that subsequent experience materially altered my views, at least as far as Lord Ellenborough and Sir Charles Napier were concerned. They inherited from their predecessors a hopeless tangle which hardly 1843J SIR CHARLES NAPIER. 8 1 " I have been much interrupted since I began this by the arrival of the news from Sind of another great battle on the 24th near Hyderabad. No particulars have reached us but that the English were victorious. This will complete the subjugation of the country ; I wish it could convince me our cause was a just one." But he fully appreciated Napier's integrity, sagacity, and indomitable spirit, and bore testimony not only to his high merits as a soldier, but also to the excellence in many re- spects of his administration of Sind, particularly as regarded his organization of police, and his clear perception of the importance and urgency of several great engineering works, nearly all of which were in after-years carried out. Amongst Frere's papers is a letter about him written eighteen years afterwards, sent, or intended to be sent, to the Pall Mall Gazette. "March 18, 1869. " Allow me to challenge the adjectives in the description given of Sir Charles Napier of Sind, where your critic cites the great General as an example of a ' grotesque self- willed public character in high authority.' " Self-willed he may have been, in the sense in which every strong-willed original genius must more or less be open to such a charge. But his self-will was always subordinated to his sense of public duty, and I never met a man of so much original force of character so open to any sound argument, fairly put before him, which appealed either to his intellect, to his moral sense of right and wrong, or to his feelings. " In the great controversy with Lord Dalhousie, Sir C. Napier was perhaps wrong in form, and may have seemed self-willed, but he was certainly right in substance as regards many essential points. What the government of India lost by this misunderstanding was not known till we learnt it in 1857. admitted of being disentangled by any subsequent peaceful measures. Possibly a man like Outram or Pottinger might have made the Ameers swallow the treaty without fighting, but only by making the Resident in effect though not in name supreme Ameer of Sind." VOL. I. G 82 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IV. " He had surely no single element of the 'grotesque' about him, unless it could be found in the toil-worn, war-battered form, which his eager fiery soul ' fretted to decay,' or in the human pathos and wit which lighted up everything he wrote or said. " The order your critic cites is one of many which will long live in the memory of our soldiers in India, and be quoted round the mess-table, and, what is more, obeyed in barracks when the formal utterances of the highest military authority are forgotton. Under his command men looked forward to a sight of his general orders not only as containing something to be remembered and obeyed, but as a relief from the monotony of camp-life, and there can be no doubt that they were among the many causes which secured for him the confidence of all good soldiers, and rendered him, beyond any commander of our days, idolized as well as trusted by his men. " I had the best possible means of estimating his capacity as a civil ruler, and I have no hesitation in placing him in the foremost rank of the Indian statesmen it has been my good fortune to meet. " His police system was, at the time he introduced it, far in advance of any other in India. It has been the model for most of what is good in subsequent reforms of the Indian police, and its performance has not yet as a whole been surpassed. It was in entire accordance with the views of the most experienced Indian statesmen, but was elaborated in Sir Charles Napier's mind, as he once told me, when he was watching the Greek coast from Cephalonia, and thinking how he would manage such a country of brigands if he ever got the opportunity. " No Indian statesman of our time has had juster or more enlarged views regarding public works, and if all the useful, practical, and remunerative public works he projected were carried out, there would be work for his successor in Sind for many years to come. " It was mainly owing to his liberal settlements of the land-tax, and especially in all that related to the military land-holders, that Sind remained so contented in 1857." Sir Charles Napier gave up his command in Sind, and returned to England in 1847. Under his rule military possession of the province had been firmly established,. 1850.] COMMISSIONER IN S1ND. 83 but the civil administration was of a somewhat rough-and- ready type. It was necessary that a revenue system should be introduced and organized, for under the Meers there had been no system ; their practice had been simply to plunder the people of as much as could be squeezed out of them. It was therefore decided to appoint, not a soldier, but an experienced member of the Civil Service, to succeed Napier ; and the selection fell on Mr. Pringle, an able man, who, after filling various offices in the revenue department, had risen to the post of secretary to the Bombay Govern- ment. But his experience had been gained in "Regulation " districts, and the uncivilized and disorganized condition of Sind required a stronger man and one less habituated to routine. Towards the close of 1850 he resigned his office. Lord Falkland, the Governor of Bombay, nominated to succeed him Colonel (afterwards Sir Melvill) Melvill, then military secretary to the Bombay Government. Colonel Melvill accepted the post. It was admitted that, if a soldier were to be appointed, no fitter man could have been found ; but the Bombay Council objected to him, and the Governor- General supported the objection, on the ground that it had been decided that in future the appointment should be held by a civilian. Lord Falkland at once yielded, and nominated Frere instead. This nomination also was vehemently opposed by Lord Falkland's Council, two of whom refused to consent to the appointment of so young a man — he was then thirty-five, and there were about sixty senior to him in the service — to what was then considered the most important commis- sionership in the Presidency. Lord Falkland, however, was firm. The matter was referred to England, and he let it be known that unless his nomination were ratified he should resign. It was confirmed, and the appointment formed a precedent for allowing a free hand to the S4 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IV. Governor of a Presidency in the choice of his Commis- sioners, which has been acted on ever since. Colonel Melvill was keenly disappointed. But he was a high-minded man and a warm friend of Frere's, and it was with true and generous cordiality that he and Mrs. Melvill received the new Commissioner and his wife as guests in their house at Bombay, accompanied them to the vessel in which they sailed, and wished them God- speed on their way to the scene of their future labours. They arrived at Kurrachee early in January, 185 1, land- ing in small boats dragged up through the mud to the shore from the steamer, which could not get up to the Mole, and rode and drove thence through the deep sand — for there was nothing that could be called a road — to Government House, a long one-storied building with a broad verandah along its whole length, having a circular plot in front in which a few shrubs grew, but the soil was too sandy for a flower-garden. On the afternoon of the same day, by a happy accident, arrived the veteran Sir Charles Napier, with his son-in-law and daughter, Captain William Napier and his wife. He had come down the Indus from Upper India at the ter- mination of his command-in-chief of the army, to which he had been so hastily sent from England on the receipt of the anxious news of the second Sikh war and the battle of Chillianwallah nearly two years before. He stayed three or four days with Frere, a welcome and honoured guest. It was little more than three years since he had himself ceased to govern Sind, and there was no man from whose sagacity and experience the new Commissioner, on the threshold of his duties, could have learnt so much concerning them. And in spite of Sir Charles's often- expressed dislike of Indian Civil Servants, the regard was in this case reciprocal. " There was no one," he said, " so 1851.] THE MEERS. 85 equal to the duties, or in whose hands he would sooner see the administration of the Province of Sind." * The province, as Frere found it, was quiet, and undis- turbed by any danger of rebellion. The Meers who had been conquered by Napier had been pensioned and sent out of the country. So little formidable were they, and so little regretted by their former subjects, that it was found safe, so soon as 1853, to allow them to return and live where they liked. A careful and minute reinvestigation of their claims was made by Major T. R. Steuart — or rather by his assistant, Captain (afterwards Sir Frederic) Goldsmid, to whom he entrusted the inquiry — followed by an increase of their pensions. One only of the chief Meers, Ali Morad, Khan of Kyrpur in Upper Sind, had been prudent enough to take the side of the British in the war of 1843, and thus saved his principality. Two years later he served with his followers in alliance with Napier in the desert war against the Trukkee tribes, and though he seldom brought his con- tingent up to time, and the English General had to take into account the possibility of his holding communications with the enemy, he proved faithful throughout the campaign, and was rewarded for his fidelity with lands and honours. But before Sir Charles Napier quitted Sind, he received information that Ali Morad, by a cleverly contrived forgery, had obtained wrongful possession of certain districts, which, as of right belonging to the insurgent Meers, should * After Sir Charles Napier's death, in August, 1853, a public meet- ing was held at Kurrachee to consider the most appropriate method of testifying respect to his memory. Sir William Napier writes to Frere, with reference to this meeting : " To you, sir, I owe a further expression of my feelings, having read your speech upon the occasion. To offer thanks would be misplaced ; it would be to thank a man for having felt nobly, acted nobly, and spoken nobly. But I offer the tribute of my admiration." S6 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IV. have been confiscated and annexed as British territory. A commission was appointed to try him. The evidence was quite conclusive, and the report of the Commissioner to this effect, confirmed by the Bombay Government and by the Governor-General, was sent to England. In November, 185 1, the despatch containing the decision of the Court of Directors was received at Bombay. It was sent on by the steamer Surat, but never reached Kurrachee, the Surat having been lost on the voyage with all hands. A month later the duplicate despatch was sent from Bombay and received by Frere. Four years had now elapsed since the facts which con- stituted the fraud had come to light. Ali Morad was a handsome man in the prime of life, with pleasing manners, a keen sportsman, a good rider, and an excellent shot with a rifle. Lavish and hospitable, and fond of the society of Englishmen, he rarely had a hunting-party at which some English officers were not present.* Nor had the finding of the Commission arrested this friendly intercourse. As an Asiatic, the Meer could not, it was said, be expected to look upon fraud and forgery in the same light that a European does. The times had been evil ; the hands of the English Government in Sind had not, in the first transactions with the Meers, been altogether clean, and it might be considered that whatever faults he had formerly committed had been condoned by the sub- * On one occasion, some years previously, Captain Forbes, then English Resident at his Court, invited him to a hog-hunt with spears, a sport which he had never before witnessed. A fine boar was started, and Forbes, who was a good rider, gave chase. The Meer galloped close behind him to see the sport, but with no weapon except the short sharp sword which he habitually wore at his side. Suddenly Forbes's horse, going at speed, fell heavily with him. The boar, hearing the fall close behind him, turned to attack the fallen man, and it might have gone hard with him had not the Meer instantly slipped off his horse, drawn his sword, and disabled the boar with a heavy cut on the shoulder. ■851-2.] ALI MORAD. 87 sequent acceptance and recognition of his services. There- fore when it became known that the sentence of the Court of Directors was that he should be degraded from the rank of Prince, deprived of all lands and villages which he held as such, and of the right to a salute of guns, and left with only the land which he inherited from his father, the intelligence caused something like a shock to the English community in Sind, to many of whom the sen- tence appeared unduly severe. In anticipation of possible resistance, the Government had, without consulting the Commissioner, ordered a con- centration of troops on the Punjab side of the Kyrpur frontier as well as on the Sind side. This movement of troops was, as the event showed, quite unnecessary, and was very distasteful to Frere, who liked to get his work done with the least possible parade and disturbance, and he took measures to stop their advance as soon as he heard of their coming. Immediately on receipt of the despatch, Frere set out to inform the Meer of the decision of the Government in the manner least hurtful to his feelings. He took with him Mr. (now General) Lester, who, as Deputy-Collector of Sukkur, was the Meer's near neighbour, and was intimate with him, and commissioned him to prepare him for what was impending. Though evidently anxious, the Meer received the intelligence with dignity, complaining only of the concentration of troops as an unnecessary aggravation of his disgrace — since he had given no cause for supposing that he would resist the English Government, to which he had always been faithful — and commending his two sons to Mr. Lester's care and consideration. The following day Frere received the Meer at a small durbar held in his camp near Roree. Writing thence, January 19, 1852, to Lord Falkland, he says — 88 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IV. " He heard and read his sentence with dignity, but with perfect submission to the will of the British Government, and, from all I hear and see, I believe him to be really desirous of a speedy, a complete, and a peaceful settlement. " He was entirely deserted by all men of influence, and the only people about him who talked of resistance were, I am sorry to say, some of the ladies ! One of his three- wives was very warlike, and an aunt, supposed to be nearly a hundred years of age, not only joined her voice to that of the bellicose lady, but opened her purse, and gave the Meer a large sum of money. He wisely, however, devoted it to paying off some of the most pressing of his creditors, and leaving his harem to talk treason to your Government among themselves at Kyrpoor, he came over and en- camped near this, with less than his usual retinue." He writes again on February 9 — " Since I reported the Meer's acquiescence in the de- mands of Government, there has been, on his part, no delay, nor any obstacle to a speedy settlement, except what arises from his utter want of system or management, his complete ignorance of all he ought to know about his country, and the defects of his agents, both as regards capacity and trustworthiness. I could not have believed he could be reduced to a state so helpless and destitute till I saw his country ; after which I hardly wondered at his having no friends among his subjects. " We have now been through about eighty miles of his late country, from Roree up to the Bhawulpoor frontier. Naturally it is by far the richest district in Sind, but any more wretched than the present state of its inhabitants I never beheld. His revenue and police were farmed to the highest bidder, and all he cared about was the game. Fifty rupees was the fine for killing a hog, five rupees for shooting a partridge, and I really believe a man would have had a better chance of his life for shooting an old woman than for killing a tiger. You would suspect me of great exaggeration if I were to describe the swarms of game which eat up the crops wherever we have been ; but you will believe that the sum-total of misery inflicted must have been considerable when I confess that, anti-annexationist as I am, if ever a native prince deserved to be dethroned from his government, I believe Ali Morad is the man. . . . 1852.] ALI MORAD. 89 But AH Morad had no intention of resting without an effort to get his sentence reversed. Contrary to Frere's advice, he went to England to prosecute his appeal. The Court of Directors by a large majority rejected it, but the Board of Control modified their decision, and pro- nounced one which, without reversing Ali Morad's sen- tence, held out hopes to him that if he behaved well in future, it might "hereafter justify " his case being "more favourably considered than hitherto." Ali Morad, on receiving the despatch, naturally in- terpreted it as meaning that he had only to behave well in future to get his lost territories restored to him. Mean- time some years had elapsed, the Mutiny of 1857 had broken out, and Ali Morad's son, Shah Newaz, was, at his father's instigation, giving practical proof of his fidelity by organizing a body of men, armed with sword and match- lock, which he placed at the disposal of the Government. Ali Morad's conduct, therefore, at this critical time could not have been better. How, then, was his case to be " considered more favourably than hitherto " ? He was in pitiable poverty ; his income had been cut down by the loss of his territories to about a third of its former amount, and he was vainly endeavouring to maintain something of the appearances kept up in better days. But to restore the forfeited lands would have been the deliberate reversal of a sentence of punishment after conviction of a great offence, the justice of which was not questioned. Nor could anything be more prolific of evil than to retransfer to a Government such as his a district in which the people had accommodated themselves to English rule. A pension would have met the case ; but the Meer, prompted or fortified in his resolution by the advice of an Irish member of Parliament, Mr. Isaac Butt, and of the advocate he sent him — and for whose worse than useless 90 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IV. services Mr. Butt called upon him to pay heavily — refused to accept anything short of the restoration of the lands. After various other proposals, a pension of twenty-four thousand rupees a year was, at Frere's suggestion, offered to his son Shah Newaz, but this also his father refused to allow him to accept. One great point with him, the right to a salute of the full number of guns to which he was formerly entitled, has since been restored ; but he has persisted in declining any pension for himself or for his son. More than forty years have passed since his sentence was pronounced ; but, at past eighty years of age, he is still agitating for a reversal of his sentence, and the traditional partisans of Napier and of Outram still take opposite views of the proportion of his guilt to his merits.* The case of Ali Morad is typical and instructive, as an instance of the confusion arising from the want — a want which Frere several times pointed out — of a rightly con- stituted Court of Appeal for State criminals in India, and of the mischief and scandal of members of Parliament being in a position to be appealed to to bring pressure to bear upon the judicial decision of such cases. In its geographical aspect, Sind may be roughly de- scribed as an equilateral triangle, having the sea for its base, and two almost rainless deserts bounding the other two sides. It is, indeed, little more than the Delta of the Indus, which flows into it at its apex. A glance at the map is enough to show that it is in the shortest line of communication between the Mediterranean and the provinces of Northern India, and that the nearest way from England, whether by Egypt and Aden, or by the still shorter route, if ever it is opened, through the Euphrates valley and the Persian Gulf, is by the port of Kurrachee ; * Since the above was written Ali Morad has died (1894). i8Si.] SIND. 91 also that Sind is the province of India lying nearest to Persia and Central Asia, and commanding the approach to the Bolan Pass and the road to Candahar and Herat. But however important from its position and capabilities, it was at that time one of the most undeveloped and unattractive provinces in India, shunned alike by Europeans and natives from other parts. What civilization there had once been, had passed away under the rule of the Meers. The necessaries of life were dear. The climate in Upper Sind is the hottest in India, nor are there any hills to afford a refuge from the summer heats. A great part of the country is every summer flooded by the waters of the Indus, swollen by the melting of the snows of the Himalaya, which leaves, as it retires, tracts of unhealthy swamp. Frere writes to Lord Falkland — " September 23, 185 1. " I doubt whether anything but ocular demonstration could give a just idea how far Sind is behind the rudest parts of India in all that relates to the comforts and con- veniences of life. Traces of the civilization of the time of the Mogul Emperors remain only in the ruins of their buildings, or in a few arts which still survive in large towns. The village system which embalms a certain degree of civilization in all Indian communities has been studiously undermined and, as far as the rulers could do so, obliterated, and, in doing this, we have even gone beyond the Meers. It was only during the last few years of their dynasty that the Meers began to imbibe something of the civilization which had survived intestine troubles in the Punjab, Afghanistan, and Persia, and which still exists in other neighbouring provinces of India. But the bulk of their nobles and influential subjects still remains almost as utterly uncivilized as the day their ancestors left the mountains of Mekran. At a few places, Hyderabad, etc., we are deceived by the show of civilization which the Meers latterly adopted in their buildings and mode of living ; but if we go to the villages where the chiefs habitually and of choice reside, we find them travelling, eating, and lodging much as their 92 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IV. brethren do in Beloochistan, and living in all respects, save the use of handsome clothes and arms, in a manner which would be discomfort for a poor Mahratta Patel. . . . " It is necessary to see and hear the natives of India living in Sind in order to judge of their aversion to the country and its causes. They come in great numbers, especially skilled labourers, servants and artisans, and are content to stay a couple of years amassing money from the enormous wages, nearly double the Indian rates, paid to them ; but they very rarely bring their families, and never appear to settle. I have conversed with scores of them, but never met one who seemed to think of making it his permanent home. It was not the heat nor the distance they disliked, but that it was, as they described it, an uncivilized, un- improved place, difficult to get at and difficult to get away from." In a Minute written at Calcutta ten years later, Frere thus describes the condition of Sind as he found it : — " September 23, 1861. " In 185 1 there was not a mile of bridged or of metalled road, not a masonry bridge of any kind — in fact, not five miles of any cleared road — only one set of barracks (for a troop of horse artillery) of higher class than 'temporary,' not a single permanent shed for an arsenal, and only one masonry magazine (now abandoned) in Fort Bukkur for gunpowder ; not a dock of any kind, — even the river steamers went to Bombay for repairs, and in seven years three of them (including the Falkland, a new vessel, the largest ever sent to India) were lost or damaged beyond repair at sea in the process. There was not a single dawk- bungalow, serai, or durumsala, or district cutcherry ; but one market-place, and not a court-house, lock-up, or police-station, or office of any kind ; no church, but what Sir C. Napier called ' an ecclesiastical convenience, I cannot say church,' built of reeds, mats, and mud ; not a schoolroom or hospital. In fact, except some temporary barracks, we were merely encamped in the country. It took a couple of seasons to awaken Government to the deplorable want of even the most necessary public works in a province which was regarded as the stepchild alike of Bombay and of the Government of India." 1851-2.] KURRACHEE HARBOUR. 93 The first object that engaged his attention was the port of Kurrachee. He perceived at once, and insisted strongly on the supreme importance of a harbour on the coast of Sind, capable of containing ships of large size, and easily accessible at all times of year. It was clearly the first step, not only to the development and prosperity of the province, but to the opening of regular communica- tion by the shortest way between Europe and North- western India. In an official letter, written two months after his arrival, he " earnestly solicits the sanction " of the Bombay Government to the expenditure of a sum of fifteen hundred rupees in investigating the nature of the bar at the mouth of the harbour, with a view to its removal if possible. Up to that time, beyond building a small lighthouse and laying down a few buoys, nothing had been done since the English obtained possession of Kurrachee to make the port more accessible. Whether the bar was composed of rock, clay, or sand, nobody knew ; and so imperfectly were the soundings on it known, and so dangerous was it in popular estimation, that during the three or four months of the monsoon no ship ventured to cross it, and the port was closed altogether, and Sind almost cut off from the rest of India ; the post from Bombay having to go round by land and across the flooded marshes of Cutch ; while at the most favourable season troops and passengers had to land in small boats at such hours as the tide allowed, it might be in the heat of the day and with great discomfort, and not unfre- quently there was loss of life from boats being swamped. But the required assent to this modest proposal was withheld, pending the report of " a competent geologist." A competent geologist was not procurable in Sind forty years ago, so Frere obtained a report from Lieutenant Hopkins, of the Indian Navy, then port-officer of Kurrachee, 94 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IV. on the depth of water on the bar at all tides and at all seasons of the year. The outcome of it was that the bar was hot so formidable an obstacle as had been supposed, and that with due precautions there was no reason why a ship of five or six hundred tons should not enter the harbour at all seasons of the year, including the monsoon. This report Frere transmitted to the Bombay Government, suggesting " that besides taking these facts into considera- tion on any renewal of the mail-packet contract, they may deem the report worth sending to the Bombay Chamber of Commerce and the Bombay Steam Navigation Com- pany." Again and again he in vain pressed upon the Bombay Government the immense importance of the question. And at last, owing either to the publication of this report, or from other causes, a juster estimate of the danger of the bar began to be formed, and in a little more than a year from its being written, on October 18, 1852, Frere, with his wife by his side, stood on Manora Point, at the entrance of the harbour, anxiously watching through a field-glass the Duke of Argyle, an English ship laden with troops, the first that ever made the voyage direct from England to Sind ; and when she passed safely over the bar and glided into the smooth water inside, it was with an ejaculation of fervent thankfulness that he laid down his field-glass and let his imagination picture all that that scene implied for the future of Kurrachee, of Sind, and of North-western India. But the depth of water was not sufficient to admit ships of more than about eight hundred tons. In the spring of the following year, 1853, he applied to Government for a pilot-boat — there being no boat available for this service in rough weather — and also for a steam-dredge to deepen the passage over the bar. His application was referred to the Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Navy, who replied 1852-3.] THE HARBOUR BAR. 95 that though he had never seen the place, he was of opinion that a dredge would be useless, and that a break- water, to prevent a deposit of sand, was what was required. In July Frere again pressed his request for an investigation of the bar, pointing out that, as a mere question of present expenditure, it would be desirable to save the outgoings of seventy rupees a month for small boats ; and at last, after a year and a half of delay, the necessary consent was given. In January, 1853, the surveys were made, and, as the result, Major H. Blois Turner ascertained beyond question that the bar was composed of sand. Upon the receipt of his report, the Bombay Government replied that now the " question of operating on the bar with a view to its removal must be considered completely at rest." For- tunately, however, the Court of Directors in London had taken up the question, and even the Bombay Government could not save the bar for ever. Mr. Hardy Wells, who was not exactly " a competent geologist," but a pupil of Brunei's, whose merits Frere had already discovered, was called on to report upon the question. After carefully examining the coast-line and the rivers as well as the bar and the harbour, he proposed to increase the flow of river water into the harbour by diverting into it several streams which flowed into the sea outside it, and thus obtain a force which would counteract the action of the tide in depositing sand on the bar. Frere determined to try and expedite matters, and turn the flank of Bombay obstruction, by writing direct to the Governor-General, Lord Dalhousie, informing him of the newly-discovered facts as to the bar, of the plan for deepening the passage over it, and of the proposal to connect Kurrachee by a railway with the Indus at Kotree, where it would be in connection with the flotilla which plied up the Indus to the Punjab. g6 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IV. Lord Dalhousie's answer was prompt, cordial, and en- couraging : — " December 5, 1853. " I have read with the greatest pleasure and encourage- ment your letter of November 14, and the very interesting memorandum which it enclosed ; and I am sincerely obliged by your having made me early acquainted with these facts. " The accessibility of the harbour of Kurrachee during the monsoon is an entire change in the geographical and commercial character of the coast of Scinde, established only during the last season. It will effect an equally ex- tensive change in the proper internal policy of the Govern- ment if further inquiry should confirm the prospect which the proceedings of this season have opened. " Without a good harbour at Kurrachee, I think you would never have a really great trade by way of Scinde. But with a good harbour there, I know not why it should be very far behind Bombay. " In any case, no one, I think, can doubt that a railway connecting the port of Kurrachee with the main stream of the Indus, whether at Kotree or at Tatta, is greatly pre- ferable to any canal. . . . " I heartily agree with you that both objects are worthy of full and immediate investigation, whatever may be the ultimate decision, and with you I am sanguine in expecting that the result of investigation will be most encouraging. " Nothing that I can do shall be wanting for your aid. I will immediately write to Lord Falkland, mentioning my interest in the subject and bespeaking his aid. I don't see how this Government could write officially until it has something more before it ; but that also I will try. " I hope you will do me the favour of writing again on these and kindred subjects." Frere writes to his old friend Mr. G. T. Clark : — " September, 1853. " You would, even after all you saw of Bombay ignor- ance and apathy, hardly credit the difficulty of getting anything done. Lord Falkland * is well inclined, and * Lord Falkland, always his warm friend and supporter, used to call him the " importunate widow," in allusion to the persistence with which he urged the needs of his province. 1852-3.] KURRACHEE HARBOUR. 97 does all he can, and the Governor-General, in everything that comes before him, acts like a great statesman, which he undoubtedly is ; but with all that it is uphill work, officials (Goldsmid always excepted) poohpoohing and throwing cold water, merchants turning up their noses at a commerce of which they have only a huckster's notions, and dreadfully afraid, if they do believe there is any chance of any trade ever coming here, that the growth of a port five hundred miles from their own, and communi- cating with an entirely distinct region, will ruin Bombay. However, I have great faith in the power of truth, and do my best to be patient." Whatever may have been the motive power which acted on the Bombay Government, works at the Kurrachee harbour were begun soon after this date. But they pro- ceeded so slowly and intermittently, and so little was done, that the breaking out of the Mutiny in 1857 found it still very inadequate to the requirements it was sud- denly called on to fulfil, as the only port through which troops and supplies had to be poured to save North- western India. Shortly after the Mutiny had been suppressed, in February, 1859, Frere writes to Lord Stanley, then Under- Secretary for India : — " I heard by last mail from Colonel Turner that you had the subject of your Kurrachee harbour improvements under consideration, and that you had decided they should not be delayed for want of funds. I cannot express to your lordship how valuable I feel this decision will be, and that a greater benefit has thus been conferred on the Punjab and Sind than any one measure which has been sanctioned since they came under our rule ; and I begin to have hopes that what I have for years been trying to impress on Government will be admitted, and that the Government of India and the Punjab will become aware that, for all commercial and military purposes, Kurrachee, and not Calcutta, is the natural port of the Punjab. Had the truth of my constant appeals on this subject been earlier recognized, I feel sure we might have saved millions VOL. I. H g8 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IV. and still have had good roads leading from the interior to the nearest and most accessible sea-boards, in place of the abortive attempt to cross the drainage of the country from Lahore to Peshawur, on which, I am told, half a million has been wasted. Nor should we have risked the tem- porary loss of the Punjab when it was cut off from Calcutta by the late rebellion and the road through Sind alone was open. It was not till this fact became alarmingly manifest that it was possible to get the Punjab people to look at all in this direction. Even then they took as little as possible from us, and with the worst possible grace." The harbour works were not yet secure from interrup- tion. Early in 1866, when Frere was Governor of Bombay, ill luck had brought to Kurrachee, to superintend them, an engineer who recorded his opinion that everything that had been done or designed was wrong. Frere delivers his- soul in wrath to his friend Captain Eastwick, then a member of the Secretary of State's Council : — " May 22, 1866. " I have been more than vexed, I have been positively shocked, by the orders we have received to stop the Kur- rachee harbour works and shelve the whole business — shocked, not only because I believe the stoppage to be a most unwise measure in itself, but because it is a con- spicuous instance of that capricious change of purpose and policy for which our Indian Government has lately be- come so notorious, which takes all confidence out of its friends, and knocks all heart and zeal out of its old servants. " I hardly know where to begin in reasoning on the question. I am ashamed to write to Englishmen of this- nineteenth century on the general advantages of harbours,, or to discuss the money value of a good harbour as com- pared with a bad one, when it is the only natural port of millions of our subjects. I had almost as soon begin lecturing on the moral obligations of the Decalogue. " But I cannot believe you doubt the value of a good port in such a position as Kurrachee. It was almost the only work on the value and necessity of which Lord Dal- housie agreed with Sir Charles Napier. The plans for its 1852-6.] KURRACHEE HARBOUR. 99 improvement were most carefully devised by the man who was far ahead of the whole engineering profession as a harbour-improver. Mr. Walker was a man whose opinion decided controversies about the improvement of the Mersey or the Clyde, and I can safely say that I never in my life saw designs for any work on which so much care, thought, and labour were bestowed by the engineer. They were approved by Sir C. Wood, himself no mean judge of such matters, and sanctioned by the Court of Directors. They were half finished, and, as far as they had gone, had pro- duced precisely the effects expected by Mr. Walker ; and why are they stopped ? . . . " The fact is, not one of those who condemn them had ever studied harbour engineering, nor, with the exception of Colonel Tremenheere, ever seen the works, or pretended to study them on the spot." Happily, after investigation, the Government of India were satisfied that the plan for the harbour was right after all, and not wrong ; and after the loss of much time the works were again proceeded with. They were fully completed only about ten years ago (in 1883). An entrance channel five hundred feet wide, and of sufficient depth for the largest ships to enter, has been established, and wharves, tramways, railways, steam- cranes, and all the appliances of a modern harbour added, so that it can now claim a place among the most convenient as well as among the most important in the world. As to the projected railway from Kurrachee to Kotree, a fortnight after Lord Dalhousie's letter was written, Lieutenant Chapman had left Lukkee, where he had been planning a road, and was sailing down the Indus in a native vessel to go on with the survey. In his anxiety to reach Kotree by daylight, he had ordered the vessel to proceed on its way as soon as the moon rose. It had not gone far when it struck against something under water, probably a sunken tree, and began to fill. A boat from the shore made an attempt at rescue, but the rope broke 100 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IV. and the boat was carried astern by the current ; a second attempt also failed, and then the vessel broke up or sank, and Lieutenant Chapman and twenty-seven men with him were drowned. The loss of this distinguished young engineer officer, the pioneer of the future railway, was felt as a calamity by the whole province. Eight months afterwards a public meeting was held in Kurrachee to urge upon the Government the importance of beginning the railway, and a year later a meeting with the same object was held at Hyderabad. There was vexatious official delay. In October, 1854, Lord Dalhousie writes privately to Frere — " I have seen with great pleasure the many efforts towards progress and improvement which you have been making in Scinde. I should be better pleased if official questions took something less than a year or two before they reached this Government. It is a long road from Kurrachee to Calcutta via Bombay, and certainly the travelling is very slow upon it for official correspondence." In July, 1856, for want of a harbour pilot, and by the blunder of the officer in charge of the port — Frere being away at the time — three ships laden with railway-plant were successively interdicted from entering the harbour, which they could quite easily have done, and were sent to Bombay to be lightened. And again and again, owing to the railway officials in charge of the works being directed to take their orders from a department at Bombay instead of from the Commissioner in Sind, came confusion, disputes, and delay. Frere wrote a strong remonstrance to Bombay, not only as to the particular matter of the railway, but as to the vicious system — as he considered it to be — which was growing up, of making executive officers responsible to a head of a department at a distant centre, instead of to the local representative of the Govern- ment in the province itself. 1852-9.] CENTRALIZATION. IOI "January 15, 1858. " The question on which I have the misfortune to differ in opinion from Government lies within a very narrow compass, but it is one of immense importance in every department of the administration. It is simply whether the Government shall be centralized by giving exclusive power and responsibility to individual officers within given areas, or whether the centralization shall be by departments, all independent of each other, and owning no common authority inferior to the Government. " The former is the old system of Oriental and of all other vigorous despotisms ; the latter is a system generally in- compatible with really vigorous government of any kind, and an almost constant source of complaint even in the free representative governments where it originated. The former built up our Indian Empire, while we maintain a really efficient chain of individual authority and re- sponsibility from the Governor in Council down to the village Patel ; the latter paralyzes all such individual authority and responsibility by departmental wires pulled from the governing centre. It is a very recent introduction into India that already threatens speedily to destroy the whole fabric of our power. Both systems aim at central- ization, but the one attains real and efficient centraliza- tion as long as there is force at the centre, the other becomes deranged by the slightest trial or shock ; and unless in seasons of difficulty some man is bold enough to break all rules, and assume at his own peril the individual local authority (which the other system spontaneously gives), the results are invariably disastrous." The principle which Frere here lays down, that as a captain must be master on board his own ship, so a ruler of a province must have authority over and be responsible for all departments within his jurisdiction, is one which he will henceforth be found constantly battling for as essential to all good administration. He contended for it with equal zeal on his own behalf when in charge of a province, and on behalf of others when he himself was on the Council of the Governor-General at Calcutta, Governor of Bombay, and on the Indian Council in London. To his own 102 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IV. subordinates he extended the fullest powers and gave the amplest discretion ; he claimed like treatment for himself. Neither the work which he did nor the methods which he pursued can be understood and appreciated unless it is constantly borne in mind how his whole system of administration was pervaded by this principle of confer- ring on each officer a large discretion and ample freedom of action within an assigned area, thereby forging a chain of personal and individual responsibility ascending from the lowest to the highest. The work of the Kurrachee and Kotree Railway was not actually begun till May 3, 1858, four years and a half after the correspondence about it with Lord Dalhousie. Even then troubles were not yet over. Frere writes to Colonel Trevelyan — "July 13, 1859. " For some weeks I was very ill, confined to my room by bronchitis. ... It was as much as I could do to keep things just going and to keep down arrears. " Then came a railway crash. The contractor had for months been doing very badly — evidently short of capital and deficient in system and management. We bolstered him up as long as we could, and I got into some little difficulty by lending him a lac of rupees on account of Government, though ultimately Lord Stanley approved of it. However, it was clear he could not get on much longer, and one morning he sent us a telegram from Bombay to say he was off to England, leaving, as we found, thirty rupees here with his agent to pay wages to some eight thousand starving workmen, to whom he owed 125,000 rupees, for wages for two and three months unpaid. To find out what was done and to pay it, to keep the work going and the poor people quiet, and to take charge of the whole line, were all very troublesome duties ; but the Railway Company has some excellent men here, and all, thank God, has been successfully accomplished, and the works are going on with renewed vigour." 1855.] STEAM COMMUNICATION. 103 The railway was at last opened in 1861, after Frere had left Sind. In June, 1855, an offer by the Steam Navigation Company to establish a fortnightly packet service to carry the mails between Bombay and Kurrachee was, by the advice of the Postmaster-General, rejected by the Bombay Government. Frere writes to remonstrate : — " I fear the decision will prove a very serious discourage- ment to the development of the commercial resources of this port. For more than eight years after we obtained the sovereignty of this province, it was taken for granted that the harbour of Kurrachee was inaccessible in the monsoon. . . . After much argument and correspondence, a trial was made, in 1853, by the H.C.S. Queen, and it was found that the only real difficulty was for the first hundred and fifty miles off Bombay harbour, and that, as regarded the coast of Sind and the harbour of Kurrachee, there was no serious difficulty or danger of any kind to steamers passing to and fro throughout the monsoon. . . . The Bombay Steam Navigation Company, having got out a steamer capable of performing the service, offered to run her twice a month for five thousand rupees per trip, which, considering the object in view, cannot, I respectfully submit, be deemed unreasonable for a first trial. . . . The object is not simply to convey detachments of troops, or the post, though it is a great convenience and boon to all concerned to get the bulk of overland mails dry, legible, complete, and in good order, a day or two after it is known by the electric telegraph that the mail is in, instead of having to wait for many days, and then get the mail, via Surat and Bhooj, by driblets, and some- times soaked with water, and mashed to an illegible pulp. . . . But the principal benefits to the public from a steamer running during the monsoon are, first, the opportunity of getting to and from Sind, the land-route to which is practically closed to travellers from June to October inclusive. This is often a matter of life and death to invalids, and of great importance to others. Secondly, the conveyance of overland parcels, books, periodicals, and light goods of all sorts. This is speedily becoming an extensive branch of trade between Bombay 104 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IV. and Suez ; but it is one in which Sind and the Punjab have little or no share by this route during one-third of the year. The Punjab is in consequence generally supplied via Calcutta." Another point which he pressed upon the authorities at Bombay was, that during the monsoon the mail steamers from Aden to Bombay should go by way of Kurrachee. The distance from Aden to Kurrachee is two hundred miles less than from Aden to Bombay. From Kurrachee to Bombay is four hundred miles. Thus the Kurrachee route is two hundred miles longer than the direct route from Aden to Bombay. But during the four months of the monsoon, steamers cannot go by the direct route to Bombay, and have to make a detour of about five hundred miles to the south ; so that during these four months the way by Kurrachee is actually the shortest as well as the easiest passage, besides affording Kurrachee the advantage of direct communication with Aden. In a letter to Lord Elphinstone, the newly arrived Governor of Bombay, dated March 28, 1854, he says — " I think it right to bring to your lordship's special notice a trip made by the Dzvarka, a private steamer with pilgrims from Muscat to Aden, in August last. " The Dwarka is a small iron boat of two hundred and eighty-one tons, and sixty horse power. . . . She left Muscat on the 17th of August, 1853, and anchored at Aden on the 31st. She steamed three, four, and five knots, one day doing little more than two and a half, and only two days reaching six. Her course was pretty close in shore. . . . "Thus it will be seen that this small and underpowered vessel, which certainly could not without great risk have shown herself outside Bombay harbour during the monsoon, made the voyage from Muscat to Aden without accident or difficulty, at nearly the same time when one of the largest and most powerful vessels, commanded by one of the best officers in the Indian navy, had the utmost 1S51-6J ROADS. I05 difficulty in forcing her way to Aden by the southern passage. " I have been assured on good authority that this is no exceptional or accidental circumstance ; but that the south-west monsoon does not blow home with any violence on the Arabian coast, while there are several headlands and islands under the lee of which safe shelter may be found, should the usual steady and strong monsoon breeze freshen, or any accident happen to the vessel or machinery rendering it desirable to anchor. " This subject appears to be one of great importance to the maintenance of a regular communication between Bombay and Aden during the monsoon. ... It is also of very great moment to the communication with the north-west frontier and the Punjab, as it would tend to show that great facilities existed for keeping up a com- munication with Aden via Kurrachee." The supreme necessity for making roads in India, where they do not already exist, is scarcely to be realized by an Englishman who has not been there. In Western Europe, not only in these latter centuries, but in all historic times since the days of the Romans, it has been always more or less practicable not only to travel, but to convey goods of all kinds on an animal of some sort, if not on wheels or in a boat, from any given place to any other given place. The old Roman roads, made once for always, and the many rivers with moderate currents lending themselves kindly to navigation, have formed the arteries of communication ; and the byways and tracks, not being exposed either to a rainless climate or to long-continued inundation, could be kept open with comparatively little trouble. Thus throughout the Middle Ages not only was trade carried on, but great buildings were constructed of stone brought many miles across country or over the sea. In India there are comparatively few dependable arteries of communication, and from various causes there were often no roads whatever from village to village. A cultivator 106 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IV. might have a considerable distance to go from his house to his land, and have no means of carrying manure to it, or bringing produce from it, except on his own back. Not only was he unable to get his produce to a market, but the extremity of famine might prevail for want of means of communication, by which supplies could be brought a comparatively short distance. Frere writes of Sind : — "At the commencement of 1851 there was not a foot of made road in the whole province, with the exception of the road to the entrenched camp from Hyderabad, about three or four miles ; and this, being unmetalled and unwatered, was only kept in tolerable order by excluding from it all vehicles except gentlemen's carriages." A steam flotilla then plied from Lahore and other places in the Punjab as far down as Hyderabad — three- quarters of the length of the province, and within a hundred miles of Kurrachee. Below Hyderabad the river spreads over the Delta in many streams, and their course and depth vary so much that navigation becomes intricate and dangerous. But in no part of its course through Sind is the Indus always to be depended upon as a means of transit. The " stream is continually shifting within definite but very wide limits, so that a village is one year five miles from the river, and the rest in danger of being carried away." Heavy boats have great difficulty in getting up against the stream ; and three months is stated to be no unusual period for a laden boat to take to reach Sukkur, a distance in a straight line of less than two hundred and fifty miles. In the hot weather the river is so swollen, and the current runs with such tremendous force, that a boat which is deeply laden or short handed cannot safely be trusted to it. The Indus, therefore, does not make roads less indispensable. 1S51-6.] ROADS. 107 Nor does the use of camels. For — " no one who has not witnessed it can imagine the utter helplessness of a laden camel, if required to ascend a muddy bank, only two or three feet in height ; and, as such banks may occur, in the inundation season, half a dozen times between any two villages, and any slip is likely to cause the loss of the animal by injury to the hind-quarters, camels in that season are seldom seen in the cultivated country, and any one who has occasion to use a camel commonly lightens the animal's load in crossing a wet bank, and, if he can, covers any sloping muddy surface with dry earth or twigs. Of course the trouble of this operation is sufficient to put a practical stop to camel- traffic in such localities on ordinary occasions during the season in question. ... It is hardly necessary to add that canals [in the absence of bridges over them] at all times preclude cart-traffic, which is unknown where canals are numerous or deep. That there is no other obstacle is proved by the universal use of a wretched cart during the dry months in all thickly peopled districts, where the general level of the country is so low that few canals are required, and those very shallow." Accordingly, in the earlier years of Frere's official correspondence from Sind, are to be found many applica- tions by him for grants for making roads, accompanied by details and estimates. Writing to Lord Falkland in April, 1853, he mentions that 126 miles of road were made in the year 1851, at a cost of 18,525 rupees; and 207 miles in 1852, at a cost of 28,298 rupees. One of these roads was made over the Lukkee range of hills near Sehwan, which had hitherto formed an impassable barrier on the right bank of the river between Upper and Lower Sind, so that to avoid it the river had to be crossed and recrossed. By the construction of a carriage-road over this range, forty miles in distance was saved, the Indus had no longer to be crossed at all — an additional saving equivalent to a journey of fifty miles — and the only serious natural obstacle, not only between Shikarpur and 108 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IV. Kurrachee, but on the direct road from Central Asia over the Bolan to Kurrachee, was removed.* With reference to the roads in Upper Sind, he writes to Lord Falkland : — "April 28, 1853. " The roads are forty feet in width, and all of those constructed within the last two years generally run in perfectly straight lines from village to village. "None are metalled ; they are merely levelled and cleared of the trees and bushes, which in many parts form an almost impenetrable jungle. A trench at the side prevents carts and cattle getting off the road, and furnishes soil for filling up small irregularities. With the exception of a few localities where great traffic renders a harder surface desirable, such roads are as good and durable as the present traffic requires. " The bridges, of which there were a hundred and fifty- nine in all, are built of burnt brick, with mud cement and semicircular arches. The largest I saw was a three-arch bridge, the centre arch of twenty-four feet and two side arches of eight feet each, and cost about twelve hundred rupees. " All these roads and bridges have been made by such artificers and workmen as could be found in Upper Sind, without aid from any European, except Major Jacob, or any native trained in an European office. . . . " The country is a dead level ; in parts the view is much impeded by heavy jungle and sand-hills, and no really correct survey of it exists. " In order to get the right line, the contractor on a calm day had a large fire lit at the spot to be reached, and keeping his eye fixed on the column of smoke, made his way through the densest jungle, marking trees as he went ; he thus got a straight path marked and then cleared, which he afterwards widened to the necessary extent, and lined out with poles and cords, and the result is a road almost as direct as could be laid out by the best surveyor. " The bridges were drawn on paper, in a manner intelli- gible to the workmen, and the dimensions were given. * Major Jacob to Frere, July 8, 1852. " Records of Scinde Irregular Horse," vol. ii. p. 66. 1851-6.] ROADS. 109 The contractors had never seen large bridges with semi- circular arches, and at first doubted whether such arches would stand ; and even now that they have built several of large span, in excellent style, they are only beginning to feel sure of the stability of that kind of arch as compared with their own pointed arches. No particular pains were found necessary to teach the workmen, except showing them how, with a line to the centre, to lay the bricks of the arch true, a matter to which they attend but little in building their own pointed arches. "All the work, both of bridges and roads, is done by contract, and the estimates are framed by putting up the work to competition. Major Jacob sends round a notice and assembles persons willing to contract. He then thoroughly explains the work required, showing when necessary a written description or drawing of the work ; when satisfied it is understood, he invites offers. The lowest offer from a good workman gives the estimate ; and when such estimate has been sanctioned by Govern- ment, the contractor is there ready to take it up. " No failure has yet occurred, though some of the works are very heavy. The work has, as far as I have seen, been well, cheaply, and quickly done. Some of the largest and best contractors cannot read or write. I, of course, do not mention this as a recommendation, but to show the dis- advantages under which the work was undertaken, and also to show how a trustworthy and competent officer, who has been allowed a given sum to do a given work, can, in spite of many drawbacks, make shift to get that work well done, if permitted to use, as he best can, the appliances he finds at hand, when he would be unable to do anything if obliged to send in voluminous returns, and furnish all the usual paper checks on such expenditure." By degrees a network of bridged roads over the province was completed. " By simply bridging the canals and raising the road in low lands," Frere writes,* " carts and fully laden camels can be used all the year round. The extent of internal communication, which may be secured at very small cost, is enormous. For example, in the frontier * Minute of August 14, 1861. IIO THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IV. districts, General Jacob cleared and laid out 2589 miles of road between 1847 and 1859-60, and during the last seven years of that period 1872 miles were raised where necessary, and furnished with 786 masonry bridges, 88 of which, across navigable canals, were passable by boats of the largest size." The facility and rapidity of postal communication in Sind was greatly improved by the substitution, recom- mended by him in an official letter in June, 185 1, of a Horse and Camel Dawk for foot-runners between Hyderabad and Sukkur. The result was a saving of eleven hours in time, and a gain of seven pounds in the weight of the mail carried in the distance of two hundred miles. One of the causes of its success lay in the system of " speed-money," introduced by Mr. Coffey, the postmaster in charge of the arrangements. Every hour that a mail was late was put down against the contractor ; every hour gained was put down to his credit. At the end of the month the balance was struck, and he was fined, or paid " speed-money," as the balance might stand — so much to his credit or his debit. " Instead of timing themselves so as just to escape fine, the sowars press on as fast as they can ; the relieving horse is always ready saddled, and the sowar ready at the post-house long before the shout of the incoming rider is heard, and directly he pulls up, the bags are thrown on to the fresh horse, the rider mounts, and is off without a moment's unnecessary delay. This, which I have watched scores of times, is very different from the usual mode of procedure, where the contractor is paid well for a good average rate of speed, and has little or no inducement to exceed it. . . . Hence they are always devising plans to save time ; and when it is physically impossible for horses to travel, I have known part of the distance done by camel, part by foot- runners, and part by boat, to the extent of thirty miles in one line, and the whole time far from bad." * * Frere to Riddell, May 7, 1855. 1854.] POSTAGE STAMPS. Ill Another improvement in postal arrangements, which Frere introduced into Sind in 1854, was the use of postage stamps. It was not till 1856 that they came into use throughout India, and that the Sind postage stamp was superseded by the Indian. He writes — "The stamp of which your note of yesterday enclosed a facsimile, was the first postage stamp used in India, and this is its history. The postage arrangements in Sind were, as you may recollect, in 1850, very imperfect; the province was poor, and did not pay its local expenses ; and when we asked for more and better,; post-offices, we were reminded of our poverty, and told that when the Government of India could afford money to spend in Sind, there were many things to be provided before post-offices could be thought of. " So, as we believed that post-offices were not luxuries, we considered how we could make the most of such means as we had, and our postmaster, Mr. Coffey, being a man of resource, we hit upon this expedient. " We got the stamps, of which you sent me a facsimile, manufactured by De la Rue and Co., and they were issued to stamp-vendors and Government officials much as they are in England, and every police officer and native district collector of land revenues, customs, etc., was ordered to receive, and forward with his own official papers to his immediate official superior, all letters bearing one of these mysterious stamps of the British Government, or rather of the Great Company. (The stamp, you will observe, is the old E.I.C.'s modification of the broad arrow, which the E.I.C. used, I believe, from the time of Charles II. till the Company itself was abolished. Only the copyist has omitted the E.I. , which perhaps in the stamp he copied from had been obliterated.) " Thus every Government office in Sind became a district post-office for stamped letters, and the first official who had a real post-office at hand sent to it all the stamped letters which he and his subordinates had collected. " The system worked very well, and of course very cheaply, for we got a complete network of post-offices and postal lines all over the country without expense. 112 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IV. "I believe the success of the plan was one inducement to the introduction soon after of the present system of postage stamps, as our Sind experiment showed that the fancied objections of natives of India to postage stamps were quite groundless. You may recollect it used always to be said that, ' prepayment by stamps might do very well in Europe, but would never do in India.' But this proved to be no more true of stamps than it has been of railways and every other innovation." Besides the want of roads, the miserable condition — or more often the total absence — of any house or bungalow, public or private, in which travellers could take shelter at night or during the heat of the day, was a serious impedi- ment to travelling. Within a few weeks after his arrival, in February, 1851, Frere writes for authority to supply this want. Five months later he makes two more appli- cations ; more correspondence ensues, and in January, 1852, he returns to the charge, fortified by a long array of testimony from several officials as to the number of travellers, the miseries they have suffered, and the fevers and serious illnesses they have contracted from this cause. He thus sums them up in a remonstrance against the refusal his application had met with. "All that I have heard and seen of this, the principal line of road in the province, during the few months that have elapsed since I first wrote, the universal complaints of travellers of all classes, professions, and presidencies, instances of individual sufferings to invalids and women, fevers and severe sickness, contracted by the young and robust, and ending fatally, in at least one case, of a person previously in good health, and which sickness would not in all human probability have been incurred had the road been provided with ordinary Indian accommodation for travellers, all have tended to confirm my opinion that the expenditure I recommended was most advisable on grounds of economy no less than humanity" In all his applications for sanction to expenditure, he 1851-6.] travellers' bungalows. 113 was careful to point out it was advisable from a strictly economical point of view. For he knew that much of the difficulty he met with in getting his plans for improvements sanctioned was due to the policy of economy, which had been strongly impressed on the Bombay Government. Sind, it was complained, cost more to govern than it produced in revenue. To this he replied, that Sind was a newly-annexed pro- vince on the most vulnerable frontier of the empire, and much of the expenditure was really for the defence of the whole of India. Secondly, that the only way to increase the revenue was to develop the country, that judicious ex- penditure would be amply reproductive ; and besides, that when roads were made, and travelling facilitated, the country would be much easier and cheaper to govern. His request for sanction for the erection of the three travellers' bungalows was at last, after nearly a year's delay, granted, and the expenditure of six thousand rupees allowed. Another scheme which Frere on his arrival in Sind lost no time in promoting, was the establishment of Fairs at Kurrachee and elsewhere in the province, to which mer- chants from Afghanistan, Persia, and Central Asia might bring their goods, and where, without making a sea voyage, so much dreaded by Asiatics in inland countries, they might meet traders from Bombay and Southern India. In a letter to the Governor in Council of Bombay he says — "August 21, 1851. " The Fair is intended to be to traders between Central Asia and Bombay what a ' Clearing-house ' is to bankers, or an exchange or bazaar to merchants in general ; a place where people who have wants which they can mutually supply to each other may meet and save time, trouble, and money, which would be otherwise expended by each in- dividual going round to the others individually. VOL. I. I 114 THE LIFE 0F SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IV. "But where such meeting is arranged for the benefit of two classes, it will be of no service if one only attends, and unless the Bombay merchants will come with their hard- ware, piece-goods, and woollens, it will be of little use for the Affghan, Sindee, and Belooch traders to congregate with their wools, furs, dyes, drugs, and raw produce. . . . " The Bombay merchant may ask, ' Why should I go to meet the Affghan, when the Affghan trader now comes to me ?' " I believe that if an active Bombay merchant could meet the Affghan trader on the Coast of Sind, buy the Affghan's wool with the piece-goods he had himself brought up, and carry the wool back to Bombay, he would find that after paying himself fairly for extra risk, trouble, and expense, he had got his wool cheaper than if he had bought it from the Affghan at the lowest price the latter would accept in Bombay, because the additional journey he takes himself and which he saves to the Affghan is a matter of comparatively less risk, trouble, and expense to him than it is to the Affghan, and, therefore, what is bare compensation for it to the Affghan is comparative compen- sation and extra profit to him. . . . " With regard to the steps I would propose to take, they would be all intended simply to clear away obstacles, and none to force trade. Publicity as to time and place of meeting, order, and good police regulation for cafilas after they arrive, facilities for traders to meet and see each others' goods, and whatever else may tend to save time and trouble. . . . " The case of any Fair in Upper Sind is somewhat different, and I see no reason whatever why one should not exist there almost contemporaneously with one at Kurrachee. " The classes of traders who will meet at the two places will be in some respects different. "At Kurrachee there will be on the one side Affghans, Sindees, and Punjabee traders ; on the other, Bombay and other Western Indian merchants. " In Upper Sind there will be on the one side the mer- chants of Khelat, Kandahar, the Punjab and Bawulpoor ; on the other those of Rajpootana and Sind." The scheme attracted the attention of the Board of 3852.] KURRACHEE FAIR. 1 1 5 Directors in London. One of them, Sir Henry Willock, who had been British Minister in Persia, and had acquired a knowledge of Central Asian affairs, which gave weight to his words, wrote a detailed letter to Frere, expressing warm approval of the plan. The first Fair was held at Kurrachee, in December, 1852. Year by year the difficulties in the way of trade with Aff- ghanistan and Central Asia were lessened or removed. The danger of robbery in passing through Beloochistan became a thing of the past. Roads were made, and resting-places for travellers. The heavy duties levied by the Khan of Kelat, the sovereign of Beloochistan, on all goods passing through his territory were modified, or during the fair-time suspended altogether, a subsidy being given him as compensation on that and other accounts. The levying of blackmail upon merchants by the wild tribes under his nominal sovereignty was stopped. As each December came round, crowds of merchants from far and near, in all the picturesque variety of Oriental costume, were to be seen encamped in gipsy tents, or sheltered by buildings erected for the purpose. There were Sindees in loose white drapery, with coloured sash, and yellow-and-red cap, shaped like an English hat, turned upside down, with the brim at the top. There were stately, unkempt Beloochees, their long tangled hair mingling with their beards, offering camels or ponies for sale ; and tall, handsome, fair-haired Affghans, bringing horses, and fruits which grow in a temperate climate, apples, and apricots, and grapes ; and there were Persians with cloths, and rich carpets, and dates, and with Russian chintzes, superior in colour, though not in texture, to the English chintzes — so that in Sind, to wear Russian chintz meant to be a well- dressed man. Even from Thibet and distant China traders came with the products of their country to this Fair on the Il6 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Cn. IV. flat sandy plain by the sea — the sea which most of them had never seen before — where, in the background, rose the newly-built European-looking houses of Kurrachee, and beyond the tall masts of the ships in the harbour, cutting the blue outline of the distant Hubbee hills. The greater part of Sind is so nearly rainless that but for the waters of the Indus it would be a desert. The north-west monsoon penetrates no farther inland than Kurrachee, and even there the annual fall of rain does not exceed six or eight inches. Agriculture is entirely dependent either on the annual natural overflow of the Indus or on artificial irrigation from it by means of canals. The bed of the Indus is at a higher level generally than the surrounding country, so that little or no pumping is necessary, only an elaborate network of channels into which the water flows at the inundation, and by which it is conducted over the country down a slight but sufficient natural incline. Under the Meers the canals were managed in a rough- and-ready way by the cultivators themselves, who had no scientific knowledge or skill, and none but the rudest in- struments, and who, where water could not be retained to show the level, or where the distance was too great for a column of smoke to indicate the bearings of a spot below the horizon, trusted for levels and direction mainly to the instinct, which is often strong in particular individuals in thinly-inhabited countries. After the English conquest the state of the canals got worse instead of better, for the English officials, who were made responsible for them, had neither scientific nor practical knowledge or skill. To remedy this state of things, Sir C. Napier organized a separate Canal Department of Engineer Officers ; but wars in the Punjab and elsewhere absorbed attention and delayed the neces- sary works and improvements, and in 1849 tne Department 1851-6.] CANALS. 117 was abolished. Frere found the responsibility for the canals entrusted to the collectors and magistrates, who were not only without the necessary knowledge and ex- perience, but were unable even to speak the language of the country. Hence the work was left to an army of native Sindian officials, with the natural result that money was wasted and the canals deteriorated. Upon Frere's representation of the necessity of a new system, Colonel Blois Turner, R.E., was, at his instance, appointed Superintendent Engineer, and directed to assist him with his advice. Under Colonel Turner's able direc- tion a new department was organized, and competent officials appointed ; and as they could not always be ob- tained in the country itself, some were induced to come from distant parts of the Presidency, from the Punjab, and north-west provinces, and, in one instance, from America. In an official letter to Lord Falkland, Frere writes * : — "June 10, 1851. " When I was at Khanghur Major Jacob brought to my notice the immense benefit that would result to all the country north of Shikarpoor, if the Begaree Canal were deepened and widened so as to enable it to convey a greater body of water. " The surface of this tract of country gradually slopes from the Indus, so that the water which, at the spot where the canal branches off from the Indus, is many feet below the surface, after running forty or fifty miles comes close to, or on the surface. " Hence the further the canal recedes from the river the nearer is the water to the surface, and the greater are the facilities for raising it, till at length, near the borders of the desert, it may, during the height of the inundation, be allowed to flow over the fields, without the expense of any wheels or other contrivance for raising it. " The soil throughout is naturally good, but, like most soils in Sind, it becomes intensely salt if left untilled and * "Records of Scinde Irregular Horse," vol. ii. p. 2. Il8 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IV. unirrigated, and almost all the wells in the country become either perfectly salt or more or less brackish. " Tillage and irrigation will, in the course of a few seasons, almost entirely free the land from salt, with the exception of occasional incurable patches ; and by as- siduous use of the wells, and by turning into them the water from the canals, the most brackish wells become annually improved, till in the third or fourth year they remain sweet all the year through. "These facts have been repeatedly proved in all kinds of situations, and under every variety of circumstance by Major Jacob, since the settlement of this frontier, and there cannot be a doubt that the whole of the district be- tween Shikarpoor and the desert might become again, as it has been in more prosperous times, a sheet of cultiva- tion. There are men now living who remember it so cul- tivated, and the marks of such former cultivation are everywhere now visible. . . . " It is not only in directly increased revenue that the benefits of the improvement will be felt. An extended and improved supply of drinking water for man and beast, and better grazing of pasture will tell indirectly, but very decidedly, on the prosperity of the cultivators throughout the district. " Still more decided will be the moral effect on the people of the country : it will give the means of subsistence to many thousands, and thereby, like every such measure, strengthen our Government, more specially the reclaimed tribes of the Hill Beloochees, whose colonies are all, with few exceptions, on the canals fed by the Begaree, will find their means of profitable cultivation greatly increased. " Those who are under Major Jacob's immediate influence have already shown an excellent spirit in this respect. I have now before me, in a private letter from Major Jacob, an account of some late proceedings of Jummal Khan Doombkee, once a notorious plundering leader, but since Sir C. Napier's Trukkee campaign, in which he was made prisoner, settled near Khanghur. He last year obtained a grant of land on the Sind frontier. Here he collected all the idle Beloochees from his own village and from Janadeyra, the Jekranee colony near Khanghur, and set them to work on the old canal, which they have dug out, besides making a dam about fifty yards long, and in the 1851-6.] CANALS. 119 centre thirty feet high, very strong and solid, secured with trunks of large trees, etc., to prevent the water of the canal flowing into a hollow. This has been done entirely by men who, ten years ago, would have rather starved than touched a spade or hoe, and yet, when visited by Major Jacob and his officers, they seemed as proud of their work as they would have formerly been of a successful foray, and even those officers who had encouraged them to the work, could hardly have believed that it was executed by Belooch robbers, putting into their works of peace, as they did formerly into their plundering expedition, a far greater amount of energy than the Sindee cultivators." The plan was carried out, and the Bigarri Canal enlarged at a cost of about a hundred and thirty thousand rupees, the work being completed in April, 1854, when the water was admitted into it from the Indus and reached Jacobabad, fifty miles distant, in sixteen hours. In a memorandum of March 15, 1855, Major Jacob says that the new lands thus brought into cultivation amounted to 181,747 Beegahs ; and that one-third of this cultivated annually (the other two-thirds being fallow), brought in a revenue of seventy-five thousand rupees in the frontier district alone, the increase on the south bank being probably about half as much. New grants were being continually applied for which would further increase the revenue. New branches and additions were made to the Bigarri Canal at different times. In March, 1855, Frere forwards, with a strong recommendation that it be acceded to, a proposal of Major Jacob's to construct a canal from the Indus near Kusmore, in the frontier district north of Sind, and to carry it along the boundary-line between the British and Kelat territory through the very heart of the desert. Major Jacob estimated that by this work about fifteen hundred square miles of land, then absolutely bare and waste, but capable of highly productive culture, would 120 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IV. be brought under the plough. This scheme also was carried out. Another great irrigation work was that of restoring, as a permanent stream, the Eastern Narra, an old river-bed about three hundred miles in length, and from two hundred to thirteen hundred feet wide, which runs from a few miles east of Roree in Upper Sind to the sea, in a direction nearly parallel with the Indus. Hitherto it had received its water at uncertain times of year by overflow or soakage from the Indus, and at other times was often nearly dry. A channel was now cut to connect it with the Indus near Roree, and water-gates constructed by which water could be introduced at will, and guided to where it was wanted by a series of dams at intervals in the course of the river ; and thus a great extent of country was irrigated and brought into cultivation. The engineer, who with great skill and patience planned and carried out this great work, was Lieutenant (now General) Fife, R.E. The canal was formally opened in the presence of ten thousand people on May 7, 1859* General Fife writes, as to Frere's part and interest in this and other works, as follows : — " The first occasion on which I met Sir Bartle Frere was at Sukkur, in the early part of 1852. I had just made a preliminary examination of the Eastern Narra River, in Sind, a subject in which he was deeply interested. I was struck with the extraordinary quickness with which he understood engineering details, and found my own interest in them intensified by his remarks and suggestions. From that time it was always a pleasure to converse with him on engineering questions. He understood them as well as any engineer with the advantage of having no professional or departmental bias. "Towards the conclusion of 1852, the plans for the restoration of the Eastern Narra were completed and submitted to Government. Frere left no point unnoticed * Frere to Tyrwhitt, May 8, 1859. 1851-6.] CANALS. I 21 which could possibly have influence in inducing the Government to sanction the project, and it was un- doubtedly owing to his strong and persistent advocacy that this great work was ever carried out. For though the subject had been considered by his predecessors and never actually rejected, there can be no doubt, judging from what had already passed, and the manner in which similar questions connected with Sind had been treated, the Eastern Narra would never have got beyond the region of discussion. Through Frere's persevering advocacy it was carried out, and many canals, large and small, were con- structed in the valley, which has been changed from a wilderness to an inhabitable and profitable tract of country, to the benefit of many thousands of poor people who previously earned a precarious livelihood by grazing cattle in spots where the occasional rain caused water to collect and fertilize the desert. " I have so far only mentioned the Eastern Narra because it was the first important public work which I saw Mr. Frere take in hand. But his advocacy and success with other irrigation works was equally great. There was no sensible proposal which came before him which did not excite his keenest interest, and receive his warmest support. There was John Jacob's improvement of the Bigarri Canal. There was Captain Ford's Canal to increase the supply of water in the Gharr Canal, a work whose whole cost was covered by the first year's increase of revenue. There were the Fullaile new supply canals, the Sukkur Canal, Jacob's Desert Canal, Sir William Merewether's further enlargement of the Bigarri, and a large number of smaller works too numerous to mention, all of which Mr. Frere advocated with success. Indeed more than advocated. It was not merely the advocacy of the projects when he sent them up to Government. His encouragement to the executive officers had the effect of inducing every one to do his very utmost in the perform- ance of his duties. . . . " In all departments, Frere succeeded in enlisting not merely the ordinary obedience or co-operation of the executive officers, but their most enthusiastic efforts. It was impossible to converse with him on any subject with- out being struck with his broad and generous views, and his far-seeing and enlightened policy. There was true 122 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IV. charity in his every word and act, and his accessibility at all times and his hospitality brought him in constant contact with all classes both native and European, who could not but admire the man, and feel the better them- selves from having witnessed one of the most beautiful traits in his character." There was a difficulty on the threshold of good administration of the Government of the country in the fact that the vernacular Sindi was not a written language, and had actually no alphabet or character. Merchants and others who had occasion to use it in correspondence employed systems more resembling cypher or shorthand than an alphabetical character, of which almost every large town and caste had a different and peculiar form. Hence it was a difficult matter for any one to learn the language. Frere lost no time in procuring information as to the extent to which English officials were acquainted with it. Only two English officers, he found, when he first went to Sind,* could understand and converse in Sindi ; one or two more could understand it without being able to speak it. It was, therefore, im- possible that it could as yet be employed as the official language of the Courts. The usual process in all official proceedings before Europeans was that the Sindi parties and witnesses spoke Sindi, a Moonshee interpreted between them and the European officer in Hindustani, and all was written down in bastard Persian. For although the great majority of the population was Maho- medan, but few of the native Mahomedans were to be found in our service ; the native official class were almost entirely Hindoos of Punjabee origin, who were acquainted with Persian, and who were in favour of Persian as the official language. * Frere to Lord Falkland, May 30, 185 1. 1851-6.] THE SINDI LANGUAGE. 1 23 Obviously it was essential, for purposes of civil and criminal administration, that Sindi should be the official language, and should be understood and spoken by the officials, native and English. And it was no less neces- sary for the spread of education that there should be a recognized medium of reading and writing. A grammar and dictionary had lately been compiled by Captain Stack on a system of his own, the characters being selected from those in common use. This was generally admitted to be the best system, and it was a great assistance to have a grammar and dictionary of any kind ; but unfortunately they were incomplete, and Captain Stack was away in England, and not long after died without completing them. Rather than lose time in so pressing and important a matter, Frere suggested leaving the question of the character in abeyance for the present, thinking that it would probably settle itself by the adoption of the one which on experience proved to be the most convenient. He proposed that thenceforward promotion in the Civil Service of the country should be conditional on at least a colloquial knowledge of Sindi ; and that there should be two grades of examination, one for a colloquial knowledge only, and the other — a more difficult one — for an interpreter's knowledge, including reading and writing, for passing which a premium of one hundred rupees should be given. He also recom- mended that Government should offer to bear the expense of printing any books that should be written in Sindi, in any character. Mr. (afterwards Sir Barrow) Ellis took the matter in hand, and successfully completed Captain Stack's grammar and dictionary, inventing characters to express sounds for which there was no letter, and thus smoothed the way for the acquisition of the language. But it was found that the 124 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IV. Mahomedans, who constituted about three-quarters of the population, preferred to write it in the Arabic character. Text-books were therefore prepared in that character also and introduced into the country schools ; the native officials soon learned to use it ; and before long it was found practicable to issue a circular making Sindi the exclusive language of record for native proceedings in all judicial cases, civil as well as military. Writing in April, 1855, within four years of his first report on the subject, Frere was able to state that all the twenty-five European officers in the three Collectorates had a more or less perfect acquaintance with the language and always employed it in their courts. Connected with the question of language was the establishment of schools, English and native, in which Frere took a keen interest ; and this department also was committed to Mr. Barrow Ellis's able superintendence. A Government English school was opened at Kurrachee, in 1853, which was subsequently divided into two, the upper one acting as a feeder to the Bombay University. And native schools of various kinds were established throughout the province and subsidized. The library and museum established at Kurrachee by Sir Charles Napier for encouraging scientific and anti- quarian researches in Sind, which had fallen into abey- ance, was revived, enlarged, and opened to the public without restriction towards the end of 185 1. Means of recreation is a want more felt by Europeans in a tropical than it can be in a temperate climate. To take a walk for exercise and refreshment, which under ordinary circum- stances is an Englishman's unfailing resource, is practically impossible in India. Nothing perhaps more distinctly marks the difference between India and home, than the abandonment of this habit, which a new-comer in vain 1854.] PARTINGS. 1 25 tries to keep up. Frere wrote to the Bombay Government for authority to purchase a suitable building. At Kurrachee, as formerly at Sattara, he had found no building which could be called an English Church ; and at Kurrachee, as at Sattara, he did not rest till he had suc- ceeded in getting one built. The architect was Captain John Hill, R.E. The first stone was laid in September, 1852, and the church was finished and consecrated in 1855. Frere took a personal interest in the design and in every detail of the building. Its tower, tall and square, like an Italian campanile, is the first object in Kurrachee visible to ships as they approach the land. The natives and the strangers from the inland and from Central Asia, when they looked at its solid walls, remarked that the people that built it " meant to stop." In June, 1854, had come the parting, inevitable to young English families in India, when the children cannot longer resist the dangers of the climate, and Mrs. Frere found it necessary to take their two little daughters home to Eng- land. Another reason for her return was the failing health of her father, Sir G. Arthur, to whom she was devotedly attached. He died in September, and Lady Arthur in the following January. Frere went with his wife and children as far as Alexandria, and then, after an absence of a few weeks, returned to his work — with a sore heart — if one may read between the lines of these letters to his little girls, to whom he used to write every Sunday in turn. " Manora [near Kurrachee], October 29, 1854. " Sunday morning, and I must have a talk with one of my pets, and it is Katey's turn. What shall we talk about ? Well, you are too far off for me to get an answer to-day, so you must tell me what you want to hear when next you write, and in the mean time I will tell you what I have been doing this morning. I was sleeping in the room 126 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IV. where mamma and I used to sleep, and having no little girls to awake me, I told Peewo the peon to call me, and he came and said, ' Sahib, get up, it's six o'clock,' and I saw the sun was just going to rise behind the Clifton cliffs. So I got up and dressed, and went out, and it was a beau- tiful, clear, and very calm and cool morning, and I thought ' how the little girls would have enjoyed a morning like this.' Everything in the distance was very clear, the hills towards Muggur Peer, and the town, and our house, and the new church, and the school, and the fishing village, where Ali Booda lives ; and the reason that it was so clear was that a fresh north-east wind was blowing off the land and blew away all the smoke and fog and sea-mist ; but as it blew off the shore on to the sea, the sea was very smooth ; and there was a river steamer taking advantage of the smooth water to go by sea to the mouth of the Indus, and so escape the creeks which we came through with Mr. MacNeil. As she passed under the rocks, where our house stands, I could hear the man with the lead calling out as they used to do in the river, ' Char baam,' ' Taree char baam : ' ' four fathoms, four fathoms and a half Then I went to look at mamma's favourite caper, which grows just at the edge of the cliff beyond the kitchen — there were some beautiful flowers on it, smelling very sweet, and I took one and sent it in to May's friend, General Ashburnham, who was not well enough to come out, and is as fond of flowers as ever. Then I went and walked round the cliff, and on the sheltered side I found a very pretty little hawk, and a large white-headed fishing eagle, who both flew away when they saw me. In a sheltered nook were three boats, fishing so close that I could see the fish they pulled up nearly as fast as they threw in their lines. After that I met Colonel Turner, and a young officer, Mr. Hicks, whose father was once a Colonel at Sattara, and a great friend of May's friends, Dr. and Mrs. Murray. He went with some of his soldiers to fight against some rebels who were in a hill fort, and one of them fired off a cannon at him as he was standing below with a spy-glass in his hand looking at the lort, and the ball struck his leg and cut it off, and a few hours after poor Colonel Hicks died ; so now this young friend of Colonel Turner's has got no father. All this hap- pened before we went to Sattara and before you were born." 1854J LETTERS TO HIS CHILDREN. 127 The following is a story which he wrote down and sent home to one of his children — "When the young Khan of Kelat reached Jacobabad, the gardener was ordered to send him some English vege- tables — fine cauliflowers, peas, beetroot, etc. In the even- ing Major Green asked 'whether they had been received, and how they were liked ? ' Old Nusservolla, the Khan's master of the ceremonies, assured him that the Khan greatly admired them ; ' but,' he added, ' your flowers are very different from ours ; yours are very large, but not so sweet-scented or finely coloured as ours are, and as for some of them, we could see very little beauty in them.' Green found out that it was supposed the nicely-arranged baskets were meant as ornaments. He explained they were to be eaten, and next day asked how they were liked. Nusservolla said His Highness tasted some of every kind, and was much pleased ; ' but,' said the old man, ' they are not so good as our Kelat apples, and pears, and grapes.' ' How did you cook them ? ' asked Green. ' Oh, we never cooked them, we ate them as they were sent, all beautifully arranged in baskets.' They had eaten them all raw. Green sent his own cook over, and you will be glad to hear that His Highness highly approves of boiled peas and cauliflowers ; but some of his court think them better uncooked." Here is another letter to his little daughter, dateless, but probably written some time in 1855, as it refers to his son, who had been born in England in October, 1854, and whom he had never seen — " I want you to send me some of your drawings. The other day when I was over at Manora the sea was very rough, and at night when I went to bed the sea made a very loud and continued roaring, and I thought to myself, What does the roaring say ? But I could not make any meaning out of it. So I wrote some lines for little Bartle, which you can give him when he can understand them — and you must tell me whether you think he will like them. I thought, people send messages by electric telegraph through the air, why should not the sea help us in the same way ? Perhaps now, while it's midnight here, my 128 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IV. pets are enjoying the sunset, and picking- up shells on the shore of the same sea somewhere at Brighton, and thinking of papa at Manora. Perhaps mamma is teaching little Bartle to walk on the sands, or threatening to toss him into the water to go and look for papa in Sind. Now if, instead of that continued roar without any meaning, the sea would only tell me what he sees on the shore at Brighton, what very pleasant dreams I should have ! And while I was so thinking I fell asleep, as you will see by some of the lines, which are rather drowsy." About four years later, after he had been to England on sick-leave, and at the end of less than a year had returned to India, alone, he writes from Kurrachee, to his old friend Mr. G. T. Clark— "August 7, 1859. " You would not reproach me with not writing to you before I left England if you had ever had to pack your overland trunks, leaving your wife and little ones behind you, and feeling that however you might prosper, you could never see those same children again — that even if you returned in a very few years, they would be so altered that you would have to guess their names, and to discover, as in a stranger, tempers and dispositions with forming which you have had nothing to do. " You know what the first uprooting from home is in youth, but the wrench then is a trifle to what it is when you are yourself the head of the home. You may satisfy your reason that it is on the whole the best thing for the poor children themselves ; but if every cadet knew what it would be after he was married and had turned forty, I fear Her Majesty would get few Indian recruits, and I would defy even your ready pen to write many letters that could be put off." w CHAPTER V. THE WARDENS OF THE MARCHES. Frere's person and character — His cold-weather tours — Sir H. Green's and Sir F. Goldsmid's reminiscences — Shet Naomul — John Jacob — Jacobabad — Jacob's frontier system — The Sind Horse. Frere's routine official work, as Commissioner in Sind, was heavy. On his arrival there, and for many months afterwards, owing to a recent reduction in the number of assistants assigned to the Commissioner, he was " labouring to the very utmost of his physical powers," as he years afterwards told Lord Falkland, " merely to keep down the current work of his office." And with all the many and various schemes and projects for the improvement of the province, such as those which have been indicated, the current work of his office formed but a small part of the task which occupied him. Yet in addition to these matters there was nothing bearing, however remotely, on the welfare of the province, nothing which he met with of scientific or historic, or artistic value, in which he was too busy to be interested. Nor were his attention and interest confined to India. In the opening-up of new countries in Asia and in Africa, and in geographical exploration everywhere, he at all times took the keenest interest. And of the course of events in England he was a close observer. The variety VOL. I. K 130 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. V. of the subjects in which he was interested seemed to refresh him by affording a frequent change of ideas, and to enable him to get through a great mass of work with but little of what is generally understood by relaxation or repose. He was then in full physical vigour. Six feet in height, he was strong and active, but slender, and well-propor- tioned. His face, youthful-looking for his age, was thin, with clearly-cut regular features, aquiline nose, and light- brown hair. A moustache shaded his mouth, which was full of expression. His eyes were hazel, deeply-set under dark eyebrows, and very keen and steadfast in their gaze. He had a clear soft voice, and spoke slowly and deliber- ately. But the great charm of his presence lay in the expression of his open countenance and sweet and ready smile, in the frank and dignified simplicity, and the in- variable kindliness and courtesy of his manner, in his absolute self-forgetfulness and ready sympathy. His press of work did not prevent his being easily accessible to all comers, European or native. Naturally tolerant and genial, the companionship of men and women of all sorts and conditions, and still more of children, was always a relaxation and a pleasure to him. With a good memory for faces as well as for facts, he never forgot any- body, and all that he had in his mind was at his fingers' ends, ready for use, so that he always quite simply and naturally said the right thing to the right person. He would, with genuine pleasure, make his way across a crowded room to claim acquaintance with a man or woman whom perhaps he had not seen since he or she was a little child, but whose face he recognized. To look up old friends and greet acquaintances, however slight, was his first thought on arriving at a fresh place, no matter how short his stay, or what other objects of attraction there might be. 1851-6.] LIFE AS COMMISSIONER IN SIND. 131 It rarely happened to him, for a single day, to be without some guest in his house ; or to take a drive without giving some one a seat in his carriage. Unselfish, and devoid of self-consciousness to a degree rare with Englishmen, he was continually doing small acts of kindness. The minor annoyances of life never in the least affected his equa- nimity. Without being a teller of good stories or a sayer of witty things, and without having humour, he had a keen sense and enjoyment of fun, and a strong and ever-present inclination to see the amusing side of people and things, which added to the charm of his society. Once when he went to England, Mrs. Frere went to meet him at the station, taking a servant, whom she told to help her to find him when the train came in. The man asked how he was to recognize Mr. Frere. " Look for a tall gentle- man helping somebody," she said. The description was sufficient. He was found helping an old lady out of the carriage. Before he had been four months in Sind he had visited, with the exception of Nuggur Parkur, every district in it. Every year, during his stay, he made what was called a " cold-weather tour," a journey through some considerable part of the province, in the course of which he made the acquaintance of every person in office, native and European, and became personally known in every town and village in the country. They were called " cold-weather tours " by comparison, but sometimes in the tents with which he travelled the thermometer stood at 120 . The modes of travelling were various, generally on horseback or camel- back, sometimes in river-boats. On most of the easier journeys Mrs. Frere and even his children accom- panied him in carriages, tonjons, or palkees. The daily distance travelled depended on where good camping- ground was to be found, and on other circumstances. The 132 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. V. Collector, or Assistant-Collector of the district he was passing through would join the camp as his guest. The day would be spent in inspecting roads, bridges, canals, or whatever might require attention, or in receiving Belooch or Sindian chiefs, and inspecting their villages. The more important business over, he would find time to visit ancient buildings and any features of anti- quarian interest, and inspect local manufactures, and such artistic work as was still to be found, the Hydera- bad enamelling in silver and gold, the Sind embroidery, and carpets, and ancient tile-work of Tatta and Halla, he carved woodwork, the Cutch silver and stone- work. He took pains to revive and encourage these old arts ; specimens were sent by him to the Great Exhi- bition of 185 1 ; and in later years, when he was Governor of Bombay, he did much to revive the pottery and tile-work. On these "cold-weather tours," he would often take young lately-arrived officers or civilians with him from place to place, and thus become intimate with them, and find out what sort of work they were fit for. At each halting place he gathered the local officials together to his hospitable tent, and his coming was looked forward to by them not only on account of the encouragement and assistance they would receive in their work, but also as a rare social pleasure. Sind being an unpopular province, the officials whom he found there were not, most of them, men of great experience or distinction. There was, when he arrived, but one member of the covenanted service in all the province. But he found good raw material in the young officers of the army who were employed there, and his insight into character and discernment of how the qualities of each man could be turned to the best account in the public 1851-6.] COLD-WEATHER TOURS. 133 service, his minute knowledge of the details of their several duties, his tact and sympathy and hearty appreciation of good work, won from them zealous and faithful service in their different spheres of action, and gradually trained and drew round him a band of able, energetic, and attached fellow-workers whose several careers, both when under him and afterwards, he watched with constant and friendly interest. He was ever ready with advice and assistance when it was asked for, and many a local officer's report to Government was suggested, or even sketched out by him. But, true to his cardinal principle of promoting personal and individual responsibility, he would seldom give hard and fast instructions, but would leave a wide discretion for contingencies, thus training his officers to court rather than to avoid responsibility. Only when there was flagrant and inexcusable neglect or misconduct did he inflict serious rebuke. But if the rebuke did come, it could be scathing. Very rarely — so rarely that few know that it ever happened — were the gentle deliberate voice and quiet smile overshadowed by a dark cloud whence was discharged a long rolling thunder- clap of indignant rebuke — the more startling and impressive from its contrast to the almost invariable calm — which showed that there was a latent capacity for strong anger, of which those who were disposed to trifle with him would have to take account, and which proved, too, that his habitual calmness was that of a strongly controlled, not of a frigid or apathetic nature. Yet even then — so strict was the judgment that he passed upon himself — if on reflection he adjudged himself guilty of having exceeded by a hair's breadth what the occasion called for, he would frankly express to the man he had found fault with his regret for any words which might have been too condemnatory or too severe. 134 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. V. General Sir Henry Green, to be often mentioned later on, writes as follows : — " If Frere's subordinates were successful in the perform- ance of their work, it was mainly owing to the confidence they felt in the knowledge that he would support them under almost any conditions. Himself fearless of re- sponsibility, he succeeded in instilling the same feeling into the minds of those to whom he entrusted difficult duties to perform. They felt that should they in carry- ing out his views commit an error of judgment, part- icularly if it was in the execution of a bold policy, that the error would not only be treated with the greatest leniency by him, but there would be no fear ot their being made a scape-goat ; he would himself accept the consequences of the error and remedy it to the best ot his ability. " In those days frontier soldiers were thrown into sudden and difficult emergencies, and luckily for them, and for those whom they served, they were far away from any telegraph-wire ; they could not, did they wish it, escape responsibility, and ask, ' What am I to do ? ' but they had to act, and, feeling certain that if they did so with boldness and good sense they would be supported, they, as a rule, came out well under sometimes very difficult circumstances ; and it was thus a school of frontier soldiers was formed unequalled in any other country. In this I include the whole Indian frontier, for although Sind and the Punjab might differ in their administrative systems, still the men each turned out proved themselves when called upon equal to any emergency." General Sir Frederic Goldsmid, at that time Deputy- Collector at Shikarpur, writes as follows of his former chief : — " One great feature which I have always admired in Sir Bartle Frere — and which I have never recognized so eminently in any other high official with whom I have been associated — is his genuine knowledge of Jiis subject. In Sind he could have performed the duty ol almost any one 1S51-6.] SIR FREDERIC GOLDSMID. 1 35 of his subordinates, and performed it well ; so that during his periodical inspection of the province, his advice and criticism carried, as it were, double weight. There was no nudging of a fellow-labourer, or undercurrent of self- exoneration possible to relieve the listener from the charge of shortcoming where detected. On the other hand, the glad expression of approval was an invariable incentive to renewed exertion. While his high states- manship was patent to the world at large through his many writings, his respect for details could only be judged and appreciated by his personal staff and employes of lesser position. " His personal activity and energy were unflagging ; and his courage and calmness in emergency would have become the most distinguished of soldiers. The despatch of every available regiment or detachment from Sind at the critical period of the mutiny, was an act in keeping with his principles ; and the result justified his confidence in the good faith of the police and people of the province over which he presided. " Sir Bartle was a charming companion, whose conversa- tion was both instructive without pedantry, and attractive without display. Not to speak of his own literary powers, which were considerable, he had a keen appreciation of literature generally, and possessed a refined and cultivated taste for Art. He had, moreover, a strong sense of the ludicrous ; his perception and enjoyment of a story or joke were thorough ; and it was quite delightful to see him relax from his official occupations to join in cheery sur- roundings. . . . " Those natives who really knew Sir Bartle Frere, and had ready access to him — and no chief was more reason- ably accessible to his people — were undoubtedly attached to him from affection as well as from fear or duty. In stating this, I think it only right to add that I cannot but feel sceptical as regards the reputation of many distinguished Anglo-Indian celebrities in this respect." Of the leading natives at Kurrachee, the one with whom Frere was in most frequent and friendly communication was Shet Naomul, a merchant, who, from the first appear- ance of the English in Sind, had made up his mind that 136 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. V. their power was destined to prevail, and had attached him- self to their cause with unwavering fidelity through all the vicissitudes of the Affghan war and the Conquest of Sind. When Sir John Keane's force landed at Kurrachee in 1838, on its way to Affghanistan, and when Pottinger, Outram, and Jacob were engaged in keeping open the communications in the perilous times that followed, he rendered valuable assistance, in recompense for which he received rewards and honours. Sir Charles Napier, apparently, did not much like him, and Naomul, resenting this, speaks of Napier as tyrannical and oppressive, but " simple-minded, pure-hearted, and a religious gentleman." Probably he may have thought Naomul, as most English- men perhaps would have done, self-important and tiresome. Frere, however, at once saw his merits and his value, and treated him with kindness and consideration. Naomul had agents or correspondents all over Northern India and in Affghanistan and Persia, from whom he received information as to native opinion which he used to com- municate to Frere. He gave him correct and valuable intelligence as to Persian and Affghan intrigues, and as to native doings and opinions, which, after the mutiny broke out, was so valued by him that he gave orders that Naomul was never to be refused admittance, day or night, when he came to see him. In his old age, shortly before his death, Naomul wrote his autobiography, from which the following, relating to the establishment of municipal government in the towns — always a great point with Frere — is an extract : — " Be it known that I visited the Commissioner and his assistants twice or thrice every week, and communicated to Sir Bartle Frere the different news that I received during the week, and which, according to my practice, I previously wrote out in arranged order on a separate piece of paper. 1851-6.] SHET NAOMUL. 137 " Once upon an occasion I and Sir B. Frere were con- versing alone when he told me that whenever he visited the old town he found it in the dirtiest state possible, the place smelt badly, and he wished to introduce the municipal system for the cleanliness and improvement of the town. The City of Ahmedabad in Guzerat, he said, looked once as dirty and unclean ; but the Government having, in consultation with the people, introduced the municipal system and levied a tax of one anna and six pies after one cwt. of ghee, the city had benefited much by the care and action of the municipality and was greatly changed in appearance. If a similar thing, he said, could be done here, and a ghee-tax of one and a half annas per cwt. could be levied for municipal purposes, he hoped it will greatly help to improve the town. I thereupon informed him that it would be done as he desired, and I would ask the townspeople to agree to it. On coming home I assembled the people together and had them to agree to the Commissioner's proposals. Such was the beginning of the municipal corporation of Kurrachee. My- self, Captain Preedy, the collector of Kurrachee, and Mr. John Macleod, the late collector of customs, formed the first managing members of that body. We daily, in the morning, went out on horseback to inspect the town, and to arrange for its cleanliness. " After a month or two, when I went to wait upon the Commissioner as usual, he jokingly told me that I had got the people to consent to a tax on ghee for municipal purpose ; but ghee without sugar cannot be indulged in longer. Thereupon I consented to a sugar rate at four annas per cwt., and the townspeople agreed to it. Time flowed on, and a couple of months had only elasped, when, going one day to Sir Bartle Frere, I heard that ghee and sugar without grain of some kind did not taste so well. A grain rate to the extent of one pice per candy was accordingly proposed and agreed to. The municipal corporation thereafter began to command importance and influence, and a general and managing committee were appointed and a municipal office opened. " In course of time a municipal tax on Europe goods, such as wines, liquors, etc., was levied, and the municipal revenue continued to increase from year to year. ... A well-laid system of roads, the metalling and watering 138 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. V. thereof, lighting the main roads and streets, the cleanliness of the town, and the appointment of the police, were all carefully attended to. " In the same manner municipalities were opened gradually in various other towns in Sind, to the great comfort of the people. And these towns, like to many trees in the desert dried up for want of water and nourish- ment, began to wear a cheerful and pleasing aspect as a consequence of the care bestowed on them by their municipal bodies. . . . " Sir Bartle's kind temper and judicious patience has won him universal respect and admiration. Every petitioner, whether high or low, received a patient hearing ; and where he perceived that people out of their ignorance of law did not understand things, he would show them that there was actually no grievance where they imagined one. ... It is a common saying in Sind that there never came such a ' Sahib-lok ' here before, and none such has come since." Of all the able and distinguished officers who served under Frere in Sind, the one whose name deserves to be widest known, and whose brilliant genius and conduct gave most colour to his administration, was John Jacob. Three and a half years older than Frere, the son of a Somersetshire clergyman, and educated at Addiscombe he entered the Bombay Artillery, and was sent in 1839 to join the newly raised regiment of Sind Irregular Horse, whose duty it was to protect the communication with the Affghan expedition by the Bolan Pass, and to keep the Belooch tribes in check. At the end of 1 841, though still only a lieutenant, he had succeeded to the command of the regiment. This was the time of the English disasters in Affghanistan, which encouraged the hostile tribes in their resistance ; and in many a desperate hand to hand fight with the fierce Beloochees, Jacob had practical experience in the work of a cavalry soldier. Afterwards, in the battles of Meeanee and Hyderabad, and a year later 1851-6.] JOHN JACOB. 139 in Napier's Trukkee campaign, the regiment led by Jacob was conspicuous for its good service. In 1846, a second regiment of Sind Horse was raised, but so completely had Jacob identified himself with the force, and so unwilling was he to let any part of it pass from under his immediate command, that, at his special request, and by a very unusual arrangement, he was made commandant of both regiments. In person, Jacob was somewhat under the middle height, wiry, and of great strength and power of enduring fatigue. His complexion was dark, his head and most of his face covered with a mass of long dark hair, so thick that, trust- ing to its protection, he would often rashly expose his head uncovered to an Indian sun. Hardy and frugal almost to asceticism, he had a contempt for all the appliances for mitigating heat, which to most Europeans are necessaries of life in such a climate as that of Upper Sind. Engineer, artilleryman, cavalry leader, and rifleman, he had a complete practical acquaintance, gained in hard service, with every branch of his profession, such as perhaps no living man then possessed. A bolder and a finer soldier never lived ; yet he hated fighting and wars, and had no desire for military distinction. His ambition as a frontier officer was not to gain credit in waging successful campaigns, but to bid wars and fighting cease. He had a great genius and capacity for mechanical construction. The Engineer, the Instrument-maker, the Clock-maker, and the Gunsmith each looked up to him as a master in their craft. Whilst English soldiers in the Crimea were making tardy acquaintance with their newly acquired Minie rifles, with which eight hundred and nine hundred yards were practically unattainable ranges, Jacob and his officers were making hits on the target at distances up to three thousand yards with a rifle manufactured from 140 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. V. a design of his own invention ; or igniting combustibles a mile off with explosive bullets. He had read much, and retained what he read. Scott was one of his favourite writers ; and as he rode at the head of his regiment on a march over the silent desert, he would repeat aloud Canto after Canto of his poems, a hesitation which impeded his speech in conversation disappearing entirely in recita- tion. But his chief favourite was Carlyle, whose picture of Cromwell and his troopers had so taken hold of his imagination, and harmonized so well with his ideal of soldierly and civic virtue, that the Ironsides became the model which he had constantly before his mind in training his regiments for the work they had to do. Writing to Frere in 1853, with reference to a proposal to add a regi- ment of silidar infantry to his force, he says — " I must have no courts martial or articles of war. I want no lawyers among my men, neither do I wish to govern them by force or by fear. I will have ' sober God- fearing men in my troops,' as said old Cromwell, and will govern them by appealing to their higher, not to their basest attributes. Actual crimes can be dealt with by me and my lieutenants as civil magistrates. All else must be left entirely to my discretion." Endowed with an indomitable will, yet kind-hearted, simple-minded, and pre-eminently chivalrous, he was withal a righteous man of pure life and with a strong clear sense of justice and duty, and a contempt for anything approaching to meanness or duplicity. Somewhat rough and aggressive in manner, he had seen little or nothing of English society, and was little inclined to it, mainly perhaps owing to the hesitation in his speech, and he was not generally a favourite except amongst those who knew him intimately. But for the young English officers whom he gathered round him and chose for his lieutenants, 1851-6.] JOHN JACOB. 141 and trained with kindly patience for the work which he had in hand, he, and the life he led with them, had a rare and abiding fascination. They served him to the end of his life with a love and devotion which had no limit, and carried on his work after his death, till, one after another, they were driven away by ill-health, in a climate and a country, to escape from which had hitherto been the one desire of every officer who had been sent there.* His native officers and troopers soon got to know that under all circumstances they were sure of a patient hearing and of unswerving inflexible justice. This was the new experience which fascinated them. They knew, too, that their conduct was watched, and their services appreciated, and they cheerfully submitted to a strict discipline, with which no caste prejudice or religious scruple was allowed to interfere, and served with absolute loyalty under the most trying circumstances. The reputation and popularity of the force was such, and admission into its ranks so sought for, that there were many applicants for every vacancy. To be turned out of the regiment was so severe a punishment that scarcely any other was needed to maintain discipline. The candidates for admission were often relatives of men already in the force ; and, in the difficulty of choosing * Though habitually reserved, Jacob could unbend at times, and rather liked a practical joke. On one occasion he sent a horse to meet a friend who was coming to stay with him at Jacobabad, to bring him the last ten miles. The horse sent was one named " the Collector," and was seventeen hands high, a veritable giant among the small horses of the country. The friend, a light weight, as he mounted, asked the syce if the horse had any peculiarities. " He will only run away, 51 was the reply. And no sooner was he in the saddle than " the Collector" did run away, at full speed, over rough and smooth, to within a mile of his destination, where, meeting Jacob, who had ridden out to see what would happen, he stopped. Fortunately his rider was a good horseman, and, though rather hot, was in no way dis- composed by his nine-mile gallop. 142 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. V. between equal claims and merits, they were set to ride a race on bare-backed horses, and the vacancy given to the winner. The recruit had to find a trooper in the regiment to be his surety, and to be responsible for him ; and this suretyship was no mere form, for it might happen that if the recruit disgraced himself and was turned out, the surety would have to go too. Among the native officers — and there were only four English officers, besides Jacob, in the two regiments — were men of rank, wealth, and consideration. At first Jacob had admitted into the ranks Beloochees and Affghans, races noted for fierce courage ; but afterwards he refused to enlist them, for he had found them — " absolutely faithless and untrustworthy, and never to be depended upon in war ; and quarrelsome, unruly, and murderous in quarters in peace. And both are given. to the most detestable vices which lead to all manner of evil. Whatever may be thought of these people by those who do not know them well, it is certain that the Mussulmans of Hindustan are altogether superior beings in every way to the Affghans and Beloochees, and are incalculably better adapted by nature to make good soldiers." * The pay of a Suwar, or private, was thirty rupees a month, out of which he provided himself with everything — horse, arms, accoutrements, saddle, clothing, food, forage, and transport. Except for a horse killed in action, he received no extra allowance whatever, under any circum- stances ; but when supplies were not otherwise procurable he was provided with rations, paying for them on the same terms as the men of the regular army. Each man, officer or private, had at all times, and in all places, to be provided * Major Jacob to the Major of Brigade, Upper Scinde, December 14, 1853. "Records of Scinde Irregular Horse," vol. ii. p. 145. 185 1—6.] THE SIND HORSE. 143 with transport for whatever he wanted to take with him on the march. The men kept camels, ponies, or mules as they pleased, and the animals being their own property, they never injured them by overloading or ill-treatment. Their means of transport being limited, they could not carry too much. Wheel-carriages were never allowed. Transport animals were always ready, sufficient in quantity and quality to carry the men's bedding, cooking apparatus, tents for such as chose to carry them, and three days' food for man and horse when necessary. Within an hour after the order to march had been given and the trumpet sounded, five hundred men would be ready to cross the desert, prepared in every way for a week's absence ; and twelve hours was quite enough warning to enable the whole corps to commenee a march of any length.* Their arms and accoutrements were of the very best, and in every detail the patterns had been carefully selected by Jacob. The dress was a dark green coat reaching about four inches below the knee, and made of strong English broadcloth ; the pantaloon of the same material with a broad red stripe, and high jack boots of English * " Records of Scinde Irregular Horse," vol. i. p. 184, and vol. ii. p. 87. A staff officer once arrived while Jacob and his officers happened to be at tiffin, with an order for the force to march at once. " After tiffin," was all the response Jacob vouchsafed. After a while the A.D.C. ventured to remind him that the order was to march at once. "After tiffin," was again the reply. Luncheon over, Jacob ordered the Assembly to sound ; and, in a few minutes, to the astonishment of the A.D.C, they were on the march. About noon, on September 25, 1848, orders were received to march with five hundred sabres to join an officer who had been compelled to raise the siege of Mooltan. They marched at daybreak, on the 26th, and by October 3 had crossed the Indus, eighty miles distant, in boats. Jacob so instilled his enthusiasm into those serving under him, that the regimental medical officer (Dr. S. M. Pelly) became an excellent cavalry soldier, and when the other officers were absent across the border, was frequently left in charge of the station. 144 THE LIFE 0F SIR BARTLE FRERE. ICh. V. leather. In winter they wore a sheep-skin jacket reaching below the knees, the woolly side inwards. Their swords, originally straight ones, had been exchanged for sabres two feet ten inches long, broad at the end, sharp and slightly curved, so as to act by edge and not by point, for Jacob had once, in a personal encounter, when going at speed, run an enemy through the body, and found that in such a case the sword will almost inevitably either break, or unhorse its owner before it can be withdrawn. The men had a double-barrelled carbine * slung by a hook on the right side, the native officers a brace of double-barrelled pistols. Each man carried his horse's ropes, pegs, etc., two or three days' provision for man and horse, and also a small water mussock, containing about two gallons of water and carried under the horse's body, and which it in no way incommoded. On an average they rode fifteen stone.f The English officers generally wore a coat of thick cloth, to protect them from the sun, and on their heads, for the same reason, polished steel helmets with a red turban. Thus dressed they did not fear exposure to any heat, which they declared was as little or less formidable to them than to the natives. The north-west frontier of Sind stretches for nearly two hundred miles along an almost rainless desert plain. On the other side of the boundary is Beloochistan, where such districts as have water, and are capable of cultivation, or of supporting herds of cattle or flocks of sheep, were in- habited by tribes owing allegiance, which at that time was little more than nominal, to the Khan of Kelat. Beyond * Probably some only of the men had akz^/^-barrelled carbines at this time. t Report of Brigadier Smeed, " Records of Scinde Irregular Horse," vol. ii. p. 229. 1851-6.] THE SIND FRONTIER. I45 the plain, hidden in the almost inaccessible recesses of the mountains, were more Beloochee tribes, the most consider- able of whom were the Murrees, Doombkees, and Boogtees. Their wealth consisted of cattle, sheep, and horses, the business of their lives was fighting, and their highest ambition a successful raid. Ever since the Affghan invasion there had been intermittent fighting with them. In 1845 Sir Charles Napier with great difficulty conducted an expedition into the heart of the Trukkee mountain country and succeeded in forcing a portion of the Doombkee and Jekranee tribes to surrender, and in inducing them to settle on land which he gave them at Janadeyra, just within the boundary of Sind. But this only made matters worse. From their new country the settlers made plundering expeditions against their old neighbours over the frontier. The latter retaliated. Murder and robbery everywhere prevailed. The British troops were shut up in forts, and did nothing to protect the people. The people themselves were encouraged to carry arms and to wage a retaliatory war. The district along the border was left uncultivated, the canals became useless for want of clearing out, and peaceable people left the country. In December, 1846, the Boogtees assembled fifteen hundred armed men, marched into Sind, passing the British outposts who failed to attack them, to within fifteen miles of Shikarpur, the capital of Upper Sind, and remained twenty-four hours in British territory, securing every head of cattle in the country round, and returning to their hills, about seventy-five miles distant, with all their booty — some fifteen thousand head of cattle. It was at this juncture that Jacob had been appointed to the command of the frontier, and a regiment of the Sind Horse ordered up with all speed. On arrival he found desolation and terror prevailing. The cavalry VOL. I. L 146 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. V. regiment at Kanghur was locked up in the fort. No one could go in safety from place to place without a strong escort. Not one of the new settlers had attempted any peaceful labour, or had ever put his hand to an agri- cultural implement. At Kanghur, where there was no village or bazaar, and but four or five wretched huts, he fixed the head-quarters of his regiment, and thither, by degrees, his troopers brought their families to settle. Distant about twenty-five miles from Shikarpur, it was on the edge of a flat rainless desert, or where rain fell at rare intervals only to breed fever. This desert was a hard dry plain, entirely without vegetation, and about four thousand square miles in extent. In the hot season it is intensely heated, and the air passing over it, already deprived of its moisture during its passage over the arid country of Beloochistan and the Persian frontier, becomes like a flame. During fully six months, without a day's respite, the fierce summer heat lasts, for the monsoon, with its storms and showers, does not reach Upper Sind. It is a land so scorched by the sun that on one occasion, during a march of a few hours, out of a detachment of four hundred men and horses, a hundred and sixteen horses died from sunstroke, a fine Arab on which the Adjutant, Malcolm Green, was riding, being the first to drop. In June, 1839, the thermometer in the hospital-shed at Shikarpur was standing daily at from 130 to 140 , once reaching 143 . The nights were so oppressive — the mercury frequently not going lower than 94 — that the English officers sleeping on the house-top would pour buckets of water over their beds before lying down upon them, so as to snatch a few hours of sleep in the coolness of the evaporation ; or if living in tents they would scoop out the earth and make a mud bath to sleep in. Dust storms occurred frequently at all seasons of the 1851-6.] THE SIND FRONTIER. 147 year, changing the light of midday to an intensity of dark- ness to which no ordinary night ever approaches, and which lasted occasionally for one, two, or more hours. These dust storms were sometimes accompanied by blasts of the simoon, a poisonous wind destructive to vegetable and animal life, so that men would drop dead instantane- ously, or survive only as paralytics. In winter it is so cold that the Murree and the Kelat hill countries, almost in sight of Kanghur, are covered with snow. In these hills there are frequent earthquakes, one of which crushed three hundred and forty men, with their cattle, in a cave. At this dismal spot on the edge of the desert, without wife or child, kith or kin, Jacob took up his abode, and without a thought of winning honour or reward in this world or the next, gave up his heart to his regiments, and to the work he had taken in hand. With him lived and worked his lieutenants, Malcolm, Merewether, Henry and Malcolm Green, Macauley, and others, men like-minded with him, whom he had himself selected, and who, entering into the spirit which animated him, led pure and arduous lives, carried out his orders, and seconded his efforts with unremitting energy and entire devotion. He never took leave or furlough, and for nine years from this time, making some seventeen years from his first coming to Sind, he scarcely left the district. Nor were his lieu- tenants less assiduous. For seven years Malcolm Green did not leave the regiment for a single day. Jacob could not spare the time to be away, and also, as he once told Frere, he had no money to spend on leave and amuse- ment. For every shilling of his pay, as well as of his private fortune, was spent on his regiment, and on the new town on the edge of the desert which was growing up under his eye, a dwelling-place and a market for his men and their families, and which contained amongst I48 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. V. other things, a laboratory, engineers' and carpenters' workshops, and a large and valuable library for the use of his officers. In the course of seven years, Jacobabad, on the site of the half-dozen huts of Kanghur, grew into a town of eleven thousand inhabitants. It was no longer on the edge of the desert, but shaded by trees in the midst of a cultivated plain, reclaimed and fertilized by the water which canals, engineered by Jacob, had brought fifty miles from the stream of the Indus. When Frere came to Sind, in 185 1, a great change for the better in the peacefulness and security of Upper Sind had been effected. He writes to Lord Falkland : — " June 10, 1851. " Of late years the frontier tribes have ravaged and desolated the country up to the gates of Shikarpoor. The few inhabitants that remained were almost as lawless as their neighbours, and lived more by retaliatory plunder than by honest labour. " Since Major Jacob took charge of the frontier this state of things has completely changed. He has rigidly enforced the disarming of all within our frontier, and has put down the practice of forays beyond our frontier, whilst the posts of Sind Irregular Horse form a perfect cordon of protection to all within them against aggressions from without. . . . Single unarmed travellers seemed now as safe as elsewhere in Sind, and the general sense of perfect security was shown by the improving state of the villages, and the fact that the people now trust themselves, their cattle, and grain-yards, day and night, out in the open fields, instead of keeping, as was so lately their invariable custom, under the shelter of their village walls. "All were loud in proclaiming their gratitude for the present perfect peace and security assured to them by Major Jacob's arrangements." And in March, 1855, he writes— " I have just returned from that most wonderful place Jacobabad. Yesterday morning I went with Jacob nine 1S47-57-] JACOB AND THE FRONTIER. 149 miles into what, four years ago, was real desert, on the Minotee road, without a tree, a blade of grass, or a drop of water, within miles. All is now jowarree stubble, and from the top of a surveying tower, as far as the eye could reach to the north, we could see the fields extended, the cultivators and cattle about the fields not appearing to dream of the possibility of plunderers attacking them. His canals this year surpass anything I have seen." To see how this change was brought about, it is neces- sary to go back to January, 1847, when Jacob assumed the command of the frontier. The key to his Frontier-system was the simple principle of justice, that when a raid has been made, the actual robbers alone, and not their fellow-tribesmen, should bear the blame and the punishment. This was to be carried out along a frontier of a hundred and eighty-five miles, in the midst of a population accustomed to look to robbery as their chief means of subsistence. It was Jacob's genius that conceived the idea that such an apparently Quixotic enterprise was possible. It had to be done in the first instance mainly by constant patrolling. On assuming the command — " Jacob at once ordered all idea of defensive operations to be abandoned ; every detachment was posted in the open plain, without any defensive works whatever ; patrols were sent in every direction in which it was thought an enemy might appear, and these parties crossed and met so often that support was almost certain to be at hand if wanted. The parties were sent to distances of forty miles into and beyond the desert, and along the frontier line." * Whenever any plunderers were met with, the troopers fell upon them at once, charging without hesitation any number, however superior, and with such invariable success, * " Records of Scinde Irregular Horse," vol. ii. p. 218. I 50 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. V. that the robbers soon ceased to make attempts on British territory, though still plundering Cutchee. During the first year, 1847, when there was but one regiment, seven hundred strong, of Sind Horse, on the frontier, the labour was excessive. They had literally to lie down to rest with boots and swords on for many months together. So perfect was their discipline, that though well-planned attempts at surprise were made, never, during the twelve years that Jacob held the frontier, was any outpost of the Sind Horse cut up.* The soldiers, who never took so much as a bundle of forage without paying for it, came to be looked upon and treated as friends by the country folks, and " the moral power of their kindly bearing spread far and wide through the country, and effected what no mere force could have done." " Meanwhile Major Jacob had discovered that not only the Boordees and Muzzarees, who were always inveterate marauders, but the Belooch settlers in Janadeyra, now British subjects, had been all along systematically carrying on plundering excursions on a considerable scale. . . . " The horses of these Jekranees and Doombkees had been taken from them a year before by order of Sir C. Napier and sold by auction, but Major Jacob found that the sale had been fictitious, and that the former owners still retained shares in their horses. For it is the custom of the country that a horse, or rather mare (for they ride only the latter), very seldom belongs to one man only, and sometimes the property in one mare is shared between as many as twenty men. " Thus when these horses were supposed to have been finally disposed of, only certain shares in them had been sold ; the animals were kept by various Zemeendars f all over the country, and when any foray from Scinde was agreed upon, the horses were ready for their old masters. The men left Janadeyra by ones and twos, went for their horses and then proceeded to the appointed rendezvous. * Frere to Lord Elphinstone, October 15, 1858. t A Zemeendar was a farmer or owner of land. I847-54-] THE BELOOCHE TRIBES. 15 1 " After the foray into the hills, or elsewhere, the booty obtained was shared at some place beyond the British boundary, the plunderers dispersed, replaced the horses with the Zemeendars, and returned one by one to their homes. "The existence of these proceedings had never been suspected until pointed out by Major Jacob, and then at first they were thought impossible, till a party of the Irregular Horse surrounded and surprised a body of the plunderers just returned from the foray. "Concealment was no longer possible, and Major Jacob now obtained permission to disarm every man in the country not being a government servant, which was at once done. " At the same time Major Jacob set five hundred of the Jekranees to work, to clear the Noorwal Canal. The men were very awkward at first, but were strong, energetic, cheerful, and good natured ; they soon became used to the tools, and were then able to do a better day's work, and of course to earn more pay than the ordinary Sindee labourers. The men seemed proud of this, and the experi- ment was perfectly successful. " Soon afterwards the Belooche settlers took to manual labour in their own fields, with spirit and even pride. From that time they were really conquered and reformed. They are now (1854) the most hard-working, industrious, well-behaved, cheerful set of men in all Scinde. Their numbers amount to about two thousand adult males, but for three years past not a man of them has been convicted, or even accused, of any crime whatever, great or small ; yet seven or eight years ago they were the terror of the country, murderers and robbers to a man. " Good roads have been made all over the country, means of irrigation have been multiplied fourfold, and everywhere on the border life and activity with perfect safety exists, where formerly all was desert, solitude, or murderous violence ; not an armed man is now seen except the soldiers and police, and person and property are everywhere protected." * One tribe only, after Jacob had taken command of the frontier, ventured on a marauding expedition in force. * " Records of Scinde Irregular Horse," vol. ii. pp. 218-220. 152 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. V. At the end of September, 1847, seven hundred Boogtees from the hills entered the plains to plunder. Lieutenant Merewether, Jacob's second in command, and command- ing the outpost of Shapoor, started immediately with a hundred and thirty-three troopers in pursuit, and came upon them posted in rough ground, and prepared to sustain his attack. As his squadron moved rapidly along their front to cut them off from the jungle, the Boogtees, thinking he feared to meddle with them, left their vantage ground to attack him. Merewether, instantly changing front to the left, as accurately as if on a parade ground, charged with his troopers and crashed through and through them. For two hours the sharp sword-blades, and with greater effect the carbines of the troopers, did their terrible work ; the Boogtees, their formation broken, but shoulder- ing closely together, defended themselves, crouching beneath their shields and cutting with their sharp swords at the bridles of the troopers' horses to render them unmanageable. Brave and unflinching to the last, they refused repeated offers of quarter. At length, when five hundred and sixty of their dead and wounded lay upon the plain, the remnant of a hundred and twenty survivors surrendered, two only out of the whole number escaping to tell the tale of death at their home in the hills.* It was a terrible lesson to the wild tribes, and no such raid in force was ever again attempted by them. From that time Jacob had to deal with depredators only in small gangs or singly, and could bring them to justice as ordinary highway robbers, acting on their own private account, and reflecting no guilt on the tribe to which they happened to belong. The population within the frontier were prohibited from going about armed, though they might keep their arms at home. All persons crossing the frontier from the "Records of Scinde Irregular Horse," vol. i. p. 112. 1850.] A FRONTIER CHASE. 153 other side had their arms taken away, for which a receipt was given ; and the arms were restored when they went back again. On the intelligence of robbers being seen, the troopers, always in readiness, were slipped upon them like greyhounds from the leash ; and they did not stop till they had literally ridden them down. The following account of one of these encounters will give an idea of the spirit which animated them. In December, 1850 (it is Major Jacob who writes) — " A party of Murree and Boogtee plunderers carried off a number of camels from the jungle, north of Gubbur, near Kundkote. Immediately on the information reaching Kundkote, the officer in command of the detachment there, Jemadar Doorgah Singh, proceeded in pursuit, with a Duffedar * and fifteen men of the Scinde Horse and four of the Belooche guides. " The Jemadar having found the tracks of the robbers, followed them at a rapid gallop till he came in sight of the marauders, about fifteen in number, who, abandoning the camels, which they had pricked on thus far at speed, continued their flight. " The Jemadar had now proceeded some thirty miles at a gallop, and at such speed that already seven horses of his party had fallen dead, he having himself ridden two horses to death ; but not contented with recovering the stolen camels, he now mounted a third horse, and deter- mined to continue the pursuit ; accordingly he kept on with the remains of his party, till he had arrived far within the hills beyond Hyran ; the enemy now again appeared, with numbers augmented by a fresh party of horsemen and forty or fifty men on foot, while Jemadar Doorgah Singh had then with him but two suwars of the Scinde Irregular Horse, and one of the Belooche guides, the horses of all the rest having failed long before. The guide entreated the Jemadar to give up the pursuit and return, as the enemy were very numerous, while he had no men with him, and the ground was such that even fresh horses could hardly move among the rocks and ravines. Doorgah Singh replied that if the guide was afraid he might retire ; * A Duffedar is a non-commissioned officer. 154 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. V. but that for himself he should be ashamed to show his face to me [Major Jacob] if, after coming in sight of the robbers, he should retire without killing some of them. " He then, with his two suwars, and followed by the Belooche guide, went headlong at the enemy. The latter perceiving that their four assailants were entirely unsup- ported, surrounded them in overwhelming numbers, pulled the Jemadar and his two suwars from their horses and literally cut them in pieces, though not till they had disabled and killed some fifteen of the mountaineers. " The Belooche guide alone contrived to escape, very severely wounded (as also was his mare), and was with the dismounted men and others of the party who had been left behind by the Jemadar, and with the recovered camels, brought back by parties from the other posts, who had also proceeded in pursuit of the robbers, and who not long after arrived." * If the Beloochee does not possess, in addition to his courage, the soldierly quality of being susceptible of discipline, he has in a high degree that of chivalry. Round Doorgah Singh's wrist, when his body was recovered, was found tied a red worsted thread. The red thread is a high distinction, conferred, like a posthumous Victoria Cross, for distinguished personal courage. But in bestow- ing it the Beloochee makes no distinction between friends and enemies, and confers it with generous impartiality on a dead comrade or a fallen foe. In providing for the pacification of the border popula- tion, Frere and Jacob had early recognized that to make the work permanent it was necessary to do more than guard the frontier and overawe the inhabitants of the country immediately contiguous to it. They aimed at making all Beloochistan a peaceful and well-governed country, friendly to English influence. Matters were not promising to begin with. During the progress of the expedition through Beloochistan to Affghanistan in 1838, * " Records of Scinde Irregular Horse," vol. i. p. 325. 1838-51.] KELAT. 155 Burnes and Macnaghten had lent a too credulous ear to one Mahomed Hussan, a clever, plausible scoundrel, who by treachery and murder had raised himself to be Wuzzeer, or chief Minister of Mehrab, Khan of Kelat. This man, while secretly stirring up the tribes to attack and plunder the English convoys, and actually sending his own servants to waylay and rob Burnes, persuaded the latter that he was the friend of the English, and that it was the Khan who was guilty of the misdeeds. At the same time he persuaded the Khan that the English were determined on his ruin. So completely were Burnes and Macnaghten deceived by Hussan as to the Khan's doings and inten- tions, that orders were given to Sir T. Wiltshire's division, on its return from Afghanistan to India, to turn aside from Quetta and attack Kelat. The place was taken by storm in November, 1839, Mehrab Khan was killed, and the town given up to plunder, Mahomed Hussan sur- rendering to the British. Shah Newaz, a distant cousin of Mehrab, was made Khan in his place. A more unfortu- nate and unjustifiable act of aggression could scarcely have been committed. Two years later some reparation was made, and under a treaty concluded by Outram, Nus- seer, the young son of Mehrab, was restored to his father's principality. But Mahomed Hussan's influence still re- mained paramount at Kelat. In March, 185 1, he paid Jacob a visit of a fortnight at Jacobabad, and by his frank manners and cleverness, imposed upon Jacob as com- pletely as he had deceived Burnes and Macnaghten. It was not till the following year, when he again had an interview with Jacob, that his real object appeared, which was to obtain the countenance of the British Government to his usurpation of the Khanate. When this became clear, Jacob told him in very plain language that he was a traitor and a scoundrel ; and the next day he departed. 1 56 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. V. Being at last found out, he became desperate, intrigued with the Murree tribe and assisted them to plunder, and did all that he could to stir up strife. All this Jacob explained to the Khan, who was with difficulty convinced of the truth, so completely had he been hoodwinked by his Wuzzeer. But, being of a good disposition, and not wanting in ability, he roused himself and endeavoured to take the work of Government upon himself. Mahomed Hussan was removed from office and placed in arrest. To strengthen the Khan's hands, and confirm him in his good intentions, Frere, in February, 1854, at Jacob's particular desire, had an interview with him at Jacobabad ; an interview which was a first step in a course of policy of far-reaching importance. A good impression was made on the Khan, and he and his Sirdars returned well pleased from the conference. Henceforward it will be seen that it was Frere's constant endeavour, as the first and most effectual means both of securing peace on the frontier and also of protecting India from hostile influence and possible invasion by more distant powers, to encourage intercourse across the border, and to promote friendly relations with native states outside the frontier and independent, but subject to British influence, and guided as by a silken thread through the personal influence and ascendency of British officers. It was a policy which seldom met with encouragement from the Government of India, and was afterwards abandoned, but he lived to see it accepted and adopted. The Khan was so impoverished that he could not maintain a sufficient force to uphold his autho- rity, and keep the peace between the wild tribes that were supposed to be subject to him. It may have been felt, too, that some reparation, however tardy, was due to him for the way in which his father had been treated. Therefore, Frere and Jacob obtained permission to con- 1854.] TREATY WITH KELAT. 1 57 elude a treaty with him three months later (May 14, 1854), by which the British Government engaged to pay to him, his heirs and successors, an annual subsidy of fifty thousand rupees, in return for which he engaged to enter into no negotiation with other states without the consent of the British Government, to put down robbery in his territories, to limit the duty levied on merchandize passing through his country to six rupees per camel load, and — what was the most important proviso of all — to permit British troops to occupy such positions in his territory as they might find advisable. This treaty secured and made permanent the friendly relations which for some time past had subsisted with the Khan. Already there was willing extradition by him of robbers taking refuge in Kelat territory. He had an agent residing at Jacobabad, and whenever a robber was believed to have taken refuge across the Kelat border, orders were sent to all village and other authorities to aid the Sind Horse in the pursuit and capture. Three months after this treaty was made, in August, 1854, Major Jacob reports that — "The notorious border robber, Sunjur Rind, the last remaining at large, and the most persevering of the out- laws who formerly infested the Scinde frontier, came in three days ago, and surrendered to the Wukkeel of the Khan of Kelat. . . . " He has, during the last two years, frequently written to me to beg to be allowed to come in and receive pardon for his crimes ; but the man's murders, robberies, and crimes generally had been so enormous that I returned no other answer than that I should certainly catch and hang him some day. " Sunjur then went to Islam Khan, the Boogtee chief, and begged him to intercede with me for him, which he did, receiving the same reply as before, with the addition that if the Boogtees harboured such criminals they would be considered as guilty also. 158 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. V. "The Boogtecs then informed Sunjur that if he came to live with them they would send him prisoner to me. " He then went to the Murrees ; but these people, greatly alarmed at our late arrangements with Kelat, and anxious to avoid giving offence, threatened to imprison Sunjur also ; whereupon, in despair, the man came in and sur- rendered as above mentioned. " The man is of a diabolical nature, and totally irre- claimable ; but, as he voluntarily surrendered, I have recommended the Kelat authorities not to execute him, but to keep him prisoner for life." * And he writes to Frere, September 18, 1854 : — "I am convinced that great and excellent results will ensue from the new arrangements with Kelat ; the whole country will, I firmly believe, become well ordered and civilized. The Khan is most earnestly endeavouring to carry out my advice, he now looks after everything him- self, and tells everybody that he is now only just beginning to live" Another circumstance arising out of these friendly re- lations with Kelat, which probably passed unnoticed at the time, but which was, perhaps, the first step in an important course of policy, much debated later on, was the following : — One evening in February, 1854, Jacob gave an order to one of his Lieutenants, Malcolm Green, to take a Duffedar's party of ten men and set out next morning for Quetta, a march of some two hundred miles, "just to see what the place looked like." Quetta is the last town in Beloochistan on the road from Upper Sind to Candahar, which is the main route between India and Central Asia. It stands on high table land between the Bolan Pass and the Affghan frontier, commanding the approach to the Bolan from the north, in an angle of Beloochistan, which * " Records of Scinde Irregular Horse," vol. ii p. 189. 1854.] QUETTA. 159 runs up into Afghanistan. Thus it is a point of vantage, looking into the latter country both in front and in flank. And it is the nearest place in India to Candahar, from which it is distant less than two hundred miles. These were the days when the Crimean War was impending, and Indian statesmen had seriously to consider the possibility, not of an actual invasion of India by Russian forces, but of Persia or Affghanistan being stirred up by Russian emissaries to give trouble. Both Frere and Jacob had too good an eye for country to be long in perceiving that Quetta was the gate of India on the highway thither from Candahar, and therefore a place of immense political and military importance. No Englishman, as far as was known, had been there since the end of the Affghan expedition, eleven years before. The English had not, as we have seen, left a sweet savour behind them in that part of the country as they retired through it ; and it might have been supposed to be a matter of no little risk for a party of ten soldiers to proceed thither. Such, however, did not prove to be the case. The good name acquired by the Sind Horse among the country folk must have reached even there ; for the little party marched quietly and unmolested through the Bolan Pass to the high table land, where they found the pools coated with ice, and, after a short stay at Quetta, returned by way of Kelat, meeting with a friendly reception there from the Khan. Thus much, then, had been gained already as regards the line of defence of India against an invader from Central Asia, that Beloochistan, the buffer between the two on the north-west, had in these few years been converted, for the time at least, from a hostile into a comparatively friendly country. Frere, on coming to Sind, had at once set himself to l6o THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Cn. V. study, and soon estimated and appreciated Jacob's character and work. " Jacob is doing more good than any ten men I know," he writes to Outram. To which Outram replied : — " How gratified I am by your appreciation of John Jacob, who is indeed a wonderful man and an invaluable public servant, and especially well calculated for controlling and taming the wild tribes on our frontier. I only wish he had charge of the entire border from the sea to Attock." And Frere writes to Lord Falkland : — " I have sent in a letter regarding the expenditure for this year on the canals in the frontier districts. It will probably occur to you to ask whether the plan has been submitted to Turner and approved by him. And it there- fore appears to me that it will be as well to mention be- forehand my reasons for not referring Jacob's plans to any one. He and Turner are excellent friends, and have a sincere respect each for the talents of the other, but they work in entirely different ways. Turner, in a cautious, regular manner, observing all forms and regulations of the service, which to Jacob appear only as so many fetters. Turner does not like to act till he is able to record reasons which would show all the reasonable world that he acts rightly. Jacob will not willingly defer acting after he has satisfied himself what is right to be done ; and he has an aversion (not, I think, an unreasonable or exaggerated one) to the delay necessary to make assurance doubly sure. Of course if I asked Turner's advice I must take it. If I take it, and call for more elaborate details, plans, estimates, etc., Jacob is, of course, disgusted. With ordinary men, this would, of course, not matter. But Jacob is not an ordinary man, he is a very first-rate engineer, and never fails to succeed in all he undertakes. I hope, therefore, you will not think me inconsistent in exempting his plans from that criticism and supervision to which everything else in the canal department in the province is necessarily subject, and without which any man, less highly qualified than Jacob is, would surely go wrong. " Perhaps I might have explained my reasons more 1854] JACOB AND FRERE. l6l briefly by saying that Jacob is quite competent to get on alone, and that he is one of those men who do not get on at all well unless you let them alone." Jacob fully reciprocated Frere's appreciation and friend- ship. They were admirably fitted for working together. Jacob's work on the frontier and his great engineering schemes had Frere's constant and active co-operation, and he smoothed their way with the Government by his advo- cacy and tact. Jacob was inclined to listen to his counsel and accept his suggestions with more deference than he had ever shown to any one else. Frere encouraged him to take his own course, and to hunt his hounds in his own way. Comparatively independent as he was, and possess- ing, by an unusual combination, which Frere took pains to secure to him, military, civil, and political jurisdiction, so as to be sole master within his own district, there were still, of course, matters as to which he had to obtain the sanction of Government, and to take orders from the military authorities. He needed, for instance, money for his canals and other works of improvement. It chafed him that the assent to his plans for reclaiming the desert should be postponed because a clerk in a Government office at Bombay had found a mistake in the arithmetic of his estimates. Nor was he pleased when a new regulation compelled his lieutenants to pass an examination in a native language, which, for ordinary useful and colloquial purposes, they probably knew better than their examiner. Outside his own special affairs he sometimes wrote letters to the London Press, criticizing and exposing what he considered to be maladministration and mismanagement of the army in India and at home, one of which letters brought down a severe reprimand upon his head. With Frere he corresponded frequently and familiarly, and many of these letters are extant. It seems to have been VOL. I. M 1 62 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. V. a relief to him thus to deliver his soul, knowing that what he wrote would be sure to meet with appreciation and sympathy if not with entire agreement, and that hasty or exaggerated expressions of indignation would go no further, and get him into no trouble. But for this friend- ship and this convenient safety-valve to his feelings, he might have poured his complaints into a less sympathetic ear, and with inconvenient results ; and the threat that he once indulged in of throwing up his commission in disgust, and turning civil engineer, might have been carried out to the irreparable loss of the service. His tone to Frere is not only full of friendliness, but also of unvarying respect and even deference. " Non omnia possumus omnes ; few men have your concentrativeness and firmness of brain," he says in one letter, which means much from a man who was quite above paying empty compliments to any one, and least of all to a superior. Jacob's chief and constantly recurring complaint was that the Punjab authorities, in their dealings with the border tribes, followed a system which was the very oppo- site of his, and that thus his work of pacification was hindered and counteracted.* * On this subject Sir George Clerk some years afterwards, when Governor of Bombay, writes to Frere at Calcutta : — "June 26, 1861. "I often ask myself, how is it that among items of extravagant ex- penditure in the Punjab, you have that constantly recurring un- limited one arising from the forays of our troops over the border? I know something of the tribes all along, and no one can say that Afreedees, Yosufzarees, and such up there, are a bit worse or more wild than Murrees, Brahooes and Belooches down here. But here, as you know, that is, on the frontier under the mountains, not a mouse stirs without Merewether's permission — and aloft, in the midst of the fastnesses of the wild tribes, I fancy there is now no fighting without Green's sanction. Hence it seems to me that before long it may fall to this Government to undertake to save you three-quarters of a 1S54.] EVILS OF RETALIATION. 163 In an official despatch to Frere, he says : — "February 27, 1854. " Much good must, it seems to me, be accomplished among these wild but not unintelligent people, by our resolutely setting our faces against all private war what- ever, whether against our friends or enemies. " It seems right that I should bring to your notice that very great evil is caused by the contrary practice close to us in the Punjab districts. Muzzarees, Boogtees, etc., have been there permitted or even encouraged to retaliate on the hill plunderers, a proceeding fraught with terrible and increasing ill consequences. " The principle of totally putting a stop to private war- fare on this frontier, where it once existed to such terrible extent, having been attended with such excellent effects, it seems matter of regret that it should not be acted on in the districts in such close contact with us as that part of the Punjab, south of Mittenhote, where the same tribes exist on both sides of the border in both provinces ; and the people and even the families being the same, the in- fluence of proceedings in one district must be more or less felt in the other." For writing this despatch Jacob was severely taken to task by the Government. Frere warmly took up his de- fence. " Major Jacob," he says, " shared my own doubts as to whether the members of the Punjab Government were aware of the extent to which the system of permitting or encouraging our own subjects to retaliate on the border plunderers was carried, or of the manner in which it worked. . . . " Had I imagined that his remarks implied any criticism on a policy adopted or approved by the Supreme Govern- ment in a neighbouring province, I should consider myself more culpable for forwarding than Major Jacob for writing them. ... million per annum, which is now wasted in cockering up the so-called 'Punjab System.' " Sir George Clerk's testimony on this question is the more valuable, inasmuch as he was in the Bengal service, and had held office in the North-West Provinces. 1 64 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. V. " I will only further express a hope that Major Jacob maybe relieved from any of the displeasure of the Supreme Government, or that if his explanation be not deemed perfectly satisfactory, I may be permitted to bear my fair share of the blame for forwarding remarks which are con- sidered open to such serious censure." In the mean time a " Punjab Report " had been printed and published, which had gone out of its way to dis- parage the work done by the Sind Horse in comparison with the labours of other frontier troops. This was too much for Jacob. He wrote an official despatch to Frere, complaining of the " Punjab Report " as being " founded on imperfect information, incorrect in fact, and unjust as to conclusion," and claiming "the protection of the head of the province " [i.e. the Commissioner in Sind] "from these injurious remarks." He then, at Frere's request, wrote and sent in a memorandum describing and contrasting the two systems. The gist of his description of the Sind system is as follows : Entirely offensive measures on the part of the troops ; no defensive works allowed, existing ones destroyed or abandoned. No dis- tinction made between British subjects and others in cases of robbery and murder. The plea of blood-feud or retali- ation considered as an aggravation rather than as a miti- gation of guilt, inasmuch as it implies malice aforethought. No private person allowed to bear arms without leave. Predatory tribes considered as mere criminal, disreputable persons as long as they persist in their misdeeds, with whom it is disgraceful for respectable persons to have any dealings. Every soldier employed, on the other hand, to have the feeling instilled into him that he was altogether of a superior nature to the robber, whom he was to con- sider not as an enemy but as a malefactor. Perfect in- formation to be obtained of all movements or intended 1851-6.] SIND FRONTIER SYSTEM. l6$ movements of plundering tribes. Strict justice, and an endeavour to excite men's better natures. Another essential feature in the Sind frontier system was that all authority, civil, political, and military, was concentrated in the Frontier Commandant, who was thus enabled to act on the instant, as circumstances might require, without consulting any one. In a memorandum written for Lord Northbrook in 1876, Frere thus describes the difference in this respect between the two systems : — "In Sind the Frontier Commandant commanded all troops on the frontier, whether local or belonging to the regular army. In his military capacity he was responsible to no one but the Commander-in-Chief and Government. He was also sole Political Agent, and superintendent of police, chief magistrate, judge, and engineer, fiscal officer, and canal officer of a strip of territory of various width from ten to fifty miles on the frontier of Cutchee. He had assistants to aid him in the several departments, but he had no superior except the Commissioner, who ruled the whole province, through whom he corresponded with Government. " In the Punjab there has always been much greater division of power and responsibility. The civil and mili- tary officials are kept separate and independent, the nearest authority common to both being in some cases the Lieu- tenant-Governor of the Punjab, but more often the Viceroy. The military authority again is divided. The troops of the regular army are under one Brigadier, responsible to the Commander-in-Chief. The Punjab troops holding all outposts are under a separate Brigadier, only partially responsible to the Commander-in-Chief. The engineers for public works are in four divisions, the police in two, all independent of each other and of the Commissioners." Upon other points of difference the memorandum states that :— " In Sind it was a cardinal rule to attempt no disinte- gration of the Khan of Kelat's sovereignty, whether 1 66 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. V. nominal or real, over the Belooch tribes, but rather by every means in our power to uphold his authority. Chiefs, or complaints against chiefs, were referred to the Khan. Every effort was made to enable or induce the Khan to give redress when needed, and to keep his people in order. . . . " The Punjab policy was ' divide et impera ; ' deal separately with each tribe and each section of a tribe ; avoid, as far as possible, recognizing any authority of the Amir of Cabul over the frontier tribes — keep them as buffers between him and our frontiers. . . ." In Sind the Commandant was charged to use his troops for the protection of life and property, not only in our own territory, but in that of our ally " within our reach." This phrase was defined in a military sense. He was to allow nothing to go unnoticed within reach of our outposts if the evil threatened to involve our people. Active inter- ference beyond the frontier by using our troops was, however, only permitted in case of overt acts of outrage by armed men, such as no local police could cope with, cattle lifting by armed bands, and the like. Prisoners made in this case were handed over to the Khan for disposal. In the Punjab the troops were on no account to cross the frontier without express instructions from Govern- ment ; and we were to hold ourselves absolutely irre- sponsible for the good or bad conduct of the tribes over the frontier as long as they did not cross it. In Sind, in following an enemy across the border the ordinary rules of civilized warfare were to be strictly observed : unresisting or unarmed men were to be pro- tected ; no plunder was permitted, or wanton destruction of houses, trees, crops, or other property. The actual culprits, not the culprits' clansmen, were punished. In the Punjab, when an expedition across the border was sanctioned, the object was to strike terror. For some 1855.] PUNJAB FRONTIER SYSTEM. 167 years prisoners were rarely taken, and quarter rarely given to armed men. Houses, trees, crops, etc., were destroyed. The fault of the individual was visited on the tribe. In January, 1855, Frere wrote to Sir John Lawrence, then Chief Commissioner of the Punjab, begging him to reconsider his policy of permitting British subjects on the frontier, not in the service of Government, to bear arms without a license. After recapitulating the facts, he says : — " I trust you will not think me intrusive in thus stating the results of the system in this province. . . . The system has been now enforced for some years under such a variety of circumstances and agencies, that there can, I think, be little doubt of its practical effect : it is observed along the whole frontier, from Mekran, round by Kelat, the Punjab, and Rajpootana, to Guzerat and Cutch ; and unless Guzerat, where an opposite system has been in force, be much changed within the last few years, the good effect of the prohibition to carry arms is nowhere more marked than in contrast with one of the oldest provinces of our Presidency. " I trust you will further excuse my pointing out that the Punjab officers on the frontier above Kusmore hardly appear to recognize the fact that the Boogtee country adjoining the British territory is part of the territory of the Khan of Kelat. Any separate treating with inferior chiefs must of course tend to weaken the authority of the sovereign ; and I need not point out that this must in time weaken our hold on the country, and diminish our means of obtaining redress when we wish to obtain it through his Highness." * This remonstrance seems to have produced some effect and to have brought about orders for a partial disarmament on the Punjab border. But neither Sir John Lawrence nor any other of the high functionaries in India seems to have recognized and appreciated the fact that Jacob's genius and persistence, supported and encouraged by Frere, had in their own province solved a problem which * "Records of Scinde Irregular Horse," vol. ii. p. 244. 1 68 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. V. Englishmen, not only in India, but in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere, had hitherto failed to solve — the problem how to contrive that contact between the civilized race and the predatory or savage tribes should bring about not hatred, bloodshed, and extermination, but peace, civilization, and mutual benefit. A saying is attributed to a late Roman Catholic divine, speaking at a time when Italy was making her first struggles for a share in the civilization of nineteenth century Europe, that it would be a better deed to save the soul of the meanest Neapolitan beggar than to cover Italy with railways from end to end. If any- thing could make it clear that the antithesis is a false and misleading one, a glance at the condition, physical and moral, of the people of Sind at this time would surely do so. Frere held as strongly as any man could that to "save souls," in any real sense, is the first and paramount duty, the highest and best ambition con- ceivable. No man was less likely to fall into the error of supposing that godliness, virtue, and happiness are coincident and co-extensive with civilization and physical comfort. But he knew and saw and realized, as we at home cannot realize, that a large proportion of the population of India, and an immense majority of the people of Sind at the time of his going there, had till recently been living in mere slavery, oppressed, robbed, and ill-treated by careless or brutal tyrants ; that they were, not occasionally, but habitually, in want of sufficient food ; that they were sunk in the grossest and vilest superstition ; and that these and other kindred miseries made them, as starved, wronged, tortured men inevitably will be, murderers, infanticides, thieves, and liars. He knew that before their souls could rise from such sins as these, the heavy load must be lightened which crushed 1851-6.] WHAT WAS DONE FOR SIND. 1 69 their bodies, and made escape from sheer wretchedness the one absorbing object of their lives. And if the British officer and the native trooper and the Civil Judge brought peace and security to the weak, and converted the murderer and robber into a harmless and industrious peasant ; if the engineer and his workmen cleansed foul cities, and poured water over arid plains, turning a desert into a garden, bringing health to the fever-stricken and food to the hungry ; if, where shifting sands had been washed to and fro by the shallow tide, great ships now sailed proudly in, bearing from across the " black water " the wealth, the civilization, the morality, for good or bad, of Western Europe, till half-savage men, by thousands, turned their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks ; — if this was done, and if Frere's was the guiding mind and faithful spirit which prompted and directed and achieved it, then it is claimed for him and for his memory, and for the noble band of fellow-workers whom he loved so well, that in the work of " saving souls " — if, indeed, it be permitted to speak of this as in any sense a work for man to aid in — theirs was not a worse but the more excellent part. CHAPTER VI. THE MUTINY. On sick leave to England — Returns to Sind — Is met by news of outbreak of Mutiny — -His prompt action — Despatches troops to Punjab — Lieutenant G. B. Tyrwhitt — The camel-dawk — Native newspapers — The treaty with Dost Mahomed — Question of abandoning Peshawur — Outbreaks at Hyderabad, Kurrachee, and Shikarpur. ABOUT a year and a half after his wife and family had gone home, Frere's health failed. He was obliged to take sick leave, and sailed for England early in 1856. Jacob was left Acting-Commissioner in Sind, as Frere had requested, during his absence ; but in April, 1857, he was given the command of the Cavalry in the Persian expedition, and Barrow Ellis took his place. Frere remained in England nearly a year. Sind and its wants were constantly in his mind all the time. He was sending out designs and plans to Colonel Turner for bridges, taking measures for the improvement of the breed of sheep in Upper Sind, urging the India Directors to push on the works for the Sind Railway, speaking at the Sind Railway meeting, and so on. He was invited to a quarterly dinner of the India Directors — one of the last ever held — and treated as one who had earned distinction. It was in this year that he took a lease of Wressil Lodge, which he afterwards bought, a house looking over 1857.] SICK LEAVE TO ENGLAND. 171 Wimbledon Common, which henceforth became his home in England for the rest of his life. After spending the summer chiefly in visiting friends and relations in different parts of the country, he settled there in the autumn with his family, taking to live with them his wife's two unmarried sisters. Those six autumn and winter months still live in the memory of those of his children who were old enough to remember them, as a time of blissful companionship with him. There were the games in the snow, the first play (Midsummer Night's Dream), the toys brought from London, the books — generally not children's books, but such as would be valued in after-years — always well-bound. And there were the first lessons in drawing — a great point with him in his children's education — and the legends and fairy stories, which he expanded so as to extend them over many days in the telling ; and there were the more serious talks. He never talked dozvn to a child, yet was always on the happiest and easiest terms even with the youngest. Though always occupied, he was never in a hurry. The old nurse recalls his putting up some Raphael engravings, which he had given the children, with hammer and nails on the morning he was starting to return to India, as quietly as if he had nothing else to do or to think of. In March, 1857, he set out on his return, leaving Mrs. Frere and his family in England, and reached Bombay early in May. Taking with him his brother-in-law, Mr. John Arthur, of the Bombay Civil Service, who was to act as his Revenue Assistant during the absence of Mr. Shaw Stewart, who was away on leave in England and did not rejoin him till some months afterwards, he left Bombay for Kurrachee, and landed there on May 18, after a dangerous and protracted passage, owing to the ill-manned, leaky, and unwholesomely dirty condition 172 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VI. of the vessel, the effects of which he felt for some time afterwards. On his way from the landing-place to Government House he was met by a trooper with a note from Mr. Gibbs, his Judicial Assistant, enclosing a letter just received by Mr. Neville Warren, the Sind Railway Company's engineer, from Mr. Brunton, the Chief Engineer of the Punjab railway. It was dated Lahore, May 13, and ran as follows : — "We are in a fearful state of anxiety here. At Delhi the whole of the Indian troops are in mutiny ; they have killed every Christian in the place ; at other places the troops show the same dissatisfaction and are turning out. Here there is expected a rumpus. At this moment all the troops are turned out for parade at Mean Meer, and it is intended to disarm the native troops. We have only seven hundred English and a few artillery. — Ten o'clock. All arms are out of the hands of the natives. They were taken by surprise, and left them, after having piled arms, at the order ' right about,' seeing at sixty yards the 81st Regiment loaded with ball, and ten guns pointing towards them loaded with grape. All men are to meet at Sir John Lawrence's office with all the arms they can muster. We are afraid what we may hear from Umritsur, where they have no English troops." For five months past there had been indications of the coming storm in Bengal. There had been gross in- subordination in several regiments, and disturbances about the greased cartridges. But mutinies of single regiments had occurred not infrequently before in India, without leading to serious results, and few men, especially in the Bengal presidency where they occurred, considered these manifestations of disaffection as having deeper roots than in mere local and passing grievances. Frere saw matters in a different light. He knew some- thing of the condition of the Bengal army. He had fore- 1857.] OUTBREAK OF THE MUTINY. 173 seen great danger from the policy of annexation and centralization which Lord Dalhousie had promoted. Ten years before, as we have seen, he had apprehended the possibility of grave consequences from the annexation of Sattara. He had doubted the justice and wisdom of the annexation of Sind. Still less did he approve of the high- handed proceedings in respect of Cashmere, of the Emperor of Delhi, of the Ranee of Jhansi, of the ex-Peishwa. At- taching great importance to dealing tenderly and in a conservative spirit with native customs and institutions, he saw grave danger in the hard uniformity and indifference to local feeling, of which the land-system of the North-West Provinces and the harsh treatment and degradation of the native landed aristocracy of the Punjab were instances ; nor did he share the prevalent belief in the contented disposition of the natives as a result of such government. What he thought on these matters may be gathered from the following extracts from some letters written in 1865 to Mr. (afterwards Sir John) Kaye, criticizing his " Sepoy War " : — "August 20, 1865. " In your account of the Indian estimate of Lord Dal- housie, you have, I think, been led into the very natural mistake of accepting the estimate formed of him in the Bengal Presidency for the estimate of all India. You have correctly described him as he appeared to the great majority of leaders of opinion in the civil and military services of the vast Bengal Presidency, from Peshawur to Singapoor ; but a very different opinion of him prevailed throughout the other half of India, including the Bombay and Madras Presidencies, where every justice was done to his vast ability as an administrator, but where there was a very extensive and profound distrust of him as a states- man. . . . His farewell Minute was admired, in what you will perhaps call these benighted regions, rather for its magnificent composition than for any other quality as a State Paper. There was a very widespread feeling that 174 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VI. all was not so smooth as it seemed outside in 1856, and the explosion of '57 did not affect men in Madras and Bombay with the same surprise which you have so graphi- cally described in Bengal." * And again : — " July 22, 1865. "When you say that there is no blame to be recorded against the Governor-General for the conduct of his final dispute with Napier, do you not take rather a limited and official view of their differences ? No doubt, technically and officially the Governor-General was right and the Commander-in-Chief wrong — there could be no question as to which the Ministry at home was bound to support — but will not history blame the statesman who refused to be warned by such a soldier as Napier ? — who, as far as we can judge, shut his eyes to the danger Napier had clearly pointed out, and was content to entrust the task from which Napier retired to such incompetent hands as , and who left the empire which he had governed for so many years with the sincere conviction, as testified in his * Sir James Outram, then in command of the expedition to Persia, had written thence, on April 27, to Lord Elphinstone : " The mutinous spirit so extensively displayed in the Bengal army is a very serious matter, and is the consequence of the faulty system of its organization, so different from that of Bombay, where such insubordination is scarcely possible ; for with us the intermediate tie between the Euro- pean officers and the men — i.e. the native officers — is a loyal, efficient body, selected for their superior ability, and gratefully attached to their officers in consequence. Their superior ability naturally exercises a wholesome influence over the men, among whom no mutinous spirit could be engendered without their knowledge, and the exertion of their influence to counteract it, whereas the seniority system of the Bengal army supplies neither able nor influential native officers — old imbeciles merely, possessing no control over the men, and owing no gratitude to their officers, or to the Government, for a position which is merely the result of seniority in the service. " I pointed this out to Lord Dalhousie once, who told me he had seriously considered the matter, and had consulted some of the highest officers of the Bengal army, who, one and all, deprecated any attempt to change the system, as a dangerous innovation. Whatever the danger, it should be incurred, the change being gradually introduced ; for as at present constituted, the Bengal army never can be depended on." (" Life of Outram," by Sir F. Goldsmid, vol. vi. p. 5.) ISS7-] WHAT CAUSED THE MUTINY. 175 famous parting Minute, that the dangers against which Napier, Jacob, and Henry Lawrence had been warning him had no existence ? . . . And again : — " July 30. "John Jacob went to the root of the matter in his pub- lished criticisms, and left the rulers of India no room to say that the truth had not been preached to them. . . . Lord Dalhousie's censure of John Jacob's published criti- cisms was a model in its way, quite sufficient to annihilate an ordinary man, but in proportion to its official effective- ness is the damage it must inflict on the reputation for statesmanship of him who could thus devote his skill to muzzle his watch-dogs." As for the heads of the Bengal native army — " Poor John Jacob," he wrote, two years after this time (August 7, 1859) and after Jacob's death, to Mr. G. T. Clark, " who knew them well, had long before pointed out the utter rottenness of their whole system, and the want of discipline, manliness, and truth, which characterized all our dealings with the Bengal native army. He had been vilified in every possible way for his pains, officially silenced by Lord Dalhousie and the Calcutta philosophers, so far as it is possible to gag such a man, and few, but those who knew him personally, thoroughly believed him. Still there were many of his intimate friends besides myself who saw he spoke only the truth, and were prepared for the worst." " Is it not strange," Frere writes to Lord Elphinstone three weeks after the outbreak (June 7, 1857), "that a man like Sir John Lawrence should believe the new cartridges were the real cause of the outbreak, or anything more than the occasion for the outbreak of a feeling caused by a long period of mismanagement ? " * * It is a significant commentary on the belief that the greased cartridges were the prime and sole cause of the Mutiny that Captain Macauley, during his campaign in Rajpootana in command of a Belooch regiment in July, 1858, found some of the greased cartridges in the possession of, and being used by the rebels. He says : "In one of the houses which had been occupied by the rebels. I found, 1/6 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VI. Thus it was that the report of the outbreak, of which there had been no sort of anticipation when he left Bom- bay, found Frere more prepared to credit it and to realize its full import, than perhaps any other leading man at that time in India. And his frame of mind was such that when, within a few minutes of his landing, after a year's absence, he received Mr. Brunton's letter, he did not, as most men would have done in such circumstances — seeing that it did not come from Meerut or Delhi, and that the worst part of the intelligence it contained was second-hand — doubt its accuracy, or wait for confirmation of it, or account the disturbance as a local matter, nine hundred miles off, which did not concern him and his government in Sind ; amongst other things, three of the identical cartridges, the issue of which was made the plea for mutinying ; others of these were also found by some of the ist Bombay Light Cavalry (Lancers), who brought them to Lieutenant Stack, their troop officer ; and on the line of march next afternoon this officer, showing them to me, asked me if I knew to what regiment they belonged. On telling him they were the greased cartridges, he gave them to the Soobedar of his troop, a Brahmin, who not only took and carefully examined them, but put one in his cap-pouch to show in the lines to the men of his troop." Colonel Malleson, in his " History of the Indian Mutiny" (vol. iii. p. 470), thus sums up the question : "After an exhaustive argument, Sir J. Lawrence arrived at the conclusion that the Mutiny was due to the greased cartridges, and to the greased cartridges only. The public applauded a result so beautiful in its simplicity, so easy of compre- hension ; . . . with them it remains still the unanswerable reason for the Mutiny of the Indian army. . . . Before a greased cartridge had been issued the chupatties had been circulated by thousands in many rural districts. . . . " The real cause of the Mutiny may be expressed in a condensed form in two words — bad faith. It was bad faith to our Sepoys, which made their minds prone to suspicion ; it was our policy of annexation ; of re- fusing to Hindu chiefs the permission to adopt — with them a necessary religious rite ; of suddenly bringing a whole people under the operation of complex rules to which they were unaccustomed, as in Oudh, in the Sagar and Narbadd territory, and in Bandahhand ; and our breaches of customs, more sacred to the natives than laws, which roused the large landowners and the rural population against the British rule." IS57-] THE PERIL REALIZED. 177 but as he read the letter, he comprehended at a glance the full gravity of the situation, and took action without an hour's delay — action for the rescue of India, as in ex- tremity of peril, not merely for the protection of his own province. Having sent on the letter by an express to Lord Elphinstone at Bombay, he forwarded a copy of it, by the same steamer which had just brought him to Kurra- chee, to Outram and Jacob on the shores of the Persian Gulf, where they had just brought the Persian expedition to a successful end, writing at the same time to urge upon them the need of bringing back the troops to India as fast as possible. Another copy he sent to Captain Raikes, the Acting Political Agent in Kutch, the nearest native state on the south-east border of Sind, who had charge of the postal lines of communication there, telling him to do everything necessary at whatever cost to keep them open, and that he (Frere) would be responsible. To Jacob he wrote : — "May iS, 1857. " I was greeted on my arrival here to-day by the news •contained in the enclosed. " It is of very grave import — and as regards Lahore can hardly be much exaggerated. I send it for your own and Outram's perusal, as this fulfilment of what you have so often and so long ago predicted would one day occur, may materially affect his plans as to sending back Europeans to India. All here well. I am thoroughly knocked up by nearly five days of the filthiest and worst-manned steamer ever provided for me. Take care to have her well cleaned ere you send any sick by her, else they will be stifled in their beds by the smell." To Outram he wrote the next day — official intelli- gence of the outbreak having in the mean time reached him : — VOL. I. N 178 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VI. " May 19, 1857. " The enclosed copy of a letter from Mr. Macleod, the Financial Commissioner in the Punjab, will show you that the report of the state of affairs there, as given in Mr. Brunton's letter, of which I sent Jacob a copy yester- day, was by no means exaggerated. I daily expect a call [for help] from Sind. You know how limited our means are at present, and you will see from the enclosed that every man who can be spared from the Persian Gulf will find enough to do in the North-West before the year is out. If you have an opportunity of sending me a letter direct, will you let me know if there is any chance of your sending any, and what men, back to Kurrachee. Of the river steamers, which are the article in which we are just now most deficient, there is little chance of your being able to spare any till the monsoon is over, but you will be able to judge of this better than we can. I have no time for congratulations on your many successes, nor to say how much I wish you were out of the heat and malaria in Persia and among us again in India, where, verily, we can just now ill spare men like you and your General of Cavalry. God keep you both." Outram received Frere's first letter and enclosure at Bagdad, and forwarded it at once to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, the British Ambassador at Constantinople, with a request that he would move the Porte to allow regiments from Malta to pass through Egypt. He hoped that his letter would reach Constantinople before the regular over- land mail, and that in any case no time would be lost in sending out reinforcements overland, if possible.* Lord * Frere to Sir J. Lawrence, June 29, 1857. Mrs. Frere, moved by his letters to do so and in deepest anxiety, kept urging Sir George Clerk, then at the Board of Control, to press the sending of troops overland. At last, but not till September, she got a note from him to say, " Your persistency has conquered : a detachment of troops is to go overland. They are to start in plain clothes, and have their muskets packed in boxes." About two hundred men of the 57th Regiment were sent from Malta through Egypt ; the plain clothes were to avoid hurting the susceptibilities of the French. Frere attached great importance to troops being sent overland, however few I857-] AVAILABLE STRENGTH. 179 Stratford de Redcliffe did obtain the Porte's permission, which, had it been acted upon at once, would have enabled reinforcements to reach India in August, at latest. Perceiving the peril in which the Punjab was placed, and that the position of the mutineers at Delhi and the stress of danger elsewhere would probably prevent any reinforcements being sent thither from Bengal and Calcutta, he, within a couple of hours of landing, sought an interview with the General commanding the troops in Sind, and urged him at once to send some European soldiers up the Indus to Mooltan, to reinforce Sir John Lawrence and to secure the safety of that station, so important as being the key of the communication of the Punjab with Sind ; for he foresaw that not only would no European troops be able to be spared from Bengal, but also that the Indus valley would become the only channel of communication between the Punjab and the rest of India by which assistance could be sent, and without which it would be absolutely isolated. His conjecture was soon confirmed. On June 3rd Lord Canning telegraphed to Sir John Lawrence, in answer to his application for reinforcements : " I can give you no assistance with Europeans in the Punjab. You are better off for Europeans than any other part of India, and you must do your best with what you have got." Owing to the drain for the Persian war the number of troops in Sind, frontier-province as it was, was already much smaller than usual. Sir Charles Napier used to require a force of fourteen thousand there, about one-third of them Europeans. There were now in the province four in number ; not only because every man was urgently needed, but because of the effect on the native mind of the evidence that troops could be so sent, and at such short notice. Had more troops been sent that way, and sooner, it would, he thought, have made a great difference. l80 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VI. Bombay native infantry regiments, a Belooch battalion, and two batteries of Native Artillery, one at Shikarpore, the other at Hyderabad, and on the frontier at Jacobabad one regiment (eight hundred sabres) of Sind Horse, and the 6th Irregular Bengal Cavalry (five hundred and fifty sabres). Of European soldiers there were in all Sind only the ist European Fusiliers and the depot of the 2nd Europeans (about three hundred strong). It was a grave matter at such a time to diminish a force already too weak, and the General commanding in Sind at first was inclined to hesitate. But Frere, taking all responsibility upon himself, prevailed on him to comply with his request, and arrange to send off at once to Mooltan the Belooch battalion and a wing of the ist European Fusiliers. In so doing he anticipated a request from Lord Elphinstone, which arrived a few days later, that he would do this. The Beloochees, who were already on their way to Hyderabad, at once marched on to Roree, to be transported the rest of the way by steamer up the Indus. On the 25th two steamers came down the river to Kurrachee, on which the detachment of five hundred and fifty men of the ist Europeans were to be embarked. It had been intended to send six hundred and fifty men, but this would have entailed overcrowding on board, which in the fierce summer heat of Upper Sind, through which they would pass, would have probably caused sickness and loss of life. It was a grievous disappointment and annoyance to Frere, on his return to Sind, to find that the Indus flotilla, on the importance and efficient maintenance of which he had so repeatedly and emphatically insisted, was now, in the hour of trial, not immediately or fully available. The materials of four fine large steamers and four river-flats had been sent out from England to Sind in the previous 1857.] THE INDUS FLOTILLA. l8l November or December, and everything ought to have been ready to put them together there. The builder, Mr. Laird, had protested against their being put together any- where but on or near the river where they were to be used, because, when built at Bombay, the steamers had always been strained and injured, and on two occasions were lost on their way up ; and the Court of Directors, accordingly, had ordered that thenceforth they should be put together in Sind. Nevertheless the Bombay dockyard authorities insisted on their being taken to Bombay instead of straight to Kurrachee ; and up to April nothing was done. Jacob (Frere writes, September 2, 1857) "thought the whole flotilla contrary to the laws of nature, and was for abolish- ing it root and branch, so he took no interest in the matter, which is one of the few points in which I do not agree with him." When Barrow Ellis succeeded Jacob as Acting Commissioner, he found the steamers, which had been at last sent on with no workmen to put them together, in sections, rusting on the beach, and at once set to work with such men as he had, and asked for a six months' sanction for the employment of the additional artificers that were required. Thus when Frere arrived on May 18 the new vessels were hardly begun to be put together, and the only really serviceable old vessels were with the Persian expedition on the Euphrates. On May 28 he writes to Lord Elphinstone from Kurrachee — " I went to see the first detachment of the Fusiliers on board the Nimrod and Jhelum this morning. They were to start at II a.m., and the Satellite, with a hundred and thirty more, will, I hope, be off to-morrow, making but three hundred and thirty in all, I am sorry to say, instead of five hundred and fifty, as I anticipated ; but almost at the last moment the General changed his mind about the flats, wished to leave them behind, and said 1 82 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VI. that if they went it would be five days before the detach- ment could start. Captain Daniell * agreed with me that it would have been better to have sent the flats, but as it was quite clear that if I urged the point there would be several days' delay, and I thought that three hundred and thirty men at once were better than five hundred and fifty a week or ten days later, I let him arrange in his own way. He had applied for the services of Captain Dansey, who was employed in the Civil Department, and I acceded the more willingly, because Captain Dansey has the reputation of being a very zealous and energetic officer, and I thought that the command of the first detachment might require some judgment and decision, should anything unusual occur at Mooltan or on the way up, and I suggested to him to leave the arrangements as much as possible to Captain Dansey. He thought 'it would be entirely a military operation.' I willingly consented, anxious only to get the men off; and he then got alarmed at the responsibility — said it was ' a very delicate operation, partly military and partly political,' and sent Captain Dansey over to me for ' instructions,' to return to him for ' final instructions.' I said I could give none but to get up to Bukkur as fast as he could, and there look out for orders from Sir John Lawrence or his nearest representa- tive, and to take care of himself and steamers. " As I make a point of troubling the General as little as possible with official letters, the correspondence which is forwarded to-day to Government will give but a very faint idea of the trouble of getting off these two hundred men, and but for his changes of plans they might have been off on Tuesday morning at latest. " I suggested to him to ask for Field Establishment and Field Batta for the Beloochees, and for riding-camels, to help them on with as little fatigue as possible. This he has done, and I have sanctioned the Establishment and camels as necessary to speedy and easy marching in antici- pation of your lordship's approval. " The Fusiliers seemed very comfortable and in the highest spirits. " The Beloochees were to leave Hyderabad to-day ; Colonel Farquhar says they are highly flattered at being employed." * Of the Indus Flotilla. I857-] REINFORCEMENTS TO THE PUNJAB. 183 On June 5, he writes — " The Europeans continue to go off very slowly. On every occasion several days elapse after the steamers are reported ready, before the men are on board." And on June 14 — " The two first steamers with two hundred men under Captain Dansey passed the Bukkur Rapids in safety on the 10th. This was a great load off my mind, for, owing to the mistake of the Flotilla officer at Mooltan in sending down the steamer which Captain Daniell meant to keep above the Pass and the delays in embarking here, it was quite possible they might have found the Rapids at Bukkur impassable ; but the river fortunately fell suddenly for two or three days, and by great exertion the steamers were warped through. I hope they will be at Mooltan by the 17th. The Beloochees will be at Sukkur by the 21st, and I have asked the General to give Colonel Farquhar dis- cretionary power to halt there or push on according to the state of affairs on the Frontier and at Shikarpoor. I purpose to continue the upward movement of the Fusiliers as fast as we can. The Conqueror is in such bad order that I ordered Captain Daniell to let her land forty men whom the Satellite could not take at Hyderabad, and then return here, when, after repairs, she will be able to run between this and Hyderabad, and save some time in the upward transport of the rest of the regiment when we are able to get the other steamers. We could get the Indus, capable of carrying a whole regiment, ready in a few weeks, if Sir H. Leeke would only send us up a few riveters. By the two last steamers he sent up a score of engineer apprentices, a class of men of which but two or three were required and who knew nothing of riveting, and only one or two riveters — the sort of workmen he knows we want most urgently. I am told any number might be got if he promoted good second-class men to first-class and so on. His conduct at a moment like this really seems to me unpardonable. Captain Daniell is doing the greater part of the work with men taught up here, but it takes a long while to teach a man." 1 84 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VL Again, on the following day, he writes — " Sir H. Leeke writes to order Captain Daniell down to give evidence before the Supreme Court, but this would be nearly tantamount to stopping all that is doing in the Flotilla, and I have therefore been obliged to interpose and direct him to remain at his post. Sir Henry also ordered him to send down the Victoria directly the Lady Canning arrived ; but the latter arrived in such a state that it will be many days ere it will be safe to let her tow in vessels ; and with so many transports expected, it would be most dangerous to part with the Victoria, and I have therefore been compelled to order her to remain. I trust your Lord- ship will approve of all this. It would save infinite trouble if Sir H. would send orders through the Commissioner. At a time like this he can never tell what is happening so many hundred miles off." Again, June 26 — " I have written officially strongly recommending a piece of decentralization (or I suppose one ought to say centri- fugalization), without which I am confident the Indus Flotilla must remain in its present wretchedly inefficient state. Your Lordship must think me afflicted with a monomania on the subject, but I assure you the cases regarding which I trouble you form but a very small portion of what I hear, but am unable to bring forward. I am quite hopeless of ever seeing matters mend unless the Flotilla be put under the direct control of the Government, and the Commander-in-Chief (of Indian Navy) allowed to interfere no more than he does with a steamer for the China Station. " I would not wish for better officers than Captains Ethersey and Daniell, but I have seen matters get gradu- ally worse ever since Admiral Lushington left, and I can only attribute it to that constant interference which, I can assure your Lordship, I have never seen exercised in any single instance save to the detriment of the public service. I could not have remained silent so long but that I was deterred by a feeling that, notwithstanding the warm interest your Lordship and Lord Falkland took in the matter and the support you always gave me, any plan for improving our river Flotilla or Marine met with an amount I857-] OFFICIAL PEDANTRY. 1 85 of cold water at Bombay, quite sufficient to drown a landsman like myself. " But I could stand it no longer when I saw what our countrymen did and are doing up country, — heard their applications for help, and remembered that with a dis- posable force and excellent troops eager for employment, and a navigable river, and all the elements of a powerful steam Flotilla, we are sending tributes of two hundred men at a time in steamers which ought not to be allowed to run, to help men who are marching twenty- five miles a day, for weeks together, in a Punjab May and June." Frere, at this critical time, in his correspondence with Lord Elphinstone, speaks with plainness and sometimes even with severity of some of the officials with whom he had to work. It was no time for standing on ceremony. Ever since he first came to Sind, he had had frequently to contend with the obstructiveness or supineness of some of the Bombay departments ; and though he eventually succeeded in getting most of his plans for the development of the country sanctioned, yet it was at the cost of long delay in carrying them out, the evil consequences of which were now becoming sufficiently apparent. In the hour of extreme peril, official obstructiveness and a pedantic adherence to hard and fast regulations, persisted in in the face of unprecedented circumstances and new dangers occurring from day to day, could hardly fail to be fatal to the very existence of the Empire. Fortunately his chief, Lord Elphinstone, the Governor of Bombay, though of quiet, retiring disposition, was a man of great sagacity, ability, and strength of will, whose high merit, not fully recognized by the Press or the Public in England, was well known to the Home Government, by whom he had been nominated as Lord Canning's successor in case of any accident befalling him. Lord Elphinstone fully appreciated Frere's powers and merits and the value 1 86 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VI. of having him as "the guardian of his left flank," and again and again interposed authoritatively in his favour in his contests with various departments. Throughout this period Frere was in almost daily correspondence with him on all that was passing around them, and was en- couraged by the assurance that he would receive from him unfailing sympathy and support. Ever since he had been Commissioner in Sind, he had been enforcing the paramount geographical importance of Kurrachee as the natural harbour, and of Sind and the Indus valley as the natural channel of communication between North Western India and England. And now that Bengal was in revolt, cutting off all direct communica- tion between the North-West Provinces and Calcutta, Kurrachee had inevitably become the mouth, and the Indus valley the throat, through which alone the Punjab could be reinforced with troops and fed with supplies, or could even speak with Calcutta or England. Clearly therefore Lower Sind was the true base of operations, and should have had a vigorous general officer, with ample powers to act on his own responsibility, or with sufficient force of character to act independently of orders as the changing necessities of the hour demanded. It was folly to suppose that there could be prompt and vigorous action if orders — often, when they came, conflicting orders — were to be awaited from Bombay, five hundred miles distant, and from which the post sometimes did not arrive for five days together. Frere, in a letter to Mr. G. T. Clark, written two years afterwards, describes the General commanding in Sind as — "August 7, 1859. " A fine specimen of a gentlemanly and well-educated Light Cavalry officer, a perfect picture on horseback, and excellent at the head of his regiment, but not more fond i8S7-] THE MILITARY SITUATION. 187 of innovation than the Senior U.S. Club generally are, and not so young as he was twenty-three years before, when I found him at Poona, Colonel of the 4th Dragoons. How- ever, a braver old gentleman never drew a sabre, and nothing could be better than the spirit with which he agreed to all the suggestions for diminishing his already weak force when the want of men elsewhere was urgent." But the General had not the ability or elasticity to enable him to cope with an emergency which transcended all experience. When he should have been directing and acting, he was waiting for instructions or seeking advice ; and Frere found himself, against his own inclinations, suggesting, advising, remonstrating, and practically direct- ing the disposition and movement of troops, and concerting measures of detail for the safety of Sind and the succour of threatened places outside it, as though he were himself the Commander of the troops. Needless to say, this was done with the utmost tact, delicacy, and consideration, and the two men were from first to last on cordial and intimate terms. But the fact remained that it was to Frere that all turned for instructions and protection, as the one strong and prescient man in the province who knew his own mind, was prepared for all emergencies, and held the threads of Government, military as well as civil, in his own hands. Whether it was owing to his finding himself in this position, or only to the natural bent of his mind to soldier- ing and strategy, he found time so early as June 6, and long before the Mutiny had developed to its full extent, to write a long and elaborate minute on the military position of India with reference to the Mutiny. Treating the Bengal army as practically gone, he assumed that a regular campaign would be necessary for the reconquest of Bengal and the North- West, and indicated the bases of operations where troops should be concentrated and the lines by 1 88 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VI. which they should advance. He urged that in the quiet parts of India, instead of waiting inactive, listening to, and perhaps being demoralized by the news of disasters in Bengal, the troops should be organized with a view to commencing the campaign as soon as the summer heats were over. Urging the impossibility of ultimately relying on English soldiers alone for holding the country, he recommended the raising of additional companies to increase some of the native regiments ; and he pointed out in detail the essential difference between the regulations of the Bengal, and those of the Bombay army, which had contributed to produce such different results. It was a remarkable document, which said in plain language that which required to be said, and what no soldier in authority could be found to say. It will be remembered that at the outbreak of the Mutiny in May there was no European artillery in the province. At Kurrachee there were a few guns, but not a single gunner or waggon. On the return of the Artil- lery from Persia Frere had sent it all away to other parts of India, except one troop of Horse Artillery, which remained at Kurrachee. He now suggested taking about ninety volunteers from the depot of the 2nd Euro- pean Regiment to be trained as artillerymen to form a battery. This plan was taken in hand and carried out by Colonel Hutt with spirit, and in a short time an efficient battery was in course of being formed. On August 15, Frere had to represent that the Commander-in-Chief at Bombay had peremptorily ordered these artillery volun- teers out of the province without so much as informing him of the order, and leaving the General no discretion. His remonstrance produced the desired effect, and a strong letter was written by the Bombay Government to the Adjutant-General insisting that the Commissioner should 1857.] LIEUT. G. B. TYRWHITT. 1 89 be allowed a discretionary power to suspend orders for the withdrawal of troops from Sind. Another matter of vital importance that occupied his attention as soon as he heard of the interruption of direct communication between the Punjab and Calcutta, was the opening of a line of communication, shorter than the way by Kurrachee and Bombay, the only one now remaining open. He found that it would be best to re-open the route via Oomercote, Joudpur, and Nusserabad to Agra, which, before the annexation of the Punjab, was the usual line of postal communication between Sind and Calcutta, but which had been discontinued for the last five or six years. He also determined to endeavour to connect this route at Joudpur with a branch to Bhawalpur and Mooltan, so as to obviate the necessity of Punjab letters passing through Sind, and to give them a shorter line of communication with Agra and Calcutta. It was no easy matter ; there was the desert to cross and it was the hot season of the year ; but there was an officer holding a command in that part of Sind whence the dawk would have to start to cross the desert, who, he knew, would do it if any one could.* Lieutenant George Booth Tyrvvhitt, of the 5th Bombay Light Infantry, was one of those men whose redundant animal spirits and superabundant energy are apt in quiet times and in civilized society to bring them into trouble oftener than to lead them to success, and are only appre- ciated in times of danger and distress. As a boy he had run away to sea and served as a common sailor, and when afterwards he obtained a commission in the Bombay army, and subsequently was given the appointment of Deputy Collector of Mirpur and Oomercote on the eastern district of Sind next the Great Desert, he still retained his sailor-like appearance and frank boyish manner, wearing * Frere to Lord Elphinstone, June 19, 1857. 190 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VI. rings in his ears, and ever ready for an adventure or a practical joke.* A favourite, and always on cordial and intimate terms with the natives in his district, he knew exactly where and from whom to purchase camels and all that he needed, with the least possible delay. On June 19, a month after his arrival at Kurrachee, Frere writes to Lord Elphinstone that in spite of the great heat and every other obstacle opposed to Europeans travelling at that season of the year, Tyrwhitt, assisted by two inspectors, had by great local influence been enabled to carry the line through to Balmeer, "and the line is complete, I hope, ere this, to Joudpur." On receipt of the news that the Mutiny had broken out at Nusseerabad, and that Ajmere was threatened, instructions were given by Frere to connect the line with Deesa, as an additional security. Letters went from Balmeer to Hyderabad at the rate of eight miles an hour, which for desert travelling was very good. This line remained open throughout the Mutiny year, and to estimate its value and the time saved in the trans- mission of intelligence between the Punjab and the seat of Government at Calcutta, it is only necessary to remember that but for its existence, a despatch from Mooltan or Peshawur to Calcutta would have had to go the whole way round by Lower Sind and Bombay. This was only one among many of Tyrwhitt's achieve- ments. Later on, at the cost of great labour and personal risk, he succeeded in bringing away a number of ladies and sick officers from Joudpur to Sind, across the great desert, in the hottest season of the year, and through a * On one occasion he telegraphed from Hyderabad to several of his friends at Kurrachee, about a hundred miles distant, " Poor Tyrwhitt dead ; come at once." Some of them went and found him prepared, not to be buried, but to entertain them at dinner. He had merely worded the invitation in the way best calculated to sec ure, their attendance. I8S7.] CAMEL-DAWK. 191 very disturbed part of Rajputana, when all other routes were closed by the insurgents. The Indus flotilla, as has been shown, was in May hardly sufficient for the task of carrying even a few soldiers up the river from Kurrachee to Mooltan. In June and July troops were arriving from the Persian Gulf, and more were expected. Every available steamer would be wanted for conveying them ; the ordnance and other stores could not be taken in addition, and already they were beginning to accumulate at Kurrachee, which threatened to become a second Balaklava. Of English rifle-bullets alone there were forty-five tons awaiting transmission, and about thirty-five tons of other stores ; while in the Punjab, hospital supplies and clothing were greatly needed, and such was the scarcity of ammunition there that the con- duct and success of the siege of Delhi was being seriously endangered by it. The only other available means of transport was by camels — a very tedious process, occupying from five to six weeks, according to circumstances. It occurred to Frere that the time required for the journey might be reduced to less than a. fortnight by the establishment of a camel- dawk, so that it might be performed continuously by relays of camels, without stoppages. The organization and management of the camel-train was entrusted to Colonel Hutt, a most energetic officer, whose intimate knowledge of the Belooch and Brahoe tribes enabled him to collect some of the chiefs together, and conclude a contract with one of them, Morad Khan, a respectable Pathan of Kur- rachee, for the supply of camels. They began with about five hundred, and a dawk was laid at intervals of twenty- five or thirty miles, with about twenty camels at each stage, which were soon increased to sixty. Each camel was to carry a load of three hundred and twenty pounds, 192 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VI. making at first a despatch of about three tons of stores at intervals of three days. The camels would return at leisure, grazing as they went, so as to be ready to start fresh on getting back to their stations. The time occupied in the journey of five hundred miles seldom exceeded ten days. The camels were also available for use in carrying soldiers in detachments of forty at a time, though they were only once so used, viz. in conveying the 7th Dragoon Guards to Hyderabad. The train was so successful and so much needed that in a few months the number of camels at work was increased to nearly ten thousand, by which large supplies were sent up to assist the siege of Delhi. So honestly and well did the camel owners and drivers do their work, that though there was only their word for the performance of their contract, not the value of a bale- lashing was ever lost. " On one occasion a barrel of am- munition," writes Sir George Hutt, " was missing, and for a long time could not be traced ; at last, as the river fell, it was found in the mud. A Brahoe immediately started on a camel, and never stopped till he brought it to me at Kurrachee. He rushed into my tent at a very early hour : ' There is your barrel ! ' he exclaimed, and he almost threw it on my bed." On July 26 Frere received a letter from Lord Elphin- stone, desiring him to send to Bombay for service in the Deccan a wing of the 2nd European Regiment, if it could possibly be spared. This would leave, besides ninety re- cruits and the same number transferred to the artillery, only a hundred and thirty-nine effective European bayonets for the whole of Sind ! He did not hesitate. He wrote to Sir J. Lawrence the same day, and remarking that " when troops were needed in the citadel the outworks must get on as best they can with reduced numbers," he says : — 1857-] REINFORCEMENTS TO THE DECCAN. 193 " I had rather have sent it (the wing of the 2nd Euro- peans) to you for many reasons, of which I will only mention the selfish one that they would have passed through the province, and before they were all out we might have hoped for the news, at least, of overland rein- forcements. However, I cannot say they cannot be spared, though a weak wing of a sickly regiment is a small force of Europeans for this whole province ; but we are quiet, and I hope may continue so ; and when every part of the Empire is so pressed, we must take our share of the risks, and if any danger arises, meet it as best we may." * Of the tranquillity and absence of disaffection amongst the country population of Sind he felt assured. Better governed and more prosperous beyond all comparison than they had ever been before, they had no violated tra- ditions, no unwelcome administrative innovations to com- plain of, and had every reason to be contented. As to the population of the towns, it was difficult to tell what their disposition was. "July 22, 1857. " Of course, in the most contented Mohamedan popula- tion," he writes to Lord Elphinstone, " a fanatical outbreak is never impossible, but I see no reason to apprehend one here. . . . Moreover, the Mohamedans here, both Beloochees and Sindees, are a manly race, far superior to the town population in the Deccan and Guzerat. . . . Information was given me that Sher Mohamed, the ex-Ameer of Meerpoor (Sir C. Napier's ' Lion '), and another old chief had been sounded as to what they would do if the Mutiny extended to Bombay. They replied that no Belooch had any ob- jection to a good stand-up fight, but the deeds of the * The wing of the second Europeans landed near Goa, two com- panies strong, about a hundred men, twice as many as Lord Elphin- stone had ventured to hope could be spared him. They marched up over the Ghat to Poona, and reinforcing General Le Grand Jacob's force at Kolapore, enabled him to check and finally to suppress the insurrection there. In a letter of a disaffected native, subsequently in- tercepted, the writer stated that he had stationed himself so as to count all the soldiers as they passed, and that he had counted two thousand! VOL. I. O 194 THE LIFE 0F SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Cn. VI. mutineers were worse than those of traitors. To murder women and children was the act of the sinners of Sodom and Gomorrah." The Police, the best legacy Frere had received from Napier, were thoroughly efficient and trustworthy, and were well able to cope with any criminal outbreak that might occur. At his suggestion two regiments, called Beloochees, though in fact the men were nearly all Sin- dees, were being raised and trained to act as an auxiliary and semi-military force of Police. Applications to be enrolled in it were numerous, and the service seemed likely to be popular.* The Bombay native regiments, Frere felt confident, were at the outbreak of the Mutiny faithful and reliable, and as yet untainted with disaffection. A few days after his return a petition had been presented to him, signed by a clergyman and nineteen others, stating that they had been given to understand that the native troops there were ripe for revolt, and asking that they might have arms served out to them for defence. He replied, assuring them that the troops were loyal and that there was no present danger — he himself having no guard to his house except the usual Sepoy sentry ; — and the petitioners were satisfied with his assurances. He " abstained from calling for volunteers or appointing places of rendezvous or refuge, from a convic- tion that, situated as we are at this station, such measures only embarrass the military and promote panic without affording much real security." He writes to Lord Elphinstone : — " September 26, 1857. " The station stretches in an irregular area of four or five miles, along the whole extent of which the dwellings * Mr. Frere to Lord Elphinstone, August 22, 1857. 1857.] ALARMISTS AT KURRACHEE. 195 of European inhabitants are scattered, seldom at any- great distance from the bazaars. " Very early in the present crisis I found that many of the places, such as the jail, the police lines, etc., which I should have considered most secure, were regarded with indefinite terror by the alarmists. It was out of the question to provide European guards to separate places of refuge for persons at a distance from the small force of Europeans in the barracks, and no single spot would answer the requirements of all parts of the station. No one could say from what quarter they apprehended dis- turbance, and it seemed to me that the general safety, in case of any disturbance, required that the small European force should give as few detachments and guards as possible, and should be kept compact and free to move rapidly in any direction, and prepared to sweep the wide straight roads of the camp, where unarmed persons rushing to distant places of refuge would only impede the action of troops, and perhaps meet their own destruction. " So as regards volunteer guards, almost every man here has business to attend to during the day, and a family to take care of at night. To arm, drill, and employ such men in guarding the camp would, as a general rule, only take them from their regular work, promote panic, and hamper the military with ill-disciplined allies, who, in the event of their services being really required at any particular point, would find themselves drawn by even stronger calls to stay at home and defend a helpless household. " In reply, therefore, to numerous applications on this subject, I have generally advised applicants to keep in their own houses, and calm, by reason, religion, and example, the fears of their own families, to provide such arms as they could use, and in case of disturbance to defend their houses till the aid which could not be long in coming should arrive." " Here all is very quiet," he writes on August 29, " though there is a vague alarm about the Mohurrum ; and it is dangerous to go near the houses of Parsees and English clerks, I hear, after dark, for the inmates are armed to the teeth, and apt to explode like a box of rockets. The Bohras have made arrangements to flee to the houses of European sergeants in camp in case of alarm. It does not look like intended rebellion on their part. I96 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Cn. VI. The common people about the bazaar, if anything, more than usually civil and good-humoured." Amongst the alarmists were some of the English news- paper editors. The false statements that got into the newspapers did so much harm that Frere expostulated with them, and warned them of the mischief they were doing. They had frightened not only the public, but each other, and at last came and asked Frere what could be done for safety. He replied in his usual way that he did not share their fears, but if they felt insecure, he had a bungalow at Kimaree, where he thought they would be perfectly safe, which he would be glad to put at their disposal. On the question of the Native press, which at this time of extreme peril and excitement was a very difficult one, Frere writes as follows to Lord Elphinstone, June 10 : — " I have the honour to enclose a memorandum with which Mr. Gibbs, Assistant Commissioner, has favoured me, of a conversation with Shet Naomul, a native merchant of Kurrachee, for many years favourably known to Govern- ment on account of his great intelligence, his extensive influence and connections throughout the countries of our western frontier, and his tried attachment to the British Government. " His opinions on the subject of the Native press seem to me deserving of attention, backed as they are by extracts from an Hindustani paper published at Madras, which show how mischievous the articles in native newspapers often are, and how widely they circulate. " The extracts and translations by Major Goldsmid * will enable your lordship in Council to form a judgment on this point. " No. 1 seems clearly meant to produce an impression that the Government had attempted to defile their Sepoys by flour mixed with hogs' bones, though the insinuation is very cautiously worded. * Frere had all Sind native newspapers read, and the principal articles translated by Major Goldsmid. 1857.] THE NATIVE PRESS. 107 "No. 2 is a very mischievous perversion of an Indian debate in Parliament, which in quieter times might be amusing. " No. 3 is perhaps the most important, as it is evidence of the effort which has for some time past been made to place the Shah of Persia in the position, as regards Maho- medans in general, formerly held by the Sultan of Turkey. Your lordship is aware that some of the most influential learned Mahomedans in India are Sheeahs, and that the liberal measures lately adopted by the Sultan, and his manifest reliance on the aid of Christian Powers, have been triumphantly appealed to by the Sheeahs as proofs of the Sultan's heterodoxy. . . . "It is the ignorance of the authors and readers of such articles which really gives them their dangerous character, as well as forms the difficulty in dealing with them, for it is not easy to prevent or punish the publication, in a native newspaper, of what may be a verbatim translation of a very harmless criticism in an English publication. " A poem in a Persian paper was lately brought to my notice as of very mischievous tendency, and as it described the signs preceding the Day of Judgment in language strikingly applicable to the present time and place, it was doubtless calculated to unsettle and excite men's minds, and prepare them for some sudden disturbance, but it read so like a free translation of a sermon by a popular English preacher on the same subject, as to render it rather puzzling to know what to do with it. " I believe the best plan would be to have all periodical productions of the Native press regularly read by trust- worthy persons, with instructions to bring to notice any objectionable passages, whereupon any measures which might appear necessary might be taken regarding them. At any time like the present, when productions like those enclosed would be calculated to do real harm, the ordinary courts would punish anything treasonable with exemplary severity, and public opinion would fully bear them out in so doing. " I have taken measures which will, I hope, prevent the publication of any mischievous articles in this province." On the same subject he writes to Sir John Lawrence a month later (July 9) : — I9S THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VI. " I fear the Press Law will hamper the Governor-General as much as 's appointment, and that he will, ere long, have reason to regret that he consented to either. A Calcutta jury would have hanged a Persian editor on very- slight evidence of seditious purpose, and till the old law had been enforced and found insufficient, it seems a mis- take to enact new ones calculated, as this Press Act is, to rouse a nest of hornets just at the time it was most neces- sary that the acts of Government should have every support from the public here and at home. Private letters and gossiping idlers spread more false and mischievous reports than the newspapers, as far as my observation goes. Your system of telling the exact truth through the Press, on all that it concerns the public to know, seems to me the true plan of preventing needless alarm. As the Act is now law, I mention my opinion in confidence to you." On July 16 Frere addressed the following circular letter to the district officers, enclosing a proclamation which they were empowered to publish or withhold, at their dis- cretion, according to the circumstances : — " It has been suggested to me on various occasions to issue some proclamation or public notice relative to the mutinies in the Bengal army. I have hitherto abstained from complying with such suggestions, from a conviction that notifications often do more harm than good, by un- settling people's minds and creating a panic. " As, however, it appears certain that emissaries have been despatched in this direction with a view to disturb the public peace, and that alarming rumours have been put in circulation in various parts of the province, I have drawn up a proclamation, of which an English translation is enclosed. " Where the people know little and care less for what has occurred, any public notification on the subject would be not only superfluous but mischievous, by creating alarm. But where exaggerated reports have been current, or where emissaries are likely to appear, the proclamation may do good, by showing the people that Government is aware of the danger and prepared to meet it. " Much more can be done by district officers in their personal intercourse with the natives than by any pro- 1857.] THE FOUR TERRIBLE MONTHS. 199 clamation. A plain statement of the real facts of the case will generally prove less alarming than the native reports in circulation ; and almost every one you converse with will be able to call to mind instances within his knowledge, when the danger which threatened our rule was much greater, and was nevertheless met by the British Government with signal success. " Probably few natives really doubt the sincere intention of the British Government to rule them for their own good and to secure them perfect toleration and the fruits of their own labour. It may not, however, be amiss occa- sionally to remind Jagheerdars that they hold their estates on service tenure, and that no service is more imperative than that of assisting Government to check disaffection and apprehend traitors." In reading these cheerful and confident letters in depre- cation of undue alarm, one needs to be reminded that they were written in the four terrible summer months when the Mutiny was spreading almost unchecked ; when some, even of the most stout-hearted, doubted if the English power would prove strong enough to crush it ; when calamities more and greater than often occur in a generation were crowded into a few months ; when defeat might involve the slaughter, not of armed men only, but of women and children ; and when the danger was not in front or at a distance, but all around, and rumbling as it were beneath the very ground men stood on. As the intermittent weekly or daily express brought its story of bloodshed and horror, its tale of slain comrades and relations, the wonder is, not that there was here and there mistaken and exaggerated alarm or shaken confidence, but that men's nerves and physical and mental powers stood the strain so well. Frere by his own demeanour was setting an example well calculated to inspire confidence and dispel panic. He carried on as nearly as he could the ordinary routine of daily life, but he had not even time, such was the pressure, 200 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Cn. VI. for the morning ride at sunrise — an almost invariable custom in India in the hot weather. The Punjab post generally arrived an hour or two after midnight ; and for months he never had a night's rest unbroken by the arrival of expresses, often three or four times in a night, requiring immediate attention. But such was his nerve and calm- ness of mind that he would fall asleep again, almost in an instant, and waste no time in lying awake. With all the burden of responsibility and of administrative work, civil, military, and political, that rested on his shoulders ; with all his powers of body and mind worked and strained to the utmost, he maintained the same unruffled temper and courtesy, the same unvarying cheerfulness ; there was the same gentle, deliberate voice and quiet smile, the same deep and constant faith in the presence and over-ruling government of God. " I always prepare," he said, in a letter to his wife in England, " to the best of my power, and then make up my mind by the blessing of God we shall succeed. And I have found it so hitherto." At the end of August, when matters were about at the worst, he writes as follows, to his sister Mrs. Hart, as to whether Mrs. Frere should come out to him or not : — " I must tell you why I do not tell Katie to remain in England. As far as she is concerned, I think she will suffer less from anxiety and alarm when out here than at home, with those terrible intervals of suspense between the mails. By November we must be having mir innings and rolling back the tide of rebellion, and if anything delays us she will soon hear enough to prevent her coming. " On other than personal grounds I think it very impor- tant not to defer her coming, for the alarm and feeling of insecurity among our own people seem to me among the great difficulties we have to contend with ; and to live as if we fully intended to remain here and to go on as before, seems to me an important duty. I have told her exactly how matters stand, and have such confidence in her judg- 1857.] DOST MAHOMED. 201 ment that I propose leaving the course she will pursue to her, assured that if she defers her journey it will be from very good reasons, and if she comes out, that public good will attend her being allowed to follow the dictates of her own feelings, insomuch as the prospect of her coming and her arrival will help to maintain confidence and allay alarm, which is as difficult and important a part of my duty as any. You know I have never from the first thought it more than possible that the evil might be checked, and warned Government two months ago that if the thing was to be done in one campaign, they must begin at once and not lose a day. I own the extent of blundering in various quarters has been more than I bargained for, and the amount of preparation in England less, but by October they will be thoroughly roused at home, and if they do not put forth the whole power of the nation to recover their lost ground, why, we may shut up at once." Serious illness amongst her children detained Mrs. Frere in England as she was preparing to return to India. She did not go till a year later. Relying as he did on an attitude of calm confidence as of transcendent importance, it was with consternation that Frere heard of a proposal, — urged in the teeth of Colonel Herbert Edwardes's strenuous protest, — that should the stress of circumstances continue, Peshawur should be voluntarily ceded to the Affghans to conciliate their good-will. Dost Mahomed, deposed with such unfortunate con- sequences by the British expedition in 1839, and reinstated at the conclusion of the war, was still the ruler of Affghan- istan. During the Sikh War he had sent a contingent of cavalry to aid the Sikhs, but it had been signally routed by a very much smaller force of the Sind Horse at the battle of Goojerat, and chased to the entrance of the Khyber. Thenceforward Dost Mahomed, convinced that the British power was destined to prevail, sought our 202 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VI. alliance. Overtures were made by him to Herbert Edwardes, the Commissioner of Peshawur, in 1854. By the latter's perseverance and persistency, and in spite of Sir J. Lawrence's reiterated expression of opinion that a treaty with Dost Mahomed was impossible, or, if possible, useless, or worse than useless, a treaty was made with him in 1855. This was followed by still closer relations and a second treaty, negotiated by Edwardes, which Lawrence, still unconvinced, ratified on January 26, 1857, an< ^ m virtue of which Dost Mahomed was to receive a lakh of rupees a month during the continuance of the Persian War, and which was subsequently continued to him four- teen months longer — to September 30, 1858. Four months later the Mutiny broke out. Thirsting to take vengeance for past defeats and to recover Peshawur which had once been under their sway, the Affghan warriors were eager to attack the British, and make common cause with the mutineers. Nothing but the personal power of Dost Mahomed, and his determination loyally to maintain the treaty, could have prevented an Affghan invasion at the crisis of the Mutiny, which must have driven the British from the Punjab, and probably also from the Bengal Presidency. Of all Edwardes's great services to India, the conclusion of this treaty was the most important. But from Lawrence he never obtained the credit he deserved for it.* Though differing from him on many important points, Frere fully appreciated the high merit and great services to India of Lawrence, to assist whom in taking Delhi and preserving the Punjab he was now straining every nerve, and denuding his own province of European troops. Six months after this time he wrote to Lord Elphin- stone — * See Macmillaifs Magazine, February, 1891. 1857.] PESHAWUR TO BE HELD. 203 " I was very glad to see the honors conferred on Sir J. Lawrence, but they hardly seem to me to be adequate to the service he has rendered, which I rate more highly every day I see more of the sort of demoralization which had pervaded the officers as well as men of that army." And to Mr. Mangles : " By almost superhuman energy and ability Sir J. Lawrence has kept the Punjab quiet — at least free from formidable revolt." Therefore his dismay was the greater when he heard of Lawrence's proposal to cede, in certain eventualities, Peshawur and the adjacent territory to the Affghans. The proposal reached Frere on its way to Lord Canning. He wrote immediately to Lawrence : — "June 29, 1857. " I must say I should be for holding Peshawur at all hazards. We may hope for some reinforcements in August, and very large ones in September and October, and even if they had to re-enact Jellalabad at Peshawur, it would be better than risking the demoralizing effect of a contrary course." And again two days later he writes : — " I trust that no extremity will induce you to abandon Peshawur. While you hold it, with Lahore and Mooltan, you are, in the opinion of every native chief, Lord of the Punjab, even if you command nothing beyond the reach of your guns. The voluntary evacuation of any of the three would have a very bad moral effect everywhere out of the Punjab, and I should hardly think the troops which you would thus be enabled to withdraw to the east of the Indus would be more than a counterpoise for the additional disorder which would follow in the Punjab itself, and which will be kept down as long as you continue to hold Peshawur. I may be wrong, but I should regard the loss of Peshawur by mutiny or rebellion as a much smaller calamity. Natives always make allowances in such cases, 204 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VI. and their opinion of our power would be less shocked than by a voluntary evacuation. " Would it be any assistance to you if we could garrison Mooltan from this ? I think we could manage it if we got even a small portion of our Persian force back — and they may be daily looked for." To Lord Elphinstone he writes, July 2 : — " I enclose a copy letter from Sir J. Lawrence. You will, I think, be sorry to see him still meditating the evacuation of Peshawur as a measure to be adopted in extremis, should Delhi not fall. I enclose an extract from my reply, written in great haste to save post. I think it would be sounder policy to draw in every outpost and stand a siege in Peshawur, Mooltan, and Lahore. While he holds these three posts he will find no difficulty in recovering the rest of the Punjab when reinforcements arrive three or four months hence ; but it is impossible to foresee the end of the evils which may result from such a confession of our weakness as a voluntary abandonment of the gate of India. I think he must have underestimated our chances of reinforcement, and if so, good may result from the details I gave him of possible aid from England. I have asked him if he would wish us to occupy Mooltan. We could do it even now, if we had a good officer to com- mand, and could get but one more Native Infantry Regi- ment from the Gulf. But managing native troops in these days is just like riding a troublesome horse — easy to a man who knows how to do it and has nerve, but not to be done by a man who requires to be told how to sit and hold the reins, and who lacks confidence in himself or his steed." Lord Canning decided against surrendering Peshawur in any event. Although no direct communication on the question passed between Frere and him, it is believed that the former's strongly expressed opinion being passed on to him by Lord Elphinstone had much to do with his decision, and it was a great support to Herbert Edwardes and those who agreed with him. Long afterwards Frere was asked if he had ever doubted during the Mutiny about 1857.] SPREAD OF DISAFFECTION. 205 the final result of the struggle. He said, " Never, except once, and that was when it was proposed to abandon Peshawur." * At the first outbreak, in May, Frere had, as we have seen, expressed his confidence both in the tranquillity of Sind and in the fidelity of the Bombay Native Regiments. But the plague could not be stayed in its course even where the conditions were so little favourable to it and the precautions so wisely and carefully taken. Ever since the middle of May the rebel standard had been flying triumphantly at Delhi. Thither for four long, anxious, dreadful months were turned all eyes and ears in every town and hamlet from end to end of India. Was it true, as had been foretold, or was it false that the English Raj was hastening to its end ? As long as the ancient city of the Moguls defied all the efforts of the British power and the mutinous Sepoys successfully resisted our arms, the opinion that that power was doomed strengthened and spread swiftly and silently amongst the great army of waverers, who, in all Oriental races, accustomed to sudden changes of dynasty and subversions of authority, are ever watching the signs of the times, that they may take part with the strongest and be found on the winning side. Religious fanatics, emissaries from Delhi, from Persia, from Affghanistan ; agents of Nana Sahib, and of many another intriguing native, swarmed through the country, appealing each to his particular race or sect ; letters from * " When the good news began to come in from Delhi, one of the great Sikh Sirdars, on being exultingly informed of it, paid little attention, but asked significantly, 'What news from Peshawur?' ' Excellent ; all quiet there,' answered his informant ; ' but why do you always ask so anxiously about Peshawur?' The Sikh hesitated, and taking his scarf, began rolling it from the corner. ' See,' he said, ' if Peshawur goes, the whole Punjab will be rolled up in rebellion like this.' '"—Macmillari's Magazine, February, 1891. 206 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Cn. VI. the mutineers in Delhi, in Oude, and elsewhere, some enigmatically, some plainly worded, came by the post to their relations and friends in the Native Regiments in Sind, calling on them to make common cause with them. And within Sind, at Jacobabad on the frontier, was a Bengal Regiment, the 6th Irregular Cavalry, which the Bengal Government dared not recall, and which, teeming with disaffection, was only kept from open mutiny by the single regiment of Sind Horse, commanded in Jacob's absence by Merewether, who, silent and unflinching, had the task of guarding them added to the now more than ever responsible duty of watching the frontier. Gradually it came to the knowledge of the officers that some of the Bombay native regiments in Sind were no longer free from the taint. None could say how far it would spread, and Frere, pretty well assured that an out- break of some sort would occur before long, confronted the situation with a European force for the whole province, numbering — sick men and recruits included — less than five hundred British bayonets, and of effectives less than three hundred and fifty.* Jacob's return from Persia with the other regiment of Sind Horse had been eagerly looked for, and it was a keen disappointment to find that when at last they did reach Kurrachee, it was only to touch there on the way to Bombay. Merewether, who had been more uneasy about the 6th Bengal Cavalry than he chose to confess, even to himself, had written on hearing of the arrival of the Sind Horse to beg they might be sent up as speedily as possible by squadrons or even by troops ; and he spoke more freely than he had before done of the 6th Bengal Cavalry. Their disorderly habits and bad example were doing much harm. When the Punjab authorities were * Frere to Lawrence. 1857.] MEREWETHER. 207 asked if they wanted the 6th back again, they always declined ; and so bad was their reputation in their own army that their comparatively tolerable conduct on the Sind frontier was a constant theme of remark. Under these circumstances, Frere, while sending on the bulk of the regiment of Sind Horse to Bombay, detained a detachment, which, including some sick and unfit for service, amounted to a hundred or a hundred and ten men. These he decided to send on immediately to their head-quarters at Jacobabad. He writes to Lord Elphinstone : — "August 20, 1857. " It will add to the number of Captain Merewether's own men on whom he can depend, and as the number of the body returning from Persia will not be diminished by re- port as they go through the Hills, their return will probably have more effect than their actual number warrants, and even a few returning to give an account of the absentees to the families, etc., at Jacobabad will be satisfactory to all parties. " I was rather struck with the manner of the old Ris- saldar when he asked me the reason of their going to the Deccan. He seemed satisfied with what he was told, but his first impression seemed to me to have been that there must be some reason beyond what he had heard. " I have of late observed among many of the Sepoys when talking to them, an expression, not perhaps of dis- trust, but of puzzle as to what the Government meant to do ; and it occurred to me that the effect would, in every way, be good if a small detachment went back to Jacob- abad, carrying news as eye-witnesses of doings in Persia, and able to assure the wives, families, and comrades at Jacobabad that we have neither eaten the rest of the 2nd Regiment, nor inveigled them beyond sea for any sinister purpose. " You can have no idea of the absurd stories circulated here and probably in every station, not only as to the in- tention of some unknown body of natives against us, but of ours against the native community — an indiscriminate massacre in revenge for the Cawnpore atrocities is to be 208 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VI. one of our mildest measures. It is not merely ladies and their ayahs and half-caste clerks who are answerable for this mischievous nonsense, but many men and officers who ought to know better, though usually the responsibility of originating the story is so divided that it is not possible to get hold of any one who can be made an example of. " I hope the postal restrictions on native correspondence will be lightened as much as possible, for the distrust and alarm is much aggravated by want of intelligence as to what is going on. I had told the Inspecting Post-master here to desire his deputies to take the local authorities into their councils before acting on the instructions they had received. But on further inquiry I found the mischief was already done, and it was better to let him and them alone. These deputy post-masters, here at all events, are people utterly unfitted, by their condition and education, to discharge properly so confidential and delicate a duty as that of opening and passing an opinion on the in- nocuous or treasonable character of the whole correspon- dence of the native troops, and the whole arrangement seems to me one of the many mischievous results of emancipating the post-office from the authority of the local government and their representatives." The plan of the mutineers in Sind, so far as they had any definite plan, seems to have been to seize the fort at Hyderabad, and make it a rallying place like Delhi ; then to cause simultaneous outbreaks at Kurrachee, Shikarpur, Jacobabad, and Mooltan in the Lower Punjab. The premature discovery of disaffection at each place disconcerted the whole scheme. The first alarm was at Hyderabad. On the evening of September 8, a native Soobedar-Major of Artillery in- formed his Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Battiscombe, that the men had been holding secret meetings and hatch- ing treason. Battiscombe reported this to Brigadier Morris, and the report having been confirmed, the following even- ing the guns were taken possession of by the Europeans, the police, and a hundred picked men of the 13th Native xehx i Hi I MAIN BAZAAR, HYDERABAD, FROM THE GATEWAY OF THE FORT. March 23, 1851. 1857-] MUTINOUS ARTILLERY AT HYDERABAD. 209 Infantry, and taken into the fort. The ladies also were moved into the fort, and though the station remained quiet, it was suspected that the 13th Native Infantry were disaffected. Frere, when the news came, perceived that the situation was critical. Colonel Hutt was roused at two in the morn- ing by finding Frere sitting at the foot of his bed, come to arrange with him for the despatch of sixty of the newly enrolled artillerymen under Lieutenant Harris, and fifty- five of the 1st Fusiliers, to Hyderabad, when the tide served in the morning. Hutt went off at once to prepare for their embarkation at a place three or four miles off, whence they sailed the next day. Almost their first duty on arrival at Hyderabad was to assist at the execution of the mutineers who had been tried and found guilty. Opposite them was drawn up the suspected 13th Native Infantry, and to the last moment there was a doubt whether the latter would not take the opportunity of firing into them instead of guarding the execution. All, however, passed off quietly. Hyderabad was saved, and the guns of the disarmed Native Artillery were handed over to the European Artillery Volunteers.* Some time in the second week in September Frere had moved his sleeping quarters, for the sake of the refresh- ment of the sea-breeze, to his bungalow at Clifton, about two miles, or ten minutes' gallop over the sand, from Kur- rachee. With him were staying Captain Goldsmid and Mr. John Arthur. On the night of the 13th, or rather early on the 14th — the same night that the assault on Delhi began — at about two in the morning the sound of a horse galloping up to the bungalow was heard, and Captain Bob Johnstone entered Frere's sleeping-room, * This volunteer artillery was afterwards incorporated in the regular artillery. VOL. I. P 2IO THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VI. making in a loud voice some trivial remark, and then in a low voice adding, "the 21st Regiment has mutinied." Arthur and Goldsmid were roused in the same way to avoid spreading panic among the servants — a useless pre- caution, for native servants generally knew what was hap- pening at least as soon as their masters. He had come to tell them that about eleven o'clock in the evening two native officers of the 21st Native Infantry had informed Major MacGregor, commanding the regiment, that a Havildar had been to them, and, after asking how long they would wait to be blown away from guns as was now done in Hindostan, informed them that the whole regiment was prepared to rise at two o'clock that morning. One man, he said, was to be sent to rouse the 14th Native Infantry, and another to secure the co-operation of the Mahomedans in the town, from both of which quarters they expected aid. They were to murder the Europeans and any native officers who opposed them, and then set off to Delhi with their arms and treasure. This information was subsequently confirmed by an orderly Havildar, and it was clear from its purport that an attempt would be made at the time specified to raise a mutiny in the regiment* Frere, Goldsmid, and Arthur hastened across the sand to where the carriage, which had been ordered out, met them. On the way Frere stopped at a bungalow hard by occupied by some ladies and a child. Asking to see one of them, Mrs. Merewether, wife of the officer left in command of the Sind Horse, whom he knew to be possessed of courage and nerve, he told her what had happened, adding that the ladies and children had had the mess-house of the 2nd European Regiment assigned them to take refuge in. As it was possible, however, that they might meet mutineers on the way * Frere to Lord Elphinstone, September 14, 1857. 1857.] MUTINOUS SEPOYS AT KURRACHEE. 211 thither, she decided by his advice to stay where she was, placing her two Belooch horsemen, and also two other sentinels, in the direction of the camp, to give notice of any one coming up the road. In case of the worst, he told her where there was a boat in a creek a quarter of a mile off, by which they might escape across the harbour to Manora Point. They then drove on to the camp, listening, as they went, to a sound which came from the direction of the native quarter, like the hum of a hive of bees disturbed. When they reached the parade-ground the danger was already over. Major Macgregor's first impulse, half broken-hearted as he was at the stain on the honour of his regiment, had been to go straight to his men and address them ; but the Subadar told him plainly that to do so would only produce an outbreak at once, and he therefore immediately went to give information to the Brigadier, warning the 2nd Europeans and Artillery on his way. The Arsenal bell had rung at a quarter to twelve, and in seven minutes from the warning the Artillery turned out with six six-pounders and two nine-pounders, harnessed and ready. The four companies of the 2nd Europeans fell in without sound of bugle, and after placing a guard over the treasury, followed, about two hundred strong, close behind the Artillery. Captain Leith, of the 14th Native Infantry, when he was told what was happening, went at once to his regiment, and before they could turn out, he heard, but could not see in the darkness, the Artillery going by. As they arrived at the parade-ground of the 2 1 st, the Europeans wheeled into line, with the guns half on each flank and loaded with grape. The 14th Native Infantry fell in almost at the same time ; by an unfortunate mistake, which might have had serious 212 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VI. consequences, they were ordered to do so without arms, an error which was, however, set right soon afterwards. As the Europeans formed line the assembly was sounded for the 2 ist to fall in, which they did, slowly and reluct- antly. They were then ordered to pile arms and move fifty yards to the flank, and had no choice but to obey. The Europeans and Artillery then changed front to the flank, so as to interpose between the 21st and their arms, and the danger was over.* On calling the roll and examining the arms, twenty-one men were found to be missing, and thirteen muskets of those present were loaded. Of the absent men the majority had taken their arms with them. One recruit of only a few days' standing afterwards appeared and stated that he had absented himself through fear when he heard the assembly sound at such an unusual hour ; and six men had subsequently gone away. Frere and his companions had in the mean time arrived on the scene. Before the disarmed men were dismissed from parade, the General, with Frere and Goldsmid by his side, addressed them — Goldsmid interpreting, and Frere, in great measure, judging by internal evidence, prompting his speech — and told them that the disarming was a pre- caution caused by the misconduct of a few, and that when the bad men had been weeded out and brought to justice, he hoped to be able again to place in the regiment that confidence which was due to their former good conduct. The ladies and children and non-combatants had at the first alarm quietly assembled in the mess-house of the 2nd Europeans, which consisted of a large room and two or * In the Bombay army the men kept their muskets and a certain quantity of ammunition in their own possession. This made disarm- ing them more critical and difficult than in the Bengal army, where the arms were kept in small armouries on the parade-ground. 1857.] MUTINEERS TAKEN. 213 three small ones. There were upwards of seventy children. The heat was stifling. Some of the ladies were crying, some in hysterics, some, amongst whom was the General's daughter, doing all they could to help and encourage the rest. One lady, just arrived from Bengal, frightened the others by seating herself in the middle of the room with her two native servants, Oude men, with muskets and bayonets over their shoulders, who, as she was told, would probably join the mutineers if there were a rising. They were kept informed by messengers of what was passing, and when the disarming was over returned to their several homes. Frere visited the lines of the 14th Native Infantry, where he found all quiet, and by six o'clock, just after sunrise, had returned to Government House to the labours of the day. So quietly had the night's work been done that many in Kurrachee slept through it, and awoke in the morning unaware that anything unusual had occurred in the cantonment. It was not known in which direction the mutineers had fled. Orders were sent out to watch the ferries, and parties of mounted police were despatched two and two along every road, with instructions to put the country people on the alert, and, if they found any trace, to leave one man to follow it up, while the other went for as- sistance. Intelligence was soon brought of several of them having been seen. Nine of them, on their way to join the Jam of Beyla, were found at nightfall posted among some rocks on a hill. Watches were set during the night except on one road, by which, as was expected, they stole away. When day dawned their tracks were followed \ they were caught off their guard among some thick jungle and were all secured uninjured. Another party of eight was discovered in the western hills about 214 THE LIFE 0F SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VI. fifty miles from Kurrachee, and taking up a good position defended themselves with desperate courage for the greater part of the day, till they were all killed or overpowered. Before a week had passed after the outbreak, out of the thirty-one mutineers only four remained to be accounted for. Three had been killed and twenty-four captured. The country people seem to have aided the police, other- wise the captures could not have been made so quickly and so easily. Frere was especially careful that there should be no unseemly haste, no departure from the ordinary course of procedure in bringing the mutineers to justice. Before their trial had taken place he noticed a scaffold being made for their execution. He immediately sought an interview with the General, by whose orders it had been erected. " I think we have made a mistake there," he said, pointing to it, and characteristically softening the remonstrance by assuming a share in the blame ; " the mutineers have not been tried yet." The General did not see it in this light : the mutineers were caught red-handed ; they were sure to be found guilty, and why delay ? Frere gently persisted, and at last, gaining a half assent, promptly took his leave, and in a very short time the scaffold had disappeared, and was not re-erected till a verdict had been found and sentence pronounced in due form. " Up to this point," Frere writes to Lord Elphinstone, " the only thing of importance on which I found the General would not adopt my suggestion was in the con- stitution of the Courts. I earnestly pressed on him that he should leave the cases to be tried by native officers. I felt strongly assured that they would not, as a body, wish or dare to shrink from their duty. He had it always in his power to order a revision of any inadequate sentence, and the separation of classes and suspicion implied by 1857.] NATIVE COURTS-MARTIAL. 21 5 putting on European officers could not but have a bad effect. However, the officers about him were generally of an opposite opinion. After the first execution I urged the subject again on his attention, and he consented to try a Native Court. As I anticipated, they were even more prompt, and as severe as the European Court." And there was this great additional advantage in a Court of native officers, that the facts proved at the trial, instead of remaining a mystery, became known to the troops through their own officers, and in many ways the effects were most beneficial. The mutineers, with one or two exceptions, were executed, hanged, or blown from guns, in the evening after their trial. They confessed their guilt and made no attempt to brave it out. One of them called out to his comrades at the last moment, admitting the justice of his sentence. There being no cavalry at Kurrachee, and the mounted police being most of them detached in parties, pursuing the mutineers, Frere, as a temporary expedient, sanctioned the enrolment of a small force of mounted patrols, com- posed of any persons not employed in active military duty who might volunteer. At the same time he accepted an offer of Mr. Dalzell to guard the treasury with a body of Naval Voluntesrs. Some armed French seamen from two ships in the harbour also offered their services, but as no more volunteers were required they were declined with thanks. The oatrol was disbanded at the end of about a month. At Shikarpir, in Upper Sind, the condition of affairs was even more critical. It became known that the Oude men in the Nitive Artillery were disaffected. There was not a European soldier within two hundred miles. On the north was the Punjab, ripe for insurrection. Merewether guarded the rorth-west frontier with a single regiment of 2l6 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VI. the Sind Horse, which had to watch also the 6th Bengal Cavalry. Early in September the Mahomedan festival of the Mohurrum was at hand.* Three years before, Jacob had issued a Station Order prohibiting all Taboots, etc., as unmilitary, and for two years there were no Mohurrum drummings, Fukkeers,or Taboots allowed. Merewether saw some preparations making by the 6th Bengal Cavalry, and without inquiry or discussion simply called the Kotwal's attention to the order. Some men of the 6th went to an old Rissaldar of the Sind Horse and asked, "What kind of an order was this, prohibiting Mohurrum processions?" The Rissaldar replied, " It was the order, and in his opinion a very good one, but at any rate it was the order and must be obeyed." And it was obeyed without a murmur. As early as the month of June, Merewether obtained information that two petty Belooch chiefs, Dil Moorad and Durryah Khan, were intriguing with the troops with a view to an outbreak. Dil Moorad had fled from Sind in 1844, and joined the robbers in Cutchee. He was taken in 1845, and Sir C. Napier intended to have hanged him, but his life was spared. In 1847 he was, for a short time, in Government service, under Jacob, as a guide, with a few of his horsemen, but being found to be in correspondence with the enemy he was dismissed. He was notorious as an inveterate intriguer, prompting others to mischief while keeping himself in the background. This man and Durryah Khan were found to be holding consultations at the latter's residence, at Janadeyra, within the Sind frontier, at which it was proposed that they should by and stir up the other Belooch tribes to join against the Government. At this time, however, it happened that Dil Moorad was in arrears in his payment of Revenue, and not meeting the * Frere to Lawrence. 1857.] CONSPIRACY IN UPPER SIND. 217 demand made on him was arrested and placed under surveillance. This upset their plans for a time, but towards the end of August, Durryah Khan recommenced his intrigues, and went round among the different tribes to induce them to join with him. On his return he assembled his own immediate followers in the sand hills under the pretence of consulting about matters of cultiva- tion, to communicate what he considered the success of his tour, and to propose the immediate carrying out of his scheme, which was to go secretly to Jacobabad, or close to it, on the night before the 20th of September, and on the 2 1st to go to the Durbar and kill the Sahibs. He came accordingly to rjacobabad on the afternoon of the 20th, when, Merewether having through his native officers information of all this, he was apprehended and lodged in gaol ; Dil Moorad was placed in irons at the same time. That the attempts, if any were made, on the fidelity of the troops at Jacobabad had failed was evident from the fact of the unresisted arrest of the chief conspirator only a few hours before the time fixed on for the outbreak, in which he had told his partisans that the troops were ready to join. Probably, however, this was an invention of his to encourage the wavering. Such an occurrence in those times was an ordinary one enough thus far. What is remarkable about it is that for many days before the arrest, as many as five hundred persons, chiefly of the Sind Horse, were aware that some plot was suspected by their officers, having been specially ordered to be in readi- ness day and night for various services ; yet not one man of the whole number ever attempted to warn the con- spirators that their designs were known. These troops, be it remembered, were to a great extent composed of Mahomedans from the Delhi provinces and Hindostan — 2l8 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VI. the very people of whom it was confidently and almost universally asserted at that time, that they could not by any system of discipline be kept to their allegiance if exposed to temptation. The arrest of the two conspirators came just in time. On the evening of the following day intelligence was given by the police spies, of a meeting of a Subadar and a Havildar, and some men of the 16th Native Infantry and Native Artillery at Shikarpur, at which seditious language had been used. Three or four of them were arrested. Three days later, about midnight on the 24th, the town was awakened by the discharge of artillery. Some of the Golundaze (Native Artillery) had mutinied, had seized four guns, and were firing them loaded with grape among the barracks and gun sheds. It was a pitch-dark night, so dark that it was impossible to distinguish a waggon from a gun, or to get any clear idea of what was going on. The 16th Native Infantry, the remainder of the Native Artillery, and the police under Captain Montgomery, turned out and opened fire upon the mutineers ; but so impossible was it to see anything, that the firing actually went on at close quarters for two hours without any casualty on the side of the troops, though the gun-sheds were completely riddled ; and only three of the mutineers were killed or wounded. The troops and police at length made a rush and retook the guns. The mutineers escaped in the darkness. It appeared afterwards that the latter were only eleven in number. Their conduct is to be explained only on the supposition that they hoped in the noise and confusion to be joined by others, as they pro- bably would have been but for the arrests which had been made a few days before. The guns, they knew, would be heard at Jacobabad, twenty-five miles distant ; and had Durryah Khan's plot to murder the European officers 1857-1 MUTINY CRUSHED IN SIND. 219 succeeded they may have hoped that the men would join them. Frere writes to Sir J. Lawrence : — " October 17, 1857. "The Subadar of the 16th Native Infantry, who was evidently the ringleader, said, before he was executed, that if he had had two days' more time he would have made the world hear of his exploits ; and his accomplice the chief of the Jekranees spoke before his arrest of a great insurrection which had broken out at Lahore and Mooltan. They were arrested just before the news of the stoppage of the Mooltan Dak arrived, and the attempted mutiny of the Golundaze was timed so as to have come off just as the news would have arrived. " Few, if any, but Oude men have been implicated in any of our Sind mutinies, and many of the mutineers before they were executed said that none of the other castes or classes in their regiments were privy to their designs. . . ." Frere was jealous for the reputation of the Bombay native army. He refused to condemn a whole regiment because some of its men had misbehaved or mutinied. About a month after the Kurrachee alarm he writes to Lord Elphinstone : — "The trials of the mutineer Sepoys of the 21st Regiment at this place have been for some time over, and I have been hoping that something would be done to terminate the present anomalous position of the regiment ; but the General seems disinclined to do anything further without orders from head-quarters. When they may come and what may be their character it is impossible to say Meantime the disarmed Golundaze company from Hydera- bad will be here in a few days|and will be soon followed by one from Shikarpur. I need not give my reasons for thinking it most undesirable to keep soldiers in this con- dition disarmed, humiliated, idle, and uncertain what we mean to do with them, and will not therefore apologize for offering my views on the subject. " I find officers generally disappointed that they cannot 220 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VI. get to the bottom of the plot, and distrustful of their men because they cannot learn all about it. But I doubt whether, here at all events, there was any plot to fathom, or anything more than a knowledge of a tolerably prevalent discontent and suspicion among the Purdesees and con- sequent disaffection. Some of the more designing thought the whole body was more ripe for mischief than the event proved them to be, and got up a very commonplace scheme for mutiny, robbery, and murder, after which they would have been guided by circumstances. Had they succeeded at first, no doubt hundreds of waverers would have joined them. But a plot, such as Mazzini and his friends would call a plot, we have no evidence of, and I think it is waste of time to seek for one. " I by no means disbelieve that the discontent itself had a deeper origin and was fanned by abler agents — some certainly from Tehran, and perhaps from further north and west, — but I doubt if we have got any of the grand conspirators among us here, where the whole lot seem to me very commonplace traitors and ruffians. Even the Shikarpur Subadar was little better, though he had got a very respectable conspiracy with the chief of the border tribes, and their move was doubtless connected with the rising in the Punjab above Mooltan. " I mention all this because I fear that, in their hopes of fathoming some deep-laid scheme, of whose existence we have no present evidence, the Commander-in-Chief and his advisers will delay dealing with the clear facts of the case as they stand, and keep good soldiers watching disarmed men who, according to the treatment they get, may be made good or bad soldiers of, but who will not improve by being kept as they are." It turned out, unfortunately, that Frere was too sanguine about the state of the 21st. Ultimately it had to be disbanded, and the regiment ceased to exist. With regard to the disaffected 6th Bengal Irregulars, he writes, six months later — " March 25, 1858. " I believe General Jacob would not, and I am sure I would not, object for a moment to their being disbanded, 1857J DISARMED SEPOYS. 221 their arms and horses being taken at a valuation. In their present state I believe them to be very useless, and liable to become dangerous, but, unless to disband them at once, I think that their being disarmed and dismounted only- renders them more troublesome and more liable to be induced to misbehave. I am sure it is hardly possible to put men in a worse position than the idle, disarmed regiments, conscious that they deserve punishment, certain that we mean to punish them, and prepared in their suspense to believe the worst regarding our intentions. Then, all our friends and foes alike look on them as a very serious source of weakness and anxiety, and in truth they are so. " I would deal with them at once in one of two ways — i. " Either tell them that their services were no longer required, pay up, and discharge them, taking their horses and arms at a valuation, and giving each man sufficient to carry him home. There are many and obvious objections to this course now that they have been so long kept from any overt act of mutiny, and I should therefore prefer the second course, viz. 2. " Direct General Jacob to take them in hand to reorganize them entirely on the plan of his own Sind Horse. Give him entire power to remand the European officers to their regiments and to select others, and to dis- charge any number of the men and native officers he may think fit. The reformed regiment would cost, like the Sind Horse, rupees 29,600, in place of rupees 23,200, per mensem, but it would be much more than twice as efficient. " It would take a long time to explain the difference between the two systems, as it would in the case of comparison between the first Napoleon's Italian Legion and a brigade of King Bomba's ; but the difference is quite as great." The murders and other horrors of the Mutiny had so engrossed the attention of people in England, that they scarcely realized the extent of the less dramatic sufferings of the survivors who had in so many cases been suddenly reduced from affluence to destitution by the loss or de- struction of all they possessed. A relief fund was set on 222 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VI. foot in India, which Frere did his best to assist. He writes (July 25) to the Bishop of Bombay : — " As to the sort of cases which it was proposed to relieve, we believed that within the limits of the North- western Provinces, very few Christian families would be found who are not more or less in want of aid. A very large proportion have lost house and property, and possess nothing but the clothes on their backs. There are many widows and orphans, who by the death of husband or father have lost the means of livelihood. Planters and tradesmen have lost their estates and shops, and all out of Government employ are left for the time destitute. Even those in the Government service, though secure from star- vation, are in great distress. Treasuries have been plundered, and pay and remittances are now, and must continue for some time, not so regular as in ordinary times. Banks are closed and powerless to effect remittances while the country is disturbed, and families, separated from the husband or father who draws pay, are badly off for the money to meet daily expenses. " The distressed seem divisible into two classes — those whose wants are merely temporary, and those who are permanently destitute. " To many of the former loans will be very acceptable. Many hope to have the means of repaying, who for two or three months will be in great distress for ready money. . . . " But the number who will suffer from utter loss of all means of subsistence and cannot be expected to repay will be very large. . . . To ascertain the wants to be relieved and to decide how and what relief is to be given, are points which we must in the first instance leave to people on the spot. Committees seem to have been appointed at Lahore and all other stations where there are competent persons permanently resident, and our committee proposes to send them small sums to relieve the most urgent and pressing wants of the destitute by loan or gift, as they may think best. . . . " I meant also to ask you whether you do not think that some public religious service or notice of our present position is called for in addition to the Prayer in time of War and Tumult? If it had no other visible effect, I cannot but think that it might allay the panic so dis- i§57.] DISTRESS AMONG EUROPEANS. 223 graceful to us in every way which seems to prevail in every place." When Frere started on his cold weather tour late in the autumn of 1857, he left directions for Government House to be placed at the disposal of any European ladies or invalids who might be coming down from up the country and passing through Kurrachee. His carriages and horses, also, were left for their use. Many a feeble invalid and desolate widow homeward bound, often impoverished or ruined, was glad of such a resting-place, and his house was occupied all the time he was away. To be able to offer such hospitality was then, as always, especially congenial to him, and then, as always, it made heavy calls upon his purse. To him high office was never a source of wealth. WRESSEL LODGE, WIMBLEDON. CHAPTER VII. THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER. General exhaustion — Malcolm Green's campaign — Macauley's cam- paign — The Khan of Kelat — Quetta — Major H. Green's expedi- tion against the Murrees — Recovery of Major Clibborn's guns — Death of Jacob. When September was over, not only in Sind, but all over India, men began to breathe more freely. Delhi had at last fallen. The garrison at Lucknow, though not yet delivered, had been reinforced. The summer heat, which in the burning plains had been so terrible an addition to the toils and sufferings of the campaign, was now nearly over, and the approaching cool season would give the Europeans their opportunity. Troops were coming in fast from England, though not faster than they were needed, for there was much hard fighting to be done for many a month to come. The great strain, mental and bodily, which men had undergone had left them wearied and exhausted, if not demoralized, now that the extremity of danger and the consequent excitement were passing away ; and out of this exhaustion arose a disposition to shirk the trouble of administering strict, painstaking justice, and to lean sometimes to vindictiveness towards the natives, sometimes — though less often — to an indolently tolerant attitude towards flagrant evildoers. Frere writes to Lord Elphinstone — 1857.] GENERAL EXHAUSTION. 225 "August 29, 1857. " I see many symptoms that unless our European troops are kept together in large bodies, well officered, and under strict discipline, they will become disorderly rabble, to an extent seriously to impede the pacification of the country. " I fear and others, and many of our bravest officers, have much to answer for for their indiscriminate severity. If officers and gentlemen cannot control their feelings, we can hardly expect the common soldiers to curb theirs, and all discipline will become loose. I allude to the butchery in cold blood of captives, with little, if any, inquiry except as to their being Purbeas, and without an attempt to dis- criminate between men who have fled in vain terror with the herd, and the ringleaders and armed murderers." With equal emphasis he deprecated leniency to proved mutiny. After the outbreak at Shikarpur he wrote to the General, calling his attention to the serious consequences which might arise from a delay which had occurred in dealing with men of the 16th Native Infantry, who were imprisoned at Shikarpur and Larkhana on a charge of attempting to induce the police to mutiny. The charge against them, he pointed out, was a very serious one. They should be tried without delay, and, if acquitted, set at liberty ; if found guilty, punished. There had been a suggestion that they should be treated with leniency as a mark of approbation of the late good conduct of the regiment to which they belonged. But leniency, he insists, would in this case be quite misplaced. The good soldiers of their regiment would be glad to have unworthy members removed from their ranks, and would regard any indulgence shown to them as an insult to the corps. To Colonel Phayre he writes : — "November 12, 1857. "All is at present quiet in the Punjab, but the sort of exhaustion which has followed their immense efforts to feed the Delhi army with reliable soldiers, and to keep VOL. I. Q 226 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VII. down their own mutinous Hindostanees, may be guessed from the length of time it has taken to put down the petty rebellion in the Barre Doab, though the rebels be^an with- out arms, and every man who could be prudently spared from Mooltan and Lahore was sent. I have always thought we neglected the Punjab too much, and we may thank Sir John's iron rule that by God's blessing the province has been saved from greater disorders. "As for our Europeans in Upper Hindostan, the late army of Delhi, every letter which I see (and a good many are sent me, one way or another) speaks of its utter exhaustion and seriously demoralized condition. They have gone through as much as human flesh and blood will stand, and are only less worn out than the crowds of villains they have been beating every third day for months past. You must give them rest and fill their places with [fresh] troops, otherwise you will get a severe check when you least expect it, simply because they come across some fresh enemies who have not yet been thrashed and hold out a little better than usual." To Lord Elphinstone he writes, when on his tour up the country, from " camp near Larkhana : " — " November 23, 1857. " Matters seem quieting down in Kelat. The Jam * of Beila professes to be very penitent for his late misconduct. I have pointed out to his messengers that when the Khan pardons him I will listen to his excuses, and he declares himself [anxious] to do all in his power to make up matters with his sovereign. " Sir John Lawrence told me what he had written to you on the subject of assembling a force in Sind. I fear he is not quite free from the general Bengal dislike to owe anything to the Bombay army. It is to me as clear as the day that fresh European troops lose half their value unless you have regular native troops to brigade with them, and that you may with perfect safety send a force of which two-thirds are Bombay native troops anywhere, if you do not send them under Bengal officers or politicals, but that they should be only sent by whole brigades. * A Chief of consideration in Beloochistan, on the Persian border. I857-] A LULL IN THE STORM. 227 One such brigade, two of our Sind Native Infantry regiments, with about five hundred European Infantry and a troop of Horse Artillery, would, it seems to me, have been invaluable in either the Punjab or Rajpootana. But I suppose he knows his wants best. " I think our coming out here has done much good. The people seem everywhere very sincerely glad to see us. But there is no doubt late events in Hindostan have made what the French call a ' profound impression,' even at this distance, and things constantly occur which make me think that one of Lord Ellenborough's proclamations declaring the direct sovereignty of Queen Victoria as Empress of Hindostan would be by no means an empty or useless ceremony." And again — " Camp Nowshera, in Upper Sind, February 22, 1858. " The ' lull ' to which I alluded is the present pause in the storm which has swept over all Upper India, and which does not yet seem to me spent. . . . " My mistrust is not by any means confined to this frontier. In Hindostan the mutineers are defeated and for the time being effectually cowed, and the Governor- General may have a plan for its future government with something less expensive than Sir Colin's army of Europeans as a police-force ; but we have seen and heard nothing of it ; and knowing what a ferocious wild beast can be made out of a native, when fairly worried and alarmed, I would gladly see an end of the dragooning system there, before we have troubles elsewhere. "It is, however, in the Punjab that there seems to me least security for permanent quiet. I never thought the 'loyalty' of the Seikhs was much more than thirst for fighting and plunder, and for revenge against the Hindo- stanees. The misunderstanding about the Delhi prize- money was very unfortunate, but the worst feature, to my mind, is the apparent determination of all the Bengal officers who are admirers of the Seikhs, to repeat in their treatment of them exactly the same errors which ruined their old army — to fancy everything depends on the raw material, and to undervalue the effect of the Englishman's brains and workmanship. . . . 228 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VII. " It is not any reverse I dread, but a constant succession of expensive petty wars, which will keep up irritation, injure our character for irresistible power, and increase debt, and make it most difficult to concentrate thirty thousand Europeans on the Indus, where they may any day be wanted. " Then there are many chances in Europe which may any day turn out against us. " The Emperor Napoleon's death or a dozen other things might give us a Provisional Government in France, wicked enough to pick a quarrel with us just to employ their army and keep themselves in power. This would seriously interfere with our recruiting troops overland, etc. So might a threat, even, of a breach with the Americans. And how should we feel if we were quite certain, as we might be made any day to feel, that it would be next to impossible to send us out ten thousand additional Europeans in less than six months ? " But it seems to me to this we are tending — to a state which will make the security of India always depend on the ability of the Horse Guards to send us more European troops. . . . " But I have got far from this frontier. There are more than the usual chances of disturbance across the border, and our force in Sind, exclusive of troops passing through, has never been so small. When I proposed to reduce it so low, it was in the confident belief that the ist Regiment of Sind Horse would have been back ere this, and that within a month after their return there would have been to all appearance three regiments of Sind Horse on the frontier. I also hoped that if the Government of India did not allow Jacob to raise two regiments of Sillidar Infantry they would long ago have intimated their refusal, so that we might have asked for Native Infantry from other quarters. I need hardly tell your lordship that from April to October Europeans are, for real work in the field in Upper Sind, nearly useless. It is as much as we can hope to do to keep them alive and efficient in barracks ; nor are Regular Native troops much better, unless very expensive field establishments are always kept up. I feel confident, therefore, that for efficiency and economy combined nothing could be better than General Jacob's plan. I never knew him fail in anything of the kind, and 1S57.] NEED FOR NATIVE TROOPS. 229 if he succeeds he will show the way to a large saving in some very expensive departments. " As for the arms of such Sillidar Infantry — if the orders of the Home Government are very imperative — the men might be armed with ordinary fusees, pending a reference to England ; but it seems to me that the arguments against giving them rifles are equally valid against [giving them] anything but staves and stones. "But the proposed Frontier Force is to hold a post quite different from any police or local corps intended to preserve the peace of the interior. They are to be on the frontier at a place and at a season where Europeans cannot be permanently posted, and they may have to meet well-armed men. Some months ago I sent you Major Lumsden's account of Goolam Hyder's Candahar Rifles, who were, in Major L.'s opinion, quite equal in armament, skill, and drill to any corps in our service. Against such men our troops must be armed with something better than an old-pattern musket. "Moreover, our great Indian difficulty is financial ; and if by giving a man a good rifle you can make him equal to two men with bad muskets, it is clearly the more economical course to give him the rifle. Arm him as you will, he can never be a match for a European similarly armed and trained, so that there need be no fear of our creating a native army which we cannot keep in order, unless we repeat our late errors. " But if a Frontier Field Force is quite out of the question, we must have something in its place, and even three regiments of Native Infantry will hardly be a fair equivalent. "At present everything here depends on personal in- fluence, and though I would rely much on such power as Jacob, Green, and Merewether have over the people up here, I do not like to see everything depend on the heads of three or four men longer than is necessary. " This letter has run to such a length that I will only say once more that I trust your lordship will order back the 1st Regiment of Sind Horse, and if possible get us permission to raise two regiments of Sillidar Infantry, and that, if not, other provision may be made to secure the peace of the frontier, for which Sir Charles Napier used to require fourteen thousand men ; for he always maintained 230 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VII. that his army was for the frontier defence and not for Sind. "Ina letter I have just received from Captain Malcolm Green, after alluding to the difficulty of getting good recruits, he says : ' There is no doubt service under the British Government is now at a discount, and a very long time will elapse before the feeling of confidence is restored. Every native of India seems now to feel that if aid had not arrived from England we should have been driven out of the country. In fact, till the Queen is proclaimed Sovereign of India there will be no peace. At present every one appears to be doubtful as to who has a right to call himself the real possessor of the throne of India, and unless this state of things is altered there will soon be another row.' " This is from Rajpootana ; and from the other side his brother Major H. Green describes just the same feeling of uncertainty and insecurity at Kelat. It is this feeling which leads natives to all sorts of foolish and abortive attempts at insurrection, long after the time when they might have been successful has passed. It is not that they are disloyal, but that, for lack of accurate information on matters which they never care about except in times of excitement, they fancy the Government is breaking up, and that it is every one for himself. It was so to a great extent in the Deccan during the Affghan War. There were numerous abortive risings, though there was very little real disloyalty. Just as in France, if you could make the public functionaries believe that there had been a successful Revolution, you might get them to swear fidelity to Henry V., or a Red Republic, or anything else, though well content if left alone to draw their salaries under Louis Napoleon." On this point it will be remembered that though the Queen's sovereignty over the territory of the East India Company was proclaimed in 1858, the title of Empress of India, which was needed to satisfy the requirements above described, was not assumed till more than eighteen years afterwards. Even then so little was the matter understood in England, that when the proposal was made 1857J CAMPAIGN OF SIND HORSE. 231 it was received there, even by those who should have known better, with astonishment or with derision, as though it were a piece of meaningless vanity and ostentation. The regiment of Sind Horse which had been on its return from Persia sent on to Bombay, was despatched thence to the southern Mahratta country. In November the detachments were collected at Poona and were ordered to march to Upper Sind, under the command of Major Malcolm Green. Lord Elphinstone sent for Malcolm Green and told him that the route he was to take would be left entirely to his own discretion ; and that as some of the Native States through which the regiment would have to pass were understood to be in a disturbed condition, he was to do as much good as he could on the road. They marched, accordingly, after being inspected by Sir Hugh Rose, then in command of the Central Indian Field Force, who expressed his great satisfaction at their efficiency. On January 9, 1858, Malcolm Green received a despatch from Sir George Lawrence, asking him to co-operate with the Nusserabad Field Force, which he joined accordingly on the 19th, and remained with it during the siege and capture of Ahwah. On February 3 the regiment resumed its march, but on the nth, meeting with Major-General Roberts's Rajpootana Field Force, a detachment of two hundred sabres was at his request left to aid him in the operations which led to the capture of Kotah and the pursuit of the rebels, the rest of the regiment going on by way of the Jodhpur and Jeysulmeer deserts to Jacobabad. This detachment re- sumed its march on April 16, reached the Sutlej a few miles below Ferozepur, and marching down the left bank of that river to Roree on the Indus, joined head-quarters at Jacobabad on July 6, thus completing a march, including 232 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VII. the distance passed over in the pursuit of the enemy, of two thousand four hundred miles since it left Poona, and being in as good fighting condition as when it started. In many of the notoriously disaffected towns and districts through which they passed were the birthplaces of the troopers and the homes of their relatives ; yet so sure was Malcolm Green of their fidelity, that he con- stantly gave them leave of absence to revisit their old friends and old haunts, and not one ever failed to report himself at the expiration of his leave. The men's letters, instead of being opened and read, as was the general practice with native regiments during the Mutiny, were delivered to them unopened, and frequently the men would hand over to an officer letters inciting them to mutiny, and they would be read aloud in derision in the orderly room by his order.* The squadron of Sind Horse were not the only Sind soldiers who served with the Rajpootana Field Force. Early in February, 1858, Frere had received a request * Jacob's horsemen were at this time armed with double-barrelled carbines in place of the single-barrelled ones which they had had before. The substitution did not take place all at once, but had been carried out gradually, the men having to purchase the new arm, and being permitted to sell the old one. Unfortunately when the old single-barrelled carbines were disposed of the regimental stamp on them was not, as it should have been, erased. Hence when some mutineers were taken with carbines with the Sind Horse stamp upon them in their hands, they were erroneously supposed to be Sind horsemen, or else to have been surreptitiously supplied with arms by men of that corps. Fortunately Jacob was able to prove con- clusively that not a single trooper in his corps was absent or un- accounted for at the time. If any additional security had been wanting for the fidelity of the Sind Horse, it might have been found in the fact that whereas most of the Bengal Irregular Regiments were in debt to their bankers, the Sind Horse, under Jacob's careful manage- ment, had a sum of no less than thirty thousand pounds, the property of the men, to their credit at the bank. Had a man mutinied or deserted he would have, of course, forfeited his deposit. i»57] MACAULEY'S BELOOCH HORSE. 233 from Sir George Lawrence to send him some cavalry. It was impossible at that time to spare the one regiment from the frontier, but, instead, Frere and Jacob arranged to raise and despatch a body of Border Belooch Horse. Lieutenant (now Colonel) Macauley was entrusted with the task. Taking as a nucleus a Russuldar, four Jema- dars, and a hundred and twenty-five Sowars of the guides attached to the Sind Horse, he quickly obtained recruits. On February 12 this hastily assembled force of wild borderers made their first day's march of twenty-six miles to Shikarpur, and the next day went on twenty- four miles to Sukkur, and crossed the Indus to Roree, where their numbers increased to five hundred and five, of all ranks. After halting a week to collect supplies, Macauley led them across the desert and reached Nusse- rabad, four hundred and eighty miles distant, in twenty- six days. They took part in the campaign under General Roberts, and during the siege of Kotah were employed in picket, patrol, and other duties. No matter what work was allotted to them, it was, after their own fashion, per- formed steadily and well. All through the intense heat of June, and through, what tried the Belooch more, the monsoon rains, of which they had had no experience in their own country, the pursuit of the rebels was carried on. Macauley was invested with supreme powers over his men — powers rarely granted, — and the very ex- istence and coherence of the force depended on his single personal control and authority. Had anything happened to him, " it is impossible to guess," he says, " what mischief some of these wild Borderers would have perpetrated ; none but those who have been in my position can under- stand what it is to work five hundred such wild creatures. I was out the greater part of every day and often all night throughout the hot season and monsoon, and had to 234 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VII. visit all my pickets twice during the night ; I may say I lived in my saddle." When the rebels evacuated Rajpootana there was no more fighting to be done, and Macauley, not caring to trust his wild men on detached duty in time of peace, returned to Jacobabad in September and disbanded them. They had been absent eight months and fourteen days, in the course of which time they had marched two thousand five hundred and twenty-three miles. Few statesmen, probably, even in India, at this time realized how important an element in the struggle was the attitude of the frontier tribes of Affghanistan and Beloochistan, and how much depended on whether they were friendly or hostile. The Affghans were eager to pour their soldiers into the Punjab and join the insurgents. Nothing but the strong hand, determined will, and un- shaken fidelity of Dost Mahomed restrained them ; and false reports of his death were constantly in circulation. Persia had long been hostile. She had been put forward as a catspaw by Russia from time to time, and both Russia and Persia were smarting under recent defeat. A Persian proclamation inciting to insurrection had been found at Delhi just before the outbreak ; and though the great majority of the Mahomedans in India are Sunnis, who look to the Sultan of Turkey as their spiritual head, and regard the Shah as a schismatic, the insurgents were dis- posed, for the time being, to sink their religious animosities and to unite against the English power under the banner of the Shah. Persian emissaries were busy in Beloochistan. In July, 1857, the Khan of Kelat, who under Jacob's and Frere's influence had developed into a just and competent ruler, friendly to the British, had died suddenly. The death of his old minister, Moolla Ahmed, followed soon after. It 1857.] THE KHAN OF KELAT. 235. seemed as if the fruit of five years' labour and pains had vanished just at the critical time, for he was succeeded by a youth of indifferent character and little ability, a prey to the influence of any one who could get his ear for the moment. Macauley went immediately with- out any escort to Kelat for a few days, which was as long as he could then be spared. On his return from Persia, Major H. Green went there as Resident, with a few Sind Horse troopers for his escort, to try and keep the new Khan straight, and baffle the influence of Persian and rebel emissaries ; and there he remained month after month, going about unarmed and alone, and carrying, as he well knew, his life in his hand from day to day. The Khan was in the hands of one Gungaram, a crafty old Hindoo, who was afterwards discovered to be impli- cated in a plot to depose him and put the Jam of Beila in his place. Gungaram was so obnoxious to the Belooch chiefs that an outbreak seemed to be imminent. Frere writes to Lord Elphinstone : — " December 16, 1857. " At his first interview with Green the Khan was ill at ease. Every prominence was given to the obnoxious Minister, and he . . . seemed at first inclined to keep the chiefs away from any personal or unreserved intercourse with Major Green, and to place him in much the same position as the Candahar Mission, isolated from the people and the Sirdars, and in communication with no one but the Ruler. But Green gave them all to understand that that was not at all the style in which he meant to live, and the attempt was abandoned. The effects seem to have been good as regards all parties. The Khan has taken a great fancy to the new envoy, and seems inclined to look to him as his best friend and adviser. The chiefs have frankly stated their wishes, which are reasonable and proper, and compliance with which will strengthen the Khan's position, and make him happier as well as more safe. They have named several old and influential Sirdars, who have the 236 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VII. confidence of all parties, and who they think would make good advisers of the young Khan, and Green seems to think the Khan will be glad to comply, that Gungaram, finding we will not support him in his rapacious and unpopular proceedings, will return to his former post, as Naib of a district and to the charge of his accounts, and that everything else will be settled to the satisfaction of all parties." Three months later Frere gives the following summary of Major Green's work : — "March 13, 1858. " He has carried out the expulsion of Gungaram, the Hindoo Wuzzeer, a man hostile to and disliked by the chiefs, and who, had he remained, would have produced either a civil war or a rupture with us — probably both. . . . " He has managed to unite all the chiefs near Kelat with the Khan, and to get the young man well married to the daughter of one of the most influential and respectable of them, and by paying the annual subsidy two months before it was due, he has avoided a financial difficulty. " In short, without using force or even threats, he has laid the foundation of a respectable and stable govern- ment, which, if he gets time to consolidate, will not only reduce all Beloochistan to its former quiet and good order, but form a most useful barrier to Persian or Affghan in- trigue and encroachment, and a most valuable outpost should we be threatened in that quarter." The following somewhat fragmentary extracts are given here as showing Frere's opinion as to the vital importance of establishing friendly relations and keeping a sharp look-out in the direction of Affghanistan and Persia, and of the great value of Ouetta as an outpost to that end. He writes to Lord Elphinstone : — " March 25, 1858. " With regard to the plan of occupying Ouetta, I believe it originated with Ferrier, the French traveller, but I have not his book at hand to refer to. Now that Green has re- covered our hold over the Khan, perhaps the best thing we 1858.] QUETTA. 237 can do is to leave him and General Jacob alone, merely putting it into their power to secure Quetta, should it be threatened by any external foe. This they can easily do if General Jacob has such a force at his disposal as shall enable him always to support Major Green in case of need. As long as he is on good terms with the Khan and his chiefs he has the resources of the country, such as they are, at his disposal. But I feel convinced it will be a fatal day for us, if either the place passes into other hands, or we cease to be paramount at Kelat. In either case you will need a very large force in Upper Sind, and all will be even then insecure. " The value of Quetta is probably quite as well known at Paris and St. Petersburg as here ; and the Brahoees and Affghans are always discussing it. My immediate appre- hension is, not that we may see a Russian General above the Bolan, but simply that if we go to sleep and neglect to secure Quetta, we may any day — when Dost Mahomed dies, or the next triennial Affghan revolution comes round — hear that Quetta has been seized by some adventurer, who may or may not be a friend of ours, but who will certainly make the best, for his own profit, of his prize. " We must either interfere in force, or keep up such a force in the vile climate of Upper Sind, as shall avert all risks of our new neighbour plundering Cutchee and menacing Shikarpur and the Indus. "This is no chimera. I sent to Government last summer a letter from Azad Khan to his old guest, the Khan's stepmother, urging her to induce the Kelat Sirdars, over whom she has great influence, to break with the English, and offering his own services in any national move of the kind. These people do not lightly or thoughtlessly make or receive such offers. It might be any day renewed, and a trifle might lead to its acceptance. In which case, unless you advanced to shut the door and secure the key, you would not be secure with even a strong brigade in Upper Sind." Two days later he writes to Jacob : — " I have heard from Lord Elphinstone. He is, I think, becoming a convert to the necessity of occupying Quetta, but he still seems to consider our hands are too full for it just now. This seems to me as though a man, with a deep 238 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VII. and rapid river in his front, were to abstain from seizing the only bridge across it till the enemy on the other side ceased to threaten him. However, I hope he will see the thing ere long as of something more than possible im- portance." And to Sir George Clerk : — "April 3, 1858. " To-day I got an answer to Major Merewether's report for 1856 for frontier affairs, which was sent last February twelvemonth to Calcutta. During the heat of the Persian war Merewether had pressed the occupation of Quetta, and they now say they have had so much to do in India that they do not consider it expedient 'to pass a judgment on the isolated question of the formation of a cantonment at Quetta.' " To Lord Elphinstone he writes : — "March 30, 1858. " You will probably have heard direct that the Herat mission left, on its return to Tehran, on the 1st inst. Major Lumsden infers from this that his mission will also be allowed to return to India. If so, I trust your lordship will urge on the Governor-General the necessity of keeping Major Green at Kelat, and allowing him to communicate freely with whoever may be Sirdar at Candahar. " I do not know what results have been secured in return for our subsidy to Dost Mahomed, but I am very sure we shall soon rue the day when we leave ourselves without eyes or ears to learn what goes on above the passes. You could not have a better man than Major Green, for he is very averse to meddle, and will not overdo the thing. . . . " Two months more will probably find many of the more active and enterprising of the rebels and mutineers seeking an asylum in Affghanistan, where as drill-masters they will be welcome guests of every petty chief who hopes to do something for himself in the coming scramble, which all foresee will follow Dost Mahomed's death. Even the Hindoos, if sepoys, will be welcomed. It is only the Afreedis who forcibly convert their Hindoo guests. These men will go burning with vengeance, and not ill-informed as to our weak points and as to the best means of doing 1858.] THE FRONTIER. 239 us mischief, and even the most abortive invasion or rising will be a serious nuisance, if it happens when your fresh English troops have been harassed by a campaign pro- tracted into the hot weather, and are beginning to sicken of dysentery and other reactionary diseases in the hastily constructed barracks on the hot plains of Hindostan. " I do earnestly trust, therefore, that you will give General Jacob carte blanclie to do his best on his burning frontier, where there can be no doubt that your permanent garrison must be native, and must be as efficient as you can make it. It is not a place where Eurasian volunteers, or English troops, or Goorkhas, or any of the proposed alternatives for our Native army can live, or by any possi- bility be tried, and therefore I trust there will be no delay while such nostrums are being discussed." To Major Merewether, then on leave in England, Frere writes : — "October 1, 1858. " The Punjab is uneasy. The system of physical force, repression, and bribery of the Sikhs cannot last for ever, and Sir J. Lawrence's successor will find himself on no bed of roses. Here we are doing what we can with small thanks and little aid from any one at Bombay or Lahore to improve communication with Mooltan, the real key of the Punjab. Jacob is forming what will be a very powerful force in front of the Bolan, and I have enough to do to keep the peace between him and the solemn gentlemen on high chairs at desks in various departments. But he will be the bulwark of this frontier if time and life be granted him." Instructions from Government put an end for the present to any project for occupying Ouetta. Upon the question of English and Russian influence in Affghanistan, he writes to Sir George Clerk : — "April 17, 1S59. " I did not meet a Candahar horse-dealer or Shikarpur merchant who did not at once broach the subject of the Russian Mission, which had evidently created a great stir in Affghanistan. What is most wanted up there seems to 240 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Cn. VII. me to be that we should lay clown to ourselves and tell our agents on the frontier and elsewhere what our policy, if we have one, is to be. It may be very convenient to say we will be guided by circumstances ; but that is not the sort of policy that wins friends and deters enemies ; we cannot pretend that it will be a matter of indifference to us what happens when Dost Mahomed dies — whether the best Affghan takes the reins, or a puppet in Russian, French, or Persian leading-strings. As a matter of fact Affghan politics cannot be matter of indifference to us, and I cannot see why we should not honestly say so, to both Affghans and Russians — tell them we do not want to interfere more than we can help, but that we mean to see and hear all we can, and not to allow other people to meddle more than we do ourselves ; and deal openly with the Russians, giving them credit for being actuated by no worse motives than we are ourselves, viz. a natural interest in the affairs of such near neighbours." And to Major H. Green he writes : — "April 23, 1859. " My policy would be to tell the people ' we mean to see and hear all that goes on, and to leave you as much freedom to manage your own affairs as possible, but not to allow other Foreign Powers to meddle more than we do ourselves. The Russians are as much concerned in these matters as we, are, and we shall always be willing to discuss them with accredited Russian agents ; but the Russians must disavow all secret and irresponsible agents. We shall not interfere with the people of Afghanistan in their choice of a Ruler ; we shall deal with him, when chosen, as we find him — and not pass over any slight or want of attention to our interest and wishes.' I cannot see why we should deal with them on any other terms." More than a year after he had left Sind, Frere writes to Lord Canning : — " December 1, i860. " I do not look on the Russian advance into Central Asia as any evil, and I know a time must come when the limit of our legitimate influence will touch the limits of «S5S.] BOOGTEE RAID. 24 1 theirs. This maybe done in peace, and I think the sooner the better. But I should like it to be, if possible, far from our own frontier, and that we should meantime, by ex- tending our common and honourable influence, unite our neighbours as closely as possible to us in interest and feeling. This is one of my great reasons for wishing to make the most of facilities for commerce in Kurrachee and the Indus, and for highly valuing such work as Major Green's, taking every care that he does not commit us to any advance in force." But to return to the autumn of 1858. On September 28, Frere was writing to Lord Elphinstone : — " I have just received from General Jacob an account of a raid by the Boogtees into the Murree country, which shows what these men are up to if they did not know that it was unsafe to meddle with us. While the Murrees were occupied by a threat of attack from the Khetranees, Islam Khan and Moorteza Khan, the two principal chiefs, with the elite of the Boogtees, made a descent on Mundahee, a place seventy or eighty miles north-west of Kahun, where, as being remote from danger, the Murrees had collected their cattle. The Murrees were quite surprised, fifty or sixty were slain, and the Boogtees,* with the loss of only five wounded, ' lifted ' a greater booty than had ever been taken in the hills before. A patrol of the Sind Horse met them at Shapoor and counted eight thousand sheep, eight hundred cows and oxen, four hundred she camels, thirty horses and mares, and eighty asses. In forwarding Jacob's account, Frere writes : — " October 15, 1858. " It is obvious that the old Border spirit has by no means died out. In daring, skilful arrangement and enter- prise the foray described is quite equal to any of those, the memory of which survives among the legends of the frontier tribes, or of which we occasionally hear on other portions of the border. " It is well to bear this in mind, because, since the * The Boogtees, it will be remembered, were the tribe so severely defeated by Major Merewether in 1847. VOL. I. R 242 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Cn. VII. arrangements on this frontier were first left in General Jacob's hands, the success of his measures has been so- complete that it is frequently ascribed to some difference in the character of the tribes with which he has to deal ; and because, since 1847, there has been no single instance of a really successful raid, great or small, within the line of General Jacob's frontier outposts, it is difficult to persuade persons at a distance that the tribes on this part of the border are still really as formidable as they were before that period, or as any of their fellow tribes on any part of the north-western frontier of India. But no one can have any doubt upon this point who considers what the same energy and skill which directed the present enterprise might have effected if, instead of wresting such a booty from the rocky fastnesses of the Murree Hills, the Boogtees had ventured to sweep the flat plains and open defenceless towns of Sind. " Secondly, it is well to consider what a commentary a successful enterprise like this furnishes on the opinion of those who deem that no serious danger can be apprehended from our neighbours beyond this frontier. " We ought never to forget that the real weakness of these tribes consists in their want of union and combination, and that one combining and directing mind, who could give them a common object and induce them to unite till it was attained, might render them very formid- able." . . . The Murrees were the most insubordinate and amongst the most powerful of the tribes owing nominal allegiance to the Khan of Kelat. Robbers by profession and almost by necessity — for their country did not grow sufficient corn for their sustenance, and when their stores of food were exhausted, a plundering raid was the only available means of replenishing them — they used to boast that of all the clans with which the English had come in contact during the occupation of Affghanistan, they alone had never submitted or been fairly defeated. Thrice in the year 1840 they destroyed, almost to a man, detach- ments of British troops, one of which, under Major '858.] THE MURREES. 243 Clibborn, lost three guns, which had never been re- covered — to Jacob, as an old artilleryman, a sore subject. Sir Charles Napier, in his Hill Campaign, did not penetrate into their fastnesses ; and they were constantly extending the range of their plundering parties, till Jacob took command of the Sind frontier in 1847, and put an effectual stop to their depredations in that direction. Henceforth, therefore, on the western side they confined themselves to periodical plundering in the Khan's territory of Cutchee and the Bolan Pass, which they rendered at times impassable to any but large Kaffilas ; and thither Jacob could not follow them, for he was prevented by strict orders from doing more than was necessary to protect the frontier. On their eastern boundary was the Punjab, and on this side their raids were more frequent and formidable. Frere and Jacob, as has been already mentioned, protested against the Punjab authorities making retaliatory expeditions against the tribes owing allegiance to the Khan of Kelat, instead of seeking redress from him as their suzerain ; and the Punjab authorities consequently asked that if they were not to be allowed to protect them- selves from the Murrees after their own fashion, the Sind authorities should take the necessary measures after theirs. The legitimate way of bringing them to order was by the authority and armed interposition of the Khan him- self. Jacob and Major Green had often talked over and planned out such an expedition, and Major Green, now political agent with the Khan, was making preparations for carrying it out. The relation of the Belooch and Brahoe chiefs to the Khan of Kelat resembled that of the German barons of the Middle Ages to the Emperor. Each tribe held its territory on condition of furnishing the Khan with a quota of armed men in war time, to be commanded and 244 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VII. fed by him. Their allegiance was at best little more than nominal, and their power of cohesion was further weakened by the reigning Khan having secretly sown discord among them with the object of strengthening his power. Amongst the most important of the chiefs whom Major Green was endeavouring to bring to join the Khan's force was the Jam of Beila. His territory was on the borders of Persia, with which Power he was known to have been, during the Mutiny, constantly intriguing against his suzerain the Khan and against the English. In respect of this chief, Frere writes encouragingly, but inculcating caution to Major Green : — "October 16, 1858. " I sent on your letter to the Jam, with one from myself, of which a copy will reach you through the General, and I trust they will have the effect of making him join you at Koydar, or wherever you may be when he gets your letter, and placing himself entirely in your hands. It will be the best thing he can do, and I think if he can screw up his courage to meet you, you will soon get over him the same influence you have acquired over the other chiefs. " I never believed him to be an injured innocent, nor do I think he laid much claim to that character. He was, I suppose, like all the rest of the chiefs, on the look-out for something to his own advantage, and if he had been forced into the Musnud, killing a few scores in hot or cold blood as the case might be, I do not suppose he or any of the others would have declined the honour from con- scientious scruples. " But one must not expect too much from these men. Loyalty, in otir sense of the word, is hardly to be expected among them any more than among the Scotch or English nobles of the early feudal times, and for the same reason, viz. that every man has some sort of connection by blood or marriage with the reigning house, and can get up some sort of claim to reign himself, if he is strong enough. Soldiers, not lawyers, elect and support the sovereign, and a stout arm and wise head are better charters than a 1858.] THE JAM OF BEILA. 245 pedigree proving you the rightful heir. Fidelity to certain persons and families all these people have who are accustomed to consider themselves as vassals and servants ; but that can hardly be felt towards the present Khan whose escutcheon is not quite without blot, nor does he command personal respect or regard. You, and you alone, have saved him ; and in saving him, have saved the peace of all that country, and of much of our own too. But do not expect too much from these people, nor set them down as villains because they waver in their allegiance to their Khan or to us, when they think us going down hill. Success is one of their tests of right, and as long as we are visibly able to command them, they will obey us, and no longer. It is because they feel that the moral power of you and your small escort is greater than that of a host of plunderers and murderers that they obey you so willingly. But take care you do not overstrain your power by exact- ing too much. "This Jam has been a good neighbour to us down here, and whatever schemes of ambition he may have entertained to the prejudice of a Power of which his father never heard probably, he has always acted as we have a right to expect : catches and gives up fugitives and thieves, and prevents his own people from molesting ours. We must deal with him according to his acts, not according to any foolish dreams which may have entered his head. . . . " If the Khan wishes to distinguish himself by reducing to order a refractory vassal, let him try his hand on Osmeid Alia Choota, who is nearer to him and as bad a neighbour to us as the Jam is a good one — always evad- ing help to our police, and harbouring criminals. I do not want him to carry fire and sword into Osmeid Alla's villages. He and his people are not worse than the Elliotts, Armstrongs, Maxwells, and Johnstones of a hundred and fifty years ago ; and in less than that time, if we go on patiently, as Jacob and you have been doing hitherto, we shall make the Chootas, please God, into respectable people, like the Elliotts & Co. of these days (Porter Brewers, perhaps, to H.M.'s Forces in Sind) ; but we must not drive them too fast. . . . "We must remember that the act transferring India to the direct government of the Crown has materially changed our powers. Before, we could, if we saw good 246 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VII. cause, have marched our army to Candahar or Herat, and trusted to the Court approving. Now any employment of our Indian army beyond our own frontier (except to repel invasion) without the sanction of Parliament is strictly forbidden. No doubt it will be done some day, but the attempt, without the strongest reasons, will be checked, and if we bring on ourselves any check of the kind, it may extend to the growth of the bulwark which Jacob is slowly but surely building against external aggression, and which, as the only defence of the kind we have, I would not willingly see interrupted. " I am afraid you will never read all this yarn unless I get a certificate from some credible person that it is good for you ; so I shall send it to Jacob and ask him to read it, and, if approved, to add such a certificate as Professor Hollo way gets." So he writes to Jacob as follows : — "October 22, 1858. " What will you think of me ? Not give me quite up, I hope. The enclosed is a letter to Green in answer to one of his about the Jam. Please read and, if you approve, say a word in support. I am a little afraid that Green, in his honest zeal for a united and powerful Khanate, will go on too fast, and try forcibly to convert the somewhat vague and nominal allegiance of the Jam into the position of vassal, bound to ' come when he is called and do what he is bid ; ' in fact, that he will try to do what MacNaughten wanted done twenty years ago. " I hope the Jam will go to him, for I am sure if Green were a week with even Azaard Khan himself, the chief would be his humble servant ; but till they know and feel by personal observation the power of his honest, right- minded character, it is useless to drive them The Khan they can never respect, but as Green consolidates some- thing like a powerful Government at Kelat, they will respect and lean to him, as the chiefs now with him do. But it seems to me a mistake to suppose that these men are specifically different from the rest. Of course there is great difference of individual character, but the main difference of all seems to me to be that the one set see and know Green personally and the others do not." 1858.] MAJOR GREEN AT KELAT. 247 Major Green's answer is not extant, and its purport can only be gathered from Frere's reply to it : — "November 20, 1858. " I hope you are better for the broadside you fired into me in yours of the 4th, just received, for I assure you it nearly took away my breath. However, as Jacob says, pitch into me, if it does you good, for I know it is all meant for the good of the nation. But do not suppose I ever imagined you were going about the country a la political. I know you could not do it, if you tried, and if any one tried to make you do it, you would, I know, either die under the operation or slay the operator outright. "Just read my letter again, if you have got it, and you will see that what I said — certainly what I meant to say — was that any attempt to force all these chiefs to obey the Khan as they would have obeyed his brother Nusseer Khan or their father, would end in the policy which you and I equally abhor and detest. "All that a just and manly course of action can do to create a firm and united Government in Beloochistan, you have done and are doing. . . . " Do not for a moment suppose that I do not feel as much as you or any other man living, the evil of shut- ting our eyes to the only true policy and adopting the timid course, which, as you justly say, is in the end the most aggressive. Publicly and privately I have used what weight my opinion has, to support the views you and Jacob have propounded, confident that they are not only just and right in themselves, but the only way to avoid being driven forward against our will and our interest. " But we are in a minority of half a dozen against the world. It is useless fretting. The only thing is to wait patiently and prepare, as well as we can, for the storm which will come, and which will, for the first time, satisfy the world that the half dozen though in the minority were not knaves or fools, nor any way in error as to what must happen. " The only fault I have ever found with you is that you do not seem satisfied with your own work ; that you seem impatient and anxious to be doing more, when I see you have done and are doing more than I believed possible, and that you are rapidly working a great revolution, and 248 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VIL converting one of our posts of danger into an outwork of commanding strength. " If I gave you any other impression than this you must forgive me, for, believe me, that was what I meant, and few things could vex me more than [for you] to think I had any feeling but one of the highest admiration for all you have done with so much courage and self- devotion. "If still wroth, fire a second broadside at me, but in any case believe me ever your sincere and affectionate friend." Frere, as usual, was doing all he could to help and support Major Green, while leaving him a free hand. He writes to him : — " December 23, 1858. " I have sent to Government your official letter of the 20th, relative to the Khan's expedition against the Murrees. " Do not consider me an old woman for reminding you that you have now duties even higher than that of showing H.H. and his paladins how to scale a hill crowned by Murree matchlockmen. You know I always admit that there are times when a General may properly pick up a firelock and use it, but it is not his usual duty. Your duty is now to direct others, and my only misgiving is that your love of danger and adventure may lead you to expose yourself, not only more than is necessary, but more than is justifi- able in a man who is to be the brain, and not the hands and feet, of frontier enterprise." At length, by January 21, 1859, and in spite of the occurrence of a calamity which might well have deterred him, Major Green had assembled at Bagh in Cutchee, at the foot of the hills, a force which it was impossible to count, but which may have been about four thousand horse and four thousand foot, together with his own escort of a single squadron of Sind Horse under his brother, Captain Malcolm Green. Robbers by profession, and iSsS.J EXPEDITION AGAINST MURREES. 249 without any cohesion or discipline, the tribes of which the force was composed were not unlikely, on the smallest provocation, to attack one another instead of the enemy. The only bond that held them together and controlled them was Green's personal authority. Many of the men had never seen a European before, yet such was the ascendency that he exercised over them, that his mere presence was sufficient to stop any quarrel which arose. And though the Jam of Beila was soon discovered to be in treacherous communication with the enemy, Major Green succeeded in keeping the force together for nearly two months, and conducted it into the heart of the Murree country, nearly a hundred miles beyond the farthest point reached by Sir Charles Napier in his Hill Campaign, through defiles and over mountain tracks of almost un- exampled difficulty, never before traversed by a European. The column on the march was about ten miles in length. In going along a valley it would spread out for a battue, driving before it and hunting down all the game, so that nothing could escape. Yet at one place, when encamped for days close to unprotected corn-fields, these semi- savages paid such respect to Major Green's injunctions that not a blade of the crop was touched. Against a force under such control, the Murrees, who mustered about two thousand fighting men, could make no effectual stand. Kahun and the other chief places were occupied one after the other and the forts destroyed, and the Murrees professed their willingness to submit to the authority of the Khan, and give hostages for their future good conduct. "This was accomplished," Frere writes to Lord Elphinstone, " without any mishap or distress to the forces which he [Green] led, without indiscriminate massacre, plunder, or destruction, or barbarity, or severity, beyond what is justified among civilized nations [and] 250 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Cn. VII. absolutely necessary to compel the submission of the rebel tribes to their lawful ruler." " I felt proud of my countryman," he writes to Sir G. Clerk (April 17, 1859), " when I saw the thorough confidence and trust which all the Kelat people reposed in him, not excepting the Khan, who, however bluntly Green might speak, seemed always to feel that he had no better or truer friend in the world. I really believe that if Green could stay there a few years, Kelat would become as quiet and prosperous as any part of India." Frere, in forwarding Major Green's despatch, says : — " The army had between two and three thousand camels, and other baggage animals in proportion. Beyond the loss of a few which fell over precipices and were dashed to pieces, Major Green assured me that he did not believe that a dozen camels were lost or left behind, though the defiles were worse than any he had ever seen in India or Europe, in the Balkan, the skirts of the Caucasus, or Armenia. A march of equal length in the plains of India would have cost more animals, and our enormous and in- calculable losses in the passes of Affghanistan have been almost equalled in later campaigns nearer home. To what is the difference attributable ? Major Green is right in at- tributing it simply to the fact that in the Brahoe force every man understood the animal he used for his baggage, had a personal interest in its preservation, and took care that it was properly fed and not overloaded. " The carriage of a twelve-pounder brass howitzer eighty miles on the back of a single camel over the worst possible paths, at the rate of fourteen miles a day, is a feat which has been probably rarely attempted, and was certainly never before undertaken as an ordinary job for ordinary hire by a common Brahoe Jutt. No two animals, Major Green assures me, could be less alike in their capacity and power of endurance than the camel in the keeping of his native breeder and the same animal under the charge of a European commissariat conductor, fed with unnatural food, and loaded and tended by a Mahratta horsekeeper. " I have often ventured to express my opinion that we have enormously overrated the value of the difficult country i8s8.] LOST GUNS RECOVERED. 25 I to the west of the Indus as a defence to India against any army of Central Asian tribes directed by European intelli- gence and energy. Major Green has arrived at the same conclusion, of the justice of which the present expedition affords a fresh proof and matter for much serious re- flection." The three guns which had fallen into the hands of the Murrees, when Major Clibborn's force was destroyed at the head of the Nuffoosk Pass, in 1840, had been taken to Kahun, a few miles from the scene of the fight. There Green found one of them, mounted on a bastion of the fort. The carriage of another was found in the fort, and the gun itself at the bottom of a newly made grave in a burial ground outside. One of them had the mark of a sabre cut across the breech — evidence of the close hand-to-hand fight which had raged round them when they were taken. The third gun had been thrown down a precipitous ravine and could not be found. The two recovered guns, twelve-pound brass howitzers, were slung each on a camel and taken eighty miles to Jacobabad. But at Jacobabad there was no General Jacob to receive them. When Outram, on hearing of the outbreak of the Mutiny, hastened back to India from Persia with all his European troops, Jacob had remained with the native portion of the force to watch over the carrying out of the treaty. Much as he was wanted in India, he was compelled to yield to the request of the British Minister in Persia that he would remain some time longer, and in September sent Captain Pelly to Bombay to report to Lord Elphinstone. He had been selected for the command of the Central Indian army,* and when at last he was able to leave Persia he * Apparently at Frere's suggestion. See a letter from Frere to Mansfield of March 9, 1863. 252 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Cn. VII. went on to Bombay, under the idea that he would have to take up the command. The occasion, however, did not admit of delay, and Lord Elphinstone, unable to wait for him, had given the command to Sir Hugh Rose. Pelly went on board the ship in which Jacob was, as soon as it came into the harbour of Bombay, with a note to that effect from Lord Elphinstone. He found him reading in the cabin. To most soldiers the loss of so important a command would have been a bitter disappointment. Jacob read the note with unconcern and went on reading his book. He returned with perfect contentment to his old head-quarters at Jacobabad. There he found enough, and more than enough, to do. Frere writes fourteen months later to Lord Elphin- stone : — " December 15, 1858. " He had been for some time less capable of the un- ceasing mental exertion to which he had been for many years accustomed, while the pressure of work on him was much increased. He had to carry on all his old duty and to form three new regiments, one of cavalry and two of infantry, the latter to be raised on a novel principle and armed with a new weapon. He had none of his old lieu- tenants to help him, and had to teach his own ideas to young officers. . . . Unwilling to decline any share of the labour thus falling on him, or to seek aid from others in bearing it, he began to find his strength unequal to the task, and for the first time in his life, probably early in last hot weather, he must have felt that the bodily machinery which had so long borne all the burden his unceasing mental activity threw on it, was showing symptoms of being overtasked. Pelly had just reached Kurrachee, after leave in England, and suspecting from the tone of a letter received from Jacob that something was wrong, hastened to join him. " Pelly found him alone in the districts far from medical 1858.] DEATH OF JACOB. 253 aid. He had then been for some nights quite sleepless, and subject to violent fits of bleeding at the nose, and total prostration of strength. In the intervals of compara- tively less exhaustion he made vigorous efforts to resume his work, and for some days steadily refused to go into Jacobabad. Nor did Pelly get him there till nature fairly refused to rally and he felt that he must give in." * For seven nights he never closed his eyes, yet con- tinued to do his work. He was just able to ride the stages into Jacobabad, and, though with evident difficulty, greeted the native officers who turned out to meet him, as usual, on his return. After this he became rapidly weaker. Major Green was at this time in the midst of his prepa- rations for the Khan's expedition against the Murrees. On arriving on December 4 at Gundava from Kelat, he heard of Jacob's illness, and starting at noon rode eighty miles to Jacobabad the same day. Jacob, as he came into his room, took him by the hand, saying, " Thank God, you have come ! all will now go right." Next day there was a slight rally, but in the evening he became unconscious and was evidently dying. Green summoned into the adjoining room the senior native officers of his regiment, the Resident of the Khan, and the Belooch chiefs who happened to be in the station, and, when at midnight the end was near, he brought them all in. "When his state became known, some of the leading Belooch begged that 'if possible he might be moved to die and be buried among his fathers in his own land, and that his seal might be sent out to them, which all would obey.' From the time that it was known that his state was hope- less till he was buried, they showed how they felt for him as for a father. In accordance with his often-repeated wish there was no military or other display at his funeral * Frere to Lord Elphinstone, December 15, 1858. 254 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VII. (the ceremony of firing volleys over the grave being dis- pensed with), but not a soul who could attend of the thousands living in and around Jacobabad was absent. His own stout soldiers and the wild Belooch borderers were alike unmanned as they carried him to his grave, and none of his older officers could trust themselves to read the Funeral Service, which was read by Captain King. " The Belooch say that they are glad now that, as his time is come, he did remain among them and is buried there, as his spirit will now be always with them. . . . " In a will dated a few months back, he left all he pos- sessed to Merewether, as his senior lieutenant." Major Green, in his despatch describing the expedition against the Murrees, says : — "The death of General Jacob added much to the diffi- culties of the undertaking. For fifteen years he had ruled these people ; his name only was known, feared, and re- spected as no other ever had been, or ever will be ; the enormous influence he exercised over these barbarians was even unknown to himself, nor could I have believed that any one man could, unseen, exert such influence, unless eighteen months of the most intimate personal acquaint- ance with all these border tribes, from Mekran to the furthest recesses of the Mari hills, had rendered the fact beyond doubt." Thus lived and died at his post in the wilderness, care- less of fame or ease, this great soldier genius, whose pre- sence in life, and whose name after death, were a symbol and a message of peace, order, and goodwill from the great Queen in the West to the wild warrior shepherds of her Indian Frontier. CHAPTER VIII. RECONSTRUCTION. Religious teaching in Government schools — Principles of administra- tion — Proportion and organization of native army — Nuggur Parkur — Frere appointed to the Supreme Council at Calcutta — Leaves Sind. The destructive force of the Mutiny had shaken to its foundations the whole fabric of English Government in India. Stunned and dazed by the magnitude of the calamity, by the spectacle of a great army suddenly dis- solved or in armed mutiny, and bewildered by the chaos of anarchy which, in a vast tract of country, had superseded all law and government, men began to question whether the principles on which they had been working had not been wholly in fault, and were groping in the dark for a truer and juster foundation on which to begin the work of reconstruction. A great convulsion reveals the hidden strata that underlie the surface ; and it was seen that the first question on which all others rest was that of religion. We were a Christian nation, it was truly said, bound as a first duty to be true to our religion. If we were not true to it, God would surely punish us. And in some way or other, doubtless, this very Mutiny had been a punishment, a judgment on us for doing wrong. But how ? Wherein had we as a nation and as a Government 256 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VIII. gone astray, and been unfaithful to our principles ? What attitude ought our countrymen as Christians, and our Government as a Christian Government, to maintain to- wards the overwhelming multitudes belonging to other religions ? It was at this point that opinions diverged, according to the different conceptions of what Christianity is, and what it inculcates. The Directors' Minute of 1854, on the question of the attitude of Government to Christianity and the native religions, which had received the deliberate approval of men of strong religious feeling in England as well as in India, had been hitherto generally considered as conclusive and final. But it was now challenged as an unworthy concession to expediency. It was urged that faithful allegiance to Christianity involved a condemna- tion of all other religions as being absolutely and funda- mentally false, and to be extirpated by all lawful means. Those who thought thus, maintained that Govern- ment had failed in its duty, and had, doubtless, brought a judgment and a punishment from above, by its slackness in upholding the one true religion and in condemning all others as false ; and that the only limit to its efforts to gain converts should be a manifest impossibility, as shown by circumstances. The 'successful vindication of our authority after the Mutiny should be made, they said, the occasion of a more or less combative and hostile attitude towards other religions ; we should henceforward give an official support to Christianity, and enter upon a proselytizing policy in support of it, as far as it was possible to do so without using force or fraud. These extreme views found an ardent exponent in Colonel Herbert Edwardes, whose great ability, distin- guished services, and high, unblemished character gave prominence and importance to all that he wrote. He 1858.] GOVERNMENT AND CHRISTIANITY. 257 issued a memorandum on "the elimination of all un- christian principles from the Government of India." Among the " unchristian elements " in our policy, to which he objected, were the exclusion of the Bible and of Christian teaching from Government schools, the endow- ment of native religions from the revenue, the recognition of caste, the observance of native holidays in the public offices, the administration of Hindu and Mahomedan law, Hindu and Mahomedan processions, and the con- nection of Government with the opium trade. Sir John Lawrence had, in theory at least, a good deal of sympathy with Edwardes's views. But his bent was too severely practical to allow him to be led into ad- vocating a course of conduct which, though perhaps logically arising out of his religious theory, was dangerous or impossible in practice. He wrote a long memorandum, expressing agreement on some points with Edwardes, but on the whole combating his views. Frere differed from both of them. His theory contained nothing with which it was difficult for his practice to harmonize. First, an instance of his practice. In March, 1858, a Mahomedan presented a petition to him complaining of an inscription posted up by Mr. Gell, a chaplain, on the wall of the shop of Mr. Matchett, a missionary, in the main bazaar at Hydrabad, and contain- ing, as he stated, a gratuitous insult to all Mahomedans. The placard was sent for, and was found to contain the assertion — for which it proffered a proof — that Mahomet was no true prophet. Frere wrote a civil letter to Mr. Gell, saying that he did not question the truth of the inscription, but objected to it — as he would to a denunciation of the Pope placarded in Limerick, or to abuse of Calvinism in Edinburgh — because it was likely to be understood by VOL. I. S 258 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VIII. Mahomedans as an intentional insult, and to lead to a breach of the peace, for which he, as chief magistrate, was responsible ; and he therefore requested that it might be immediately removed. This request, after a protest, was complied with, but Mr. Gell considered that a great principle was at stake, and that the success of missionary effort would be imperilled if he were not allowed to attack the Mahomedan religion in his own way. A long controversy followed. The Church and the missionaries had not a better friend than Frere in India. At Sattara and in Sind he had always been foremost in the work of building and endowing churches ; and during his journeyings through the remoter parts of the country, he had caused services to be held on Sundays in places where they had seldom or never been held before. But this did not deter Mr. Gell and Mr. Matchett not only from complaining of his action to the Bombay Govern- ment, but also from stirring up the Bombay Press and, finally, one of the great English religious societies against him, in defence of their principle of liberty to attack the tenets of other religions. Of the controversy, it is enough to say that the Govern- ment supported Frere's action, and that subsequently Mr. Gell frankly admitted that he had been wrong. He afterwards became a firm supporter of Frere, and a warm friendship existed between them. The following letters will show what Frere thought was the right attitude for Government to adopt towards the propagation of Chris- tianity in India. He writes to Lord Stanley, then Under-Secretary of State for India : — " December 19, 1858. " I do not like to let another mail leave without an expression of my hope that nothing may occur to induce 1858.] GOVERNMENT AND CHRISTIANITY. 259 the Government to depart from the principles you have laid down for our guidance, with regard to the relations of Government servants to missionary operations, and that the principles which appear to be advocated by Colonel Edwardes will never be adopted by the Government of India, even to the modified extent to which they are supported by Sir J. Lawrence in his despatch published in the Times of October 28. " It is not merely that I feel assured that Sir J. L.'s plan, if adopted, would convince the natives generally that we meant to use our temporal power for their conversion, and that when once such a conviction became general, no armies you could send to India could retain it as an appendage to the British Empire. If the thing to be done were clearly right, I would not regard the con- sequences. " But I feel convinced that the course proposed is not right — that as Christians we are not justified in using the temporal power of Government to enforce particular forms of religious belief, even when that belief is Christianity. I can see no logical difference between the course proposed by Sir J. L. and that followed by religious persecutors from the Inquisition down to later examples in France, Italy, and Norway, and I am convinced that, once fairly embarked in the Crusade, you will find no practical stop to the use of temporal coercion for religious purposes, unless the check be applied either by our own religious differences among ourselves, or by the active opposition of a general rebellion. " In any case I feel convinced that Christianity must suffer. I have been since the day I came into the country an active supporter of missions as far as my private means allowed, because I felt convinced that the conversion of the natives to Christianity was the greatest blessing our rule could confer on them, and, as far as human reason could see, one of the great objects for which our rule was permitted. I can testify from personal observation that the change already wrought by missionary enterprise in India is far greater and more rapid than could reasonably be expected from the means used, or than either the missionaries or their opponents believe, and my chief objection to the course indicated in the propositions of Colonel Edwardes and Sir J. Lawrence, arises from the 260 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VIII. conviction that this progress will be interrupted if, abandon- ing our own principles as we understand and would wish them applied among ourselves, we rely on the temporal power of Government to influence the natives in matters of belief. Disguise it as we may, this is what Govern- ment Bible classes come to, and setting aside all practical difficulties and risks of temporal danger, I cannot see how we can, as Christians, defend in India a course which in England we should condemn as ineffectual for the promotion of true religion, even if it were not denounced as impious to attempt it. On the same subject he writes to Lord Goderich : — "January 4, 1859. " If India were converted the gain would be cheaply purchased by the loss of our Empire in India. But I cannot see how we can hope for such a result as a large number of real converts, if we violate the very first principles of Christian toleration. Sir J. Lawrence seems to me to start in error by considering ' What can we safely force the native to submit to ? ' instead of ' What have we, as the power placed over them by God, a right to expect them to submit to ? ' It is all very well to say that we know ourselves to be right, and that we cannot be wrong in using our power to enforce our own conscientious con- victions. So said the Inquisition and all religious per- secutors from the days of Saul of Tarsus down to our own. But there can be no safe rule of guidance for a Christian Government different from that of a Christian individual — to do as we would be done by. And what Colonel Edwardes and Sir J. Lawrence would do is just what we would ourselves resist to the death if attempted on us or our children — not by Hindoos or Moslems, but by a Roman Catholic or Greek autocrat. " I hold entirely with the principles which guided the late Sir Robert Grant in this matter, and I have in vain sought for some of his minutes and letters on the subject, which have for the past twenty years been our rule on this side of India, and which are very different from what seems to have been the practice elsewhere in India. " Sir Robert Grant was a far more zealous and efficient promoter of missions than any one I have seen in high office out here, and one of the most popular among natives I859-] GOVERNMENT AND CHRISTIAN TEACHING. 26l of every creed and class — a result I always attributed to the thoroughly Christian and tolerant spirit which shone out in every act and word. . . . " As regards the points of difference between Sir John Lawrence and Mr. Arnold, I entirely hold with the views of the latter as I gather them from Sir J ohn's letter. . . . " If we strictly adhere to our Christian principles, I firmly believe that the glory of bringing India within Christ's fold may yet be ours ere many more generations have passed away. " I have written in great haste and amid much inter- ruption, wishing all the time I had been able to enter more fully into this most important subject." He writes again to Lord Goderich : — " January 5, 1859. " In my hurried letter yesterday ... I forgot to say what it seems to me it is our duty to do. " First, as to education. It seems to me an enormous error to lay it down as any part of the duty of any conceivable Government of India, English or Russian, Moslem or Hindoo, in this year 1859, or even in this century, to educate its subjects generally. You have no money, you have no plan, nor are your great parties agreed as to any possible plan for such an undertaking, which no other great Government in the world has ever attempted with success. " But you can and you ought to assist the people to educate themselves, and as far as they require and will accept your help, so far to the very limited extent allowed by an empty exchequer you are bound as a Government to help them. It has always seemed to me that the Court of Directors, in their despatch on education, sanctioning grants- in-aid, laid down very nearly, if not exactly, the right and only practicable course for our Government in this matter. The policy directed in that despatch was never fairly worked, and I do not think we could now do better than go back to it. Divide the whole sum you can annually spare for the purpose, so much for each province, and let each do its best with the means so allowed, according to the principles laid down in the despatch, with a few rules added to ensure the first grant being made to the most urgent need. 262 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch, VIII. " I believe with Lord Ellenborough that the most urgent need would often be found to exist among the higher classes, and I would not take poverty as the only test of need. I would also let the experiment of Government education in its strictest sense be tried among Bheels, coolies, and other races, where the good effected must be great, and where absolutely no objection to it can be urged. There are hundreds of thousands of such people in India, and when you have really succeeded with them, you can try the more difficult task of educating people who already know what education means, and have their own ideas as to what they want in the way of education. " With regard to missions, I hold that all that is required from Government is to leave them alone, and I look on any Government enterprise or support as in the last degree mischievous. " Let the Government of this world keep the peace and do justice and mercy to the best of its power, and rule the people so that peace and plenty may prevail through the land, but let not Government presume to dictate to any of the meanest of its subjects what he shall believe, or, however indirectly, to bribe or coerce him into any particular form of belief. . . . " I do not mean, however, that Government should be indifferent or idle in matters relating to religion. First let us set our own house in order, and remove the reproach universally and most truly cast against us by all native opponents — ' You spend thousands of pounds to convert one low caste Hindoo, but you do not move a finger to prevent your soldiers and sailors being examples of the grossest vices in every bazaar they frequent. You leave the poor Christians of all classes and creeds wholly uncared for, while a Mahomedan who changes his religion is sure to make his fortune.' Let us first, by our barrack arrange- ments and sailors' homes, make our soldiers and sailors as decent and well-conducted in externals as possible, and give them the same opportunities in the way of pastoral aid as the poor in a well-ordered community in Europe. Let us give similar benefits to the thousands of poor Christians who, as clerks, cooks, and in other capa- cities, are found in great numbers in every station, and who are now almost universally and totally neglected. 1S59.J BIBLE TEACHING. 263 " This is little apparently to ask, but it would require the services of many hundred clergymen — Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and Roman Catholic — to enable Government to do its duty in this respect to its own servants. " I never met any earnest or thoughtful missionary, or religious Christian of any kind who had the means of knowing, who did not allow that Government might by such means effect more than armies of missionaries could, humanly speaking, hope to effect in centuries, as long as the great body of professing Christians in the country are a visible and practical refutation of half the arguments the missionary urges on his native opponent." In an undated fragment, Frere writes : — " I think the note of Principal Ray expresses more clearly and concisely than anything I could write the con- clusions at which I have arrived as to the extent to which Government may and ought to comply with the demand that Bible-classes should be permitted in connection with Government schools, viz. that permission should be given to every teacher in a Government school who wishes to teach a private class to volunteers, elsewhere than in the Government school-room. . . . " But it is to be observed, first, that this permission is already virtually accorded. At all events, it never, as far as I know, has been, or can be denied to any who choose to assume it. And, secondly, that it does not meet the wishes of those who have taken the most active part in bringing this question forward. . . . " I trust you will not press on the Government of India, nor authorize if it is proposed to you, any official sanction of the employment of Government teachers in expounding the Bible to their scholars. . . . "Your Government teachers in this country may be divided into three classes : 1. "A few men to whom any religious-minded Christian who agreed with them on devotional points would gladly entrust the education of his own children. How many are there of this class ? And how many of them to whom a moderate but sincere High or Low Churchman, or Presby- terian, or Roman Catholic, would conscientiously give permission to teach religion to their own scholars ? 264 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VIII. 2. " There is a much larger number of nominal Christians, who do not entirely disbelieve Christ, but who will teach what they are told to teach — much or little Christianity, of any particular complexion which may be ordered — High or Low, Calvinistic or Roman Catholic. Will their teaching do any real good ? Just at present, rightly or wrongly, they will believe that it will be for their own good to teach as much as they can with a leaning to Calvinism, and to show as much result as possible in the shape of applicants for further information and missionary teaching. " What will be the religious results of such men's teach- ing ? What would they be in England or Ireland ? What must they be among a people subtle and naturally inclined to dissemble, and who are but too prone to let the end sanctify the means, in advancing their worldly interests ? 3. " But the largest class of all are men who do not profess to believe Christianity — some, baptized Christians, but sceptics ; many more, professed Hindoos, Mahomedans, and other unbaptized unbelievers in Christianity. Can any sincere Christian contemplate the enforced reading and exposition of the Bible to Hindoo and Mahomedan boys, by men of this class, without a shudder ? It may be said it is not enforced, but voluntary ; but if they know, as they will certainly presume, that their promotion in the department depends on their making a show of teaching, many of them will make such a show, and their misrepre- sentations, whether honest or dishonest, must do more harm than good. A scoffing, sceptical teaching of the Bible by such men must be many times worse than no teaching at all. " But take the next case — an honest and competent teaching by a man who believes and is capable of teaching Christianity. Have we any right to make such teaching a part of the system in Government schools ? " It may be said, it is no part of the system, it is simply permitted. "But I maintain what is expressly permitted and encouraged by the Government is a part of the Govern- ment system. " How would it be in Ireland if a Government with an Orange Lord-Lieutenant were to permit the Protestant 1858.] THE END OF THE COMPANY. 265 teachers in Government colleges to use their lecture-rooms for religious lectures to their R. C. pupils out of college hours ! Would any one believe in the really voluntary character of teaching or learning ? " The rule of the old East India Company was drawing to an end. A Government Bill, assented to in its general principle by the Opposition, had been introduced into Parliament, transferring its possessions and authority to the Crown. The systems and methods of Government in India were in the melting pot, destined to take new forms and shapes, and statesmen and others in England who were likely to have a hand in the work were seeking for information and guidance as to the principles on which the new foundations should be laid. The following letters, written in such intervals as he could snatch in the pressure of his work, give Frere's views and convictions on some of the leading questions involved in the work of recon- struction. He writes to Lord Goderich : — "June 15, 1858. " Your questions embrace a wide range. Of the causes of the Mutiny, you will find those which affected the army well set forth in the writings of General John Jacob, and if you do not quote the opinions as kis y nor make special reference to Bengal, you will find most men of real ex- perience even in the Bengal army agree with him, but such men are fewer than you might suppose, and length of service is no test of experience. We tried to centralize the management of an army dispersed in peace over a country half as large as Europe, the greater part of the army being never seen for years together by any one in real military authority. Our centralization was not by officers, but by departments, and was a purely paper system. We carefully destroyed all individual authority, till it is really no exaggeration to say that, except the adjutant of his regiment and the Adjutant-General of the army, there was no single officer, from the Commander-in- 266 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VIII. Chief downwards, whose good or bad opinion was of any consequence to the individual sepoy, in pay, promotion, or anything else affecting his material well-being. For many years past the Bengal army has been practically an army without officers, and but for the innate, tractable character of the material, would have mutinied long ago, as any mercenary army will when they think they have the power to do as they please. The remedy seems to me a most simple one. I do not say easy, for it is impossible to calculate the power of prejudice. Abandon the idea of assimilation to any single pattern. . . . Require personal knowledge and inspection of his charge from every officer, whatever his grade, and you would very soon have an army far better than you have lost. The material you have is the best in India, and you need not go out of India to seek better, for it is excellent. It is our treatment of it which has spoilt it. You would require fewer officers, and could afford to pay them well. Such a system is that advocated by General Jacob. It is the best I have ever seen or heard of in theory or practice. But I do not say it is the only good one, and I would discard the idea of any single system applicable to all India. Every province half as large as France and every army of twenty thou- sand men ought to be allowed to differ widely in details of system from other provinces and armies. Yet we tried to enforce exact uniformity throughout an army of 150,000 men. Of course such uniformity can, from the nature of things, only be apparent. You must already have seen the mistake of supposing that we can hold India by European troops alone, and you will soon, if I am not mistaken, see the error of all plans for foreign merce- naries — Malay, African, etc. I do not think we have lost the art of governing India mainly by native agency, and you may rest assured you cannot long govern two hundred millions by any other. " Our mistakes in Civil Government have been of much the same character as those we have made in military affairs, ending in the destruction of all individual and local authority and responsibility. Our form of govern- ment must necessarily be despotic ; a good, vigorous despotism, in which the risks of tyranny and arbitrary oppression are minimized, is one in which the despot is accessible — that is, when every man sees, knows, and can 1858.] RIGHT AND WRONG CENTRALIZATION. 267 appeal to his own despot, to some one who can, if he please, redress his grievance by some act of individual power, in which all affairs of merely local import are managed locally, and where usage or common law rules in most things. Our system has been the reverse of all this, at least in what are called our Regulation Provinces. A native in a distant district can hardly find any man who can do him any good by an act of power. We have en- veloped ourselves in rules and regulations till we have left ourselves no power of individual action. We have guarded ourselves against doing evil till we have left no power of doing good. Usage, custom, and common sense go for nothing against a circular or rule of some distant court. Our legislature is away in a corner at Calcutta, composed of a few elderly Government functionaries, inaccessible to public opinion, and necessarily unacquainted with four- fifths of the country for which they legislate. And then we wonder that their laws are not better than the crude edicts, which in former days each province framed for itself. One of the worst consequences of the absence of local legal authority is that unscrupulous men usurp unlegal authority, and this is one great cause of the misconduct charged against our native officials. They would be far less tyrannical if they had more legal power and greater responsibility to their immediate superiors. " Here again the remedy is very simple, though not easy, for it is opposed, not only to existing habits and prejudices, but to all our English ideas of government, though singularly enough not to our habits of business and modes of managing great private and commercial affairs. Centralize by individuals, not by departments. Throughout your whole machine of government, from the head of the village up through heads of districts and provinces, up to the Governor-General, let every official be a real ruler in all things to those below him, and let him be really ruled by the functionary above him. The changes you will have to make will not be really so many as you may imagine. It will be simply a general return to a mode of government once very common and still existent in many provinces. You may have heard of the excellent administration of Nagpoor under Sir Richard Jenkins, or of Sattara under Captain Grant Duff. The 268 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VIII. great secret of their success was that they were men well selected, and ruled on the plan I have described. . . . " I think you might avoid all difficulty about patronage if you will adhere to the Company's rule, which was to keep jealously in England the right of selecting the raw material for your officials, and leave entirely to the Govern- ments in India the power of selection and promotion after they are once appointed. The former rule excludes broken- down dandies and insolvents, who now so often take refuge in a Government Colonial appointment. The latter prevents much jobbing which can hurt the public service. Provided the lads who go out as future officers or civil servants are not meanly born or basely bred, it is really of very little consequence whether they are selected by Directors or by a Minister. Of course, the better the birth and the breed- ing, the greater chance of turning out the lad a credit to his country and a blessing to India. But the qualifications you most want are found more or less invariably in all classes above those whose connections and pursuits are really sordid and debasing. It is, as far as India is con- cerned, a matter of very little moment whether the boy is sent out selected by competitive examination, or as an act of private favour, or in return for votes at an election. But it is of great importance to India that his career in India should depend entirely on the character he makes for himself after he comes out, and that it should not be affected by the home interest of his connections. I think we have made a great mistake in making intellectual power the sole passport to the Civil Service. Our superiority over the natives is less intellectual than moral, and your best Indian rulers, like your best public men everywhere, are not always those who would send in the best papers at an examination for a degree. Of course the higher the intellect and the better the education, the more useful the public servant, if he has the necessary moral qualities also. But what you want in India is a high-spirited, kind-hearted, active-minded, modest, conscientious English youth. And it is really of more moment to the natives that he should be good in the cricket-field and on horseback, popular with servants and the poor, and the champion of bullied fags ; that he should have a mother who taught him to say his prayers, and sisters who helped her to give him love and reverence for womankind and respect for weakness, 1858.] THE INDIAN SERVICE. 269 than that he should be fit to take a double-first at Oxford. " I have written at intervals a very disjointed letter, and have not touched on half the topics indicated by you, and not even the most momentous question of all : How are we to restore the mutual confidence and good feeling between races now in so many provinces bitterly incensed against each other ? It can hardly be done by rule ; and our doctrinaire philosophers, who are answerable for half the mischief which has happened, will only make matters worse. But much may be done by personal power and influence, if you trust good men. God forbid I should palliate the atrocities which have been committed so widely throughout the revolted provinces ! but the question which occurs to me, and which none of our violent declaimers can answer, is, What so changed the conduct of men, who for so many generations treated us as if we had been tabooed as a sacred rather than as an alien race ? It is, I fear, true that we are hated in many a wide province ; but why? It is not usual for even the worst of men to hate those who they really believe wish them well. "You may say, What are the tests for securing good recruits for the Indian Service ? How would I ascertain the moral qualities ? I reply that they are generally found in four out of five lads taken from the middle or upper classes at random, and perhaps more generally in lads taken at random than in lads selected for intellectual proficiency. You must not suppose I undervalue in- tellectual acquirement, but it is a fact that some of our most useless and unpopular men among the natives are the very men whose intellectual powers are of a very superior order, their unpopularity proceeding from their conceit and the ruthless manner in which they follow out a favourite theory when they get the power. You must recollect that our despots here rise by their place in the calendar, not as in Turkey or in France, where a man who would rise to power must, among other things, exert his power of pleasing. You find your doctrinaire philosophers in London ride a hobby to death. But in London they are kept in order by checks and opposition in a thousand forms. Imagine how the same men would ride their hobbies, when invested with despotic power, over a million or two of Indian peasants. It is such men who upset 2JO THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VIII. native tenures, turn native society topsy-turvy, and with the best intentions drive a whole people to mad revolt, when [whereas] General Sleeman, who wrote very in- different English and had little notion of science, art, or literature, was worshipped simply on account of his kindly nature and the sympathy which the people knew he felt for them." The Court of Directors issued a despatch, dated Novem- ber 25, 1857, as to the reorganization of the Indian army, in reference to which a list of questions was framed and sent round to various officials for their replies. The heads of inquiry were classed as — 1. The recruiting and composition of corps. 2. The military code and rules of discipline. 3. Organization, promotion, and rewards. 4. European officers. Frere answered them fully, and also wrote a letter to Colonel Durand, who was in charge of the inquiry. Several persons having asked for copies of his answers, he had them printed in a pamphlet of a hundred and sixty pages. Sending some copies of this pamphlet to Sir George Clerk, then in England, he says : — "January 16, 1859. " I would be very glad to know how far you agree with what I have said. It is quite certain that we cannot keep up our present military expenditure, and I am quite sure that it is not needed, if we would but govern instead of dragooning the people. If you could send us a few of the Malcolms, Metcalfes, and Elphinstones, and come back yourself, I would engage to reduce the military estimates to little more than those of 1838. " It seems to me utterly impossible that our present system of holding the country with European detach- ments scattered over it can be persevered in, without the destruction of all discipline, and an aggravation of the feeling of general distrust, which makes Englishmen as well as natives suppose that a detachment of Europeans is necessary at almost every station. . . . i859-] BRITISH AND ASIATIC SOLDIERS. 2J\ " If we would avoid the necessity which obliged England to cast off her American colonies, we must continue to govern our own Indian provinces hereafter, as we have generally done heretofore, through the respect and with the consent of the natives, and to trust for the general maintenance of internal peace to our police. A conviction of our superior military power is one necessary element of real respect ; but such respect derives its greatest strength from a belief in our superior wisdom, justice, and modera- tion, and is something very different from the simple con- viction of our superior brute force, on which it is now so much the fashion to recommend reliance. . . . " It is, I believe, a fashionable theory that railways, electric telegraphs, and similar appliances render it easier for a Central Government to control its distant subordi- nates, and safer to exercise that power. So far from this being the case, they seem to me to render it necessary to concede formally greater power to officers at a distance, and to impose heavier responsibilities, because the facility of reference holds out a temptation to refer instead of acting, which did not exist before. On the other hand, the facilities of communication greatly diminish the danger of entrusting despotic powers to men at a distance, owing to the greater publicity which such facilities ensure and the increased ease with which aggrieved parties can seek redress at the hands of the Central Government. " The English soldier comes of races habituated to self- government, and you can only get good recruits, in large numbers, by letting them see that, however ill-paid and undesirable the service is in some respects, the soldier has still rights of his own. The non-military classes in Eng- land would not, with their eyes open, tolerate payment for an army of their own countrymen, ruled on purely despotic principles ; the Articles of War give to the engagement between the soldier and the State some semblance of a voluntary compact. . . . " Asiatic soldiers, on the other hand, come of races habituated to despotic government, and in the dealings of a State with its servants and subjects, they understand and can appreciate no other. The grant of rights which they can enforce against their Sovereign and employer simply puzzles them, and a Code, like the Articles of War, and Army Regulations, by giving rise to vague notions of 272 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VIII. some ill-understood rights, which some unknown authority is apparently suspected of wishing to subvert, creates a vague feeling of suspicion and discontent. Natives much prefer serving under a master whose wishes and temper, once understood, are to them a law and rule of conduct, of which they know the exact provisions and obligations. An Englishman asks, ' What are my rights and duties ? ' The Asiatic guesses what they will be by the answer to his question, which is always, ' Who is my master ? ' And with all the intricacies and divided responsibilities of our present system, this is a question to which he can rarely get a clear and decided answer. In some respects his Adjutant or Commanding Officer, the Brigadier or Adjutant- General, the Commander-in-Chief or Governor in Council, are all more or less his masters ; but he can never clearly understand the exact relation of each authority to the other, still less can he find the one master whose will to him is law, for he still perceives behind the Government itself some power which prevents the Government from being absolutely despotic. " That the natives infinitely prefer the individual des- potism is clear from the preference they always show for it, when the two forms of subordination are presented to their choice. Service in an Irregular Corps is always pre- ferred to a Regular one ; and no one can deal long with natives without finding that they prefer serving a man they know and can trust, and that they will rely on his arbitrary will, rather than get the most binding charter of rights that was ever written on paper by a man whom they do not know. " In all that General Jacob has written and published on this subject I most fully agree. Rules and laws of some kind there must be, but they should be confined to a definition of ' Who is to be obeyed ? ' The authority of the immediate commanding officer should be made supreme over all natives who are placed under his orders, to the extent of dismissing them from the service ; and he should be held strictly responsible to the commanding officer, up to the commander-in-chief, for the mode in which the authority so given is exercised. But the re- sponsibility should be always retrospective in the shape of praise or blame for what is done, and should never involve the necessity for previous sanction. . . . 1858.J OFFICERS FOR NATIVE TROOPS. 273 " I entirely concur in what has been recorded by many eminent authorities, and especially by General Jacob, as to the absolute necessity, if we would keep India, that we should allow none but educated European gentlemen, in feeling and principles, and, if possible, by birth and station, to have any immediate connection as officers with our native army. . . . " As far as my observation goes, I should say the intervention of the native officers between the European officers and their men greatly added to, if it be not essential to, the full influence of good European officers. I cannot see how the legitimate influence of the European officer could be communicated to the men generally without the intervention of the native officers. . . . " In all the cases — three in number — in Sind, which came under my personal observation, the native officers gave information of the disaffection of their men. In each case the information was given in time to prevent a suc- cessful rising. ... In the Sind Horse, under great and continued temptation, the native officers behaved with exemplary fidelity as well as intelligence. No mutiny took place where they were quartered, but they aided to obtain information of an intended rising of the frontier tribes, and to arrest the ringleaders exactly as European officers with the same opportunities might have done. . . . " Native officers should be continued very much as at present, but they should be differently treated. The number of European officers with a native corps should be diminished ; they should be all selected men. The work of officers of companies should all be done by the native officers. . . . " Our best native officers and soldiers do not serve simply for pay, but for distinction, and would not enter at all if debarred promotion to posts of influence and honour. " Native soldiers are absolutely necessary to the efficiency of a European force, in hot weather, and for services which are better performed by natives than by Europeans. What further proportion of the cheaper and more accessible native element may you add to your army without impair- ing its efficiency for general military service ? "Judging from late experience, it is difficult to provide efficiently for all the duties of a large army in the field VOL. I. T 274 TIIE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VIII. during a protracted campaign in India without nearly as many native as European troops. One half may therefore be taken as the minimum proportion which native troops should bear to Europeans, and which it would be desirable to have even if the difference in cost and difficulty of pro- viding Europeans were not greater than that of providing natives. . . . Three to one is about the ratio which I should consider natives should bear to Europeans in order to give us the most efficient army which could be kept up for any given sum. A larger proportion of Europeans would give more than you require of the most costly element in your army ; a smaller one might reduce too low the element which is most formidable in a general action. " But the proportion would vary in the different arms. In the artillery, the backbone of the army, the advantage of having Europeans, great utility of individual muscular power, and many other reasons, comparatively greater, and the drawbacks fewer than in other arms ; and therefore, in the artillery, Europeans should so far preponderate that there should always be at least sufficient to work every gun ; save in very rare, exceptional cases where (as on the Sind frontier) it is altogether impossible to keep Europeans permanently stationed. In the cavalry the advantages of employing Europeans are at a minimum, and a very small proportion of them will suffice : one of the principal reasons being that European dragoons can never, in this country, dispense with their grass-cutters and other followers who are necessarily on foot, and thus Europeans, as cavalry, lose much of the superior celerity and independ- ence and other natural advantages of cavalry as compared with infantry ; and the advantage of employing the more costly European for such service is much lessened. . . . " I cannot but think that any attempt to assimilate the Indian armies to each other, beyond those points in which similarity is of practical importance in the field, must hasten the deterioration of the whole body. The course I would in preference most strongly recommend is the direct reverse of assimilation and amalgamation. The unwieldy size of our Bengal Native army was no doubt one element of its ruin, by precluding any officer, but more especially the Commander-in-Chief, with his five years' tenure of office, from gaining even a general know- 1858.] DIVERSITIES IN NATIVE TROOPS. 275 ledge of the whole body. It seems to me that our Indian forces should be re-divided into at least four, if not more, armies, so as to admit of a really active Commander-in- Chief gaining a general knowledge of the whole body under his command ; and the utmost latitude in organiza- tion should be allowed to local authorities within the limits imposed, by a due regard for the finances of the Empire. . . . " It is doubtless desirable that the rates of pay for similar arms should be, in some respects, similar ; yet this must be subject to many local variations. . . . The best military races in India, who will serve for seven rupees in the valley of the Ganges, or at the Nizam's Hydrabad, will not voluntarily take service in Sind on ten rupees ; and the irregular cavalry soldier who finds twenty rupees enough for himself and his horse in one part of India, would starve on thirty rupees in another. . . . " The diversities of national character in our Indian army are at least as great as among the nations of Europe ; and the Oude or Seikh sepoy, the Affreedee and the Goorkha, have each their favourite mode of fighting ; and some of them must act to disadvantage, if all are compelled to adopt any one uniform mode of formation. " It must be borne in mind that the whole army of the Indus is essentially a frontier army, facing, in close proximity, warlike and aggressive nations, who have twice successfully invaded India since we first gained territorial footing on the Continent, and who boast themselves prepared to repeat the attempt whenever it suits them, while they are daily becoming more subject to those military and political influences which affect the great family of European nations. Whatever we may think of its possibility or its chance of success, an invasion of India is a common topic of conversation in every assemblage of chiefs between Tabriz and Peshawur, the day-dream of more than one Sovereign Prince, and a subject of more or less thought and reflection to every one who aspires to be a successful soldier. There can be no doubt of the grave results which must follow any advance of our armies beyond our present frontier. But if we would avoid inviting aggression or combinations which may force us to advance in self-defence, we must be better prepared than we have been during the last ten years, and our 276 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Cn. VIII. frontier army must not only be in numbers sufficient to render attack hopeless, but it must always be ready for the field. If we would preserve peace, every corps and every station west of the Indus should be permanently on a footing prepared for immediate war." All this time, while statesmen and administrators were planning and reconstructing, the danger was far from being over ; there was widespread disorder and demorali- zation, and hard fighting was going on intermittently all over Northern India. So late as June, 1858, Sir John Lawrence writes to Lord Stanley, that the condition of things was worse than it had yet been since the fall of Delhi, nine months before. The mutineers, defeated and dispersed, had spread themselves over the country, coercing the natives into rebellion as they found oppor- tunity, and accustoming them to a condition of plunder and rapine, while the Europeans became exasperated into an attitude of bitter race-hatred, which too often dis- inclined them to be just, reasonable, or merciful, or to exercise discrimination between mutineers or murderers, and those who had been coerced into joining their ranks, thus banding together the innocent and the guilty in rebellion. The want of reliable native troops, especially in the hot weather, was greatly felt throughout Bengal, for the Europeans could not act efficiently without their co-operation, and could not move rapidly enough to follow up their successes. Frere writes : — "I have just read in the Lahore Chronicle of the 18th, an account of proceedings at Allahabad, so circum- stantial that one can hardly doubt its general accuracy; but the state of demoralization and disorder it reveals is quite astounding. It is extracted from the Englishman, and as the Punjab Government exercises a strict surveil- lance over the Press, and ' does not allow alarming news to «859J NUGGUR PARKUR. 277 be disseminated,' one wonders what can be the character of what is suppressed. The men seem to have been guilty of every kind of mutinous and disorderly conduct short of shooting at their officers (they did fire with ball-cartridge into their compounds and over their houses) and plunder- ing the station. Yet it is spoken of as if it were less extraordinary than an election riot, or a collision between marines and dockyard men at Portsmouth. " It seems to me that however wise and firm the conduct of Government may be in the final settlement of this question, the mischief is done if such conduct go unpunished." East of Kurrachee, in the south-east corner of Sind, and lying between Rajpootana and the sea, is the district of Nuggur Parkur. Remote, and distant from any important line of communication, it had been hitherto in a backward, unimproved condition, and afforded ample scope for the energies of Tyrwhitt, its Deputy-Collector, the officer who had distinguished himself at the outbreak of the Mutiny by re-establishing the line of communication between the Punjab and Agra. In a letter to Sir George Clerk, Frere describes what was going on there. This description and that of the subsequent outbreak illustrate Frere's administration in a peaceful and in a troubled time.* " February 1, 1859. " I have time for a very few lines, but do not like to miss an opportunity of telling you how pleased I have been with these districts which are young Tyrwhitt's charge. It is four years since I was last through them, and he was just setting to work with little to guide him but a good heart, sound sense, and great energy, which he has turned * In giving the following description, it is not meant to distinguish the administration of Nuggur Parkur as of exceptional excellence among districts in Sind managed by such a band of able and laborious workers as Goldsmid, Currey, Ellis, Marston, Ford, Steuart and others, but rather to give an instance of Frere's power of developing qualities in men in whom they had not previously been displayed. 278 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VIII. more to road clearing, building, and more especially to canal digging and land settlement than to the present fashionable occupations of hanging and village burning. Not but that he had to use the sword of justice, too, at starting, for the people were wild and half savage, and used to live by cattle lifting nearly as much as by labour, and you may recollect his chase after Ruthensing Soda, a cateran who had rebelled under Sir Charles, been bought off and pensioned, and who shot the first Kardar of Tyrwhitt's who tried to introduce something like security and good government into the desert. But having fairly run Ruthensing down and shown the border thieves that he could ride farther and faster than they could, Tyrwhitt saw that penury and insecurity of life and property were at the root of the evil. I have not yet in the course of this tour seen his desert districts, but he seems to have carried out admirably a plan I sketched for him four years ago for giving the people a light and fixed assessment, just the simple sort of system they have under a good Thakoor of their own, with plenty of wells and tanks where they can be made, work in the camel-police for those who would otherwise steal, and employment and bread for all. The result is that crime has almost disappeared, and he levies a revenue such as the Meers never dreamed of. I can see how well he has managed these Thurr people by the influence he has beyond his own border. He gets all he wants from the Judhpoor and the Jessulmere Durbar with evident good will, and the Thakoors, who are in a state of chronic rebellion against the Maharajah of Jessulmere and who refuse to listen to the Governor-General's agent, write to Tyrwhitt to apologize when they ' by mistake ' plunder his people in the Judhpoor territory, and offer to submit all their differences to his arbitration. He is quite altering the appearance of the Sind districts of Meerpoor Proper west of the Thurr, which get no water but from the river. Strong as the language was which I used, to describe our neglect of canals in the early years of our rule, it was short of the truth, and no district had suffered more than these. Meerpoor, when I saw it in 185 1, was twenty-five miles within a howling wilderness, and I saw no living soul nor sign of cultivation in a sixteen mile ride from Alyartha Tanda. Now there are fields the whole way, and the people everywhere rejoicing in the abundance of water, the simple i859-] OUTBREAK OF REVOLT. 279 fixed cash assessments, and the absence of meddling and dragooning. . . . There is little, in fact, which might not be found under a very benevolent, just, liberal, and energetic native ruler, and all classes seem equally happy. From old Shere Mohammed down to the old Belooch woman who would come out of her hut with a light for his pipe or a bowl of milk, and to ask the Hoozoor, ' if he could not let her old man have his wheel a rupee or two lower. It was such hard work, and he was an old soldier and not used to labour.' I wish you could see the old Meer. He is by far the finest of the lot, very proud, and as haughty as when he ruled in Meerpoor, but looking ten years younger than when I saw him here, just after his return from Sind four or five years ago, and so evidently pleased with the way Tyrwhitt treats him and his sons and all the old Belooch Sirdars. In all this the Government revenue has not suffered. " The districts yielded, when made over to Tyrwhitt, 135,000 rupees, and the people were the most wretched, poverty-stricken set to be found in Sind. This year he has collected 450,000 rupees, and I would not wish for a happier and more contented people, nor would it be possible to have less crime. Government sometimes think I have been extravagant in my views of canal works, but do not results like these justify the expenditure even as a fiscal measure? Tyrwhitt has had much unprofitable desert added to his districts since he began, but the main cause of the increase of the revenue is his canal digging and light assessment, and he is far from the limit even now. I fully expect as cultivation extends, the collection will rise to seven lacs. . . ." Some two months after this letter was written came a rude interruption to the scene of peaceful progress. The contagion of revolt had reached the district. The news came, like a bolt out of the blue, that the telegraph wires had been cut, the officials killed or driven away, and the treasury plundered. No sufficient cause for the outbreak could be assigned, nor was there any knowing how far it might spread ; and, what made it more serious, the insurgents had chosen a 280 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VIII. time of year, the beginning of the hot season, when the greater part of the district, the Runn of Cutch, was liable any day to be covered three or four feet deep with water from the summer overflow of the Indus, and the rest of the district was exposed to a fierce heat and drought which made military operations in it by regular troops impracti- cable. To Tyrwhitt, much dejected at this unlooked-for dis- turbance, Frere wrote : — "April 22, 1859. " You must not let this affair vex you. It was not in your power to have prevented it, and I know you will set matters to rights quicker than any one else would under such circumstances ; so make your mind easy on that score. It seems to me one of those things which God sometimes sends to bring us to our senses, when we are beginning to be very self-confident and to forget our dependence on Him, and we shall all be better for the lesson. I had begun to feel over-secure, but rely on it the thought of blaming you never entered my head. Now there are a few things you must remember. 1st. There are no fresh Tyrwhitts in store to serve out when the original one is worn to rags — so please take care of him ; don't expose him more than you can help, nor put him to do work which others can do as well, or which will bear delay. This is frightfully hot weather in your part of the world, and no mortal man can stand the work you try to do, so do please try to take things a little quietly. 2nd. If we hear matters are not settled at once I will send you a larger force. We could send troops very quickly by Mandavie Bhaaj, but you could get them still more quickly from Deesa. There is a troop of horse artillery now about leaving Deesa, which ought to be available. I have told the brigadier you are likely to call on him. 3rd. I have ordered Pirie to go on to take command of the Hyderabad police with Johnstone. You will find him an excellent ally, if anything is to be done. 4th. If the people take to the Sardra valley, be very careful how you manage the assault ; an attack at either end of the defile would be a very desperate undertaking if they are 1S59.] HOW TO SUPPRESS IT. 28 1 determined to defend themselves to the last, and you would have to go very cautiously to avoid ambuscades. There are paths to the tops of the hills from the walls of the defile, and if you once crowned them, the people below must surrender or be destroyed ; probably the best way would be, if you had men enough, to close the two open- ings — that towards Casbe, as well as that towards Nuggur — and then send parties over the hills, and not to attempt an advance at either end till you know that the heights are in possession of your men. Water would be your chief difficulty, as I fear there is none in the hill outside the gorge. But I trust you will not be obliged to use force. The greater part of the insurgents must be blind followers of some few knaves, and no good can be gained by destroy- ing them. You may rely on any promise of pardon you may make being observed, and no one will ever say you have been too lenient. Any leaders or instigators of the multitude must, of course, take the consequence of their misdeeds ; but this I leave entirely to you, and I hope you will take special care to let them all know, whether they submit or resist, that any women and children of even the very worst of them will be taken care of and sent to their own relations in safety. Otherwise, unless assured of good treatment for their families, we may have them slay- ing their women Rajpoot fashion, before they are attacked, to prevent their falling into our hands. All petty prisoners you can try and sentence at once, but the leaders and capital offenders had better be committed for trial by Downe. The Bengal Acts for summary jurisdiction in such cases do not extend to Sind. For all but the leaders, and for those who were merely lukewarm and disaffected, but not actively criminal, a few years at Kurrachee would be a good punishment. They will go back with sounder ideas of our power and their own importance than they have now. " I have full trust in your judgment and humanity as well as in your zeal and courage, and you may rely on my supporting you to the utmost. The fact that all the suspected leaders are Sodas looks as if there were some grievance of the class of which we have as yet heard nothing. But if any one can find it out I know you will. God be with you and guide you." In order to put down the outbreak with as little delay 282 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Cn. VIII. and as little resistance as possible, Frere caused three columns, comprising troops of all three arms, to advance simultaneously, one from Hydrabad, a second from Deesa, and a third from Kurrachee, sent by sea to Mandavie. The command was given to Colonel Evans, by whose prompt and judicious action the town of Nuggur was recaptured and the insurgents dispersed or taken. Frere was able to report the complete success of the operations and the suppression of disturbances more than two hundred miles from the camp whence the force marched, before time enough had elapsed for an answer to be received from the Bombay Government to his report of the outbreak. Some of the officers employed under Colonel Evans had come from outside Sind, and were therefore un- acquainted with Frere's manner of dealing with insurgents. He therefore writes to Colonel Evans : — " May 4, 1859. " It may be well to impress on all officers with you that you are not dealing with mutineers but with rebels, or it may be with foreign enemies, but either as rebels or enemies entitled to a fair trial. You will be best able to judge whether any departure from the ordinary forms of procedure is necessary ; but unless the necessity is very urgent, I should strongly recommend your making over all prisoners to Captain Lambert, with instructions to try and dispose of them in the usual way. But in any case every officer under you should understand that he is not at liberty to hang any one he may think deserving, as some of them seem inclined to do." He writes again to Colonel Evans : — "May 15. " Always supposing that Akhajee was not a leader or instigator, and did not approve of what had been done, I should be inclined to let him off cheaply. Born before the Talpoors got Sind and when the Ranas were really independent robber chieftains, reared as a Desert Thakoor I&59-] SIR JOHN LAWRENCE. 283 who looked on a raid to Cutch or Guzerat as his natural, rightful mode of subsistence, he had the sense to submit from the first to Roberts, and has since honestly done his best to reconcile the old and new order of things. In a sudden disturbance like this, if he speedily separates him- self from the leaders and gives in, I would not be very extreme to mark whether he attended the rebel Rana's Durbar, provided he told his old masters he was a fool, and had made a mistake in rising. It is hardly in human nature for an old servant like him to do more, and we should be well off if all did as much. Tyrwhitt and his people will be very naturally angry with him for not doing more, but till we have some evidence of an organized plot and conspiracy, I should not condemn the old man for not telling us." To Lord Elphinstone he writes, May 5 : — " I fear there can be no doubt that the people of Parkur had substantial grounds of complaint, but, as far as can be seen from such of their statements as have reached me, not more than falls to the lot of people in every remote district, and is usually treasured up till they get an opportunity to complain. Such an opportunity they knew they would have had in a few weeks more or less, when Lieutenant Tyrwhitt came among them ; and any very pressing grievance would, no doubt, have led to some of them starting for his camp, or to Bhooj, or to Kurrachee, to complain. But the events of the last two years had unsettled their minds, and they no doubt intended to repeat the experiment they tried under the Meers, when they shot an obnoxious Kardar. "The true remedy is, I am sure, to bring the district out of its present isolation, and enable us to get at the people and the people at us, better than they can do at present." Sir John Lawrence, worn out with his great and arduous labours, was at length able, at the end of February, 1859, to leave his post in the Punjab to his successor and to start for England. His way lay down the Indus through Sind, and Frere expected him to go to Kurrachee, where 284 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VIII. he and Lady Frere were preparing to receive him with due honour. He met him accordingly in Upper Sind, and travelled two days in his company down the river. But Lawrence was too weary and ill, and too anxious to get home, to pause in his journey or go out of his way, and so went straight from the mouth of the Indus to Bombay, without going to Kurrachee. Referring to what he had seen of him during these two days, Frere says, writing to Lord Elphinstone : — "March 10, 1859. " You will have seen Sir John Lawrence and heard all and much more than I could have told you of what I heard from him. My general impression was that his difficulties, from the paralysis of the action of a Supreme Government and of the military system generally, were far greater than I had imagined, and that the present condition of everything to the North and North-West was, and is still, far worse and still more demoralized than I had believed possible. I used to think it a great mistake that Sind had not been united to the Punjab and placed under the direct control of the Supreme Government, but what I heard from Sir John has quite altered my opinion, and I fancy that with [in spite of] all the advantages of being appendages of Calcutta, your dominions are half a century in advance of either the North- West or the Punjab." Frere had never re-visited England except once on sick leave, and now that the great danger is over, his thoughts turn homeward. " March 30. " I have seen the revenue here rise from twenty-three to forty-three lacs in eight years," he writes to Lord Elphinstone. "And if your Lordship stays in India as long as I hope you will, you may certainly see the revenue of Sind three-quarters of a crore, and perhaps more. . . . I am not likely to see it, for I earned my pension last month, and now ride at single anchor." I859-] RECOGNITION OF FRERE'S SERVICES. 285 And to Mr. H. Danby Seymour he writes : — "March 17. "The first instalment of Mr. Walker's plan for im- proving the harbour of Kurrachee has been sanctioned, and is to be put in hand at once, and it will be wanted to accommodate the rapidly increasing trade. Here are some of the figures. The value of the whole seaborne trade was, in 1853-4, 88,51,000 rupees; in 1857-8, 215,92,000, being an increase of some thirty-six per cent, per annum. It will this year be probably two and three-quarter millions, which is close on the value of the whole trade of Madras, and the stream is only beginning to flow. The first square-rigged sailing ship entered the harbour in 185 1 : there were fourteen in 1852-53 ; fifty-seven in 1857-58 ; and there will be at least seventy-five this year, twenty-seven of which will have taken full cargoes for Europe. This is exclusive of Government transports. I think these facts are a sufficient answer to those who call me a visionary, and who talk of my reckless expenditure, or proposed expenditure, of public money." His services during the Mutiny in India were com- paratively little known to the general public in England ; for the very reason which was strongest evidence of his high merit, namely, that while a fierce struggle was raging on its borders, his own province was almost undisturbed, and nothing of such startling interest as to attract general notice had occurred in it. But by Lord Elphinstone and at the India Office at home, the importance of the work he had done, not only in keeping his own province quiet and in guarding his frontier, but in doing this while at the same time sending nearly all his European troops to Delhi, to the Punjab, and to the Deccan, was fully appreciated.* * Mr. (now Sir Richard) Temple, secretary to the Chief Com- missioner of the Punjab, writes to the secretary of the Bombay Government, extracting a paragraph from a letter to the secretary to the Government of India, which runs as follows: — "May 28, 1858. " The Chief Commissioner (Sir John Lawrence) could not allow his notice of the officers who have distinguished themselves to be 286 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VIII. On each of the two occasions — in January, 1858, and in April, 1859 — when the thanks of Parliament were given to the Civil Service and the army in India, his name was specially mentioned ; and on the second occasion he received the honour of a Knight Commandership of the Bath. To Major Merewether, in response to his congratulations, he writes : — " May 27, 1859. " Many thanks for your kind letter, which only expresses what I knew you would feel. But you do not feel what I do very strongly, that but for you and the Sind Horse, if any of us had lived to get honours, they would have been for the reconquest of the country, not for its preserva- tion in peace and for helping those beyond our border. One of the few points in which I did not agree with our dear friend Jacob was in rating — I trust not too highly — such rewards as among honourable objects of ambition. But I shall ever regard mine as a trust given, not to me personally, but as the head and representative of many noble and brave men who all did their duty so gloriously. " There was no part of Lord Stanley's speech which I read with half the pleasure I derived from what he said of our dear friend." Some time early in the summer of 1859, Frere heard incidentally that Lord Stanley, on Lord Canning's recommendation, was about to appoint him a Member of the Supreme Council at Calcutta. Owing to a change of closed without mention being made of the great obligations under which he lies to Mr. H. B. E. Frere, the Commissioner of Sind. From first to last, from the commencement of the Mutiny to the final triumph, that officer has rendered assistance to the Punjab administration, just as if he had been one of its own Commissioners. It was owing to his indefatigable exertions that the 1st Bombay Fusiliers arrived at Mooltan so soon as they did. He despatched the 1st and then the 2nd Belooch Battalion from Sind to succour the Punjab. The Chief Commissioner believes that probably there is no civil officer in India who, for eminent exertions, deserves better of his Government than Mr. H. B. E. Frere." iSS9.] APPOINTED TO SUPREME COUNCIL. 287 Ministry in June, Lord Stanley being succeeded at the India Office by Sir Charles Wood, nothing was for some time definitely settled. Subsequently Sir Charles Wood wrote to Lord Canning that he intended to make the ap- pointment. Still there was some uncertainty owing to the number of retirements and of places which had to be filled up. It was not till the beginning of September that he received a letter from Sir Charles Wood to say that next day he was going to nominate him. Lord Elphinstone was very unwilling to lose Frere from Sind. He afterwards told Lady Frere that he and Lord Canning had been fighting over which should have him, " but Canning, you see, has got his way." Towards the end of September he got a letter from Lord Canning, telling him that his appointment had been received, and wishing him to go to Calcutta as soon as he could. In a letter to Lord Elphinstone, he says — " October 9. " I am writing among many interruptions consequent on our departure, rather sooner than was expected. I need not tell you how very mixed is one's feeling on such an occasion. But I think my wife's feeling is nearly un- mitigated regret at leaving so many kind friends and a place where we felt of some use, and going some thousand miles farther from our children, but I hope it will not at any rate retard our chance of ultimately rejoining them. Writing to Sir Charles Wood a month later, in the interests of his successor, whoever he might be, he says — "November 11, 1859. " I have urged on Lord Elphinstone as strongly as I could the impolicy of reducing the salaries of the Com- missioners in Sind, and I believe he fully agrees with me. Owing to the position of the place it is, as I found by experience, quite impossible for the chief civil officer and 288 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VIII. representative of Government to do his duty, either to Government or Society, and to save out of the salary heretofore allowed — as he might and ought to do out of a very much inferior appointment here in Bombay. . . . " I am convinced there is no worse economy than underpaying your officers in charge of frontier and insulated provinces like Sind. It is a serious financial mistake to pay any of the superior officers of Government so low as to make it difficult to save a decent competence before they are quite worn out, and for a warden of the marches to have to consider whether a guest more or less will make a serious difference in his household expenditure, may make the difference between success or failure in important public affairs. One of the most sagacious men in India once said to me, speaking of Sir William Macnaughten's avoidance of society, ' I often used to think a few dozen of champagne might have averted the Cabool disaster,' and what constitutional shyness did for Sir William, is often done by parsimonious living in our Indian stations. We have little expression of public opinion, hardly any originating with the better-informed class of public servants, and the man in high official position who shuts himself out from hearing what his English fellow-servants say and think in society is sure, sooner or later, to go wrong. I think I could trace some of the worst and most dangerous blunders of late years to the recluse habits of some of our leading men, who ought to have known every pulsation of feeling among Europeans as well as natives ; and whatever may be said of the old lavish style of Indian expenditure, it certainly left our officers no excuse for a parsimony which Mountstuart Elphinstone, Malcolm, or Metcalfe would have held in- compatible with successful administration. I would not have inflicted this dissertation on you, but having left Sind I feel free to speak on a subject which I am satisfied is of vital importance to my successor, and it may make all the difference between his taking a pride and pleasure in his work, and his being anxious to quit it as a very laborious and ill-paid office, which I am convinced it will be if the threatened reduction in the salary is carried out." When it was known at Kurrachee that Sir Bartle was to leave Sind, a public meeting was held, to propose 1859.] HIS STEWARDSHIP IN SIND. 289 the presentation of an address, expressive of public feeling on his approaching departure. All races and classes joined in expressing their love and respect for his character and their sense of the benefits which under his wise and fostering rule of nearly nine years had been con- ferred on the province. The address was signed by more than five thousand persons in Kurrachee, and by as many more from other parts of Sind. In replying, Frere disclaimed any originality in his principles and methods, which were those of Mountstuart Elphinstone and Malcolm, of Outram, Pottinger, and Clerk, and after paying a warm tribute to Napier and Jacob, he said : — " In the other branches of administration to which you specially allude, if I have been successful it has been by exposing to the utmost of my power the centralizing fashion which has of late years been so common, and which I have always considered to be one great cause of our late disasters. " I believe you have not exaggerated what has been done in many of the departments which you specify, but I feel convinced that however earnestly and ably I might have laboured, the results would have been comparatively insignificant had I acted on any other principle than that of giving to every workman the freest scope and best aid I could, to do in his own way that work which God put into his heart to attempt ; it is this which, in almost every district, has enabled our officers, with very limited means, to crowd into a few years such a vast amount of improve- ment in roads, canals, railways, steamers, and other results and marks of civilization. " I have endeavoured to pursue the same policy in all matters affecting commerce, regarding Government inter- ference and Government imposts as in themselves serious evils, and believing it to be the appropriate function of Government simply to protect all men in the enjoyment of their rights and possessions as long as they do not in- terfere with the rights or possessions of others, and to remove all obstacles, natural or artificial, to such enjoy- VOL. 1. U 290 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VIII. ment ; it has been my study not to develope commerce and industry, but to leave commerce and industry free to develope themselves." Independently of the above, an address was presented to Frere by the native community of Kurrachee. After enumerating the benefits Sind had received from his rule, it says : — " Perhaps you cannot at present fully know the extent to which your good qualities, your knowledge of the secret of gaining the hearts of the natives of India, and of governing them by the sole power of justice and love, have endeared you to the people of this province, and made you popular alike among all classes of the country, natives as well as Europeans, countrymen as well as foreigners. But had your route lain through the province, instead of by sea, we are sure you would have found every step of your way crowded by a sorrowing populace. From the aristocracy of the land down to the humblest fisher- man, every soul would have deserted their pleasure and their daily labour, and flocked round you to give vent to the outpourings of their hearts. You would have met with none but weeping and sorrowing faces on the sudden parting with their deservedly beloved and revered ruler. But you are saved such an affecting scene. We, however, are sure that you will yet hear of their grief on learning that their benefactor, whose ever-smiling face annually brightened every villager's homestead with a visit from Kurrachee up to Kusmore, and from Thur up to the remotest corner of the Hill regions, has suddenly left them, with but a slender hope of ever seeing him again. . . . " We would say in conclusion, that if Her Majesty's Government want to select from among the Indian states- men one who possesses the key of the secret of touching and winning the hearts of men of different creeds and castes of which the native society of this country is com- posed, by the power of love and not of fear, they should look to you, and to you alone. You have appreciated and illustrated the ' Power of Love ' to its fullest extent in your administration of this province. There are volumes in those three words, and your rule here has proved that iSS9] FAREWELL. 2pl you had thoroughly mastered them, feeling as you do that * we have all of us one human heart.' " Frere, in his reply, alludes to the immunity from disturbance which Sind had enjoyed during the past two troubled years, ascribing, mainly to the loyalty of the inhabitants and the efficiency of the police, the fact — " That we went about our ordinary avocations in peace and quietness, and that though attempts were repeatedly made in different places to excite insurrection, no public office was ever closed for a single day, our ordinary com- mercial dealings were never interrupted, and no com- munity was kept for more than a part of a single night out of their beds, in consequence of any of the abortive attempts at insurrection." On the morning of one of the last days of October, Sir Bartle and Lady Frere left Government House for the last time. There was not a man in the length and breadth of Sind, it was said, to whom his face or voice was not familiar ; and all Kurrachee, European and native, had turned out to line the road by which he was to pass to the harbour. The soft October sun shone upon crowded ranks of people in every variety of bright-coloured costume, on intent faces, and on a forest of outstretched hands, seeking in simple Eastern fashion to touch if it were only a fold of the coat of him who, during ten years of peace and plenty, such as they had never known before, had been their ruler and their friend. Through the native town the train moved at foot's pace to the Napier Mole of the harbour — the first passenger-train that had gone that way. Here some mishap occurred at the facing-points — a truck went off the rails — and carriages had to be procured to take them the remaining mile and a half to the head of the pier, which was decorated for the occasion. A boat was waiting to row them to the steamer, into which Frere, 292 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. VIII. with difficulty releasing himself from his friends, was the last to enter. The strains of " God save the Queen," the boom of fifteen guns from the fort, and the cheers of the crowd of comrades and of friends, in whose moved faces and moistened eyes congratulation struggled vainly with regret, carried to him across the widening water a last farewell from Sind. CHAPTER IX. CALCUTTA. Settles at Calcutta — Mr. Mackinnon — Indian finance — Mr. James Wilson — Income-tax — Sir C. Trevelyan — Death of Wilson — Sir Robert Napier — Military Finance Commission — The Arms Bill — Constitution of Legislative Council. The vessel that took Sir Bartle and Lady Frere from Kur- rachee was the Fevoze, belonging to the Indian navy. One of those petty local outbreaks, which were still happening from time to time — sparks fanned into flame by the per- vading spirit of unrest — had recently occurred at a place on the coast of Kattywar, some two hundred miles south- east of Kurrachee, and the insurgent Waghers had occu- pied a small fort at Dwarka, which was being invested by some troops. The ammunition running short, a fresh supply had been sent for, which the Feroze had taken on board to leave on her way down the coast. She reached Dwarka and landed the boxes of ammunition at the very time that a bombardment from the sea and an assault by land of the fort was going on, which Sir Bartle and Lady Frere were able to watch from the deck of the vessel, the shots from the fort occasionally passing through the rig- ging or striking the water near. After taking in several wounded men, the Feroze proceeded on her way to Bombay. There they were detained for more than three weeks, 294 THE LIFE 0F SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Cn. IX. waiting for their vessel to go on to Calcutta. The delay gave him the opportunity of intercourse with Lord Elphinstone, and of making himself acquainted with the opinions of leading men at Bombay. Thence they went on to Galle, then the port of junction where the mail steamers from Suez, Calcutta, Bombay, China, and Aus- tralia met, and where they had a few days to wait. In a long letter to one of his daughters at home, he describes the beauties and antiquities and interesting- features of Galle, a place so familiar to travellers in those days — the spider canoes, or catamarans, used as surf-boats for landing passengers from the steamers in the roadstead, made out of a hollowed tree, and balanced, so as to be in- capable of upsetting, by a beam floating on the water attached to it by stiff rods six or eight feet long ; the costume of the Cingalese men, a black silk jacket and petticoat, and with hair drawn back into a knot at the back of the head, " like a respectable Portuguese of Bombay masquerading as a woman;" the old Dutch gateway; the Court House, with a cock and the date 1603 over it ; the narrow streets, where two carriages could not pass ; and the well-known road to Wakwallah, a few miles inland, the perfection of tropical scenery. The letter is inter- spersed with spirited illustrations, and five different kinds of palms are noted and each accurately sketched — " Besides scores of other trees, of which I could recognize but few, but all most luxuriant, and with a greater variety of form and foliage than in any Indian scenery I know. As we ascended we had the most lovely peeps down the sides of the hill — sometimes into little dells — quite over- shadowed by the thick trees, with neat little cottages under them, swarming with children. At other times we got more distant views of the hills in the interior, or of the seashore and bay, with its deep blue sea and white breakers. At the top we found a very neat bungalow, as 1859] GALLE. 295 we should call it in India, a house with only a ground floor — wide verandahs projecting far out, so as to throw as much shade as possible without excluding the breeze — rooms floored with real Dutch tiles, and furnished with old Dutch carved ebony couches, chairs, or cabinets, elaborate enough to drive a carved furniture-fancier crazy, and a pretty garden in terraces round all, between the house and the edge of the hill, with beautiful peeps of distant scenery beyond. " For the first time in my life I saw India as it appeared to my imagination thirty years ago, and I again implicitly believed in the scenery of 'Paul and Virginia' and the ' Indian Cottage,' after a quarter of a century of scepticism and disappointment." They spent three days at Guindy, near Madras, as the guests of Sir Charles Trevelyan the Governor, and reached Calcutta December 21. Frere writes to Lord Ripon : — " December 21. " We have been here but a few days, only time enough to see that the city is far more metropolitan in appearance than either Madras or Bombay, and the European popula- tion far larger and more varied ; but I am sadly disappointed in the natives, though what I have seen of them explains much which was before inexplicable in the conduct of Europeans during the Mutiny and their sentiments since. I think it a very serious evil that so large and influential a section of the rulers of India should obtain their first, often their only knowledge of the natives of India from a race which seems to me both physically and mentally inferior to any of the more civilized races of Northern and Western India. On this account, and for many other reasons, I am glad that Mr. Wilson has gone up to join the Governor-General's camp, and will get as far as Lahore before he turns his face in this direction." At Calcutta he took a house, No. 31, Chowringhee Road, in a fine range of buildings facing the Maidan Park, or Plain, the Hyde Park of Calcutta, outside the city. Here he would be seen at sunrise riding " Beejapore," a fine 296 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IX. Arab he had taken from Satara to Sind, and brought on to Calcutta, over the fine galloping ground, or round the race-course, or in the shady roads of the suburbs on the two sides of the Maidan facing the country. The day would be spent in his study or in attending the Executive or Legislative Council ; and late in the afternoon, if not too busy, he would be out riding or driving again. The evenings he rarely had to himself. Work after nightfall in an Indian climate is fatal to health, and to be avoided if possible ; and he entered freely into society. He was the first Bombay civilian who had ever been ap- pointed to the Supreme Council ; hitherto its members had always been taken from the Bengal service, and the Cal- cutta civilians were not at first inclined to be cordial towards a stranger from another Presidency ; but his tact, kindli- ness, and courtesy, his readiness to mix in general society and make himself acquainted with current opinion, and the liberality with which he maintained the high standard of Indian hospitality, soon overcame prejudice and made him generally popular. Nor was his hospitality confined to the official world. At Calcutta, more than at Bombay, and than elsewhere in India, the Civil servants had hitherto been socially a class apart, having little intercourse with non-official Europeans, and none at all with natives. But Sir Bartle and Lady Frere had a welcome for all classes and races, and tact to offer it in such a way as to offend no prejudices. Lady Frere visited the native ladies, as she had been accus- tomed to do in Sind, in Satara, and formerly in Bombay ; and the native merchants, and native princes and rajahs who came to Calcutta were often entertained at their house. Friends would look in, uninvited, to breakfast ; and once a week Frere had a public breakfast to which any person who wished to see him on any business could come. Any iS6o-2.] SIR WILLIAM MACKINNON. 297 one arriving from England or from some other part of India, any one who had information or experience to im- part, or a cause to advocate — artists, missionaries, soldiers, merchants, men of science, and above all, travellers — found in him an attentive and sympathetic listener. The non- official Europeans, whose only way of making their wants and grievances known had hitherto been by articles in the Press — often virulent and abusive in proportion to their powerlessness to produce any effect — found Frere always ready to give them a courteous and attentive hearing. It was thus that about two years after this time he first met Mr. (afterwards Sir William) Mackinnon, who became for the rest of his life one of his warmest friends. Mackinnon had gone out to India from Glasgow a few years previously, a young man, and with slender means, to take up a business in partnership with a friend who had preceded him to India. After a time they had come to own two steamers of six hundred tons each, trading from Calcutta to Burmah ; more steamers were acquired, and the concern became the "Burmah Steam Navigation Company." Mackinnon had larger schemes in view, for which he needed a Government subsidy ; but Calcutta officials in those days were not very accessible to the outside mercantile world, and it was not till early in 1862, shortly before Frere left Calcutta, that a friend took him to one of Frere's semi- public breakfasts, and he was able to get a hearing from some one who could help him. He proposed, if a subsidy were granted to him, to establish a line of coasting steamers, calling at all ports of the coast from Calcutta round to Kurrachee. Frere, with his quick eye for a man of mettle, gave him and his proposal a cordial reception. " You are the man I have been looking for for years," he said to him ; and he took him to Lord Canning, who gave favourable attention to his scheme. But the consent of the Bombay 298 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IX. Government was also necessary, and this Mackinnon was unable to obtain till Frere went to Bombay as Governor in April, 1863. There he was the first person with whom Frere had an interview after being sworn in, and the result was that the subsidy was soon after granted. The " Burmah Steam Navigation Company " became the " British India Company ; " and in time the steamers ex- tended their trips to the Persian Gulf, to the East African Coast, to England, and to Australia. When Frere's mission went to Zanzibar in 1872-3, Mackinnon maintained for several months, with great advantage to the Mission, and at a great expense to himself, a fortnightly postal service to Zanzibar. The British India Company has now a fleet of eighty-eight steamers, some of them of from four to six thousand tons. In case of need it could, and would, at a week's notice, collect steamers enough at Calcutta, Madras, or Bombay to convey thirty thousand troops to any port required — an addition to the defensive strength of - the Empire which it is difficult to adequately estimate. This great company took its first impulse — so said Sir William Mackinnon — from the encouragement given by Frere to a young and unknown man at his breakfast-table in Chowringhee Road. The office to which Frere had been appointed was Member of the Supreme Council of India, that is, of the Cabinet of the Governor-General. The question of finance, of how to make both ends meet, was the absorbing problem of the day. From 1853-4 to 1856-7 there had been a deficit every year. Then came the Mutiny, when, in the struggle for exist- ence, the expenditure was uncontrolled and lavish. The deficit for 1857-8 was eight millions sterling; that for 1858-9, fourteen millions; and the estimated deficit for 1859-60 was upwards of ten millions. Unless matters iS6o.j FINANCIAL DIFFICULTIES. 299 could be mended, bankruptcy must follow, or India would have to be retained at such a cost to the mother-country as she could hardly be expected to submit to. Compara- tively little increase could be made to taxation ; for India is, or was then, a country of few rich men and many poor. If the balance of income and expenditure was to be restored, it must be mainly by a reduction of ex- penditure. In February, 1859, nearly a year before he went to Calcutta, Frere had written to Mr. H. Danby Seymour : — " My few spare minutes have been given to answering Colonel Durand's questions on the re-organization of the army, of which I ordered a copy to be sent to you. They were mostly written in July and August, but every week since has convinced me more strongly of the fact that the question is essentially a financial one, and that unless it is so viewed and disposed of, we shall lose India, not from any incapacity to hold it, but from finding it too costly and troublesome a possession to be worth keeping. You or men who know India are not likely to think so, but numbers of the tax-paying classes would, if they found Indian de- ficiencies disturbing the Stock Exchange. Out here there seems no one connected with the Supreme Government who has any definite plan of finance, and from Lord Dal- housie's conversion of the Five per cents, to the present moment nothing could be more unworthy of a great Government than the haphazard way in which we have drifted in finance. . . . " It is the total apparent want of plan and method, of any defined object, the general trusting to what may turn up, and the sort of demoralization consequent thereon, that are, to my mind, symptoms of evil omen, even now when every one is saying that our troubles are over. (We) are, in some respects, less likely to govern India as we ought than before our late terrible lesson." On the threshold of any financial reform was the im- possibility of obtaining reliable information as to what the 300 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Cn. IX. expenditure really amounted to in the different provinces, and on what the money was spent. Frere writes to Sir C. Wood : — " May 3, i860. " There is nothing in hand relating to either military or police ; no information you get on either subject is com- plete ; all that appears wildest and most exaggerated in Sir Charles Napier's later diatribes on these subjects is strictly and literally true. Lord Ellenborough will tell you how he found matters in both departments when he was here, and they are far worse now — the worst feature of all being the incapacity of most of the official men here to discover or admit that all is not perfection. I could not give you a better instance than the one before you in the discussion between Sir C. Trevelyan and Lord Elphinstone on the one hand, and Mr. Wilson on the other, as to the cost of the army and police for this year now ending, and the amount of reduction which can be relied on as in progress for 1860-61. The difference between the two results is not a few thousand rupees, but millions sterling, and this, not on a question of calculation, but of fact, such as you would learn from the War or Home Offices in a few hours to within a few thousand pounds. The discussion has been going on for weeks, and it is still difficult to prove conclusively who is right : I am convinced that Mr. Wilson is, and feel assured that if he has erred, it is in under-estimating the charges. But when you see the time and trouble required to prove a fact which ought to be clear from turning over a few leaves of a ledger, you may imagine the difficulty of getting materials for framing schemes of altered organization and reduced expendi- ture. . . . "You will naturally ask, what is to be done? I should say, in the first place, leave much more to the Governor- General to do and give him more aid to do it. . . . The Commander-in-Chief must be in reality a ' Commander-in- Chief in India,' and not, as Sir Charles Napier truly called him, • only a gigantic Adjutant-General.' Let him cease to be troubled with the petty details of this vast and heterogeneous Bengal army ; make over to a Commander- in-Chief of the Forces in each Lieutenant Government the same duties which a Commander of Forces in Bombay or i860.] COST OF INDIAN ARMY. 3OI Madras could exercise ; and let each Lieutenant-Governor have the same sort of control over the movement and disposition of the troops that the Governors of Bombay and Madras have. Since General Outram has been ill I have had the military work passing through my hands, and I certainly have never had to do with so chaotic a department. Less than one-third of the work is of an imperial character, such as ought to occupy the time and attention of a Governor-General or his Council ; the rest is such as, in any other country, would go to the Adjutant or Quartermaster-General, to a Brigadier, or some of it even to an inferior officer. Mixed as it is with the really important work, it effectually prevents the latter being done, and hence so many subjects of great importance are unavoidably postponed or slurred over." The military expenditure in India had been, in round numbers — Sterling. For 1856-7 ... ... 11^ millions. 1857-8 ... ... i 5^ millions. 1858-9 ... ... 21 millions. 1859-60 ... ... I7| millions. 1 860-1 ... (estimate) 15^ millions. Thus, though it had already been much reduced, it was still 3| millions more than before the Mutiny. The increase of expenditure was not by any means solely in the Military Department. The total increase, Civil and Military, as compared with the year before the Mutiny, was iitj millions, and was made up thus — Sterling. Military in India ... ... 3,784,415 Other than Military in India ... 3,942,846 Home charges of all kinds ... 3,817,738 11,544,999 But, except in the important item of police, there was no 302 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Cn. IX. prospect of being able to make any material reduction in the Civil charges ; it was even doubtful if they could be kept from increasing. It was therefore only in the Military Department, and In the cognate department of police, that any material reduction could be looked for. And it appeared also that even if the military expenditure could be brought to as low a point as before the Mutiny, there would still be a deficit of more than six millions, unless the revenue could by some means be increased. In view of the serious financial difficulty, the Home Government had sent out, as " legal " member of the Supreme Council, not, as usual, a barrister, but a financier, the Right Honourable James Wilson, who had gained a high reputation for skill in finance by the ability of his articles in the Economist, of which he was editor, and by his good work while holding office, successively, at the Board of Control, the Treasury, and the Board of Trade. When Frere arrived at Calcutta, Wilson had gone up the country with Lord Canning. Shortly after his return, on February 18, he laid before the Council his estimates and his proposals, the most important and novel of which was the imposition of an income-tax throughout India for five years. All incomes above £50 were to pay four per cent., those between .£50 and .£20, two per cent, those under that amount being exempt. There was also to be an annual license-tax of ten rupees on wholesale, and four rupees on retail trades, and one rupee on artisans. There could be no doubt that to impose an income-tax at such a time was a serious and even hazardous experi- ment. All the many objections which had rendered the carrying out of such a measure difficult and unpopular in England applied with greater force to India, where, instead i860.] INCOME-TAX. 303 of a loyal and homogeneous population with an organized and reliable staff of officials,, there was a heterogeneous aggregation of men, with, for the most part, little or no sentiment of loyalty to the Government, and, in Northern India, not yet returned to their normal condition of acquiescence in submission to the ruling powers from which they had been aroused by the Mutiny. Frere himself had been inclined to think that the balance of expenditure and income might be re-established by the natural increase of revenue and by a reduction of ex- penditure, such as could be effected by better administra- tion, a better system of local audit, and by the cutting down of needless and wasteful expenditure which he knew to be going on, and which if inquired into would come to light. But he knew also that the waste and abnormal expenditure was not entirely owing to the Mutiny, but was of older growth, and was due to causes which would take, not months, but years to change and reform, and that in the mean time some such source of additional revenue as an income-tax, however perilous, was a necessity. The proposal to impose an income-tax did not in general meet with a favourable reception from Indian officials. A suggestion had been made that, instead of levying an income-tax, revenue should be raised by the imposition of local octroi and transit duties, which it was said would be productive, and would excite little opposi- tion. To this Frere replied in a Minute : — " February 17, i860. " The course (proposed) is, in every respect, retrograde. All these various and very incongruous modes of collecting money are revivals of abolished native modes of taxation, condemned long ago, not by speculative theorists, but by all our wisest and most experienced practical adminis- trators, on the very solid ground, that for every rupee they 304 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IX. brought into the Treasury, they kept out two which would otherwise flow in by some legitimate channel ; that such taxes strangled trade and industry, and that their pro- ductiveness was an exact measure of the indirect mischief they did. " Their abolition on these grounds has been generally the first measure with which our rule in a lapsed Native State commenced. It has always been the one mea- sure most popular with all classes, save the great capitalists. . . . " I should have much preferred, if it were possible, to have so far reduced our current general expenditure that it could be met by our ordinary revenue, and that the large sums which ought to be raised and spent on objects more or less local (roads, canals, education, and many others), should have been provided by local taxation, locally arranged, by local bodies, acting on general principles laid down by the general legislative body of India, and in distinct and perfect subordination to the general Government of India. " I am sanguine that in time such economy as I have described may be enforced, but that time cannot now be allowed. Our wants are urgent, and owing, as it seems to me, to the erroneous mode in which for twenty-five years we have attempted to centralize, we cannot now enforce economy as rapidly as a really strong centralized Govern- ment would, and as our need requires. " Nor can we, by a stroke of the pen, resuscitate that spirit of local and municipal administration which is never entirely extinguished in an Indian community, but which for years past so many of our measures have tended to check and paralyze, and which must be in vigorous exist- ence before any extensive plan of local administration of local affairs can be organized. "Situated as we are, a general system of direct taxation, such as our Right Honourable Colleague will, I understand, propose, seems to me the only really effectual measure which can be desired. I am not blind to the risks and objections which beset any such measure ; I look upon them as truly formidable ; but I see no escape. The alternative is nothing less than absolute and early ruin, if peace continues — ruin still more rapid should the strain of war come upon us." i860.] OPPOSITION TO INCOME-TAX. 305 The most serious opposition to the income-tax proposals came from Madras. The Governor, Sir Charles Trevelyan, not content with recording his objections and those of his Council in a Minute for the consideration of the Governor- General and Supreme Council, took the unprecedented, and for a man of his official experience, the inexcusable step of sending a copy of the Minute — in spite of the protest of the two Civil Members of his Council — to the Press, for publication. Thus, in the face of all India, European and native, he proclaimed himself, at a critical time and on a vital question of policy, to be in marked opposition to the Governor-General and his Council. Little progress could be made with the Budget proposals till the question was referred home. Frere writes to Trevelyan : — "April 9, i860. " I cannot tell you what a source of sincere regret it has been to me ever since we received your letter regarding the financial schemes brought forward by Mr. Wilson, to find myself in any way opposed to you. Not only because I had hoped that occasions would rarely arise on which we should differ, but because I cannot help fearing that the course you have taken will interfere very seriously with the emancipation of the Government of Madras and Bom- bay from that interference by the Government of India, which you, I know, think quite as mischievous as I do. You have taken the battle on a question of finance and army organization — two of the three classes of questions which, it seems to me, must always be left to the Govern- ment of India, external politics being the third. . . . What new taxes are to be imposed is a question on which pro- bably no two men would exactly agree, and much must, it seems to me, be conceded by all of us to whoever is to bear the responsibility of setting our finances to rights, and as we cannot all of us be Chancellors of the Indian Exchequer, we must do our best to aid him who is. Were we all in Parliament, if the Opposition had the best of it, they would, of course, change places with the Ministry VOL. I. X 306 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IX. and try their hands at finance ; but even if that could be done in our case, how would you as Governor-General prevent the new Governor of Madras from making a similar stand against your scheme ? I greatly fear that whatever the Secretary of State and people at home may think of your arguments, they will begin to doubt how the Government of India can be carried on while such opposi- tion on a financial question is possible." To the objections relied upon in the " Letter from the Madras Government on the Income and License Tax Bill," that Mr. Wilson's scheme " was entirely on the English model," that "the taxes he proposes are utterly unsuited to India," and that " his plan embraces the intro- duction into India of direct taxation " (as if it were a novelty), Frere replied in a letter to Sir C. Wood : — "April 23, i860. " There is no part of Mr. Wilson's plans that might not have had a place under a different name in any scheme of Akbar's — no single tax which is not at this present moment levied by almost any independent Native State when in difficulties ; and if you look at the various sug- gestions of those men who know the natives best, you will find that they, with scarcely an exception, recommend one or more taxes identical in principle with the three proposed taxes, but not either so simple or complete. The scheme, as a whole, is, it is true, a financial revolution, and like all revolutions a thing to be avoided, if possible. . . . But it is not a revolution from Indian to English finance, as they who object to it assert ; it is rather a return to modes of taxation, once universal in India, and even now existing in every unaltered Native State, and which we only gave up in our own provinces within the last twenty-five years, the main alteration being that the new taxes are uniform and simple in their incidence, and free from the arbitrary exemptions and anomalies of every kind, which made it difficult to reform the old taxes without abolishing them. If you refer to the proceedings of Government about 1834 and '36, when the Mohlurfa and other direct taxes were abolished in Bengal and Bombay, you will find that many of the most experienced men then advocated their reform i860.] SIR GEORGE CLERK. 307 rather than their abolition, and it was the difficulty of any- real reform, joined to the then flourishing state of our finances, which led the Government of India to abandon all the multiform direct taxes, which were more or less income-taxes and taxes on trades and professions, and which were nearly as ancient and universal as the land- tax. I doubt whether you could consult a single native prime minister of any native sovereign who would not recommend something of the kind as his native panacea for our financial difficulties." Sir Charles Wood, on the matter being referred home, at once recalled Sir C. Trevelyan. Sir Henry Ward took his place at Madras, and after Ward's death, a few months later, Sir William Denison succeeded. From Bombay also, Lord Elphinstone, to Frere's regret, for he greatly valued his opinion, wrote a Minute, express- ing disapproval of the income-tax. He felt convinced that had Lord Elphinstone had a complete statement of the financial position before him, he would have come to a different conclusion ; but there was no time for dis- cussion with him, for in the spring of i860 he went home, and was succeeded by Sir George Clerk. Sir George Clerk had done good work, and held high offices in India, including, in 1847-8, that of Governor of Bombay for about a year ; and had lately been at the Board of Control and at the India Office, under Lord Stanley and Sir Charles Wood. He was an intimate friend of Frere's, wrote frequently and confidentially to him, and being a racy and vigorous writer — occasionally, perhaps, tempted into using exaggerated language — as well as an able and energetic administrator, their corre- spondence shows unreservedly the thoughts of each on the questions of the day, on which they were generally in accord.* * Frere, writing in 1849, speaks of him as "a liberal, enlightened. 308 THE LIFE OF SIR IIARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IX. Frerc writes to him : — " May 9, i860. " Mr. Wilson has been again very carefully over his cal- culations, and finds that Lord Elphinstone is nearly four millions out in his Indian calculations alone. . . . " I much wish that Lord Elphinstone had taken for granted the correctness of Mr. Wilson's estimate of the deficiency to be provided for, for without the materials which he has in the offices here, and the time and attention he can devote to them, it is impossible to frame a better — and in no single minute particular has he yet been found in error. By next year, no doubt, there will be the materials for framing such estimates as you have in Eng- land. At present it can be done only very roughly — errors are continually coming to light, but, unfortunately, they are all on the wrong side, and make the deficit worse than was expected. . . . " Everybody has lost confidence in Government and in every one else, and Mr. Wilson's plain statement of his difficulties, and the plan he proposed for getting out of them, were the first gleam of light that the non-official public here had seen for many a day. There was a visible return of confidence, and all was going on well, till Sir C. Trevelyan's Minute appeared, and this gave to those who dislike the new taxes — always, of course, a numerous body — just the sort of encouragement they wanted. " There are, of course, many details in Mr. W.'s plan which I should have liked to have seen otherwise arranged, . . . and in many things a little less haste would have been better speed ; but as a whole, I hardly think he had an alternative ; and if he is now thwarted or defeated, I do not see what his successor can do ; further reduction — I mean beyond the point allowed for by Mr. Wilson — seems to me impossible without dictatorial powers given to the Governor- General (and then they must be given to a man who can and will use them), or without opening a fresh loan, which is only another road to ultimate ruin. . . . far-sighted statesman, with great determination in carrying his own measures, and great skill in managing men ; detested by the jobbing, jog-trot office men in Bombay ; not liked nor supported, as he should have been, by men who ought to have known better, but universally regretted by all whose opinion was worth having." iS6a] MR. JAMES WILSON. 309 " Nothing can be better than Lord Canning's own intentions, as far as I can judge, but Dalhousie principles are still in the ascendant with B. and the rest of them. As for Bengal, the longer I stay, the more I am amazed at the wonderful patience of all classes. To me it has the appearance of anarchy in everything but that the Govern- ment revenue is still paid, and judging from Western experience I should have expected that last sign of obedience to Government to disappear two months ago. But to all one says, the Government officers reply with a smile of contemptuous pity, and no man of influence seems to realize the risks they are running except William Grey, who is a first-rate man in every way, save that he has no Mofussil experience. shuts himself up and is almost inaccessible, lies in bed till late in the day, and sits up at night splitting hairs, after his old fashion. It is a great pity, for he has the abilities of five Lord Chancellors, but (is) fossilized by long residence here, and by the worship of the little clique about Calcutta. Here and elsewhere all the great questions about the army, police, and the courts are in abeyance, drifting till some strong hand takes the helm. " As far as I am myself concerned, I do not dislike the place, or the work, though there is just now about four times as much as mortal man could do properly, owing to Outram being away, the Civil Council one short, and Mr. Wilson able to do little but his own Financial Department, which is a Herculean labour in itself, if he is to set it right in five years ; but I feel much like the fly on the coach-wheel, with little real power to direct the team. Daily do I wish we had you here. But if you cannot take the whole thing into your own hands, you will, I hope, at least stop Bombay from following the example of Madras. . . . " I believe if we could only get our finances in order all would come right, and therefore, though on many points of minor detail I might take a different view from Mr. Wilson, I support his general measure with all my might. His defeat seems to me equivalent to leaving the whole thing to Parliament and the Council of India, — in other words, to ruin, — for until ruin overtakes them they are not likely to see that you can have but one real Government for India, and that that Government can only safely be in India." 310 THE LIFE OF SIR EARTLE FRERE. [Cn. IX. Nor did Sir George Clerk like the idea of an income- tax. He writes to Frere from Bombay — "May 17. "Why on earth could not Mr. Wilson have let India bide still awhile ? With what I know about enormous waste in North- West Provinces and Punjab, no one will persuade me we might not have made healthy progress in finance and have prepared the people to go with us two years hence in almost any form of new taxation, provided they were first consulted, and allozved time to deliberate about it." As to Sir G. Clerk's opinion, Frere writes to Lord Canning : — "June 11, i860. "You must, I think, draw a distinction between what he would wish to do, if circumstances were other than they are, and what he would propose to do under existing circum- stances. I do not think he sees any escape from the necessity which we all lament, or that if he were now in your Council he would give his voice against the proposed measures, or their immediate introduction in October next " There are some men — Sir G. Clerk himself is an admir- able specimen of the class — who might be dropped into any native community and would rule it, as Englishmen should always rule a weaker race, with little need of English troops ; but such men are always rare ; and since the proceedings connected with the Affghan War debased so many of the then rising generation of political officers, they have been in proportion rarer than before. Meantime our dominions have extended with marvellous rapidity, and the Government has had to employ many men who have no capacity for any but the French or Cossack style of dealing with natives — a style the inherent evils of which are sometimes mitigated by English good nature, some- times aggravated by doctrinaire conceit, but which always requires an enormous visible preponderance of physical force to back it. . . ." Whether he liked them or not, Sir G. Clerk loyally accepted the income-tax proposals and did his best to i860.] INCOME-TAX PASSED. 311 make them work smoothly, while he gave his mind to the still more important matter of retrenchment. To Mr. Barrow Ellis, Frere writes : — "July 31, i860. "First as to your accusation that I have become a wretched Qui Hi * Centralizer, . . . forgetful of his old principles and old presidency. Be it known to you that I do not intend to plead to any charge in the Revenue or Financial Department, everything connected with which goes to Mr. Wilson, and I see and hear nothing of it, unless he asks my opinion, or the matter comes before Council, neither of which, generally, happens till it is rather late for advice to be of use. We are excellent friends, and he always expresses himself as valuing my opinion very highly on all matters, and I often recognize bits of my own suggestions in his propositions. I urged at the outset of the income-tax that he should refer to the Govern- ments of Madras and Bombay for their solution of the financial difficulty, and ask them what they thought of his suggestions ; very possibly this would not have stopped or prevented the Trevelyan row, but it would have saved heartburning and time, and made the measure a better one. On various occasions since, I have counselled a similar course, with but rare success, for he has a great idea that to treat India as containing numerous different nations is as great a mistake as to dissolve the Union or restore the Heptarchy, and friend rather encourages this idea, and is apt to argue that you may do what you please in India, if you only do it with a high hand ; so the upshot of it all is, that having more, much more than I can do, of my own, I leave my Right Honorable Colleague to do his work his own way, only always telling him when I think he is going wrong, if I know it before it is done, which is not often, and remonstrating even afterwards, if I see the papers, which is not always. I think this will dispose of most of your accusations, at least all connected with customs accounts and establishments. I must say that when a matter is discussed in time, it is difficult to meet with a more clear-headed, sensible, reasonable, and liberal man than Wilson is. . . ." * Bengalee. 312 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IX. Wilson's Budget passed the Legislative Council, and the Income-tax Bill became law. It was his last public work. The Indian climate, to a man who goes there late in life and works hard, is too often fatal. He died after a few days' illness, during which Frere was frequently with him, early in August. Frere writes to Major F. Marriott : — "August ii, i860. " It was a very sad sight that funeral of Wilson's. Twelve days before he had been talking to my wife about his plans for going away to the Neilgerries when his Bills were all passed, and we went to see him the day before he was taken ill. He sent us many messages, asking my wife to take care of his unmarried daughter, if the married one left, and desired that I would take up and carry through his unfinished measures. I felt this proof of his confidence the more, because he knew that in the manner of carrying out many measures, and in some of the measures them- selves, I did not entirely agree with him. No ancient Stoic or modern Red Indian could have met death more com- posedly, or made more calm preparation for carrying on the various schemes he left incomplete." Frere had now, therefore, in addition to his own depart- ment, to take up and carry on the whole of the financial work, as well as the military finance — which last employ- ment enabled him to look after the " Military Finance Commission," which, " since Wilson's death, had got into a good deal of hot water," and to keep things together till Wilson's successor, Mr. Laing, arrived six months after- wards. He writes to General Cotton (January 8, 1861), apolo- gizing for an unanswered letter : — " I hope Forbes will have told you how I have been worked since poor Wilson died and Outram left ; and now I look forward to Laing's arrival, and to the appointment of some good man to succeed Outram, much as a ship- wrecked sailor watches the sail that may save his life. i860.] WANT OF GOOD ACCOUNTS. 3*3 Even then we shall be trying to work a first-rate man-of- war with the crew of a coasting collier." To Sir Charles Wood he writes : — "November 23, i860. " I trust we are not to take the diatribes of the Times as an index of the general feeling in England as to the mode in which the Government of India has acted in financial matters since Mr. Wilson's death. There is no single diffi- culty which has arisen for which any one now here is fairly responsible, but they are all attributed to Lord Canning and his Indian advisers. " I would not have alluded to this had it not been con- nected with one of the great popular mistakes regarding Indian finance. It is generally believed that Indian in- solvency is only to be averted by some miracle of financial statesmanship, such as would save Austria or Turkey. This is a dangerous error, first, because it leads the public to expect novel and striking plans, instead of being content with what is homely, obvious, and comparatively easy of attainment ; and secondly, because it sets your financiers to search for such striking novelties instead of being con- tent to work hard at more useful drudgery. . . . You simply want good accounts, and steady, good manage- ment in a hundred small details to extricate you from all embarrassments. Our real defect in India, hitherto, has been want of power in any one man, not to make great alterations, but to supervise and get into order a number of branches and departments which have heretofore been nearly independent. . . . " All this Wilson would have done and much more, but I was struck in the last letter he wrote to you, and which Lord Canning showed me, with the number of plans which he had in hand, and which would have taken him twenty years to work out. He had described most of them more or less in conversation, but I never observed the hopeless- ness of any one mortal executing them till they were com- pressed into that single letter — most of them, as you know, were merely in embryo ; — but no one out of India can con- ceive what a task it is to work out any one such plan, and many of them, though excellent in themselves, were not at all necessary to bring your finances into a condition of solvency." 314 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IX. How much there was to be done, how difficult it still was to get reliable accounts, and to detect the various channels through which the public money was running to waste, the following letters, written nearly a year later, serve to indicate. Frere writes, May 8, 1861, to Sir G. Clerk: — " It seems incredible, but it is a fact that we started this time last year in the belief that the police of India must cost near twenty lacs (.£200,000). No one could tell exactly, but from the best accounts forthcoming here it seemed certain it would not be less.* Bruce was certain it was more, and after a year's digging it is clear that four crores (i.e. four hundred lacs, or ,£4,000,000) is nearer the mark, though two and a half are all that as yet figure in the estimates. Bengal was supposed to be above twenty, and certainly under twenty-five lacs, and it is clear now that forty would be about the mark. " You will wonder how it is possible for such things to be in doubt — but so it is. Our accounts, till Wilson came, were utterly worthless and are only now beginning to improve. It is really at the bottom of all our financial difficulties. We have no accounts at all trustworthy, and it will take two or three years' hard work to provide them. Had I not come here and seen it with my own eyes, the utter rottenness of the whole system of accounts would have been quite incredible. Lord Ellenborough tried to improve matters, and ordered something very like the present Budget system, but as soon as his back was turned Dorin and Co. got back to their old ways. " Bruce is doing excellent work, but the jealousy of any- thing from a Bombay or Madras source seriously impedes progress. It would be ludicrous, were it not something worse, to see the way in which, between the Military and Police Commissions, whole corps are discovered which no one ever knew of before, but which had been concealed under some head of Political or Judicial charges. . . ." t * Colonel Herbert Bruce was Inspector-General of Police and was engaged in overhauling the expenditure of that Department, and reforming the system of Police throughout India and Burmah, in a great part of which work Mr. R. Temple was his coadjutor. t Colonel Bruce writes to Frere, August 5, 1861 — " Of this I am sure, i860.] WASTE OF PUBLIC MONEY. 3 1 5 To this Sir G. Clerk replied : — "May 20, 1 86 1. " I am much obliged to you for the useful figures and remarks that Colonel Bruce has been good enough to send. I made some discoveries here, too. of dark levies, so dark that no one but their Commanding Officer knew of their existence, or how paid ! However, it was all a drop in the ocean, compared, I imagine, with what has gone on these last ten years in the Punjab and the North-West Provinces, and at double pace since the rebellion. I have at length got to the bottom of all here, excepting, by-the- bye, a party of Sowars, discovered only last week ; but they never had been a charge, having not yet seen a dumree of pay — thats a comfort. But I suppose they must get something here. Intermediately, I presume, they have lived on loot." The absence of an intelligible system of audit of accounts throughout India, especially in those parts that had been disorganized by the Mutiny, and the difficulty of ascertaining what proportion of expenditure ought to be set down as local, and what as Imperial, gave rise to optimistic and erroneous views on the part of the local Governments as to the proportion of revenue to expendi- ture in each particular province. In order to check, if possible, these fallacious ideas, the Supreme Government passed a financial resolution, one of the chief objects of which was to call the attention of the Governments of the larger provinces to the fact that " Imperial expenses were much larger than is generally supposed, and that a province may have a surplus after paying its local Civil expenses, and yet fail to contribute anything like its quota towards the Imperial expenses which admit of no viz. that the Police of all India was not costing much, if anything, under four crores on May 1, i860, which is the date fixed for all our returns, and I am equally certain that it can be done much more efficiently under the new system for less than one half." 3l6 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IX. localization." The Punjab was mentioned as being amongst the worst offenders, and the greatest drain on the Imperial finances. To this the Punjab Government, which held a long-cherished belief that the exact contrary was the case, and that they were contributing a handsome surplus to the Imperial Treasury, replied, altogether repudiating the imputation. The Supreme Government rejoined in a Minute written by Frere, which showed conclusively that of the enormous military and quasi- military expenditure which was going on there, a much larger proportion was expended for purely local purposes than the Punjab Government charged itself with, while a much smaller proportion was required for the Imperial purpose of frontier defence than they had taken credit for. There were at that time three distinct military bodies in the Punjab, under separate commanders : the regular army, the local army and frontier force under the direct control of the Lieutenant-Governor, and the military police, which had no military functions, but was simply a native local force. The total annual expenditure on these forces exceeded a million and a half sterling. At Peshawur there were more than 9,000 soldiers, of whom 5,264 were Europeans. How excessive this force was for any frontier or Imperial object may be estimated by the fact, that the entire army, which twenty years before had conquered Affghanistan and held it for three years, numbered 13,500, of whom less than 3,300 were Europeans.* " February 25, 1862. " When Montgomery t was here," Frere writes to Sir G. Clerk, " we went over the calculation. He with the aid of Temple and Davies (his very able secretary) could not * Minute by Frere, January 14, 1862. t Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab. i860.] LORD NAPIER OF MAGDALA. 317 get the absolute deficit, after deducting every item which even he could call an Imperial charge, below thirty or forty lacs (£300,000 or £400,000), but he could not say how the deficit could be got rid of. . . . But it is uphill work. * * * * * These Punjabees work the Press, and work the Indian Council, and men still think the Punjab a mine of wealth." General Sir Robert Napier (afterwards Lord Napier of Magdala) had, on his return from the Chinese War in 1861, succeeded Outram as Military Member of the Supreme Council, and thus become one of Frere's colleagues at Calcutta. Between him and Frere there had existed from the first mutual liking and respect, soon ripening into cordial friendship, which helped forward the heavy work of army reform, in which both were so keenly interested. Five years later, when the course of service had brought them together again, and Napier was Commander-in-Chief of Bombay, Frere writes of him as being " as charming a combination of the Royal Engineers and a knight of the Round Table as it is possible to imagine." Napier describes his relations with Frere at Calcutta as follows : — " My first acquaintance with Sir Bartle Frere was when I was fitting out and embarking the Bengal troops for the campaign in China in i860. " Sir James Outram was the President of the Council and Sir Bartle Frere a member. Sir James Outram, fresh from the exigencies of war, knew well how injurious would be the application of regulations adapted for peace measures to the wants of a military force under newly developed conditions, and in the application of his ex- perience he was cordially supported by his colleague Sir Bartle Frere, who took an intense interest in, and a masterly view of, the wants of the troops, and the necessity 318 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IX. of delivering them on the field of their work in the most perfect condition possible. " Instead of having to fight for everything under the harrow of regulations never intended for such occasions, all official red-tape obstructions were brushed aside. Liberal outfits for European and native troops, with fore- sight for all contingencies, were at once sanctioned ; all just pay arrangements settled with liberal facility. The transports, in spite of the resistance of the Superintendent of Marine, and of their captains, were made healthy by proper ventilation and sanitation. Officialism vainly tried to interfere. Though the power to influence these matters rested with Sir James Outram, such a colleague as Sir Bartle Frere, whose courteous persistence put aside all controversy, was very valuable. Under such auspices I was enabled to deliver the Bengal portion of the troops in China in excellent condition and fit for immediate service after a three months' voyage. " I again came in communication with Sir Bartle Frere when I joined the Council of the Governor-General in 1861. " His courteous bearing and cordial kindness made my entry into a new and very responsible office, at a very difficult time, comparatively easy. His wise and temperate advice was ever ready. " The first military business was to reduce the war es- tablishment of the Mutiny years to a peace footing. " Sir Bartle Frere pointed out how necessary it was to effect this work ourselves instead of waiting until some Special Commission might be sent from England to do with a rough hand what we could do with more con- sideration. . . . " As Military Member of Council in all matters relating to my department, I felt the value of the friendship of one who had so wide an experience and so comprehensive a grasp of public affairs both in England and Europe as Sir Bartle Frere." The " Military Finance Commission " already referred to had been appointed early in 1859. It consisted of three members, one from each Presidency, and was charged with the all-important and gigantic task of investigating the i862.j MILITARY FINANCE COMMISSION. 319 military expenditure throughout India, and reporting on the best means of reducing it. Colonel (afterwards Sir George) J Balfour was appointed from Madras, Colonel Jamieson from Bombay, and Colonel Mure from Bengal. The last two had to leave India from ill-health or other causes before the completion of the work, and the chief burden of it, during a period of more than three years, fell on Colonel Balfour. Experienced, persevering, and de- termined, he was eminently fitted for the laborious and difficult work, and in the statistical calculations incident to it he was materially assisted by his wife, a daughter of the financial reformer Joseph Hume, who possessed the family capacity for dealing with figures. The questions with which the Commission had to deal involved a re- duction, not of thousands, but of millions sterling — if the finances were to be made to balance ; — and the Indian Budget each year had to be framed with reference to its investigations and conclusions. In a Minute dated March 11, 1862, Frere wrote: — " I consider the possibility of preserving the present financial equilibrium of income and expenditure depends mainly — I believe it might with truth be said, entirely — on the maintenance of the Military Finance Department, or of a department similarly constituted, as a separate de- partment, in free and confidential communication with the Governor-General in Council — qualified to submit sound professional opinions on every ordinary branch of military expenditure ; free to express those opinions, and bound to do so on all questions which are likely to affect, directly or prospectively, the aggregate of that outlay." As regarded the Bombay Presidency, Frere was often able to smooth the way of the Commission and assist it by his local knowledge and by his reputation for fairness and sound judgment on military matters. He wrote several letters in this and the following year to old friends 320 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Cii. IX. in Sind and elsewhere to endeavour to reconcile them to the inevitable ; it was a sore point when the question of a reduction in the Sind Horse was raised. Cutting down expenses and disbanding regiments was a weary and thankless task, rousing opposition and discontent wherever the smart of the pruning-knife was felt. Military officials everywhere were, as was natural, inclined to be hostile. Even in the Military Secretary's Depart- ment at Calcutta, where there was less excuse for it, there was sometimes a disinclination to assist the Commission or to work cordially with it, so that Frere's good offices were occasionally required to make peace. At last matters went so far that Balfour, considering himself aggrieved beyond bearing by the tone and purport of a letter addressed to him by the Military Secretary, sent in his resignation. The occurrence was due partly to a mistake, partly to faults on both sides. Frere immediately set himself heart and soul to unravel the threads of the misunderstanding and to heal the breach. A correspondence between Balfour, Napier, and himself followed, in which he speaks of Balfour's resignation as a public misfortune, and, in earnest words appealing to him to " speak frankly and freely " to Napier as " to an old Addiscombe comrade," begs him to withdraw it. He was at last successful. It will be enough to quote the brief entries in his private diary to show what pains he took to avert the catastrophe. "Jan. list, 1862. — Balfour and Napier. On returning, found B.'s note resigning, on a snub from the Military Department. "Feb. 1st. — Saw Balfour before breakfast. Determined to resign. Spoke to Lord Canning. B. saw him after, and they had a long and not very satisfactory discussion. B. positive to resign. Told him he was very foolish and wrong. 1862.] SIR GEORGE BALFOUR. 321 " Feb. 2nd. — To Bruce and Napier early about Balfour. Wrote to N., who was ill in bed, and saw him evening. All a mistake about the censure to B. N. agreed to write a conciliatory letter to, and see B. Wrote to B. "Feb. 3rd. — To see Balfour early." Colonel Jamieson, one of the three Commissioners, writes to Frere : — "March 18, 1862. " Balfour's energy has done wonders, and India owes him much for the present satisfactory state of Finance. "To your kind and constant support to Balfour and to myself the success of the Finance Commission is to be attributed. Balfour always acknowledges this and feels your kindness most gratefully. I will to my last day retain towards you the same feelings of gratitude by which I was actuated when I left Calcutta." Towards the end of April, 1862, Colonel Balfour left for England. The value and importance of his work on the Finance Commission had obtained full recognition. Lord Canning, Frere, Napier, Laing, and Beadon, each wrote a minute expressing their high appreciation of his services, in which Lord Elgin expressed his concurrence. In sending a copy to Frere, Balfour thus touchingly refers to his difference with Napier. "May 19, 1862. " I cannot allow this last opportunity to pass without writing to say how gratefully I bear in mind the noble and unvarying support I have received from you, and to acknowledge the fact that I owe to your encouragement and countenance the openings I have had of being useful to Government. I enclose two copies of the Minutes thanking me for my services, and I confess that you have always judged wisely in urging me to do my duty, trusting to the efforts being fully appreciated ; and I feel assured that you will be pleased to learn that, as I failed to see Sir R. Napier owing to his absence at Barrackpore, I wrote to express my regret that I should have thought hardly of him, and have allowed myself to entertain VOL. I. Y 322 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IX. thoughts so much opposed to the noble sentiments he had recorded in my favour. I mentioned that I had requested Colonel Browne to wait on him frequently, and as there were now few questions likely to create differences, and as Colonel B. was of a more conciliatory disposition, I trusted that the public service would be better carried on during my absence. ..." * This was not the only occasion on which Frere played the part of peacemaker between men high in office at Calcutta. In Lord Canning's time it had not yet become the custom for the Governor-General or the Members of his Council to go to the Hills in the hot weather. The press of official work was too great, and railway communication not yet sufficiently developed. During Frere's stay at Calcutta, he was never able to go up the country except once, at the end of 1861, when he went to attend Lord Canning's Durbars at Agra and elsewhere. The following letter to his third little daughter describes a trip of a few miles up the Hooghly. '•'November n, i860. " I think you will be amused with an account of a trip I made with Lord Canning when we were staying at * More than five years afterwards, Frere, then in London, wrote to Sir Stafford Northcote : " General Balfour deserved the lion's share of the credit for the great reduction in Military expenditure, which enabled Wilson and Laing to balance income and expenditure. Such service, of course, did not make him popular anywhere, and when all in high office who had seen his work were dead or departed from Calcutta, he came home, and, I imagine, was not received as he should have been after such services. What occurred between him and Lord Halifax I never exactly knew, and have not had time to inquire ; but he was deeply hurt, and declared he would never set foot in the old India Office again. " I hope his vow does not hold valid as regards the new building ; for he is quite the most valuable man of his class I know, and able to render most excellent sendee in an unpopular and uninviting department. ..." i860.] TRIP UP THE HOOGHLY. 323 Barrackpore some weeks ago." (Here follows a descrip- tion of the chief localities of Calcutta, and a beautifully drawn map of the Hooghly, showing the position of Calcutta and of all the chief places for thirty miles up the river.) "We started very early from the Governor-General's house, and drove through the station and up the river to Phulta Ghaut, near Ishapoor, where we were to embark, but the steamer was not then come, so we waited, watching the fishermen and making sketches for half an hour, and then embarked on board the Governor-General's ' Flat,' as it is called — a sort of floating house with two sitting-rooms, sleeping cabins, drawing-rooms, etc., with a deck above as a promenade, under an awning. This was towed by a steamer, and away we went up the river, taking what is called the ' small breakfast ' — tea and bread- and-butter — as we went. The river is here a very fine one, much larger than any you have ever seen, and crowded with boats, large and small, the big ones carrying on a great trade with all Bengal, the smaller fishing. The banks are low but lined with the most luxuriant vegeta- tion and thick groves of large trees, with a swarming population in huts, interspersed here and there with brick houses, and occasionally the palace of some great native proprietor or European planter ; a few temples and numerous ghauts, or flights of steps leading down to the water, occur every few hundred yards along the bank. Budrashahur would be a very large brick town in Europe and is the great centre of the Bengal salt trade. Fleets of salt boats lined the banks, and the only remarkable buildings were salt warehouses. Then we came to Chandernagore, the only remnant of French empire in Bengal — a pretty, neat town, with well-kept esplanade along the bank of the river, a neat Governor's house, public offices, etc., all as became a dependency of la belle France. There are two or three large hotels too, rather apt to be occupied by people who wish to escape their creditors in Calcutta, for M. M. Hayes, the polite and well-informed Governor, though he rules over a territory about the size of an English parish, keeps up all the rights and privileges of French territory, and under the tricolor, which waves over his Government House, no English sheriff's officer can serve his writ on any 324 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IX. unfortunate debtor. Zouaves, or men dressed like them, were on sentry at the various public offices, and there was a great running to hoist the flag when they saw ours and recognized the Governor-General's barge, and it was duly dipped as a salute as we passed. Beyond this we came to Chinsura, where was formerly the Dutch factory, and it has as evident marks of being a Dutch town as Chandernagore of being French. We visited a queer little church which . . . retains little of its Dutch origin but its general shape, a bit or two of wooden carving, and some funeral achievements of old Dutch Mynheers, whose arms are all duly painted, with their names at full length. . . . Then to the Imamharra, a great Mahometan seminary just outside the town. . . . You enter by a fine gateway into a large court or quadrangle with a very fine mosque at one end, kitchens and refectory on one side, and the lecture-rooms and students' cells all round the rest of the quadrangle. He took us over his own rooms — not quite so well furnished and comfortable as a Fellow's of Trinity, but very neat and scholarlike, with plenty of books, but all Persian or Arabic, for this is a great stronghold of Islamism. There are trim little gardens behind the cells and in the quadrangle, and beautiful views up and down the river from the top of the mosque. The old gentleman with his Calendar's cap and crutch- headed staff, introducing his scholars and their tutors in the courtyard, might all have just dropped from Bagdad. The next place we visited, about a mile on, looked like a bit of Portugal. It is a fine old Portuguese church, between two and three hundred years old, with a little, old Portuguese priest in surplice and skull-cap, and attended by his quire and a dozen or two of his congre- gation, looking quite as antiquated and as little like India as his church. He took us over his little parsonage — a comfortable house, connected with the church by a cloister. His sitting-room was evidently intended only for distinguished visitors, for no one could sit in it on account of the number of ornaments of every kind with which it was crowded, the gifts, he told us, of his people, and which he did not know how to dispose of — busts and figures of all kinds : Queen Victoria, Cupids, French shepherds and shepherdesses, dogs, stags, etc., in plaster, marble, china, and bronze ; shells, bead-work, crochet, and i36i.] LORD CANNING. 325 worsted ; samplers, prints of all kinds, the Duke of Wellington and Pope Pius IX., the Prodigal Son's progress under the guise of Spanish costumes of the eighteenth century, the Church's Sacraments of about the same time, and various other prints of every kind. At last he got a chair for the Governor-General and Lady Canning, and produced his deeds and charters, some of them granted by the old Emperors of Delhi a hundred and fifty years ago. He was greatly delighted at the first visit of a Governor-General since Lord William Bentinck's time. " I have nothing to tell you of our return voyage, except that we saw eleven elephants bathing at one place, some of them lying down in the water and being scrubbed." To Mr. Bourchier, Frere writes : — " October 6, 1861. " We often wish ourselves anywhere on your downs or among your lanes, and think that if we could only have our children with us, a quiet turnpike on a not too noisy road would be a good exchange for our house in Chow- ringhee. We should care less for the separation if we felt we were doing the children much good by staying here, but what with reduced pay and greatly increased expense of living, income-tax, and the accident that, almost immediately after I came here, the removal of Ricketts and Outram left me senior Member of Council, with no additional salary, which my predecessors had formerly, to cover the increased expenditure when the Governor- General was absent, we have given up all hopes of ever being anything but a copper imitation of the ancient golden Nabob. However, I shall not have earned my pension for another year, so there is no necessity for any immediate decision, and the longer one lives out here the more one feels the folly of forming plans long in advance. Meantime the work is absorbing, and as long as Lord Canning remains, it is a great pleasure to be able to aid, however slightly, in carrying out the only policy worthy of England which has been formally acknowledged by the Indian Government since Lord W. Bentinck's time. Off and on ever since we came here the work of the five Members of the Executive Council has had to be done 326 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IX. sometimes by three or even by two, and has been very hard and not at all satisfactory, owing to the impossibility of really looking after any one Department. But the difficulties have been reduced as far as possible by Lord Canning, who has always dealt with me quite in the way my uncle * would have wished, and I sometimes think that if he could see how we worked he would not be displeased at the kind of work I have been able to do for the son of his old friend. It has, at any rate, been honest support, for Lord Canning's policy and objects have always been worthy of his father's son, and such as any man might be proud of aiding ; and had he been better supported by those about him in 1857-8, he would have escaped much of the unmerited obloquy to which he has been exposed, and the true value of his services to India and to England would have been sooner appreciated." Mr. Laing had arrived to take Wilson's place early in January, 1861, but his health also soon failed, and within five months he had set out on his return to England on sick leave. Frere writes to Lord Canning : — "June n, 1861. " I must say I quite agree with him (Laing) that it is useless to attempt importing another Financial Minister from England. You know I do not undervalue the labours of either poor Wilson or Laing, but the net result is not worth the cost. In reductions you are where your own Military Finance Commission (appointed two years before any English Financier was appointed) would have brought you, at least as soon, by simply working on as it began. In Civil reductions and Police reform the work done has been by Indian impulse as well as by Indian machinery, and if the Finance Minister has given valuable support and aid, you would certainly have got on faster and better without any other interference from England. " In taxation, what Wilson did Laing has condemned. " In all, that relates to management of Loans, Budget and Audit and general organization and management, we have been great gainers through Wilson's and Laing's * Hookham Frere. See chap. 1. I86i.] WILSON'S AND LAING ? S WORK. 327 labours. But at what cost ? Will the loss of Wilson and Ward, Laing's breakdown, the damage of Trevelyan's official repute and the interruption to his usefulness, the increased acerbity of local jealousies, the consequent delay and loss of time in effecting real reforms — will these be balanced by what we have gained ? and is what we have gained equal to what we might have had, if what you began early in 1859 had gone on undisturbed by external interference ? " I really believe it is not. The great advantage we have derived from Wilson and Laing has been the sort of authority with which they came out, and which enabled them easily to overcome obstacles which might otherwise have been serious ; but this advantage cuts both ways and makes their errors, in proportion, of graver moment. " Nor, as Laing shows, are you likely now to command even this advantage of authority for any good purpose. Whoever comes will feel he has, like a Roman Consul, to make his name famous in a single year, or at most two or three, and will not be content honestly to carry out his predecessor's policy. An active man, even if of the first class, will probably be actively mischievous, and a second or third-class man, whether active or passive, will be far worse than useless. " I quite concur in what Mr. Laing says of the character of our real want, and I like his proposed organization better than what I once talked of to you — a plan for getting out, not a Minister of Finance, but simply a Minister of Account." Amongst other duties which fell to his share, Frere generally had the task of piloting the Government measures through the Legislative Council ; and small though the Council was — there were only twelve members, of whom frequently not more than five or six were present — there were sometimes animated debates. To what length these debates were carried, may be gathered from the fact that the printed Report of them for i860 runs to over fourteen hundred pages. The struggles of the Mutiny had left behind a legacy 328 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IX. of bitter race hatred and suspicion. The Europeans, particularly the non-official and mercantile community of Calcutta, were greatly incensed with the native popu- lation, and angry with Lord Canning for his firm modera- tion in dealing with them. Some measures affecting the relations between Europeans and natives came before the Council, which gave rise to the expression of a strong feeling of antagonism to the latter. It was unfortunate that the usual exponent of this feeling was the highest judicial officer in India — the Chief Justice, Sir Barnes Peacock. The law passed in 1857 to restrict the bearing and selling of arms expired early in i860, and to take its place a new Arms Bill was introduced. Frere had not seen it before it was brought in. In its original form, however, he had no particular objection to it. Writing to Mr. Barrow Ellis, he says — "August 6, i860. " It was then all that was really needed — a law to limit trade in arms and ammunition, and to prevent people from carrying arms without a license or permit — our Sind law, in fact. The alterations made in it were no children of mine. I do not approve of any general attempt to take away arms from the people, for I believe it will be made everywhere, but especially in the North-West and Punjab, an instrument of frightful oppression, and be quite ineffectual, except to make rebels. I hold the power to subject a district to domiciliary searches for arms, such as go on in the North- West, to be quite as much an imperial power as that of making peace and war, and would limit it accord- ingly to the Supreme Government. . . . The Bill as it stands is a vile Bill, and should not have passed in its present shape if I had got hold of it earlier." During its progress the Chief Justice had moved and pressed an amendment for the exemption of Europeans, Americans, and Eurasians from its restrictions, although 186a] THE ARMS BILL. 329 in 1857 he had as Member of Council concurred in reject- ing a proposal for their exemption, and his Minute was on record. Such a race distinction was especially distasteful to Frere. Patriotic to a fault as he was, and profoundly convinced that Englishmen were capable of holding their own against all comers without any adventitious aid, it was alike offensive to his sense of justice and galling to his pride in his countrymen that such a distinction should be made. In the course of his speech in opposition to the exemption he said — " He could not answer for other Members, but judging from his own experience, he confessed he was frequently reminded by his own feelings that we come of a very irascible race, prone to get angry and to be guilty of assault and battery to an extent unusual amongst other races. There was no denying this fact, which every one knew : no race in the world knew better how to use such weapons as Nature gave them, or were better able to defend themselves under the greatest disadvantages. It was difficult therefore to find any section of the community for whose exemption as a class from any such police regulation fewer good reasons could be shown. . . . But there was a stronger reason. Such class exemptions, unjust to all, were most injurious to the exempted class. . . . We were never tired of inculcating this on nations in which slavery prevailed. We were convinced of it ourselves, and were, as we flattered ourselves, fast persuading other nations to agree with us. . . . The Government was most anxious to do all in its power to promote the settlement in this country of as many Europeans as could make a fair livelihood in it, convinced that they would add greatly to the strength of the Govern- ment and to the resources of the country. The way to encourage them was not by making special exemptions in their favour, but by improving our administration, so that we could reasonably expect them to live under the same laws as their fellow-subjects." He spoke with deep feeling and conviction, and with even more than his usual force. Not only did his opinion 330 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IX. prevail — the Chief Justice not getting a single vote in support of his amendment, — but the speech produced a profound impression outside the Council, and was taken as an indication of a changed and more friendly dispo- sition in the Legislative Council towards the native population.* Though Lord Stanley was the first Secretary of State for India after the demise of the old Company, he quitted office so soon afterwards that it was to Sir Charles Wood, who succeeded him in June, 1859, that the chief work of reconstruction fell. Amongst Frere's papers of this time are letters from Sir C. Wood by almost every mail on fundamental questions of administration. They are freely quoted here as the best way of elucidating the points at issue and Frere's views upon them. Sir Charles Wood writes : — "September 2, i860. " I congratulate you on having got through the Income- Tax and Arms Bill. I have been shocked at the language of the Judges on the latter Bill. I am afraid that the antagonist feeling of race is becoming a source of formidable danger. I hardly see how the country is to be administered unless a good and kindly feeling towards the natives is entertained by our official servants. I should like to * On the subject of disarming the native population, Sir George Clerk writes : — "June 17, i860. " I was conversing yesterday with a man of much intelligence who has been in active magisterial employment at Peshawur. . . . He informed me that they had not attempted to disarm the Peshawurees. ' Why not ? ' ' Oh ! they were too well armed and too many for us.' If anything could add to the sense I have always entertained of the puerility of the attempt to disarm India, it would be the avowal that we can only partially disarm ; and we leave the arms in the hands of those who have the resolution to resist, instead of the cash to buy off the surrender." l86i.] DEBATES IN THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL. 33 1 express my opinion of the language of and but I am afraid it would not be decent. I am clearly against the Judges having seats in the Legislative Council on the footing on which it now stands." *s Another episode in debate is described in the following letter to Sir Charles Wood : — "April 21, 1S61. "We had yesterday another and a very striking instance of the evils of our present system of having Judges as leading members of our legislative body. We were dis- cussing a Bill introduced at the instance of the Lieutenant- Governor of the North-West Provinces, to protect, from the ordinary action of Courts of Law, grants of land given by Government for special State services, and to place them in the same position as money allowances have long been by law. After the discussion had, as I thought, closed, Sir Barnes Peacock got up, and after stating his objections to a few points of detail, said that one main ground of doubt was his fear, lest by passing the Bill, the Council should acknowledge the power of the Governor-General in Council to alienate land by making such grants of it, that he doubted whether any such power existed. He then went in detail into the question of the power of the Govern- ment of India to alienate land under each Charter Act, expressed his belief that no such power now existed, and wound up by saying he had not time to look thoroughy into the question, or to pronounce a decided opinion, and did not mean to vote against the second reading of the Bill, reserving to himself the power to express and act on his opinion at a future stage. . . . " Whatever may have been the meaning of the framers of the Act, or the legal interpretation of the words now, there can be but one opinion of the extreme inconvenience and practical mischief which must result when a Chief Justice gets up, and without taking time to master the case, or make up his own opinion, throws out doubts of this kind and lends the weight of his authority to call in question the validity of acts which in Oude and many other parts of the country form the sole foundation of all title to landed property. Even in Bengal the value of the property affected by this dictum of Sir B. Peacock is very 332 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IX. great, and there are no means of effectually solving the doubt, save by a decision of some competent Court of Law — that is, if the opinion so wantonly thrown out carries with the public the weight which, from his high and well- deserved character as a lawyer, it ought to carry." To this Sir Charles Wood replies — "June 9, 1861. " I am utterly shocked by Sir B. Peacock's proceedings. The declaration about the titles to land is the most un- justifiable thing a man ever did. That he should have thrown out such a doubt seems to me to be monstrous, and if anything could be added to make the course worse, it is his own confession that he had not had time fully to consider it." Another circumstance illustrating the anomalous position of the Council occurred in December, i860. The Mysore Princes, members of the family of Tippoo Saib, who had fallen at the storming of Seringapatam in 1799, had had large revenues assigned them under the treaty which followed. These revenues, by their supposed complicity in the Vellore Mutiny of 1806, they were held to have forfeited ; but nevertheless, and in spite of the dis- reputable course of life pursued by several of them, they were still considered to have certain undefined claims on the Government. Sir Charles Wood settled the matter by assigning them ^"34,000 a year for their lives, together with a sum for purchasing houses. Frere, concurring with Lord Canning's opinion, wrote a Minute deprecating the proposed arrangement as "a fatal gift tending to increase in each generation the number of unworthy recipients, and to diminish the proportion of those members of the family who will bear a trace of their brave and energetic ancestry." He also pointed out that, to take up such questions, except at the instance of the Viceroy, would have the effect of dangerously weakening 1 86a] THE MYSORE GRANT. 333 his authority, and lead to the inference that justice was not to be obtained in India itself. The Home Government, however, held to their opinion and the proposed arrangement was decided on. In December the amount of the grant leaked out, and a storm of indignation arose at Calcutta. Coming at a time when strenuous efforts at retrenchment were being made, and new taxes being imposed, the new settlement was denounced almost unanimously by the Europeans as lavish and excessive, and a petition against it signed by nearly all the leading merchants and professional men. The Chief Justice moved an address in the Legislative Council, asking for the production of Papers and the correspondence with the Home Government on the subject. It was in vain that Frere, who in Lord Canning's absence was acting President of the Council, pointed out that whatever the merits of the case, the Council had nothing to do with it, and that the only effect of producing Papers would be to raise a debate on a subject which the Council had no authority to entertain. The Chief Justice persisted, and the debate was adjourned for a week. Lord Canning was up the country, but in the interval Frere was able to obtain his view of the question. It was a great satisfaction to him to find that he entirely approved of the course he had taken. Lord Canning writes : — " December 12, i860. " I had seen in the newspapers the Petition which was presented to the Legislative Council on Saturday, and I was expecting a breeze. . . . "It is now clear that the battle of the Legislative Council must be fought out. The other side are committed to it ; and there is no escaping a full, open, public discussion of the question. " The claims of the existing Council to a larger scope 334 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IX. of responsibility and authority is a more difficult part of the question than the outside demands for a more numerous and independent Council. "But the whole must be fought in England, not in India, and our study should, in my opinion, be to keep out of the fray as much as possible. Irritation amongst our respective champions at home will do us little harm, but any increase of soreness between the Government and the Patriots in India is greatly to be avoided. " If Peacock should carry a motion of which the gist should be a request for Papers on the Mysore Grant, I would answer it by a message declining, very civilly, to give the Papers, on the ground that the interest of the public service forbids it — indicating, gently but clearly, the right of the Governor-General so to decline — and adding that the request would be made known to the Secretary of State. This will transfer the contest to London ; — and to do this quietly, and with as little ex- asperation here as possible, is what we should now aim at." The Chief Justice pressed his motion to a division, and the numbers being four to four, carried it by his casting vote as Chairman. Frere, in studiously courteous terms, declined to give the Papers. Sir Charles Wood, in answer to a letter of Frere's giving a detailed account of the debate, approves the refusal of the Papers, and says — " The truth is that the Legislative Council has assumed, gradually perhaps, a position that does not belong to it. . . . From 1833 to 1853 the Executive Council of the Governor-General legislated, with the addition of an English barrister, to give some legal shape and form to their ordinances and laws. Would anybody have dreamt of the Council with this member addressing the Council without this member for papers ?".... Already, before Frere went to Calcutta, it was generally felt that the Legislative Council, as then constituted, did not work well, and recent experience had strengthened the conviction that a change in its constitution must be i860.] CONSTITUTION OF THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL. 335 made. It had originated in 1833 as an enlargement, for legislative purposes, of the Governor-General's Executive Council, all the members of which were ex-officio members of it. The enlargement was effected by the addition of a legal member nominated by the Home Government — the first of whom was Macaulay — whose presence was made necessary to the passing of any law affecting British India ; and subsequently, in 1853, when Sir Charles Wood was President of the Board of Control, by the addition of a member of the Civil Service from each Presidency and Lieutenant-Governorship, and of two of the Judges of the Supreme Court. At this stage, Lord Dalhousie gave it a character never intended by Sir C. Wood, by making its debates public, and thereby inviting public comment. Thus, from being an offshoot of the Cabinet, it had gradually assumed many of the functions of a little Parliament. As early as the previous March, before he had been three months in Calcutta, Frere had sent in a Minute on the changes which he deemed necessary in its constitution and functions. It was necessary either to go backwards and restrict it to its original functions, or forwards, so as to develop its representative character. Frere advocated on all accounts the latter course ; and, moreover, public opinion, both in England and India, would, he contended, render it impossible to lessen the independence of the Council, or to do away with the publicity which had been given to its debates ; it was necessary, therefore, boldly to face the second alternative, and to endeavour to make it as far as possible a representative body. But in any case, he insisted it was necessary to take out of its control all local matters, the management of which should be com- mitted to a local Council in each Presidency and Lieu- tenant-Governorship. $$6 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IX. Sir Charles Wood writes to Frere : — "February 18, 1861. "Whatever notions may now prevail, nobody at that time (1853) — and I myself introduced the Bill — ever dreamt of a debating body with open doors and even quasi-independence. Lord Dalhousie began wrong, and I am afraid that everything since has tended in the same direction. He, I believe, generally presided and kept things straight. This, I believe, is not the practice, and everything has gone in the direction of fostering the notion of their being an independent legislative body. It is all wrong and very unfortunate, because there is always a sympathy here for independent deliberation. " I am writing for Lord Canning's views on the matter, but I confess I am very uneasy as to the future bodies to be constituted in India. Representative bodies, in any real sense, you cannot have, and I do not think that any external element will really do good. It may satisfy the English at Calcutta to have an English merchant or English planter in the Council, but I am by no means sure that it would improve the legislation ; and you cannot put natives in who are in any sense the expo- nents of active opinion, or who could take any part in the deliberations." It was with doubts and misgivings such as he expressed in the foregoing and subsequent letters that Sir Charles Wood brought in and passed the Bill of 1861 to amend the Legislative Council of India. Frere's reply to one of these letters is inserted at some length, as it expresses the views that he had long been urging, and which he again pressed with the hope that the Bill might not fall short of what was needed. "April 10, 1861. " You may rely on it that no one is a safe adviser on this subject unless he is a very far-seeing statesman who looks below the surface, or has seen India within the last two years. No mere Indian experience of five years ago is worth much as a guide on this particular question, and it is of little use now inquiring what were the intentions i86i.] GENERAL DISCONTENT. 337 of Parliament when the Council was first constituted. You have declared that the Council alone has power to make laws. Lord Dalhousie gave the Council the form of a deliberative assembly, and the Mutiny of 1857 rendered it necessary to impose new taxes. The result may make the government of India more difficult than before, but whatever the result, I believe it to be impossible to recede, and I see the gravest danger to make legislation more autocratic, or more secret, or to raise taxes without the kind of discussions which now precede legislation. But I would go farther than saying it is impossible to recede. Looking at the very altered condition of India within the last five years, I am convinced that it is not desirable, even if it were possible, and that had you not enlarged the Council and had not Lord Dalhousie opened its sittings to the public, and the necessity for taxation drawn general attention to its proceedings, our difficulties now would have been far greater than they are. "You can have little idea how much India is altered ; but if you consider that in these five years we have changed from an aggressive and advancing power to a stationary one ; that the sympathy which Englishmen, whether long resident or fresh to India, felt for the natives has changed to a general feeling of repugnance if not of antipathy ; that instead of a general feeling of content with their Indian lot and an inclination to live in India, to think of India, and consider things in an Indian rather than an English point of view, the English here are, almost generally, openly discontented, disinclined to re- main here, or to care for India, and disposed to look at things in any but an Indian light ; that all this feeling is inevitably reciprocated by the natives ; that our debt and our unavoidable expenses have greatly increased, and that not only increased taxation, but great reduction of expen- diture are necessary ; that this produces more or less dis- content in every class both of Europeans and of natives, and that every day increases the intimacy and frequency of intercourse between this country and the people who are seething around you in Europe, inquiring, intriguing, money-getting, revolutionizing ; — think of all this, and you will have some notion of how different the task of govern- ing is, from what it was when Lord Dalhousie landed here. vol. 1. z 338 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IX. " How Lord Canning got on with the old machinery is to me an unaccountable marvel, but no human ability could get on with it much longer, and with a Governor- General of less judgment and calm courage you might any day have some terrible disaster. " You will perhaps say this is not a case for enlarging the Legislature, or making it less official in its compo- sition ; and if there were any means for law-making in the several divisions of the Empire ; if they could get on, as the Punjab does, without anything which lawyers consider a legal code, I should say, wait for quieter times without making any change. But since 1833 you have concen- trated all law-making with most other functions here in Calcutta, and the machinery is ridiculously inadequate, in every way, to the task it has to perform. After twenty- eight years there is not a department of administration in which the concentration is real and perfect ; even in finance and military affairs, it will take a year or two more of well-directed labour to effect real centralization, and they are the only great branches of administration in which I believe it is possible. But laws of some kind you must have, and it is in legislation that the inadequacy and incapacity of the present machinery is most clearly and frequently apparent. " You cannot do much to remedy this by enlarging the existing body. It would still be most imperfect if it were five times as strong in numbers of well-selected men, and I much doubt if any one body you could devise would be able to shape the laws wanted for so many and such dis- similar races, and nations, and interests. " The utmost you can hope to do is to assist the Viceroy with some sort of senate, which shall advise him in framing laws which can be of general application {e.g. such as relate to post-office, customs, etc.), and in confirming or annulling laws shaped by those who have had local experience and knowledge of local wants and wishes. " To ascertain and to put into shape those wants and wishes you require local bodies, and I am sure the time is passed when it would be possible to constitute such bodies exclusively from among the servants of Government. " Here, again, you must not be misled by those who recollect India only when the traditions of ancient exclu- siveness still leavened the whole community in India. i86i.] NON-OFFICIAL EUROPEANS. 339 Increasing trade, accelerated communication, and thirty- three millions of English capital invested in railways, made and owned by unofficial people, have rendered the servants of Government less able than ever to decide what even their own countrymen want or wish for and will have, if it is to be got by perseverance in asking here or in England. " Unless, then, you give us non-official Europeans in these local legislative bodies, you must be prepared to legislate in Westminster on every subject which touches that class. They will not rest content with our official legislation out here, and whether our official-made laws are bad or good, you will have to debate them over and over again in London. " Then if you admit non-official Europeans you must also admit, in at least equal proportion, natives, who in intelligence and education are their equals, and who have a far greater stake in the country. None but the best of your officials, men who cannot be spared from the adminis- tration of distant provinces, will give you as good an idea of native views and wishes as a very ordinary native gentleman or merchant will ; and your legislative bodies will make fatal mistakes unless they have some native members to aid them. . . . " You say ' representative bodies in any real sense we cannot have,' but this is only true of representative bodies responsible to those whom they represent, which is not the sort of representation I mean. The members must be selected by the Government, but if well selected, they must represent the great interests of the country as well or better than if elected by popular suffrage. You doubt ' whether any external element will really do good.' I can only say I doubt whether you can possibly get on much longer without it. It is certainly possible even now for a considerate, far-sighted, judicious man of some experience in Indian affairs to ascertain and anticipate the wants and wishes of those under his charge ; he will learn from repre- sentative men and bodies, such as Punchaits and Chambers of Commerce, what is thought of his measures or what is wanted, and shape his course accordingly ; but you do not often meet with men with the tact and knowledge neces- sary to do this effectually. I can remember very few, perhaps only one — the late Sir Robert Grant, who was new 340 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Cn. IX. to the country and did it effectually, excluding men who, like Mr. Mountstuart Elphinstone or Sir George Clerk, from past Indian experience and knowledge of mankind know more of most great interests under their charge than any one man of each interest could tell them. Then you must recollect that if this process of feeling the people's pulse is resorted to regularly and habitually, it is only doing in a circuitous, imperfect fashion what local legis- latures would do directly and perfectly, while there is less responsibility on any one for the result, and it carries much less weight. I often see opinions of Sir George Clerk's, which I know to be not only sound in themselves, but the expression of the general opinion of the best- informed and most interested parties in Bombay, set aside and pooh-poohed by the sages here in a manner which would be impossible if it were embodied in a vote of a legislative body in Bombay. " Men of great experience in the working of Colonial Councils, like Sir W. Denison or Sir H. Ward, are often averse to introduce Legislative Councils where they do not exist, from a feeling like that of our Generals towards Times' correspondents in their camps — they are always an additional trouble, and may be a serious embarrassment if inclined for mischief. But the question is, Can you exclude them or do without them? Lord Raglan had perhaps good cause for wishing Mr. Russell out of the Crimea, but he was only one feature, though an essential and indis- pensable one, of the system which enabled you in the second year of the war to be stronger than in the first, and to be ready to renew the contest when France and Russia were equally exhausted. The days are gone when you could govern India without much caring what the Euro- peans and Europeanized community say or think of your measures, and unless you have some barometer and safety- valve combined in the shape of a deliberative Council, I believe you will be always liable to very unlooked-for and dangerous explosions. " Some men who advocate such bodies at the great Presidency towns would not have them at places like Rangoon or Lahore. No doubt autocratic government and legislation is, for the present, more possible at such places ; but not, I think, less dangerous in the long run ; nor can you, without some device like a local Legislative i86i.] THE COUNCILS ACT. 34I Council, give to your pro-consuls in such provinces the real power they ought to possess. Aided by such a Council, you may as safely leave men like Sir R. Mont- gomery * or Colonel Phayre f as independent of all control in local matters and legislation as Sir George Clerk at Bombay, or Sir W. Denison at Madras ; without it, all their acts are open to question, and, if Sir Barnes Peacock's law is correct, are utterly illegal. At best it is only their individual character, their distance, and the check which a considerate Governor-General imposes on the energies of his secretariat, which prevent a constant and most mis- chievous interference. I would remedy this by letting each head of a great administration organize the best Legislative Council that he can devise, and give to its enactments, approved by the Governor-General, with the advice of his senate, the force of law in all local matters. " These are some of the reasons which make me anxious to see Lord Canning's plans sanctioned by Parliament, and perhaps carried further even than he contemplated in 1859. I believe it would contribute, more than anything we could do, to unite governors and governed, both Euro- pean and native ; to restore a healthy tone to the Ad- ministration ; to turn the thoughts of the discontented from Imperial measures, which they can neither understand nor amend, to local wants which they can supply ; and above all, to strengthen the Executive in every pro- vince, and thereby strengthen the Imperial Government also. . . ." Frere's opinion and that of Lord Canning prevailed. The Bill, though not in all details such as Frere approved, was drawn and became law on the lines suggested by them. Under its provisions two members of the Legis- lative Council were nominated by the Crown ; and the Governor-General was given power to summon to it, besides the existing members, not less than six nor more than twelve additional members, of whom one-half at least were not to be officials under Government. The Judges * Lieut.-Governor of the Punjab. t Commissioner in Burmah. 342 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IX. no longer had seats on it. That the Executive power might be strengthened, a new and extraordinary power was conferred on the Governor-General of making and promulgating ordinances, in cases of emergency, on his own responsibility. Councils more or less similarly constituted were provided for Bombay, Madras, and Bengal, with powers of legislation in local matters. On questions affecting the whole Empire of India these local legislatures might enter only with the previous sanction of the Governor-General. Finally — and this was the newest feature of all — the additional Members of the Legislative Council of India, as well as of the local Councils, might be either Europeans or natives. A native gentleman was appointed to the Council at Madras, and at Bombay Sir George Clerk selected for this honour no less than four natives. When Frere was with Lord Canning at Allahabad at the beginning of November, 1861, and the appointment of the new Members of the Legislative Council of India was pending, the Maharajah of Puttiala, anticipating that he himself might be nominated, came to see Frere and ask him about it. In Frere's diary is the following entry : — " Memo, of remarks of the Raja of Puttiala, November r, 1861. Enquiry as to the mode of doing business in the Legislative Council — how the members sit, speak, and discuss matters ; difficulty of language — of managing his own State if always away. (" Answer. Sessions brief — power of resignation.) " Of decision off-hand without consultation with skilled and experienced persons — difficulty of a single native in such a Council — he will have to bear the unpopularity of all measures not acceptable to natives. (" Ans. He will also share the popularity of good ones, and will have many to share both popularity and un- popularity with him.) " Of what class will his colleagues be ? Division of i86i.] NATIVES ON THE COUNCILS. 343 business — military, civil administration — Finance — a ruler or legislator should know all branches, but some are quite ignorant of any but Finance. The mistakes they make in military and administrative matters : e.g. Raja of Burdwan. (" Ans. Parliament, Cabinet, Durbar — various kinds of fitness, but all eminent.) " Can you tell me who are likely men ? ("Ans. I believe none yet fixed, but sure to be men of mark and eminence, with whom it will be an honour to be associated.) " Is the Raja of Burdwan likely ? It is not pride makes me ask, but that such men really know nothing of the management of State affairs. (" Ans. What are tho sort of people who do know ?) " Nawab of Raunpore. But we (chiefs like Puttiala) know little of our fellows. I hope to go to Benares if H. E. would speak to me after I have been there. I should be better able to speak, for I would inquire characters ; but the G. G. sees and knows all. . . ." The entry in the diary for January 29, 1862, is : — " Legislative Council Debate. First occasion when Native Members of Council spoke. . . . Dinkur Row, Deonarain, and Maharajah of Puttiala on Inam Bill for preventing alienation of lands granted for services." And to Pelly, he writes : — " February 18, 1862. " The Councils have met under the new Act. There is the germ of much good, accompanied by much dross. But I am glad to see natives and non-officials sit and vote, and to save the principle of publicity — sorely endangered by the want of judgment shown by the Judges." But Sir Charles Wood's misgivings as to the probable effect of the Act were not to be easily dispelled. He writes to Frere : — "August 17, 1861. " The Councils Act, which really alters the constitution of the Government of India, is by far the most important of the measures which I have introduced. 344 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IX. " It is framed upon Lord Canning's despatches, and will, I hope, meet your views and answer your expectations. " It is undeniable that it is a great experiment and I can only hope for its working well. That everything is changing in India is obvious enough, and that the old autocratic Government cannot stand unmodified is indisputable. " But I confess that I cannot look forward without some apprehension to the phase which obviously the English population looks forward to, and which your letter indicates, namely, something approaching to Colonial self-government. " I am as much as anybody can be for the self-govern- ment of a Colony of British settlers. They can manage their own affairs, and if they misgovern themselves they suffer and will learn to mend their ways. But such a form of government seems to me singularly unsuited to India. The worst of all governments is a popular government of one race over another. It is notorious that the treatment of slaves is best in despotic, worst in free countries. The Spanish Code is by far the most humane, the American the worst in the world. "You know that in the Mutiny the Governor-General was unpopular with the English because he would not go their length against the natives ; and I have heard of language being held at Calcutta which would have shocked an American slave-driver. Do you think a jury of indigo-planters would convict a planter or acquit a ryot ? And how would they legislate for matters pending between them ? . . . " In India the Government is really the protector of the natives and their representative, if you will consider the Government representative, and if the Government has nine-tenths of the assembly — it might do. But I am by no means comfortable at the prospect of English settlers legislating for Indian dependents. ... I suspect the control of the Home Government and its support to the Government in India will become more necessary as the popular element gains strength. "The future Government of India is a problem of the most serious import, utterly unexampled in history, and one of which it seems to me very difficult to foresee the progress. i86i.] A COLONIAL POLICY. 345 " Forgive me this long story, but your letter raises all these considerations very forcibly to my mind." Upon the points thus raised by Sir C. Wood, and repeated by him in a letter to Lord Canning, in which he deprecates a " Colonial policy " towards the natives, Frere wrote a Minute, from which the following are extracts : — "October 2, 1861. " Certainly nothing was further from my thoughts than to advocate what is commonly known as ' Colonial policy ' towards the natives ; by this I understand a policy which puts all real power into the hands of European officials and European colonists, and treats the natives as at best in statu pupillari, to be ruled, taught, and perhaps petted, but to be excluded from all real power or influence on the measures of Government, and to be governed, not with reference to their own reason and sense of right or wrong, but according to our latest English notions of what is best for them. " These principles, be it remembered, under one disguise or another, are nearly as common among our present race of officials as among the non-official class. The two classes differ as to the division of power between officials and non-officials. But as between Englishmen and natives they are generally agreed, and the crack Collector or Com- missioner is often as little inclined as the most rabid member of the Landowners' Association to let a native landholder with an estate of .£10,000 a year, which has been two hundred years in his family, have a voice in deciding how his property shall descend or be divided, or how his own children shall be educated, and the civilian would probably be less inclined than the non- official to give the landowner any share of administrative power. " There is, no doubt, a large and, I trust, an increasing school of officials who hold with Warren Hastings and Cornwallis, Wellesley, Malcolm, and Mountstuart Elphin- stone, rather than with Lord Dalhousie and Mr. Thomson and the later school of resumption and annexation ; but they are still in a minority, and the latter school have it 346 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Cn. IX. all their own way in the Secretary of State's Council, where, since Sir George Clerk left, there has been hardly any zealous representative of the other school. Here, in India, Madras and Bombay officials generally hold more or less the opinions of Malcolm, Munro and the Elphin- stones, while a majority of the older servants in Bengal, the North-West, and the Punjab belong to the school of levelling, resumption, and annexation, which, till the Mutiny, was paramount, and they have among them some of the best and ablest, most energetic and most conscientiously fanatical in religion and political economy of our working men. They are also from their position generally more influential with the Government of India. Many of them are sincerely anxious for the improvement of the natives, provided it be effected in their own — the European — fashion ; but not one of them I ever met has a particle of real sympathy with any native who does not belong to the small Anglicised class, or would allow the natives at large any voice in the decision of the question how the natives can be best governed or improved. . . . " Except in Lower Bengal, where the conditions of the case are quite exceptional, I believe it will be found that the English non-official settler is closely identified in interests and feelings with the native landowner or mer- chant. This is always the case where there is a really strong and even-handed administration of the law to all, white or black. " It seems to me very important to bear these facts in mind. Otherwise we shall make the dangerous mistake of believing that in the prominent representatives of the present fashion of Indian official opinions, we have some check on the " Colonial policy " towards the natives, as it has been above defined ; and it would, I believe, be an equal mistake to suppose that, with the exception of a limited but rather noisy section in Bengal and at the Presidency towns, the non-official European class has, as a body, any sympathy with that policy, or any antagonism to native rights, as Elphinstone and Metcalfe would have defined them. However that may be, Sir C. Wood cannot condemn more strongly than 1 do what is called the " Colonial policy " — the policy of governing India merely for English interests and according to merely English ideas ; nor can he feel more convinced of its danger ; and i86i.] REPRESENTATION OF PROPERTY AND INFLUENCE. 347 I most cordially concur in the belief that the policy which Lord Canning has pursued from 1857 up to the present date, was not only the main cause of our escaping from a war of races, following the Mutiny, but that it is the only policy by which we can hope to retain India. " The only ' Colonial ' feature which, as far as I recollect, I ever wished to see introduced into our form of govern- ment, was in the relations between our Home and the Indian Government. It seems to me a fatal mistake to attempt to govern India in London. The Court of Direc- tors did so in theory, but in practice, till very lately, great latitude of independent action was allowed in all important matters, and more was often assumed by the local govern- ment by virtue of their distance, and the difficulty of enforcing previous reference for orders to England. We are now, however, carrying out in practice the theory of the Court of Directors, and attempting to govern India much as in former times we attempted to govern the Colonies by a Secretary of State in London, with deputies in the Colonies, who look to him for orders instead of acting for themselves, subject to his criticism after the act. "We shall probably produce the same results as we did in the Colonies, i.e. chronic disaffection leading to incessant agitation, making our Indian possessions, like our Colonies, sources of anxiety rather than of strength, and sometimes, as in the case of America, losing them altogether. " The proper remedy seems the same which was applied with so much success to our Colonial system, viz. that the Secretary of State should cease to endeavour to govern India himself; that he should give India the best govern- ment he can, with such mixture of absolutism or repre- sentation as he thinks best, and leave it alone, contenting himself with acting as the representative and colleague of the Viceroy in the Cabinet and Parliament, and as the exponent of the Viceroy's measure to the English Parlia- ment and people. . . . " I believe some sort of representation of property, influence, and intelligence is essential to safety. But let the despotism be as absolute as can be conceived, it would still be better exercised on the spot than if the ruling powers resided in London. The more absolute 348 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. IX. the form of government, the greater the danger of ex- cluding all sensible checks and all channels of indirect information. These are few and precarious in the most vigilant and intelligent despotism. They must be all but absolutely wanting in a despotism separated by half the globe from the nearest point of the country governed, and the difficulties of governing must be enormously increased." CHAPTER X. LORD CANNING'S POLICY. India best governed in India — The Nil Durpan incident — Wuzzeree Campaign — The annexations — The Adoption Despatch — Star of India — Lord Canning leaves India — Frere appointed Governor of Bombay. The power of legislating on local matters conferred by the Indian Legislative Councils Act, and accorded to the different centres in India, would, Frere considered, have another important and beneficial result. Many- local questions could and would in future be decided without reference to Calcutta, and there would be, in con- sequence, henceforth, not only less delay, but less chance of antagonism between the rulers of distant provinces and the Supreme Government, and fewer occasions for reference to England. Interference by the Home Government in matters of administrative detail he always especially deprecated. Throughout the discussion of the question as to the constitution of the Government of India he strongly insisted on the principle that India must be governed in India and not in England. In this Lord Canning entirely agreed with him. The following correspondence explains and illustrates his opinion. Frere writes to Sir Charles Wood : — 350 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. X. " May 15, i860. " Mr. Wilson showed me, confidentially, the reports of the Committees of Council on the constitution of the Government of India, and on the relations between the Government and those of the subordinate Presidencies. I must confess that neither document struck me as going to the root of the matter, or as likely to form a useful guide as to the course to be pursued. " The evils of the present system, regarding which all parties seem agreed, are briefly : — " 1. The Governor-General is overtaxed with work. It is an utter impossibility in the quietest times and with the greatest ability for him to do justice to it. " 2. The general legislation of the Empire is ill done and local legislation is hardly attempted. " 3. Consequently the subordinate provinces are dis- contented and ill-governed and the administration every- where is enfeebled. " It seems to me that the remedies proposed by your Committee will, many of them, add to the Governor- General's work and seriously diminish his power to do it. They will moreover tend to draw more power to England, and this raises the question which must be decided before all others — where and in whose hands is the active administrative government of India to rest? " When last you considered this question in Parliament, all seemed agreed that India must be governed in India. The best available statesman must be secured as Governor- General ; he must have the best men as his advisers ; and he must have the largest possible powers, being responsible to England for the mode in which he exercised his high trust. " But our practice ever since has been the exact opposite to these principles. The Indian Government refers, and the English Government exacts more reference than ever, and now, under pretence of increasing the Governor- General's powers, your Indian Council proposes to cut down his Councillors into Secretaries, and to make other changes which render it inevitable that the Governor- General shall in future take no important step, without knowing that it will be approved by a majority of the Indian Council at home. i860.] GOVERN INDIA IN INDIA. 351 " Now, if you are going to reverse the policy last agreed on in Parliament and to govern India in England, let it be done effectually — abolish the whole fabric of the Supreme Government, and deal with India as the Colonial Office deals with its Colonies.* "You will not then long retain India. My conviction on this point rests, not on any distrust of an English Minister and House of Commons, but on the impossibility of their giving due attention to the element of time ; and in Indian administration, as in war, time is everything ; even Napoleon could not have conducted a campaign from St. Helena, and it will be quite as impossible to administer India from London. " Steamers and electric telegraphs only increase the difficulty. You cannot argue by telegraph, but the rapidity with which you send news, begets an habitual impatience of delay, and these facilities of communication only make it more necessary that the Governor-General should act and decide at once. If you compel him, as your Indian Council's plan will, always to refer to you for instructions, his decisions may always escape reversal, but they will always be too late. " I must confess, were I re-arranging the machinery of Indian Government, I should advocate a course the exact opposite of that suggested by your Committee of Council. I should select from the Council as many under-secretaries as you require and dispense with the rest, retaining only sufficient to enable the Secretary of State to act as the Indian Minister in the Imperial Cabinet, and to deal with Indian questions in Parliament — tasks ample for any mortal man, without attempting the impossible task of conducting, as de facto Governor-General, the detail administration of India. "Why should you deal with the Governor-General of India differently from the Governor of New South Wales? The one is necessarily an autocrat, the other the head of a representative Government. But the reasons which induce you to abstain from interference in detail — to be content with general instructions, to leave him to do his best, and to judge him by results — are much stronger in the case of the * That is, its Crown Colonies. The chief Australian Colonies, one of which is referred to at the end of this letter, had responsible Govern- ments of their own. 352 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. X. Viceroy of India than in dealing with a Governor-General of Canada or New South Wales." He writes again to Sir Charles Wood on the same subject : — "August 8, i860. " Seeing all that I do daily and hourly in the course of the current business of Government, I should not be justified in concealing from you my impression that the Governor-General's difficulties are greatly increased by the very peculiar constitution, or rather the peculiar course of action of the Home Government of India. It is quite impossible to say what subjects will be taken up, to what extent orders will be passed on them at the instance of your Council. This uncertainty paralyzes action on all matters which are likely to be taken up, and often thwarts the best-considered measures of this Government, under- taken in the belief that your Council would not interfere. I need not go farther for an example than last mail. Mr. Wilson had shown by figures, what we already knew as a general fact, that, next to the army, the police are the branch of the service, the reformation of which was most important to our finances. On the necessity for reform we were all agreed, and we set about it in earnest, the Governor-General having led the way, some months ago, in his admirable letters to the Governments of the Punjab and North-West Provinces, of which you have had copies. I had not — nor, I think, had Lord Canning — seen Mr. Wilson's printed Minute on an Indian constabulary, when Mr. Wilson sent it to you, and there was much in it to which we should have demurred if we had seen it, and which Mr. Wilson would, I am sure, have modified on a fuller discussion of the matter. This discussion was in progress, and we were agreed on principles, and seeing our way to useful action, both in reducing the cost and increasing the efficiency of our various bodies of police, when we hear that a despatch may be expected embodying the views of your Council on the subject and prescribing a course of action which may or may not accord with the views held by the Governor-General and his advisers, or with what has been already done in the matter. Of course the immediate consequence is more or less to impede any action, and when we get the despatch we may find it i860.] THE EXECUTIVE IN INDIA. 353 necessary to retrace our steps or to make further reference to you ; and the least evil which will result must be delay, both in reducing expense and in getting rid of the costly incubus which is, in every point of view, such a drag upon us. " This would be a very serious evil, however sound might be the views embodied in the despatch ; but if those views are, as I understand them to be in the main, those of Sir J. Lawrence, the result must be still more disastrous. He adheres, I am told, mainly to his Punjab police in the very features in which it differs from the model proposed by Sir Henry Lawrence and in which Sir R. Montgomery and his best officers now find it faulty, and we must either go back to this system, just as it has been condemned by the Punjab, and give up the effort to reduce cost, or act in opposition to the declared views of your Council, or, what is almost as great an evil, suspend all action while we discuss the oft-debated question afresh. . . . " I feel certain you will pardon the freedom with which I write ; but not a mail arrives without some fresh proof of the evil resulting from the misapplied energy of the Council of India, originating measures and usurping the functions of the Executive Government of India, and that not on any one principle, but in a manner so uncertain as to render it difficult to say when they will or will not act. " I feel this more especially in this matter of police, because, as I have often mentioned before, I think we have no time to lose in setting our house in order, whether we look to your horizon in Europe or to ours in Asia." To which Sir Charles Wood replied : — "September 17, i860. " I am much obliged to you for your letter, but you must forgive me for saying that I am a little surprised at what you say. Now, do not suppose that I wish you to do otherwise than write to me fully, frankly, and freely on all subjects, not excluding your views as to myself and Council. Except upon the subject of the police, I do not know in what case we can be said to have interfered with the functions of the Government of India. I shall write to you as freely as you have written to me, and shall VOL. I. 2 A 354 THE LIFE 0F SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. X. expect as free a rejoinder ; and shall be very much obliged to you to point out where you think our inter- ference has been unwise. It may prevent our committing a fault again. " To return, however, to the police. ... I appointed a Committee of my Council, one member from each presi- dency, and on their report a despatch has been framed. It was considered by every Member of Council who took an interest in the matter, and has gone with their unanimous concurrence. " We saw no sign of action on your part except an increase in, as we thought, a bad shape — battalions of foot and horse, more like troops than police. In Madras we saw a police being formed which the Madras Members of Council thought inadequate, and undoubtedly we had Sir J. Lawrence's strong opinion of the tried qualities of the Punjab police. Now, I must beg you to re- member that there is a greater variety of knowledge of different parts of India on my Council than at Calcutta. It seemed high time that something should be done, and we thought that we should be giving you assistance by bringing together all that we could as to the police of India. . . . " The Council may have been wrong, but unless the concentrated knowledge of all India which exists in the Council is to be brought to bear upon such questions, I really do not know of what use the Council is. . . . " I have endeavoured to explain to you our reasons for what we have done as to the police ; but I shall be obliged to you to explain more fully what you mean by the Council ' interfering with the functions, or usurping the functions of the Government of India, not on any one principle, etc' . . . " Doing anything of this kind is far from my in- tentions, and equally so, I am sure, from that of the Council, nor am I conscious in what way we can be said to have done so. " Pray, however, let me know in what way you think we have done so. " At all events, it is advisable that we should understand each other. We may decide to interfere or avoid it, but we shall not be in our proper relative positions unless we under- stand clearly what we are and what we are not to do." i860.] THE COUNCIL AT HOME. 355 Frcre's answer was as follows : — " October 22, i860. " I received by the Bombay Mail your letter of September 17, and rather fear from its tenor that you thought I had written too strongly on the interference of your Council, especially in the matter of police. But on careful reflection I cannot think I overstated anything, and as every day confirms the view I then expressed, I avail myself of your kind injunction to state my views freely and without reserve, trusting that whatever you may think of the opinions you will believe them to be sincere, and expressed only in accordance with the strong con- viction of what my duty to the public service requires. " First, as to police. I am sanguine that the public despatches you will have received shortly after you wrote, will have convinced you that the Governor-General and his Council had not forgotten the subject nor omitted to act as vigorously as circumstances allow in reducing the enormous police and semi-military charges. You will have seen that while on his tour the Governor-General took up the question as affecting Oude, the North-West Provinces, and the Punjab, in which reduction was more necessary and most easy ; that he pointed out clearly how reduction was to be made, and what should be its extent, and there really remained nothing for the Govern- ment of India to do but to keep these Governments to the path marked out and to aid them in the unpopular and disagreeable work of reduction. "The Police Commission, whose first report you will have received, will, I trust, give valuable assistance in both ways. With their plan before them, no man can say he does not know how to reduce or what to substitute for the existing system, and the new police will be more efficient than any of the old police bodies, while it will cost much less than the double police, half of it a civil police and half a civil army, which is eating us up in the Punjab and North-West Provinces, and has begun to do so in Bengal. This latter point you will see more clearly when you get the result of the Commission's financial inquiry. I need hardly observe you have never yet seen the real cost of the double police, because a part of the expense is always looked on as a set-off against reductions in the regular army, which, however, very rarely follow. Now 356 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. X. this double system is really what the police despatch authorizes. It is true you insist on reductions, and a few men will be reduced here and there, but it is the double system which is the true cause of expense, and till that is altered any large reduction is hopeless. At present the Punjab and North-West Provinces have a police very much in accordance with the views set out in your despatch — stronger perhaps than you would approve — but the reduction need not be large, and cannot approach to what Lord Canning ordered peremptorily and on the soundest grounds in April, and which, I trust, the Police Commission will aid him to carry out. I feel certain you will have approved the course the Governor-General took in deciding to go on with the plan he had sketched out before he knew we were to have a plan from home ; but the despatch has very much increased the difficulty of reform and retrenchment. . . . " This brings me to your question whether there is not a greater variety of knowledge of different parts of India in the Home Council than in Calcutta, and whether it does not possess the best concentrated Indian experience. " To this I must with all respect answer in the negative. As regards police the subject is comparatively a new one in India. I doubt if there is much of value on record more than ten or fifteen years old. Even now there are really very few men who have studied the subject in a manner to entitle their opinion to weight ; fewer still who have studied it at all in connection with finance. I can hardly think of one who has so studied it and is now in England, save Sir C Trevelyan ; but, apart from police, I cannot, with all due respect, admit that the Home Council is the best, or even at all an adequate, representative of the best Indian experience. I have the highest respect for many of the members, and some of them are confessedly among our foremost men, but the Governor-General has, if not in Calcutta, certainly within his reach in India, a far greater amount of Indian experience on every subject, and, what is even of higher importance, the experience is of later years. It is this which, especially since the Mutinies, renders Indian experience in India so much more valuable than Indian experience of men in England, some of whom have not seen this country for many years. India is changing even faster than England, and nothing can be i860.] USE OF THE COUNCIL. 357 more misleading than mere Indian experience of ten years back. I do not now speak of statesmen, but simply 'of our first-class public servants. The wisdom of such men as Mountstuart Elphinstone is never obsolete. Nor, I feel confident, will you for a moment suppose that what I have said applies to the remarks or instructions of the Secretary of State himself. Nothing could be more valuable, and, I should think, more necessary to the Governor-General than the fullest expression of the Secretary of State's own views ; but, in consulting Indian experiences, my view is that the Secretary of State would be better guided by what the Governor-General collects in India, than by men who had seen no more of India than many men still in this country, and whose experience, however great at the time, is now sure to be obsolete. " You ask, if the Council are not to be consulted in such matter, of what use are they ? I must frankly admit that I cannot answer this question, for I have always looked on such a Council as a most useless encumbrance to any statesman charged with the duties of Secretary of State for India. As under-secretaries, to aid him by their local knowledge of the several departments and provinces in which they have served, a moderate number of them would be most useful, but in their present number and with their present anomalous functions, it seems to me they can only prove a bad imitation of the Court of Directors ; that they must mislead and do active mischief by preventing the two English statesmen who are charged with the des- tinies of India from properly dividing the great work they have in hand — the one to rule India as Viceroy, collecting and acting on the best Indian experience we can gather, the other to connect the vast machine of Indian Govern- ment with the Government and people of England. A similar division is now recognized between the duties of the Colonial Office and Colonial Governments. The Indian Council seem to me in danger of leading to a state of things similar to that which existed some years ago when the Colonial Office endeavoured to carry on in detail the Government of all the Colonies of England, and very nearly lost them in the attempt." In sending a copy of this correspondence to Lord Canning, he says — 358 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. X. " I fear the truth may not be acceptable to Sir Charles Wood, but . . . holding [the] opinion [I do], I hardly think I should have been justified in not expressing it when occasion offered. The evil threatening seems to me a mortal one, and I have devoted a life-time to India to little purpose if I were to be silent from a wish to speak only smooth things, and I trust you will think I am right." To this Lord Canning replied : — " October 24, i860. " I return the letters to and from Sir Charles Wood. I am very glad indeed that you have defended your first position so firmly and conclusively. I do not think that a word too much is said, in letter or in spirit. Indeed, I rather wish you had instanced one or two more cases of ill-judged intervention. They are not hard to seek [find]. " I told Sir Charles Wood that I would write to him on the subject of his letter to you, by next mail ; and I shall feel bound to re-echo what you have said. " There is no fear of his taking anything amiss that is openly outspoken. He is himself hasty and snappish, but very fair, and much too thick-skinned to be resentful of anything that we are likely to write. ..." Writing to Lord de Grey seven or eight months afterwards, Frere makes the same complaint : — "June 9, 1861. " I wish I could agree with you in your treatment of us in the matter of the Contract Bill. It is just one of those measures which ruinously impair the authority of the Governor-General. Had the despatch laid down general principles and said, ' It is only a Bill framed in accordance with these views which I can approve,' we should have had no ground for complaint, and your object would have been secured. Still better would it have been to have done the same in an unofficial letter to the Governor- General and so put him on his guard. Best of all, in my humble opinion, to have waited till you saw what shape the measure would take when it left the hands of the Governor-General and his Council, warning us, if you thought it necessary, not to pass such a measure without i86i.] HAMPERING THE GOVERNOR-GENERAL. 359 the ordinary three months' consideration between the second and third readings. . . . "As it is, you have allowed a section of the community here (with whose views, remember, I agree in the main), in concert with a few members of the House of Commons, to dictate to the Governor-General. If this is often done, a timid Governor-General will refer every measure to you beforehand, and will do nothing till you have considered the measure in the India House, and committed your- selves to support him, while a headstrong and self-willed Governor-General will be always resorting to expedients to commit himself and you, if possible, before there can be time for remonstrance. Both are most mischievous results. " Please remember I have no objection to your behead- ing a Governor-General and his Council too, if they do wrong or omit to do right ; but hold the sword over us like men, and don't keep us in leading-strings like children. . . . " You have no idea the trouble you cause us in the present irritated and divided state of public feeling out here, to prevent explosions in and out of the Legislative Council, which, however impotent in themselves, seriously embarrass us. I hope this has been avoided in the present case ; but it has cost time and trouble, which I greatly grudge, as they might have been more usefully employed. " But it is the principle of interfering with the Governor- General, except in the way of criticism by punishment or praise, as the case may be, after he has acted, to which I object, as leading to your governing India in West- minster instead of in India. I do not say ' Calcutta,' for it is, I think, the worst place in India for the seat of Supreme Government — a place where no man can do a good day's work for more than nine months in the year, and which costs you in one year four such men as Wilson, Outram, Barnes, and Laing, all of whom in any other part of India might at this day, humanly speaking, have been still at work." The chief object of the " Contract-Bill," referred to in the above letter, was to endeavour to settle the differences between the Indigo planters of Lower Bengal and the 360 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Cn. X. Ryots. Nowhere was the antipathy between Europeans and natives so bitter and so dangerous. A Commission, of which Mr. W. S. Seton Karr, Secretary to the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, was President, had been appointed in the previous year to inquire into the griev- ances complained of.* The general purport of their report was, that the Ryots had been systematically oppressed, that indigo was a crop which it was not profitable to them to cultivate, and that without coercion they would hardly grow it at all. The irritable state of public feeling on the subject at this time was shown by the following incident. A certain Bengalee play, reflecting the native feeling against the Indigo planters, was translated into English and printed, apparently merely as a literary curiosity, by Mr. Long, a missionary, who was in the habit of trans- lating native literature for the Government, and by Mr. Seton Karr. Mr. Seton Karr sent several copies to his friends, and unfortunately they were inadvertently enclosed in wrappers marked " On Public Service," as though the translation were intended to be circulated officially, and many of the leading journals had copies. The play was a sort of satire on the planter-class — " very much the kind of melodrama which would have delighted a Surrey-side audience twenty years ago," Frere writes, "substituting Indigo-planters for bloated aristocrats, or Jesuits, or the Italian Count who does the horrible in the English melo- drama." * The question arose whether a breach of contract by Ryots to sow indigo should be punishable by fine and imprisonment. Mr. Seton Karr and two of the Commissioners said No. The two other Commissioners said Yes. The Lieutenant-Governor (Mr. Peter Grant) sided with Mr. Seton Karr. The Government of India took the opposite side. Sir Charles Wood said that he should veto a Bill with such a provision. So it was dropped. i86i.] INDIGO-PLANTERS AND RYOTS. 361 Amongst the Europeans a storm of fury arose against the authors and publishers of the translation. The planters combined to prosecute for libel, first the printer, and then Mr. Long. The trial of the latter was disgrace- fully conducted. He was ill-defended ; and the Judge summed up in the most outrageously partial terms and with indecent violence of manner and expression. Sentence was reserved for the full Court. The proceedings before the full Court were not much more fair. Eventually Long was sentenced to a month's imprisonment and to pay a fine of a thousand rupees. The Chief Justice made no secret of his opinion that a still more severe sentence should have been passed. " I must say [writes Frere] it has been rather a shock to all my notions. I had much sympathy with the planters, which has been pretty well corrected by their un-English hatred of free discussion, and vindictive alliance with the Press to punish a man for a libel not half as bad as the Press publishes daily on Government, and to punish him by a form of trial which does not admit of his pleading the truth or meeting the charge fairly. " But one does not expect much from Press or planters, and the sight of English Judges behaving as and have done, throws everything else into the shade." The planters were determined to proceed to institute a prosecution against Mr. Seton Karr. It was announced that in that event the Chief Justice intended to try the case, though in the usual routine it would have come before a puisne Judge, and it seemed likely that he would be convicted and sentenced to a much longer term of imprisonment than Mr. Long. Matters were getting so serious — it even seemed probable that a conflict between the Executive and the Judicial Bench might occur — that the Government took the matter into its own hand, and 362 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [C11. X. Lord Canning published a Minute, in which censure was bestowed, amongst others, on Mr. Seton Karr.* By this step the more moderate planters were conciliated, and prevailed upon the others to drop the idea of prosecution. Had the prosecution of Mr. Seton Karr succeeded, the violent party among the planters had proposed to proceed against the Lieutenant-Governor himself, whom they fancied they could implicate in the matter ; but nothing more was now heard of this. Sir Charles Wood thought — and Frere quite agreed with him — that too much had been made of the matter. He writes, in answer to a detailed account from Frere of the whole business : — "January 17, 1862. " All that I thought of Lord Canning's Minute was that it was too severe [on Mr. Seton Karr]. Nobody here considers the publication as a libel, and Lord Stanley said to me the other day it would go hard with Charles Dickens for such a publication as ' Hard Times ' if he were to be tried by Sir B. Peacock and a Calcutta jury. The only defence which a learned member of my Council can suggest is that the law of libel is not the same in England and India — which it ought to be." Upon the old question of frontier-policy Frere had occasion again to express his opinion. In the spring of i860 took place one of the periodical expeditions against one of the marauding border tribes of the Punjab. The recurrence of this border warfare was, as we have seen, always a sore point with Frere. Upon receiving the official Report, he wrote the following Minute : — * Frere to Sir Charles Wood, December 4, 1861, and to Lord de Grey, September 9, 1861. Mr. Seton Karr was soon afterwards, on the nomination of Lord Canning, made a puisne Judge of the High Court of Justice at Calcutta, and was subsequently Foreign Secretary to the Government of India under Lord Lawrence and Lord Mayo. i860.] A BORDER EXPEDITION. 363 "May 22, i860. " I trust I may not be misunderstood as in any way undervaluing the great military skill with which this expedition has been conducted, if I express my doubts whether any permanent good is likely to result from a system of laying waste the country and destroying crops in the fashion described in this Report. " I do not doubt that some effect is produced by every such exhibition of our power, but I believe it to be such an effect as Edward I. may have produced in Scotland or the French in Algeria, sufficient to enforce submission for a time, but certain to leave behind a feeling of bitter hostility, such as ages of good government will hardly eradicate. "It is true that there has been in this present expedition some attempt to discriminate between the guilty and the unoffending. " The Lieutenant-Governor applauds the discriminating forbearance shown, and trusts that, conjoined with the merited punishment inflicted on the guilty, ' it may lead the Wuzzeerees to recognize the equal justice which dictated the resolutions of the British Government' " But what was this discriminating forbearance ? It must be remembered that we were making war on a tribe which does not acknowledge our sovereignty. The Wuz- zeerees, if robbers and murderers, were not rebels or mutineers. " The commander, in describing the operations, says, ' we found large sheets of cultivation, so large indeed that we were unable to destroy them all ; we therefore selected that that belonged to tribes that are notoriously mis- chievous, hoping that the distinction thus drawn might make the true object of our expedition more marked.' " Whether a distinction made in consequence of inability to destroy more was likely to be very accurate or well observed, may be doubted, but probably among the Wuz- zeerees, as among all other plundering tribes on that frontier, there are always two classes — the class that lives by plunder and the class that lives by cultivation or on the produce of its flocks and herds. Many individuals doubtless do a little in both ways, but as a general rule the border riders do not plough, nor do the plough- men habitually plunder. Now, what is the effect of 364 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [C11. X. destroying the cultivation of a tribe in the wholesale manner here described ? Simply to unite the whole tribe, non-plunderers as well as plunderers, against us — and this result is clearly shown in this paper. . . . " We are told that the cultivation of the mischievous Nana Khail tribe was destroyed and trampled down by the troops when we could eat no more ; and again, ' In the course of the fortnight we have been in the hills, a very large amount of crops has been eaten up and destroyed ; a great deal was done in this way on the Shuboor side, and we have completely lapped up the whole cultivation in the valley between Kundval and Shinghee.' The Commissioner then calculates the damage at twelve hundred rupees per diem to the Wuzzeerees, ' who depend entirely on it,' and can only replace it as food by impor- tation. How this imported food is to be paid for, when their villages have been burnt and their cattle driven off, is not explained, but he estimates, on good authority, that the damage done was equal to eight years of successful plundering. " Having thus treated all, bad and good, alike, is it to be wondered at that the Commissioner found the Mahsoods thoroughly united and able to keep their counsels quiet ; that he could get no information either from members of the tribe or from spies sent among them ; and that as a consequence Colonel Lumsden's camp was surprised and only saved from destruction by the determined gallantry of his soldiers ? " What can these people think of us ? Bad as they may be themselves, do we give them any cause for thinking better of us, or for believing that we war in a more generous or chivalrous fashion ? Is it to be won- dered at that when offered the privilege of taking away their slain, they did not trust us ? I do not find mention of a single prisoner throughout these proceedings. Surely some must have been taken among the wounded. " I say nothing of higher motives, but I must confess to a feeling which I am not anxious to define very accurately when I read of such proceedings being successful ' under the guidance of Providence/ and that ' it will not be in the power (with God's blessing) of the whole tribe to arrest ' the march of the force. But I do very deeply regret that brave and excellent men should delude them- i860.] THE WUZZEEREES. 365 selves into the belief that even as mere matters of policy- such proceedings can ever be successful. It is, I know, a fashionable doctrine that this is the only way to treat people like the frontier tribes ; but knowing, as I do, that by a different treatment — a treatment more in unison with our own religion and laws and customs of warfare — they can be brought not only to respect us, but to have an almost superstitious veneration for brave and generous gentlemen like Colonels Chamberlain and Lumsden, I cannot but lament a policy which induces such officers to act, as I am confident they must have acted, contrary to their own natural feelings and principles, and which persuades them that expediency requires recourse to measures which their own instinct tells them are wrong." In the press of other work requiring immediate atten- tion, this Minute seems to have passed without notice for nearly six months. In a letter to Frere, Lord Canning writes : — "November 8, i860. " Here is a very interesting paper which I have left too long — Brigadier-General Chamberlain's account of his expedition against the Mahsood Wuzzeerees. " I know that you have much to say against the policy which prescribes these expeditions, therefore I have not as yet written any note upon this paper, in order that if the policy question be raised, I may write on the two points — (1) policy, and (2) Chamberlain's individual execu- tion of the work — at once. " Upon the latter point I think there can be no doubt that the greatest credit and praise is due to him and to those under his command, in any case. " Upon the former it appears to me that the measures which have been carried out do not, although they were on a large scale, exhibit a strong case against the policy, because the provocations from the Mahsood Wuzzeerees have been unusually great, and their strength and in- accessible position and character are such as to make gentle measures more than usually hopeless, and because pains have been taken to make the punishment dis- criminating, in a roughish way. But on this you will perhaps differ from me. The weakness of this case is 366 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. X. that after a difficult and successful (in its immediate objects) expedition, we find the Mahsoods firing into our rear-guard up to the last moment. But I am by no means sure that this as an indication of failure is not much more apparent than real. . . . " The fuller report which we now have, shows that more trouble was taken to make punishment discriminating than would be gathered from the imperfect one." To this Frere wrote a long and exhaustive reply, from which the following are extracts : — "November 15, i860. " Of Chamberlain's share in the business and of the whole expedition as a military operation, it is impossible, I think, to speak too highly. . . . " Nor, as a part of the general frontier policy of the Punjab, do I find fault with General Chamberlain's own proceedings as narrated by himself. It is clear that he felt that indiscriminate destruction in these expeditions was one of the weak and indefensible points of the usual system, and he did his best to make a distinction between the property of the innocent and the guilty — perhaps the line was as clearly drawn as is possible in an operation on such a scale ; at any rate, it would not be just to find fault with him if, in this, which, as far as I know, is the first attempt of the kind, he did not carry out his just and merciful purpose as completely as he would have wished. "But his whole proceedings show the unsoundness of the canons laid down with such assumption of authority in the Punjab Report of 1856, which Chamberlain very in- consistently quotes at the end of his Report. Sir J. Law- rence, speaking through Temple, declares it to be impossible to make distinction between guilt and innocence in this frontier warfare ; according to him, all are equally worthy of punishment, and should be all treated as you would the various branches of an enemy's army. " General Chamberlain's practice shows that it is possible to make such distinctions even among the members of the most generally guilty and united tribe of the whole frontier, and that it is not only possible but that all the expected results follow. He spared the crops and villages of the Ahmedzye Wuzzeerees as soon as he marched into their iS6o.] THE INNOCENT SUFFER WITH THE GUILTY. 367 country. They at once understood the distinction made, received his force as friends and furnished supplies. . . . "Taken as a whole, this expedition does not raise the question of the general frontier policy of the Punjab Government, because the Wuzzeerees are, as Chamberlain points out, exceptional in their unity of action, and claim to be independent, which renders it possible to treat them as a distinct power, neither subject to Cabool nor Lahore, to be treated, therefore, not as robbers and rebels against us or our ally, but as a hostile nation and independent power. "Against such a tribe I would, of course, defer hostilities as long as possible, and try every other possible expedient to make them good neighbours, but if they obstinately hold out and continue to make constant aggressions, rob- bing and murdering in our territory, and refusing to punish or give up offenders, there is nothing for it but an appeal to force of arms — they must be taught that their courage and difficult country are no sufficient protection to them in evil-doing, and that as they acknowledge no superior government to which we can appeal, we have the power to punish them as a distinct people and government for not doing their duty to their neighbours. . . . " Surely our language should be, ' we will never rest till that malefactor — the individual offender — is caught and punished ; all who harbour or aid him shall be punished too, but no innocent man shall suffer for him.' " The constant reply to this from the Punjab officers is, that it is impossible to enforce such a demand. I do not believe in such an impossibility. General Chamberlain's Report shows it does not exist. I do not say we should organize such an expedition to punish every murder, but I am convinced it would be better to go to any expense to secure the individual malefactor, rather than to be content with easy redress from the community. " In this Wuzzeeree Campaign I find no specific demand for specific malefactors to be given up. It may have been made, but I cannot trace it ; and if it was omitted, it remains doubtful whether the tribe would have acted as they did under a threat of general tribal humiliation and punishment. It is quite possible that the result might have been different had the Mahsood chiefs, when they came to General Chamberlain's camp, been furnished with 368 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. X. a list of men to be given up. It is certain that had such a list been made known to the tribe, the malefactors named would have shared the odium of the subsequent house and crop-burning, and the owners of the property destroyed would have been more guarded in future in making common cause with thieves and murderers. . . . " It is the Punjab fashion to say that the Northern tribes are more powerful and warlike, the country more difficult, and the people more bigoted. I have never seen the slightest ground for this assertion. Our armies, when they went up by the Bolan and down by the Kyber, found no such difference. The Beloochees may be more true and honest, but they are just as brave and barbarous — quite as bigoted and impatient of foreign control as the Affghans. " It is little use my publicly urging these views, but I do not scruple to place them before your Lordship, knowing that you have faith in the power of such principles, and that you do not believe in the possibility of a principle being true in one place and false in another. I feel sure that from you they would find acceptance with men like Sir R. Montgomery, Chamberlain, and many more in that quarter — men as just and merciful as any in the world, blinded though they may be for the time by the apparent success of an unsound policy, and bound by a mistaken feeling of honour and consistency to uphold in public writing what in their hearts they detest and condemn. Opportunities will not be wanting of telling them what you think, and, without any sudden or even perceptible change, you may greatly accelerate the change which I see taking place in their practice, though they still adhere to the erroneous formularies of bygone Punjab Reports. . . ." To Major H. Green he writes on the same subject : — "July 2, i860. "From all I have seen since I came here, I am quite con- vinced that if you two and Merewether were moved North and left to your own devices, we should in three years have every tribe from the Indus to Guzni and Cabool, and pro- bably the old Dost himself, wanting us to call them our subjects, and ready to do whatever we ask them. Rely on it, all this will appear some day as clear to others as it does to you and me. But we must have patience." i860.] ANGLO-INDIANS AT HOME. 369 Lord Canning and his advisers were loyally supported by the Home Government during this difficult time. On occasions when they considered they had cause for complaint they said so, plainly enough, as has been mentioned. But from public opinion and the press in England they got little encouragement. The English people, at that time gene- rally ignorant and indifferent about events outside Europe, had been roused to keen but temporary interest in India by the outbreak of the Mutiny, and by the peril and heroism of their fellow-countrymen. But the interest had waned with the danger. If India was known to be in difficulties the Mutiny was set down as the ultimate and sufficient cause ; and the Mutiny was supposed to have been an unfortunate accident, which was nobody's fault, and which no wisdom could have foreseen or averted. Nor, it must be confessed, did the Anglo-Indians then in England, whose careers had justly gained them promi- nence and respectful admiration, contribute much to the general enlightenment. Speaking at Glasgow in Sep- tember, i860, Sir John Lawrence repudiated the supposi- tion that Lord Dalhousie's annexations had had any material effect in stirring up hostility to English rule, and attributed the Mutiny to the insufficiency of the number of European troops in India at the time, and to the ignorance and superstition of the native troops in objecting to the greased cartridges ; he recommended as a remedy to teach Christianity in Government schools, and thereby gradually eliminate superstition. Colonel Herbert Edwardes went a step further in search of causes for the Mutiny. He made a speech at the Church Missionary Society's Meeting in London, in May, 1860, as to which Frere writes to Lord Canning : — "June 14, i860. " Colonel Edwardes' speech is worth reading, if only as VOL. I. 2 B 370 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. X. an instance of the sort of half-truths which tell on such occasions. But it is melancholy to see a man like him labouring to prove that indisposition to mutiny was a conse- quence of [there being] a few Christian sepoys in the Madras army, and leaving his hearers to infer that had there been as many in the Bengal army it would not have mutinied. One may question whether religion is served by his theory of special providences favouring the Punjab ; but one feels something stronger than regret to find him claiming a peculiarly Christian character for the Punjab administration, when one remembers the frightful stories of regiments ' accounted for,' wholesale, under the orders of these very men, and a frontier policy defended as just and necessary, which he would be the very first to condemn if carried out by a French or Russian border-warden." To men who, like Canning and Frere and Clerk, were spending all their strength in tearing up the roots of mis- government and neglect, and in striving to amend what was wrong, it was not encouraging to hear that their country- men at home were being told, on what seemed good authority, that there was nothing of consequence to mend — nothing at any rate which they would be likely to set right. It was probably after reading the Glasgow speech that Canning wrote in a postscript to a letter to Frere : — " November i, i860. " Really Sir John Lawrence ought to be shut up, and Edwardes have his head shaved. The latter is exactly what Mahomet would have been if born at Clapham instead of Mecca." Frere had strongly disapproved of Lord Dalhousie's wholesale annexations from the time when, as has been related, he opposed that of Sattara, which was the first of the series ; * and it was with deep satisfaction that he found * Pasted into Frere's diary for 1S61 is a newspaper cutting, part of which runs thus : — " The acquisitions of territory made by Lord Dalhousie on one pretext or another were as follows : — i86o.] LORD DALHOUSIE'S ANNEXATIONS. 371 himself in agreement with Lord Canning on the question, and able to give him hearty support in initiating a change (By Conquest.) 1849. The Punjab 1852. Pegu (Seized for Misconduct 1850. Part of Sikkim 1852. Sind (Ali Morad) .. 1853. Country of Tularam Sonaputtee 1856. Oude Square miles. •• 73,534 20,000 or Misrule.) 1,670 5,412 2,160 23,738 (Alleged Failure of Heirs. 1848, Sattara 1849. Jitpore 10,222 165 4,693 30 2,306 80,000 2,532 1849. Sumbulpore 1850. Baghat 1852. Odeypore 1854. Nagpore 1854. Jhansi 1855. Bhoodawal Candeish 1856. Tanjore " In addition to the above figures, Lord Dalhousie's Government recommended the Court of Directors to escheat the following princi- palities : — (Alleged Failure of Heirs.) 1852. Kerowlee (Rajpootana) . . . . . . 1,800 1855. Adjyghur (Boondela) . . . . . . 340 1856. Inchalmeranjee . . . . . . . . 800 " The Court of Directors forbade the annexation in the case of Kerowlee, and a succession by adoption was permitted." Sir George Clerk, writing to Frere on this subject, says : — "May 17, 1S60. " Government writers in the Friend of India have already cost us forty millions sterling (at least that was my estimate given when the rebellion burst forth, and I see now little reason to modify it), and if great care is not taken there may be another very long bill incurred in a similar way. "You know how warmly the gentlemen of the essay-writing school in the Punjab and Calcutta . . . welcomed the fiat of the god of their idolatry at Serampore : ' You must wipe out and have done with the 372 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. X. of policy in reference to the adoption of heirs by native Princes. He writes to Sir George Clerk — " June 14, i860. " I hope you approve of Lord Canning's letters about adoptions generally. ... I had no idea till he came down that he held such opinions, and think it a great pity that the fact is not more known. He seems to me to be some- times overscrupulous in doing anything which can look like a reflection on his predecessor, and but for this feeling he would, I think, have done much more to correct the mistakes of the last fifteen years. . . ." In Frere's view the principles laid down in Lord Canning's famous " Adoption Despatch " constituted a change from an unjust to a just policy, and an altered atti- tude of the British Government in the face of all native India from that of an aggressive into a protecting Power. In a letter to Lord Canning, he says — " I think your Lordship and every one with you and belonging to you ought to pass a very happy Christmas, if happiness can be reflected ; for I am sure your noble Adoption-Despatch will be read with joy in every Durbar in India, and in many a village far enough from Durbars, as a charter of a more generous policy than we have ever yet publicly avowed." His Minute on the subject is too long to be transcribed at length. The following extracts will suffice to indicate its tenor : — " The statement as to the extent of doubt and mistrust existing in the minds of native rulers and of all connected rotten system of Princelings, Rajalings, and Taloukdarlings, and having so coloured all the map of India red, civilization and Chris- tianity will make rapid progress.' " I do not grudge the cost of this lesson in money a bit ; but oh ! the deplorable cost in the blood of innocent women and children, and, with rare exceptions, inoffensive missionaries. . . ." i860.] LORD CANNING'S ADOPTION DESPATCH. 373 with them, on the subject of the future fate of their families and states, is, I sincerely believe, much within the truth. The present condition of the question discussed in the despatch has deeply impressed all parties affected by it with the belief, not only that any want of direct heirs male would involve risk of the absorption of their State, but that there was a strong and consistent desire on the part of the Home Government to overrule any arguments which might be adduced by local officers or Government in favour of the continuance of a native State. It could hardly be otherwise, seeing how prevalent this belief has been of late years among all European officers who are interested in such matters. I have repeatedly heard it expressed in so many words, by natives, but I was never more struck by it than when lately at Bombay I was visited by many of the native gentlemen I had known formerly in the Deccan. To every inquiry after any native Chief, the answer generally referred more or less to his prospect of leaving direct heirs, with an intimation, where such prospect was remote, that the speaker con- sidered the State as doomed. Once, when I expressed regret at some statement of the mismanagement of a petty State, the reply was, ' What can you expect ? The young Chief has no children. It is not likely he will be allowed to adopt. So every one scrambles for what he can get while there is anything to be had.' " It is impossible to exaggerate the evil of this state of .uncertainty. Even the most intelligent Ministers of the states that have best reason to be assured of our goodwill, feel most keenly that we have no fixed policy regarding them ; that their fate depends greatly on the character of the British Agent at their Court, and that a harsh or indolent Political Agent may turn the scale against generations of loyalty and good service. . . . " Nothing could be more blighting to every good and loyal feeling than such a state of doubt as to our intentions. It would be less pernicious if those concerned could depend on a full inquiry into their claims, whenever the question of succession might arise, but I know of no case in which the parties more immediately interested have been told to state their case fully so that Government might form a judicial opinion on its merits. It has, in every case of the details of which I know anything, been left entirely to the 374 THE LIFE 0F SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. X. Resident or Political Agent to state his own impression of the rights of both parties, one of which was to be subsequently judge of the case, and the other party, the family dispossessed, never directly knew till it was too late, till the decision of the home authorities was pro- nounced, on what grounds their claims had been dis- allowed. . . . " I feel certain that there never was a time when the effect of the measures suggested by His Excellency the Governor-General would be so great as at present, when it would be regarded as a perfectly spontaneous act of royal favour, calculated to remove the cloud of doubt and distrust which has of late years hung over all our dealings with native states, to give practical effect to the gracious promises conveyed in Her Majesty's Proclamation, and to bind to us and our interests a class which we have of late years done much to alienate, and of whose value to a sound and healthy condition of the Empire we could not have stronger proof than the last three years have afforded. . . . " But there should be no delay ; the opportunity now offered is never likely to recur, when the gift will have all the grace of a free concession, and when it will be recog- nized as a part of the same vigorous and generous policy which crushed rebellion and mutiny, and granted a general amnesty to vanquished rebels. " And what is the price to be paid by us for this measure ? I sincerely believe it will cost us nothing, not merely because an honest and generous policy must be in the long run the best, but because I see none of these states absorbed by refusing permission to adopt which add as much to our resources as if we had treated them in the manner advocated by His Excellency the Governor- General on this despatch. " Sattara was supposed to be an extreme case in which the fiscal value of the escheat did not admit of question, but I question if it will be found to have added much to our revenue, after defraying the cost of European troops and European barracks, never needed till the country was annexed. Certainly the surplus is nothing like what would have been gladly and easily paid by the late dynasty as a fine or tribute, in consideration of being left as before in charge of a district which is now a per- i860.] NATIVE SUSCEPTIBILITIES. 375 petual source of misgiving and uneasiness to all connected with it. "There are other escheats like Jhansi, the memory of which we would gladly wipe out at the price of the best province which ever lapsed for want of heirs. " This question can, in fact, never be looked on as a fiscal question, for there can be no doubt that a province, large or small, is managed much more cheaply by a native ruler than by Judges, Magistrates, and Collectors, or even by Commissioners and Deputy-Commissioners. Which is the better form of Government for the people is a question which will be discussed as long as foreigners rule India. But it is abundantly evident that in our provinces now under direct Government management, we have as much to do as we can do properly for generations to come, and ages must elapse before we can say we have done our work so thoroughly in our own provinces that we are in duty to our subjects bound to undertake the direct admi- nistration of Native States. . . ." The Adoption-Despatch granted, in Frere's view, no more than was strictly just. And it was also consonant with the characteristic chivalry which made him tender of the dignity of native princes no longer able to oppose force to the British power, and with the conviction that it was only by respecting native susceptibilities and social traditions that it was possible to govern India. Lord Canning was entirely in accord with him in this feeling, and it showed itself in many details of administration. When in Sind, Frere had taken especial care of the captive or pensioned Meers, and of the education of their sons ; and Sir G. Clerk, writing to Frere, speaks of " the admirable good sense with which they have met your endeavours to train them for undertaking public duties." Writing to Sir G. Clerk, he says : — " November 27, i860. " I am very glad you are going to relax the leading- strings in which the Raja of Kolapoor has so long been 3J6 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. X. kept ; but it will be only half done unless you can impress your own views on some of the Politicals down in the southern Mahratta country. You would be much amused at the surprise of some of the gentlemen here at the success of Lord Canning's experiment in giving judicial powers to selected Sirdars in the Punjab, and Talookdars in Oude. . . . Lord Canning will, I think, do all he can to extend the system. Here there is not a Raja or planter, however wealthy or influential, who can legally fine a man an anna, or exercise the commonest powers of a Deccan Patel. Illegally they, of course, kidnap and murder ; but legal power they have none ; and as a consequence there is not a soul who does possess any legal power in Lower Bengal except, perhaps, the Governor-General and Lieu- tenant-Governor, and a Judge or two, who possesses a stake of ,£20,000 property in the country, and probably not one of them has ,£1000 in land. This cannot be a healthy state of things, and I believe that all the men of property — European and native — here would feel very differently towards Government if they had only the same powers as Justices of the Peace, etc., as you give to such men in Bombay ; and I hope ere long to get something of the sort tried here." In a Minute on " Honorary Magistrates," Frere gives the following instance of the advantage of having them : — "December 12, i860. " In Sind, when the railway commenced, we had an influx of non-official Europeans of all classes. When dis- putes and assaults occurred between them and the natives, the higher railway employes were apt to think that the official magistrates and Justices of the Peace were biased against the Europeans of the railway. The impression was evidently sincere, though, as far as I could see, un- founded ; but it was evident that the feeling was getting every day stronger and increasing in bitterness. The agent and chief engineer of the railway company were gentlemen of the highest character and respectability, and I got them and a couple of the leading European merchants put on the Commission of the Peace, and begged that they would exercise their powers and take a seat on the Bench and a share in the proceedings whenever they could, i860.] UNPAID MAGISTRATES. 377 especially when any of their own men were brought up for trial. I do not know that they have ever sat on such a case, but the result I anticipated was attained — they felt that they were trusted, and that they had substantial proof of the desire of the Government to ensure fair play to their men. I heard no more complaints of the bias of the magistrates against the railway Europeans, and I believe that the good effects were felt in every class of the non-official community." It was a recognition of the same principles which led to the creation of the Order of Knighthood of the " Star of India " — a decoration to be conferred alike on Europeans and natives of distinguished rank or merit. "June 26, 1861. " It is a symbol of a policy [Frere writes to Lord Canning] often acted on, I believe, without being expressed, some- times without being distinctly thought of even, and even then the cause of much of our success in India, but never till lately formally and with authority announced. I am certain you will look back on your share in its creation with the same sort of satisfaction as on the Adoption- Despatch and the other cognate acts of your administration, which will continue to bear fruit long after our conquests are mere matters of history. " I still hope that before you leave India you will see your way to admitting the cadets of such native Princes as are fit to be enrolled in the Order to take their places habitually in the Court of St. James's, perhaps serving the Queen in some way which would entitle them to their spurs on other grounds than their hereditary rank." The creation of the Order had originally been suggested by the Queen, and she and the Prince Consort took an active interest in its establishment and details.* Lord Canning was its first Grand Master. The magnificent spectacles of the Durbars which he held at Allahabad and Benares, for conferring the decoration, seemed to mark the hour of * The Prince Consort is represented in the mausoleum at Frogmore wearing the insignia of the Order. 3?8 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. X. his triumph over the prejudice, calumny, and opposition through which he had toiled on patiently, in the fear not of man but of God, in as terrible a trial as ever tested the faith and strained the powers of an English statesman. The following are extracts from Frere's letter to Sir Charles Wood, describing, at length, the scenes at Allahabad, Benares, and Lucknow. "November 6, 1861. " The first and most important ceremony was the investiture of the Knights of the Star of India on the 1st. You will learn all the details of the ceremonial from the despatches. What struck me was the very different way in which it seemed to affect each chief, though the result in all was satisfactory, and I think exactly what could be wished. Sindia, like most Maharattas, is rather suspicious, and was at first inclined to be unmannerly,* but it was curious to see how much he thawed, and he went away in the best of humours. Though self-willed, violent in temper and fickle, with other faults of his race, he has some very good qualities, and appeared to me really anxious to do and be all that was wished by Lord Canning, for whom he seems to have a great personal admiration and respect. We had several long and unreserved talks when he found I could converse with him in Maharatta, which is not spoken in Hindoostan, and I was much struck with his good sense and quickness. At parting he went out of his way to assure me with great apparent earnestness how much he was gratified by the favour he had received from the Queen, and at the mode in which it had been conveyed to him by Lord Canning, and how earnestly he hoped to govern as Lord Canning wished. This desire to meet Lord Canning's wishes appears, indeed, a ruling principle * Sindia's demands were so unreasonable, and his temper so bad, that Frere seems to have spent a good part of a day between Lord Canning's tent and his. Being able to speak Mahratta, Frere could converse freely with him, and finally succeeded in bringing him to a better frame of mind. Sindia had remained faithful during the Mutiny ; but at one time he had wavered. " I have hot coals in my stomach," he had said to Dinkur Row, his Minister. "Then take care to keep them there," was the reply. i86i.] THE STAR OF INDIA. 379 with him, and showing itself, as his very able Dewan Dinkur Row told me, sometimes in a way rather inconvenient to the older fashioned among his courtiers and Ministers. There is evidently much good in him, and I should say that few of the recipients of the honour here or elsewhere were more deeply and usefully impressed by the ceremony than Sindia. . . . The Begum of Bopal is a really charming old lady, full of wit and repartee as well as of shrewd and sensible remark. I saw her under great advantages at informal interviews, when Colonel Durand, who was an old friend of hers, introduced me to her and the other three generations of her house — her old and rather bitter and bigoted, but very voluble mother, her daughter (who alone of the party retains the "purdah" or screen, which is dispensed with when a lady reaches a certain age and has to look after public business), and her little arch and very mischievous grand-daughter, a child of five years old. The Begum cross-questioned us closely on the subject of female knights, and was evidently greatly pleased by the interest her honours excited among our own ladies. She wound up her questions with, ' Well, I think any one may say I am in luck to get a star without going to heaven for it.' " Her reply, when Lord Canning invested her, will not, I suppose, appear in the official report. She said : ' It was impossible to express sufficient gratitude for such great honours bestowed on one who had done so little to deserve them. It was the wont of great sovereigns so to honour their sincere and loyal well-wishers, and many others had so distinguished eminent men who had served them faith- fully. But it was reserved for the Queen of England to distinguish her own (the Begum's) sex by conferring such an honour on a loyal woman.' "Sindia, who has an unfortunate impediment in his speech, received his honours in silence. Pattiala, briefly, and in very becoming terms, expressed his gratitude and sense of the honour, and nothing could be better than the effect when the little lady, with the utmost self-possession, in a very clear and distinct voice, and in very elegant Oordoo, broke the silence which followed Lord Canning's address, spoken in that deep, clear, and emphatic tone of his, which seems peculiarly suited for such occasions. . . . "The ceremonial was very magnificent, and no experience 380 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. X. of ordinary Indian camp life among Indian native poten- tates, can give any adequate idea of the extent, order, and magnificence of such a camp as the Governor-General's. " But the most remarkable result, in my opinion, was the degree to which the Chiefs and their followers seemed to understand the sort of fellowship with our men of rank and eminence, which is one great feature of an Order of Knighthood. There was, of course, a great gathering of European officers and ladies from all the neighbouring provinces, and they generally seemed to feel correctly the object of the ceremony, and in many ways gave natural expression to their feelings. This was to be expected, but I had not hoped it would have been so well understood as it was on the other side by the Chiefs and their courtiers. This was notably the case with the Begum, partly perhaps owing to the smaller size of her principality, to her quicker woman's perception, and to her seeing ladies as well as gentlemen, when they called to pay their respects ; but it was more or less marked in all. " At Lucknow I observed a very marked improvement in the appearance of the Talookdars. The deputation of them which came to Calcutta some time ago were certainly not fair specimens of the race ; they were shabbily dressed, and the impression they left was one rather of disappoint- ment ; but it would be difficult to find a finer body of men than the hundred and fifty or two hundred who assembled to meet Lord Canning and present the address on the subject of infanticide ; — generally handsome, well-dressed men, with many marks of great intelligence and energy about them ; thoroughly well pleased with themselves and with their government, and possessed with a feeling of communion with us and our objects, of which I have seen little evidence since I came round to Calcutta. As Mr. Yule, himself a Bengal civilian, remarked, when looking at them assembled, it was grievous to think what an amount of valuable material for administration, in men possessed of so much property, local influence, and intelligence, we have for years systematically neglected and thrust from us. Every one spoke well of the results of the experiment made in entrusting the Talookdars with a share in the administration. I am convinced that it is the greatest and most urgently needed of all improvements on this side of India, and I cannot imagine how society and the i86i.] THE INVESTITURE. 38 1 administration have kept together so long without it. Nothing strikes a man from Madras or Bombay so much as the entire exclusion from all power and all share in the administration, of all native and non-official property, rank, local influence, and intelligence. To me it goes far to explain the rebellion which followed on the Mutiny, and I feel assured that unless the example set in Oude be followed elsewhere, our tenure of the country must remain extremely precarious. I think Mr. Yule feels this, and I only wish there were a few more men of his great expe- rience, sound judgment, and natural sagacity, to make a beginning elsewhere. At present very few of the older civilians in Bengal or the North-West are advocates for the Oude system, possibly because they have difficulty in imagining anything so unlike the unnatural system to which they are used ; but there is a marked change in the tone of all who have had the means of comparing the two systems." "Calcutta, November 17. " I am rather pressed for time to describe the Benares meeting, to my mind, in some respects, the most remarkable of all. The assembly was a very striking one, thoroughly Hindoo, and thoroughly unlike anything to be seen in the Presidency towns. Except in Rajpootana, it would be impossible to see anything more characteristic. But I did not understand its full significance till afterwards, when I was going over the city under the guidance of a very intelligent young Brahmin, a man of considerable local property and influence, and well educated in English as well as Sanscrit. He did not volunteer his remarks, nor were they addressed to me, but to my companion Colonel Bruce, who happened to ask whether the ceremony had gone off as they wished, and whether the Governor-General's reply had given satisfaction. After saying it had, the Brahmin observed — " 'It is a remarkable fact that till to-day no Governor- General, as far as I can learn, has, ever since Warren Hastings was here, received such an address from the people of Benares.' " Colonel Bruce asked, ' What particularly induced the people of Benares so to distinguish Lord Canning? He had never been much at Benares nor connected with it.' 382 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. X. " The man replied, ' There is a very prevalent feeling among us all who are Hindoos that he has done more than any Governor-General to secure us our rights and to restore that confidence in the British Government which has been much shaken of late years.' In reply to further questions he specified, not only the sanction of the right of adoption, but the general tenor of Lord Canning's policy, and added, ' I hardly think that English officers in general are aware how much the character of Government suffered, of late years, in the estimation of the less well-informed classes, and of the extent to which even the better informed had got alarmed and were prepared to believe that they might any day be deprived of their property and rights.' Pressed for instances, he said that he was himself an admirer of Lord Dalhousie, and thought that no one could justly find fault with the annexation of the Punjab or conquest of Pegu, but that the annexations of Nagpoor and of Oude were not justifiable with any reference to treaty obligations, and were universally considered by the natives as indicating our intention to aggrandize the Government without any regard to either abstract justice or covenanted faith. " ' But,' he added, ' what struck us most with Lord Canning, and went further than anything to reassure us and win our confidence, was that, while the Government was in danger and we at least thought the hold of the country very precarious, he said not a word, he made no promises and held out no hopes. But when the rebellion was fairly extinguished and the country under his heel, then he did what he thought just and right, and even the most bigoted and prejudiced are inclined to believe the Government in earnest and to trust its assurances.' " In different ways and under different forms I had heard all this a dozen times before, but it never seemed to me more striking or instructive than after the meeting at Benares." Alas ! close upon these trumpet-notes of rejoicing and hopes of returning peace, there fell suddenly on Lord Canning the crushing stroke of a heavy calamity. Lady Canning was attacked by fever, of which, after little more than a week's illness, she died. i86i.] LADY CANNING. 383 Frere writes to Sir Charles Wood : — " November 18, 1861. " He [Lord Canning] seemed to forebode the result even before the physicians were alarmed, and I have never seen him so much moved as he was when he learnt the real character of her disorder. When told that little hope remained he was literally struck down by the blow, and, knowing his power of self-control, I shall be very anxious for the effect of the strain on him. " I believe no man could be associated with him in public life as intimately as you have been, without feeling the warmest personal regard for him and a deep interest in all that concerns him ; and no one could be even slightly acquainted with her and fail to be struck by her peculiarly noble and perfect character. You who, I believe, knew her well, can understand that in India, wherever she was personally known, her loss will be regarded as a public calamity. She is, I believe, most justly looked on as one of the few who, through good or evil report, cheered him on in a course of singular difficulty when everything seemed against us, and when he so nobly maintained the national character, almost as much endan- gered in success as in disaster. Now that his countrymen are beginning to do him justice, they feel what they owe to her who was so much to him in the hour of great peril, and they even who know her not as one of the noblest and best of women, do her reverence as one to whom England owes a deep debt of gratitude. . . ." Lady Canning had been one of the Ladies-in-waiting to the Queen, by whom she was much beloved. Frere feared lest the news of her death, coming without any previous intimation of her illness, should be a painfully sudden shock to the Queen, saddened as she already was by the recent death of the Duchess of Kent. He, therefore, on his own responsibility, at once telegraphed an order to Bombay to despatch a special steamer to convey the news of her illness, so that it might reach England some time before the intelligence of its fatal termination. Dissatisfied, in many respects, as Frere had been before 384 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. X. coming to Calcutta with much of the administration of the Supreme Government, he had then no prepossessions in favour of Lord Canning as an administrator, greatly as he had admired his firmness and moderation in the midst of the peril and angry passions of the Mutiny. But once on his Council, he was not long in perceiving and appre- ciating his high merit, and realizing the great difficulties he had to contend with in the prejudices and opposition of most of those by whom he was surrounded, and through whom he had to work. When he mentions Lord Canning in his letters, his expressions become gradually more and more cordial, more full of admiration and respect. Thus he writes to Sir G. Clerk : — " May 26, i860. " I like very much what I have seen of Lord Canning, and only wonder that he has been so unlucky and is so little popular. He is generally so right and high-minded in all his principles and intentions, that it vexes me to hear him continually run down here by the people who still, almost to a man, worship Lord Dalhousie and his buccaneering policy." And again — " October 17, i860. " Lord Canning is quite at one with you as to the treatment of natives, high and low. He is almost the only man I see or hear of on this side who thoroughly agrees with you on such matters. I mean men in high station. Many of them are inclined enough to patronize native Chiefs, etc., under their own immediate orders, but the idea of being liberal and courteous to all without patronizing seems seldom to occur to them." To Mr. G. T. Clark he writes : — "June 19, 1861. " I have been very agreeably surprised in Lord Canning. He is by far the ablest and most liberal man I know in India, and one of the most judicious and best-informed — I862.J LORD CANNING. 385 scrupulous, if such a thing is possible, to a fault, and very- courageous. If his nature were a little more sympathizing and genial he would be perfect as a Viceroy. As it is, he would be one of the best and most successful Governors- General if he had better instruments to work with. But till I came round here, I had no notion of the extent of his difficulties in that respect, and I often wonder how he kept things together at all." Sir George Clerk wrote afterwards to Frere : — "September8, 1862. " I admired Lord Canning because you, who saw him near, saw so many estimable qualities in him, and I regard your judgment as most sound. My estimate of him as a Governor-General is that first his views were wrong, but latterly right. I doubt whether any one but you and I — and Lord Stanley — well know the course of his conversion. He shines brightly (not in abilities, but in honourable and discreet government) in comparison with his predecessor, who was wrong from first to last." Some of those * who, being in contact with Lord Canning at Calcutta, had better opportunities of observing him than Sir George Clerk, had noticed a gradual change in him from the time Frere became one of his advisers. Not only was Frere's character and society attractive to him ; not only had his arguments and opinions great weight with him, but his more genial manners and greater tolerance of other men's foibles were constantly and successfully exercised in endeavouring to establish more cordial relations between the Governor-General and his subordinates, and still more with the non-official Calcutta Europeans, some of whom had not long before petitioned for his recall. He had become, it was said, another man. With the beginning of the year 1862 the time for Lord Canning's leaving India drew near. Frere's private letters * Notably Sir George Balfour, to whom Lord Canning once said of Frere, " No man ever had a better adviser." VOL. I. 2 C 386 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. X. show that he, too, was looking wistfully towards home and England. He had spoken on the subject of his taking furlough to Lord Canning, when up the country with him in November. Then came Lady Canning's death, and he had to promise him that he would not leave him. And now that Lord Canning was going, he was wanted to assist his successor, Lord Elgin, on his taking up the govern- ment. He writes to Sir G. Clerk : — " March 12, 1862. " I felt very thankful that my own health stands pretty well, and that I have some useful work before me here. " It is not such as I like, for it is little a man can do in this Council. All one's strength goes in preventing others doing harm, and in getting a few men here and there — such as Yule in Oude — room and liberty to work free from the endless pedantic meddling of the old stagers here. While alone with Lord Canning, I helped forward many a good work he took heartily in hand ; but then the labour was very great — too great to last. Owing to paucity of hands with a full Council, more than half my time goes in stopping mischief or removing obstacles thrown in the way which never ought to have been put there, and little time is left for doing anything actively useful. " I used often to long to ask for Nagpoor, or Mysore, or anything where I could work and see what came of the work. . . . " The guns have fired to tell us to go and meet Lord Elgin. Lord Canning will probably leave in the Feroze on Monday. I only hope we may find half as much to respect in Lord Elgin. He has been much overworked of late, and is looking very worn. . . ." The entry in his Diary for March 18 is as follows : — " To see Lord Canning at 3 p.m. He was at Barrack- pore by her grave alone. Spoke of many things in hand : police, land-tax redemption, etc. Told me my fault was trying to reform too much at once and too radically. Very kind in all he said — would write often and expect only one letter for three. Much affected at parting. A 1862.] LORD CANNING'S DEPARTURE. 387 large meeting in the great room to say good-bye, and at the Prinsep's Ghaut. He left about six. [Here is pasted in a slip of paper marked, ' The last label of the last box received from Lord Canning. 18, 3, 62.'] " In his home also he was now left lonely. All his children were in England. Lady Frere's sister, Miss Georgina Arthur, who had made her home with them, was now married. And Lady Frere had suffered so much from the Calcutta climate that, under peremptory doctor's orders, her passage had been taken for England, and she sailed from Calcutta within a few days of Lord Canning's departure. Lord Canning writes to Frere from Galle : — "March 25, 1862. "We anchored here at sunset yesterday. ... I have been thinking much of you being now left alone. I hope that as Lady Frere has done your bidding in leaving you, so sorely against her own wish, you will honestly repay her by breaking away the moment that Goodeve — or, still more, your own feelings — tells you that you ought to do so. The wear and tear of the Council has become such as it never was before — e.g. Low, Ricketts, Wilson, Beadon, Laing, Outram, all fairly prostrated in my time, — and it is absurd and wrong to hold the six months' absence which is claimed by a Member of Council to be an indulgence to be taken only at the last gasp. I shall speak to Sir Charles Wood strongly in this sense. ... If you go to Bombay I shall have no fear . . . but stewing on in Calcutta is quite another thing. . . . " I have found here a letter from my sister [Lady Clanri- carde], speaking in the most grateful terms of your great kindness in sending her some translations from native newspapers. It is very good and friendly of you, my dear Sir Bartle. God bless you ! " But Frere was not long to outstay his chief at Calcutta. Sir G. Clerk had been compelled by ill-health to resign his post at Bombay, and a letter from Sir Charles Wood was 388 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. X. on its way, telling him that he had been appointed Clerk's successor, without the usual preliminary inquiry whether he was willing. Sir Charles Wood's letter is character- istically frank. " March 3, 1862. " I have had under consideration for some time whether I should recommend you for the Government of Bombay. I was aware of Lord Canning's opinion of your fitness for the place, but I had great doubts from two or three reasons : first, there is an objection to sending a man to supersede his seniors in his own presidency, as it is pretty sure to create difficulties for him in his administration ; next, that in your case this was aggravated by your own brother being one of them, and that he also was in Council ; and lastly, I did not wish to deprive the new Governor- General, so soon after his arrival, of the benefit of your advice and assistance. " I have failed, however, in obtaining the services of one or two men whom I considered fit for the place ; and this being so, I have come to the conclusion that the advan- tages of appointing you outweigh the objections — and I have recommended you to the Queen, who has approved your appointment, and your commission to take up the government, on Clerk's coming away, goes out by this mail. . . . " I have written to you quite frankly what were my diffi- culties in appointing you, and you will see that they in no respect affected your own fitness for the office. Indeed, I do not think that any one whom I could have appointed would have united so many of the qualities required at present as you do. I therefore feel quite confident as to your career at Bombay. You have witnessed and taken part in Lord Canning's recent policy, which Sir George Clerk most highly approved and pursued. You are sensible of the necessity of the reductions which Clerk has made, and I can look to you with confidence to pursue the same policy which has been recently pursued, and from which I look for much and marked benefit to our Indian subjects." Frere at once accepted. He writes to Lord Canning :— i862.] APPOINTMENT TO BOMBAY. 389 "April 3, 1862. " You can easily imagine how delighted my wife was. She heard the news at Madras and telegraphed to say she felt so much better, she was sure the change to Bombay would be sufficient ; then for leave to land, and then that she had landed, and the steamer had gone on, before I sent her Goodeve's not very dubious assent, on condition that she promised to go to England next year." Lord Canning writes from Aden on his way home : — " I have barely time for one line, but it must be written. I have just seen in the Overland Mail your appointment at Bombay, and in a succeeding one that of Morehead as your successor. There can then be no doubt that justice has been done, notwithstanding ' Friends in Council.' " I do not know when I have read anything with such unmixed pleasure. It has given me a fillip, and a new start in the interest for India, which I take away with me. God grant you health and strength to do your work in your own noble spirit ! " And again from Alexandria : — "We sail for Malta this morning, after having passed the whole of yesterday here. I have seen the Pacha, and thanked him heartily for his good services to us in 1857. Outram is here. He has death in his face, and yet is said to be looking better than a fortnight ago. . . . " I have found letters from Sir Charles Wood announcing your appointment, and replying to a letter of mine, in which I took exception (rather ungratefully) to the passage in his despatch upon the Lucknow and Benares meetings, in which he spoke of the feeling as ' conciliatory.' I hate the word, and I said so — and that I wished he had used the true and more complete epithet 'just.' His answer is curious. The gist of it being that he does not object to the criticism, but that he could not have carried the word 'just' on his Council. " I did not say half what was in my mind when I wrote from Aden. I do hope that now that you have got the chief burden to bear on your own shoulders, you will take more care of yourself, and not run risks from overwork. It will be inexcusable if, with the help of Poonah and 390 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. X. Mahableshwur, you do not so husband yourself as to be able to work out your full time of usefulness. " I wish Lady Frere had overtaken me (as she threatened to do). I should so like to congratulate her." Frere, writing from Bombay, replied : — May 12, 1862. " I am not surprised at Sir Charles Wood's difficulty in getting his Council to agree to call your policy 'just,' and that they preferred to call it ' conciliatory.' With some of them, I fear, the latter is the better word, and there are few who would agree with you that it is faint praise unless coupled with the former. Sir George Clerk will be able to tell you of many cases here in which he was unable to do all he would have done, because he could only say it was just. " I hope better times are coming ; but Sir Charles Wood must be on his guard to prevent a reaction against your policy, which it will take years to put out of danger. " I found here many details of a conspiracy which began, I think, to be unravelled before you left. It is an evident offshoot of the discontent which lost its chosen leaders in the Nana, Tantya Topee, etc., and which still smoulders in Central India and the Mahratta country. From all I can learn, any spark, such as a war in Europe or with America, would have been followed by a number of con- certed but separate insurrections in all parts of India between the Vindya Mountains and the Towchundra. It was clearly checked and discredited about the time of your Allahabad and Oude Durbars, and by the admission of natives to the Legislative Council, the relaxation of direct taxation, and, above all, by the general expression of native feeling at your departure, that you had tried to govern justly, and that in so doing you had given expression to the fixed intention of the English Crown, and to what is likely to be for some time the declared and honestly intended policy of the English Government and nation. I will try and get together the scattered evidence on which my conviction rests, as soon as the inquiries which are still in progress are complete ; but I found Colonel Wallace, at Baroda, had come inde- pendently to the same result, and I hear much from old Mahratta acquaintances who came down to see me, and 1862.] DEATH OF LORD CANNING. 391 all tell the same tale — high-handed proceedings of every kind and grasping spoliation up to 1857, — their wild hopes that we were to be shaken off, in which so many- joined, that it became an act of loyalty in any native of influence to be prudent and wait events. You may thank Lord Elphinstone that he thoroughly entered into your wishes and policy, and that there was here so little to regret in what was done in the heat of action. Since 1858-59 the tide has set steadily the other way, and in a few years, if we go on in the same course, we may rely on something stronger than English bayonets to secure the neutrality of the people when next we are in trouble. But there is much yet to be done and a vast amount of English prejudice to overcome, as well as of native dis- satisfaction and sense of wrong to eradicate." Lord Canning's letter, to which this letter is an answer, was the last he ever wrote to Frere, and is so labelled in Frere's handwriting. He had not " husbanded " him- self. In less than six months after he had left Calcutta his name was added to the bright roll of statesmen who, leaving English homes of ease and comfort for the ser- vice of the Queen in India, have spent their best years in unremitting and exhausting toil, and met a premature death in middle-age ere they could wear the honours they had won. Frere felt Lord Canning's death as a great personal loss. He also felt it deeply as depriving India of the benefit of a good and wise influence at the India Office, which might have had much effect in modifying and shaping its policy. As the members of Lord Canning's Council — Outram, Wilson, Laing — had, one by one, died or gone home in broken health, Frere had, before the end of his first year, found himself the senior, and, finally, the only Civil member of the Council. By degrees he had become, as has been described, Lord Canning's chief adviser; their 392 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. X. intimacy had borne fruit, for, though of such different manner of life and demeanour, they were on essential questions like-minded. As measure after measure was passed, and point after point gained which he had long and earnestly contended for, Frere gave the credit to Lord Canning, his Chief, as he had formerly given the credit of the work they did together to Jacob, his lieutenant. There is no need now, even if it were possible, to appor- tion it between them ; no need to do more than mark the harmony with which the two traced the lines of a better system of administration, and struck the key-note of a changed and juster policy, under which India, casting behind her the angry memories of the Mutiny, entered upon a period during which, for the first time in her history, her two hundred and fifty millions of inhabitants, differing as widely as it is possible to differ in race, religion, civili- zation and manners, and steeped in traditions of bitter hostility, have lived for more than a generation, and are living still, protected alike from foreign invasion and civil conflict, in security and at peace. CHAPTER XL BOMBAY. Arrival at Bombay — Cotton cultivation and transport — Road-making — Friction with Calcutta Public Works Department — Conference of Engineers at Poona — Death of Lord Elgin — Sir John Law- rence Governor-General — Frere's Minute on Frontier Policy — Relations of Lawrence and Frere — Kattywar — Income-tax re- pealed — Minute on Local Taxation. FRERE'S time was so fully taken up in public business with Lord Elgin during his last days at Calcutta that he had little leisure for leave-taking. The Parsee community presented him with an address of congratulation on his new appointment, which bore testimony to his influence in bringing about improved relations between the European and native communities. The Civil servants and leading people wished to give him a farewell dinner ; but the Governorship of Bombay being a high prize, and one rarely conferred on a member of the India Civil Service, he conceived that his appointment to it might have raised some feelings of disappointment in the minds of his seniors in the service, and especially of the distinguished civilian who was then Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, to whom expectation at Calcutta had assigned the post, which made it the more courteous and considerate course to decline any public demonstration of satisfaction at his appointment. 394 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XI. Sir George Clerk was anxious for him to reach Bombay before he himself left for England, that he might see him and hand over the reins of Government to him without an interregnum. He left Calcutta by the mail steamer on April 9, and joined Lady Frere at Madras on the 13th. Thence they went by railway across the Peninsula to Beypore on the west coast, a railway only just com- pleted, their train being the first that had crossed India from sea to sea. From Beypore H.M.S. Auckland took them to Bombay, where they landed on the 22nd. Sir George Clerk was ill at Poona, and thither Frere went on GOVERNMENT HOUSE, PARELL, BOMBAY. the same night to join him, arriving there at five in the morning, and travelling back with him next day to Bombay. The following day Sir George Clerk sailed for England, Frere seeing him off and returning to be sworn in at the Town Hall. It was a great satisfaction to him to succeed a man with whom on public matters he was so thoroughly in accord. " It is, as you know," he says in a letter to Outram, " no easy task to succeed such a man ; but it is a comfort to find all that one's predecessor did so just, 1862.] ARRIVAL AT BOMBAY. 395 wise, and generous, that there is nothing to regret or wish altered in what has been done of late years." Taking office at such short notice, Frere had his staff appointments to fill up, and many household matters to attend to without delay. And a serious loss had just be- fallen him. When he left Calcutta, all his movable goods were packed and put on board the Turon — a French sailing vessel bound for Bombay. The ship was stranded and lost on the James and Mary sandbank in the Hooghly, and scarcely anything was saved. Amongst the lost things were thirty-two cases of books and papers — a valuable library, which he had been carefully collecting all his life — collections of coins, antiquities, curiosities, and hunting trophies, and many letters, memoranda, and other papers, the loss of which was irreparable. Nor did he obtain the usual sum of ,£2500 allowed to a new Governor of a Presidency for expenses of outfit ; for by a rule, for which it is not easy to see the reason, this allow- ance is not made if the government is taken up by an official already in India, who does not come from England. He was received in his old Presidency with a pro- longed jubilant shout of acclamation from Europeans and natives — officials and non-officials, — his old Sind colleagues leading the chorus. Overworked and wearied as he was, such a welcome could not fail to give him fresh hope and vigour ; and refreshed by the change from the depressing climate of Calcutta to the drier and less enervating air of Western India, he abandoned for five more years all thoughts of rest and home, and applied himself at once to his new work. His work indeed was already more than begun, and his plans of action more than half formed. In many districts of the Presidency he was familiar with almost every village, hill, and stream. Travelling, generally 396 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XI. alone, as he had done in the early years of his service, day after day, and week after week, through districts unde- veloped and sometimes in abject poverty through failure of crops, his mind had acquired the habit of contriving, elaborating, and storing up in his memory for possible future use, plans for public works to meet the wants of each locality. The Bombay Council consisted of three members be- sides the Governor, one of them being the Commander- in-Chief of the Bombay Presidency, who, though his duties were chiefly confined to military matters, assisted in the discussion of most of the important questions which came before Council. Of the two civil members, one took the revenue and finance, and the other the judicial and other kindred departments, the Governor himself taking one or two departments under his own more especial direction (in Frere's case the Political, Military, and Public Works). According to its importance, the business of each depart- ment was disposed of by its head, or by him and the Governor, or by both civil members and the Governor, or, in case of difference of opinion, by the whole Council. In general, each transacted the business of his de- partment with the Governor separately, and only when they differed was the other member called in. The routine business was done by the secretaries to the departments, the chief of which were the Finance, Judicial, and Public Works secretaries ; and it was these secretaries who communicated, as occasion required, with the corre- sponding departments of the Government of India at Calcutta or Simla. Matters of importance came before the Governor and the whole Council and were discussed at their meetings, which ordinarily took place weekly, and were minuted upon by him. Under the Act of 1862, a Legislative Council for 1862.] ADMINISTRATION. 397 Bombay had been created, similar to that of Calcutta, being made up of the Executive Council with eight members added to it. These eight members were nomi- nated by the Governor, some being official, some non- official, and some natives. The Legislative Council met for the first time under his Presidency at Poona on July 15, 1862. It sat once a week, sometimes oftener, till the middle of October ; then met again at Bombay in December and sat till April. Bills when passed by it had to be ratified by the Governor-General in Council and by the Secretary of State in England. The Bombay Presidency comprises a vast territory, and at that time sent its officers as far as Zanzibar, Aden, and the shores of the Persian Gulf. Time and space made it impossible for Frere to establish the same close personal relations with every Civil servant under his authority, as he had done in Sind. But many were former colleagues and old friends, and there was the same spirit, the same accessibility and sympathy, the same intimate knowledge of details and appreciation of good work. He gave public breakfasts once or twice a week, at which any civilian, or any one else with an introduction, could speak with him. And for those at a distance — when the trouble or perplexity exceeded what written counsel could dispel — there was always an invitation to come and stay a week with him at Bombay, and talk it over. The first important matter Frere had to take in hand was that of the production of cotton. When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, and a blockade of the ports of the Southern States followed, it became evident that the supply of cotton from thence would cease. Little cotton, comparatively, came to 39§ THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XL England from any other country at that time, and it seemed as if the manufacture on which the livelihood of hundreds of thousands in Lancashire depended would be stopped altogether for an indefinite time. India had for some years been exporting to England a relatively insignificant quantity, mostly of inferior staple and quality, amounting for the year 1858 to the value of about four millions sterling. Could this small yield be improved and increased so as to come near to meeting the want ? To Frere it was no new subject. Long before, in Sind, he had turned his attention to the introduction of finer kinds of cotton, and to the improvement of the methods of growing and cleaning it. In February, 1861, he had written a memorandum on the subject for Lord Canning — to be used as a resolution, or as a letter to the local governments — pointing out what the local authorities should do, and what they should avoid doing. They must not, he says, take upon themselves the cul- tivation, for they would, by so doing, discourage the private cultivator and capitalist ; nor must they directly, or indirectly, enforce its cultivation on landowners or labourers. But, indirectly, Government might give much useful encouragement by publishing information and statistics as to the supply and price of cotton ; and by sending competent officers, who might be accompanied by members of the mercantile community, to examine and report upon the best means of communication between each cotton-growing district and the nearest port ; and especially by facilitating communication and improving roads, and making, where there were no roads, tracks practicable for country bullock-carts going at a rate of from two and a half to three miles an hour ; for it was the difficulty and cost of conveying the cotton to the coast which mainly prevented any great increase in its cultivation. i86 2 .] COTTON. 399 He had written to his friend Mr. Bourchier : — "October 6, 1861. " Cotton has always been a special hobby of mine, and when first a check in the American supply was threatened, I found Lord Canning fully alive to the importance of the question as affecting India, and despite the sneers of some of the old Indians, he adopted measures, the wisdom of which is now admitted by all parties here and in England, I think. The capacity of India to supply cotton is absolutely unlimited ; but while America could supply all you wanted much cheaper, India was only looked to in years of occasional scarcity. India, therefore, grew grain and other crops, for which there was a steady demand. But if the demand for cotton continues, there can be no doubt we can supply all you want. There is no denying we have been backward in improving our roads and river navigation ; but I trust we have turned over a new leaf in this respect also, and that England will henceforth have no reason to reproach us with neglect of her interests in this particular." A small import duty on cotton goods coming to India was levied for purposes of revenue, and the Manchester cotton spinners became alarmed, lest, in addition to their other troubles, a competition by Indian manufacturers might be fostered thereby, which would interfere with their trade to India. In answer to a letter from Lord Elgin,* asking for information about this, Frere writes : — "July 1, 1862. " I see Manchester is agitating stoutly to get off the remaining 5 and 5J per cent, import duty ; but its entire omission would do them no good. If mills can live, and spinning-jennies and power-looms work at a profit in Bombay, with only 5 per cent, duty on English goods, what chance will the English goods have against a factory in the Nerbudda districts, in sight of both coal and cotton fields, and with food and labour so much cheaper than in Bombay? The difference in cost of production will be * Lord Elgin to Sir B. Frere, May 24, 1862. 400 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XI. more than 5 per cent, and the establishment of the factories is certain to follow the railway now in course of construction. " But, as I think I once told you, I am convinced the growth of cotton factories in India is the very best thing which could happen for Manchester. It is doubtful whether India can ever compete with Manchester in the finer kinds of goods — those in which the cost of the raw material is a small element — compared with the cost of spinning and weaving it. But it is certain that on the spot machinery will beat the spinning-wheel and hand- loom, and that for a long time to come the Indian mills will find their most profitable work in superseding the native hand-made goods. " But for steam-driven machinery of any kind, you require better cotton, cleaner and more carefully picked than any now used for hand-made goods ; and the first effect of an extension of mills in India will be an improve- ment in the quality of the cotton used for local purposes and by India manufacturers. " This is just what Manchester wants. At present the vast quantities of cotton locally consumed in India are useless for English purposes, for the cheap, ill-cleaned cotton, which satisfies the Indian spinster and hand-loom weavers, is almost unworkable by English steam-driven machinery. " But once improve the general quality of Indian cotton, so as to make it workable by such machinery, and you create a vast supply which is always in reserve for, and at the command of, the long purse of the English manufacturer. If the cotton exists and is to be purchased, he will get it in time of American scarcity ; at other times he does not want it. The great evil is, not that cotton is dear, but that it is not procurable. England derives little help from India, because Indian cotton is not grown and prepared for machine-driven mills, and is useless to any but the hand-weaver. Supersede the hand-loom by the factory, and you will at once improve the quality of the cotton, and you will make it of a kind which England will con- tinue to use when other kinds fail. . . . " Dinkur Row's proposal was far more sensible than that of the Manchester agitators for a repeal of our import duties. He said, keep the import duties on, and put an i862.] NEED OF ROADS. 401 excise on the Indian factory produce, then tax at equiva- lent rates all sales of hand-made cloth. This cloth tax is, or rather was, one of the most universal and profitable indirect Indian taxes, and I believe Dinkur Row was quite right in saying that it would enable you to give up every direct tax except the large incomes." Casting about for every possible means of improving the communications with the cotton districts, Frere noticed that in the country through which lines of railway ran, the roads leading to the stations on the line had been so worn with the unusual traffic as to become nearly im- passable, and in such a condition from the passage of draft animals over them as to become, in wet weather, quag- mires which were absolutely pestilential.* Such a matter in a European country would be set right by local authorities, but in India it depended upon the chance of its falling under the notice of some official, and Frere found it necessary, by a paper sent round to the consulting engineer of the railway department, to call attention to the clauses in the railway contracts, which bind the railways to provide roads from their stations to the nearest town or made road. " Above the Ghauts," he says, " there is rarely any visible road to any station, and, except at Poona, I have not seen a single road at any station from Tanna to * Mr. Shaw Stewart, the then Collector of Dharwar, writes : " I write from here while the senses of smell and sight are still suffering acutely from the dreadful state of the approaches to the stations at Kandalia and Campoolie, to ask your authority to speak to Scott and Malcolm on the subject. About two or three hundred yards of road approaching either of these stations is absolutely half knee-deep in the most offensive and malarious black mud. ... It is disgraceful to our Public Works Department, most unhealthy to the wretched people, European and native, who have to live in the neighbourhood, and most offensive to all railway passengers." He goes on to suggest that the roads in question should be made good at once, leaving the question of cost to be adjusted afterwards between the Public Works Department and the Railway Company. VOL. I. 2D 402 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XL Sholapur which was not a discredit and blemish to the great work with which it ought to communicate." To Sir Charles Trevelyan, then just returned from England to take charge of the Finance Department in the Supreme Council at Calcutta, he writes — "January 28, 1863. " You desire my views as to what should be done if you have a surplus of one million. I should say ' make roads and canals.' And if you have two or three millions I should still say ' make roads and canals,' and this, not only because they will in a thousand ways tend to increase your resources, but because they will, if well designed and executed, wipe out the greater part of fifty millions of debt, for till you make your railways pay, the expendi- ture on them is so much addition to your debt. " At present your railways are like the Great Eastern, with nothing but canoes and catamarans to load and unload her. We are doing well in this Presidency as regards traffic on all open lines, but I see everywhere that it can be increased, perhaps doubled, by a good network of roads affording the necessary complement to the great carrying engine already provided. "After roads and canals, I should say pay your Courts of Justice better, and give a much larger assignment to education. I am thoroughly ashamed of the parsimony with which our education grant is doled out, and with the consequent delay in giving effect to the great despatch of 1854. " I would not for the present either pay off debt or remit taxation." But all his intentions and plans were rudely checked by a sudden order from Calcutta, alluded to in the following letter to Sir George Clerk : — " February 12, 1863. " At Calcutta we seem getting back to the good old days when the secretaries led the Governor-General as they pleased. I only hope Trevelyan will do something to keep us out of the old groove, but unfortunately it is just the groove into which a man of his turn of mind is peculiarly apt to slip himself without knowing it. 1 862.] PROGRESS CHECKED. 403 "Just before he came out we were preparing a budget of Public Works, considerably in excess of last year's — nothing very new or extravagant, but barracks, roads, and canals, long since approved and sanctioned and urgently wanted — when a telegram comes desiring us to cut down our military works to two lacs less than last year, and our general Public Works Budget to ten lacs less. This seemed so absurd, with an overflowing treasury, that I thought the telegram was a mistake. But the letter came and showed us that Madras was even worse off, being reduced twelve lacs. Bengal, North- West Provinces, and Punjab only six lacs, while the Central Provinces (Nagpore, etc.), Oude, Burmah, and the minor administrations under the Govern- ment of India, have between them an increase of six lacs. It is the old story. We have remonstrated publicly, and I have written privately to Trevelyan and Lord Elgin, urging the folly of stopping all useful and necessary works just when we ought to be doubling our expenditure on them. I can conceive nothing else that could possibly be done so sure to unite all classes in abusing the Govern- ment of India, and to leave it no friends even in this country but the Secretaries and their creatures. John Bright himself could not have planned things better to show the justice of his own views. " Unless our remonstrances are successful, almost every cotton road and every barrack now making must stop on April 30th, and no new ones can be commenced, and this with cash balances three millions over the safe working- mark and an increasing revenue." He writes on the same subject to Sir Charles Wood — "January 27, 1863. " I trust there will be no check to road-making through our own Public Works Department. We have been dis- mayed by an order from the Government of India to restrict our Budget of Public Works expenditure for next year, 1863-64, to a sum ten lacs less than the very inade- quate assignment for the current year. I send you a copy of our letter submitting our Budget, and pointing out what works must be stopped or lie over if the limitation is insisted on. You will see that it amounts practically to a stoppage of all our outlay on new roads and works of 404 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XI. irrigation almost as complete as during the crisis of 1857-59, and a very serious curtailment of expenditure on all the most useful works in progress, and this too at a time when everything seems most favourable for a vigorous prosecution of public works of every kind, the balances higher than they have ever been, the revenue steadily expanding, public credit good, trade flourishing, and the people better contented than they have been for many a year. I was at first in hopes that it was merely a measure of precaution to enable Sir C. Trevelyan to have a large margin for future liberality, but from a letter I got from him on his way out, he speaks of ' the demand for public works within the year being limited not only by our avail- able means, but also by a due consideration of the increased cost of labour and materials, and by the degree to which it may be advisable to divert our limited stock of labour from active immediate production to provide the machinery of future increased production in the shape of Public Works.' As regards available means, they were surely never greater than they are just now ; labour and materials are dearer than formerly, but much cheaper than they are likely to be hereafter, for prices are steadily rising, and are likely to rise, so that every day's delay must enhance the cost of any given work. Our stock of labour is limited more by the want of roads and means of communication than by anything else. It is ample for all the public works we could undertake, if you gave us a million more to spend, without throwing out of cultivation a single field. Of this you could not have a better proof than the fact that the muster of labourers on the Bhore Ghaut railway works has sometimes risen to forty-five thousand men, and the outlay in wages to thirty thousand pounds a month on a line fourteen miles long, without any visible effect on the cultivation except to increase the demand for land in all parts of the country whence the labour was drawn. The reason is obvious. The Indian labourer is not usually an Indian navvy. He is an agricultural labourer, who tills his fields at the appointed season, and works on a railway work when he would otherwise be idle. His rail- way earnings are clear gain, and are devoted to a very great extent, as soon as earned, to 'active immediate' agricultural 'production.' I have verified this fact in a variety of ways, by inquiry from many labourers as well as •863.] NORTH CANARA. 4° 5 from the engineers and contractors ; and it is still more the case in the construction of common roads, where the class of provincial labourers in earthwork is less numerous than on our railways. So far, then, from expenditure on Public Works curtailing agricultural production, the reverse is the case. " All this I will urge both on Sir Charles and on Lord Elgin, and trust they may see the matter in the light in which it appears to me. But I mention it to you at once, for it seems to me that the curtailment of our Public Works expenditure may cause much embarrass- ment in a variety of ways. It is quite impossible that India should fulfil all the expectations formed of her cotton-producing powers, and, if the cotton famine con- tinues, every expectant of cotton from India will attribute his disappointment to Government. As long as we are doing our best to give roads, etc., we have an answer to the most serious of the popular complaints ; but such a curtailment of our Public Works assessments as is threatened, and the consequent stoppage of works in progress which are visibly necessary to our cotton export trade, will give a ground of complaint which it will not be easy to meet, and which may do more harm than the postponement of the works in itself. " Frere spent some weeks or months of each year in visiting outlying portions of the Presidency. Early in February, 1863, he went through the district of North Canara, which lies on the coast immediately south of Goa, in order to see for himself what could be done towards developing it, with a special view to the pro- duction of cotton. He writes to Lord Elgin from Coompta, a town on the coast some five hundred miles south of Bombay. ''February 20, 1863. " I came to these parts to see what was going on in this province, which was transferred from Madras to Bombay last year. " This place is the great outlet of the cotton grown in Dharwar and the neighbouring districts of Bellary and Mysore. It is a most thriving place, and the people say 406 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XI. they shipped last year cotton to the value of three million sterling, besides other produce. " But it is merely a roadstead for coasting craft. There is a small creek where the cotton is put into small boats and sent across a dangerous bar to native coasting craft lying at anchor in the roadstead, or aground on the beach. These take it to Bombay ; but even these small craft have no shelter, and are forced to put to sea and scud for the nearest headland when it comes on to blow. Moreover, the port is separated from the mainland by a wide estuary, across which the cotton has to be ferried. . . . " I doubt if you have in all your dominions a province which will so immediately respond to expenditure on roads as North Canara would. It is opposite one of the only three depressions which break the barriers of the Western Ghauts, and it has a naturally good port (Seda- shegur), which the other two depressions have not. " It has a magnificent back country, embracing, in Dharwar and Mysore, our best cotton, coffee, and betel- nut districts, with forests of the finest timber, and a rich and very civilized coast population. It only wants roads. The Madras Government lined out some admirable ones, and roughly opened a few, which are already covered with traffic to an extent which the road-makers could never have expected, so much does it exceed the road's capacity for bearing traffic. We are doing our best to supply deficiencies, but all must come to a stop within two months from the ist May next, unless you relent and give us more money for our public works. " In the belief that the finances would justify your giving us more money for public works, and that, having it to give, you would be sure to give it, we had been preparing for a greatly increased expenditure on roads and works of irrigation. I am certain we could most economically and to the best advantage lay out in this presidency half a crore * more than we have this year ; and you may imagine our disappointment at finding that you intended next season to cut us down ten lacs below this year's most inefficient assignment. . . . " I gave Sir C. Trevelyan a few of the reasons why I think there is no case for reducing taxation. The fact is that the late enormous importations of bullion have so * A crore is a million sterling;-. 1863.] SEDASHEGUR. 407 raised prices that neither landowners nor cultivators, artisans nor traders, feel taxation as they did three years ago ; and there is no class which will really thank us for remitting taxes except that with fixed incomes, which is a very small one. On the other hand, it is impossible to exaggerate the want of common roads, or the evils it produces. It is the great cause of the comparative non- productiveness of your railway expenditure, which forces into bolder relief the barbarous modes of travelling every- where off the solitary grand trunk road. ... I found it required a whole day to land at the capital of the district (Honore), owing to the want of such a pier as every herring fisher's village has in England ; and that when at the capital, and wanting to go twelve miles to this place, one of our great cotton ports, another day's delay was needed to make preparations, not for a Nabob's progress, but for simple locomotion by any means other than walking. The choice lay between landing a horse and posting bearers to carry me in a muncheel, either of which operations required a whole day. I expected to have ridden through a desert, and was surprised to find a country very much resembling, but richer, if possible, and better populated than, that between Galle and Colombo. The sole obstacles to cart-traffic, along a road which was studded with large, scattered villages, were two rivers, either of them capable of being bridged for three thousand pounds, but which at present forced me to unsaddle and tow my horse after me in a canoe. It is for want of these bridges that at Honore the only wheel carriage was the native judge's palkee carriage, drawn by two ancient bullocks ; and that no one in these parts seems ever to quit his own immediate neighbourhood, unless by sea or on foot or in a muncheel, and that they are so old-fashioned, that when we want their cotton or coffee or pepper we can find nothing they want in return from us except our money or bullion, though they evidently would, if the country were more accessible, take a vast amount of our manufactures." From Coompta Frere went to Beitcul, whence he made a thorough investigation of the port and neighbourhood of Sedashegur — a natural harbour, to which the attention of several Manchester merchants had been already drawn. 408 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XI. Sir William Denison had visited it from Madras before it had been transferred to Bombay, and since its transfer in April, 1862, Government had been pushing on the work of making it available by connecting it by roads over the Ghaut with the cotton-growing country in the interior. Complaint had been made in Parliament, and a claim for damages instituted against the Government by the Manchester Cotton Company, on the ground that there had been culpable delay, and that an undertaking to complete certain roads and landing-places had not been fulfilled. Frere wrote from Beitcul to Sir Charles Wood a minute and detailed description of the position and features of the harbour and the country near it, and of the progress and condition of the roads that were being made. The harbour itself, he found, required little doing to it, except the addition of a pier and a wharf wall. The great want was that of cart-roads to the interior. One had been opened, but, owing to a severe visitation of fever, which had incapacitated or scared away the labourers, was incomplete. He writes to Sir Charles Wood : — " February 22, 1863. "Almost every man we met had been, or was, when we saw him, fever stricken ; and from the miserable, emaciated figures, and enlarged spleens of some of the poor wretches, I can well believe the tale we were told of its ravages among the wild, ill-fed, and ill-clothed people of these forest tracts. It spares no one, and though it yields easily to treatment, and is seldom fatal to those who clothe and live well, is constantly recurring, and seems to strike terror into every class, especially the workmen, who generally abscond after a few days' stay, and cannot now be got to engage at all on the Ghaut works. "Such visitations appear to recur periodically at intervals of fifty or sixty years, and we therefore hope this, which has now been on the increase for three years, may abate. But Dr. Leith's conclusions are entirely negative. It is 1863.] FEVER. 4<->9 not apparently of atmospheric origin, nor dependent on race, food, water, or mode of living, save that the poorest and weakest suffer most. . . . " I had a meeting yesterday, at which all the local European agencies of Bombay nouses and the Manchester Cotton Company were represented by five or six gentle- men from all parts of the world — Manchester, Glasgow, Germany, and Australia. The Government engineers, Revenue officers, Surveyors, and Foresters, and all Govern- ment officials were present, and we discussed everything relating to the place and province, came to a better mutual understanding on many points, and removed some griev- ances, real or imaginary, so that I hope things will go on more smoothly in future. The mercantile men ended by declaring they had nothing to suggest or complain of, and, with the exception of an early completion of the Arbyle Ghaut road, nothing to wish for which we could do for them, so I trust you will find their employers in somewhat better humour hereafter. . . ." Sir Charles Wood supported Frere in his remonstrance against anything being withheld of the amount originally destined for expenditure on public works. He writes : — " March 18, 1863. " I have written very strongly to Trevelyan by the last two or three mails, and I repeat my views by the present mail. I agree with you, and I am very glad to have seen the copy of your letter to him. I have told him that I entirely approve of what you have said to him. I devoutly trust that my letters will have arrived in time to prevent their committing so grievous a mistake as reducing the assignment for public works in 1863-4." And again : — "April, 1863. " I am very much obliged to you for your long and interesting letter from Sedashegur. ... It is melancholy to read your accounts of the fever, which my Manchester friends say that we have got up for the occasion, in order to justify our shortcomings. This is a specimen of their candour. However, nobody much credits what they say. 4IO THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XI. . . . Trevelyan has sent me a good deal of correspondence. He has got into a strange notion of a surplus which he thinks may be inconvenient, forgetting that a larger appro- priation for public works — the very thing that we all want — will make this fancied surplus disappear, whatever it may be for 1863-4. • • • I cannot conceive what has been running in his head, for we had talked it all over before he went from home, and I thought that he had understood my views and wishes completely." Lord Elgin supported Frere's views as to expenditure. In answer to Frere's letter from Coompta, he says : — " March 11, 1863. " I entirely agree as to the inexpediency of applying our surplus, if we have any, to the reduction of taxation. I expressed my views on this head very strongly to Sir C. Trevelyan before I left Calcutta, and I hope that my arguments were not without some effect on his mind." The Government of India seems at this time to have been so impressed with the expediency of showing a favourable balance as the result of each year's finance — because it would give confidence to English capitalists and tempt capital to India — that it failed to realize that the supply of the crying need of stricken Lancashire and the protection of Indian districts from the risk of famine were obligations paramount to that of producing a showy budget. However, on this occasion, whether convinced by Frere, or under Sir Charles Wood's or Lord Elgin's pressure, it gave way, and the money for the works was supplied. It was an inexpressible relief to Frere. " It has done more," he says, in reply to the letter announcing the decision, " than the climate up here (Mahableshwur) to set me on my legs again." Another impediment to the introduction and use of cotton from India, which Frere set himself to remove, was the serious adulteration to which it was liable before 1863.] ADULTERATION OF COTTON. 4II it was shipped from Bombay. Cotton of inferior staple was put in to fill up, and there was tampering with it when it was pressed, and during its transport overland. But the worst pilfering was done by the native sailors — sons or grandsons of men whose trade had been piracy — in the small coasting vessels which carried it along the coast to Bombay. These men used to cut open the bales, pilfer the cotton, put in stones and dirt to make the weight right, and then sew them up again. A measure to prevent or punish these frauds was introduced into and passed by the Legislative Council. Frere would not make it a Government Bill, because he preferred that the responsibility and credit for it should rest on the mercantile community, and it was therefore introduced by a merchant member ; but he warmly supported it, and no doubt originally suggested, and had a chief hand in formulating it. Under its provisions a staff of inspectors and special police was appointed to watch over the cotton in its various stages of transit. The presses were licensed, and each had its stamp, so as to facilitate the tracing of fraud. It was made penal to bring adulterated cotton to be pressed. A small fee was charged for licensing presses and for stamping, which sufficed to cover all expenses of inspection and special police, and to make the machinery of the Act self-support- ing. It came into force on the 1st of January, 1864, and had a very beneficial effect on the quality of the cotton exported ; though as the Act applied only to the Bombay Presidency, some of the cotton which came down the Indus from the Punjab, to be shipped at Kurrachee, was only partially protected by it. In order to remove, as far as possible, all red tape friction and jealousy between heads of departments and the executive engineers of the different districts, and to 412 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XI. reduce to a minimum the weary waste of time and energy spent upon correspondence and report writing, Frere invited them all to meet in a conference at Poona. The freest discussion was allowed, and all were on equal terms; the highest official had to listen to the most searching criticism of his methods and plans ; the humblest man could obtain a hearing for his pet scheme, or his tale of delay or neglect. Sharp things were sometimes said ; but Frere's tact and courtesy, and his acknowledged competence and good judgment on engineering questions, sufficed to maintain harmony and good feeling throughout the protracted discussions. The Conference was a great success, and it was repeated annually during his term of office. Writing about it to Lord Elgin, Frere says : — " October 10, 1863. " We ordered all the principal Revenue and Public Works officers to meet the Council, and by oral discussion, continued from day to day for some weeks, did more actual work, and came to a clearer understanding of the actual position and relative duties of all connected with public works, than has been effected by the written correspondence of many years past. " Much indirect good was done by the full discussions and explanations which these meetings permitted ; old feuds between different departments were explained away and reconciled ; the good, hard-working men who too often get soured by isolation and compulsory idleness were encouraged ; mistakes, where any existed, were explained and cleared up, and we often got most valuable information on points on which Government was in error. The very few idlers who exist in the Public Works Depart- ment were exposed, and one or two were deservedly shelved. " We found that we could not reduce the numbers or cost of the superior grades of superintending or executive engineers. But we found that the establishments we have got, though a minimum for the smallest possible expendi- 1863.] CONFERENCE OF ENGINEERS. 413 ture, could all of them undertake more work within the limits of their own charges than had been previously- assigned to them. If each executive engineer were work- ing full power, the whole body could undertake to build barracks, and make roads and canals, costing altogether more than half a million sterling in excess of the assign- ments you had already sanctioned, with an addition of subordinate establishment of less than one per cent, on the sum to be expended." To Sir Charles Wood, Frere writes of the Conference : — "August 8, 1863. " The time will not have been wasted even should the result be confined to correcting the feeling which I find prevails very generally among some of our best and most zealous revenue, as well as public works officers, that the Government here and in Calcutta are combined with your Council to stop all public improvement, and to reduce our public servants to mere machines. No one who has not seen it, in our remote stations, can have an idea how deeply such errors rust into the minds of zealous public officers secluded from all intercourse beyond the society of their own station, nor how quickly these errors rub off in the course of a few days of personal intercourse with other officers of Government above and below them at a large station like Poona and Bombay." Prominent among the questions discussed was what public works were most urgent, and how and at what expense they could be carried out. Thus one imme- diate practical result of the Conference was that the Government became possessed of the best obtainable collection of engineering opinion in the Presidency, on which to found their plans and estimates for the coming year. General Fife, R.E., writing his reminiscences of these Conferences, relates how — " On one occasion, Colonel , an officer in political employ, ventured to read a short paper in which he said 414 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XL that public roads could be constructed for about one-fifth of what they cost under the engineers. Sir Bartle had, in calling upon Colonel to read his paper, led us to suppose that he was inclined to agree with him. A storm arose. Some flagrant oversights on Colonel 's part were pointed out, but as the paper had been drawn up with some care, at any rate, and the engineers had no warning of the attack that would be made upon them, their rejoinders were not at once so conclusive as they might have been. Subsequently several, including myself, placed our ideas on paper, with, I am afraid, not a little acrimony, and the papers were duly laid before the Governor and might have drawn forth some rather severe remarks from him ; but he took all in the most kindly way. " Public works received a great stimulus by the Con- ferences. As in Sind, every one was electrified by the sympathetic interest which Sir Bartle displayed, and never before were the engineers so actively employed." Upon the subject of irrigation, Frere writes to Sir Charles Wood : — "April 10, 1863. " Last monsoon the rains failed us in the Deccan and Candeish, and we had to spend several lakhs of rupees in affording relief by famine works, etc. They are provinces in which irrigation pays well, and where, from the small Ryotwar tenancies, it must be done by Government. I inquired how much we had spent on new irrigational works within the last ten years, and found it was about ,£7000, positively not more than .£700 a year in a country larger than Scotland. There were at the time more than two hundred schemes for irrigational works, some of them on a very large scale, in the records of our Public Works Department and awaiting execution. Inquiring the reason of this extraordinary state of things, I was assured that the utility of such works was so great, and the facilities so obvious, that zealous officers were perpetually sending up plans, but that, partly owing to the want of money, and the constant changes in the department, few or none of any size were ever undertaken. The great obstacle to really doing anything was the want of a separate set of 1863.] IRRIGATION. 415 officers to undertake works of this kind, and the impossi- bility of combining them with the ordinary duties of an executive engineer, such as road-making and barrack- building and repairs. " Captain Fife, who had devoted twelve years to irriga- tional works in Sind, and had executed a great project of Colonel Baker's with great ability and success, happened to come out from England at the time, and I set him to work, not to start new schemes, but to revise some of the two hundred we had on hand, and to select the most promising and profitable for execution. All this was duly reported to the Government of India, and I did not suppose there would be two opinions as to the almost self-evident necessity for what we proposed. Captain Fife spent several months in travelling and had a large stock of well-considered and most paying schemes to begin with next season, when a letter from Colonel Strachey comes, many months after we had reported our plans for approval, upsetting, with a few sarcastic remarks, all we had done, and directing Captain Fife to refund all the salary he had drawn. I have no doubt all will be rectified as soon as I can explain to Lord Elgin and get him to look into it and form his own opinions." Ultimately this was rectified, and after much waste of time and writing, Captain Fife was confirmed in his appointment. It is sometimes asserted that famines in India are more frequent than formerly. The contrary is the fact. Until comparatively recent times, a province might, owing to a failure of the usual rainfall, be desolated by famine and a million or two of people starved to death without any one more than a few hundred miles off knowing any- thing about it. Frere was once asked by one of his children why he was perpetually thinking and talking of irrigation. " If you had seen men's bones as I have," he answered, "lying unburied by the roadside, and on entering a village had found it untenanted by a living person, you would understand why." 416 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XI. In a rainless country like Upper Sind regular irrigation is at all times essential to cultivation, and where there is no irrigation there can be no permanent population. But in the Deccan cultivation was, in ordinary years, carried on by means of water supplied from small tanks, filled in the rainy season. This uncertain supply necessarily failed in exceptionally dry years, for the average rainfall is only about twenty-five inches, and falls in four months of the year. Periodical famines were the result. On the mountain range of the Western Ghauts, running parallel to the coast, there is in the driest years a very heavy rainfall, whence in the rainy season the rivers bring down a great volume of water. Frere, after much consultation with Colonel Fife, determined to carry out the idea originally suggested by Sir Arthur Cotton, of storing the water of the river Moola, which flows by Poona, by means of a great lake. To make this lake, a huge dam of solid masonry, about a mile long and nearly a hundred feet high at the deepest part, was constructed at a point ten miles from Poona up the valley. By means of this dam was formed a sheet of water — named after its constructor Lake Fife — twelve miles long and at its broadest part a mile and a half wide. There was no fear of its not being filled every season, for at the head of the valley, in the mountains, there is a rainfall of two hundred inches a year. By this work, which with the canals cost about half a million, and was seven or eight years in con- struction, the town of Poona, and the cantonments, and about eighty-six thousand acres of land were supplied with water. This, which was only one among many schemes for irrigation projected and commenced at that time, needed all Frere's support, and that of his successor, Sir Seymour Fitzgerald, to get it carried out, otherwise it would have been shelved for an indefinite time. Afterward irrigation 1863.] CENTRALIZATION. 417 works for the Deccan became more general, and the department expanded from a nucleus of three or four officers till it possessed a large staff. By the year 1884, so much progress had been made that it was estimated that the area of cultivation actually protected from famine was as much as a million and a half acres — a result the more remarkable owing to the extreme roughness of the country, which in some places makes it impossible to irrigate. It soon appeared that the incident of the sudden check to the supplies by the Government of India at the beginning of the year was not to be exceptional, but was to be followed by a series of similar difficulties and delays. A traditional jealousy of old standing existed between the departments of the Government of India at Calcutta and those of the Bombay Government. The Bombay Governor and his Council are appointed directly by the Crown ; they were naturally tenacious of such indepen- dence of action as they were entitled to exercise, and chafed at being interfered with in matters of detail by the officials at Calcutta. The Calcutta Secretaries, on their side, were not likely to lose sight of the fact that their departments were those of the Supreme Government. Before the days of railways and telegraphs, distance made it practically impossible to govern Bombay from Calcutta, and in matters of pressing importance the Bombay Government acted first, and asked for sanction afterwards. But during Lord Dalhousie's rule a change had taken place. His policy tended to restrain the independent action of the Presidencies and to gather the threads of all departments of administration, even to the smallest details, into the hands of the Government of India, and under his own personal supervision as Governor-General. Opinions are still divided as to VOL. I. 2 E 41 8 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XI. whether the result was a brilliant success or a disastrous failure. But however that might be, one consequence of the increased centralization was that the work of the Government of India grew to be so great that no one man could any longer superintend it. The departments at Calcutta became more and more independent, each Secretary administering his own with less and less consul- tation with his colleagues or control by the Governor- General, who often knew little of what was being done till he was appealed to to put an end to friction or to settle a dispute. The Secretary to the Public Works Department of the Government of India at this time was Colonel R. Strachey, an able man, with a considerable reputation. Unfortu- nately, he had fallen into the fatal mistake, too common at that time amongst Indian officials, of assuming that experience gained in one province was equally applicable and a sufficient guide to the circumstances and require- ments of another, and of imagining that his official position imposed upon him the duty of stopping or postponing all undertakings, however highly recommended, as to the nature and expediency of which he had not himself the local knowledge to enable him to form a correct judgment. His mistake was aggravated by the adoption of a style and method of expressing himself in his letters which was very unfortunate. The Bombay Government was not even left to reform and organize its own Public Works Depart- ment in its own way, but was ordered to make it conform to the Calcutta Secretary's notions of what was best. Frere, anxious if possible to avoid friction, did not appeal, as he well might have done, to Lord Elgin, but yielded the point. Nor did he on his own account resent the tone of the official letters, which he did not permit for a moment to trouble the even surface of his courteous 1863.] CONDITION OF BARRACKS. 419 temper. But it was otherwise with his Secretaries and lieutenants. Matters reached a crisis when, early in September, 1863, the Bombay Government sent in a supplementary estimate of what would be required for expenditure on public works during the ensuing financial year. Based on the result of the deliberations of the Poona Public Works Conference, it had been prepared with more than ordinary care, and was sent in in conformity with the request of the Government of India. The answer from the Public Works Department at Calcutta, was a fiat refusal to consider it* Frere thereupon wrote to Lord Elgin, explaining in detail the circumstances connected with the estimate, and the treatment it had received from the Calcutta Public Works Department. The three most prominent items of expenditure were for cotton-roads, barracks, and irrigation. Of the want of roads enough has been said. As to the urgency of the need for new barracks and for irrigation, Frere writes as follows to Lord Elgin : — "October 10, 1863. " Sir William Mansfield completed during last season a personal examination of all our great permanent Euro- pean stations. The state of things he found and reported was briefly this : Three men are habitually quartered in shelter designed for two ; more than half the quarters were never designed as permanent barracks ; half the permanent barracks are of a design and construction now exploded and condemned ; men are frequently living in * This answer contained the following paragraph : — " It is quite impossible for the Governor-General to make any satisfactory selection from the long list of works submitted, so as to reduce the estimated outlay to the sanctioned amount, complicated as the present demand is by large additional requirements for repairs and establishments. His Excellency, therefore, instructs me to state that no orders can be given on the communication now under reply, but that, when proposals are made in conformity with the instructions of the Government of India before given, they will receive attention.'' 420 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XI. buildings long since condemned as insecure and unfit for habitation (one of these has fallen since Sir William saw it last year ; the men have been removed from another and sent into tents). Fully half the hospitals are defective, or unsuitable, and there is a general want of proper sanitary arrangements.* " Altogether, he showed half a million sterling was wanted to house your European troops, not luxuriously, but according to the ordinary and admitted requirements of life in India. "So with irrigation. The country was starving and prices higher than at Delhi during the late famine, because Government, the great landowner hereabouts, has done nothing for forty years to make the supply of food equal to the rapidly increasing demands for it. Nothing kept us from the most serious scarcity but the enormous demand for unskilled labour, caused by railway-making and the development of trade in Bombay, giving all labourers who can travel such wages as enabled them to bear the high price of food, the food being brought from a great distance, * Sir W. Mansfield's memoranda, when on a tour of inspection, contain the following description of some invalid barracks which he visited : — " The barracks which, I understand, were originally intended to last two years, are of the very worst temporary description. They are simply sheds supported on poles, the walls being filled in with lath and plaster. They are raised about three feet, and have large double weather verandahs. The floors are of rammed earth cow- dunged. " If we recollect that about a hundred and fifty inches of rain fall during the monsoon; that during that season damp fogs prevail in all hills when rain is not actually falling, and these floors so constructed are constantly absorbent of moisture, we may form to ourselves some idea of the dampness of these wretched buildings for six months of the year, and of the carelessness, amounting to cruelty, in leaving them in such a state, while our military invalids are ordered into them. " How is it possible to expect that change of air or scene can possibly avail to restore the health of the invalids, if we wantonly expose them to such evil influence ? I confess I was shocked when I saw the barracks, the more especially when the executive engineer who accompanied me reminded me of the fact that the discussion about rebuilding sites, unhealthiness, etc., had lasted for ten years." 1863.] PUBLIC WORKS BUDGET. 42 1 when it might be produced at our doors if we invested money at from ten to twenty-five per cent, in irrigational works, which would return to our farmers cent, per cent, on their enhanced outlay." He wrote a short letter, summing up the matter, to Sir C. Trevelyan : — "October 12, 1863. " I must beg your early and particular attention to our correspondence with Colonel Strachey regarding our supple- mentary Public Works Budget, sent in with a long explana- tory letter. He answers by a flat refusal to consider our letter. " I have written at length privately to Lord Elgin, for it seems to me absolute insanity to hold our hands just now in spending any money we can spare on cotton-roads, railway feeders, barracks, and works of irrigation. " We fully believed that, in acting as we did, we were only doing our best to carry out the views of Lord Elgin's Government as explained by you in your speech of April 3rd.* We were more than ever convinced we were right when Sir Charles Wood quoted your words on the subject of Public Works assignments with so much approbation in the House of Commons, and when we read his despatch on the Report of the Royal Sanitary Commission ; as regards military works, we had a positive invitation to submit plans for immediate sanction, as late as June 1st, from the Government of India. "But I cannot believe we have in any way misunder- stood you, or that any one but Colonel Strachey would say that with money in the Treasury, with means organized for spending it most economically, with a cotton famine in * In that speech Sir C. Trevelyan said : " This Government [i.e. the Government of India] desires it may be clearly understood that any funds that can be expended with advantage on cotton-roads, or works of irrigation or navigation, or on any other useful works, will be granted during the ensuing year. There will be no difficulty as far as money is concerned, the only limit will be the impossibility in particular cases in getting value for outlay." On July 23rd, Sir Charles Wood, in laying the India Budget before the House of Commons, emoted these words, and added, " I can assure the House that, for some years past, there has been no check whatso- ever as far as money goes." 422 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XI. Lancashire and a food famine impending in the Deccan, with a possibility not remote of the Americans going to war with France or with us, and still further curtailing the cotton supply, with all the materials for a serious attack in Parliament about all these questions, about guaranteed Railway mismanagement or deficient barrack accom- modation, — with all this in prospect during the next six months that we should say, ' We will not make these roads for cotton or grain, nor these works for irrigation, nor railway feeders, nor barracks, for the next eighteen months, because a Budget rule, which we have made and remade half a dozen times and which we constantly violate, would be violated once more.' " For all the essentials of the Budget system the supplement we submitted is far better and more care- fully prepared, and more in order than any we have ever sent. " As for the style of the snubbing, it brought over the most valuable (to me) of my colleagues with a formal tender of his resignation, and I only appeased him by a very confident assurance that it could not have been sanctioned by Lord Elgin. He was perfectly in earnest, and his loss would be a serious one to me." * * Frere, quite indifferent to official arrogance when directed against himself, was especially careful to check any manifestation of it to others on the part of officials under his authority. He writes on one occasion to the Chief Secretary of the Bombay Government : — " March 24, 1863. " I do not like to put on record any censure of your excellent Deputy Secretary, but I wish you would instruct him to be more careful in the terms of the letters to the High Court. " His letter of March 1 1 is very curt and dictatorial, and not at all in the tone which even the mildest of Chief Justices would like to receive from the most despotic of paternal Governments. " It ought never to have gone, however worded, without my seeing it. I have often begged that every letter differing from or censuring any high official should be sent to me before it goes. And this is specially necessary when the High Court is to be told that we cannot do what they want. This kind of snubbing does nothing but irritate and make correspondence. " I hope you will keep W from falling into this snare of young Secretariat officers." 1863.] FRICTION WITH CALCUTTA. 423 To Colonel Strachey himself he writes in terms of grave but friendly remonstrance :— "October 12, 1863. " Your letter of September 25 has brought matters to a crisis with our Government, and I have been compelled to lay the matter before Lord Elgin, privately as well as publicly, in terms I would gladly have avoided. "Rely on it, my dear Strachey, you cannot be both Superintending Engineer of every work in India, and also Secretary in the Public Works Department to the Govern- ment of India. You may very easily ensure that not a work is commenced throughout India till you have been satisfied as to the minutest detail of plan and estimate. But you will find this will end in the paralysis of the Public Works Department. You wish to ensure a maximum of work and efficiency and a minimum of expense. The means you adopt will ensure the reverse. All our money will go in establishments and designs and writing ; the work done will be a minimum. " I cannot admit that for four-fifths of the work you have any advantage over provincial engineers. There are many great engineering problems, in solving which you have an immense advantage over us, and are more likely to be right. But in the humdrum work of roads and bridges — plain earth-work and masonry — the only problem is how to get as much as possible for the money, and the more you check and correspond, the less is done. A wise imperial Public Works Department would do absolutely nothing in such matters, but give all the money it could spare to the local Governments and judge by results whether it had been well spent." The correspondence in the mean time had gone home to Sir Charles Wood. He writes, not knowing of Lord Elgin's illness, to Frere : — "November 16, 1863. " I am very sorry, indeed, for the disagreement with the Government of India on the Public Works matter. Nothing can be more uncourteous, to say the least of it, than Strachey's letter, and you are quite right to remonstrate with Lord Elgin. But something or other has gone wrong 424 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XI. about the expenditure on public works. I authorized, more than a year ago, expenditure on useful reproductive works not exceeding ^3,000,000. They said they could not spend it. I urged them to do something. Then they proposed barracks. I said, ' No, do your barracks out of revenue, and don't be in a hurry, for the Sanitary Com- mission here are afraid of your getting wrong in the mode of construction. Spend money from cash balances, i.e. beyond your surplus in reproductive works.' Then Trevelyan says, ' I can provide for all we can spend advantageously out of surplus revenue ; ' and so convinced are the Government of India of this, that they reduce taxation, and then Trevelyan begs me to pay off debt, as it is a shame to keep money idle for which we are paying interest. I do this, and then out comes a minute from Lord Elgin, saying that I had ordered £ 3,000,000 on public works, and he rather reproaches me for changing my mind. I only changed in consequence of what they said, and in compliance with their request. They have, in fact, money enough for both purposes, and for all that they can do. I shall have paid off the dissentient debenture- holders on my creating a new 5 per cent, stock ; and there will be somewhat more than ^3,000,000 to spend upon any useful purposes. I mention this to you, that you may know what has passed in case there should be anything in Lord Elgin's letter to you as if I had checked expendi- ture. I hope that his answer will put all straight." The remonstrance never reached Lord Elgin. In November he was travelling by a mountain pass over one of the spurs of the Himalaya, when he was seized by illness and could not proceed. He died on November 20th, a little more than a year and a half after his arrival in India. A recent Punjab frontier disturbance at Umbeyla, which bad assumed a serious aspect from a British force having been surprised and two guns taken, was then attracting attention, and seemed likely, apart from other evils which it was causing, to cost much money and cause a curtailment in the supplies which were so much needed 1S63.] DEATH OF LORD ELGIN. 425 for other purposes. Not knowing, in this sudden and unexpected vacancy, who would be sent out to replace Lord Elgin, Frere thought it was an opportunity which ought not to be missed of calling the attention of the new Viceroy, whoever he might be, to the old question whether these unfortunate chronic disturbances on the frontier were not the direct result of a vicious policy. He therefore wrote to Sir Charles Wood : — " November 28, 1863. " Colonel Durand tells me that he has urged on you the necessity of directing Lord Elgin's successor to proceed to the Punjab as soon as he can. This is no doubt very sound advice, though winter will probably have put a stop to active warfare on the frontier before the new Governor- General can arrive, and his first wish and duty will pro- bably be to consider with Sir Charles Trevelyan how his finances stand. " But I trust you will also impress on him the necessity for forming his own judgment on the general question of the Punjab Frontier Policy, and for judging for himself as to what sound policy requires, without giving undue weight to mere length of residence and experience in India, or even in the Punjab itself. I am very unwilling to speak dogmatically on the subject, for my official knowledge of what has lately been passing is very im- perfect, and I have always had the misfortune to differ from some of the highest and most able Punjab officers, from Sir John Lawrence and Sir Robert Montgomery, Sir Robert Napier and Mr. Temple. But the question is so important, that a Governor-General can hardly hear it too fully discussed, and when I see our difficulties on that frontier taking the exact form always foretold by Sir George Clerk, by General John Jacob, by Sir Charles Napier, Lord Clyde, Sir W. Mansfield, and others, who were not blind to the peculiar features of that frontier, the event seems to me to afford strong ground for doubting the soundness of a system which I never heard defended on principle or by any arguments, other than those founded on some supposed peculiarity of circumstance such as it is argued must justify departure from principle. As for 426 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XL any arguments derived from the supposed success of the Punjab frontier policy, you can judge of their value by the present state of affairs up there, and by the undisguised alarm with which it is regarded even by some of the best- informed men in the Punjab itself. " You have now got Sir George Clerk at home, and I trust that the new Governor-General will hear and care- fully weigh his views on this question. . . . " As far as we can judge, General Chamberlain has made no mistake in carrying out the plan laid down for him, and has done his best with the large force under his com- mand, and the real blame must rest on the system, which creates many heads, political and fiscal as well as military, which deals with these tribes on principles different from those observed in dealing with regular governments, and which thus imperfectly secures their respect and confidence. "All this is rank heresy in the Punjab, and in other quarters too, I fear. But if, as is undoubtedly the case just now, a single check in an expedition like this makes your Indian Chancellor of the Exchequer nervous for his sur- plus, and creates such panic in Northern India that your Government of India and Commander-in-Chief would think it a most inopportune time to send our surplus force to England or Canada, it is clearly desirable that a new Viceroy should weigh well whether experienced statesmen, like Sir George Clerk, and old soldiers, like Sir C. Napier and Lord Clyde, were altogether wrong in the view they took of the Punjab frontier system." Writing (Nov. 29, 1863) to Colonel Herbert Bruce, then Inspector-General of Police, a valued friend with whom he had become intimate when at Calcutta, Frere mentions that he had written strongly to Sir Charles Wood, pointing out this Punjab frontier policy as one of the very important questions for his new Governor-General to consider and form his own opinion upon without being bound to follow in the Punjab track, but that he had little expectation of its doing any good ; that in England there was always a constituted authority on such questions, and that Sir John Lawrence was then that authority. Even if he were not 1863-4.] MINUTE ON FRONTIER POLICY. 427 sent out as Lord Elgin's successor, the India Office and the new Governor-General would probably be entirely guided by his views and advice on the matter. " However, magna est Veritas, and one of these days they will find out the truth, and your views will be acted on, but not while Lawrence has anything to say to it. "I hear nothing from anyone but Sir H. Rose. He sent me an account of the affair of November 20th, in which Chamberlain was wounded. It arrived just in time, to go home and prevent a newspaper version of ' General Chamberlain killed ; forty thousand men will be required to re-establish our position.' This latter part was actually in type as an extra to go home by the mail. So much for the Punjab system of ' keeping these things quiet.' " Frere followed up his letter to Sir Charles Wood by writing and sending him a Minute, in which he repeated shortly the old arguments and principles he had so often, in concert with John Jacob, and afterwards at Calcutta, sought to enforce, in the hope that it might be read and considered by the new Viceroy, whoever he might be, before he left England. But before the Minute could arrive, Sir John Lawrence had been appointed Governor- General, and had already sailed. Frere, on hearing this, writes to Sir Charles Wood : — " January 1, 1864. " Everything will be in readiness for Sir J. Lawrence going up to the Punjab at once. His firm will, clear sense, and great experience will do good wherever he goes, and I sincerely trust you will hear of everything quieting down in and around the Punjab. Much will depend, as to the permanence of the quiet, on whether he looks at questions up there in the light in which you or any English statesman would view them, or as, with few exceptions, our Punjab men do. ... I will tell Sir J. Lawrence, as frankly as I have told you, my views on the subject and the important bearing of the question on the finances, and having done so, whether we agree or not, you may rely on 428 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XI. my loyally supporting him to the best of my power as long as I remain in India." Frere, finding that Sir John Lawrence had left England without having seen the Minute, sent a copy of it to meet him at Galle, enclosed in the following letter : — "January 7, 1864. " This will hardly be in time to welcome you to India, but you will, I trust, be assured that no one in India is more sincerely desirous than I am that health, strength, and wisdom may be granted to you to enable you to discharge efficiently the great task which is before you. " I believe you will find your greatest difficulty, for the present at all events, in that part of India with which you are best acquainted, and I should hesitate in offering my opinions unasked, if I thought you could possibly have seen, as clearly as those in India, during the last three or four years, the growth of feelings and opinions which seem to me to threaten serious and speedy mischief unless some corrective can be applied to them. " I have stated my views very fully in the enclosed Minute. It was written when I supposed you would have dealt with it in London, instead of in Calcutta. I should not have materially altered its substance had I known you were coming out as Governor-General, but I might in that case have deferred their expression till you were able to consider our position on the spot." And to Sir Charles Wood he writes — "January 13, 1864. " I have sent Sir John Lawrence a copy of the Minute I sent you on our frontier policy. When I wrote it I expected him to have criticized it with you in London, and I do not now expect him to express concurrence in its views. But I trust when he looks at the question by the light of his English experience of what we say of our neighbours in Europe when they invade and shoot and burn villages to ' make an impression ' on savage or in- subordinate borderers, he will feel that a change is neces- sary in the Punjab policy, and I trust he may be able to effect it." 1863-4.] STANDARD PLANS. 429 Upon the vexed question of the control of the details of Bombay Public Works by the Calcutta Secretary, Sir Charles Wood writes — "January 4, 1864. "It is hardly worth while going into the discussion on the Public Works question, as I talked it all over with Sir John Lawrence before he went, and he is not at all dis- posed to strain the control of the Government of India over the expenditure of the other presidencies. I agree with you that in all minor matters, such as ordinary roads and such like, the control of the Supreme Government is merely financial, i.e. we can allow you so many lacs for them. When I say merely financial, I mean that they must not go into the mode of execution. But financial con- trol may and ought to mean more in works of importance ; that is to say, that the Government of India, before it sanctions beginning a work, like a large annicut, for instance, which may cost a quarter of a million, has a right and ought to be satisfied that the estimate is a probable estimate. "As to barracks, the sanitary people here don't think any place safe unless they have seen it. They say that the best constructed barracks are deficient in some very essential particulars, and therefore all plans for new barracks, or for extensive alterations in old barracks, are to come home to be criticized and amended." Frere was prepared for this check to the building of new barracks. He had written to Trevelyan : — "November 24, 1863. " I hear that all barrack building is to be suspended till Colonels S and C have decided on ' standard- plans ' for barracks all over India. " If this is the case, rely on it their time will be wasted and your money misspent. Of all crotchets, this ' standard- plan ' crotchet is the most runaway of hobbies. Of course the barracks can be built according to the ' standard,' but they must be at best necessarily unsuitable in a ratio varying as the distance of the site where they are built, from the spot where the standard plan-maker learnt his notions of comfort. 430 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XI. " Had this ' standard-plan ' fashion been in vogue ten years ago, you would have had the huge barrack for a hundred and two hundred men stereotyped. Even now, the science of how to house a thousand Europeans in India, with least injury to their health, is quite in its infancy, and the experiments necessary to teach us can only be postponed by this ' standard-plan ' drawing. " The antidote to the evil lies in the fact, always over- looked by those who advocate such attempts at enforced uniformity, that you cannot reduce English engineers to blind copying machines, and that each man, as he rises in the department, revenges himself for so many years of compulsory building, according to his predecessor's standard, by setting up a new ' standard ' of his own. The ' standard ' is altered by each successive head of the department, and common sense thus tardily has something to say in deciding what is to be built. " But the mischief done meantime is incalculable. So I hope you will set your face against the system. Let us all try who can do best for our soldiers with the money you can give us. Let us compare notes, and learn by each other's success or failures, and then, in ten years more, you may be able to tell how soldiers should be housed in each province. But the ' standard ' set up by experience for one province, will always differ more or less from the ' standard ' of its neighbours." As to the incorrectness of estimates, which Sir Charles Wood said required to be checked by the Supreme Government, Frere says, in a letter to him : — "July 22, 1864. " I am far from defending Indian Public Works esti- mates in general. I know that they are too often very vague and inaccurate guides as to what is proposed or probable in the way of cost. But my argument is that the further you remove the authority which is to examine into their correctness or sufficiency, the less chance have you of real accuracy. If the officer making the estimate knows that it is to be dealt with promptly and practically, with a view to immediate execution, by some authority near at hand, he is careful to make it as careful and 1864.] FINANCIAL CONTROL. 43 1 accurate as possible. But if he knows it is to be sent to the other side of India, and to be there delayed and criticized not on its real merits, but according to some paper pattern of perfection, he inevitably becomes careless. I frequently elicit, sometimes in so many words, but oftener in substance, that an officer 'supposed the estimate was only wanted to send to Calcutta,' ' was sure the execution would be so long delayed that fresh designs would be called for,' as excuses for carelessness in framing estimates, and I have found men in superior situations, who ought to know better, excusing themselves for letting estimates pass imperfectly revised, by saying they knew it would all be pulled to pieces when it reached the Government of India. " The root of the evil is the incongruous character of the functions attempted by the Government of India — to direct details in some of the minor administrations, and to lay down principles for the larger Governments. — No man can at one moment criticize the arches of a bridge in Coorg or Oude, and the next moment remember that it is the general direction of the road from Madras to Bombay, and not the details of execution, which he has to discuss with the Madras and Bombay Governments. " The result is a great show of accuracy on paper, but utter paralysis of executive power, besides much irritation and want of due subordination to the Government of India, which is the more vexatious when we are very cordially desirous to obey, and to aid the Governor-General in any object he may have in view." " Financial control," it was clear, might be made to include or exclude almost any sort of control, according to the fancy of the controller. It soon became evident that the Calcutta Government considered itself by no means precluded from " going into the mode of execution " of matters which could not be said to be specially important. The question of financial control in matters of detail was raised by the following incident. In March, Dhuleep Singh, the deposed ruler of the Punjab, arrived at Bombay on his way back to England, 432 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XI. after visiting India to attend his mother's funeral, and was received as a guest at Government House. Before leaving he had considerable expenses to meet, and finding that he was £2000 short, asked Frere if the Government would lend it to him. For many reasons it was expedient that it should not be withheld ; and there was no risk of loss, as Dhuleep Singh enjoyed a large pension from Government. Frere complied, but not knowing how the disbursement, not being provided for under any established head of Budget expenditure, would be received at Calcutta, he wrote at once to Lawrence to say what he had done : — "April 4, 1864. " I thought you would wish me to do this, if only to facilitate his return to Europe, and to prevent the necessity for his borrowing here in the bazaar. " So I have ordered 20,000 rupees to be advanced to him. " If you approve of my doing so, I must beg you to let the Financial Department know, so as to prevent their telegraphing to lock the Treasury. " When I was lately in Guzerat, I found that we had repeated at Surat and Ahmedabad the error for which we are now paying so dearly here in Bombay and elsewhere. We had made no provision for the land needed for approaches, etc., near our railway stations till after the railway was opened, and the land was rising rapidly in value. " I found the Municipal Commissioners prepared to relieve Government of the greater part of their respon- sibility, provided Government could aid them to buy the land at once. To do this they asked for an advance of money, for which they would pay Government interest. " So I gave them an advance, and thereby saved, as I thought, for Government, some three or four lacs of rupees. " But without inquiry as to what I had done, or why, we get a telegram from E. Lushington, and a letter from Mr. Peachey, saying that you had peremptorily forbidden the advance. 1864.] FINANCIAL CONTROL. 433 " I know Mr. Peachey to be an excellent man and a good accountant, and had he been with me at Surat and Ahmedabad, he would no doubt have satisfied you and Trevelyan that what I had done was a certain saving of several lacs of rupees, which will now fall on Government as an inevitable charge, partly railway and partly Public Works. " All this we have explained in proper official detail. " But this obliges me to trouble you about this small affair of the Maharajah's advance. For I do not want him, if he goes to the Treasury on the strength of my promise, to find the door shut by a telegram from Calcutta conveying an order from you." Sir John Lawrence's answer was as follows : — " April 14, 1864. "You will have received my telegram regarding the advance to the Maharajah. " As regards the other matters touched on in your letter, Trevelyan strongly objects, as indeed do the other Members of Council, to your using Government money in the manner you describe, especially without authority first obtained. What they say is that if you can do it in one case, you can do it in another. If you can advance one lakh of rupees, you may advance twenty ; and that, in short, there can be no financial control under such a system. Now, I think there is a great deal of force in what is said. I think that in most cases time would admit of a previous reference, and when it did, such a reference would greatly facilitate business in the long run, and of course, in emergent cases, you could telegraph. In the case of the Maharajah, I would not authorize the advance until I had asked Trevelyan's consent. . . . "We are now barely able, as you know, to make the income balance the expenditure. New demands are every day coming upon us, and if we are to meet them we must economize as far as practicable, and this we cannot do if we let the control of the finances pass out of our hands. You may depend upon my helping you, whenever I can do so consistently with my duty." Frere's reply was as follows : — VOL I. 2 F 434 THE LIFE 0F SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Cn. XI. "May II, 1864. " From some expressions in your letter of April 14, I am not sure that you are aware how much the restrictions now put on us are in excess of what has been usual hitherto. "Formerly, as you know, up to i860, the Government of India was content with a somewhat irregular and im- perfect assertion of its legitimate power of control over the finances of the Madras and Bombay Governments. Its action was vexatious to those Governments without being effective. The Budget system was to remedy all this, to give the Government of India an effective and regular power of control, while it allowed the local Govern- ments greater liberty of action within certain defined limits. " The old customary restrictions on the creation of new appointments, on the alteration of salary, etc., were re- asserted. The several branches of service were defined and classified under fixed heads, for each of which a sum was fixed in the Budget. Within that sum the local Governments were to be allowed more than their old liberty of action, provided they created no new offices, altered no fixed rates of salary, did not exceed the whole sum allowed for each head of service, and made no transfer from one head of service to another without the leave of the Government of India. " All this has in practice been altered within the last two years, and we are now strictly tied down to the exact details entered in the Budget without the slightest power to vary them without your previous sanction. " What used to be required was your subsequent ap- proval and sanction ; the practical difference is immense. " It is not easy to make my meaning clear without an example. I will take that of the advance you lately dis- allowed for purchase of land for roads and railway ap- proaches at Surat. I made much local and personal inquiry on the spot from officers in every department, and I clearly saw that an immediate advance of a lakh of rupees would purchase land which must sooner or later be bought by Government for various public purposes — railway approaches and great trunk-roads, landing piers, etc., and which land, if not bought then at once, would in a few months rise enormously in value. . . . Under the system 1864.] FINANCIAL CONTROL. 435 heretofore in force the advance would have been made at once. It would have stood at my personal risk, till I was relieved by my colleagues in the Government approving of what had been done by me individually, when away from them. Then, if there were savings under the same head, say ' purchase of land,' at the end of the year, the advance might have been cleared by a simple order of the Bombay Government, otherwise it would have been neces- sary to satisfy you and to get your sanction to the extra charge by showing that it was an ultimately profitable or necessary purchase. " But under your late orders, not a shilling can be ad- vanced on any account, no matter what the urgency of the case. You do not treat us as a merchant treats his agents, advancing money and honouring bills on the assurance that when the agent's explanation comes it will be found that all has been done for the good of the firm. You stop by telegram every payment of which, as in this case, you hear accidentally, for which you have not given previous orders. " You say the practice we followed is objectionable ; that if we are allowed to advance a lakh we may advance twenty, and that there would be an end of all financial control. " This depends on the understanding between the parties and the degree of confidence reposed in the agent. No power to do good can be given without conceding the power to do mischief. " But has the power been so abused in times past when it was unquestioned ? Was the Empire worse when you and Lord Elphinstone and Lord Harris incurred expenses, which had not only never been previously sanctioned by the Government of India, but which you were for months unable to report or explain ? "You will say these are extreme cases, not likely to recur. But I maintain that there is always in India some need for public servants acting without orders, on the assurance that, when their superiors hear their reasons, their acts will be approved and confirmed ; and I hold that when you have extinguished that feeling of mutual con- fidence between superior 'and subordinate authorities, and made public men as timid here of acting without orders as they are in England, you will have removed one great 436 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. LCh. XL safeguard of our Indian Empire. It does not take long so to bridle a body of public servants as to paralyze their power of acting without orders. "But, you will say, why not, in the case of the Surat advance, at all events, report your reasons and ask for previous sanction ? " If you would trust our judgment and discretion this would be easy. We need not have written more than I have written above ; but the Government of India always insist on reasons and explanations at least as full as those we require from our subordinates. " Your Secretaries treat an opinion on which our Com- missioners, Secretaries, and Councillors concur, just as if it came from Oude or Singapoor, if anything more critically, requiring the same proof that we require from a Collector or Commissioner. This costs time, and saving of time is the great object. " I could not give a better example than one which greatly influenced me at Surat. It had just occurred in Bombay. " Owing to delay in fixing the railway termini and their approaches in Bombay, we shall have to pay at least a quarter of a million sterling more for land than need have been paid had we been more provident when the railway works began. The case I now allude to is only one out of many. Nearly a year ago we fixed as nearly as possible a portion of the Baroda line close to the town, but it was not possible to fix it exactly ; roads were to be diverted, crossings to be made, whether level or by bridging was a subject of controversy, and the exact curve of the line de- pended on surveys and reclamation schemes which would take months to mature. A small property was to be crossed ; the owner wanted twenty-five thousand rupees for it, the Collector valued it at twenty-two thousand. Had we been acting as prudent private parties, we should have given twenty-five thousand rupees, all the owner asked, taken what we required for our railway and road diversions, and as the event proved, have sold the rest, which we did not require, for twice what we gave for the whole. The Collector proposed so to buy the whole, but was overruled according to official routine. After some months, roads, curves and crossings, etc., are all settled in regular form. We are able to tell the owner the 1864.] FINANCIAL CONTROL. 437 exact strip of his property we require ; he insists on an enhanced price ; we go to arbitration, and have to pay him more than double his original demand for a portion of his property, leaving the remainder greatly enhanced in value. " With a dozen such cases before me in Bombay, I pro- posed to save you from similar results at Surat and Ahmedabad. What I did, would, four years ago, have passed as a matter of course, and you would have said, the Governor did well to take so much personal trouble and responsibility in order to save ultimate charge to the State. If it turned out as he expected you would have praised him. But in any case, whatever the result, you would have supported him. I do not think you would find that real economy is promoted when you discourage the practice of a Government, with such an elaborate apparatus of advisers and councillors as we have here, from acting on its own responsibility and trusting to its finally satisfying you that it has acted well. " I know you have personally no jealousy of the action of the local Government, and you would give us all possible liberty. But it is otherwise with most of those about you. The abler and better they are, the less, generally, do they believe in the possibility of anything being perfect unless they themselves direct every detail. They can see no urgency in my Surat case, simply because what I saw and heard on the spot they cannot see and hear, and it never occurs to them to rely on my convictions without calling on me to state all that actuated me before I was convinced. Two or three years hence they will be indignant at having to pay heavily for the same land, but they will then have forgotten that had I been allowed to do so, I could have got it for nothing. " They would equally have doubted the necessity for much of your expenditure in 1857 which had not their previous sanction, and, had the Budget system then existed, would probably have stopped by telegram Sir Henry Law- rence's outlay to provision the Residency because ' it was not provided for in the Budget, and there was nothing in the Financial Department to satisfy them of the necessity.' It may not come in our time, but sooner or later this present system of insisting on previous proof satisfactory to all departments at Calcutta or Simla before a rupee is ex- pended, of allowing nothing to be spent at the risk and on 438 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XI. the responsibility of a local Government, in the belief that they will ultimately give good reasons for what they have done, must bear evil fruit. The habit of never treating them otherwise than as they treat their Collectors, of never saying ' though there is nothing to satisfy the forms of the secretariat, still we will trust a Government composed of so many old and experienced servants, at least till we have heard them,' must soon destroy the race of Indian officials who would venture to act on their own responsi- bility without previous orders." To all this Lawrence only answered, civilly enough, to the effect that Budget rules were Budget rules, and must be adhered to. The management of the Electric Telegraph throughout India suffered from similar causes, due to over-centralization and jealousy of local control. It was notoriously execrable. The messages were inaccurate, delayed in delivery, and the clerks were said to take bribes to deliver them to the wrong persons. Instead of being profitable, it was a loss to the revenue of something like a quarter of a million a year. Frere says of it, in 1862 — " October 27. " It has never outgrown the mistakes of its first organiza- tion, when it was a nest of jobbery under men who in very rare cases were gentlemen. They were responsible to no one but the superintendent. . . . No single mortal man can control such a department so scattered over all India, if he concentrates the immediate authority over individuals in his own hands. He must work through local officers armed with authority to inquire and to reward and to punish all the rank and file of the department, who should feel that they are responsible to those who see and know how each officer works." And in reply to Sir Charles Wood's complaints, he can only write — "JulyS, 1864. " You desire me to look after the telegraph, but except between Kurrachee and Bussora we have nothing' whatever 1864.] TELEGRAPHS. 439 to do with the telegraphic administration and are most peremptorily forbidden by the Government of India to interfere in any way with the management. Everything is centralized through the Director-General at Calcutta. . . . Some months before Sir John Lawrence came out things had become so bad in the Telegraphic Department that we went up to the Government of India with complaints from merchants and others, and proposed a Commission of Inquiry into the management of the depart- ment ; but this was refused, with a strong exhortation to mind our own business." Such being the evils complained of, the head of the tele- graphic department at Calcutta met them as follows : A watch was set to detect any messages of a private character sent officially at the public expense. Six or eight cases, involving altogether a sum of fourteen or fifteen rupees, were made a matter of complaint against Bombay officials. In one of them, a young Civil servant applied to know if he could have leave to Europe, as his father had an illness which threatened his life. The answer Frere's private secretary sent was : " His Excellency says you may have the leave you apply for, if Mr. Mansfield approves. The Governor is most sorry to hear of your father's illness." The last sentence of the message was made the subject of a formal complaint as being unofficial, and therefore liable to be paid for. In another case Colonel Marriott, the Military Secretary to the Bombay Government, received a message from an officer asking for leave and requesting an answer by telegraph, for which he offered to pay. Colonel Marriott telegraphed the answer, at a cost of two rupees, ten annas ; but " believing that it was his duty to act with a certain discretional courtesy on the part of the Government," did not charge the re- cipient with it, but sent it officially. This heinous act drew down upon him the following reprimand from one of the 440 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XL Secretaries to the Supreme Government : " His Excellency in Council regrets to observe that a public servant in so high and responsible a position should apparently fail to see that when an officer, to whom is entrusted the duty of sending messages on the service of Government and of paying for such messages out of the public revenue, uses the authority of his position to send a private message at the public charge, he is, in fact, guilty of a breach of trust." With reference to this censure on Colonel Marriott, Frere writes some time afterwards to Sir Charles Wood : — "January 28, 1866. " In the telegraph matter . . . Mr. Maine, who was with me when the discussion was forced on me, seemed to doubt whether Sir John Lawrence was aware of the childish system on which the Home Office at Calcutta was acting in its telegraphic criticisms, and I hoped, when the matter came before the Governor-General, he would do justice to Colonel Marriott, one of the most scrupulous and conscientious officers in his army, who had been accused of a ' breach of faith ' [trust] ... I am sure you will agree with me when you see the paper, that if Colonel Marriott deserved the censure passed on him, he must be unworthy to hold the Queen's commission. I feel it the more, because I saw him sorely tried in the share mania a year ago, and he was one of the very few who was never for a moment blinded as to what was becoming in an English public officer of trust. I believe a more sensi- tively honourable man could not be found in your Indian service." The relations between the Calcutta and Bombay Govern- ment officials did not improve. Frere had again to com- plain of the tone of the letters from the Calcutta Public Works Department ; and there were counter-complaints against the Bombay Public Works Department, the then head of which, though a very able man, had the reputation in his own Presidency of being somewhat arbitrary and despotic. 1864.] INTERFERENCE IN DETAILS. 44I He writes to Sir Charles Wood : — "September 8, 1864. " You see most of our important correspondence with the Government of India, but you do not see the constant worrying interference in details, which keeps all local officers and departments in a state of chronic irritation and rebellious feeling towards the Government of India, nor can you see a tithe of the labour it costs me to keep our correspondence within the bounds of the respect due to the authority of the Viceroy and his Council. My colleagues share the irritation, but do not feel the responsibility, which rests on me alone in this respect. " Sir John Lawrence has been good enough to allow me to communicate freely direct with him on all matters, and I have freely availed myself of his permission. But I can see that he regards me as the zealous but rather expensively inclined Commissioner of a district, with a number of deputies who, like the Commissioner, are a little inclined sometimes to run wild. That we are dealing here with a state of things of which nothing to be seen in the Punjab or Bengal could give him a notion, and that after thirty or thirty-five years in India we do not need more control than to have general principles laid down for our guidance never seems to occur to him. " To show you that I have done my best to keep clear of unpleasant discussions with the Government of India on such matters, I enclose a copy of a long demi-official letter I wrote to him on this subject, some months ago, and a copy of his answer. " You will see that nothing could be personally more cordial than the spirit of the answer, but it leaves us just in the same state of pupilage as before. . . . " However, you may rest assured that in future we will keep well within the bounds marked out for us, and you will not blame us if the Government administration stag- nates while everything else in the Presidency is advancing. " I send you copies of my correspondence with Sir J. Lawrence, not in a controversial spirit, but that you may be satisfied I have done my best to convince him of what seems to me a grave error in administration ; and you may rest assured that, having stated my opinion, no exertion shall be wanting on my part to give the utmost effect to 442 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Cn. XL the system which he prefers, repressive and enfeebling as I believe it must prove in its results." * Lawrence's labours in India had made him — in consti- tution, though he was not in years — an old man. He had * Sir Seymour Fitzgerald, Frere's successor in the Governorship of Bombay, had to complain of similar treatment on the part of the Government of India. Writing to Frere shortly after taking up his Government, he says — "July 8, 1867. " I have once or twice written to Northcote as to the vexatious interference with this Government by the Government of India. . . . Lately the interference in petty trifles has become so extraordinary that it would seem as if they wanted to see how far they can go without remonstrance, or as if they wanted to pick a quarrel. A petty work of about four hundred pounds at Ahmedabad is disallowed, pending explanations. The explanations are given, and three months after, a despatch comes to say that the Governor-General in Council thinks the sum seemed too high, and calling for detailed plans and specifications, with a schedule of prices, etc. ! The same week comes a peremptory order disallowing less than twenty pounds for the shelter of Ellis and Mansfield's guard, which the Members of Council have had ever since the Council have come to Poona. But the worst case of interference is with reference to an excess on the estimate for the Poona Engineering College. After explanations given, they allow the excess, but require us to send them the name of the officer who sent in the insufficient estimate, ' in order that he may be made responsible for having misled the Government? Now this strikes at the root of all discipline. If an officer fails in his duty, it surely is for us, and not for the Government of India, to find fault. In this particular instance the engineer was in no way to blame ; but the effect can only be pernicious if a public servant is taught to look — not to his own superior, but to some other authority, who may condemn or support him, as the case may be, contrary to the opinion of the Government in whose service he is. This is so objectionable an interference that I have drafted a remonstrance against it, and will write also privately to Sir John Lawrence about it. I cannot bring myself to believe that he knows one half of the despatches that reach us of this nature in his name." Again (August 8), he writes — " The Government of India do not make my work more agreeable. They are more encroaching and uncourteous every day. I have been obliged to remonstrate more than once." 1864-6.] LAWRENCE AND FRERE. 443 returned half unwillingly as Viceroy, and had afterwards made it a condition of his remaining that he should spend half of each year at Simla. For him the Punjab and North- West Provinces, the scenes of his early career, out- weighed in interest all the rest of India. The remarkable development of Bombay, which in wealth, enterprise, and population, was fast outstripping Calcutta, failed to engage his attention and interest ; and he turned a deaf ear to Frere's often-repeated entreaty that he would come and stay with him at Bombay or Poona, and see for himself all that was going on, and what needed to be done.* Always a hard worker, he continued so to the end ; but it was impossible for him personally to undertake the direction of more than one department — that of Foreign affairs, — and Frere found that he had to deal with the heads of departments at Calcutta separately, and that Lawrence, if appealed to, would almost always support them without really going into the question for himself, or even giving reasons. Between Lawrence and Frere there was not the least symptom of personal hostility. Not a single expression can be found in any one of the letters which passed between them in the smallest degree wanting in courtesy. Each had too high a respect for the other, too genuine an appreciation of the services rendered in the great days of the Mutiny for anything of the kind to occur. "Personally," Frere writes (June 3, 1866) to his old * Sir Seymour Fitzgerald, writing to Frere (February, 1868), says, with reference to the construction of a railway terminus at Bombay : — " Of course the great difficulty will now be with the Government of India. In the first place, any great scheme for the improvement and advantage of Bombay would meet with an ungracious reception ; but besides, except Sir W. Mansfield, there was not a single member of the Supreme Government who had ever been in Bombay, or knew what they were talking about.." 444 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XI. chief, Lord Falkland, "Sir J. Lawrence is, I believe, as civil to me as to any one under him who does not belong to the Punjab, or to the county of Derry, or to Exeter Hall." " Nothing can be kinder," he writes to Captain Eastwick, " than Sir John is, and our personal relations are most cordial ; and I feel sure you will hear nothing of any disagreeable discussions between the Government of India and Bombay when and are gone. But I do not expect that their departure will alter the centralizing policy, which seems to me the great cause of our diffi- culties." " Sir John still speaks of the excellence of your Government, especially as regards the natives," writes Sir Richard Temple to Frere from Bareilly (December 3, 1866), when the latter was about to return to England, "and was lamenting the loss which Western India will sustain by your departure." But it was an unfortunate fate which subordinated Frere to a Viceroy who had set himself to follow the lines of the centralizing policy of Lord Dalhousie which, in Frere's opinion, had so nearly lost us India. And it was a sore trial to him, with his ardent temperament, his varied and profound knowledge of India, his quick perception of facts and prescient forecast of events, to be checked and thwarted at every turn by a system and a Government which departed from its Gallio-like attitude towards the Bombay Presidency, only to allow and encourage heads of departments at Calcutta or Simla to paralyze by a stroke of the pen all spontaneous action, however neces- sary and beneficial, in countries they had never seen, and as to matters the details of which they were of neces- sity absolutely ignorant ; or, as in the case of the removal of the lieutenant-colonel in command of the 15th Native Infantry from his regiment, to strike at the very roots of the discipline of the army by revising a decision of the 1865.] RUMOURS OF FRERE'S RESIGNATION. 445 Commander-in-Chief without any reference to the Bombay Government. It was hard for him to rest content with accomplishing what seemed to his eager spirit so little, when, but for such obstruction, so much more and better work might have been done. "February 14, 1865. " I often feel sick and weary," he confesses to Sir G. Clerk, " of the whole business, and but for the feeling of a sentry on duty, would gladly look out for a turnpike- gate of my own in Gloucestershire, where, with my children, I could rub on in quiet for the rest of my days." There were rumours, which were mentioned in Parlia- ment, of his resignation, owing to the way in which he had been treated. But he was not the man to let personal annoyance or disappointment influence him in such a matter. As long as he thought he could do good service he would remain at his post. Alluding to this rumour in a letter to Sir Charles Wood, he says — "August 1, 1865. " I need not remind you that some months ago my relations with the Government of India, here in India, were not on a pleasant footing, and I began to doubt whether they were such as were convenient or advan- tageous to the public service, and whether it would not be better that I should retire and make room for some one whom the Government of India might be disposed to treat with more fairness, if not cordiality. " But I felt that you must be the best judge of this, and that you would tell me frankly if you thought the public service would benefit by my retirement. . . . " And whatever may have been my feelings towards the Government of India in this country, I can safely say that nothing has ever occurred to make my feelings towards yourself other than those of the highest respect officially, and of a grateful personal sense of unvarying kindness and consideration." The majority of the Indian Council in London were 446 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Cn. XL men who had belonged to the Bengal service, and on questions arising between officials of different Presidencies their natural bias would be for the traditions of their own. And besides this, there was a traditional idea in the governing body of India that, other things being equal Bombay and Madras must give the first place to Bengal. Sir George Clerk writes to Frere from the India Office : — "July 16, 1864. " I was very glad to read in one of your late notes to me that you do not care what the Punjabees say against your views of administration in general, and border policy in particular. I did not suppose you would care, but others thought it would shut you up, though hoping other- wise. ... If you think you are sometimes being snubbed from this, it is not snubbing you, but snubbing Bombay. It would be just the same were Lord Wodehouse Governor there. With two other Bombay representatives, or even one staunch one, I could hold my own ; but Perry is the only one who is so ; the others are vacillating. . . ." Sir Charles Wood had, indeed, a difficult task to per- form in judging between the widely divergent opinions on so many points of two men of such reputation and powers as Lawrence and Frere. There is something almost pathetic in the candour with which he confesses his con- version to Frere's views, as to the need to govern India in India and not from England, and speaks of his difficulties in language nearly identical with that used by Frere in his correspondence with him five years before. Referring to the progress of electric telegraph construction, Sir Charles Wood says — "April 17, 1865. " I am afraid that it will lead to more references home, to more interference from home, to shrinking from respon- sibility in India, and to meddling from home — all which things will not improve the administration of affairs in India. Upon the whole, the Government of India can manage Indian matters better than the Government at 1865J SIR CHARLES WOOD CONVINCED. 447 home. There are certain great questions on which the authority of the Home Government is necessary and useful to preserve an even tenor of conduct ; but in all minor matters, the less we meddle, the better. One of the evils of the old Indians in my Council is their dis- position to interfere in smaller matters, such as they had been used to deal with when in India. It is, perhaps, inevitable, and they could not have the knowledge of India, which is so useful, without the practical knowledge of the working of the system in detail ; but I have always to check this disposition, and am sometimes told that unless we do this sort of thing, we might as well abdicate. On the whole, the system works reasonably well, and when one considers what an anomaly our Indian Empire is, we have reason to be grateful for any machinery for managing it which works reasonably well. There will also, I fear, be a temptation to more parliamentary interference, and that will always be, not for Indian, but for home or personal objects." The knowledge possessed by Members of the Council, when founded solely on experience, was apt to be out of date. An instance of this occurred in the case of Katty- war. Kinloch Forbes, when Acting Resident there in i860, had drawn attention to the urgent need of reform. Frere found the province in a condition which made him describe it as " the blot on the administration of this part of India." "Justice was not administered; life and pro- perty were unsafe ; private warfare was carried on ; and crimes, indicative of a lawless and disorganized state of society, flourished as they did sixty years before." There were some four hundred independent sovereigns. By the law of the country, estates were divided equally among the sons ; and the confusion was the greater because, owing to the lawless state of the country, the people had to live for protection in towns or large villages, so that a chief's inheritance often consisted of a small portion of a town 448 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XI. or large village. As each nominally exercised independent jurisdiction, sometimes amounting to powers of life and death, there was hopeless confusion. The Resident, whom Frere found there, though a good man in his way, was unequal to the task of grappling with such a state of things. To replace him, Major Keatinge, a distin- guished officer of the Bombay Artillery, who had won his Victoria Cross when in Sir Hugh Rose's Central Indian Force, was selected — much to his own surprise, for he did not know that Frere knew anything about him. — He had a long and troublesome task, and his difficulties were aggravated by the opposition of a Member of the Indian Council at the India Office, whose opinion carried weight because he had been Resident at Kattywar a quarter of a century before, and who could not be persuaded that anything needed amendment. Keatinge — as did Pelly and others of Frere's lieutenants, who had specially difficult work on hand — came once or twice every year to stay at Government House and tell his story, and to be cheered by the hearty encouragement and help which was always bestowed in generous measure. Frere writes to Keatinge : — "November 15, 1864. " As to the general questions regarding Kattywar, we may be defeated, over and over again, by prejudice and bigotry ; but we have right and truth on our side, and if we hold on steadily we must win in the long run. You have seen too much of public life to suppose that reforms such as you have j initiated are ever carried per saltum, and you have already made too much progress to be dis- couraged. We must ply the India Office with facts, and in time they must give in." . . . And to Sir Robert Napier he writes — " December 14, 1864. " You will wonder, when you read all we have on record, why the whole population are not outlaws ; but I believe 1S65.] KATTYWAR. 449 Keatinge is on the road to set matters to rights, if the Indian Council would let him." To Sir Charles Wood he wrote— "January 27, 1865. " Major Keatinge would mend matters by and through the chiefs, with the most scrupulous regard for all their rights of property, and for every privilege which a chief can, in the nature of things, long retain in the presence of a great centralized imperial power like ours. He would rid you of the dangerous and anomalous feature of more than four hundred independent sovereigns in a single province, . and would leave you, in their place, a strong, well-instructed, and contented aristocracy, such as we so grievously miss in most parts of India. " I have always held it to be our duty and our best policy to uphold and strengthen and use such a body, wherever we can find it. But this, as you know, has not, of late years, save during Lord Canning's time, been the usual policy of the Government of India ; and I much doubt whether the objects you have in view will meet as hearty sympathy on the other side of India as on this." . . .• Frere wished to have a chief British Resident at Baroda, with authority over the Residents of the five surrounding States, of which Kattywar was one. But this he could not obtain. On the main points of his reforms, however, * This, it appears, was a policy in which Sir Charles Wood con- curred. He had written to Frere with reference to Lord Canning's Adoption policy : — " August 1, 1S62. " I am quite convinced that the policy of suppressing or suffering to go to ruin all the aristocracy and gentry of India is a mistake. The dead level of nothing between our officers and the people is an unnatural state of society ; and surely it must be better in any country, especially in India, where the paucity of our numbers is so glaring, to endeavour to work with, improve as far as you can, but conciliate to our rule the existing state of society. We must be stronger with the natural chiefs and leaders of the people attached to us, than in leaving the people open to the persuasion and seduction of upstart leaders." VOL. I. 2 G 450 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XI. he eventually got his way. The independent chiefs were divided into seven ranks or classes, each with clearly defined jurisdiction, civil and criminal, from which there was, as a rule, no appeal, except on the presumption of mal-administration. The authority of the British Political Agents and assistants was made magisterial and direct, instead of, as hitherto, merely diplomatic. The whole system was controlled by the Political Agent. Major Keatinge's government and the reforms he instituted were eminently successful. The improvement in the con- dition of Kattywar dates from the administrative system introduced by him. Another act of Frere's Government, which, strange to say, called down censure from Sir Charles Wood, was the issue of Enfield rifles to a Bombay Native Infantry Rifle Regiment. Sir Charles Wood sums up his view of the matter by saying — "September 12, 1864. " Whether, then, I look at the exercise of your own discretion, or the regard which you ought to pay to what might be wise elsewhere in India, and the possible opinion of the Government of India, or, lastly, to the deference which you are bound to have for the orders of the Home Government, I am sorry to say that you are equally wrong ; and when in one and the same case you sin in all these three respects, I cannot see any justification for you." Still stronger expressions of censure, though expressed in a kindly tone, followed. The facts were these : — The 4th Native Infantry was a regiment armed with old-fashioned Brunswick two-grooved rifles. Many of them were worn out, and at the suggestion of the Com- mander-in-Chief, Sir W. Mansfield, instead of getting out a fresh supply of the obsolete weapons, Enfields, of which i86 4 .] BRUNSWICK OR ENFIELD RIFLES. 451 there were plenty in store, were issued, and thus an exceptional and inconvenient pattern was got rid of. As to the issue being indiscreet, on the ground that the use of the cartridges might offend caste prejudice and be made the occasion of mutiny, the supposition was absurd. The Enfield cartridges were now not made of the objection- able grease, and when used were now not bitten but torn open. As to paying "regard to what might be wise elsewhere in India," Frere pointed out that hitherto it had been the practice for each Presidency to arm its army independently of the other Presidencies, Lastly, as to the order of the Board of Directors, in 1857, prohibiting the use of the Enfield cartridges, it was a prohibition referring to an exceptional crisis and to a different cartridge to be used in a different way, and could not reasonably be supposed to be valid and applicable for all time. As a matter of fact, so far from being dangerous, it was of the utmost importance to the good feeling of the native regiments that they should not be armed with inferior weapons, which would prevent their fighting on equal terms side by side with the English regiments. Already, in the last frontier fighting about Umbeyla, our difficulties had been aggravated by the inability of the native regiments, armed only with smooth-bores, to take their share of the fighting. The men armed with old muskets knew per- fectly well that they were handicapped and could not stand against inferior troops with better arms ; and they were getting demoralized and discontented in con- sequence. It was the exact opposite of the spirit and system by which Jacob gave his men the best arms he could procure, and by making them feel that they were trusted, did so much to secure their fidelity. Never surely was a change more expedient. Sir Charles Wood, however, adhered to his opinion that Frere was 452 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XI. wrong and unregardful of orders. But he mentioned in a subsequent letter — what was by itself an almost sufficient justification of the issue of the Enfields — that he had since discovered that there was already a Bombay Native Infantry Regiment armed with Enfields. It had been so armed by Jacob early in 1857, at the very time of the cartridge disturbances in Bengal ; so that, after all, what had been done, so far from being a perilous experiment, was not an innovation at all. At the beginning of the year 1865, the prosperity of the trading classes and cultivators, the great rise of prices and in the cost of labour, and the consequent need of raising the salaries of public servants, and also the call for increased expenditure on necessary public works, all pointed to the expediency of increasing, rather than diminishing taxa- tion. Therefore when Sir Charles Trevelyan, in his Budget statement in April, 1865, proposed the discontinuance of the Income-tax, and in its place the imposition of export duties and a loan for public works, the announcement was received with general surprise. Sir John Lawrence, who had been strongly opposed to the Income-tax when it was first introduced, had by this time come round to approving of it ; and now he was the only one of the members of his Council in favour of retaining it* He might, indeed, have overruled his Council ; but this he would not do. Frere writes to Sir Charles Wood : — "April 10, 1865. " I could scarcely believe my eyes when I read that the Income-tax was to be allowed to lapse, and that we were to substitute for it borrowing and taxes on exports. I had very recently heard from Sir J. Lawrence himself that he did not see how we were to do without the Income-tax, and one way or another this view of the case had been * Lawrence to Frere, April 15, 1865. 1865.] INCOME-TAX DROPPED. 453 made generally known as the conclusion at which the Government of India had arrived, and it had been acquiesced in by the public. The press everywhere assumed that at least another year of Income-tax was inevitable — some approved, some excused, but, as far as I can learn, none wholly condemned what all were ready to accept as a matter of necessity. Here in Bombay the tone of the native press was quite remarkable. In many native papers the Income-tax was defended on the obvious ground that it was a wise and just tax, sparing the poor and falling mainly on the rich, who pay taxes very inadequately in any other shape. This tone was the more remarkable, because the native press is almost exclusively the organ of the prosperous and educated natives, and we have nothing answering to your democratic press in Europe. " That I was not mistaken in my impression of the views of the Government of India up to a very late date, I gather from the surprise which Sir Hugh Rose expressed when he heard on landing here that the Income-tax had been given up. The measure had evidently been decided on since he left Calcutta. " Neither Sir C. Trevelyan's printed Financial State- ment, nor the debate, nor any reflection on our financial position, had enabled me to discover any worthy reason for this act of financial suicide." Sir Charles Wood expressed himself even more strongly about the Budget. He writes to Frere, May 17, 1865 : — "The Budget is as bad as can be. Lawrence stood alone in support of maintaining the Income-tax, which would have been the right thing ; and was, I think, equally right in refusing to agree to shifting the load from the shoulders of the rich to those of the poor, by raising the salt-tax. The export duties are as foolish as anything can be, and the loan is worse. Heaven help us from such selfish and short-sighted statesmanship ! " Sir Charles Wood disallowed the export duties, but it was impossible for him to save the Income-tax. Trevelyan shortly afterwards returned to England, leaving a heavy 454 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XI. deficit as the result of a policy of cutting down expenditure, when and where it was especially necessary and likely to be reproductive, and of remitting taxation at a time when it was more easily borne than ever before. Sir C. Trevelyan was succeeded by Mr. Massey, who produced his first Budget in March, 1866. In order to get rid of the deficit, the Budget contained a suggestion to transfer to local funds certain charges which had hitherto been borne by the Government of India, those, namely, for education, police, district jails, public works, and mainten- ance of roads and bridges. To meet these charges a certain discretion in the method of taxation was to be allowed to local administrations, but the taxes recommended were a licence-tax of trades and professions, house-tax, octroi duties, and succession duty on lands paying no revenue. This drew from Frere a minute on local taxation (November 15, 1866), and on the financial condition of India generally. In the course of it, he points out that though he would welcome a proposal to hand over to the local Governments certain taxes, together with a corresponding liability to meet local charges, as Wilson and Laing had proposed, it was quite another thing if the liability trans- ferred was to be heavier than the corresponding tax had hitherto been, and would in fact involve a breach of faith with the tax-payer. As regarded the four taxes suggested by Mr. Massey, Frere expressed approval of all except the octroi duties. "To these I must express a very strong objection. They are generally popular with the larger traders, as favouring monopoly and keeping down petty trade ; with men of property, who do not much feel them . . . and with officials who find them productive and easy of collect- ing, and do not see the mischief they do. But they are oppressive to the poor, especially to the small trader, and form a serious check to the natural growth of commerce. 1866.] LOCAL TAXATION. 455 They are better than no source of public income at all, and this, I believe, is the best that can be said of them." He goes on to say that to supply the urgent need of money for repairing roads in the Presidency, tolls had been imposed wherever the nature of the country permitted, by which more than seven lakhs (.£72,000) had been raised in a year. Tolls, however, had been resorted to, not because he thought this the best mode of providing for road-mending, but as the only means to which sanction could be obtained. He would prefer a cart or wheel-tax, leaving tolls to be levied on made roads over mountain passes or on bridges. The one-anna cess, originally suggested by Sir George Wingate and Colonel Davidson, had also been resorted to, which was paid with the land- tax at the rate of one anna for every rupee of Govern- ment land revenue, to form a local fund for making and repairing roads, and for maintaining primary schools. There was some doubt as to its being compatible with the terms on which the cultivators in some districts held their land, and therefore it had not been generally intro- duced, but as it was, it brought in thirteen lakhs in the Presidency, and would bring in more as the old settlements fell in. The army expenditure could not, he considered, be put at less than sixteen millions out of a total expenditure of forty-six, without including the cost of barrack improve- ments, and he thought the existing condition of the army very unsatisfactory, many portions being obviously and notoriously inefficient. Upon the question of the revenue from opium, he says : — " Under this head we spend one and three-quarter millions to obtain from opium a revenue of six and three- 456 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XL quarter millions sterling. Every year's observation con- firms me in the belief, which I have often before expressed, that the disregard of all sound maxims of political economy, which is shown by our maintenance of the Government monopoly and manufacture in Bengal, joined to our neglect of the plainest dictates of prudence in keeping up the present price of Malwa opium-passes in Western India, must rapidly ensure the decline and final extinction of this branch of revenue. . . . " We have in India two opposite systems of taxing opium — one the fee or passport system, in force in Western India, which is not at variance with the laws of political economy, and which promises to afford the largest possible revenue for the longest possible time, provided we do not stimulate production in other countries by pitching the tax or passports too high. It involves little expenditure for establishment, and is not obnoxious to the moral objections which are urged against the system of Govern- ment manufacture in Bengal. " The other system in force in Bengal is not only obnoxious to all the objections, economical or moral, which do not apply to the Western mode of taxation, but is certain, sooner or later, to be ruined by the often-proved impossibility of conducting any manufacture by Govern- ment monopoly on such sound commercial principles as to compete with commercial success in a free, foreign market which has other sources of supply. " Second in the list" (the Minute continues), " as regards the extent of the charge, come Public Works, the large aggregate amount of which is a frequent source of con- gratulation, when we speak of the good deeds of the Indian Government, while the comparative smallness of the result, when looked at in detail, is the theme of almost universal complaint and disappointment. . , . "A fixed sum should be assigned annually to each Administration, and the local Government should be left to spend this sum to the best advantage, with no further condition than, perhaps, a stipulation that a certain pro- portion should be devoted to certain great heads of really Imperial importance ; such, for instance, as military shelter or defence. Each Administration should state annually, as soon as possible after the close of the working season, what it had done with its assignment, how many 1866.] LOCAL ADMINISTRATION. 457 miles of road had been made, and where and what per- manent buildings had been erected ; but as to all details, the Government of India should take it for granted that the professional advisers and executive officers of the local governments are competent to decide every ordinary point regarding common roads, buildings, and other works ; and the Government of India should content itself with the assurance that if something might be gained in point of ultimate perfection by sending the plans many hundreds or thousands of miles to be revised by officers under the Government of India, much more would assuredly be lost in delays and in a diminution of the work ultimately done. "At present all the preliminary details regarding any costly work, however simple, are gone over twice, or oftener, and the expenditure on the establishments neces- sary for this repeated examination of details must be something enormous. In place of these establishments, the Government of India should employ the best officers in every department as travelling inspectors to report, in the first instance, to the local governments, and ulti- mately to the Government of India, on the comparative merits of every kind of public work in every part of the Empire. " Every province has some peculiar excellence of its own — the barracks of one, the roads, the bridges, the anicuts, the canals, the architecture, the masonry of others, are the best of their kind in India ; and a frequent per- sonal inspection and criticism of all by selected officers, who did not confine their observations to one province, but who saw and personally examined all they discussed, would speedily do more to raise the general standard of public works, and to ensure better results for the expendi- ture, than ages of paper-sifting by accomplished clerks in a central office. " I would, once for all, disclaim anything like a personal application of the opinions I have ventured to submit. I know no more accomplished or high-minded body of public servants than are to be found in the Indian Public Works officers. The Government of India has, as it ought to have, under its immediate orders some of the ablest and best, and, speaking generally, no faulty system was ever worked with greater consideration and courtesy, 458 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Cir. XI. or with a more single eye to the good of the public ser- vice. But the system is radically bad, and can be no more redeemed by an exemplary body of officials than that which has just centralized Austria into political paralysis. Let us remember that Bengal is larger and more populous than either France or the old Austrian Empire, and probably not poorer than Austria ; that Madras is much bigger and twice as populous as European Turkey ; and that probably the most ardent centralizer in a French bureau would shrink from any proposal to manage the roads and bridges of the Ottoman Empire from Paris as a centre, though that would be a light task compared with what is now attempted in India." CHAPTER XII. THE REBUILDING OF BOMBAY. Sanitary state of Bombay — Census — The City rebuilt — Its defences — The Thide — Railways — Education — Address to Deccan Sirdars. THE filth of an Indian city is, or was at that time, not to be imagined by any one with an experience limited to Western Europe, much less to be described here. The old town of Bombay was ill-built, ill-drained, or rather not drained at all, very dirty, and very unhealthy. Land for building was urgently required by the rapidly increas- ing population, and space for more airy streets and houses. There had never yet been any census taken of any large city in India, and the populations could be only very roughly estimated. As a preliminary to extensive drain- ing and building operations for the improvement of the sanitary condition of Bombay, it was expedient to ascertain what the population really was. A Bill for taking the census passed the Bombay Council in April, 1863. In August Lord Elgin's assent was given, and it was under- stood to have become law. In December, therefore, a notification was put forth at Bombay that the census would be taken on February 2, 1864. Forms were arranged, enumerators drilled, and the people generally 460 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XII. prepared to aid, and not to resist or be alarmed. A week before the day fixed, when all was ready, without any previous hint of disapproval, a telegraphic message was received from England that the Act had been dis- allowed by the India Office, no reasons being given. To have suspended the work at the last moment without explanation would have caused misunderstanding, and perhaps alarm and danger. So, after consultation with the Commissioner of Police, and with the natives who had assisted in the arrangements, Frere determined to proceed with the census without the aid of the Act, as a voluntary enumeration. His decision was not approved by the India Office, but the result was a complete success. "I feel sure," he writes to Sir Charles Wood, " when you have the result before you, with Dr. Leith's report on the sanitary condition of the more densely populated quarters, you will say I did right to get the best census we could without waiting for a compulsory Act." " I admit that you make out a fair case on the census," Sir Charles Wood replies (May 17) ; " my Councillors were all against it, and I had not an opinion sufficiently strong to warrant me in differing." Frere was a keen and ardent sanitary reformer, abreast of all the latest knowledge on the subject. He had obtained a report on the condition of the city from Dr. Leith, President of the Bombay Sanitary Commission ; and he called to his assistance Dr. Hewlett, then recently returned from England, where he had been making a special study of sanitation. He would often take his daily ride, sometimes accom- panied by Dr. Hewlett, through the purlieus of the native quarter, to examine its condition for himself. It happened that he had noticed a house which had been raised at 1863-6.] OLD BOMBAY. 46 1 different times to an unusual height. One day, seeing that a sixth or a seventh story was being added to it, he asked the owner, a native, whether he had a very large or increas- ing family to need so unusual an addition to his house. The man answered, " No, he had had several children, but they had been all very feeble and sickly. He had added a story to his house from time to time, as his means permitted, hoping that by living higher up, where the air was purer and the breeze fresher, their lives might have been saved. But one after another they had sickened and died — all but one. He was building this new and highest story as the last hope to save the last child that was left to him." The Europeans were even more straitened for house- room than the natives. The quarter of the city chiefly inhabited by them was enclosed by the ramparts of the old fort, and could not be enlarged till they were removed. House-rent had gone up to an extravagant price. An English surgeon writes, " The house I am now in, with another of the same size, were bought by my present landlord in 1848 for forty thousand rupees. They are now being sold together for six hundred thousand rupees, or fifteen times as much. This is no speculative purchase, but a bona fide operation." Nor was it possible for Europeans to migrate to any less expensive quarter. The peculiarities and habits of the natives of an Indian city make it impossible for Englishmen to live in their streets. It is not a question of pride or fashion ; the dwellings are altogether unfitted for Europeans. On the other hand, the rich natives had begun to buy up houses hitherto occupied by Englishmen, so that there was now no exclu- sively European quarter.* * Colonel Marriott to the Secretary to the Government of India, January 21, 1865. 462 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XII. A considerable amount of space was obtained by clear- ing away obsolete fortifications and useless public build- ings and factories, and laying out the ground afresh, using part of it for new public buildings and for recreation ground, and selling the rest as sites for building. The principal Government properties offered for sale were — The gunpowder and gun-carriage factories, both very large in extent, with an excellent harbour-frontage, but in localities now utterly unsuited to their purpose. The old European General Hospital, which was in too confined a space and unhealthy. The old ramparts of Bombay. These were useless for defence, and occupied a great space between the two busiest portions of the town. The high walls interfered with the circulation of air, and the ditches contained stagnant water. They were accordingly levelled, and part of the space laid out in roads, open spaces, and sites for public buildings. A considerable area remained, which was sold under conditions arranged so as to secure the interests of the public, and for a sum which was sufficient to cover the whole expense of the work done. Many were the plans propounded and discussed for the drainage of Bombay. As far as the surface water was concerned, it was eventually thoroughly done. But it was ultimately found to be impossible, owing to difficulties of level, the set of the tide, and other causes, to construct a system of sewers and house drainage, and it was there- fore necessary to organize a complete and elaborate system of house-to-house scavenging. By Frere's strenuous efforts the Bombay Municipal Act was passed in 1865 to provide for the management of these and other kindred matters. It was a carefully considered and comprehensive measure — the first of the kind passed in India. It provided for the appointment 1665.J NEW BOMBAY. 463 of a Municipal Commissioner for a term of three years, in whom was vested the entire executive power, and of an executive engineer, a consulting officer of health, and a controller of municipal accounts. These officers were paid by and under the financial control of the bench of justices, to whom they reported at their meetings four times a year. The Commissioner was empowered to enact bye-laws, subject to confirmation — first by the justices, and secondly by the Governor in Council. How high an importance Frere attached to the pro- motion of the health and cleanliness, and the improvement of the private dwellings and public buildings of Bombay, and how near these things were to his heart, may be gathered from the following passage in a letter to Colonel Merewether, then commanding at Aden, and justly valued by Frere as one of the ablest and most distinguished officers in all India. " February 15, 1865. " I sometimes wish I had you here, to act as Lord Mayor of this town. Did it ever occur to you as a task as glorious, and quite as difficult, as conquering Cabul? I only ask to learn your views, and not because I am able now, or feel sure I shall be able hereafter, to offer it. But I should like to know how you would view the offer, if made." Mr. Arthur Crawfurd was the first Municipal Commis- sioner, and Dr. Hewlett the first Officer of Health. Their work was carefully designed, planned, and executed. An immense improvement in the health of the city was effected, and became apparent by the diminution, ultimately, in the death-rate from thirty-five to twenty-three per thousand.* Twelve new public buildings were designed and * Miss Nightingale writes to Frere some years afterwards : — "November 13, 1869. " Bombay has had a lower death-rate on the last two years than London— the healthiest city in Europe. This is entirely your doing. 464 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XII. most of them begun during Frere's term of office, the twelfth being completed only in 1891. Rarely has a municipality had a greater opportunity. Seldom have there occurred financial delays and difficulties more formidable than those which it had to encounter in the first years of its existence. And never, perhaps, as those testify who saw the old city and have also seen the new one, has a transformation — spreading though it did over a quarter of a century from its commencement to its completion — been more magnificently successful.* The old fortifications of Bombay had long been useless and were now demolished, but as yet they had not been replaced by new ones ; and the long range of modern guns and changed conditions of naval warfare, made it necessary to look to the defence of this the greatest and most exposed of the sea- port towns of India. Frere writes to Lord Cranborne, the new Secretary for India : — "October 2, 1866. "The American man-of-war Shenandoah has arrived in Bombay, bringing the first intelligence we have received of an American vessel of that class being in these seas, and reminding us rather vividly of the fact that she might have dropped upon us quite as unexpectedly in time of war as of peace ; that we have nothing to meet her nearer than If we do not take care Bombay will outstrip us in the sanitary race. People will be ordered for the benefit of their health to Bombay or to Calcutta, which is already healthier than Liverpool or Manchester." * As these pages are being written, a letter comes to Lady Frere, from the wife of a Member of Council at Bombay, dated April 13, 1892, which contains the following : — " We can never forget the time when you and Sir Bartle were here, or Sir Bartle's great kindness during the time my husband was serving under him, a time which we often think of and look back to as one of the happiest periods in our Indian life. Everywhere around us now in Bombay we see proofs of Sir Bartle's wisdom and forethought, and even yet all his plans for the improvement of the city are only in process of development." 1S64.] BOMBAY DEFENCES. 465 Trincomalee, a thousand miles distant and not in tele- graphic communication with us. Depressed as commerce still is in Bombay, a vessel like this could in twenty-four hours extort a ransom of many millions sterling. The American Consul or any man in business in Bombay could tell the captain that the mint and the bank alone could yield him three or four millions in silver, and the captain could have no difficulty in dropping a shell into either building as a hint to hasten payment. . . . "When the question comes before you, I am confident you will not allow the fortification and defence of vital points like Bombay, to be left to the chances of a surplus in a local fund. But no land defences will suffice without powerful floating defences, and I do not see how they are to be maintained in this or other harbours without a local Indian Navy. " I would not restore the old Indian Navy, which had incurable vices of constitution, nor attempt to improve the present Bombay marine, which will never be more than a costly and not very efficient transport service. " But I would borrow from the Royal Navy a selected Port Captain and pay him well, with local rank as a Com- modore for five years, and give him command of all local transports, harbour defence, and Government Dockyard services, and give him officers and men from the Royal Naval Volunteers, serving for five years at a time, with a suitable increase of pay and pension so as to make the service popular. . . ." Early in 1864 Captain Sherard Osborne had reached Bombay with four gun-boats, with which he had been putting down piracy in the China seas. The operations were at an end, and three of the vessels with their stores were made over to the Government ; the fourth, the Thule, was advertised for sale by Captain Osborne's agent Mr. Cruick- shank, as a " yacht." She was unarmed, but very fast, and capable of being converted into a second and a more formid- able Alabama. Frere at once stopped the sale, and on February 28 wrote to Sir Charles Wood to say he had done so, and suggested that the Government should buy her. Sir VOL. I. 2 H 466 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XII. Charles Wood's reply is interesting, as showing what the English Government's opinion on this question, afterwards so much debated, then was. "April 4, 1864. " I brought the question of the gun-boats before the Government, and I can now give you directions to some extent. " You were quite right to take charge of the gun-boat's stores, etc. That is a clear case. " With regard to the Thule, which you describe as a yacht, and not fitted for an armament, you have, I am afraid, gone beyond legal measures. I do not at all blame you for having stopped the sale ; but you had in fact no right to do so. Therefore you had better let Mr. Cruick- shank sell her as he pleases ; but you must take good care that she is not fitted for war purposes in your territory. You should, I think, warn Mr. Cruickshank that nothing of this kind can be permitted. We have, I am inclined to think, pushed our practice here beyond the law. The decision has so far been against us in the Alexandra case, and I do not much believe that we shall succeed in convicting even the rams. I have no doubt of their being intended for the Confederates, but I suspect that we shall not be able to prove it on legal evidence. So mind what you do, and have the best legal advice before you take any step. I should think that a warning from you to any purchaser would probably be effectual in stopping any proceeding which would be contrary to law." Frere replied — " April 28, 1864. " I have been over the TJiule. She is called a yacht ; but yachting in China, with Malays and Manilla men as crew, and in waters where pirates are quite as plentiful as fisher- men, is not a very peaceful occupation, and the Thule could certainly be equipped outside our harbour so as to make her a very formidable rover. A man calling himself ' Cap- tain Lowe, Agent for the Southern States,' has lately been here, offering to buy any of the four vessels, arid to pay ready money for them. " I at first thought of letting her be sold to any respectable local firm which would give security that she should not 1864.] THE THULE. 467 fall into the hands of either of the belligerents ; but I found that respectable firms were shy of buying a vessel the exact ownership of which seems a little mysterious. ... So I thought it only safe, in order to avoid all risks of American remonstrance, to take charge of her with the other vessels. " She is exactly the kind of vessel to station in the Persian Gulf or at Zanzibar or Aden, at the disposal of the Resident. The Admiralty steadily refuse permission to their vessels to remain at Aden, or in the Red Sea, or Persian Gulf, except during the cool months, and it is absolutely necessary that the Resident should have a despatch-boat at his disposal. The Thule is admirably adapted for such service, and would be worked much more cheaply than our old vessels of the Indian Navy." It was fortunate, as the issue of the Alabama case showed, that Frere's suggestion was adopted, and the Thule purchased by Government. She was afterwards given as a present to the Sultan of Zanzibar, who, Livingstone writes, was greatly pleased with her. About the same time the question was raised whether the Indian Army could not be still further reduced, and troops spared, if necessary, for service elsewhere. Frere gave his opinion that the Native Army — and in this Lawrence agreed with him— was already quite as much reduced as it ought to be. The Bombay Native Army numbered, in 1848, 35,049; in 1856, 28,620; and at that time, though the territory of the Presidency was larger, 20,872. The Bombay Government Despatch states that — "April 21, 1864. " Barely two-thirds of the Native (Bombay) Army has as much as four nights in bed at a time of profound peace when there are no troops in the field. With only two regiments of native troops on foreign service in China, we are left without any reserve of Native Infantry immediately available, or any means of giving rest to regiments which, from sickness or other cause, may have become disabled." But with his habitual confidence in native troops, when 468 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XII. well disciplined and commanded, he suggested the reduction of the European troops in the Presidency by one Infantry and one Cavalry regiment, and by three batteries of Artillery. The pushing on of railways was the most important thing of all, he considered, for strengthening our military position in India, as well as on all other accounts. Over and over again in his letters to the Government of India and to the Secretary of State, he urges the extreme im- portance of completing the railway connection between the Punjab and the sea at Kurrachee by continuing the rail- way from Kotree to Mooltan. Apart from the great com- mercial benefits it would confer, being by eight hundred miles the nearest route to the sea for twenty millions of people, it was the one thing wanted to assist the defence of the North-West Frontier on its whole line, by making it easily accessible to troops from Kurrachee. "The Russian advance on Bokhara causes great excitement even at this distance," he writes, in 1866, to Captain Eastwick. " Why do you delay to connect Mooltan and Kotree, and Guzerat and Delhi by railway? If anything happens to us, the verdict of history will befelo de se." And he writes to Lord John Hay : — " May 3, 1866. " There are no two measures so important in a military, political, or commercial point of view as the completion of the railway lines up the valley of the Indus, and from Guzerat to Delhi. There are existing guaranteed Railway Companies ready to make both, by extending their own completed lines onwards from Kotree in Sind to Mooltan, and from Baroda in Guzerat to Neemuch and Delhi, but the Government of India refuses to let the Companies make the surveys, a work which, properly done, will take two or three quiet seasons ; and the Secretary of State's Council supports the refusal, and, after two ineffectual re- monstrances, a third peremptory order has come to us to recall survey parties actually in the field." 1864-6.] RAILWAYS. 469 To Lord Cranborne he writes as to the railway from Kurrachee to Kotree, and the need to extend it along the valley of the Indus : — " The present line has cost quite double the original estimate, and one of the arguments against any extension is the presumed high cost of any addition. I therefore took particular pains to ascertain the causes of the high cost of the existing line, and feel convinced that it is mainly due to bad engineering as regards both the lining out and the designs for the bridges, etc., across the drainage, and to reckless extravagance, if not worse, in the execution. As far as I could learn, two-fifths of the actual expenditure would have been ample, even at present enhanced prices, on good designs and a well-laid-out line. All concerned, Government officials as well as all the railway people in Sind and in England, must have their share of the blame, and I traced many mistakes and omissions to my own time when the work began ; some of those concerned will, it may be hoped, be more honest and all wiser and more experienced next time. " One main cause of all the mischief has been the hurry in which everything was done at the last, under pressure of the Mutiny, and my great objection to the repressive policy of the Government of India, refusing leave to survey and inquire in anticipation of a concession of a line, is that I am confident the Indus valley and many other lines will be hurriedly ordered some day, under panic at hearing that a Russian envoy has arrived at Cabool, or a French or American squadron in the Persian Gulf." Public works and education were the two matters Frere meant chiefly to press — so he told his private secretary, Mr. John Arthur — when he took up the Government of Bombay. If with the former he had to encounter storms and to make way against a head-wind, with the latter he was in comparatively smooth water ; for he was not at every step impeded by the need of obtaining the sanction of the Government of India. Nor was it necessary to make new departures so much as to accelerate progress on the lines already laid down. 470 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XII. These were the years, preceding the settlement of 1870, during which the question of the extent to which religious teaching was to form an integral part of national education was being hotly contested in England. The waves of the controversy did not fail to reach the shores of India ; and it was sought to impugn the principle of the Educa- tion Despatch of 1854, which laid down neutrality in matters of religion as the attitude to be observed by the Government. In the spring of 1864 a deputation from the Church Missionary Society came to Sir Charles Wood to complain of the course taken by the Bombay Government as to religious teaching in schools.* And subsequently Sir Charles Wood suggested that sanction should be given to Government schoolmasters ' giving instruction in the Bible or Christian religion at other times than school hours.' f To this Frere replied — " September 27, 1864. " I trust you will let all who are most responsible for the peace as well as for the education of the country, be heard before you formally give any orders on the subject of Government schoolmasters giving instruction to their pupils in Christianity out of school hours. I know nothing in this Presidency to prevent any sincere inquirer learning all he can desire to know on the subject of Christianity from any Government schoolmaster who is willing to in- form him. But it would be difficult to frame any order on the subject, which should not be taken as an incentive to mix up Missionary teaching with Government education, which would, I am sure, be most disastrous for both, but especially to true Missionary work, for I am convinced that any general suspicion that we were to enter on an Orange policy in India would not only be quite as dan- gerous as in Ireland, but quite as ineffectual towards any result of true conversion." * Sir Charles Wood, to Sir B. Frere, June 17, 1864. t Same to same, September 1, 1864. 1864.] EDUCATION. 471 On the same subject, with reference to a complaint made against an official in the Education Department, he writes : — "July 22, 1864. " I am sanguine that you will have little trouble in the Education Department from the Missionaries in this Presidency, unless they are urged on by ' Parent Societies ' and gentlemen travelling as ' deputations from Parent Societies,' who, in cases of this kind, are very apt to play the firebrand. " Our difficulties have been of the same sort as those Government meets with in Ireland, and the faults found with us are very like what you hear charged there. But little fault is found by our own Missionaries on the spot. They seem to me to be doing much more in their own way among the natives than either their friends or their enemies suppose ; often, I am certain, much more than they are themselves aware of. And their success is, I am sure, partly owing to the really fair and impartial course pur- sued by this Government on all questions of religion and education, and to the confidence and absence of bitter feeling among the natives which this course has inspired." Anxious as he was lest the teaching of Christianity should be endangered by its being taken up by Govern- ment officials, he did his utmost to encourage it in the hands of the Missionaries, and of the colleges and schools of the different religious bodies, and to foster their efforts to teach not only their native members, but Europeans of the lower class, the neglect of whom and of whose children at that time brought so much discredit on English Chris- tianity in India. The following passage occurs in a pencil note of his for a speech at a meeting of the Free Kirk General Assembly's Institute : — "You, as independent religious communities, do that which Government cannot properly or safely attempt to do — you render it impossible for any native of India to 472 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XII. say to us as a nation that 'you teach us everything but that which the great teachers among yourselves believe to be the most important of all knowledge.' This can be said by no one within reach of this institution." The following letter to the Rev. Charles Merivale gives his impression of the extent to which Christianity was spreading and influencing the natives of India at that time : — " February 7, 1865. " I have to thank you very much for a copy of your admirable sketch of the conversion of the Roman Empire, one of the very few books I have met with which I wished expanded to any number of times its present size without any alteration in the relative proportions of its several parts. "The subject has a special interest for us just now in India, where the various forms of Indian belief are under- going the same process which you so well describe ; but it seems to me that in our modern case the process is going on much more rapidly than of old — for I do not suppose that any one generation of Romans ever witnessed such extensive and important changes of belief in the mass of the people as I have witnessed during my thirty years in India. I think this is only what might be expected from the superior temporal advantages of the proselytizing nations of modern days. Of the fact I think there can be no doubt, though it is at variance with the generally received opinions regarding the results of modern Mission- ary effort. " I send you a Maharatti newspaper, in which you will find an article on ' Sinceritism,' as the writer calls it, which expresses what is, I think, the general form of belief among our young educated natives. You will see it is Deism with a strong tinge of Christianity, and a code of morals almost entirely Christian, and approaching much more closely to Christian teaching in many most important points than some of the modern fashionable European creeds. The men who think with the writer have no sympathy with the old Hindooism, and so far from being hostile to Christianity, are very apt to receive it when their hearts are touched by any of the various accidents I86 4 .J SCHOOL OF ART. 473 which show them the very unsatisfactory character of such half-way houses as ' Sinceritism.' " Frere sought to give the fullest possible effect to the principle of Government grants-in-aid, originally laid down in the Despatch of 1854, and freely sanctioned Government assistance being given to educational estab- lishments of all denominations which could show they were doing good work. By these means a great impetus was given to primary instruction. But the great impulse given to education under his rule at Bombay — education in the widest sense of the word, of men and women, as well as of boys and girls — was due to his personal encouragement more than to any legislation promoted by him. It was owing mainly to his influence that so much of the overflow of wealth which came into the possession of the Bombay native merchants during the American Civil War was applied to the building and endowment of schools, colleges, museums, and other insti- tutions, instead of being squandered in idle luxury and display. Keeping himself well informed of all that was going on in England in politics, literature, science, and art, he was competent to give good counsel on all educational matters. He encouraged the growth of the School of Art at Bombay, and also took a keen interest in the preservation of the ancient arts — such as textile and pottery work in Sind — and in Indian antiquities, starting a committee which made a study of the ancient buildings of Western India. In fostering art in India — where there exists so much manual dexterity and delicacy of workmanship — the pro- blem is to get beyond the reiteration and reproduction of old forms and patterns, and to introduce new life and new 474 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XII. ideas which may grow and develop. Writing to Mr. E. J. Howard, Director of Public Instruction, Frere makes the following suggestion : — "January 3, 1864. " The only way in which, as far as I can at present see, imported artists could come out to teach usefully would be by coming out to execute some specified commission, teaching native pupils the while, as Vandyke taught whilst painting for Charles I. and his Court. Rustunjee might say, ' I will give a sum of money to any artist you select to come out and paint for me family portraits and oil pictures on historical subjects, and frescoes for my new house,' with liberty to take home and exhibit what is portable, and with a promise to teach what he could to whom he could. If an enthusiast with any teaching mania in him, he would soon find pupils. If not, he would still, in the course of executing his commissions, give many an intelligent youth a basis and hints which might end in the wish to be an artist. It would be something that our Parsee youths should see practically that pictures are painted, and not woven or stamped. If nothing else came of it, Rustunjee would get his pictures for his money." He jhad a deep sense of the importance of female education and did all he could to encourage it. In a letter to a Parsee gentleman, Mr. Manockjee Cursetjee, he offers suggestions in respect of his intention to start a school for native girls : — "July 27, 1863. " Your success will much depend on keeping it as a movement among yourselves for your own improvement, managed and supported by those for whose welfare it is designed. "Don't call it an 'Institute.' How would 'Alexandra Native Ladies' School ' do? " I would avoid a European ladies' committee. Ask ladies to visit without responsibility or authority, and by all means give the Miss Manockjees and any ladies, if you can find any similarly accomplished, the fullest power to visit and suggest ; but let no one manage save the mistress — she should be educationally supreme. 1864.] EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 475 " Financially, let all be in the hands of native gentlemen — yourself and others who feel with you. " All will depend on your choice of a mistress. Put it in the hands of a man like F. D. Maurice, who from the Ladies' College could doubtless send a lady devoted to the work for the work's sake. She should be allowed to choose a companion lady as her second in command, and should be quite supreme. " I write in great haste. May God be with you, and help and direct you aright ! " With Miss Mary Carpenter, best known for her work in connection with Reformatories, who visited Bombay, he had much communication as to Native Girls' Schools, and also upon Prison Discipline. Writing to him after his return to England, she says : — "March 10, 1868. " I value your personal appreciation of my work more than anything which could be expressed on a very large sheet of official paper. I must not, however, be ungrateful for official help, since that which you gave me at Bombay was the means of doing what I did in India respecting Prison Discipline." He would look in, without previous intimation of his coming, with an apology for intruding, and asking as a favour for information, upon unpretending private schools or orphanages, cheering lonely workers — it might be men or women, far from home and friends, who had little pleasure left but in their work, by his bright presence and warm sympathy. It was thus that he came to know and to befriend Miss Prescott, who had devoted her life and her slender means to the education of a number ot friendless girls, chiefly native or Eurasian. He was always ready to take his part at the meetings of the Council of the Bombay University, of which he was Chancellor, or on a speech-day of a college or school. Not naturally fluent, with a slow and deliberate articulation, 476 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Cn. XII. and cautious of dropping a word that could be misunder- stood, or could not be fully substantiated, he would begin his speech so slowly as almost to threaten tediousness ; but as he went on, his vigorous grasp of his subject — always carefully thought out and arranged beforehand, as the pencil notes in his handwriting testify — his wide and accurate knowledge, his incisive, well-chosen words, his high thoughts and the deep conviction expressed in the tones of his clear, silvery voice, and in the play of his open countenance, moved his hearers, not to noisy plaudits, but to a fixed and sympathetic attention, and left upon them a deep and lasting impression. At a Durbar of the Deccan chiefs and Sirdars held at Poona, on September 4, 1865, he addressed them, as usual, in their native Marathi language. His speech is so clear and simple an expression, as far as it goes, of the spirit and ideas which inspired his government of the natives, that it is inserted here almost entire. " Chiefs and Sirdars, — I am glad to welcome you to Poona ; to hear from you of the welfare of yourselves, of your families and your ryots. . . . " Among other topics, there is much which I should be glad to say on the subject of Education. " By ' education ' I do not mean mere reading and writing. Without these elementary means of acquiring knowledge, there can be no perfect education ; but much may be learnt from travel, from seeing other countries, and conversing with men of wide experience and more know- ledge than can be met with at any one place. There is much to be learnt in a visit to Bombay or Poona, Ahmeda- bad or Benares, or in any distant city or country. " I know that the expense of travelling with a great retinue is a serious obstacle to such journeys, and I wish you would imitate the excellent example of His Highness Maharaja Scindia and His Highness Maharaja Holkar, who had visited many countries with no larger retinue than was absolutely necessary for seeing with advantage all 1865.] THE DECCAN SIRDARS. 477 that was worthy of a visit. I would gladly write more than can be said orally on this subject of Education. But I find from the reports of Political officers that a very large proportion of the Maratha Sirdars are unable to read and write their own language, and there are very few indeed who know the language of the English Govern- ment and of our gracious Sovereign, sufficiently well to understand what I might say or write to them in my own tongue. . . . " I would earnestly beg you to consider whether this is creditable to yourselves, or consistent with your duty to yourselves, to your families, or to your subjects. " To yourselves, because without such knowledge you cannot efficiently fill the high station to which you were born ; you cannot fulfil your duty nor deserve the respect of your people, nor the sympathy of your Government. You know that it is the earnest desire of her Majesty the Queen and of the Government of India, to maintain the class of nobles to which you belong with undiminished hereditary property and influence, and to see them act as leaders of the people in the moral and physical advance- ment which it is the eminent desire of the British nation to encourage in this country. But this is simply im- possible if you neglect all opportunities of learning. " I would ask you if one of the princes, the sons of Queen Victoria, came amongst us, how many of you would be able to converse with his Royal Highness in his own language ? How many of you can read the laws of the country in the language in which they are enacted ? or the correspondence of our Government regarding yourselves and your own rights ? Nay, more, how many of you could tell a traveller, even if he spoke your own language, any- thing of the history or geography, or of the politics of any part of your own country beyond the immediate neighbour- hood of your own territory ? " The Government of England has of late years decreed that an active share in the government of this country shall be given to the people of this country as far as they are worthy of it. You have good reason to know that this is no mere figure of speech. For we have done our best to promote worthy men among the native com- munity to the highest seats in our Council, and to the Bench of our great Courts of Justice. We would gladly 478 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Cn. XII. select for such officers, men illustrious for their birth and descent, and influential from their rank and family posi- tion. How is it, then, that we have been able to find among the Sirdars of the Deccan, so few who possess such a knowledge even of their own people and their own public affairs, as to be fitted for such a trust ? There are honourable exceptions sufficient to show how easy it would be for you to avail yourselves of this great opportunity. . . . " I know well that there is no natural impediment to prevent the majority of the Sirdars of the Deccan from being fit to take part in the government of the country if they would but make use of the advantages of education which are within their reach. There was a time when a Deccan Sirdar could afford to neglect these things. When, if he attended his Prince at Court or in war, he could leave to hireling subalterns and scribes all active concern in drilling his troops, in collecting his revenues, and in ad- ministering justice to his retainers. But the times when it was possible so to delegate all his most important duties are gone ; you must all feel assured they can never return. You must know that it is owing to this habit of delegating important duties to others, and to the consequent incapacity of discharging them in person, the opportunity of having such duties to perform has passed away from so many. A powerful nation now protects each and all of you in the enjoyment of your property and rights. It is not possible now for a man with a few more retainers, or with better equipment than your own, or even for any one who wields the whole power of Government, unjustly to deprive the weakest of you of his rightful possessions. But there is one enemy against which even the powerful English Government cannot protect you, and that enemy you will find among yourselves. Everything in this world must either grow or decay, and you and your families can be no exception to this great law of nature. Two roads are now before you. By following one of these roads, it is in the power of every one of you to improve his own estate, to make his ryots contented and happy, to make himself respected by high and low, by his own countrymen as well as by the English Government, and to take a large share in the administration and improvement of the country — a greater share when measured by its capacity for doing good than any minister of former sovereigns could boast. 1S65.] THE SIRDARS' WIVES AND DAUGHTERS. 479 All this power you may command by simply availing your- selves of those advantages of education and position which are within the reach of you all. But there is also a second road, and, by neglecting those advantages I have mentioned, it is also within your power to become in each generation smaller and less important men than your forefathers were ; to see your lands and revenues slip from your grasp, or remain yours only in name ; to see your power and influence usurped by others ; to live unhonoured and die unlamented. If this be your lot, do not blame the Govern- ment under which you live, or any blind Fate, for be assured it is entirely your own fault for neglecting the great opportunities before you. I have spoken plainly and truthfully to you as became an old friend, whose life has been spent in the public service of this country, who earnestly desires your welfare, who may not again have an opportunity of speaking to you." He had, however, one more opportunity. A year later he met the chiefs and Sirdars at a farewell Durbar, at which they presented his portrait to the Poona Town Hall. Amongst other topics, he pressed upon them the import- ance of the education and influence of their women. "As you all know, the actual performance of a young chief rarely comes up to the wishes of his ministers and real friends, and the reason of this, as you also well know, is the almost entire absence of any education among the mothers and wives of the Sirdar's class. " There are, I know, honourable exceptions, which are yearly becoming more numerous ; but, as a body, you are well aware that the ladies of Sirdars are secluded — not according to your own ancient Hindoo usage, but accord- ing to a comparatively modern fashion, derived from the Mahomedans ; and thus there is hardly a Sirdar's mother or wife who can do more than read or write, and but few who can even do that. "A poor man's poverty may often force him to learn and to improve himself, but the son of a great or rich man has little chance of learning if his mother be ignorant or insensible to the value of education ; and this is the reason why I would urge on you most strongly the education of 480 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XII. your wives and daughters, not only for the same reasons which apply to all female education, but as a matter of paramount importance to your order. " There are many among you sufficiently well-informed to press forcibly on your less enlightened brethren a truth naturally distasteful to an unlettered military aristocracy. You can tell them how among the nations which now bear rule in every part of the earth, there is no instance of a class of nobles retaining its position without being superior in intelligence and education to the mass of the people, nor any instance of an educated nobility, the ladies of which are allowed to remain uneducated. Few men who have not been in Europe or America can fully estimate the influence which educated women possess in these con- tinents. But you are all more or less aware of the great influence which many noble ladies, besides her Majesty the Queen, possess in England ; and by these and many examples, you may satisfy your untravelled or unlettered fellow-Sirdars that they need not fear the influence of ladies educated as are the wives and mothers of our statesmen and soldiers." CHAPTER XIII. MASTERLY INACTIVITY. The two Pensioners of the Bramshill Lodges — Relations with Afghan- istan — Death of Dost Mahomed — Letter to Sir John Kaye — The Wahabees— Colonel Pelly in the Persian Gulf— Sir W. Mere- wether at Aden. On a Hampshire heath, one on each side of the entrance to a venerable park, and remote from any other habita- tions, stand two lodges, each tenanted by an old pensioner. A Crimean General, living in the neighbourhood, with a kindly feeling for old soldiers, had made the acquaintance of one of them, and used to leave his newspaper for him to read. One day the other pensioner presented himself and asked if he too might have a paper. The General suggested that the same paper might be passed on from one to the other ; but the man seeming dissatisfied, he asked if they were on bad terms. " No, Sir William," was the answer, " we never had a difference ; but living so near each other, and having no other neighbours, we avoid communicating or speaking for fear we should happen to fall out ! " The attitude of these two old soldiers towards each other is an exact parallel of that which, for a quarter of a century since the first Affghan War, had been pronounced by the dominant majority of the leading men in India to VOL. I. 2 I 482 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Cn. XIII. be the right one to maintain towards their neighbours on the northern and north-western frontier. It sprang originally from a reaction against the policy of Lord Auckland's unfortunate intervention in Affghanistan in 1838, which had brought such fatal consequences. Accord- ing to this school of Indian statesmanship, the ideal British empire in India should have a sharply defined boundary, enclosing annexed territory, within which the Government should be administered with the utmost attainable uni- formity, and with the countries beyond which all inter- course was to be as much restricted as possible. An imaginary frontier-wall was to separate British territory from that of the outer barbarian, the Highlander or Central Asiatic, in whose friendships, quarrels, commerce, and behaviour generally we were to abstain as far as possible from taking part or concerning ourselves. In an article in the EdinburgJi Revieiv * on Sir John Lawrence's foreign policy, known to be written by a prominent member of his Government, these views were advocated, and his foreign policy summed up and ex- pressed by the words "masterly inactivity." The phrase was taken up by Lawrence's followers, and afterwards adopted, as far as it was understood, as an article of faith by the Liberal party in England. It was only natural that Sir Charles Wood's leaning should be in the same direction — that a Secretary of State for India, already overwhelmed and bewildered by the vast extent of his responsibilities, should be inclined to catch at any plausible generality, such as the " fickleness and faithlessness of most Orientals," f as a reason for checking the natural extension of British influence, in the illusory hope that to do so would diminish or prevent the increase of the * Edinburgh Review, January, 1867. t Sir Charles Wood to Sir B. Frere, April 18, 1S63. 1865.] DOST MAHOMED. 483 difficulties and responsibilities and expense of Indian Government. Frere was by nature and creed incapable of accepting as proved a general and sweeping indictment for faithlessness and incapacity for friendship against any people or race on earth. He recoiled instinctively from a doctrine which im- plied and accepted a permanent attitude of suspicion and estrangement ; it was diametrically opposed to his social, religious, and political faith. To proffer friendly offices, public or private, whenever need and occasion called for them, was the daily habit and occupation of his life ; and his intense belief in the power for good of British influence and authority and civilization, led him to repudiate any attempt to assign hard and fast limits to their scope and exercise. His experience in Sind had convinced him that in dealing with frontier tribes there was in the long run no middle course between friendship and hostility. He and Jacob and Edwardes had proved that an alliance with them could be a real defence and a tower of strength in time of peril. In a letter to Mr. J. W. Kaye, on the subject of his then recently published history, Frere writes : — "August 20, 1865. " The mistakes made by the Government of India in dealing with Dost Mahomed are still bearing bitter fruits ; they are still persisted in in our dealings with his suc- cessors, and will yet work us woe in India. " I believe the first advance of any kind made by the Affghans towards friendly intercourse with us subsequent to the annexation of the Punjab, was when one of the Candahar Sirdars asked for a safe conduct through Sind on his way to Mecca. I was then Commissioner in Sind, and John Jacob referred to me, inquiring what answer should he send? I applied through Lord Elphinstone for instructions from the Governor-General, pointing out the valuable opening thus afforded for a renewal of 484 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XIII. neighbourly relations with the Affghans, and desiring Jacob, if the Sirdar appeared on the frontier before an answer arrived from Calcutta, to receive the Sirdar as he would any other gentleman of rank, and to tell him that all strangers were free to pass through Sind, or any other portion of British India, as long as they complied with the laws. " This gave great offence to Lord Dalhousie ; he asked if I had forgotten the misbehaviour of Dost Mahomed during the Punjab War, recounted at length his grounds of quarrel with the Dost, and directed that if the Sirdar made his appearance he should be detained, pending further orders. Luckily for us all, the Sirdar delayed his visit ; and I had time to reply, pointing out that Candahar and Cabul were in effect at that time separate, if not hostile powers ; that none of our causes of quarrel with the Dost ought in fairness to affect our relations with his brothers ; and I dwelt on the inconveniences of our then condition of estrangement from our Affghan neighbours, and on the value of a good neighbourly understanding with them. Lord Dalhousie replied he had no doubt I meant well, but he adhered to the opinions he had already expressed. However, not long after, he authorized a different policy toward the old Ameer ; but neither in the Dost's time, nor subsequently, have our dealings with the Affghans been such as the laws of really good neighbour- hood would dictate, and you may rely on it, that we shall at no distant period pay heavily for our selfish and short- sighted policy." . . . Towards the close of i860 Captain Pelly arrived at Calcutta, having come from Teheran in Persia by way of Herat, Furrah, Kandahar, and Kelat, at that time a most perilous journey, and which he performed, without assuming any disguise, in his British uniform. He brought very im- portant information, which, in Frere's opinion, proved it to be practicable to enter into closer relations with Aflf- ghanistan, and he hoped Pelly would have been sent on a mission thither with that object. But Lord Canning did not, Frere thought, give Pelly the credit he deserved for his enterprise, nor did he desire to employ him in the 1S63.] THE DOST AND HERAT. 485 matter. It was one of the few occasions on which Lord Canning's action, or inaction, was a matter of lasting regret to Frere. Again, early in 1863, when war was impending between Dost Mahomed and his son-in-law Sultan Jan, supported by Persia, and the Dost was preparing for the siege of Herat, Frere thought mediation might have been offered with a fair chance of success. He writes to Sir Charles Wood : — " March 12, 1863. " I quite agree with you about Herat as far as relates to the question of active interference, but I think we might have prevented some trouble to ourselves and much to our neighbours had we early in the day added the weight of our advice to the opinion of the Dost's sons and old servants and dissuaded him from the expedition. No one but the old man himself wanted to undertake it, for all thought it must hasten his end, and all who were waiting for the scramble, consequent on his death, felt they should be at a disadvantage if it occurred while he was away at Herat. A strong remonstrance from our Vakeel, backing the reluctance of his own people to see him committed to the siege, would any time before he passed Furrah have probably turned the scale. It is quite true that everything in Affghanistan is so unstable as to make it most unwise to meddle by any active interference ; but this seems to me only to increase the necessity for a wise and temperate exercise of the influence which our proximity and immense power give to our advice and wishes. So exercised, the moral weight of the opinions expressed by the Governor- General of India would be very great ; if, as they generally would be, conservative in their tendency, it would soon be felt that the man who quietly kept and enjoyed what he had got was the friend of the British, and that he who dis- turbed the public peace was their enemy. This is, I think, one of the few practical antidotes to the general insecurity and instability of everything Afifghan, and not, I think, by any means a weak one, for every year of quiet would add to its power, till by degrees something like regular rules of succession and public right took the place of the present 486 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XIII. reign of force. This is every way a matter of importance to us, for on the quiet of Affghanistan depend, in some degree, the peace, and in a greater degree the commerce of its neighbours, including Sind and the Punjab. You need not fear that the utmost freedom in expressing our opinions will either weaken their effect or involve us in any more active interference. I am convinced that the reverse is the case, and that as long as our principles were simply and honestly conservative, to keep things as they are, without trying to pull down one man or set up another, we might exercise a very great influence on the Affghans, with the best results to them and to us, and be much more secure against temptation to interfere actively than we can ever be while we affect a reserve and indifference which the Affghans do not believe to be real, and are sure to mis- interpret. I would not now trouble you with all this, but similar occasions are always recurring, and I have always felt that we threw away great advantages and incurred great dangers by our reserve in dealing with the Affghans, and I pointed this out at great length to Lord Canning when Sir H. Rawlinson sent Colonel Pelly to Herat, and afforded an opportunity for putting the relations between Herat and the Dost on a footing which would have pre- vented this expedition." He writes again to Sir Charles Wood : — "May 22, 1863. " With all my great respect for Sir J. Lawrence's opinion, I cannot agree with him about Herat. I advocate, as strongly as he does, ' absolute non-interference, unless we have reasons for doing so of our own.' But it seems to me we have such reasons in the present case — for at least offering advice and mediation, which is all I proposed. I would attempt no arrangements or engagements of any kind. I would simply give the weight of our influence and advice to the cause of peace, which seems clearly the best for Affghans and Persians, as well as indirectly for us. A continuation of hostilities can only serve the purposes of those powers who wish to see Persia and Affghanistan weakened, which is certainly not our interest. " I would say to Persia, ' you have behaved very badly in this matter. You brought on hostilities by meddling and intriguing at Herat ; you have no sort of claim on us 1863] DEATH OF DOST MAHOMED. 487 for our good offices, still, we will not refuse them, and as far as advising the Dost goes, for what seems to us his good, as well as yours, we will do so, and thus give you a fresh proof of the falsehood of the charge against us, that for our own selfish purposes we stir up strife and seek to make you weaken each other.' "To the Dost I would hold just the same language as his old advisers and family have from the first held to him, and which is, in fact, the language of Affghan common sense. ' All this fighting with Herat is patricidal warfare. Victory or defeat will be equally disastrous to your family and nation. Sultan Jan is your son-in-law ; his children are your grandchildren ; he has been severely punished, and is now willing to submit and to hold Herat as your gift ; accept his submission and pardon him.' " All accounts agree that Sultan Jan would make any nominal formal submission which would save the Dost's honour and induce him to retire, leaving Sultan Jan in possession. The expedition has always been unpopular with all classes, and has been forced on by the old man's obstinacy, against the advice of all, even that of sons who hope to succeed him, and dread Sultan Jan as a formidable future rival. For they know the Dost may die any day, and that their own chances of succeeding him will be materially lessened by absence from Cabul or Candahar, which may, in such case, be seized by some one on the spot. " I cannot think that we should stand badly if he neg- lected our advice. If he did so and failed to take Herat, his failure must strengthen our influence. If he succeeded we should be no worse off than all his sons and most trusted influential Sirdars, who have held the same language to him ever since he passed Furrah." . . . A few days after this was written, Dost Mahomed took Herat by storm ; and within a fortnight afterwards, on June 9th, 1863, he died. He left sixteen sons, no less than twelve of whom aspired to rule the whole or a part of their father's territory. Shere Ali had been named by the Dost as his successor, to the exclusion of his elder brothers Afzul and Azim Khan, and he was at first acknowledged by all the brothers Ameer of Afghanistan, and was recognized 488 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XIII. as such by the British Government. But by the next spring Afzul and Azim were in revolt. For two years righting went on with more or less intermission between the brothers, till in May, 1866, Shere Ali sustained a heavy defeat near Ghuznee. A report reached Calcutta that he had fled for refuge to Kelat, and Lawrence wrote to Malcolm Green as to the reception to be accorded to him. But the Kelat in question proved to be Kelat-y-Ghilzai in Affghanistan, not Kelat in Beloochistan. Shere Ali had no intention of quitting the country and giving up the game. Frere writes to Lawrence three years after Dost Mahomed's death, on the same subject : — "June 15, 1866. " I am very glad you have allowed Malcolm Green to write to you. He is one of the stoutest-hearted, soundest- judging men I know, and thoroughly reliable in every way. . . . " I wish I could agree with you that it is ' of very little importance to us who is ruler of Cabul and Candahar.' I confess that to me it seems a very vital question, and I would spare no pains to be on the best of terms with him, whoever he may be. I quite agree with you that we ought not to interfere in any way. But I hold it quite possible to have very intimate relations with such neighbours as the Affghans, and yet to give them the fullest assurance that we do not intend to meddle in any way in their affairs. Why should that which is perfectly easy in our dealings with France and with every European power be impossible with the Affghans ? I mean, that they should feel we take the liveliest interest in their affairs, while they are assured that nothing can be further from our intentions than inter- fering in their domestic affairs, or attempting to influence their home politics." . . . But Lawrence did not agree. He answers — "June 28, 1866. " When I expressed an indifference as to who might rule in Cabul or Candahar, I intended to convey my impression that such rulers could not be relied on by us ; and that they I866.J RUSSIAN ADVANCE. 489 would not be really friendly towards us ; and that they would, in the event of temptation, fall away from us, what- ever might be their engagements to the contrary. No doubt it would be very desirable that the case was other- wise. I do not myself see how a truly friendly feeling can be established between the Affghans and the English Government in India, when we bear in mind the character of these people and the history of our connection with them during the last thirty years. So long also as we keep them out of Cashmeer and Peshawur, they will be ready to join any combination against us which may give promise of success." To Sir George Clerk, Frere writes — ' ; September 8, 1866. " Naomull writes to me from Kurrachee that there is great excitement all along the border in consequence of the unsettled state of Affghanistan, and the Russian advances towards Bokhara. He says that Afzul Khan and Shere AH Khan will soon again try for the mastery, and whichever is worsted will certainly call in Russian aid. Meantime Shah Nawaz, the son of Sultan Jan, the late ruler of Herat, has been sent thither by Afzul Khan to try and regain it, and whether he succeeds or fails, he is likely to seek Persian aid, which stood his father in good stead. . . . " I have also had two visits and a long letter from old Agha Khan (the Pir of the Khojahs), sure signs of stormy times to the North-West, for I never hear from or see him when all is quiet. He confirms all Naomull's news, and is equally urgent that we should interpose, though after a very different fashion from Naomull's. " There is no danger of Lawrence interfering, but I see great risk of the present abortive efforts to appear uncon- cerned when our neighbour's house is on fire leading to some ill-judged, hasty action hereafter, and I wish that, instead of being forced to keep aloof and appear indifferent, our frontier officers were allowed to treat the Affghans with the same spirit of neighbourly frankness with which Jacob and his lieutenants have so entirely won the con- fidence of the Beloochees and Brahooes." And to Lord Granborne : — 490 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Cn. XIII. " November 28, 1866. " If we had really good military communications throughout India, and an outpost at Quetta, we might safely leave events to develop themselves. As it is, I fear we shall find, at no distant date, that the Sibylline leaves have been burning faster than we supposed, and that we shall have to do hurriedly and at vast cost, and therefore imperfectly, what we may now do leisurely and well." And again to Lord Cranborne : — "February 12, 1867. " Sir Robert Napier has returned from Sind, greatly pleased with all he saw, and satisfied, I think, as to the soundness of our frontier system. He went with a camp of two thousand men over all the scene of his great name- sake's mountain campaign, some sixty miles beyond our frontier, and was everywhere welcomed as a friend. " I believe that the Government of India and the Punjab frontier officers no longer doubt that the tribes of the Sind frontier can be brought to permit and even like such visits from English officers, nor do they doubt that it would be well if the Affghans would do the same. But they are profoundly convinced that there are natural impediments on the Affghan frontier which do not exist elsewhere, or that human nature changes where the Sind frontier ends, and continues changed as far as the Punjab frontier extends. " We have just had a reply from the Government of India to a letter we wrote on the subject of Quetta, couched in terms so peremptory, and almost prohibitory of discussion, that I felt further argument was almost pre- cluded. I regretted it the more, because this is the second opportunity we have lately lost of putting our relations with the Affghans on a more neighbourly footing, without risk to ourselves, and with a good prospect of restoring peace and good government to them." Seven years after this time, in 1874, occurred one of the periodical panics about the advance of Russia in Central Asia, in the direction of India, which drew from Frere, then a Member of the Indian Council, a statement of his views on Frontier Policy, expressed in a letter to Sir John 1874.] LETTER TO SIR JOHN KAYE. 49 1 Kaye, Secretary to the Political Department of the India Office. This letter was printed for confidential circulation amongst the Members of the Indian Council, upon whom it seems to have made a considerable impression at the time ; but it was not made public till October, 1878, when, to the surprise of Frere, who was then in South Africa, it was printed nearly at length in the Times, and was most incorrectly taken as recommending the course of action which was then being carried out by Lord Lytton in Affghanistan. Though not written till long after he had left Bombay, it sums up and explains Frere's policy on the question when Governor there, and is therefore summarized and extracted here. "Official politicians in India," the letter said (June 12, 1874), "seem now at last seriously alarmed, and there is much risk that, like all men, when they at last perceive a danger they have long been unable to recognize, they may rush in the wrong direction." Opinions had been expressed that a boundary must be named in Central Asia beyond which any advance by Russia must be made a casus belli. To do this, Frere pointed out, would be impracticable. The Russians were impelled to advance by causes similar to those which had impelled the British advance from Calcutta to Peshawur. Their conquests in Central Asia, like ours in India 3 had on the whole been a benefit to the populations of the countries annexed. Nevertheless the danger was, or might become at any time, very serious to the safety of India. " Some of our greatest acquisitions were made in our own generation by men who came out sincerely determined to avoid extension of boundary, but the course of conquest was never stayed till we got to the barriers of the mountain regions which surround India on the landside. All this 492 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Cn. XIII. was in spite of the most constant and positive orders from home, and the most sincere wish on the part of men at the head of affairs in India to obey these orders. " It is the same with Russia, with this difference, that instead of public opinion at home being, as was the case in England, strongly and sincerely pronounced against further extension of territory, there are in Russia, as I need not tell you, two opposite political parties. Neither of them objects, on any moral ground, to extensions of territory ; but one of them, including the Emperor himself and some of the best and most able financiers and enlightened politicians, is strongly opposed to further extension in Asia, on grounds of expediency. The great mercantile party of protectionists, many of the Russianized Germans, who are more Russian than the Russians, most of the military and the ultra-national politicians, on the other hand, are enthusiastic supporters of further schemes of conquest, and this party is by far the more popular and powerful. " But the Russians have one source of impulse which moves them more powerfully than it does us, though we too feel something of it. I mean the religious crusading element. . . . To a modern religious Russian the prospect of a war with a Mahommedan or an idolatrous prince has the same aspect and excites the same feeling as a crusade did among religious Englishmen in the Middle Ages. I only mention this because I think it is one of the forces impelling Russia onwards, of which we take less account as a political force than it deserves. It is in many ways a great source of strength to her. So is the declared policy of the Russian Government to put down slavery where - ever her influence extends, such slavery, I mean, as that prevalent among the Turcomans and throughout Central Asia. Contrast our feelings, or the feelings of intelligent Americans, when they heard that the slave-markets in Khiva and Bokhara were abolished, with what you and I felt when we ineffectually ground our teeth as we read of what poor Stoddart and Conolly were suffering, and we may have some faint idea of the national credit, the sense of duty performed, and the impulse to do more, which patriotic Russians feel when they consider what they are doing in Asia. . . . " The result of all this is that Russia will go on, whether 1874-J A BARRIER TO RUSSIA. 493 her Government wish it or not, till something stops her ; and what will stop her ? Nothing that I can see except an impassable barrier, such as we found in the mountain chain of the Himalayas, or a political barrier, such as finding herself on a frontier which she cannot pass without fighting an equally powerful nation on the other side, and where that powerful nation is civilized like herself and able and willing to give her honest hearing and reasonable redress with regard to all frontier discussions and to require equal justice from her. . . . " What, then, is the barrier which I would propose to raise to Russia's advance towards India ? . . . " Our policy hitherto has been not only stationary and nominally — though I think very imperfectly — defensive ; it has also been purely negative. We are ready enough to say what we will not do, but all efforts by any of the other Asiatic powers concerned have hitherto failed to elicit from the Government, either here or in India, any declaration of what it will do under any given or con- ceivable combination of circumstances. This peculiarity in our policy will at once explain to any one who knows Orientals, or, in fact, to any one who knows mankind in general, the inherent weakness of our policy as compared with that of the Russians. . . . Orientals generally mis- understand our present inaction. They suspect some deep design, some secret understanding with Russia. If it is once understood that nothing will move us till the Russians appear on our frontier, we shall certainly hasten that even by a great many years. . . . " What, then, ought to be the character of our action ? " Nothing, I believe, will be effectual to resist Russian progress towards India till we have British officers stationed on the Indian side of a well-defined frontier, exercising an effective control over the politics of the semi-civilized races on our side of such a border, and in constant frank diplomatic communication with Russian officers on the other side. " But how is this to be effected without annexation or protectorate almost equivalent to annexation and sup- ported by force ? " We must carry much further, and make more generally understood, the liberal, frank, and independent policy inaugurated by Lord Mayo. . . . 494 TIIE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XIII. "We must not attempt to impose on the Ameer with any profession of disinterested regard for his welfare ; we must let him see that we fully appreciate the danger which threatens ourselves as well as him by the Russian advance, and that we intend to stop all occasion for such advance in his direction, by assisting him so to govern Affghanistan that he shall give Russia no pretence for interference. . . . " The views held on these subjects by most of our Punjab frontier officers are much sounder now than they were twenty years, or even ten years ago. " But nothing can make up for the loss of such a noble school of frontier officers as John Jacob founded, and which the Government of India so persistently discouraged and ultimately abolished. . . . " The active measures which seem to me essential for our present purpose are, first, to place an advanced post of our frontier army in the Khan of Kelat's territory at Quetta, sufficiently strong to prevent the place being carried till reinforcements can arrive from the Indus, between which and Quetta the communication should be improved, as far and as fast as practicable, to the foot of the Bolan, and throughout that pass. This would establish above the passes, and in the territory of a power bound by treaty to act in subordinate co-operation with us, an advanced post in an excellent position for watching Southern Affghanistan, and acting, if necessary, on the flank of whatever might threaten India from the Khyber Pass and Cabul. These measures require no diplomacy nor consultation with any other Power except the Khan of Kelat, and we have treaties and engagements with him which give us all the power we can require. A detach- ment from Jacobabad has frequently passed the summer in Quetta, and nothing more is necessary than to strengthen and provision such a post, and make it capable of per- manent occupation. " The railway for a hundred and fifty miles, from tha Indus to the Bolan, would run over a level plain very similar to that over which, in Northern Bengal, a railway has just been made at the rate of a mile a day. Thence to Quetta the road may be easily and cheaply improved by keeping parties of pioneers at work on it, remembering that nothing more than a practicable road for artillery is needed. I874-J QUETTA. 495 " Secondly, well selected English agents should be placed at Cabul, Herat, and Candahar. I still retain my old predilection for military officers for such service ; but they should be picked men, with good training in the scientific branches of their profession, hardy, active, and good linguists, and, above all, men of good temper and disposition, calculated to secure the confidence of the chiefs they have to deal with. Their policy must be strictly laid out for them ; it must be one of entire absti- nence from all meddling with the internal government of the country, of watchful vigilance as regards all that goes on, and actuated by a sincere desire to support the ruler of the country, actively and efficiently, as long as he main- tained friendly relations with us, and dealt frankly and in a friendly spirit with the English Government regarding all matters of foreign policy. " This need not be a costly proceeding, if we are careful to avoid the mistake of subsidizing the prince, so as to make him rely more on our treasury than on his own thrift and good management. " But what if the Ameer should object to follow our advice ? If the matter did not affect his foreign relations, he might be left to follow his own inclinations, but if it affected such a question as his relations with other powers than ourselves, I would give him clearly to understand that he must not count on our support unless he followed our advice. I would not break with him save in the last extremity, and after all hope of continuing friendly rela- tions had disappeared ; but I would clear for action, and give him unequivocally to understand that we held ourselves free to act as might seem best for our own interests, which were to give foreign powers no good ground for inter- ference with him or us. " If, as we are told, the Ameer already evinces dislike and distrust towards our government, we cannot too soon come to a clear understanding with him as to whether he means peace and effectual alliance or the reverse. If peace, then I would let no small obstacle hinder our placing a British officer, not necessarily in the capital, but in a position to judge for himself, arid to report to us all that goes on at Cabul. . . . " In considering this Central Asian question, it never seems to me that, either those who are for active measures 49^ THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XIII. on our north-west frontier, or their opponents the advocates of ' masterly inactivity,' fairly appreciate the real character of the danger to be guarded against, or the respective kinds of strength of the parties concerned. " What is our danger in India from Russian advance- ment? People talk of a Russian invasion of India. If this means an expedition, like the expeditions to Khiva and Bokhara, formally prepared by the Russian Govern- ment with Russian forces, and marching from the Russian frontier to attack us, the danger is perhaps a remote one. No Russian statesman in his senses would, as matters now stand, dream of attempting such a thing for a long time to come. ... So far I quite agree with the ' masterly inac- tivity ' advocates, and I have no doubt whatever of the entire sincerity of all Russian statesmen and soldiers of judgment when they disclaim any idea of such an invasion of India for their own generation. But the danger I apprehend is not of this kind. . . . " If we suppose Affghanistan only so far Russianized that Russian travellers freely move about the country, that Russian officers and men, not necessarily in the pay of the Russian Government, but deserters, possibly, or vagabonds from Russia, drill the Ameer's troops, cast his cannon, coin his rupees, and physic him and his subjects, what would be the effect in India ? Can any man in his senses, who knows anything of India, doubt that the effect now, and for many years to come, must be to disquiet every one in India except that great majority of the cultivators who will go on cultivating without talking politics till the crack of doom ? Every Englishman, from the Governor-General downwards, will be disquieted ; they will feel that a great foreign power has almost as much to say to the proceedings of all the troublesome classes as the Viceroy and his English officials. Every prince and chief will see in the Russians a possible alternative claimant for empire in India, all the disaffected, dangerous, and criminal classes will be on the qui vive, ready to stir at a moment's notice, and all the millions who still have some martial spirit left will furbish their swords, and believe that another era of fighting and fair contest for martial renown and plunder is at hand. All these elements may be stirred into strife any moment by a Russian proclamation issued at Cabul, or even by a false report of one, for it is not necessary I874-] RUSSIA AND AFFGHANISTAN. 497 that the report should be true to set some of these restless elements in motion. " Now this danger, to be reasonably apprehended from a Russian Minister established at Cabul, and Russian subjects quietly permeating Afghanistan, is a danger which is never many weeks removed from the present time. I have no doubt that the good feeling of the existing Government in Russia would prevent their taking any steps towards it if we seriously remonstrated with them at the present moment ; but we must recollect that the more material part of such a step may be taken at any moment by a daring Russian frontier commander who chooses to run the risk of formal disavowal and recall, and that once taken, the step would be, or might be said by the Russians to be, irrevocable. . . . " This, it seems to me, would be the case if a Russian Minister were established either formally or informally at Cabul, and friendly relations prevailed between Russians and Affghans, while we are in the present state of apparent peace in Europe. But how would it be, if we were engaged in any discussions such as have occupied our diplo- matists during the last ten years, about Danish or Cuban questions, or Luxemburg questions, or Spanish or Swiss or Italian questions, in which Russia wished us either to support her actively, or in which she desired to neutralize our voice against her ? She would then only have to instruct her Minister at Cabul to show his teeth, to hold language insulting or offensive to us, and to get the Ameer to make ostentatious preparations for war. If, subsequently, peace were patched up in Europe, the Minister might be recalled in satisfaction of our remonstrances, but, mean- time, what would be the effect on India ? Should we be able to withdraw a single regiment or gun? Should we not be probably called on to increase our Indian army, and get ready for war ? All this, remember, may be done without our actually breaking with Russia. " But the case would be far more serious if matters went a little further. I have never seen any difficulty in a Russian agent impelling upon us in India hordes of Asiatic barbarians, more or less disciplined by renegade Russian and Indian soldiers, many of them deserters from our own army, followed by a vast train of undisciplined marauders, such as followed Nadir Shah and Ahmed Shah VOL. I. 2 K 498 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Cn. XIII. almost within living memory. When people doubt the possibility of such a move, and talk of want of commis- sariat, etc., they speak in entire ignorance of the mode in which an Asiatic marauder, or even a regularly paid soldier of an Asiatic power, habitually travels. Of course such a force would be met as soon as it appeared in India, and we may hope it would be defeated, if not annihilated. But what will take place in the mean time ? How much expense will be incurred in repelling them ? How many outbreaks will occur in India itself? And who can tell what will happen when once the rolling-stone is put in motion ? And all this, it seems to me, may be done without Russia committing herself to a clear casus belli, or being in any way actively unfriendly. . . . . "You will naturally ask what is the remedy I propose for this state of things, and I will briefly state the principle on which I would proceed. First of all, I would endeavour to meet the danger, as far as possible, from our own frontier, without placing any hostile power between us and our Indian base. Some of these measures I have already described. They involve the establishment of a perfect Intelligence Department of European officers in Afghan- istan, and, if possible, a preponderating influence there, but I would not attempt the subjugation of the country nor its military occupation, because I believe that we can effectually keep out all rivals by supporting a national Government. Hence, I would not attempt to hold Herat by a force of our own troops, at least not until we had tried the effect of such measures as Todd and Pottinger and Rawlinson proved could be so effectual in like cases. I would not attempt to enforce union of the Affghan States under a single ruler ; I would not oppose such union if the ruler seemed capable of effecting it ; I would give him the best advice I could on the subject, but avoid committing myself to support an unpopular or imbecile candidate for united Affghan Empire. I believe if we dealt candidly and frankly with the Affghans, as Metcalfe and Clark dealt with the Sikhs, we might maintain supreme influence among them as long as we can command a succession of such men. But you must trust them largely, and remember that their expenditure cannot be conducted like that of an overseer of a Union Workhouse under a vigilant Board of Guardians." * * With the letter Frere printed and confidentially circulated — leaving 1874-3 INDIA AND EASTERN AFRICA. 499 Lawrence wrote a Memorandum in reply to this letter, maintaining and defending his foreign policy, in the course of which he says — " Though I quite admit that the approach of Russia towards our Indian possessions is fraught with future trouble and danger, I do not see that we can do much more than watch events for the present, and be guided by circumstances as they arise. . . . " The occupation of Quetta seems to me to be an unwise step, both in a political and military point of view." In another quarter also, the question was now arising whether the British Empire was to maintain an attitude of " masterly inactivity," or to execute its mission and accept its responsibilities outside as well as within its own borders. At least as long ago as the days of Solomon ships were sailing and trade being carried on between Eastern Africa and South Western Asia. The breath of the steady trade- winds, the conformation of the East African coast, indented with frequent harbours, and the fertility of the land, un- broken by deserts, down to the shore, render the voyage out the parts personal to himself— a letter from Sir Henry Green, in the course of which he said — " October 26, 1874. "Your Paper ought to be printed in gold letters, framed, and placed opposite the chair of the Secretary for Foreign Affairs at the Foreign Office, and at each change of Government the Foreign Secretary for the time being should be compelled to copy it until he knew it by heart. More than this, the whole nation should know it. We should then possess a real Foreign Policy in Central Asian questions, and there would be 110 fear of war with Russia. She would know our Policy, and shape hers accordingly. Russia does not want war any more than we do, but we are both drifting towards one to the delight of the uncivilized world. Every Mahomedan, who is longing for an opportunity to raise the standard of his creed and deluge some of the fairest parts of the world with blood, is praying to see two of the most powerful Christian nations tearing each other to pieces." . . . 500 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XIII. easy and commerce lucrative. In the autumn the sailors have but to spread their broad lateen sails to the north- east monsoon to be driven, faster than a European square- rigged ship, or than any but the fastest steamers can follow, to the African coast. There they have only to wait till the summer season brings the south-west monsoon, to be wafted back with equal ease and swiftness to the shores of Arabia, the Persian Gulf, or Western India. For two centuries the Portuguese were the ruling maritime power, alike on the coasts of India, as far north as Muscat on the Persian Gulf, where the walls of their cathedral are still standing, and on the East Coast of Africa in its whole extent. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, their supremacy was contested by the ships of the Imam of Muscat, chief of the Arab tribes of Oman, the name given to an undefined region in the south-east corner of Arabia and on the west shore of the Persian Gulf. The power of the degenerate Portuguese gradually gave way before the Arabs of Oman, who exercised a sort of organized and disciplined piracy, mitigated by certain rules and customs which deprived it in popular estimation of its disreputable and lawless character ; and trade was carried on with comparative safety by merchant ships under their license and protection. As the English power became paramount in India, the safety of the seas became a matter of concern to the Indian Government. The Bombay Marine was established, which afterwards developed into the Indian Navy. In 1798 a treaty was made with the ruler of Oman by the East India Company, and in 1800 an English Resident was established at Muscat. About this time part of Arabia was overrun by the Wahabees, a fanatical sect, of whose religious and political creed it is enough to say that it legalized the indiscriminate 1804-1S56.] SEYYID SAID. 501 plunder and thraldom of all people, Muslim as well as unbelievers, beyond its own pale. The Wahabees were a constant source of irritation and danger to the Omani ; with such fanatics there could be no permanent truce, and though, later on, their capital, Nejd, was taken and occupied by Ibrahim Pasha with his Egyptian army, the sect still spread and made itself formidable. In 1804 began the reign of Seyyid Said, commonly called — though he laid no claim to the title — Imam or Sultan of Muscat and Zanzibar. Throughout his long reign till his death in 1856, he was the faithful ally of the English. Several operations were conducted by the Indian fleet, conjointly with him, for repelling the Wahabees and for suppressing the independent piratical tribes of the Persian Gulf and destroying their strongholds, operations which so far succeeded that, in 1820, the chiefs of all the maritime tribes were constrained to sign a treaty, binding them to a perpetual maritime truce, and to accept the arbitration of the British Agent in the Gulf in case of intertribal disputes. From 1829 to 1844 the Seyyid lived chiefly at Zanzibar, and gradually occupied, sometimes with the assistance of the English, almost every consider- able sea-port and all the islands off the coast from near Brava, north, to Cape Delgado, south, of Zanzibar, about twelve degrees of latitude. He had a considerable fleet of ships, fairly manned, and armed after the English fashion. One of them he. sent as a present to King William the Fourth, which was placed on the Navy list as H.M.S. Imam — a serviceable teak-built frigate. The trade on the coast increased and flourished. Zanzibar grew into an important place. Indian merchants were followed thither by English, Germans, French, and Americans. Foreign consuls of each nationality were established, each of whom contrived to obtain for his countrymen a treaty with a 5<D2 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XIII. " most favoured nation " clause, which added to the difficulties of raising revenue. In Said's absence at Zanzibar, troubles had arisen in Arabia ; the Persians as well as the Wahabees were threatening his territory of Oman ; the Indian Govern- ment, it is to be feared, was vacillating in its attitude towards him ; and his later years brought him disappoint- ment and misfortune. In 1856 he was forced to conclude a humiliating treaty with Persia, shortly after which he died, leaving behind him a reputation as a wise and able ruler, and classed by his countrymen in the same rank with Runjeet Sing, Dost Mohammed, and Mohammed Ali. He left fifteen sons, of whom the eldest, Thouaini, suc- ceeded him at Muscat, and the fourth, Majid, at Zanzibar. These two were each prepared to claim and fight for the undivided inheritance of sovereignty, but referred their dispute to Lord Canning, who deputed Sir W. Coghlan, the Resident at Aden, and Dr. Badger, the great Arabic scholar, to report. The award confirmed the division as it stood, and directed Majid, as having the richer territory, to pay forty thousand dollars annually to Thouaini. The compromise was accepted. But in a few years difficulties began to arise at Zanzibar. The payments to Thouaini were not made. The slave- trade was increasing, which the Sultan of Zanzibar was bound by treaty to put down. The treaty did not inter- fere with slavery as an established institution in the country, and slaves might be conveyed from port to port within the territory ; but this was taken advantage of to convey slaves in large numbers to the Red Sea and Persian Gulf — a traffic which the British cruisers could do but little to impede. Matters were in this state when, early in 1861, Pelly reached Calcutta after his perilous journey from Persia i86i.] SIR LEWIS PELLY. 503 through Afghanistan. Frere, finding that Lord Canning had no employment for him, wrote to Sir George Clerk at Bombay on his behalf. Clerk telegraphed back offering him a sort of roving commission as Political Agent on the East Coast of Africa. Pelly immediately accepted, went to Zanzibar, where he obtained Majid's assent to all that was asked of him, and then sailed down the coast, visiting the different ports and gathering information. In Sep- tember the Semiramis, the ship in which he was, was shipwrecked on Johanna, one of the Comoro islands, and he was detained a month there till he could get a vessel to take him away to Zanzibar. Frank, straightforward, ardent, fond of adventure, and fearless, Pelly was ready for any service, the more novel and hazardous the better. His shrewdness, tact, and ready wit generally carried him safely and successfully through the various dangers and difficulties he had to encounter. From the time that he first served under Frere in Sind, the latter had treated him with cordiality and affection, and had done his best to obtain suitable employment for him. Pelly returned Frere's kindness by entire devotion. Writing to Lady Frere some years after his death, he says — " You say truly that I loved Sir Bartle, and that I always felt, when I had the privilege — as I often had — of being received under his and your roof, that I was at home, and with those in whose good will and noble encourage- ment I had full and implicit confidence. Had I been his son I could not have loved and respected him more than I did, and all possible considerations have been as nothing to me compared with the pleasure I felt in being admitted to his personal friendship. I often ponder all he was to me, and his loss is irreparable — so gentle, so sweet, so considerate, so tender to one's faults, and so bold and firm in support when one tried to serve him honestly and fearlessly." 504 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XIII. Frere, shortly after his appointment as Governor of Bombay, writes to Pelly : — "May 17, 1862. "It seems to me that we may have the cares and responsibilities, if not the other attributes of a great empire, half African, half Arabian, thrust on us, whether we will or no, and I often wish I knew whether anything, and what, occurred to you as better to be done than the just waiting-on-Providence policy which we have hitherto followed in South East Africa. " All seems just now to hang on this great slavery question which you have brought forward in a way which must, I think, command attention and bear good fruit. . . . " Now, I want you, my dear Pelly, to tell me, as your old friend, and not as Governor in Council, how you feel you can best apply your abilities to do good in your generation ? It seems to me that you have a very mag- nificent future of usefulness open to you in East Africa, if your situation were put on its proper footing, and I might be able, and would gladly do what I can, to support you in that direction. But if your heart turns towards the tamer routine of Indian official life, the opportunity may not be wanting of showing how I value what you have done, and how highly I estimate what you can do." Pelly returned to Bombay in November, 1862. As to the slave-trade, his opinion, founded on what he had seen, was that it was not to be suppressed all at once, or by forcible means solely, or even mainly. The captures which had been made by the English cruisers had of late been comparatively few, and had not had altogether a good effect. Some of them had been really illegal and contrary to treaty, owing to the difficulty of determining the true destination of the boats captured, and had to a certain extent created an impression of overbearing conduct on our part, rather than of disinterested intentions towards the slaves. Slavery Pelly believed to be a social evil indigenous to the country, which could be eradicated only by degrees, by establishing free-labour settlements and 1865-6.] THE PERSIAN GULF. 505 by encouraging commerce, which would gradually lead the old piratical trading spirit into other channels and bring outside influences to bear upon the ideas and manners of the inhabitants. These views coincided generally with Frere's,* and also with those of Dr. Livingstone, f who had stayed some time with Frere at Bombay, in 1864 and 1865, and who after- wards from time to time wrote to him from Africa. Pelly did not stay long at Bombay. He was sent out by Frere as locum tenens for the British Resident in the Persian Gulf, who was on furlough. But he needed change of climate, and after a time went home to England. He returned in October, 1865, and the British Resident having retired, he was appointed in his place. The Seyyid Thouaini had none of his father's energy. The Wahabees were encroaching on the Muscat sea-board, and were carrying on an active importation of slaves for sale in Arabia and Persia. They had sacked two Muscat towns, and besides plundering many, had murdered one or two of the peaceable Hindoo traders who carried on most of the commerce of those seas, and many of whom were British subjects.^ Thouaini was miserably inert ; but at length, urged by his own subjects and by Pelly's remonstrances, he took the field. He released from prison Toorkee, an able but somewhat troublesome brother, and set him at the head of his troops. An English ship was * Frere to Sir Charles Wood, June 23, 1863. t Livingstone arrived at Bombay in 1864, having come across from Zanzibar with a native crew in a small lake steamer. Thence he returned to England, and the following year revisited Bombay to make preparations for his last great journey. He took with him to Africa some negro lads from the Church Missionary's establishment for rescued slaves at Nassick, some of whom, in 1873, brought his body all the way from Ujiji to England. % Frere to Lord De Grey, March 13, 1866. 506 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XIII. to aid him by sea, and he was to have help to equip his neglected fleet. In the Gulf there was only one English warship, the High- flyer, Captain Pasley, and the Resident's steam yacht, the Berenice. In accordance with instructions from Colonel Pelly, Captain Pasley commenced hostilities against Damaun, a Wahabee town on the coast. The water was too shallow to admit of the heavy boats approaching within twelve hundred yards of the shore ; but without taking the precaution of reconnoitring the fort the crews of two light cutters went on to the assault. After wading three hundred yards through the mud, they carried the lower story with a rush, only to find gates and walls, manned by numerous marksmen, opposed to them. To scale these was impossible, and they had to retire with a loss of two killed and an officer and two men wounded. The Highflyer then returned to Muscat, where Pelly joined her in the Berenice, and after destroying the forts of Soor, south of Muscat, the Highflyer sailed to Bombay, and the Berenice up the Gulf to Cape Mussendon. That same day (February 13, 1866), as Seyyid Thouaini was resting at Sohar, a town on the coast a little way north of Muscat, his son Salem came stealthily in and shot him, or caused him to be shot, through the head as he slept. Hearing a rumour of what had happened, Pelly went immediately to Sohar in the Berenice. Salem came to meet him and try to deceive him as to the cause of his father's death. But Pelly had ascertained the truth, and peremptorily demanded the release of Toorkee, the murdered ruler's brother, whom Salem had shut up in a dungeon. Toorkee was released and came on board the Berenice for safety, shivering and trembling, with nothing on but his shirt. The Berenice then went on to Muscat, 1866.] SALEM THE PARRICIDE. S°7 where all was in confusion, and Pelly, having no force on the spot to back him, sailed away to await instructions, and soon afterwards returned to Bombay. A parricide usurper in alliance with Wahabee robbers and slave-traders was not an ally to be desired, especially when his co-operation was wanted for promoting commerce and putting down the slave-traffic, and Frere and Pelly hoped that our Government would have had nothing to say to him. But the Government of India confined itself to finding fault with Pelly for everything he had done, and would give him no intelligible or definite instructions for his future guidance. Frere, on the contrary, thought he had behaved exceedingly well, and wrote to Lawrence in his defence. "March 23, 1866. "The repulse at Damaun was certainly very annoying, and the loss of the four brave fellows killed a very lamentable and, it may be said, a very useless expenditure of valuable life. But in apportioning the blame, I think we should consider that the season for naval operations was drawing to a close, that the Admiralty peremptorily forbids the retention of ships in the gulf after the hot weather sets in, and that if the navy was to do anything it was necessary to do it quickly. " Of course if Colonel Pelly had been on board the information would have been better, the reconnoitring more complete, and the attack would probably have succeeded with possibly no loss ; but is Colonel Pelly to blame for not going with the HigJiflyei' ? " I certainly think not. He could not be in two places at once, and he was much more wanted at Muscat and with the Sultan than up the gulf. The naval operations were merely auxiliary, the main object was to rouse the Sultan to use his own very ample forces by land to repel the Wahabee aggression. This Colonel Pelly could not do unless he kept close to the Sultan. He did stay close to him and did rouse him, and would have made him do for himself all that was needed had not his parricide son cut him off by a crime which no one could foresee, and 508 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XIII. which was so improbable in itself that the poor Sultan when warned by a faithful slave refused to believe it possible. " Colonel Pelly is, I believe, the first Resident who ever stirred from Bushire except on a holiday trip. He has done his best by personal activity and exertion to make up for the want of a more numerous agency, and has almost literally carried his life in his hand in visiting not only all the shores of the gulf, but in his most perilous journey to Riadh, and this year in his trip through Oman. . . . " In sending his native agent with the Highflyer, Colonel Pelly did the utmost he could, and that at great personal inconvenience and considerable risk to himself ; he advised Captain Pasley to go via Bahrein, where he would have got any pilots and information he could require, and had he done this and reconnoitred with ordinary caution, he would either not have attacked the fort at all, or ensured its capture and destruction with little risk of loss. " Do I, then, blame Captain Pasley and his officers for their rashness ? I should be very sorry to do anything of the kind. Of course what they did was very rash, but so are all stormings and boardings and cuttings out. It is owing to such rashness, joined to other great qualities, that our navy is what it is. We should have thought them very fine fellows if they had succeeded, and I trust the Admiralty will not think the worse of them for having honourably failed in an enterprise so desperate that few but British troops would have attempted it, and in which none could have been defeated with so little disgrace." In another letter, Frere suggested that Colonel Pelly should go and see Sir J. Lawrence at Simla. "April 13, 1866. " There is so much which it is difficult to write, and so easy to understand by oral discussion, that I believe an hour's conversation with him would save you many hours' reading and writing ; and it is so much easier to instruct and obey a man you have seen, that I feel sure it would be every way advantageous if you could see him." Lawrence writes in reply : — i866.] THE QUEEN'S PEACE IN THE PERSIAN GULF. 509 "April 21, 1866. " I would not ask Colonel Pelly to come up to Simla, more particularly at such an inclement season of the year. If necessary he might come across on my return to Calcutta. I do not, however, desire to arrange myself for the policy to be adopted in the Persian Gulf. I would prefer that all that was done was carried by or through your Government. What that policy is will mainly depend, no doubt, on the views of the authorities at home. If I have any influence on that policy, I should advise that we interfere as little as may be practicable in the affairs of the Arab tribes on the sea-board, and of course still less with those of the tribes in the interior of the country. I would be slow to take up the cause of natives of India, or their descendants who call themselves British subjects, for injuries received in the country, and where I did so, I would confine the interference, as a rule, to remonstrance. Unless we act in this way, we shall make enemies and not friends of these Arab tribes, and our interference will be misrepresented, misunderstood, and, when opportunity offers, will be resented also. " I would confine our labours, as a rule, to the suppres- sion of piracy on the high seas. This seems to me quite as much as we can undertake with any advantage." Thus Frere could get no definite instructions for himself or for Pelly, verbal or written, beyond general advice to be inactive. He writes, in answer to Lawrence : — " April 29. " With the advantage of your own letters before me, an advantage which Colonel Pelly does not possess, I can understand clearly enough your own views. But you must forgive me for saying that it will be impossible to carry them out without a total reversal of our policy of the last half century in these parts. " The policy of non-interference which you describe might have been a very convenient one two generations ago, as it would have been in China or Japan, in Turkey or Egypt. " But for the last forty-five years at least, our policy from Bahrein to Rasel Had has been one of active interference 5IO THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XIII. and avowed assumption of the duty and responsibility of protecting general commerce. Trade has greatly in- creased, not less, I believe, than fourfold in forty years. It has been generally under the British flag and carried on by men who claimed protection as British subjects, and received it from the Resident, who had always an efficient squadron at his command, and used it very freely to enforce his demands. " This system has been popular even with the Arabs themselves. They begin to find commerce profitable, and though you cannot convert pirates into merchants in one generation, much is being done to reclaim them. They look with dread, so Salem's own envoys tell me, to being cast off by us, and if we abdicate the position of general arbiters and active preservers of the peace which we have occupied so long, I have no doubt some other naval power, probably the French, will be invited or will invite themselves and will step in. . . . "As for remonstrance with the Arabs, I need hardly remind you that it will be effective in exact proportion to their estimate of our power and intention to use it in enforcing our remonstrances. " In acting as he did at Soor and Khatiff, Colonel Pelly did exactly, I believe, what his predecessors had been in the habit of doing under similar circumstances. We have sent you copies, I believe, of every letter we sent him. The position is one in which a very large discretion must always, I think, be entrusted to the Political Agent, and when it is impossible to refer for orders and he acts for the best, great allowance should, I think, be made for him, even if all does not turn out as he expected." The French were more nearly gaining a footing in the Persian Gulf than the Government of India dreamt of. Colonel Merewether, who was on his way home on leave, writes to Frere from Alexandria : — " May 26, 1866. " I met Palgrave * at Suez and had about an hour's most interesting talk with him. He told me in confidence, what I may communicate to you in the same way, that * Gifford Palgrave, the traveller and orientalist. IS66.J KEEPING WITHIN OUR SHELL. 5 1 1 the main object of the journey he was sent upon by Napoleon, was to report on the position and proceedings of the English in the Persian Gulf, and to recommend a place for a French settlement there. He had presents for, and authority to close a bargain with, the Imaum, if he had the opportunity — but his wreck and the absence of the Imaum from Muscat when he was there, prevented his doing anything. . . ." Pelly went back to the gulf with orders from Calcutta to recognize the parricide Salem, and to do the best he could with him and the Wahabee Chief. The confident and determined attitude he maintained was successful. Frere writes to Captain Eastwick : — "May 12, 1866. " Pelly writes that the Wahabees have given in on all points and ' paid the money.' I suppose he means the compensation for the British subjects murdered and plun- dered by the Wahabees in one of their raids on a Muscat port. I hope this will satisfy Sir John Lawrence that our protectorate over British subjects in those parts is not such an empty form as he has supposed. But I fear it will not be easy to remove from Pelly's mind the very unpleasant impression that he was judged by the Government of India after the event, and that they would have thrown him over, had anything gone wrong, without reference to his deserts or to anything but success." And to Lord John Hay he writes : — "May 3, 1866. " Up to the present time the orders of the Government of India are enough to puzzle any plain man — like nothing I ever read save Punch's caricature of the orders of the Admiral in the Baltic. The fact is I doubt whether the Government of India has at present any foreign policy beyond a sort of resolve to "keep within our shell," as they call it, and not to incur risk or expense for anything which may happen beyond the jurisdiction of our High Courts. This is a tempting sort of policy and looks safe and cheap, but it is not easy to carry out where we have treaties, and other obligations and responsibilities as strong 512 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XIII. as treaties, incurred by men of old time who knew what honour and empire meant ; and one of these days we shall reap bitter fruit from our present selfish and timid way of dealing with all our independent neighbours." Included, like the Persian Gulf and Zanzibar, within the jurisdiction and authority of the Bombay Government was Aden, the key of the Red Sea and of the ocean high- way from Europe to India, China, Australia, and the East Coast of Africa. There also the question arose of activity or inactivity, of an advancing or receding British influence. Sir W. Coghlan, who commanded there when Frere went to Bombay, wrote thence, early in 1863, that Sheebur and Maculla, two places on the opposite coast, were two of the greatest slave depots, and that at that time there were two thousand slaves at the latter place, and many also at the former, ready for despatch to the Red Sea and Persian Gulf. He went on to say that he had succeeded beyond his expectations in obtaining treaties binding the chiefs of those places to stop the traffic, which he hoped the Government would provide him with the means of enforcing, if necessary. Coghlan's command ended in 1S63. He was succeeded by Colonel (afterwards Sir William) Merewether. Merewether, already mentioned as a worthy disciple of Jacob's school, had succeeded him in the command of the Sind frontier at his death in 1858. "It was solely owing to his excellent judgment and power of command," Frere writes, " that he was so little heard of in 1857-58. He maintained order and cheerful obedience where inferior men would have let matters come to a crisis, and perhaps have earned great repute in dealing with it." Frere, on going to Bombay, at once offered him the post of military secretary to Government. Mere- wether, thinking only of the duty entrusted to him and 1862-5.] ADEN. 513 not of his own advancement, answered gratefully that he felt he could not be spared from the frontier ; that if he went, others would go too, as opportunity offered, and that the charge — laborious and shunned save by enthusiasts — would fall into weak hands, and Jacob's work be undone. But a few days' reflection convinced him that he had been wrong to consider himself indispensable, that Henry and Malcolm Green, Macauley and others were ready and competent to carry on the work, and he telegraphed to Frere, " I was wrong to show difficulties. Have now made all arrangements, and am ready to start." He had not been at head-quarters much more than a year, when he was appointed by Frere to Aden. Aden is a poor Arab town lying treeless and waterless at the foot of the bare red cliffs of a mountain scorched by the unclouded rays of the sun from year's end to year's end, where scarcely a blade of grass, much less of corn, can find heart to grow. The British occupants had been ordered to keep within the narrow strip of land around it which had been proclaimed British territory, and to have no friendships or enmities with the Arab tribes who fought and plundered outside. Food had to come from a distance, and if the supplies by sea were delayed, as they sometimes were, it rose to famine prices, and the garrison could not get enough to eat ; for the roads from the interior were infested by robbers, who intercepted the produce which would otherwise have found a profitable market there. The state of matters resembled on a smaller scale that on the Sind frontier, as Jacob had found it. But the Arab tribes were far less formidable than the Beloochees, and the country within a short distance of Aden more easily susceptible of profitable cultivation than the Sind desert ; and Merewether sought to apply a similar remedy. He requested to be allowed to raise a force of a hundred vol. 1. 2 L 514 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XIII. horsemen, equipped and trained like the Sind horse ; but this was refused. He then suggested — a plan for which he confessed he had no liking — subsidizing the Sultan of Lahej, who belonged to a friendly tribe through whose territory the roads passed, and paying him to protect the kafilahs as they passed through his territory. Frere, though full of sympathy with his object, writes a word of caution. Comparing Aden to Gibraltar, he says — " February 15, 1865. " We do not need Gibraltar to establish an influence in Spain, and the possession of much interest or respon- sibility, still more the actual possession of territorial sovereignty on the mainland of Spain, would be a serious source of weakness. Now, if we once begin as arbiters, it will be very difficult to avoid having sovereignty, or at least a protectorate quite as onerous, thrust on us at Aden. We ought to be respected and feared at Aden, but if we once quit it to interfere by force of arms, save in the most selfish manner, and for purely selfish purposes — e.g. to secure our supplies of grain, fowls, and forage — we cannot help being drawn on to protest, to arbitrate, and to rule ; a very glorious result, perhaps, but one not at all con- templated by our rulers, and not one which we are likely to be allowed to follow up. To begin, and then to be called back, leaving those who have trusted us in the lurch, is every way evil." But matters grew worse. The Foodthelee tribe plundered vessels belonging to British subjects, and robbed kafilahs bringing supplies into Aden within a mile of the barrier gate. Merewether again applied for leave to raise a cavalry force, and, though supported by the opinion of Sir W. Coghlan, then in England, it was again refused ; but Sir Charles Wood authorized "a raid to punish a thief," and Merewether prepared, not very hopefully, to do the best he could with his infantry. He succeeded beyond his expectation. The tribe was taken by surprise, and suffered so much loss — more than a hundred being 1865-7.] SIR WILLIAM MEREWETHER. 5 1 5 killed — that they were disposed to pay the indemnity demanded, and to give security for better behaviour in future. The good effect produced was instantaneous. Merewether writes — " December 31, 1865. " The people in Aden are delighted at the prospect of future security, which will follow on the punishment of these Foodthelees. One of the Parsee merchants, to show his delight, wished to send a present of soda water and lemonade to the soldiers out here. He despatched it on a couple of camels, without asking for any guard, and it reached our camp safely last night, thirty-five miles from Aden. Formerly nothing could go two miles from the barrier gate without a guard. Give me the hundred horse- men, and the new state of affairs will become vigorous, and be perpetuated without undue interference on our part." But the absence of cavalry marred the complete success of the expedition. The tribe was quite willing to do all that was asked, but the old chief, Ahmed bin Abdulla, who could have been caught if there had been fifty horsemen present, escaped to the hills and would not come in. In three or four months he was found to be plundering again, and a second expedition became necessary. The force consisted only of the 109th Europeans. The native regi- ment, being armed with smooth-bore muskets, Merewether did not venture to bring to the front, though otherwise he would have been glad of them. The old chief still kept out of the way, though he had no longer much power for mischief. A year later, in the spring of 1867, Merewether's request for a small cavalry force was at last granted, just as he was leaving to take up the Commissionership of Sind, to which he had been appointed. In answer to her congratulations, he writes to Lady Frere : — ''June 19, 1867. " The Foodthelees have formally and unconditionally surrendered. On the second friendly visit they received 516 THE LIFE OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. [Ch. XIII. an electric shock all round, and had sparks taken out of their noses to completely ratify their reception into civilized society. This — the surrender, not the shocking — is a very satisfactory conclusion to the little expedition into the Foodthelee country in 1865-66. It is Frontier all over again, and poor Jacob would, I am sure, have approved. When the troop now raising at Jacobabad has arrived, the country will, I hope, be settled for very many years to come. Their lines will be outside the fortifications on British territory, to show the Arabs we don't care a straw for them, and are in earnest when it is said there must be peace in the land." END OF VOL. 1. LONDON : PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. Xorhdon,; John, Murray, Albwuzru Street . FS^-ellerJVR-GS T* u*- PSruvcLgc Lahore ^fc *&j u R <*?. J P IMBIJL Mde nV^s ^ • e # bl^ ! )°, R rb*' dda bombayS) ,>s >n B DNajjp erarsi, "Ode ^Sty % Hyder aJa ad r&f Hyderabad. S e a CALCUTTA^ Hw^ 7 l/ Tropic -*£ W\ i *3i GxttaxA^. &> iR. Godavsry istzia.R. J% > £ JiTahef u I MADRAS B 'ozudich-erry ( French, ) ^ ♦ ^ .Mah&oeL(li \ V ^ A. Y e jst & A f .Andaman Hicobar. ^ 75° Longitude East 80° from G ch 85° London,; JotlTV Murray ,^ilh entnrLe, Str**£>. 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