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 Uttkrs of Jlniiia 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 SIR WILLIAM WILSON HUNTER, K.C.S.I. 
 
 C.I.E. : M.A. (Oxford) : LL.D. (Cambridge) 
 
 EARL CANNING
 
 Xonbon 
 HENRY FROWDE 
 
 Oxford University Press Warehouse 
 Amen Corner, E.C. 
 
 [All rights reserved\
 
 RULERS OF INDIA 
 
 Eati Cannino 
 
 By Sir H. S. CUNNINGHAM, K.C.I.E. 
 
 Tu ne cede jnalis 
 
 AT THE CLARENDON PRESS : 1891
 
 Orforb 
 
 HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 I HAVE to acknowledge my obligations, in the 
 
 *^ preparation of the following sketch, to the late Earl 
 Granville, who was good enough to give me some 
 
 ^\\ notes of his recollections of Lord Canning's early life, 
 and to criticise the biographical portion of the work : 
 to Mr. Lewin Bowring, C.S.I., who kindly placed at 
 my disposal the Diary which he kept while he was 
 Private Secretary to Lord Canning: to General Charles 
 Stuart, who allowed me the use of his Journal kept 
 during his term of office as Military Secretary : and to 
 ^ Lady Lawrence for the perusal of an interesting corre- 
 
 'is^ spondence between Lord Canning and Lord Lawrence. 
 
 V The elaborate history of the Indian Mutiny, begun by 
 Sir John Kaye, and completed by Colonel Malleson, 
 and the latter author's shorter and more recent w^ork 
 on the same subject, are authorities which I have 
 frequently consulted and to which I am largely 
 indebted. 
 
 H. S. C. 
 
 212380
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Chap. I. The Argument 7-19 
 
 II. Biographical 20-47 
 
 III. The India which Lord Canning found . . 48-67 
 
 IV. The Native Army 68-80 
 
 V. Mutiny S1-113 
 
 VI. Conquest 114-143 
 
 VII. Lord Canning's Assailants .... 144-165 
 
 VIII. Pacification 166-185 
 
 IX. Eeconstruction 1S6-197 
 
 X, Finance 198-208 
 
 XI. Last Days 209-215 
 
 Index 217-220 
 
 NOTE 
 
 The orthography of proper names follows the system adopted b_y 
 the Indian Government for the Imperial Gazetteer of India. That 
 system, while adhering to the popular spelling of very well-known 
 places, such as Punjab, Lucknow, &c., employs in all other cases the 
 vowels with the following uniform sounds : — 
 
 a, as in woman : a, in father : i, as in police : i, as in intrigue : 0, as 
 in cold : u, as in bwll : u, as in swre : e, as in grey.
 
 EARL CANNING 
 
 FIRST VICEROY OF BRITISH INDIA 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The Argument 
 
 India has added a thrilling chapter to the English- 
 man's national romance — a chapter which more, 
 perhaps, than any other in our annals, abounds in 
 interest and pathos — in dark, tragic scenes, strange 
 episodes — the success of splendid daring — the supre- 
 macy of the constant mind over adverse fate — the 
 determined mood which gains reinforcement from 
 hope and consolation from despair. It has been the 
 arena in which the qualities which Englishmen most 
 prize in themselves and their fellow-countrymen have 
 been exhibited on a grand scale — the iron will — the 
 unwavering purpose — the practical aptitude for the 
 management of human affairs — long-enduring fortitude 
 — devotion to duty — the generous contagion of self- 
 sacrifice, when courage glows into heroism and the 
 commonplace becomes sublime. 
 
 With no original design which looked beyond a 
 mercantile profit, the warding off" of imminent danger, 
 or the coercion of a troublesome rival, the English 
 found themselves, after a century of unexampled
 
 8 EARL CANNING 
 
 vicissitudes, — the import of which they were unable, 
 at the time, to comprehend, — the paramount power 
 among; the unstable governments and shattered 
 nationalities of Hindustan. 
 
 Destiny had driven them — much against their will — 
 to discard their counting-houses and ledgers for an 
 Imperial task. Dupleix's bold conception of employ- 
 ing one set of natives to subjugate another had been 
 employed to good effect. Again and again Indian 
 troops, drilled and led by Englishmen, had triumphed 
 over an Indian foe. One great State after another had 
 succumbed, and — effete, prostrate, moribund — had been 
 converted into component parts of a living organisa- 
 tion. The robber communities — 'jackals tearing at 
 the carcase of the Mughal Empire ' — had been tamed 
 into order or scared to flight. There had been fierce 
 struggles in which Marathas or Sikhs had tested the 
 prowess of the Western conquerors to the utmost — dark 
 hours in which it had seemed doubtful whether those 
 Western conquerors were destined to hold their own. 
 But their ascendancy was now complete. Dalhousie's 
 masterful will and firm hand had crushed the last 
 serious effort of the fiercest of the races who had 
 ventured to contest it. The Sikhs, after a crushing 
 defeat at Gujarat, had bent in submission to the 
 fated conqueror, and their Afghan allies had fled cower- 
 ing through the Khaibar Pass. From the Himalaya 
 to Cape Comorin no power questioned the supremacy 
 of the English Kaj. 
 
 On such a theatre it was inevitable that the idiosyn-
 
 GROWTH OF BRITISH RULE g 
 
 crasies of individual character should stamp them- 
 selves on particular epochs, and give a special colour 
 to the area of their influence. The progress of the 
 English Empire was, in one sense, continuous ; for 
 it was the result of great causes which transcended 
 alike human insight and human will. But its rate 
 varied with the convictions and temperament of the 
 ruler, who, for the time being, embodied the policy 
 of England in the East. 
 
 One powerful character after another swayed the 
 growth of Empire this way or that, gave it a 
 momentary check or urged it with new-born impetus 
 on its onward course. One school of rulers empha- 
 sised a policy of forbearance, cautious abstention, 
 sympathy with the venerable fatuity of Eastern 
 beliefs and the picturesque ineptitude of Eastern 
 institutions. Another favoured a forward policy, and 
 made no secret of the creed that the regeneration of 
 India was to be found in unfaltering application of 
 Western methods and the prompt and vigorous in- 
 fusion of Western ideas. 
 
 At the close of the eighteenth century the Marquess 
 of Wellesley exhibited the programme of conquest and 
 supremacy in its most imposing light, and with bold 
 hand traced the lineaments of a British Raj which 
 should be paramount in India. Hastings gave daring 
 realisation to Wellesley's dreams, crushed the Pindaris, 
 tamed the great Maratha Confederacy, and proclaimed 
 England as an Eastern Power by sending an Indian 
 army to co-operate in Egypt against an European foe.
 
 lo EARL CANNING 
 
 In Lord Dalhousie the policy of progress found its 
 most impressive exponent. His powerful intellect saw 
 a new India, fashioned to the last model of modern 
 improvement. He carved it and its institutions 
 unflinchingly to the desired pattern. He pulled down, 
 he built up, he changed the squares of obsolete 
 tradition for the rounds of civilised enlightenment. 
 Nothing was proof against the indefatigable energy 
 of this determined reformer. To trample down open 
 hostility with the red heel of war — to crush factious 
 opposition — to carry beneficent civilisation to scenes of 
 anarchy, oppression, and suffering — to proclaim order, 
 and order's long train of blessings to communities 
 shattered by war, devastated by rapine or convulsed 
 by internecine strife — to give full swing to trade, 
 locomotion, and education, and set human intelligence 
 free for triumphs redounding in advantages to hu- 
 manity — to develop new industries, discover new 
 resources, — to lop away with firm, unsparing hand 
 such parts of the body politic as were incompatible 
 with a regime of improvement, or refused to lend 
 themselves to its advance — such was Lord Dalhousie's 
 Tole, and he played it in a fashion which filled onlookers 
 with the awe due to superhuman efficiency, and his 
 sympathising and applauding countrymen with delight. 
 Eastward and westward the tide of conquest 
 flowed. Year by year the red line which marked the 
 confines of British rule embraced a wider area and 
 newly-acquired subjects. The conquests of the sword 
 were supplemented by a less hazardous but not less
 
 DALHOUSIE'S POLICY ii 
 
 effectual method of acquisition — the rule definitely 
 enunciated and vigorously enforced, that, on failure 
 of natural heirs, the sovereignty of subordinate States 
 should not descend to an adopted son, but lapse to 
 the paramount authority. By virtue of this policy, 
 various important Principalities passed from tradi- 
 tional and hereditary rulers to become mere items in 
 an ever-increasing Imperial total. The closing hour 
 of Dalhousie's rule had been marked by an annexation 
 which, alike from the prestige of the Sovereign dis- 
 possessed, the richness of the annexed territory, and 
 the historical interest attaching to it, had placed the 
 policy of annexation in a striking light, and had 
 obliged every Native Prince to recognise the fact that 
 it was a doom that, sooner or later, was likely to over- 
 take the most dignified and loyal of Native States. 
 Such a conviction could scarcely fail to produce a 
 general sense of uneasiness, and to weigh with the 
 leaders of Indian society, when confronted with the 
 embarrassing alternative of standing by the Govern- 
 ment or of aiding the cause of rebellion. 
 
 In the zest of triumphant progress, Dalhousie ignored 
 — perhaps he overlooked — certain important consider- 
 ations — one, — that, however unquestionable may be 
 the abstract advantages of a reform, change in itself 
 is a painful process to the majority of mankind, and 
 no feeling more distasteful than that of a world that is 
 tumbling about one's ears: — another, — that to many 
 individuals and even classes good government, in the 
 English sense of the word, is a very doubtful blessing —
 
 12 EARL CANNING 
 
 is not, on the whole, a desideratum, and is likely, 
 when opportunity offers, to be resisted : a third — 
 that ' so many overthrown estates, so many votes for 
 troubles ' ; a fourth, — that the beneficent despot, who 
 assumes the prerogative of deity in exalting the meek 
 and sending the rich empty away, brings upon himself 
 the inconvenient consequence of powerful enemies, and 
 feeble, half-hearted and unsympathising friends, and 
 may not improbably be called to defend his reforms 
 against the combined assault of both classes. He will 
 learn the full hatred of men to those who would fain 
 do them good against their will, in ways they do not 
 understand and by changes in which they disbelieve. 
 
 Such a ruler, it is safe to predict, will have some 
 rough times to encounter. He will, not improbably, 
 find his work of benevolent despotism arrested by 
 unexpected outbreaks, and will be obliged to pause 
 in the congenial task of improvement to resist 
 the frantic efforts of communities actuated by un- 
 foreseen and incalculable impulses, or of individuals 
 who see in a general convulsion of society the only 
 chance of personal rehabilitation. He is sailing in 
 unexplored seas, of whose shoals and rocks, currents 
 and tides, treacherous calms and sudden tempests the 
 charts of statesmanship can give no hint. He may 
 be a courageous, skilful and fortunate navigator ; he 
 may sail boldly and well : but the probability of dis- 
 aster is never far removed, and the disaster may leave 
 the fair vessel of his hopes little better than a wreck. 
 
 One of these tremendous episodes broke, while yet
 
 THE MUTINY 1 3 
 
 he was new to the task of Empire, upon Lord Dal- 
 housie^s successor. There are those who regard Lord 
 Canning as having merely reaped in danger and gloom 
 the harvest which Dalhousie had sown in hope, con- 
 fidence and joy, and as having confronted the dire 
 reaction which awaits premature projects of reform. 
 
 Other, and perhaps more trustworthy, guides hold 
 that such a view is scarcely justified by the facts of the 
 case. Those who saw most of the Mutiny, who studied 
 it with profoundest attention and with the best oppor- 
 tunities for its right understanding, considered that it 
 took its rise in a military panic, was a military out- 
 break, and was in no material respect dependent on 
 popular support or popular grievances. 
 
 Whatever its origin, an unexampled and appalling 
 crisis had to be met. Lord Canning met it in a 
 manner of which every Englishman may be proud — 
 with firmness, confidence, magnanimity, with calm 
 inflexible justice. On a stage, crowded with heroic 
 personages, he stood — an impressive central figure — 
 too unmoved and too undemonstrative, too completely 
 master of himself to suit the excited tempers and un- 
 balanced judgments of an epoch rife with unprecedented 
 catastrophe ; but rising above the onset of ephemeral 
 hostility with a dignity, which, as the scene recedes 
 and we are able more justly to appreciate its pro- 
 portions, places him high on the Hst of those great 
 ofiicers of State, whose services to their country entitle 
 them to the esteem and gratitude of every loyal 
 Englishman.
 
 14 EARL CANNING 
 
 The crisis passed. As the din of battle died away it 
 became apparent that a great work of pacification and 
 reconstruction bad to be accomplished. The fight was 
 over, but, none the less, peace, in the sense of the civic 
 good-will, which makes society possible — the friendly 
 order that holds communities together — had to be 
 restored. European and native stood glaring at 
 each other — their swords still stained with kinsman's 
 blood. In some parts of the Empire the entire fabric 
 of British administration had temporarily disappeared. 
 In many, it had been grievously dislocated. The task 
 of governing an alien race — always difiicult — had 
 become harder than ever. There were dreadful, mad- 
 dening recollections which had to be obscured ; fierce 
 animosities to be assuaged, a fierce spiiit of revenge to 
 be exorcised. The English were in no placable mood. 
 They had been stirred by an agony which had gone 
 to their very heart's core. They had suffered long 
 and acutely, again and again, with little to sup- 
 port them but a stern purpose of vengeance or the 
 desperate resolve to sell their lives as dearly as 
 possible. They had fought against odds, which seemed 
 to render destruction inevitable. There had been the 
 supreme efforts of daring, of endurance — long, stag- 
 gering marches under the cruel Indian sun — desperate 
 encounters — the hair-breadth escapes of some, the 
 tragic end of others, the suffering of all. It was 
 difficult for men, with such experiences fresh in their 
 minds, to pass to the tame legality of peaceful exist- 
 ence and to regard their recent antagonists with
 
 EFFECTS OF THE MUTINY 15 
 
 the amity due to a fellow-citizen. Order was indeed 
 restored, but the body politic still quivered with 
 its recent convulsion. Every part of the great ad- 
 ministrative machine required change, renovation, 
 adaptation to new times, new wants. The Army, the 
 Courts, the Finances, the very structure of the govern- 
 ment had to be recast. The time had arrived for 
 discarding some dignified simulacra, whose life and 
 use had long departed — some fictions which had long 
 ceased to serve a useful end. It was no easy task 
 which confronted Lord Canning, and he had to per- 
 form it, throughout, amid a tempest of animadversion. 
 From every quarter came the fierce blasts of disap- 
 proval, dissatisfaction, dislike. The tendency to hasty 
 criticism of remote matters — about which it is easy 
 for those who know little to feel strongly — become^ 
 uncontrollable, when national sentiment is profoundly 
 stii'red. It was uncontrollable in Lord Canning's 
 time, in high quarters and low. In Calcutta pubHc 
 opinion ran high. In England^ in Parliament and 
 in society, its tone was menacing. Lord EUenborough's 
 ungovernable mood found vent in an onslaught so 
 unmeasured, unreasonable, unjust, that its very ex- 
 travagance operated to defeat its end: but such on- 
 slaughts try the nerve of the strongest. Lord Canning 
 stood unmoved and immovable — just, tenacious of 
 purpose, conscious of its rectitude — not to be driven 
 from it by the vituperation of a minister or the 
 murmurs of an irritated community. It is possible 
 that a man of a more efiusive, less self-contained
 
 l6 EARL CANNING 
 
 temperament might have been more fortunate in 
 carrying the sympathies of his countrymen fully 
 with him, and concentrating upon himself the en- 
 thusiastic loyalty which Englishmen lavish on a 
 ruler in whom they feel confidence. But it is by no 
 means certain that such a statesman would have met, 
 as completely as did Lord Canning, the general require- 
 ments of the situation. He had to lay down the lines for 
 the future, not only of the English sojourners in India, 
 but for two hundred millions of native inhabitants ; 
 and his wisdom during the struggle and after it, — his 
 calm assurance in the ultimate triumph of his country, 
 his impartial mood, his unwavering resolution to be 
 just, his hatred of violence and excess secui'ed the 
 result that the disaster left behind it so little that an 
 Englishman need regret, or a native resent — that the 
 breach between the conflicting nationalities, though 
 deep and serious, was not irremediable — that extra- 
 vagance and ferocity in the stern work of retribution 
 were the exception and not the rule — that^ as the 
 flood of anarchy subsided, it left a soil rich with the 
 materials of orderly progress and friendly co-opera- 
 tion, and that the generation, which followed the 
 Mutiny, has witnessed European and native labouring, 
 hand in hand, at the task of national development. 
 
 How, in the face of much to discourage, disturb and 
 disappoint, this work was accomplished, it is the 
 object of the following pages to narrate. 
 
 It is their object, too, to throw light on the 
 character of the task which the English nation has
 
 LESSONS OF THE MUTINY 17 
 
 undertaken in the government of India, its problems, 
 its difficulties, its frightful risks. They will show the 
 liability of gi-eat aggregates of ignorant folk to ground- 
 less panic, the recklessness which such panics induce, 
 their unexpected and inexplicable effect on the conduct 
 of individuals or communities which suddenly become 
 proof alike against the demonstrations of logic, the 
 teaching of experience, even the strong sway of life- 
 long usage. They will show how small is the insight 
 into men's temper and conduct which the best skill 
 and experience can achieve in the case of races whose 
 hereditary temperaments and beliefs differ essentially 
 from our own, and who unconsciously shroud their 
 real feelings in impenetrable reserve. Now that a 
 generation has passed away and the subsiding dust of 
 contemporary controversy has given place to a clearer 
 atmosphere, some principles of statesmanship stand 
 out distinctly as established by the events of the 
 Mutiny. It was a tremendous lesson. It strained 
 our resources at home ; it weakened our position in 
 Europe ; it imperilled the very fabric of our Indian 
 rule. It was written in blood, in tears, in a vast 
 aggregate of human sorrow and suffering. Its stern 
 truths were branded, as it were, with a hot iron 
 upon the national conscience. It is well that the 
 English nation — which, amid the excitements of 
 popular government, is apt to be indifferent to remote 
 dangers, and the causes which produce them — should 
 lay those truths to heart. 
 
 The history of the government of dependencies, a 
 B
 
 1 8 EARL CANNING 
 
 cynic has observed, is mostly the history of failures. 
 It is easy in such a case to fail. The problems in- 
 volved in the task of ruling remote and alien popula- 
 tions are complicated, abstruse, subtle, and likely to 
 betray those who solve them carelessly into deplorable 
 mistakes. Such mistakes lie thick in the annals of 
 the Mutiny. Such a mistake, for instance, it was for 
 the rulers of a country such as England — with vast 
 interests to protect in every quarter of the globe, 
 and with two wars on hand — to have so far yielded to 
 the Parliamentary pressure for economy as to cut 
 down its army to a level below the ordinary peace 
 estimates, so that the effort necessary to preserve 
 India left England practically defenceless. Such a 
 mistake, again, was it for the Rulers of India to 
 allow the proportion of English to native troops to 
 sink far below the level which every good authority 
 pronounced to be compatible with safety, and to 
 pigeon-hole in some comfortable bureau alike Lord 
 Dalhousie's demonstrations of danger and his projects 
 for removing it. As it was, the utter defencelessness 
 of the English position in many parts of India — the 
 light-heartedness with which large arsenals, command- 
 ing forts, dangerous centres of native disaffection, im- 
 portant European communities, wide stretches of 
 territory had been left without an English soldier, 
 seemed, when once the outbreak had occurred, like 
 the reckless audacity of a race doomed to self- 
 destruction. 
 
 Such a mistake, again, was the hasty judgment
 
 ENGLISH MISTAKES 19 
 
 pronounced by English statesmen on Lord Canning's 
 action, and allowed by its publication, at a most critical 
 moment, in India to aggravate the intensity of the 
 crisis. Good sense and right feeling in the end pre- 
 vailed, but not till grave risk had been incurred, and 
 the difficulty of pacification had been seriously en- 
 hanced. It seems hardly credible to us who read of 
 it in cold blood, that responsible politicians should 
 have acted and spoken as they spoke and acted then, 
 and that the head of an English Ministry should, in 
 ignorance of the real facts, have condemned his Sove- 
 reign's representative in the presence of a mutinous 
 army and a half-suppressed insurrection. But the dan- 
 gers of Parliamentary government of dependencies are 
 great, and, in the hot air of a party fight, or the pres- 
 sure of a party emergency, the interests of England 
 in India, and the claims of those who represent them, 
 are apt to become obscured. Such an episode is a 
 warning how easily the forms of popular Government 
 may lend themselves to rash judgment, violent tone, 
 unjust and ill-considered action, and how seriously 
 the aberrations of a popular assembly may embarrass 
 the fulfilment of an imperial task. 
 
 B 2
 
 CHAPTER II 
 Biographical 
 
 In the fourteenth century Lord Canning's ancestors 
 were great people in Bristol. William Canynges, a 
 wealthy cloth-worker and ship-owner, was Bailiff of 
 that city in 1361, was six times its Mayor, and its 
 representative in three successive Parliaments. His 
 son was also Mayor. Of his grandsons, one, Thomas, 
 became Lord Mayor of London, and took an active 
 part in the suppression of the tumults headed by 
 Jack Cade. Another grandson, William, maintained 
 the family prestige by being four times Mayor of 
 Bristol. In this capacity he had the honour of enter- 
 taining, successively, Margaret of Anjou and Edward 
 the Fourth, and established a more lasting claim to 
 the gratitude of posterity by restoring the beautiful 
 church of St. Mary, Redcliffe, which had been damaged 
 by a thunderstorm. His monument is still to be seen 
 there, and 'Mr. Canynges cofre/ long preserved in 
 the Muniment Room of the church, acquired unex- 
 pected celebrity by supplying the material with which 
 Chatterton constructed the most curious literary fraud 
 of modern times, the Rowley forgeries. 
 
 His nephew, Thomas Canning, by his marriage with 
 Agnes Salmon, heiress of Foxcote in Warwickshire,
 
 THE CANNING PEDIGREE 21 
 
 acquired a position in that county, and his lineal 
 descendants continued to reside there till, in the 
 course of the present century, the estate passed, in 
 default of heirs male, to another family. 
 
 At the beginning of the seventeenth century (1618), 
 George, the youngest son of one of these Foxcote 
 Cannings, received a grant of the Manor of Garvagh, 
 in Londonderry, from James I. A branch of the 
 Canning family was thus established in Ireland, and 
 had some rude experience of the popular dislike of 
 the intrusive Saxon. William, the son of the original 
 grantee, was killed by the Papists in O'Neill's re- 
 bellion. His son, George, was attainted in King James 
 the Second's Parliament at Dublin. Despite these 
 vicissitudes, the family stuck sturdily to their estate, 
 and strengthened their position by various good 
 matrimonial connections. Stratford Canning, fourth 
 in descent from the original grantee, was the father 
 of three sons, George, Paul, and Stratford. He was 
 an austere and irascible parent, whose creaking shoes 
 sounded a note of terror, in after years, in his 
 children's recollection. Both George and Stratford 
 aroused his wrath by lovers' entanglements, and were 
 turned loose upon the world. Both died early, but 
 both left sons who were to fill a large space in con- 
 temporary history. Stratford defied his father's ire, 
 married the lady of his choice, settled as a banker 
 in London, and at his death left behind him a six 
 months' infant, who, half a century later, made the 
 name of Stratford de RedclifFe a potent factor in
 
 22 EARL CANNING 
 
 Eastern diplomacy. George was admitted to the 
 English Bar, lived in a cultured coterie, achieved some 
 success in the lighter branches of literature, and 
 enhanced his personal embarrassments and his father's 
 resentment by marrying a beautiful but portionless 
 young Irishwoman. In the midst of family troubles 
 and bootless prospects of rehabilitation, he became the 
 father of a son who was destined to become famous in 
 the annals of English statesmanship. Little, indeed, 
 did the Fates seem then to promise that this child 
 of sorrow should be Prime Minister of England, and 
 the embodiment of all that was most brilliant in the 
 politics of his day. 
 
 The genius of George Canning soon soared above 
 family misfortunes. His uncle. Stratford, came to 
 his aid. Eton and Christ Church smiled upon the 
 accomplished scholar ; London society welcomed a 
 brilliant acquisition: the discrimination of Pitt 
 secured a valuable recruit. Good Tories were re- 
 joiced to have their views enforced by the wit which 
 flashed in the best of political squibs. He had now 
 climbed the dizzy heights of office, and held the 
 portfolio of Foreign Affairs. 
 
 The successful statesman's fortunes were crowned 
 in 1800 by his marriage with Joan, daughter, and 
 co-heiress with the Duchess of Portland, of General 
 Scott, a gentleman whose successes at the whist- 
 table had made his daughters wealthy women. In 
 1812 George Canning was living in the enjoyment of 
 great domestic happiness at Gloucester Lodge, an
 
 SCHOOL DAYS 2$ 
 
 Italian villa which lay between Kensington and 
 Brompton, and which derived its name from its first 
 owner — the Duchess of Gloucester. From the Duchess 
 it passed to her daughter, the Princess Sophia, and 
 from her to Mr. Canning. 
 
 Here, on the 14th of December, 181 2, George 
 Canning's third son — the subject of the present 
 biography — was boi'n. He was named Charles John. 
 At this time his two elder brothers, George Charles 
 and William Pitt, were alive. A daughter, who became 
 Marchioness of Clanricarde, was born in 1804. When 
 Charles Canning was ten years old, and a student 
 at Mr. Carmalt s, a famous private school in those 
 days, at Putney, an event occurred which was very 
 nearly altering the whole current of his father's life. 
 In 1822, Mr. Canning, — whose refusal to prosecute 
 the Queen had mortally offended his royal master, 
 and, for the time, ruined his Parliamentary prospects, 
 accepted the post of Governor- General of India, about 
 to become vacant on Lord Hastings' retirement. His 
 experience at the Board of Control, where it had been 
 his duty to watch, sometimes to curb, and finally to 
 sanction Lord Hastings' daring programme, may have 
 reconciled him to the change. It was not fated, 
 however, that Canning should quit the scene of his 
 many triumphs. In the following autumn, while he 
 was paying a farewell visit to his constituents at 
 Liverpool^, Lord Castlereagh's tragic end brought 
 
 ' Canning, when at Liverpool, was a frequent guest of Mr. Grlad- 
 stone of Seaforth House. It stood on a flat stretch of country,
 
 24 EARL CANNING 
 
 about a new series of political combinations, and 
 obliged the King to accept Canning as leader of the 
 House of Commons. His appointment as Foreign 
 Secretary put an end to all thoughts of India. 
 Thirty -three years later his son had the same offer, 
 and accepted it. 
 
 In 1824, Charles Canning was sent to Eton, where 
 his father's brilliant reputation as statesman, man of 
 letters and wit, ensured him a cordial reception. 
 Dr. Goodall, the Provost, ordained that the Minister's 
 son should undergo his entrance examination, not, as 
 was usual, at his tutors, but in his father's house, — 
 a questionable privilege, so far as young Canning's 
 feelings were concerned, for it involved the con- 
 sequence that the dreaded ordeal should be passed 
 in his father's presence. Mr. Chapman, afterwards 
 Bishop of Colombo, the official on whom the duty 
 devolved, has recorded the anxiety with which the 
 father watched the boy's progress through his ex- 
 amination. The passage selected was the description, 
 in the Aeneid, of the storm which shattered the fleet of 
 Aeneas, and the famous aposiopesis in which Neptune 
 turns away from punishing the outbreak of the rebel 
 winds to the gentler task of calming the waves and 
 restoring peace to the ocean — 
 
 ' Quos ego — sed praestat niotos componere fluctus.' 
 
 The trial — a severe one for youthful nerves — was 
 
 north of the town, overlooking the sea. Here he would sit, 
 enjoying the prospect, while a son of the house, William Ewart 
 Gladstone, was playing on the strand below. — Bell, 321.
 
 AT ETON !i5 
 
 safely passed ; the anxious father pronounced approval 
 with a ' not so bad,' and the young aspirant was 
 pronounced to be fit for the Fourth Fornix where, 
 accordingly, he took his place, 4th September, 1824. 
 The superstitious belief that the verses of Virgil, 
 taken by chance, are fraught with prophetic meaning 
 has expired: but a believer in the efficacy of the 
 Sortes Virgilianae might have been confirmed in his 
 creed by the unsuspected appositeness of the verses 
 which chanced to be chosen for the young Etonian's 
 preliminary task. No line that ever Virgil wrote 
 could more aptly embody the main characteristic of 
 Canning's future career — the merging of the duty 
 of punishment in the more congenial process of 
 pacification. 
 
 Earl Granville, who had begun a boy's friendship 
 with ' Caro ' Canning among the strawberry-beds at 
 Gloucester House, and who was a year or two his 
 junior at Eton, has recorded a grateful remembrance 
 of the protection which Charles Canning extended to 
 him, as a new boy, in the rude experiences of school 
 life, and of his welcome mediation as a pacificator at 
 a fight in the playing fields, which neither combatant 
 was lotli to bring to an honourable close. ' His 
 kindness to me,' writes Lord Granville, ' was con- 
 tinuous. His reputation at Eton was high as to 
 ability: the respect and attachment felt for him by 
 his contemporaries the same as has been the case 
 through all his life.' 
 
 Charles Canning's Eton career, though marked by
 
 26 EARL CANNING 
 
 no extraordinary achievements, and not wholly un- 
 checkered by the Olympian wrath of Dr. Keate, was 
 not without distinction. There is evidence of his 
 having attained more than average proficiency in the 
 all-important art of Latin versification. 
 
 We have some contemporaneous sketches of the 
 Eton of that day in Mr. Milne Gaskell's letters to his 
 father, to his friend Arthur Hallam, and others, and 
 in one or two from Canning himself. Sir Francis 
 Doyle, who was at Eton from 1822 to 1827, mentions 
 a debating club, of wdiich Arthur Hallam, Gladstone, 
 Selwyn, Lord Arthur Harvey, Lord Elgin, Lord 
 Canning, and Lord Blachford, were the principal 
 members. ' The perfect intellectual freedom,' he 
 writes, ' bestowed on us by the ease and leisure 
 of our idle school, had its good as well as its bad 
 side.'' It had, certainly, some rough aspects to the 
 new-comer, not least the portentous figure of the 
 Head Master, shaking his red and shaggy eyebrows, so 
 prominent that Kinglake describes him as habitually 
 employing them instead of arms and hands to point 
 out any object to which he wished to direct attention. 
 Before this awful being, one May morning, little 
 Gaskell was summoned. ''EKTropevo/^ei^ou' is the fatal 
 word that speaks his doom — a doom that sometimes, 
 in this epoch of flagellation, eighty victims under- 
 went in a single morning. Gaskell waits trembling 
 in the ante-room the arrival of the judge and exe- 
 cutioner. ' He first flogged one of the collegers and 
 then called me. I begged him to give me my " first
 
 ETON FAGGING 37 
 
 fault." He answered that I had committed an error 
 very early. I could scarcely refrain from tears, but 
 did, and in his usual harsh manner he said, " Go 
 along, sir, go along." ' 
 
 The epoch of fagging was at its height. One 
 little despot has three attendants ; one gets the 
 milk, another the kettle, another the rolls and but- 
 ter. Sometimes Gaskell has to run to ' Cripps for 
 ham, bacon, bread, chocolate, &c. ; then to receive 
 several blows because I was not quick enough — then 
 to boil eggs for Taunton, or employed in the servile 
 offices of brushing Halifax's clothes and tying his 
 shoes.' 'Rolles got spurs, and rode some of us over 
 a leap, positively impossible to be leapt over with a 
 person on one's back, and every time (which is every 
 time) we cannot accomplish it, he spurs us violently ; 
 and my thigh is quite sore with the inroads made 
 by this dreadful spur. My Poetae Graeci is de- 
 stroyed, my new coat completely ruined.' In 1826 
 Gaskell writes of more agreeable themes. ' Now 
 comes the most gratifying, transporting, edifying, 
 delightful, charming piece of information. I will 
 begin by telling you that Canning is very consider- 
 ably below me in the school. It is true that I 
 noticed him twice, I mean, invited him to breakfast. 
 It is true that I have done him two copies of verses. 
 From what I have seen of him I think him rather 
 disposed to be idle, but clever, quick, spirited, affec- 
 tionate. Canning was very much taken with these 
 little civil offices, but, as Horace says, " Di exagitent
 
 28 EARL CANNING 
 
 me," if I expected any return.' Canning, however, 
 made an unexpectedly generous return for his patron's 
 good services, for, before long, there comes a hospitable 
 letter from Mrs, Canning, inviting ' Caro ' and his 
 friends to a party at Salt Hill. Thereupon followed 
 many pleasant expeditions to the great statesman's 
 house, delightful and impressive to the boyish imagi- 
 nation, which continue till Gaskell sees his friend's 
 father at Chiswick, lying on the couch from which 
 he was never to rise. There is one pretty scene — 
 George Canning walking back with the boys from 
 Salt Hill to Eton, and, near the end of the long field, 
 looking over Caro's holiday verses, the subject being 
 Panthea and Abratates. An epithet is wanted for 
 ' ala ' — ' celeri ' is suggested and rejected ; then some- 
 one suggests ' fausta.' Yes, ' fausta ' will do — ' fausta 
 Victoria protegit ala.' So the phantom figures — father 
 and son and friend — pass away into the Olympian 
 shades. 
 
 ' Canning looked well at Surly,' so runs another 
 letter ; ' he rode there, and leapt all the way, on 
 a large black horse. He is twelve years old. I got 
 nothing but some lobster and half a bottle of cider.' 
 On another occasion we find the young debaters 
 busied with a motion for discontinuing the Morning 
 Chronicle, on the ground of its constant pugilistic 
 reports, and the motion lost by Gladstone's casting- 
 vote. In December, 1827, we have Charles Canning 
 writing to his friend Gaskell a pleasant school-boy 
 letter : —
 
 AN ETON CLUB 29 
 
 ' Moss will be captain of the boats next year, and 
 I shall pull in the ten-oar. I mess with Hodgson 
 and Moss now: perhaps Cowper will mess with us 
 next half ; those three will be my greatest and only 
 " cons " except old Handley. I gave leaving books to 
 Gladstone, Hamilton, Chisholm Ma., Doyle, Lord Bruce, 
 and Sutton Ma. Handley, Gladstone, Mr. Bruce, Lord 
 Bruce, Hodgson, and myself set up a Salt Hill Club 
 at the end of this half. We met every whole holiday, 
 or half, as was convenient, after 12, and went up to 
 Salt Hill to bully the fat waiter, eat toasted cheese, 
 and drink egg-wine. In our meetings, as well as at 
 almost every time, Gladstone went by the name of 
 Mr. Tipple ; Lord Bruce, Dr. Roberts ; Handley, 
 Miss Judy Myers ; Mr. Bruce, Mr. Cranmer ; Canning 
 Mr. Coxhead. Hamilton, who was Mr. Demster, 
 would have been in the club, but was prevented by 
 his having to show up a punishment to Keate every 
 day at one, which cut up his "after 12" completely. 
 The punishment was inflicted for his having taken 
 a conspicuous part in all the late riots.' 
 
 Charles Canning did not remain at Eton for the 
 most interesting period of a public school-boy's career, 
 the last ; for, having reached the upper division of the 
 Fifth Form, he became the pupil of the Rev. Thomas 
 Shore, a Bedfordshire clergyman, a nephew of the 
 Governor-General of Lidia who succeeded Cornwallis, 
 and is known to fame as Lord Teignmouth. This 
 gentleman, an accomplished scholar, received a few 
 pupils of distinction, and equipped them — more
 
 30 EARL CANNING 
 
 assiduously, perhaps, than the genial potentates of 
 Eton — for the arena of academic life. One of 
 Mr. Shore's daughters remembers still the impression 
 created by Canning's air of thoughtful intelligence — 
 his modest tones — his girl-like blushes — his kindness 
 to the little daughters of the house. Here Charles 
 Canning was joined by the grandson of the first Lord 
 Harris, with whom he formed a life-long friendship, 
 by Lord Granville, and Mr. Charles Howard. Here 
 'ingenuous arts' blossomed, as they ought;, into gracious 
 behaviour. ' Lord Granville,' says the chronicler, 
 ' made himself as charming to us little o^irls as ever he 
 did since, I suppose, to the finest ladies or to a public 
 audience.' From this agreeable tutelage Canning 
 passed in December, 1828, to Oxford, and was entered 
 as a student of Christ Church, where his father had 
 resided forty years before. Two of his Oxford con- 
 temporaries and associates, Dalhousie and Elgin, were 
 destined, as himself, to occupy the post of Governor- 
 General of India. ' I was about a year with him at 
 Christ Church,' writes Lord Granville, ' where he was 
 one of a brilliant set. Gladstone, Sidney Herbert, 
 Lord Lincoln, James Hope, the present Dean of 
 Christ Church, Lord Selborne, Lord Cardwell, and 
 Lord Malmesbury, had just taken their degrees : but 
 Lord Elgin, Lord Dalhousie, Fred. Bruce, Stephen 
 Denison, were still there.' Among Canning's other 
 associates were Mr. (Sir) Robert Phillimore and Lord 
 De Tabley, whose friendship lasted to the grave. 
 
 In this congenial society Lord Canning led a life of
 
 AN OXFORD PRIZE POEM 3 1 
 
 cultured enjoyment — somewhat cold in manner to 
 the outer world, but endeared to the inner circle of 
 his associates by geniality, taste and humour. He 
 devoted himself to the studies of the place, and in 
 1831 won the College prize for a Latin poem on 
 ' Caractacus,' which he recited, standing beneath his 
 fathers portrait) in the great Hall of Christ Church. 
 
 ' It was a remarkable scene,' writes Sir R. Phillimore. 
 ' In that magnificent banquetting-room are hung por- 
 traits of students who have reflected honour upon the 
 House, which reared them, by the distinctions which 
 they have won in after life. Underneath the portrait 
 of George Canning — the recollection of whose brilliant 
 career and untimely end was still fresh in the memory 
 of men — stood the son, still in the prime of youth, 
 recalling in his eminently handsome countenance the 
 noble features of the portrait, while repeating the 
 prize poem which would have gladdened his father's 
 heart'.' 
 
 ' Canning,' writes Earl Granville, 'was like HofFner's 
 picture of his father as a young man — a great gentle- 
 man in character and demeanour. He was handsome, 
 with singularly fine eyes. He was fond of sport — 
 hunting, shooting, and especially fishing. . . . He had 
 extraordinary powers of continuous work for months 
 and years, when the occasion arose, together with 
 a faculty for being perfectly idle for long periods.' 
 
 In 1827 Mr. Canning had died. His widow was 
 
 ' Mr. George Canning's ' Iter ad Meccam ' was regarded by con- 
 temporaries as the best prize poem ever written.
 
 32 EARL CANNING 
 
 created a Viscountess, with reversion to George 
 Canning's sons. The eldest son, George Charles, 
 had died in 1820. In September, 1828, the death 
 of the second son, William Pitt, rendered Charles 
 Canning heir to a Peerage, and placed him in a 
 position sufficiently independent to justify his re- 
 solution to adopt a political career. In 1833 he 
 took his degree, obtaining the honours of a first 
 class in classics and a second in mathematics. 
 
 In September, 1833, he married the Hon. Charlotte 
 Stuart, eldest daughter of Lord Stuart De Rothesay, 
 a lady whose many graces and endowments of person 
 and character bound all hearts to her alike in England 
 and India, and whose death invested the closing hours 
 of her husband's career with a pathetic interest. 
 
 The pleasures of married life did not still the 
 promptings of ambition. Charles Canning's thoughts 
 were bent on Parliament. In August, 1836, he was 
 returned as member for Warwick. His experience 
 of the House of Commons, however, was brief: for 
 Parliament was prorogued within the month, and on 
 the 15th March, 1837, Viscountess Canning died. 
 In the following month Lord Canning took his seat 
 in the House of Lords. 
 
 On Lord Melbourne's resignation in August, 1841, 
 and the formation of Sir Robert Peel's Ministry, Lord 
 Aberdeen received the portfolio of Foreign Afiairs, 
 and was glad to nominate Lord Canning to the 
 Under-Secretaryship in a department in which his 
 father had acquired so much distinction. Lord
 
 EARLY POLITICS '>,'>, 
 
 Canning accepted the offer, nor was he to be tempted 
 from it by an invitation which he received in the 
 following year from Lord Ellenborough — on his 
 appointment to succeed Lord Auckland as Governor- 
 General of India — to accompany him as Private 
 Secretary. The two men were destined, in after years, 
 to come into violent collision on an Lidian topic. 
 
 Canning worked hard at his duties, but the presence 
 of his chief in the Upper House relieved him of the 
 necessity — indeed deprived him of the opportunity — of 
 Parliamentary explanation. But his character was felt. 
 ' Lord Aberdeen,' says Earl Granville, ' had the most 
 implicit confidence in him, and allowed him to do 
 much of the Secretary of State's work. He was 
 greatly looked up to in the office.' 
 
 Early in 1 846 Sir Robert Peel, now in the troubled 
 waters of the Corn Law Repeal, took the field again 
 with a reconstituted Ministry, Mr. Gladstone at the 
 Colonial Office, Lord Lincoln in Ireland, Lord Canning 
 at the Woods and Forests. Sir Robert Peel's resig- 
 nation in June of that year brought Lord John Russell 
 to the Treasury and placed Lord Canning in opposition. 
 He frequently, however, found himself in sympathy 
 with the liberal measures of Lord John Russell's 
 Cabinet, and in May, 1848, was the first to support 
 Lord Lansdowne's motion in support of the removal 
 of Jewish Disabilities, separating himself from almost 
 the entire body of his former associates, and replying 
 to Lord Ellenborough, who had moved an amendment 
 on the second reading of the Bill. 
 
 c
 
 34 EARL CANNING 
 
 On Lord John Russell's resignation in February, 
 1851, Lord Canning was invited by Lord Derby to 
 fill a seat in his Cabinet as Foreign Secretary, an 
 offer which, greatly as it was to his taste, he did not 
 feel himself sufficiently in accordance with the Con- 
 servative Leader to accept. In Lord Aberdeen's 
 Coalition Ministry of 1852, Lord John Russell became 
 Foreign Secretary, and Lord Canning, not without 
 some natural feelings of disappointment, accepted the 
 unambitious post of Postmaster-General. Here he 
 did good work, instituting numerous reforms and 
 fighting a courageous battle against vested interests 
 which stood in the way of departmental efficiency. 
 Sir Rowland Hill described the years during which he 
 served under Lord Canning at the Post Office as ' the 
 most satisfactory period of his whole official career, 
 that in which the course of improvement was steadiest, 
 most rapid, and least chequered.' 
 
 In January, 1855, Lord Aberdeen was defeated on 
 Mr. Roebuck's hostile motion for an inquiry into the 
 conduct of the war, and resigned. Lord Canning was 
 invited by Lord Palmerston to remain in office as 
 Postmaster- General, with the addition of a seat in the 
 Cabinet, an offer which he accepted. 
 
 By this time Lord Dalhousie's long and brilliant 
 term of office as Governor-General of India was 
 drawing to a close, and the question of his successor 
 was occupying the thoughts of Ministers. The 
 choice fell on Lord Canning. The son was free 
 to accept the splendid offer from which his father
 
 APPOINTED GOVERNOR-GENERAL -3,^ 
 
 had, thirty-three years before, been compelled to 
 turn away. 
 
 'I was the first person,' Lord Granville writes, 
 'who told him of the probability of the Governor- 
 Generalship of India being offered to him. He at once 
 discussed it, and seemed inclined to accept it. It was 
 an interesting conversation. We had travelled by rail 
 to Windsor, attended service at St. George's, and rode 
 to Cleveden, where we had tea; and then dined at 
 Salt Hill. His departure, and that of the beautiful 
 and clever Lady Canning, created a great void in 
 a very intimate society. Lord Palmerston gave me 
 leave to write all Cabinet secrets to him while in 
 India. . . . His departure for India deprived me of 
 the most valuable assistance I ever had in speaking. 
 He always gave me his opinion on my speeches. 
 I knew his criticisms to be exactly what he thought, 
 and I had absolute confidence in his judgment. 
 There was no question, from the most important 
 points of public and private life to the shape of 
 a saddle, on which I did not desire his advice. He 
 was one of my greatest friends. I am not sure that he 
 was the most intimate. He had some natural re- 
 serve, and, on the other hand, I should not willingly 
 have told him of things that I had said or done of 
 which I was ashamed.' 
 
 On August 1st, 1855, Lord Canning was introduced 
 at a Court of Directors and took the customary oath 
 of office. In the evening he attended the banquet, 
 with which, in that hospitable epoch, the Company 
 
 c a
 
 ^fi EARL CANNING 
 
 was wont to celebrate the outgoing of a new Governor- 
 General. The speeches delivered on these occasions 
 assumed the character of important political utterances, 
 and were regarded with interest as indications of 
 principle and policy. The Chairman, Mr, Elliot 
 Macnaghten, proposed the new Governor-General's 
 health. Lord Canning, in his reply, surprised and 
 impressed his hearers by a grave and measured elo- 
 quence in every way worthy of the occasion. The 
 remembrance of George Canning — the marked resem- 
 blance between father and son — the same handsome 
 features, the noble brow and fine presence — no doubt 
 predisposed the audience in the speaker's favour. But 
 Lord Canning^s speech was intrinsically excellent — 
 weighty, dignified, imbued with a statesmanlike sense 
 of the greatness and the difficulty of his task. He 
 responded with gratitude to the Chairman's assurance 
 of the confidence and co-operation of the Directors 
 and of the two great bodies with which he would 
 have mainly to do — the Civil Service and the Army. 
 * I know not,' the speaker continued in terms which, 
 read in the light of after events, have a prophetic 
 ring, ' I know not what course events may take. 
 I hope and pray that we may not reach the extremity 
 of war. I wish for a peaceful time of office, but 
 I cannot forget that, in our Indian Empire, that 
 greatest of all blessings depends upon a greater 
 variety of chances and a more precarious tenure 
 than in any other quarter of the globe. We must 
 not forget that in the sky of India, serene as it
 
 SPEECH AT THE DIRECTORS' BANQUET 37 
 
 is, a small cloud may arise, at first no bigger than 
 a man's hand, but which, growing bigger and bigger, 
 may at last threaten to overwhelm us with ruin. 
 What has happened once may happen again. The 
 disturbing causes have diminished certainly, but are 
 not dispelled. We have still discontented and hetero- 
 geneous peoples united under our sway ; we have 
 still neighbours before whom we cannot altogether 
 lay aside our watchfulness ; and we have a frontier 
 configuration which renders it possible that at any 
 moment causes of collision may arise. Besides, so 
 intricate are our relations with some subsidiary 
 States that I doubt whether, in an Empire so vast 
 and so situated, it is in the power of the wisest 
 Government, the most peaceful and the most for- 
 bearing, to command peace. But if we cannot 
 command, we can at any rate deserve it by taking 
 care that honour, good faith, and fair dealing are 
 on our side : and then, if, in spite of us, it should 
 become necessary to strike a blow, we can strike 
 with a clear conscience. With blows so dealt, the 
 struggle must be short and the issue not doubtful.' 
 
 The grave and melodious voice rang through the 
 great assembly and created a profound impression. 
 Lord Cannings hearers, some of whom had never 
 heard him speak and others who had only heard his 
 ordinary Parliamentary replies, felt that they were 
 listening to no common man. They were noble words, 
 instinct with a high purpose, a pledge, pure and high- 
 toned. Nobly was Canning destined to redeem it. 
 
 212330
 
 38 EARL CANNING 
 
 It was decided that Lord Canning should take 
 over charge on March ist, and his journey to India 
 was so timed as to allow of a short stay in 
 Egypt, and of visits, en roide^ to Bombay, Cey- 
 lon, and Madras, where his old school-fellow. Lord 
 Harris, now reigned as Governor. On November 4th, 
 1855, Lord and Lady Canning sailed from Marseilles; 
 they landed at Alexandria on the 12th, and had their 
 first taste of Eastern hospitality in the somewhat 
 over-splendid arrangements made by the Pacha's 
 order at Cairo for their reception. Some weeks 
 were devoted to the sights of Egypt and a journey 
 up the Nile. On January 26th, 1856, Lord Canning 
 landed at Bombay, and the full tide of official cere- 
 mony began to flow. Lord Dalhousie had decreed 
 that his successor should be royally welcomed ; 
 but, amid the pomps and festivities of a State re- 
 ception, the new Governor-General gave early proof 
 of the indefatigable industry which never flagged 
 throughout his whole career, ' I have been un- 
 ceasingly busy,' he wrote to Mr. Elliot Macnaghten, 
 ' for two-thirds out of every twenty-four hours since 
 our arrival : and by the 5th or 6th I hope to have 
 seen nearly all that calls for ocular inspection in this 
 city and its neighbourhood.' 
 
 Landing at Madras, the party spent a few days 
 at Guindee Park, the Governor's country residence, 
 and Lord Canning had an opportunity of renewing 
 the memories of old school days in the society of 
 Lord Harris. On the last day of February, he
 
 THE COUNCIL 39 
 
 disembarked at Calcutta, and proceeded at once to 
 take the customary oaths of office and his seat in 
 Council — ' within five minutes after touching land,' 
 as he wi'ote home — and to be introduced to the 
 members of the Council. Of these Mr. (Sir) Barnes 
 Peacock, a distinguished English barrister, and John 
 Peter Grant, a civilian of exceptional ability, were 
 the most influential. Another member. General John 
 Low, had fought in the last Maratha War, and since 
 then had enjoyed a prolonged experience of native 
 Courts and unusual facilities for reading native 
 character. He was supposed to be of those who 
 thought that Dalhousie had gone too far and too 
 fast. 
 
 The new Governor-General plunged eagerly into 
 business, and commenced from the outset that neglect 
 of all consideration for health which he continued to 
 the end with such disastrous effect. At the end of 
 the first week he writes that, so great had been the 
 pressure of business that he had found time ' only for 
 one look out of doors ' since arrival. The oppor- 
 tunities for converse with Lord Dalhousie were, of 
 course, invaluable. 
 
 The tide of official work rolled in amain. 'Another 
 fortnight is gone,' Lord Canning wrote towards the 
 end of March, ' and I am beginning to gather up by 
 slow degrees the threads of business, as it passes 
 before me : but it is severe work to have to give 
 up so much time to the bygones of almost every 
 question that comes up ; and some weeks more must
 
 40 EARL CANNING 
 
 pass before I shall feel myself abreast of current 
 events.' 
 
 Not many weeks had passed before the new 
 Governor-General perceived that his hopes of a 
 peaceful reign were little hkely to be realised. The 
 danger threatened from Persia. England was pledged 
 to the independence of Herat ; but that independence 
 had always been precarious, more than once actually 
 endangered. In 1852 a Persian force had seized the 
 place, and nothing but the peremptory interference of 
 the English Government had induced her to abandon 
 the project of annexation. The Crimean War seemed 
 to the Teheran politicians to afford an opportunity 
 for reviving a favourite design. Material for a 
 quarrel was soon forthcoming. Mr. Murray, the 
 British representative, found it impossible to remain 
 any longer at his post. A Persian army was presently 
 on the march against Herat. English diplomacy had 
 said its last word. War had become imminent. 
 
 Lord Canning watched with regret the lessening 
 chances of a pacific settlement. ' Do not be afraid,' 
 he wrote to the President of the Indian Board in 
 April, ' of my being unduly hasty to punish Persia. 
 Unless the Shah should steam up the Hiigli with 
 Murray swinging at his yard-arm, I hope that we 
 shall be able to keep the peace until your instructions 
 arrive.' The prospects of peace, however, became 
 daily fainter. ' My hope of an accommodation,' the 
 Governor-General wrote to the President in August, 
 ' has almost died out. I contemplate the prospect of
 
 PERSIAN IVAR 41 
 
 the inglorious and costly operations, which lie before 
 us, with more disgust than I can express.' 
 
 The quarrel went briskly forward. In the summer 
 Lord Canning received instructions to prepare for the 
 despatch of an army from Bombay, and in November 
 war was officially declared. The choice of a com- 
 mander for the expedition and the details of its 
 equipment necessarily involved much thought^ talk, 
 and correspondence, and made a formidable addition 
 to the numerous and varied administrative topics 
 which, in the ordinary course, called for the Governor- 
 General's attention. 
 
 A war with Persia involved a thorny question as to 
 the aid that should be given to the Amir of Kabul — 
 whether he should be helped at all, and if helped, to 
 what extent and upon what conditions. The English 
 authorities were of opinion that a blister to Persia 
 might, with excellent effect, be applied from the side 
 of Kandahar. Herbert Edwardes, stationed on the 
 frontier, warmly advocated the project of an alliance 
 with the Amir. At the beginning of 1857 a treaty, 
 negotiated by Sir John Lawrence and Edwardes, 
 bound the old Dost by a tie which, happily, he 
 observed conscientiously through times when the 
 hostility of Kabul, in the rear of the English, would 
 have added disastrously to the difficulties of the 
 situation. ' I have made an alliance with the British 
 Government,' he exclaimed, when the treaty was 
 signed, 'and, come what may, I will keep it till 
 death.'
 
 42 EARL CANNING 
 
 Lord Canning, who at the other end of the telegraph 
 wire at Calcutta had superintended the negotiation, 
 complimented Edwardes on its satisfactory issue with 
 a generous and hearty recognition of good service, 
 which was habitual to him. ' I feel the more bound 
 to do this,' he wrote, 'because the first suggestion 
 of a meeting came from you. ... It would be a good 
 thing if all diplomatic conferences were conducted 
 as satisfactorily and set forth as lucidly as these 
 have been.' 
 
 Persia was not the only anxiety. Within the 
 confines of India itself the course of events did 
 not flow with unbroken smoothness during Lord 
 Canning's first year of ofiice. Outram had welcomed 
 his arrival with a telegram — 'All is well in Oudh;' 
 but the announcement had been premature. Outram 
 had now gone away to England, in ill health, and all 
 had certainly not been going well with his successor 
 — a hot-headed official, of the order of those whose 
 destiny it is to be the marplots of diplomacy and 
 thorns in the flesh of their employers. Lord Canning 
 had to taste the bitterness which a refractory sub- 
 ordinate infuses into the cup of high official life. His 
 remonstrances fell on unheeding ears. The progress 
 of dethroning an ancient royalty — necessarily an 
 ungracious one — was made doubly distressful. Com- 
 plaints became numerous and loud. The Governor- 
 General wrote that his subordinates were placing him 
 in the humiliating position of promising redress which 
 they failed to give ; nor was the mischief ended till.
 
 TROUBLES IN OUDH 43 
 
 in the following spring, on its becoming clear that 
 Outram would be employed in the Persian Expedition, 
 an unexceptionable substitute was found in the person 
 of Sir Henry Lawrence, who took charge of his duties 
 at Lucknow a few weeks before the first outburst of 
 the Mutiny. 
 
 Periods such as that of the Mutiny afford but 
 scanty space for the personal biography of those 
 who play a prominent part in them. Such men 
 lead only a public existence. Their thoughts, their 
 h^pes^thdr_eflfort^j_aTe_CQncfiiitia^ 
 Lord Canning's life during the fateful years 1857 and 
 1858 was one unflagging effort to keep pace with the 
 torrential flow of events which followed each other 
 with a rapidity too great even for diligence as 
 phenomenal as his.\ ifJ o1^<^0'^'Oi^^^ iiiiu.m$ ,/UCcyifier^*^K 
 
 It would be difficult to exaggerate the multifarious- 
 ness or the importance of these demands on his 
 judgment. The general course of the various cam- 
 paigns which the suppression of the Mutiny involved, 
 was, to a large extent, under his superintendence and 
 control ; he was in immediate touch with the principal 
 Commanders throughout, who looked to him for orders. 
 Questions of the utmost difficulty — such, for instance, 
 as the abandonment of Peshawar, in the critical weeks 
 before the fall of Delhi — were constantly presenting 
 themselves for immediate decision ; Parliamentary 
 discussion of Indian topics added intensity to the 
 controversial furnace in which Lord Canning lived. 
 He had to watch the growth of public sentiment,
 
 44 EARL CANNING 
 
 to guide it in safe channels, and repress its undue 
 violence ; and his task had to be performed under 
 conditions well calculated to disturb the most steadfast 
 equilibrium. There were great topics on which the 
 fate of an Empire hung ; but little topics swarmed 
 about him — like a cloud of midges — all the more 
 irritating, possibly, for their minuteness. A convulsion 
 which breaks down all ordinary barriers and overrides 
 all ordinary rules of discipline, is certain to entail 
 official blunders and collisions. Stupidity, decently 
 latent in times of peaceful routine, leaps to light. 
 There will be a misapprehension of duties, quarrels 
 more acute than usual ; the excited man who does too 
 much ; the nervous man who is afraid to do anything ; 
 the wrong-headed man who does the wrong thing. 
 Sometimes, moreover. Nature seems to have pro- 
 vided that the men who have greatest capacity for 
 blundering have the largest gifts of insistency in ♦ 
 self-defence. Many such men now crossed Lord 
 Canning's path. Many such questions — whose in- 
 trinsic insignificance is no measure of the toil and 
 vexation they occasion to those who have to decide 
 them, beset him. 
 
 His temperament was that wliich treats small things 
 and large with the same precise and conscientious 
 care, and so renders official life a burthen too heavy 
 for the strongest shoulders. There is a habit of mind, 
 well known to the student of official pathology, which 
 shrinks in aversion from the rude expedients by which 
 some men get through a vast amount of work. The
 
 EXACTNESS IN BUSINESS 45 
 
 just, the fastidious, the scrupulous, are its especial 
 victims. Such a man has a honor of imperfection, 
 of inexactness, of the hardship or mischief which 
 inexactness may easily produce. He will not indite 
 an incorrect sentence, slur over inconvenient difficulty, 
 or pronounce an ill-considered decision. He knows 
 how the thing ought to be done ; his conscience 
 forbids him to do it, or to let it be done, in any 
 other fashion. He will not slight it himself; he 
 will not hand it over to another who might be 
 more easily satisfied. One question after another is 
 put aside for further thought, for further knowledge, 
 for the last few touches which an artist loves to give 
 to his work, but which, unhappily, so seldom are the 
 last. Meanwhile, the world does not stand still: 
 the tide of business rolls onward, rude and strong ; the 
 impossibility of coping with it becomes obvious ; the 
 arrears become so huge that a little more or less is not 
 worth consideration ; the offender becomes desperate. 
 The official machine is obstructed at a hundred 
 points ; and sturdy workers of the rough and ready 
 order are complaining that, in the research of a too 
 exquisite perfection, the practical work of adminis- 
 tration is being brought to a standstill. The offender 
 entrenches himself behind a barricade of office boxes, 
 each of which protests with dumb mouth against the 
 dilatory mood which hinders its contents from dis- 
 posal. Thence he defies those who preach to him 
 that with statesmen, as with women, hesitation often 
 means ruin.
 
 46 EARL CANNING 
 
 Such barricades, it is to be feared, rose high in Lord 
 Canning's study. An embassy of his colleagues, on 
 one occasion, brought some friendly pressure to bear 
 upon their too assiduous chief, and urged him to 
 part with some portion of his task, which it was 
 certain that he could never accomplish. The re- 
 luctant Governor-General hovered uneasily about the 
 vast accumulation, finding in each instance some 
 especial reason against abandonment, and was at last 
 with difficulty persuaded to bow to the stern destiny 
 which has decreed that human life shall be short, 
 human energy exhaustible, and the art of adminis- 
 tration difficult and long. 
 
 Canning, however, could be prompt enough when 
 promptitude was evidently essential, and a crisis 
 had now arrived which called imperatively for in- 
 stantaneous action. 
 
 During the early months of the year 1857 various 
 symptoms of a mutinous temper in the troops in the 
 immediate neighbourhood of Calcutta, and at Ber- 
 hampur, a military post a hundred miles to the 
 north, sounded the first note of danger. Then, when 
 the troubles in Bengal seemed to have subsided, out- 
 breaks of similar character in Upper India, at Meerut 
 and Lucknow, showed that the malady was no merely 
 local one ; and, while these were being dealt with, 
 there came the astounding news that the Sepoys 
 at Meerut, the strongest post, as to European troops, 
 in India, had thrown off" allegiance, murdered their 
 officers, sacked the Station, and effected their escape,
 
 OUTBREAK OF MUTINY 47 
 
 and that the rebel soldiery were in possession of 
 the capital of the Mughals. Lord Canning knew 
 that he was confronted by the gravest emergency 
 that had ever beset the English in India. 
 
 Before dealing with the Mutiny, it will be well to 
 take a survey of the general situation and of the 
 conditions under which the Government entered upon 
 this tremendous trial of its strength.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 The IndixV which Loed Canning found 
 
 LoKD Canning's predecessor had on his homeward 
 journey recorded, with almost dying hand^ the achieve- 
 ments of his long and prosperous reign. To few, 
 indeed, of the rulers of mankind has such a retrospect 
 been accorded. Success in the ventures of War and 
 the labours of Peace — improvement in every depart- 
 ment of administration — progress in every phase of 
 civil life — the triumph of enlightened beneficence — 
 such is the note which rings through the whole 
 exultant strain. Nor was the boast an empty one. 
 But if Dalhousie left India prosperous, orderly, pro- 
 gressive and replete with the outward and visible 
 signs of efficient government, there were quarters 
 in which the cold breezes of adversity might easily 
 arise ; and he himself had preluded his narrative with 
 the warning that no prudent man^ with any knowledge 
 of the case, would ever venture to predict unbroken 
 tranquillity within our Eastern possessions. Every- 
 thing, however, in the external relations of India 
 seemed to promise it. Burma had been cowed 
 into the terror which was the best assurance of 
 friendship with a Court too barbarous to know its
 
 FOREIGN RELATIONS 49 
 
 own weakness. Nepal, under a sagacious Minister, 
 and with a Thibetan War on hand, was little likely 
 to break the peace she had observed for forty years. 
 The Chieftain whom, in an unlucky moment for 
 humanity, the British Government had placed on 
 the throne of Kashmir had laid hold of the great 
 Pro-consul's dress in Darbar and cried: 'Thus I 
 grasp the skirts of the British Government, and 1 
 will never let go my hold.' A treaty concluded in 1 855 
 with the Amir of Kabul bound him to common friends 
 and foes, and Lord Dalhousie could report that every 
 portion of our Western frontier was covered against 
 hostile attack by the barrier of a treaty with a friendly 
 power. But an Empire within whose confines, either 
 by conquest, failure of heirs, or the stern decree of 
 paramount authority, four kingdoms and various 
 minor principalities had in less than a decade been 
 merged, could scarcely fail to contain much smouldering 
 disaffection or to provide the occasion which would 
 fan it to a blaze. Oudh, the latest acquisition, lying 
 in the very heart of the North- Western Provinces, 
 was full of explosive material. The King had 
 yielded without a blow ; but the results of a century 
 of anarchy were not to be effaced by the heroic 
 remedy of annexation. The administration had 
 been supremely corrupt ; the patrons of corruption 
 were numerous and influential. The disbandment 
 of the royal army sent 60,000 peasants back to 
 their homes, stripped of their livelihood and ripe 
 for disturbance. The local magnates, following the 
 
 D
 
 50 EARL CANNING 
 
 familiar Indian precedent, had taken advantage of 
 a Court paralysed by profligacy to do what they 
 pleased ; and their pleasure was that of sturdy 
 warriors, entrenched in forest fastnesses and followed 
 by small armies of retainers as little compunctious as 
 themselves. For such men might is right, and the 
 doctrine had been, no doubt, rudely applied against 
 rivals and dependants. A British official, who conducted 
 an inquiry, a few years previous to annexation, into 
 the condition of the Province, had travelled through 
 a tract of eighty miles which Nature had designed to 
 be a garden but which one of the Oudh magnates had 
 reduced to a desert. When the British administrator 
 appeared upon the scene, bent on beneficent projects 
 for an oppressed peasantry, backed up by Courts 
 which could not be bribed and forces which it was 
 impossible to resist, the Oudh Talukdar found himself 
 in a new and uncongenial world. The European 
 officials regarded him with no friendly eye, as an 
 oppressor of the poor and a useless incumbrancer 
 of the soil. His title-deeds were strictly scanned; 
 his vague prerogatives were disallowed. Tenant- 
 rights, of which the tenant himself had scarcely 
 dreamed, were boldly affirmed. Great dissatisfaction, 
 accordingly, existed in the landed classes of Oudh. 
 When the Mutiny came, the tenantry sided with 
 their traditional lords against an alien protector, 
 and the rebel soldiers, themselves for the most part 
 drawn from the peasantry of Oudh, found in the 
 strongholds and jungles of the landholders their
 
 THE KING OF OUDH 5 1 
 
 best refuge and in many of the landholders their 
 warmest allies. 
 
 Sir James Outram, the Head Official of the newly- 
 annexed Province, had welcomed Lord Canning's 
 arrival with a telegraphic announcement that all 
 was well in Oudh ; but failing health had driven 
 Outram to Europe, and his successor had by violent 
 temper and want of judgment materially enhanced 
 the dangers of an already perilous situation. In the 
 meantime, the dethroned Sovereign was established 
 in a suburb of Calcutta, and was consoling himself 
 by the mission of various members of his family 
 to plead his cause before the authorities in London. 
 Those who profess to find elsewhere than in military 
 disaffection the causes of the great outbreak of 1857, 
 are accustomed to point to the presence of the ex-King 
 of Oudh at Calcutta as one of the motive causes of 
 the convulsion. No evidence, however, has ever been 
 produced that the ex -King, either directly or in- 
 directly, took part in the movement ; while amongst 
 the circumstances connected with the Mutiny, which 
 favoured the fortunes of the English, may reasonablj^ 
 l)e counted the fact that, when Oudh threw off its 
 allegiance^ the natural centre of local loyalty was 
 not on the spot to afford a nucleus for disaffection. 
 
 North-westward across the Doab, well placed in 
 a commanding position on the Jumna, such a nucleus 
 existed. The historical capital of the Mughals — 
 so the will of Heaven or the fatuity of man had 
 decreed — was now at once a strong fortress, a first- 
 
 D 2
 
 52 EARL CANNING 
 
 class arsenal, and the home of the dethroned dynasty. 
 Here Bahadur Shah — faded image of the great Mughal 
 — still lived, a splendid pensioner, impotent for every- 
 thing but sensuality, intrigue and crime. Half a 
 century before, when Lord Wellesley and Lake were 
 shattering the confederacy of Maratha States, the 
 English had rescued his ancestor — a blind, helpless 
 old man — from the oppression of the Marathas and 
 control of the French, Lord Wellesley, with much 
 respectful language, had reduced him to a puppet, 
 consoled him with a good pension and splendid 
 ceremonial for the loss of all real power, and, 
 repenting of his original intention, allowed him to 
 continue to reside at Delhi. Here, though with 
 ever diminishing prestige, the heir of the House 
 of Timiir lived on in quasi-royal state. The un- 
 wisdom of the arrangement had been recognised and 
 denounced by Lord Dalhousie. ' Here,' he said, ' we 
 have a strong fortress in the heart of one of the 
 principal cities of our Empire, and in entire command 
 of the chief magazine of the Upper Provinces. It lies 
 so exposed both to assault and to the dangers arising 
 from the carelessness of the people living around it, 
 that it is a matter for surprise that no accident has 
 occurred to it.' The only effectual remedy was, the 
 Governor-General observed, to transfer the stores into 
 the Palace, ' which would then be kept by us as 
 a British post, capable of maintaining itself against 
 any hostile manoeuvre, instead of being, as it is 
 now, the source of positive danger, and, perhaps,
 
 DISAFFECTION AT DELHI ^^ 
 
 not unfrequently, the focus of intrigues against our 
 power.' 
 
 In 1856 the question was again brought under 
 notice by the death of the King's heir, and Lord 
 Canning strongly enforced his predecessor's view. 
 The phantom dignities of the King were, he pointed 
 out, unmeaning, useless and dangerous. The ultimate 
 decision was that the legal heir to the discrowned 
 monarch should be recognised, but only on condition 
 of surrendering the title of King and of residing 
 elsewhere than at Delhi. The child of the King's 
 favourite wife, whom his mother's ambition destined 
 as liis heir, was wholly put aside. The Queen was 
 loud in lamentation and busy with intrigue. The 
 young Prince, her son, was growing up a bitter hater 
 of the English. In 1856^ there is reason to believe, 
 these feelings rose higher than usual in the royal 
 circle. A famous priest was poisoning the King's 
 ear, and performing propitiatory sacrifices to hasten 
 the moment of restoration. Exciting rumours filled 
 the air. Russia was to avenge the Crimea by the 
 invasion of India and the re-establishment of the 
 Mughals. Persia was to help. The hundred years' 
 rule by the aliens of the West was about to close. 
 
 Vague talk took at last a more solid form, and in 
 March, 1857, a proclamation, posted on the gates of 
 the Great Mosque, announced that the King of Persia 
 was marching to the destruction of the British Raj, 
 and that it behoved the faithful to be ready to fight 
 the unbeliever. Thus was Delhi prepared to welcome
 
 54 EARL CANNING 
 
 the mutineers who were soon to seek shelter behind 
 her walls. 
 
 Further again to the North-West lay a Province 
 which any one, forecasting the chances of tranquillity, 
 might well have regarded as a likely centre of dis- 
 turbance. The Punjab, when Lord Canning arrived 
 in India, had been for seven years a portion of 
 the British Empire. Not an hour of those seven 
 years had been wasted by the administrators of the 
 newly-conquered Province, in their task of extend- 
 ing to it the advantages of enlightened government. 
 Under the two Lawrences and the able officials, whom 
 Dalhousie crowded into his favourite acquisition, its 
 prosperity had advanced by leaps and bounds. Yet 
 the history of our connection with the Punjab was 
 full of warning. At the beginning of the century 
 the rising ambition of Ranjit Singh became a menace 
 to Upper India. When in 1806 he crossed the 
 Sutlej, and advanced pretensions to the territory 
 between that river and the Jumna, Lord Minto, 
 abandoning his policy of non-interference, had de- 
 spatched a mission under Metcalfe and a British force 
 to check the unwelcome intrusion. This combined 
 argument induced the Sikh leader to sign a treaty of 
 perpetual peace with the English, which he faithfully 
 observed. The disorders, which followed on his death, 
 had ended in a Praetorian tyranny. The army governed 
 itself, ruled the State, and assumed a threatening atti- 
 tude toward the English across the Sutlej. Hardinge 
 massed his forces on the frontier. British victories at
 
 THE PUNJAB 55 
 
 Firozshah in 1845, and, in the following year, at 
 Aliwal and Sobraon, tamed the ambition of the Sikh 
 leaders and advanced the British frontier to the west 
 of the Sutlej. The infant Sovereign was restored, a 
 Council of Regency appointed ; benevolent despotism 
 had full sway. The current of reform ran swift and 
 strong. There was superficial tranquillity. Hardinge 
 left India with the belief that not another shot need 
 be fired for five years. In a few months the bloody 
 fields of Chilian wala and Gujarat attested the vanity 
 of such hopes. The army of the Punjab was con- 
 quered and disarmed ; but the fact remained that 
 the Sikhs who, under Ranjit Singh, had stood as 
 one good line of defence against an assailant from 
 the North- West — India's most vulnerable point — had 
 shown themselves our sternest foes, and had cost us 
 some of our bloodiest encounters. The Protectorate 
 established by Lord Hardinge had completely broken 
 down ; and Lord Dalhousie having to determine 
 between ' thorough conquest and incessant warfare,' 
 had solved the alternative by annexation. But though 
 Gujarat had crushed the Sikh Confederacy, the cam- 
 paign had demonstrated how formidable a foe the 
 Sikh nation could be, how easily the national feeling 
 might be roused against the English. Seven years of 
 alien administration could hardly have efliaced national 
 resentment or the desire of a warlike nation to assert 
 its prowess in the field. ' The spirit of the whole Sikh 
 people,' Lord Dalhousie had said, ' was inflamed by the 
 bitterest animosity against us. . . . It was necessary to
 
 56 KARL CANNING 
 
 take measures for obliterating a State which could 
 never become a peaceful neighbour.' The experiment 
 proved a splendid success. During the Mutiny the 
 Sikh soldiery rendered invaluable service ; but, in 
 calculating the chances of that dire encounter, it is 
 well to remember how easily matters might have 
 gone otherwise — how, by the merest change of cir- 
 cumstances, we might have had the most soldierly 
 population in India arrayed amongst our foes, and 
 how supremely fortunate for the English it was that 
 the annexation of the Punjab — the expediency of 
 which was greatly called in question by the opponents 
 of Dalhousie's policy — had been effectively earned 
 out — the Sikh army broken up — the population dis- 
 armed, and that an exceptionally vigorous British 
 administration had got the Province well in hand. 
 Had an army — such as that with which Ranjit 
 Singh threatened Upper India, or as that which 
 Gough confronted at Chilianwala — been hovering 
 in our rear during the siege of Delhi, the whole 
 character of the struggle would have been altered, 
 and the odds against the British immeasurably en- 
 hanced. Another fortunate circumstance was that 
 the portion of the Province, through which the route 
 to Delhi lay, was held by Chieftains who owed their 
 escape from absorption by Ranjit Singh to a British 
 Protectorate, and who showed their gratitude by loyal 
 co-operation at a moment when the fortunes of the 
 British seemed at the lowest. The Chief of Patiala 
 lent an army to preserve our communications ; and
 
 AFGHANISTAN 57 
 
 the troops of the Jind Raja fought by the side of 
 British soldiers in the breach at Delhi. Fortunate, 
 too, was it that the head official of the Province was 
 a man whose character, temperament and antecedents 
 seemed as though expressly designed to meet a great 
 emergency. Sir John Lawrence had been familiar with 
 Delhi since his first appointment, as a young civilian, 
 twenty-five years before. In 1845 he was its Chief 
 Magistrate, and earned Lord Hardinge's approval by 
 the excellence of his transport arrangements to the 
 battlefield of Sobraon. He had been placed in 
 command of the territory then acquired. On various 
 occasions he had been officially connected with districts 
 on either side of Delhi, and knew them and the people 
 thoroughly. Such knowledge is strength. When the 
 moment arrived he was able to turn it to invaluable 
 account. His colleagues and subordinates formed the 
 strongest body of officials ever concentrated on an 
 Indian Province. Among them were several whose 
 military capacity amounted to absolute genius. 
 
 Westward, across the Indus, the wild tribes of the 
 Sulaiman hovered on the frontier, ever ready for 
 a fray ; and, beyond them, again, was old Dost 
 Muhammad in his Kabul fortress, eagerly watching 
 the course of events and the chances of safety for 
 his little State; dangerously environed by mightier 
 Powers, whose collision might crush it out of ex- 
 istence. Experience had taught him some rude 
 lessons. The British had giievously wronged him 
 — had driven him from a throne into exile and
 
 58 EARL CANNING 
 
 captivity. He had revenged himself, after his restora- 
 tion, by sending his best troops to aid the Sikhs in 
 theu' struggle for independence. He had now made 
 up his mind that the British were better as friends 
 than foes. The wrongs, which he had received — the 
 assistance which he had given our enemies had been 
 mutually condoned, and a formal agreement of amity 
 had been signed in 1855. In Lord Canning's first 
 year the course of events had tended to strengthen 
 the ties of friendship between the Enghsh Government 
 and the Amir. Persia was once again threatening 
 Herat ; war with Persia was imminent. There was, 
 fortunately, at this time, an official at Peshawar who 
 appreciated the importance of the Amir's alliance, 
 and believed that he might be conciliated and trusted. 
 Herbert Edwardes succeeded in convincing Lord 
 Canning that we might with advantage settle the 
 terms on which England would help him in his 
 struggle with the common enemy. The old Chieftain 
 came down to the Khaiber, discussed his resources 
 and necessities with the British envoys, renewed the 
 alliance and received a satisfactory assurance of 
 material aid. ' Now,' he said, ' I have made a treaty 
 with the British, and I will keep it till death' — a 
 promise which, happily for England, he observed with 
 exemplary fidelity at a crisis when its breach would 
 have been disastrous. 
 
 But there were dangers nearer home. The great 
 south-easterly bend of the Jumna marked a frontier 
 which seemed boldly to challenge the sturdy tribes of
 
 ^. 
 
 RAJPUTANA ( 59 
 
 Rajputana. Delhi, Agra and Allahabad looked out 
 upon a region where, on an arid soil and beneath 
 a blazing sky, some of the fiercest blood in India 
 throbbed in the veins of a warrior race. Southward 
 from Aijra towered the rock-built strono-hold of 
 Gwalior, where Sindhia recalled the faded glories 
 of Manitha rule. To the south, again, was Jhansi, 
 home of a brave and fierce woman, widow of the 
 last of the Jhansi Rajas, bitterly brooding over Lord 
 Dalhousie's refusal to allow her to adopt an heir 
 to the title and dignities of her departed lord. Still 
 further to the south — where the Vindhyan Hills 
 look down upon the Valley of the Narbada — 
 Holkar, another Maratha potentate, preserved a 
 loyalty which, perhaps, at times derived opportune 
 reinforcement from the neighbourhood of a British 
 cantonment at Mhow. Throuo;h this region ran the 
 great high-road from Bombay to Agra and Delhi ; 
 and, in case of a disturbance in Upper India, its 
 military significance would be enormous. 
 
 The Maratha Princes had no great reason to love 
 the British. Nowhere had national instincts been 
 more rudely thwarted, or the struggle between anarchy, 
 rapine and oppression, as represented by native rulers, 
 and order and subordination, as enforced by English 
 administrators, been more acute. The antagonism had 
 been long, fierce, inveterate. In the latter half of the 
 seventeenth century Sivaji, founder of the Marathas, 
 had carved a kingdom for himself out of a dismembered 
 fragment of the Mughal Empire. His successors had
 
 6o EARL CANNING 
 
 pillaged with indiscriminate ruthlessness north and 
 south of the Narbada — in the Gangetic valley and in 
 the uplands of the Deccan. His descendants reigned 
 at Satara, far to the south ; but a race of hereditary 
 ministers had eclipsed the lineal heads of the con- 
 federacy, and the Peshwas at Poona had won their 
 way to an acknowledged headship. Another powerful 
 subordinate had started an independent princedom in 
 Berar, with Nagpur for his capital; another became 
 a Sovereign at Baroda ; Sindhia gathered his retainers 
 at Gwalior ; Holkar at Indore. Far and wide, across 
 India, from Gujarat to Cuttack — from the Jumna to 
 the Karnatic — these fierce communities had made the 
 thunder of the Maratha horsemen a sound of terror. 
 At the beginning of the century their mutual ani- 
 mosities brought a nobler combatant upon the scene, 
 and Arthur Wellesley had crushed a Maratha army 
 at Assaye. Later victories made the English masters 
 of Delhi, Agra, and a wide tract of country north of 
 the Jumna. The Province of Orissa was taken from 
 the Maratha Chieftain of Nagpur. Holkar still held 
 his ground, and Lord Wellesley's closing years were 
 chequered by inglorious reverses and baffled schemes. 
 Lord Cornwallis arrived in 1805 with a mission of 
 peace ; but the day of peace was not yet dawning. 
 Twelve years later Lord Hastings found himself 
 committed to another Maratha War. The Peshwa 
 struck a bold blow for his ascendancy — bold, but 
 ineffectual. He was vanquished^ lost his kingdom 
 and his Maratha headship, and retired, a pensioner
 
 THE MARAT HAS 6l 
 
 of his conquerors, to Bithur, an estate in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Cawnpur, where his adopted son, forty 
 years later, was destined to take a terrible revenge 
 for his father's reverses. The Berar Sovereign tempted 
 his fate with a like result. His kinafdom was shattered 
 and dismembered. Holkar received a crushing blow at 
 Mehidpur. The Maratha States bent their stubborn 
 neck beneath the yoke, and owned themselves feuda- 
 tories of the conquering Power. Such a history leaves 
 no kindly recollections ; nor had subsequent intercourse 
 tended to induce a more friendly mood. Southward 
 of Bombay, behind the Western Ghats, lay a tract, 
 known as the South Maratha Country, reaching 
 from Satara to Dharwar. Here there was at work 
 a special cause of animosity, the proceedings of a 
 Commission, whose function it was to inquire, with 
 the exactness of an English Court, into the validity 
 of various titles and privileges purporting to emanate 
 from former dynasties. The holder of a title, which 
 has served well enough for his fathers before him, 
 naturally resents official intrusion into his muniment 
 room. The ' Inam Commission ' and its agents were 
 odious, especially to those whom their proceedings 
 ruined. There was, moreover, one Maratha, whose 
 hatred toward the English was tinged with a deep 
 personal animosity. The last of the Peshwas had 
 lived on at Eithiir till 1851. His adopted son, 
 known to infamy as Nana Sahib, petitioned to have 
 the ex-Peshwa's life-pension continued to himself. The 
 claim had no legal basis, and Lord Dalhousie con-
 
 6a EARL CANNING 
 
 sidered that the claimant, who inherited a large sum 
 from his adoptive father's savings, was generously 
 treated in being constituted owner of the Bithur 
 Estate. The Nana sent an envoy to move the English 
 authorities in his behalf; but the Directors were as 
 immoveable as Dalhousie. He nursed his grievance. 
 Shortly before the outbreak of the Mutiny, he made 
 a tour in Upper India, and paid a visit to Lucknow, 
 which so unfavourably impressed Sir H. Lawrence 
 that he wrote to communicate his suspicions to the 
 General commanding at Cawnpur — a warning, which, 
 unhappily, was not believed till tragic experience 
 confirmed its truth. 
 
 There were other considerations, of wider range 
 and stronger import even than nationality, which 
 V at this -time influenced the public mind in India. 
 ^^\Oiie_ was religious disquietude. The pious con- 
 servative has generally ample grounds for deplor- 
 ing his lot as born in evil days and a revolu- 
 tionary epoch. But the classes who, in the India 
 of Lord Dalhousie, wished to stand in the old ways 
 of custom and creed, may well have felt something 
 like consternation at changes which threatened the 
 whole structure of society and struck at the very 
 heart of religion. Creed and custom and institution 
 seemed to be tottering to their fall. Popular education, 
 a prominent feature of Dalhousie's programme, had 
 been inaugurated by a brilliant essay, in which 
 Macaulay assumed as his standpoint the thesis that 
 Hindu mythology was a mere tissue of absurdities.
 
 RELIGIOUS DISQUIETUDE 6^ 
 
 With cheerful but ruthless lucidity he pointed out 
 that the first lesson in physics must satisfy the 
 Bengali student that his sacred cosmogony was 
 a childish myth. The hopes of missionaries rose 
 high. Their language was confident and courageous. 
 Some of their manifestoes sounded like invitations to 
 general apostacy. Their influence on legislation was 
 unmistakeable. The Hindu system visits apostacy 
 with tremendous penalties, and declares the renegade 
 to have forfeited, not merely the social communion of 
 his fellow-men, but his share of the inheritance. An 
 Act of the Governor-General's Council had swept 
 away these penalties, and allowed the deserter from 
 his creed to share with believers in the property 
 and privileges of the family estate. A strong senti- 
 ment, embodied in a sacred text and a widely-spread 
 custom, prohibited the Hindu widow from a second 
 marriage. A British enactment — declaring that this 
 was not the Hindu law, and that the widow was 
 free to marry again — had been prepared in Lord 
 Dalhousie's time, and was passed by his successor. 
 Another measure of the legislature, promoted in 
 the early days of Lord Canning's reign, under the 
 patronage of influential members of the Govern- 
 ment, for the purpose of restraining certain odious 
 forms of polygamy, was resented by Brahmans, 
 whose privileges it curtailed, and dreaded by Hindu 
 conservatives, who saw in it only another blow at 
 existing institutions. When the legislature was thus 
 courageous, it was not likely that the zeal of indi-
 
 64 EARL CANNING 
 
 viduals would be checked by authority or tempered 
 by discretion. There were many in India at this 
 time, not mere fanatics or enthusiasts, who regarded 
 the conversion of the people of India as a not im- 
 prabable event, and the endeavour to promote it as 
 a duty, which no human mandate could overrule. 
 One officer had openly preached to the soldiers of his 
 regiment at Barrackpur: another had inscribed the 
 Lord's Prayer on pillars on the main road entering 
 the capital of his district. 
 
 It is significant that, on so important an occasion 
 as the banquet given by the Directors of the East 
 India Company to Lord Canning on his appointment as 
 Governor- General, Lord Palmerston had used language, 
 which alarmists in India might not unreasonably inter- 
 
 Cpret as suggestive that the conversion of the people was 
 among the hopes, if not the immediate projects, of the 
 Government. ' Perhaps,' he said, ' it might be our lot 
 to confer on the countless millions of India a higher 
 and nobler gift than any mere human knowledge; but 
 that must be left to the hands of Time and the gradual 
 improvement of the people.' 
 
 The hands of Time seemed moving very quick ; the 
 pace was becoming dangerous. ' The faster the current 
 glides,^ wrote Sir H. Lawrence in 1856, ' the more need 
 of caution, of watching the weather, the rocks and 
 shoals.' Even while he wrote, the breakers were close 
 a-head. What — millions of anxious hearts were ask- 
 ing — did all these changes portend to the social and 
 religious ascendancy of the Brahman, to his prestige,
 
 musalmAn grievances 6^ 
 
 his sanctity, his caste? There was fear in the high 
 quarters of Brahmanism, and Brahmans were a ruling \ 
 power in the Sepoy army. 
 
 Tlie Musalman had a personal grievance. He was 
 feeling the dull pain of humiliated authority and tar- 
 nished prestige. In the days of the great Mughal 
 Emperors the Muhammadan rule had stretched far and 
 wide. Eastward and southward — across the rich delta 
 of Bengal, the rice fields of Dacca, the fat homesteads 
 of Arcot, Muhammadan rulers had exercised sway, 
 and Muhammadan soldiers and officials had enjoyed the 
 pleasant privileges of victorious rule. Those halcyon 
 days had passed. The Muhammadan had now toi 
 compete on equal terms with the race which he had 
 conquered and despised. 
 
 His temperament, his creed, his education, disabled 
 him from contending successfully with the subtle and 
 quick-witted Hindu. The present was distressful. 
 He brooded gloomily over the past. His lawful 
 Sovereign sat with his sham Court at Delhi, more 
 prisoner than prince — a pale shade of his former 
 greatness. He was humbled. His conquerors were 
 now devising fresh humiliations for his son. Haidar- 
 abad and Lucknow alone remained of the mighty 
 kingdoms which derived their sovereignty from Delhi ; 
 and now the suppression of the Lucknow Court once 
 again sounded in the Musalman's ears the knell of 
 departing glory. In his dreams of the future, the fall 
 of the British rule presented itself to the eye of faith as 
 opening a possibility of restoration. The Musalman's 
 
 E
 
 66 EARL CANNING 
 
 acquiescence in an infidel ruler is always contingent 
 on the impossibility of rebellion. If a favourable 
 opportunity offered, it would not be for pious 
 believers to let it pass unused. A stimulus was 
 afforded to disloyalty by a colony of fanatics from 
 India, who had established themselves at Sitana, in 
 the mountain ranges beyond the Indus, with the 
 alliance of a local ruler, the Akhond of Swat. They 
 issued incendiary proclamations, while the Miilvies 
 of Patna secretly co-operated, and kept up a train of 
 political converts from that city to the British frontier. 
 
 Apart from race or religion there were large classes 
 in India on whom the British rule weighed heavily, 
 or who had old scores to settle with the new regime, 
 or who were sufficiently uneasy to wish for change. 
 There were other great landholders besides those of 
 Oudh, who had experienced a rude transition, and 
 come out of it with lessened dignities and a lighter 
 purse. Lord Dalhousie's Government had rigorously 
 enforced the principle that the right of an Indian 
 Prince to transmit sovereignty to his adopted heir 
 was contingent on the permission of the paramount 
 Power. That permission had been on several notable 
 occasions refused. The princely families of India 
 could not fail to recognise that, as failure of natural 
 heirs is a continual incident in an Eastern magnate's 
 family, their absorption in the Empire was, sooner or 
 later, inevitable. 
 
 Such feelings in high quarters may have tended to 
 unsettlement, and in any case have weakened the
 
 AGGRIEVED INTERESTS 6^ 
 
 dislike of change natural to a privileged class. So, 
 too, there were men to whom the introduction of 
 a regular judicial system and strict procedure had 
 proved a capital misfortune. Immemorial estates 
 pass away to successful decree-holders, and a time- 
 honoured family is sunk in ruin. To such men the 
 hour of revolution sounds a hopeful note. There 
 were, no doubt, men in such a mood in 1857, who 
 reflected that the Centenary of Plassey was at hand, 
 and recalled with secret satisfaction the prophecy 
 that the hundi'edth year of British rule was to see 
 its close. 
 
 E a
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 The Native Akmy 
 
 The native army, with which Lord Canning had to 
 deal, had been winning its laurels for a century. The 
 French and English, ranging themselves on opposite 
 sides in the War of the Austrian Succession, had 
 carried their quarrel to the Coromandel Coast, and 
 had soon learnt the valuable secret that native troops, 
 disciplined and led by European officers, might be 
 effectively employed against a native or a European 
 foe. The English had turned the discovery to good 
 account, and, when Clive started to rescue Calcutta 
 from Siraj-ud-daula and to win his great victory at 
 Plassey, he led with him, besides his 900 English 
 soldiers, a well-drilled force of 1200 Sepoys. Since 
 then the Sepoy army had shown its mettle on a 
 hundred well-fought fields, it had carried the stan- 
 dards of England to victory against the greatest 
 armies and most famous commanders of the East — 
 before the ramparts of Seringapatam, in the forest 
 swamps of Burma, on the banks of the Sutlej, in 
 the burning plains of Sind. It had enabled Wellesley 
 to crush the Marathas at Assaye, and Gough to 
 shatter the Sikh battalions at Gujarat. It had
 
 LOYALTY OF NATIVE SOLDIERS 69 
 
 shared our reverses as well as our triumphs. Native 
 soldiers had suffered and died by the side of their 
 English comrades on the banks of the Chambal, in 
 the defiles of Kabul, and behind the crumbling earth- 
 works of Jalalabad. 
 
 The English leaders of this force, in its earlier 
 days, appear to have wielded a strange spell over 
 their followers. Eomantic stories are told of the 
 devotion with which the native soldier regarded 
 his European officer, and the chivalrous loyalty with 
 which he obeyed him. On one occasion the Sepoys 
 had stood by Clive against a mutiny of English 
 officers and troops. On another they had, when food 
 was running short, given up their own rations in 
 order that the Europeans of the garrison, less inured 
 than themselves to privation, might not feel the pinch 
 of hunger. 
 
 An honourable record of meritorious service had 
 embodied itself in the tradition that the Sepoy, if 
 properly led, would go anywhere and do anything 
 that his officer enjoined. The officers, on the other 
 hand, were proud of their men, careful of their 
 well-being, confident in their loyalty — a confidence, 
 which, in many instances, was not to be shaken by 
 the clearest evidence, and which cost many lives by 
 the delay of precautions till it was too late to strike 
 a blow. Some signal instances, however, had proved 
 that the Sepoy was capable of a mutinous mood. At 
 Vellore, in 1806, discontent — aroused by certain inno- 
 vations in drill and dress, which were regarded as
 
 70 EARL CANNING 
 
 a menace to caste and religion, and aided, probably, 
 by Tipti Sahib's family, who were detained there — 
 had shown itself in overt insubordination. In a few 
 hours Gillespie's Horse Artillery, galloping from Arcot, 
 had brought the offenders to account, and military 
 order had been vindicated by a sudden and terrible 
 retribution. 
 
 Eighteen years later, on the occasion of the first 
 Burmese War, a native regiment, the 47th, alarmed 
 lest the vicissitudes of the journey to Burma might 
 imperil the integrity of the terms of their engage- 
 ment, refused to march. Discipline was again sternly 
 asserted. A sudden discharge of artillery swept 
 the ranks of the offenders ; the surviving leaders 
 were hanged, and the name of the guilty regiment 
 disappeared from the Army List. 
 
 Subsequent events had not tended to improve the 
 temper of the Sepoy, or diminish the grounds of 
 disaffection. The conquests of Wellesley, Hastings, 
 and Dalhousie had enlarged the area in which the 
 Sepoy was bound to serve without the extra allowance 
 granted for foreign service. The victories, which the 
 Sepoy helped to win, were thus turned to his dis- 
 advantage. The ill-feeling had on more occasions 
 than one assumed a dangerous form. The 34th 
 Regiment, ordered to Sind, had refused to march 
 beyond Firozpur without the usual addition to its 
 pay. Several other regiments had followed the 
 example. The Government was afraid or unable 
 to strike the necessary blow ; and though the 34th
 
 SEPOY DISCONTENT 7 1 
 
 Regiment was ultimately struck out of the Army List, 
 the Sepoy had learned the mischievous lesson that 
 insubordination might enjoy impunity and even effect 
 its object. 
 
 The conquest of the Punjab once more raised the 
 question of the extra allowance for foreign service. 
 In 1849 two regiments of the Army of Occupation 
 showed overt signs of discontent. A soldier of nerve 
 and resolution was, happily, on the spot to meet the 
 emergency. Sir Colin Campbell's mood was not 
 encouraging to incipient mutineers, and the difficulty, 
 for the moment, passed away. 
 
 In December of the same year General Hearsey, an 
 officer destined a few years later to play a prominent 
 part in the opening scene of the Mutiny, found himself 
 confronted by a similar manifestation. In January of 
 1850 the 66th N.I. broke out at Govindgarh, the fort 
 which dominated Amritsar, the sacred city of the 
 Sikhs. The outbreak was promptly crushed by some 
 native Cavalry which, luckily, stood firm. The guilty 
 regiment was disbanded: its name was erased from 
 the Army List, and its place taken by a regiment of 
 Gurkha Hill-men, whose military value was now 
 beginning to be realised. 
 
 At this stage of the story a conflict of opinion 
 between the Governor-General and the Commander-in- 
 Chief tended to obscure the merits of the controversy, 
 and to impede the application of remedial measures. 
 Neither Lord Dalhousie nor Sir Charles Napier were 
 men to sleep upon their rights. Napier, in a more
 
 72 EARL CANNING 
 
 than usually independent mood, thought proper to 
 rescind a departmental order, which had been passed 
 in 1845 as to some details of the Sepoys' pay, and to 
 denounce it as 'impolitic and unjust.' Dalhousie at 
 once responded to the challenge, and in incisive 
 language reproved the attempted encroachment on 
 his authority. Napier, angry and rhetorical, declared 
 that he had acted in ' a moment of great public 
 danger,' and that he was dealing with 'an army 
 of 40,000 men, infected with a mutinous spirit.' 
 Dalhousie denied the mutinous spirit and derided 
 the alleged danger. The result was to commit Dal- 
 housie to the theory that the condition of the native 
 army was satisfactory. He received, however, some 
 serious warnings as to the soundness of such a view. 
 Once again Burma supplied the occasion. In the 
 second Burma War the 38th N. I., a distinguished 
 regiment, was invited to embark for Arakan. Such 
 a journey was beyond the terms of its engagement. 
 It would imperil caste. The men declined to go. 
 Dalhousie was unable to compel them. They were 
 in their right. The Great Lord Sahib was known, in 
 soldiers' circles, to have suffered a repulse. Such 
 triumphs are dangerous to those who win them. 
 The Sepoy was tasting the pleasure of having his 
 own way, and was learning how to get it. The 
 difficulty was one of the troublesome legacies which 
 Dalhousie bequeathed to his successor. When Lord 
 Canning arrived in India, it had become acute. The 
 conquest of Pegu necessitated a permanent Burma
 
 THE BURMA DIFFICULTY 73 
 
 garrison ; but only a twelfth part of the Bengal Army- 
 was available for foreign service. The rest could 
 refuse to cross the sea. The land journey to Burma 
 was practically impossible. The problem pressed for 
 solution. Of the six regiments available for general 
 service, three were in Pegu, and would have shortly 
 to be relieved : the other three had but recently 
 returned, and could not be again called upon for such 
 unwelcome employment. Lord Canning appealed for 
 help to the Madras Government, whose army did not, 
 by the terms of enlistment, enjoy the exemption from 
 service across the sea. But the Madras Government 
 objected that the general employment of its troops 
 as a garrison for Burma would render the army 
 unpopular, check enlistment, and impair the morale 
 and discipline of the force. Thus foiled. Lord Canning 
 resolved that the only course was to act in the 
 direction which had, several years before, been in- 
 dicated by the Directors — to assimilate the terms 
 of enlistment for the whole Bengal Army to those 
 in force in the Bombay and Madras Armies and in 
 the six ' General Service ' regiments of Bengal. It 
 was decreed, accordingly, that, for the future, the 
 terms of recruitment for the whole of the Bengal 
 army would involve the obligation of service beyond 
 the sea. The announcement produced no manifestation 
 of disapproval, and Lord Canning wrote home in the 
 autumn of 1856 that there was no symptom that the 
 change was unpopular, or that the Sepoys, enlisted on 
 the old termSj regarded it as a first step towards
 
 74 EARL CANNING 
 
 breaking faith with themselves. There is reason, 
 however, to believe that the measure was unfavourably 
 regarded by the Bengal Army and the classes from 
 which it was recruited. That army was, to a large 
 extent, a hereditary body. The existing Sepoys 
 regarded the future position of their sons with as 
 much anxiety as their own. Sir Henry Lawi'ence, 
 writing early in May, 1857, reported that the en- 
 listment oath ' for general service ' was frightening 
 the Sepoys and deterring the Rajput recruits. It 
 is possible that this, among other topics, was urged 
 on the Sepoys by the propagandists of disaffection as 
 a ground for the belief that their privileges, caste and 
 religion were not as secure as heretofore. The un- 
 easiness of the native army may have been increased 
 by the rumour that the Government contemplated 
 a large addition to the Sikh troops in their employ, 
 and would thus become, to some degree, independent 
 of the army, by which hitherto its Empire had been 
 extended and sustained. 
 
 A source of chronic danger existed in the personnel 
 of the Bengal Ai'my. It was mainly recruited from 
 districts in Oudh, in which Brahmans and Bajputs 
 form the bulk of the fighting population. The men 
 were of fine, stalwart physique, such as a commanding 
 officer naturally selects as promising material. The 
 orders of Government, accordingly, which had from 
 time to time enjoined the necessity of composing 
 regiments of diverse castes and classes, had been too 
 generally overlooked. The son stepped proudly and
 
 THE BENGAL ARMY 75 
 
 gladly into the father's place, and found himself 
 surrounded by kinsmen. The result was that two- 
 thirds of the Bengal Army, and of the ' Contingent 
 Forces ' maintained by Holkar, Sindhia and other 
 semi-independent States, consisted of men drawn 
 from the same locality, inspired with the same ideas, 
 and bound together by strong ties of creed, custom, 
 and feeling. In one of the regiments near Calcutta, 
 in which in 1857 disaffection first disclosed itself, 
 it was ascertained that, out of a total of 1083 men, 
 more than 800 were Hindus, and of these no less than 
 2,2)^^ including 41 officers, were Brahmans. An army 
 so composed could scarcely fail to engender forces 
 subversive of its discipline as a military machine, 
 and calculated to give to the sentiments of any 
 influential section the dangerous universality of an 
 epidemic. The seriousness of such a state of things 
 was enhanced by the fact that the Bengal Army 
 garrisoned a territory which stretched from the Trans- 
 Indus frontier on the west to Pegu and the Malay 
 Peninsula on the east, and that it outnumbered the com- 
 bined numbers of the other two Presidential armies. In 
 1856 it consisted of seventy-four regiments of Infantry, 
 ten regiments of regular, and eighteen of irregular 
 Cavalry. Part of the Bombay Army, also, was re- 
 cruited from the same districts in Oudh, and shared 
 the susceptibilities of their fellow-tribesmen in Bengal. 
 It is possible, also, that the annexation of Oudh 
 may have fostered disaffection in the native soldiery, 
 largely recruited from that country. Some, no doubt,
 
 76 EARL CANNING 
 
 felt aggrieved at the extinction of a dynasty, which, 
 whatever its offences, had the merit of making Oudh 
 a kingdom. When the order of effacement came, the 
 shortcomings of the deposed Sovereign — his debased 
 surroundings — the outrages of his officials — the reign 
 of cruelty, impotence, and wrong — passed, no doubt, 
 into a generous oblivion. A soldier, whom oppression 
 scarcely touched and certainly did not shock, would 
 feel but languid enthusiasm for the new and impersonal 
 regime, which replaced the picturesque splendours of 
 an Oriental Court by the dull preciseness of English 
 administration ; and which lowered his personal status 
 by bringing within the reach of the community at 
 large legal rights which had previously been the 
 privilege of the soldiery. 
 
 In the army itself there was a serious deficiency of 
 European officers. Lord Dalhousie's administrative 
 system necessitated the free employment of European 
 officers for civil work. A semi-military, semi-civil 
 regime answered the wants of a newly-conquered 
 Province. It was cheap ; it was effective ; it rendered 
 the head of the organisation more completely master 
 of the situation — to do what he pleased, unchecked by 
 technicalities. But it involved a large reduction in 
 the staff of European officers doing duty with their 
 regiments. In April, 1857, Lord Canning had written 
 to England an urgent request for an addition to the 
 officers in each Infantry regiment — four for each 
 European, two for each native regiment. He ex- 
 plained that the application was submitted in a
 
 DETERIORATION OF THE NATIVE FORCE 77 
 
 bald shape because 'the necessity of immediate 
 increase is urgent, and I have no time to go into 
 the complicated question of our military wants gene- 
 rally.' An influential party in England, however, 
 deprecated any such addition in native regiments as 
 tending to lead the officers to form a class apart, and 
 to live a too completely European life, and so to lose 
 touch of their troops. 
 
 Administrative changes, moreover, introduced with 
 the object of improved discipline and efficiency, had 
 lowered the status of the officers in native regiments, 
 and had substituted for a small body of European 
 officers, specially adapted to their work and closely 
 associated with their men, the conventional staff of 
 an English regiment. A system of appeal to Head- 
 quarters had grown up, which taught the Sepoy the 
 dangerous lesson that his officer's decision was liable 
 to be revised and set aside. 
 
 Altogether it may be said that many causes had 
 tended to undermine the Sepoy's respect for authority, 
 his loyalty to his officers, his sense of discipline, and 
 to accustom him to the idea of carrying his own way 
 against his superior. All these bad influences are 
 more or less conjectural; but there was one evil, 
 affecting the native soldiers before the Mutiny, which 
 admitted of arithmetical demonstration. There were 
 too many of them. 
 
 In 1838, when the Afghan War broke out, the 
 native army was under 154,000 men. Lord Hardinge's 
 preparations to meet the Sikhs had raised the numbers
 
 78 EARL CANNING 
 
 to 245,000. At the close of Dalhousie's reign, the 
 numbers were still 333,000. On the other hand, the 
 European force had been gradually lowered from 
 48,709 men in 1852 to 45,322 at the moment of 
 Lord Canning^s arrival. He found, accordingly, an 
 approximate ratio of one European to five native 
 soldiers. In the Artillery there were more than 
 12,000 native Gunners, as compared with 6500 
 Europeans. The European force was very unequally 
 distributed, a preponderating number being employed 
 in garrisoning newly-acquired territories, the Punjab, 
 Sind and Oudh. Twenty years before there had 
 been no less than six European regiments between 
 Calcutta and Allahabad. In Dalhousie's time there 
 were only two, and when the Mutiny broke out, Lord 
 Canning found that, for the 750 miles between 
 Barrackpur and Agra, there was only a single 
 European regiment, stationed about half-way, at 
 Dinapur. 
 
 This numerical disproportion had occasioned anxiety 
 to Lord Dalhousie, and he had brought the subject 
 strongly before the Home Government. In 1853, 
 Parliament had sanctioned an increase of the European 
 local force from 1 2,000 to 20,000 men. Unfortunately, 
 advantage had been taken of this permission only to 
 the extent of an addition of three regiments. Under 
 the pressure of the Crimean War, two European 
 regiments from the Indian garrison had been de- 
 manded, a request which provoked a vehement protest 
 from the Governor-General. Such a transfer would,
 
 DIMINUTION OF EN GUSH FORCE 79 
 
 he objected, give rise to an impression that in our 
 conflict with Russia we had grappled with too 
 powerful an antagonist : it would reduce the European 
 force below the standard recognised as safe in ordinary 
 times. 'If, further,' he added, 'we should be called to 
 despatch an army to the Persian Gulf . . . then indeed 
 I shall DO longer feel, and can no longer express, 
 the same confidence as before that the security and 
 stability of our position in the East will remain 
 unassailed.' 
 
 Despite this protest, two European regiments were 
 transferred in 1 854. They were never replaced ; 
 and when the Mutiny broke out, another important 
 fraction of the European force was engaged in the 
 Persian expedition. 
 
 One of Dalhousie's last acts in India had been to 
 lay on his Council table a series of Minutes, the 
 general purport of which was a reduction of Sepoy 
 regiments, an increase of European regiments, an 
 addition to the Irregular and Gurkha forces, and 
 of the European officers with native regiments. The 
 warning fell on unheeding; ears : the Minutes were 
 pigeon-holed, and never reached Parliament or the 
 English public. Some of them were irretrievably 
 mislaid. The subject dropped out of notice; and the 
 outbreak of 1857 found the Government with an 
 European force wholly inadequate to meet the barest 
 requirements of the situation. 
 
 Dalhousie's protest did not stand alone. Sir Henry 
 Lawrence in 1855 had written in no faltering terms of
 
 8o EARL CANNING 
 
 the defects which at that time impaired the efficiency 
 of the native army. He called attention to the 
 dangerous numerical disproportion of the native to 
 the European force. He insisted on, the danger of 
 high military commands being entrusted to men 
 whose only claim rested on seniority, and whose 
 incompetence was, in many instances, notorious — 
 on the ' sullen discontent ' which the existing rules 
 excited in aspiring native soldiers — the inadequate 
 pay — the scanty and long-deferred pension, the narrow 
 possibilities which bounded the ambition of ' the man 
 who lives and rots without hope.' He pointed out 
 how 50,000 soldiers of the King of Oudh, turned 
 adrift for no fault of their own, and an equal number 
 of his dependents, were all looking to the British 
 Government for compensation — and how Oudh, with 
 its 246 forts and innumerable smaller strongholds, 
 hidden in impenetrable jungles, afforded a congenial 
 refuge for despair and disloyalty. ' We shall be 
 unwise,' he said, 'to wait for the occasion. Come 
 it will, unless anticipated.' The Sibylline leaves 
 were scattered to the winds, and even while he 
 wrote, the hours, during which anticipation would be 
 possible, were passing rapidly away.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 Mutiny 
 
 Theke are periods in history, it has been said, which 
 resemble the moments before the rising of the curtain 
 on a stage where some thrilling drama is about to be 
 enacted. We seem to hear the muttered voices, the 
 hurried steps, the bustle of preparation on the still 
 hidden scene. There is a nervous excitement — a sense 
 of impending catastrophe : the common acts of life 
 gain a strange, terrifying significance : common words 
 mean more than meets the ear. The heroes, the 
 victims, the villains of the piece, have not begun their 
 parts : but the thrill of expectation is strong ; tragedy 
 already fills the air. 
 
 It is with some such feeling as this that we watch 
 the close of Lord Canning's first year in India, and 
 the fateful 1857, with its store of troubles, opening 
 upon a world where all things still promised to run 
 their common course. 
 
 And now the first whiff- of the coming tempest 
 broke upon an untroubled atmosphere. It had been 
 decided that the old-fashioned musket should be 
 superseded by the Enfield rifle. Depots for in- 
 struction in the use of the new weapon had been 
 
 F
 
 82 EARL CANNING 
 
 formed at three stations : Dumdum, a cantonment 
 in the neighbourhood of Calcutta ; Ambala and 
 Sialkot, at the foot of the Himalaya in Upper 
 India. Large numbers of cartridges for the new rifle 
 had been manufactured at Fort William in Calcutta, 
 and sent up country for use at the two northern 
 depots. Another supply had been manufactured at 
 Meerut, the headquarters of the Bengal Artillery. 
 None had, however, as yet been issued to the troops. 
 A chance altercation between a high-caste Sepoy and 
 and a low-caste employ^ at Dumdum brought to light 
 the astounding fact that the material used in lubri- 
 cating the new cartridge consisted partially of the fat 
 of cows and pigs, a substance which neither Hindu 
 nor Muhammadan could touch without pollution. The 
 story spread like wild-fire. It became at once the 
 topic of the Sepoy's talk at the neighbouring can- 
 tonment of Barrackpur, where four native regiments 
 were quartered. The Sepoys were seriously alarmed ; 
 and the Sepoys were a body so constituted that 
 a sentiment, felt acutely by any of its members, 
 flashed through the entire body with the swiftness 
 and force of an electric shock. There is reason to 
 believe that, before Lord Canning's day, the native 
 soldiers of Upper India were haunted by the idea 
 that the Government contemplated their conversion to 
 Christianity by the summary process of rendering 
 them outcasts from their own religion. In the first 
 days of trouble at Lucknow a Brahman ofiicer of high 
 standing assured Sir H. Lawrence that for ten years
 
 PANIC IN NATIVE ARMY 83 
 
 the Government had entertained such a design, and, 
 when Sir Henry reasoned with him, stuck to his 
 opinion, saying, ' I tell you what everybody says.' 
 Such an idea would not seem grotesque to men 
 whose notions of religion rested more on customary 
 ceremonial than on sentiment or dogma, and with 
 whom acceptance by the vanquished of the creed 
 of the conqueror was a not unfamiliar incident of 
 conquest. It now received a tremendous impetus 
 from the discovery that the Government was about 
 to furnish the soldier, as part of his equipment, with 
 something which Hindu and Muhammadan alike re- 
 garded it as sacrilege to touch. Their rulers were 
 contriving, had actually contrived, their religious and 
 social ruin. Whenever, from Calcutta to Peshawar, 
 a group of Sepo^^s gathered round a camp fire to 
 eat their meal, or chatted on the march, the tidings 
 found ready belief ; and, owing to the close ties 
 between the Bengal army and the Oudh population, 
 every pang which the Sepoy felt vibrated through 
 a hundred villages, where the fate of father or husband 
 or brother was keenly felt and eagerly discussed. 
 Such anxieties soon mount into panic, and early in 
 1857 the Sepoy army of Bengal was panic-stricken. 
 
 At Barrackpur there was an outburst of incendiarism 
 in the native quarters — -midnight meetings — excited 
 talk — despatching of letters to other regiments — 
 every symptom of alarm and agitation. A hundred 
 miles to the north the cantonment of Berhampur kept 
 guard over Murshidabad, a former capital of Bengal, 
 
 F %
 
 «4 EARL CANNING 
 
 and now the home of one of India's discrowned 
 magnates. There were no European troops. An 
 Infantry regiment — the 19th,— a corps of irregular 
 Cavalry and a battery of Artillery, composed the 
 native force. Here, before the close of February, 
 the excitement became acute. The 19th broke into 
 open mutiny. The men i*efused. the copper caps 
 tendered to them for a parade, and presently rushed 
 to their arms. The Colonel, after vainly endeavouring 
 to persuade or intimidate them into submission, and 
 not too confident of the support of the rest of the 
 force, was compelled to purchase their return to 
 discipline by a concession which was equivalent to 
 surrender to a mutinous demonstration. 
 
 At Calcutta, meanwhile, prompt measures had. been 
 taken to allay the excitement. An order was pro- 
 mulgated, informing the troops at Barrackpur that 
 they would be allowed to purchase for themselves 
 the ingredients for greasing their cartridges. General 
 Hearsey, the General of the Division, an officer 
 thoroughly familiar with native feeling, addressed 
 the brigade and explained to the troops the futility 
 of their alarms. His explanations fell on unbelieving 
 ears. The fact that the Government had sent to 
 Burma for an English regiment, and that the 
 regiment which had misbehaved at Murshidabad 
 was under orders to come down to headquarters to 
 receive sentence for its offence, increased the general 
 alarm. 
 
 The suspicion, originally felt about the grease used
 
 OUTBREAK AT BARRACKPUR 85 
 
 for lubricating the new cartridge, was now transferred 
 to the glazed paper of which it was made. It was in 
 vain that its innocence was demonstrated. Terror 
 will not be convinced. At the close of March, a more 
 pronounced outburst of insubordination occurred at 
 Barrackpur. In front of the Quarter Guard of the 
 34th N. I., one of the native regiments there stationed, 
 a young Sepoy, in a frenzy of excitement, strode 
 boldly up and down, inviting his companions to 
 rebellion. He fired upon an European officer, as 
 he was galloping to the scene of disorder, brought 
 down his horse, and grappled with him on the 
 ground. In the scuffle which ensued, no native, 
 except a single Muhammadan, came to the assistance 
 of their officer. The native officer of the Quarter 
 Guard and his men looked on unmoved. Some of 
 them even joined in the assault. The arrival on 
 the scene of the General of the Division and his 
 daring and impressive behaviour restored discipline 
 for the moment. But it was evident that the regi- 
 ment was completely demoralised, and that further 
 troubles might be expected. The disbanding of the 
 19th N.I. was, however, effected without disturbance. 
 The dismissed soldiers went away, cheering their 
 General, protesting contrition, and vowing vengeance 
 against the 34th Regiment as the instigators of their 
 misbehaviour. 
 
 Meanwhile, at Ambala, 1000 miles away, an inci- 
 dent had occurred in the Commander-in-Chief's camp 
 which showed how widely the alarm about the new
 
 86 EARL CANNING 
 
 cartridges had spread. The 36th Regiment, which 
 formed General Anson's escort on his march, had 
 a detachment in the rifle depot. Two Sepoys from 
 this detachment visited the General's camp, and 
 learned with horror that their comrades regarded them 
 as Christians and outcasts, and refused to eat with 
 them. The men reported the incident to Lieutenant 
 Martineau, the Musketry Instructor at the deput, with 
 tears in their eyes. If this, they argued, could occur 
 in the Commander-in-Chief's camp, what would be 
 their fate when they returned to their homes 1 They 
 were ruined. 
 
 Then the Commander-in-Chief attempted to allay 
 their anxiety. Summoning the native officers before 
 him, he assured them that the Government harboured 
 no design against then- caste, and that their fears 
 were baseless. The native officers, respectful, but 
 unconvinced, pointed out in reply that, however 
 groundless it might be, the story was universally 
 believed in the country, and that, though they were 
 ready to obey any order to use the new cartridge, its 
 use would render them outcasts. General Anson 
 then raised the question, whether it might not be well 
 to meet an irrational panic by the simple expedient 
 of breaking up the deput and dispersing the detach- 
 ments to their regiments. Upon consideration, how- 
 ever, Lord Canning decided that it would be a mistake 
 to postpone the target drill. On no possible ground 
 could objection to the cartridge paper be justified. 
 ' If we give way upon this,' he wrote, ' I do not see
 
 INCENDIARISM 87 
 
 where we can take our stand.' The difficulty in the 
 future would be only increased by delay. The new 
 drill, accordingly, was ordered to proceed. The Sepoys 
 submitted ; but nightly fires in the cantonments indi- 
 cated the prevalence of disturbing influences and an 
 agitated mood in the soldiery. Night after night some 
 military building was found to have been mysteriously 
 fired. All attempts to discover the origin of the 
 conflagration were unsuccessful. 
 
 The tide of trouble continued to rise. One alarming 
 rumour followed another. At Cawnpur, where grain 
 prices happened to be ruling high, some consignments 
 of flour, forwarded in Government boats, were offered 
 to the troops. The proffered boon was refused, and the 
 sale was at once arrested by the report that the grain 
 had been ground in European mills, and that the dust 
 of cow bones had been mixed with it for the purpose of 
 polluting it. Not a Sepoy would touch the suspected 
 supply. In the surrounding country the general un- 
 easiness was enhanced by the mysterious transmission, 
 from village to village, of chupattis — flat cakes of flour 
 — the meaning of which has never been elucidated, 
 but which were admitted on all hands to herald the 
 advent of stirring times. At Meerut, a religious 
 mendicant, mounted on an elephant and followed by 
 a long retinue, riding through the streets of the city, 
 stimulated the public excitement. Nana Sahib, 
 the adopted son of the ex-Peshwa, whose estate of 
 Bithur was but a few miles from Lucknow, was 
 travelling from city to city, and earl}^ in itS57 paid
 
 88 EARL CANNING 
 
 visits to Delhi, Lucknow, Kalpi across the Jumna, 
 and other important centres of native society. In 
 the last week of April the latent fire blazed out. Out 
 of ninety troopers of the 3rd Native Cavalry at Meerut, 
 who were called upon to receive their cartridges for 
 a parade, all but five refused to touch them. In 
 vain their Colonel expostulated, upbraided, explained. 
 The men were firm. The parade was broken up, a 
 court-martial ordered, the due complement of officers — 
 all natives — was assembled to investigate this flagrant 
 breach of discipline. 
 
 At Calcutta it appeared as if the excitement was 
 subsiding. There had been no more outbreaks at 
 Barrackpur. The mutinous Sepoy of the 34th N.I. 
 and the native officer of the Quarter Guard had been 
 hanged in presence of all the troops of the can- 
 tonment, the latter with his last breath confessing 
 his guilt and warning his comrades against disloyal 
 behaviour. So satisfied was General Hearsey with 
 the state of the cantonment that, on May 7th, he 
 reported that he no longer required the European 
 troops, which had been sent there to guard against 
 disturbance ; and the Government were preparing to 
 send back the 84th Regiment, which, on the first 
 occurrence of disturbance, had been brought over 
 from Burma. 
 
 At Dumdum the detachment in the rifle depot had 
 proceeded to ball practice without any symptoms of 
 disaffection. At Sialkot the new rifle drill was 
 proceeding quietly. Sir J. Lawrence, who visited
 
 TROUBLES AT LUC KNOW 89 
 
 that station in May for the purpose of seeing the 
 new weapon, as well as of judging of the temper 
 of the Sepoys, reported to Lord Canning that ' all 
 were highly pleased with the new musket and quite 
 ready to adopt it ; ' ' The officers assured him that no 
 bad feeling had been shown, and he could perceive 
 no hesitation or reluctance on the part of the Sepoys.' 
 From Ambala General Barnard wrote in favourable 
 terms of the behaviour of the troops. It thus seemed 
 that at the central points, the rifle depots, the difficulty 
 had been tided over. At Meerut, the insubordination 
 of the 3rd Cavalry provoked no imitators. The 
 threatening storm seemed to have passed, and Lord 
 Canning began to turn his thoughts to current topics 
 of administration. Presently came bad news from 
 Lucknow. Early in May a regiment of Oudh 
 Irregular Cavalry had shown symptoms of dis- 
 affection. The men refused to use the cartridges, 
 and had broken into open mutiny. Sir H. Lawrence 
 had at once adopted vigorous measures of repression, 
 and, hurrying to the spot, had succeeded in disarming 
 the regiment. Symptoms of disturbance, however, 
 continued. Incendiarism was rife in the native 
 quarters, and Sir H. Lawrence satisfied himself, 
 by personal intercourse with the men, that the moving 
 cause of the disturbance was the conviction of the 
 native soldiery that the English Government con- 
 templated their compulsory conversion. 
 
 At Calcutta the punishment of the 34th Regiment 
 had been considered with that leisurely exactness
 
 90 EARL CANNING 
 
 which Lord Canning's temperament demanded, and 
 which the importance of the matter justified. It 
 was not till the end of April that the sentence of 
 disbandment was announced. It was, confessedly, 
 a mild sentence. Lord Cannii.g's assailants are never 
 weary of denouncing its inadequacj^ as one of the 
 causes of subsequent military insubordination. But 
 there is no ground for supposing that the careful mode- 
 ration exhibited by the Government at the outburst 
 of the Mutiny encouraged its spread. On the contrary, 
 the first great act of rebellion was the immediate result 
 of a severe sentence carried out, with every degrading 
 accessory, at Meerut. Lord Canning himself, reviewing 
 the case in the light of a subsequent outbreak at 
 Lucknow, thus summed up the argument for a policy of 
 leniency: — ' I wish to say that it is my conviction that 
 the measures which have been taken in dealing with 
 mutineers have not been too mild. I have no doubt 
 that many rank offenders have not had their deserts, 
 but I know of no instance in which the punishment 
 of any individual could, with unquestioned justice, 
 have been made more severe : and I am not disposed 
 to doubt the efficacy of the measures because the 
 present ferment, in running its course over the land, 
 after being checked in Bengal, has shown itself in 
 Oudh and the North- West. I would meet it everywhere 
 with the same deliberately measured punishments ; 
 picking out the leaders, wherever this is possible, for 
 the severest penalties of military law ; visiting the 
 common herd with disbandment, but carefully exempt-
 
 MUTINY AT MEERUT 9 1 
 
 ing those whose fidelity, innocence, or. perhaps, timely 
 repentance, is fully proved.' 
 
 The subject was still under discussion when, on 
 May 1 2th, there came news from Upper India whose 
 transcendent importance at once revolutionised the 
 situation. The station of Meerut, some forty miles 
 north-east of Delhi^ was one of the very few in 
 India where adequate means existed for quelling 
 an outbreak of native troops. There was a regiment 
 of English Dragoons, a battalion of the 60th Rifles, 
 and a strong force of Horse and Foot Artillery, far 
 more than sufficient to deal with the three native 
 regiments who were also quartered in the cantonment. 
 The court-martial on the eighty-five men of the 
 3rd N. C. who had refused to take their cartridges, 
 had by this time completed its inquiry. The men 
 were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. The 
 sentence was carried out with impressive solemnity. 
 On a morning, presently to become historical — the 
 heavens sombre with rolling clouds — the brigade 
 assembled to hear their comrades' doom — to see them 
 stripped of their uniform and secured with felons' 
 manacles. The scene produced intense emotion. 
 Resistance was impossible. There were entreaties, 
 tears, imprecations, as the prisoners were marched 
 away to jail. Discipline had been vindicated by 
 a terrible example. The next day was Sunday. In 
 the evening, as the European Riflemen were gathering 
 for Church, a sudden movement took place in the 
 native quarters. The Cavalry dashed oft" to the jail
 
 92 EARL CANNING 
 
 to rescue their imprisoned companions. The two 
 Infantry regiments, after a moment's wavering, threw 
 in their lot with the mutineers. Then ensued a scene 
 such as, unhappily, became too familiar in Upper 
 India within the next few weeks. Officers were shot, 
 houses fired, Europeans — men, women, and children, 
 wherever found, were put to the sword. A crowd of 
 miscreants from the jail, suddenly set free, made a 
 long night of pillage. Meanwhile, paralysed by the 
 sudden catastrophe, the English General of the Division 
 and the Brigadier of the Station forebore to act, re- 
 fused to let their subordinates act, and the Sepoys 
 who had fled, a disorganised mob, in different direc- 
 tions, soon found themselves gathering on the march 
 for Delhi. 
 
 In the early morning at Delhi, where courts and 
 offices had already begun the day's work, a line of 
 horsemen were descried galloping on the Meerut road. 
 They found their way into the city, into the presence 
 of the King ; cut down the European officials, and, as 
 they were gradually reinforced by the arrival of fresh 
 companions, commenced a general massacre of the 
 Christian population. 
 
 A brave telegraph clerk, as the mutineers burst in 
 upon him, had just time to flash the dreadful tidings 
 to Lahore. Before evening, the native regiments fired 
 upon their officers and joined the mutineers. After 
 weary hours of hope for the help from Meerut which 
 never came, the British officers in command were 
 compelled to recognise that the only chance of safety
 
 FIRST DAY OF MUTINY AT DELHI 93 
 
 lay in flight. Ere the day closed, every European 
 who had risen that morning in Delhi, was dead, or 
 awaiting death, or wandering about the country in 
 the desperate endeavour to reach a place of safety. 
 
 A day dark with disaster was, however, illumined 
 by the first of those heroic acts which will make the 
 siege of Delhi immortal. The insurgents had their 
 first taste of the quality of the race whose ascendancy 
 they had elected to assail. Lieutenant Willoughby, 
 the officer in charge of the Magazine, and eight gallant 
 companions, resolved, early in the day, that, if they 
 could not defend their invaluable supply of ammu- 
 nition, they would destroy it, though its destruction 
 would almost certainly involve their own. For hours 
 they defended their stronghold against an overpowering 
 crowd of assailants. The train was laid : the sergeant 
 who was to fire it stood ready: Willoughby took a 
 last look out upon the Meerut road: the assailants 
 were swarming on the walls. The word was spoken : 
 a vast column of flame and smoke shot upward. 
 Two thousand of the assailants were blown into the 
 air. The thunder of that explosion announced to the 
 mutineers that one great object in the seizure of Delhi 
 had escaped their grasp. Was it an opening note of 
 victory, or the knell of an abortive insurrection ? 
 
 The mutiny began badly for the English. Its first 
 great episode was one which, least of any in its 
 history, can be remembered with satisfaction. Eng- 
 lishmen for the most part, during that dread ordeal, 
 rose nobly to the occasion ; but those, whom circum-
 
 94 EARL CANNING 
 
 stances called to play a leading part in this first scene, 
 sank below the average level of promptitude, energy, 
 and daring. 
 
 Fifty years before, an outbreak at Vellore, in the 
 Madras Presidency — curiously similar in the character 
 of its origin — had, fortunately, found a man equal to 
 the occasion. In a few hours Gillespie, who com- 
 manded a regiment of British Cavalry at a neigh- 
 bouring station, had come galloping to the rescue. 
 The retribution, which his troopers dealt to the 
 mutineers, had crushed the outbreak and taught the 
 native army a long-remembered lesson. There was 
 no such spirit now in the Meerut head-quarters. 
 Those, on whose firmness and promptitude salvation 
 depended, were neither firm nor prompt. Had their 
 example been followed — had other Englishmen, at 
 critical moments, shown the same passivity, want 
 of resource, the same anxiety to secure their own 
 position to the neglect of others still more endangered, 
 the Mutiny must have assumed a difierent. a far more 
 serious aspect — our hold on Upper India must have been 
 lost, and recovered — if indeed it proved recoverable — 
 by a struggle the dimensions of which it is impossible 
 to conjecture. On the other hand, a Nicholson or 
 Havelock would have been presently thundering on 
 the track of the mutineers, and have brought them, 
 before they were many miles on their road, to a 
 swift and terrible account. Order, unbroken, would 
 have reigned in Delhi : the English would have held 
 a fort and arsenal from which they could have defied
 
 CONDITION OF BENGAL 95 
 
 any combination of assailants, and the propagandists 
 of disloyalt}^, from one end of India to the other, 
 would have been cowering, in terrified silence, 
 before the signal punishment which had overtaken 
 the first attempt at rebellion. Not so had the book 
 of fate been written. The history of many months of 
 struggle, suffering and sacrifice, may be summarised 
 as a prolonged effort to repair the disastrous con- 
 sequences of this ineffable shortcoming. Nobly was 
 it to be retrieved. 
 
 The seizure of Delhi severed the great British line 
 of communication which runs straight across Upper 
 India for 1500 miles from Calcutta to Peshawar. As 
 his eye followed it on the map, Lord Canning 
 realised profoundly the huge distances with which 
 he had to deal, the defencelessness of the European 
 position, in case the movement initiated at Delhi 
 and JMeerut should spread, and the many grave 
 possibilities which the position presented of further 
 trouble. Delhi, the immediate scene of action, was 
 900 miles away. The great Province of Bengal was 
 destitute of European troops. There were in the 
 Province 2400 European soldiers, as against a native 
 force of more than 29,000. A single English regi- 
 ment was distributed between the fort in Calcutta 
 and the neighbouring cantonments. A traveller, who 
 at that time had journeyed up the line, would have 
 found no other European troops till he reached 
 Dinapur, 380 miles away; and the English regiment 
 there stationed had enough to do in watching four
 
 g6 EARL CANNING 
 
 native regiments and the neighbouring city of Patna, 
 itself a hotbed of Muhammadan fanaticism and a 
 dangerous nucleus of Muhammadan intrigue. It 
 was a portion of the line of communication at 
 which difficulties were likely to occur, and where, 
 in fact, the gravest perils did subsequently present 
 themselves. 
 
 A little further to the westward our imagined 
 traveller would have come to the holy city of 
 Benares, the stronghold of Brahmanism. Here were 
 three native regiments, without a single European 
 soldier to control them, the excitable inhabitants 
 of the city, or the turbulent population of the sur- 
 rounding country. 
 
 Next on the line of communication was Allahabad, 
 at the junction of the Ganges and Jumna, commanding 
 the eastern entrance of the tract of country which lies 
 between the two rivers — known locally as the Doab — 
 thus dominating the North- Western Provinces, the 
 neighbourino; districts of Oudh to the north and the 
 Rajputana frontier on the southern bend of the 
 Jumna. Its position gave it enormous military sig- 
 nificance ; but Allahabad was without a European 
 soldier. 
 
 At Cawnpur, on the right bank of the Ganges, 
 140 miles from Allahabad, the traveller would 
 have found four native regiments, and a European 
 force represented by fifty-nine Artillerymen, and a 
 small party of invalids. Its defenceless condition 
 was the more unfortunate, as there was an unusually
 
 THE LINE OF THE JUMNA 97 
 
 large non-combatant population, including several 
 hundreds of women and children. 
 
 At Lucknow, forty-two miles away from Cawnpur, 
 to the north-east, on the other side of the Ganges, 
 in the centre of the newly-annexed Province, were 
 stationed three regiments of native Infantry, one of 
 native Cavalry, and a battery of native Artillery. 
 The European force consisted of a single regiment, 
 H. M.'s 32nd Foot, about 570 strong, and 50 or 60 
 artillerymen. 
 
 Following the course of the Jumna from Allahabad 
 upwards, the traveller would next come to Agra, the 
 capital of the North-Western Provinces ; here were 
 quartered two regiments of native Infantry, one 
 European regiment, and a battery of Artillery. 
 
 One hundred and fifteen miles higher up the stream 
 he would have found Delhi, the head-quarters of the 
 rebellion, with every trace of British domination swept 
 away. Thence, forty-three miles across the Doab, he 
 would have found at Meerut a powerful British force — 
 of all arms — paralysed for the moment, unhappily, by 
 its nerveless commander. Still journeying westward, 
 and crossing the highlands which separate the Indus 
 and Ganges systems, the traveller would at last reach a 
 Province where the disproportion of the European force 
 to the native was less serious. In the Punjab there 
 were some twelve English regiments, numbering about 
 11,000 men. The native regular force numbered 
 36,000, composed of much the same elements as the 
 Sepoy army in other Provinces of Upper India, and
 
 98 EARL CANNING 
 
 suspected of being largely infected with the same 
 disloyal mood. 
 
 There was, besides, a local force of Punjab Irregulars, 
 numbering some 1 3,000 men — distributed for 600 miles 
 along the Indus frontier. To which side would these 
 men incline, supposing that the Sepoys — already more 
 than three to one — turned against the English ? 
 
 Besides the army there was in the Punjab a body of 
 13,000 military police, drawn from the same classes as 
 the Irregulars, and likely to follow them in the matter 
 of loyalty. The English regiments were massed 
 principally about Ambala on the eastern confines 
 of the Province, and in the Peshawar Valley, on its 
 north-western frontier — four regiments at the one 
 and three at the other. Even here the British 
 were outnumbered. At Peshawar the 3000 Euro- 
 peans were confronted with 6000 native troops. 
 The position was in other respects full of anxiety. 
 Within an easy ride was the famous Khaibar Pass 
 and the belt of mountain tribes, untameable, warlike, 
 and nothing loath to seize a favourable opportunity 
 for a raid. Beyond them again was the old Afghan 
 Amir, who, though recently bound by an alliance of 
 friendship with the British Government, had some 
 old scores to settle, some deep grievances to resent, 
 and the dear hope of regaining the Peshawar Valley, 
 of which Ranjit Singh had robbed him. 
 
 Nor was it of Upper India alone that Lord Canning 
 had to think. How would the country southward of 
 the Jumna, the races of Rajputana and Central India,
 
 SPREAD OF THE MUTINY 99 
 
 be affected by the crisis? the Maratha Chieftains, 
 through whose dominions ran the other great line of 
 British communication — that which linked Agra and 
 Bombay ? Would the Gwalior army be friend or foe, 
 and, if foe, could either line of advance be adequately 
 protected from so well-placed an assailant, aided by 
 such important allies as the Kani of Jhansi, burning 
 to avenge her husband's wrongs % How would Holkar's 
 retainers at Indore view the opportunity of striking 
 a blow at their old opponent ? What of Bombay, and 
 the South Maratha Country beyond, where elements 
 of mischief were known to be at work % The answer 
 was not long in coming. Within a few weeks of 
 the seizure of Delhi, Oudh and the North- Western 
 Provinces were practically lost. In one great station 
 after another the Sepoys rose, drove out or massacred 
 the Europeans, pillaged the treasury, turned loose 
 the population of the jails, and marched away in 
 triumph to join the rebel army. The Lieutenant- 
 Governor of the Province was locked up in Agra, 
 and expecting every day to be besieged. Allahabad 
 had been saved by a lucky chance and a bold act, 
 and was held by a hastily extemporised garrison. At 
 Lucknow a British garrison was standing grimly at 
 bay, surrounded by an overwhelming force of besiegers. 
 At Cawnpur a handful of English soldiers, and a 
 multitude of non-combatants, lay at the mercy of 
 Nana Sahib and the huge army that had gathered 
 to his banner. A British force had, indeed, appeared 
 before the walls of Delhi, but only to demonstrate 
 
 G 2
 
 lOO EARL CANNING 
 
 how inadequate were its resources for the siege, and 
 to be obliged to fight hard, day by day, to maintain 
 its position. As week after week went by, and the 
 Mughal capital still offered defiance to the British 
 flag, the crisis intensified and the area of insurrection 
 spread. The Lucknow garrison was in desperate peril: 
 that of Cawnpur was doomed. Oudh had become 
 an enemy's country. Rohilkhand, on the left bank of 
 the Upper Ganges, was a-blaze. At all the great 
 stations of the North-West Provinces — Aligarh, Eta- 
 wah, Mainpuri, Bulandshahr — there had been mutiny. 
 
 In the Punjab, where a prompt blow, struck by 
 Montgomery at Lahore, the vigour and determination 
 of Lawrence, and the military prowess of Nicholson, 
 had hitherto kept the disafiection in check, the temper 
 of the Sepoy army was dangerous. 
 
 On the 3rd of June Sir J. Lawrence wrote to Lord 
 Canning that the whole native army was ready to 
 break out, and that unless a blow were soon struck, 
 the irregulars as a body would follow their example. 
 
 Nicholson and Edwardes at Peshawar had found it 
 necessary to disarm four native regiments there, 
 and another at the neighbouring station of Murdan ; 
 and Nicholson sweeping about the country like the 
 incarnation of vengeance, had struck terror into 
 wavering: hearts. Li the east of the Province the 
 fort of Phillor, an important arsenal, containing much 
 of the siege material destined for use at Delhi, had, 
 happily, been saved. Firozpur, too, another im- 
 portant arsenal, with its priceless magazine, was safe ;
 
 THE RANI of JHANsI lOl 
 
 but the disbanded Sepoys had escaped to swell the 
 rebel ranks at Delhi. In June the Sepoys at Jalandhar 
 rose, effected their escape^ plundering the city of 
 Ludhiana en route. Multan, an important position 
 commanding the south-west portion of the Province 
 and the Indus line of communication with the coast, 
 was saved by a timely disarming of the mutinous 
 regiments there stationed. The Sikh Chiefs, whom 
 Nicholson invited to give assistance, declined, till it 
 should be more apparent which would be the winning 
 side. Soon, however, it became apparent that the 
 general population had no sympathy with the Hindu- 
 stani mutineers^ and in a few weeks some 34,000 
 recruits were raised, delighted at the prospect of 
 sacking Delhi, 
 
 In the first week of June, on the Jumna frontier, 
 the Rani of Jhansi had shown her savage mood, 
 massacred an European force, and proclaimed herself 
 Sovereign of her State. 
 
 The Gwalior force, sent by Sindhia to aid the 
 British, had turned against them, and was threatening 
 Agra. The Sepoys at Nimach and Nasirabad, gar- 
 risons in the heart of Rajputana, had broken out, 
 pillaged the surrounding villages, and marched away 
 to Delhi. Ajmere, the arsenal and treasury of the 
 Province, had been saved by the timely disarming of 
 a Brahman regiment. 
 
 Bundelkhand, flanking the Jumna line to the south, 
 might at any moment burst into a blaze. Still 
 further southward the tide of disaffection rolled. At
 
 I02 EARL CANNING 
 
 Sagar the troops rose, and the Europeans had to 
 defend themselves for months in a fort to which 
 they had fled for safety. The Jabalpur district, across 
 the Narbada, was soon teeming with rebel Chiefs in 
 arms. Nagpur was saved by a determined official 
 and the staunch loyalty of the Madras troops. At 
 Indore the British Eesidency had been attacked, and, 
 despite the proximity of the cantonment at Mhow, 
 the British Resident had been forced to beat a hasty 
 retreat. 
 
 At Haidarabadj the Nizam's stormy capital, the 
 shock of the Delhi news was felt ; and, before June was 
 over, there were outbreaks of Musalman fanaticism, 
 and cries to the Moolvie in the Great Mosque to 
 proclaim a holy war. An attack on the Residency 
 was repelled by the Madras Horse Artillery. Still, 
 as the weeks went by, and Delhi remained a rebel 
 capital, and Rohillas, Afghans and Punjabis flocked 
 into Haidarabad, bringing ever fresh news of English 
 disaster, and urging participation in the struggle, the 
 position became critical. Had the Nizam's great 
 Minister, Sir Salar Jang, been weak, or had the 
 loyalty of the Madras forces wavered, Southern India 
 might presently have been in a blaze. 
 
 Westward, across the Deccan, the towns of the 
 South Maratha Country were dangerously sympathetic 
 with the movement in the north. In more than one 
 regiment^ correspondence with the mutinous Sepoys 
 was seized, and the germs of conspiracy were discovered 
 and suppressed. At Kolhapur, before July had passed,
 
 THE POSITION BECOMES SERIOUS 103 
 
 the Sepoys actually broke out, plundered the town 
 and treasury, and made off for the jungles. 
 
 Such was the general position, with which, within 
 the first few months of the Mutiny, Lord Canning was 
 confronted. It was impossible to define the area of 
 probable disturbance or to gauge its intensity. It 
 was impossible to conjecture where next the flames 
 would break out, how far the conflagration might ex- 
 tend. In Upper India it already glowed fiercely. All 
 Bengal might, at any moment, be in a blaze. The 
 great necessity of the moment was, fii'st, to keep open 
 the main lines of communication which led from 
 Calcutta and Bombay to the scene of action ; secondly, 
 to prevent, — and, if prevention were impossible, to 
 delay — explosions in Bengal which there were for the 
 present no means of suppressing ; thirdly, to prevent 
 the struggle from becoming what the temper of the 
 English was threatening to make it, a war of races. 
 
 For several months the position became increasingly 
 critical. The British army before Delhi, despite 
 all that Lawrence could do to reinforce it with 
 Punjab levies, was enormously outnumbered, and 
 daily fights were thinning its ranks. The idea of 
 seizing Delhi by a cowp de main had been abandoned. 
 Many doubted whether, even by regular siege opera- 
 tions, its reduction was possible ; for the besieging 
 force could attack it only on one side, and behind its 
 walls were all the resources of the insurrection and 
 a constant inflow of recruits. 
 
 In July the rescue of the Cawnpur garrison had
 
 104 EARL CANNING 
 
 become an affair of hours. Havelock had been 
 selected for the task. Not less a military than 
 a religious enthusiast^ he had been for forty years 
 preparing himself, by study and much varied service, 
 for the realisation of his long cherished dream — the 
 command of a British army in the field. Some 
 derided his pietism, some his theoretic researches, 
 some his care-worn features and emaciated frame; 
 but Sir H. Hardinge had said of him : ' If ever India 
 should be in danger, the Government have only to 
 place Havelock at the head of an army, and it will be 
 saved.' The moment had now arrived to test the 
 truth of the prediction. 
 
 On the 7 th July Havelock started from Allahabad, 
 fought his way, through a series of fierce encounters, 
 to the battlefield before Cawnpur, where the Nana — 
 his hands red with European blood — was awaiting 
 the advent of the avenging force. The resistance 
 was long and fierce, but Havelock and Havelock' s 
 army were in no mood to be resisted. In a few hours 
 the rebels were rushing in confusion from the field ; 
 the Nana, who had been descried during the day 
 riding from post to post, rallying his wavering ranks, 
 was himself spurring hard to his refuge at Bithiir, 
 and the inhabitants of Cawnpur, cowering at the 
 retributive fury of the English, were streaming in 
 panic out of the city into the surrounding country. 
 
 They well might fear, for Havelock's troops heard 
 news next morning, and witnessed sights that even 
 now cannot be recalled without a thrill of horror.
 
 HAVELOCK AT CAWNPUR 1 05 
 
 Their forced marches under the fierce July sun, their 
 long days of hard fighting, had been in vain. They 
 had come too late — too late, that is, for anything but 
 vengeance. The vestiges of recent tragedy were 
 around them — the clotted floor, the shreds of hair 
 and clothing, the ghastly well, where lay the last 
 victims of the fierce Maratha's lust for English 
 blood. The dreadful story was soon told. About 
 400 English combatants and an equal number of 
 women and children had been collected at a spot 
 where defence, for more than a few days, was 
 impossible. They were surrounded by a fully- 
 equipped army of 3000 men. On June 5th the 
 Sepoy regiments had risen and marched away to 
 Delhi. The Nana, who had till then professed to be 
 assisting the EngHsh, took the command. Conscious 
 of the cool welcome which a Maratha leader was likely 
 to receive from the Musalmans at Delhi, he induced the 
 rebel force to return with him to Cawnpur. From that 
 moment the doom of the garrison was sealed. The 
 so-called siege was one long massacre throughout. 
 All the artillerymen were killed or wounded in the 
 first week. On June 1 1 th the thatch of the barrack, 
 which had afibrded a scanty refuge to the women, 
 children and wounded men, was fired by red-hot balls, 
 and the whole building was presently a mass of flames. 
 On the loth a message from Sir Henry Lawrence 
 at Lucknow had told the doomed garrison that he 
 was powerless to help them. Two fierce assaults were 
 repelled. Misery, exposure, exhaustion, the ceaseless
 
 io6 EARL CANNING 
 
 rush of shot and shell, and the merciless summer 
 sun, were rapidly thinning the remnant of English 
 fighters. Water was to be had only at the cost of 
 precious lives. Provisions began to fail. The end 
 had come. The Nana's ofier of a safe conduct gave 
 the only chance of escape. On June a7th the fatal 
 move began, and, a few hours later, the blackest perfidy 
 of modern times was enacted. 
 
 The survivors of that afternoon's fusillade were 
 dragged back for the further torture of imprisonment. 
 Eighteen days later, on July 15th, as Hav clock's 
 avenging force drew near, the despot of the hour 
 decreed a last revel of ferocity, and when the English 
 columns entered Cawnpur, they found — so far as their 
 own countrymen were concerned — a city of the dead. 
 No one of English birth — man, woman, or child — 
 remained to tell the dreadful tale. Was the same 
 tragedy, the bafiled rescuers asked themselves, to be 
 re-enacted at Lucknow? 
 
 A deep gloom fell on leader and men. Havelock's 
 spirits sank. ' If the worst came to the worst,' he 
 said to his son that evening, ' we can but die with our 
 swords in our hands.' Lucknow was to be relieved, 
 but was relief achievable % The task was a serious one. 
 His march lay for fifty miles through a country swarm- 
 ing with enemies. Several large armies threatened his 
 line of advance. He was leaving an ill-defended base, 
 a great river in his rear, the bridge over which might 
 easily be destroyed, and his retreat thus be cut ofi". 
 At the end there was the Lucknow garrison, penned
 
 HAVE LOCK FALLS BACK 107 
 
 up in a corner of a huge city, thick-set with defensible 
 buildings, crowded with combatants, through which 
 the rescuing force would have to fight its way. On 
 July 25th Havelock's march began. After a fortnight's 
 hard fighting he was forced to recognise that his 
 strength was inadequate, and to fall back on Cawnpur, 
 now seriously threatened by a rebel force advancing 
 from Bithur. Even at Cawnpur, Havelock's position 
 became precarious, and he was obliged to warn the 
 Government that, unless speedily reinforced, he might 
 have to fall back on Allahabad. Not till the third 
 week in September did Outram's welcome reinforce- 
 ments enable the two leaders to start for the rescue of 
 the Lucknow garrison. 
 
 The weeks during which Havelock was fast-held at 
 Cawnpur were eventful at two other centres of interest. 
 At Lucknow it had been felt from the moment of 
 the outbreak at Meerut that a siege was inevitable. 
 Sir H. Lawrence had been reluctant to endanger the 
 tranquillity of the rest of the Province by disbanding 
 the Sepoy regiments at Lucknow ; but he had pre- 
 pared to stand on the defensive. As the country 
 round rose into rebellion, Lucknow became the one 
 isolated position in Oudh where British authority was 
 upheld. Its isolation was perilous. On June 30th 
 a British force, which had started from Lucknow to 
 meet an approaching army of the mutineers, was de- 
 serted, as the action began, by the native Artillery, and 
 encountered a severe repulse ; it retired with difficulty, 
 and soon found itself actually besieged. Lawrence lived
 
 lo8 EARL CANNING 
 
 but to see the commencement of the siege ; but the 
 spirit of that brave, generous and romantic nature 
 continued to inspire the leaders of that heroic defence. 
 Its incidents are familiar history. The garrison was 
 greatly outnumbered and ill-supplied ; the defences 
 were weak, hurriedly constructed, and, in parts, un- 
 finished : the position was, according to every rule 
 of war, indefensible. Defended it was, however, at 
 a terrible cost of human life and suffering, for eighty- 
 seven days. The garrison held its own, unaided, till 
 September 25th. On that day Outram and Havelock, 
 with their long-expected succour, fought their way into 
 the Residency — a reinforcement, not a relief; for the 
 heavy losses entailed by the operation made it clear 
 that it would be impossible, with the existing forces, to 
 attempt the removal of the non-combatants. Outram's 
 little army had greatly increased the powers of the 
 defence ; but it also greatly increased the rate at 
 which provisions were consumed. As evacuation 
 was impossible, the position of the garrison was, in 
 one sense, more critical than ever. Not till November 
 17th did the hour of deliverance come. 
 
 Meanwhile, the fate of the Empire seemed to depend 
 on the little force which, barely able to protect its own 
 position, was clinging fiercely to a single side of the 
 Delhi ramparts. On June 8th, two English forces, 
 combining from Ambala and Meerut, had di'iven the 
 mutineers in confusion from the field, and taken up 
 their position on a ridge of stony ground which faces 
 the city's northern side. Some bold spirits urged
 
 SIEGE OF DELHI 1 09 
 
 an immediate assault. An accident alone, on one 
 occasion in the early days of the siege, prevented the 
 trial of that audacious experiment. But the persistent 
 attacks on the British position, the heavy losses, the 
 serious wear and tear, the certainty that the resources 
 of the Punjab were approaching exhaustion, inspired 
 the responsible leaders of the force with the gravest 
 anxiety as to the impending assault. It was a cast 
 of the die, and the fortunes of English rule in India 
 depended on it. Who can wonder that human nerve 
 should shrink from so fateful a crisis ■? June and July 
 were spent in a series of encounters which, if they 
 disheartened the rebels, grievously taxed the slender 
 resources of the besiegers. In August, Nicholson's ap- 
 pearance on the scene with a force which he had taught 
 to think nothing impossible inspired fresh spirits and 
 brighter hopes. Early in September the arrival of the 
 siege-train, and of the last reinforcements which could 
 be expected from the Punjab, decided the moment of 
 attack. The English General now had 8748 men at 
 his disposal, 3317 only of them his own countrymen. 
 Batteries were hastily run up, a cannonade opened 
 upon September nth, and, by the evening of the 13th, 
 a practicable breach had been effected. Early on the 
 morning of the 14th, Nicholson led the assaulting 
 force to its great emprise. His fall dimmed the 
 successes of a day bright with British heroism ; but 
 he lingered long enough to know that the object of 
 the long and costly struggle had been attained. Delhi 
 was again in the hands of the British ; the old
 
 no EARL CANNING 
 
 Mughal monarch was a prisoner, and the principal 
 nucleus of insurrection was destroyed. 
 
 The re-conquest of Upper India, however, was still 
 far from completion. The fall of Delhi, important 
 as was its moral effect, made substantially little 
 difference to the rebel numbers. The garrison had 
 escaped, and the hostile forces, previously occupying 
 various portions of the country, were strengthened by 
 the accession of a garrison till now concentrated for 
 the defence of the besieged city. Outram and 
 Havelock had heard of the fall of Delhi as they 
 were entering Lucknow, but they were practically 
 prisoners in that city. 
 
 The task of rescuing them devolved on the newly- 
 arrived Commander-in-Chief. It was no hght one. 
 Sir Colin Campbell, on his arrival in Calcutta, found 
 a general sense of disaster and discouragement. 
 There was much to be done before an advance upon 
 Lucknow could be attempted. The war departments 
 at Calcutta had to be strengthened into increased 
 efficiency: transport for reinforcements to be pro- 
 vided ; the line of advance from Calcutta to Cawnpur 
 — dangerously exposed throughout its entire length 
 — to be secured. It was not till the close of October 
 that the Commander-in-Chief was able to quit Calcutta 
 for the theatre of war. After a narrow escape of being 
 taken prisoner, en route, Sir Colin reached Allahabad 
 on November ist. His position was critical. To his 
 north lay Oudh, and the districts, eastward and 
 westward, which had been caught in the Oudh
 
 Sm COLIN CAMPBELL 1 1 1 
 
 conflagration — Oudh, with its dense population, now 
 pledged to the rebel cause — its feudal Chiefs, its 
 impenetrable jungles, its hundreds of strongholds, — 
 and Lucknow in its midst, where Outram and 
 Havelock were held fast-bound by 60,000 rebels. To 
 the north-west, the post of Fatehgarh, one of the 
 most important strategical positions in Upper India, 
 had been seized by a rebel Chief, who was thus 
 master of the Central Doab. To the north of this 
 again, all Rohilkhand, a rich and warlike Province, 
 was in arms. Its capital, Bareilly, and other large 
 towns, were in rebel hands. The revolted Gwalior 
 Contingent was hovering on Sir Colin's flank, and, 
 within a few miles of Cawnpur, a formidable army 
 was assembled under the banner of Nana Sahib. 
 
 Outram had sent a message to Sir Colin at Cawn- 
 pur that the Lucknow garrison could hold out till 
 November i8th, and the problem was how to rescue 
 them before that date and get back before the 
 Allahabad line of communication could be broken 
 by the Gwalior Contingent, or the English reserve, 
 left to hold Cawnpur, be crushed by the Nana's army 
 advancing from Bithur. 
 
 The rebel positions in Lucknow had, it was known, 
 been greatly strengthened since the relieving English 
 force had fought its way across them in the preceding 
 September ; but Havelock had lost nearly 1000 men — 
 a third of his entire force — on that occasion, and Sir 
 Colin had now not only to surmount the new obstacles 
 but to bring away a large crowd of non-combatants.
 
 112 EARL CANNING 
 
 There was, moreover, the likelihood that on his return 
 he might find the bridge over the Ganges destroyed, 
 its banks strongly defended, and the force which he 
 had left to guard Cawnpur assailed by an over- 
 whelming foe. 
 
 On November 12th, Sir Colin reviewed the httle 
 army with which this brilliant feat of strategy was to 
 be achieved. An onlooker has described the scene — the 
 force, dwarfed by its surroundings to a mere handful 
 of men, drawn up in the middle of a vast plain — the 
 forests which bounded the horizon— the blackened and 
 battle-worn guns and batteries from Delhi — English 
 lancers with their blue uniforms and turbans twisted 
 round their caps — wild frontier troopers on prancing 
 horses, with loose fawn-coloured robes, long boots, and 
 towering head-gear — the worn and wasted remnants 
 of English regiments in slate-coloured uniform, stand- 
 ing, with wearied air, around their standards — tall 
 Punjab Infantry with huge twisted turbans and 
 sand-coloured tunics, and, conspicuous among the 
 rest, the 93rd Highlanders — ' a waving sea of plumes 
 and tartans ' — as with rapturous cheers they greeted 
 their veteran chief. 
 
 The long stubborn fight across the defences and 
 through the streets of Lucknow, and the successful 
 rescue of the British garrison, skilfully and gallantly 
 efiected in the course of the next few days, marked 
 the second great step towards the rehabihtation of 
 the British rule ; but Sir Colin had to hurry back to 
 rescue the force at his base from annihilation. Wynd-
 
 DEFEAT OF T A NT I A TOPI II3 
 
 ham, whom he left to hold Cawnpur, had encountered 
 Tantia Topi, at the head of a powerful and well- 
 equipped army, and had been driven back on his en- 
 trenchments. Cawnpur was in the hands of the enemy. 
 The Gwalior army of 25,000 men, flushed with success, 
 and arrayed in a strong position, awaited the English 
 General's attack. Sir Colin's victory of the 8th of 
 December avenged the fortunes of his lieutenant, and 
 shattered the rebel forces beyond recovery. Thus, in 
 the closing weeks of 1857, a third great step towards 
 re-establishment of British ascendancy had been 
 achieved.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 Conquest 
 
 The months during which these events were 
 occurring in Upper India threw a heavy weight 
 of anxiety upon the Governor-General and his co- 
 adjutors at Calcutta. The first shock of surprise 
 had speedily been followed by tidings which left no 
 doubt as to the nature of the impending conflict. 
 Each day brought a heavier tale of outbreaks, massacres, 
 desperate conflicts, or scarcely less desperate escapes. 
 It became apparent that at numerous points the 
 English were in supreme peril. It was apparent, 
 too, that the means at the disposal of the Government 
 were utterly inadequate for their protection. Reinforce- 
 ments had been sought in various quarters — Madras, 
 Bombay, Ceylon, Lord Elgin's China force. Before 
 May was over they were beginning to arrive, but 
 they came in driblets, as compared with the multi- 
 tudinous array of insurgents ; and still smaller were 
 the di'iblets in which it was possible, with existing 
 facilities, or such as could be extemporised, to send 
 them to the front. Meanwhile the whole country 
 was like a volcanic soil seamed with igneous material, 
 which, at any moment, at any spot, may burst into 
 fiames.
 
 CANNING'S VIEW OF THE SITUATION 115 
 
 ' Our hold on Bengal and the Upper Provmces,' the 
 Governor- General wrote to Lord Elgin on May 19th, 
 ' depends upon the turn of a word — a look. An in- 
 discreet act, or irritating phrase from a foolish 
 commanding officer at the head of a mutinous or 
 disaffected company may, whilst the present condition 
 of things at Delhi lasts, lead to a general rising of the 
 native troops in the Lower Provinces, where we 
 have no European strength, and where an army in 
 rebellion would have everything its own way for 
 weeks and months to come. We have seen within 
 the last few days what that way would be.' 
 
 ' Here,' Lord Canning wrote, a few days later, to 
 Sir J. Lawrence, with reference to the successful 
 disarming of the Punjab regiments, 'from Calcutta up 
 to Agra, we are in a very different position, and must 
 play a very different game. With the exception of 
 Dinapur, where there is one weak Queen's Regiment, 
 not a single European soldier exists over a stretch of 
 750 miles. It would be impossible to take the Sepoys' 
 arms from them ; and, if it were done, we should not 
 be much the better for it. There are no sufficient 
 numbers of any other class in whose hands the arms 
 could be placed with safety. All that can be done at 
 present is to put on a bold front, and to collect strength 
 as rapidl}' as possible. If the rebels at Delhi are 
 crushed before the flame spreads, all will go well. 
 Time is everything, and delay will severely try 
 Cawnpur, Benares, and Oudh.' 
 
 The Delhi rebels, however, were not crushed and 
 H 3
 
 ii6 EARL CANNING 
 
 the flames were mounting high. At Calcutta the 
 English community, profoundly shocked and agitated, 
 beg-an to criticise and condemn the action of the 
 Government. Lord Canning was mortified to find 
 that some of the officials about him were not giving 
 him the moral support for which, at such a crisis, he 
 had a right to look. There was much despondent 
 talk, many prophets of evil. Circumstances made it 
 necessary for the Governor-General to assume a 
 confidence which he was far from feeling, and to 
 avoid everything that might suggest to the population 
 of Bengal the idea that the emergency was acute 
 enough to drive the Government to extraordinary 
 expedients. Such a policy does not admit of being 
 publicly explained. Too little trouble was, perhaps, 
 taken to explain it. 
 
 Lord Canning found himself working in an atmo- 
 sphere highly charged with the electricity which 
 soul-stirring events, unexampled disasters, sudden 
 dangers, engender in the public mind. There was 
 thunder in the air — fierce outbursts from agitated 
 and angry men — a hostile press — violent pamphlets, 
 violent speeches, violent acts — everything that could 
 agitate, unnerve, provoke. Yet Lord Canning la- 
 boui'ed on in unruffled equanimity. His letters at 
 this time breathe a really noble tone. ' The sky is 
 black,' he wrote to Bishop Wilson, 'and, as yet, the 
 signs of a clearing are faint. But reason and common 
 sense are on our side from the very beginning. The 
 course of the Government has been guided by justice
 
 HIS UNPOPULARITY 1 17 
 
 and temper. I do not know that any one measure 
 of precaution and strength which human foresight can 
 indicate has been neglected. There are stout hearts 
 and clear heads at the chief posts of danger — Agra, 
 Lucknow, Benares. For the rest, the issue is in higher 
 hands than ours. I am very confident of complete 
 success.' 
 
 It was hard that a mood so high-toned and cou- 
 rageous should not have found support in the sym- 
 pathy and confidence of the English community. But 
 the English in Calcutta were now in no sympathising 
 temper. Again and again it was Lord Canning's lot 
 to provoke their distrust, dislike, resentment. They 
 were angered by his fancied reluctance to accept their 
 services as Volunteers for the defence of Calcutta. 
 They were angered at the neglect of precautions 
 which to them seemed obvious and necessary, but 
 which reasons of policy led Lord Canning to veto or 
 postpone. They were angered at restrictions of the 
 press, European as well as native, which the position 
 rendered imperative. They were angered at the rule 
 which obliged European and native alike to obtain 
 a license for carrying fire-arms. The grievance was 
 purely sentimental: but the English were not in 
 a mood to tolerate anything which implied equality 
 between themselves and the natives of the country. 
 The tragedies of the Mutiny were bearing fruit in 
 a fierce, sometimes a ferocious, spirit of revenge. The 
 sufferings of our countrymen had engendered an 
 appetite for blood — an appetite which grows by
 
 Il8 EARL CANNING 
 
 what it feeds on. Revenge is an intoxicating cup. 
 The less sober of the English ministers of vengeance 
 were becoming intoxicated. There was excess, there 
 was violence, there was indiscriminating retaliation. 
 To men in this temper Lord Canning's calm and 
 judicial mood was profoundly distasteful. He felt, 
 and showed that he felt, some contempt for personal 
 terrors, to which he was constitutionally a stranger — 
 something more than contempt for the ruthless mood 
 which such terrors engender. But those who inferred 
 from Lord Canning's cold exterior that thinner blood 
 throbbed in his veins than in their own, judged him 
 wrongly. He was stirred by passions as human as 
 theirs. The first news of the insurrection convinced 
 him that signal punishment ought to be inflicted on 
 the Meerut mutineers and their fellow-rebels, now 
 masters of Delhi. ' No amount of severity,' he wrote 
 to the Lieutenant-Governor at Agra in May, 1857, 
 'can be too great.' 'I should rejoice,' he writes in 
 the same month to the Commander-in-Chief, ' to hear 
 that there had been no holding our men, and that the 
 vengeance had been terrible.' But a calmer, more 
 equitable mood had replaced in Lord Canning's mind 
 the first hot rush of indignation. He was determined 
 to discriminate, and to compel the tribunals to which, 
 in the first moments of emergency, dangerously large 
 powers of life and death had been entrusted, to do the 
 same. His Proclamation to this eflfect, issued in July, 
 roused a storm of indignation. A great journal in 
 England, after much contemptuous derision of the
 
 EXCITEMENT IN CALCUTTA 1 19 
 
 cheap virtue of humanity at other people's expense, 
 denounced the ' clemency of Canning ' as ill-timed 
 weakness, and boldly advanced the proposition that 
 the suppression of the Mutiny must be left to the 
 unfettered hands of the military authorities. ' They,' 
 it was said, ' must know, not only what is best to be 
 done, but what is the only thing possible under the 
 circumstances.' 
 
 Lord Canning, however, was more and more con- 
 vinced of the necessity of putting a check on the 
 violent temper of his countrymen. ' There is a rabid 
 and indiscriminate vindictiveness abroad/ he wrote to 
 the Queen in September, ' even among those who 
 ought to set a better example. . . . Not one man in 
 ten seems to think that the hanging and shooting of 
 40,000 or 50,000 men can be otherwise than practicable 
 and right.' 
 
 Excitement was excusable, for ever since May the 
 horror of the situation had been becoming more 
 intense. When Sir Colin Campbell arrived in August, 
 things were almost at their worst. The little be- 
 sieging force was clinging grimly to the Delhi ridge ^ 
 but the standard of rebellion still flaunted us from its 
 walls. Cawnpur had witnessed a disaster of which 
 Englishmen could scarcely bear to speak. The 
 Lucknow garrison was sorel}^ pressed. Havelock 
 was fast-bound at Cawnpur. The line of communi- 
 cation with Upper India was menaced throughout its 
 entire length. At one time it was actually severed, and 
 it seemed as if Behar were lost and the tide of trouble
 
 I20 EARL CANNING 
 
 were about to roll down upon Bengal. The gallant 
 stand of an amateur garrison at Arrah, their rescue by 
 Vincent Eyre and his vigorous pursuit of the Dinapur 
 mutineers, re-established British ascendancy at this 
 endangered spot, checked the downward progress of 
 insurrection, and set free once again the flow of 
 reinforcements towards the scenes where their arrival 
 was of such vital importance. 
 
 A question which, in the course of July, Lord 
 Canning was called to decide, marks the darkest 
 hour of the storm. Early in June Sir John Lawrence 
 had faced the possibilities suggested by the precarious 
 position of the besieging force at Delhi. To reinforce 
 it he had drained the Punjab of its last man. No 
 help could be looked for elsewhere : but the leaders 
 before Delhi were doubtful of success, doubtful indeed 
 whether the attempt should be made. If it failed, 
 the consequences would be to place the surrounding 
 country and the Punjab in extremest peril. Across 
 the Indus were three European regiments, a powerful 
 force of artillery, and some of the best native troops, 
 whose presence would assure order in the Punjab and 
 settle the fate of Delhi in a week. If Delhi could not 
 be taken otherwise, it might be necessary, Lawrence 
 suggested, to concentrate this force, leaving Peshawar 
 and the Trans-Indus Valley in the custody of Dost 
 Muhammad, with a promise of ultimate cession to him 
 of that much-coveted region. This is no place to enter 
 upon the controversy which this proposal evoked, or 
 to discuss the arguments with which Edwardes and
 
 'HOLD ON TO PESHAWAR TO THE LAST' 121 
 
 Nicholson met it. The alternative on either side was 
 deplorable. Edwardes's view was that the General 
 before Delhi should be told ' that he could have no 
 more men from the Punjab, that he must either get 
 into Delhi with such men as he had, or get rein- 
 forcements from below, or abandon the siege and fall 
 back on the Sutlej , leaving Delhi and its dependencies 
 to be re-organised in the cold weather.' . . . ' If General 
 Reid,' he wrote to Lawrence, ' with all the men you 
 have sent him, cannot get into Delhi, let Delhi go. . . . 
 You have made vast efforts for him, and no one can 
 blame you for now recovering your own Province.' 
 
 The security of his own Province, however, had 
 from the outset filled but a part, and not the largest 
 part, of Lawrence's thoughts. He was convinced that 
 the abandonment of the siege of Delhi, or its failure, 
 would be an imperial disaster. He was prepared, if 
 needs be, to make any sacrifice with a view to its 
 prevention. He now pointed out that, even from the 
 Punjab point of view, it would be fatal to leave Delhi 
 untaken and the besieging army to its fate. 'The 
 Punjab,' he said, ' will prove short work to the muti- 
 neers when the Delhi army is destroyed.' Nicholson, 
 in a conversation with Lawrence, pleaded that other 
 places rather than Peshawar might be abandoned. 
 ' Give up everything,' he said, ' but Peshawar, Lahore, 
 and Multan:' but Lawrence objected that such a 
 measure would isolate those three places, lock up 
 a fine force in Peshawar, and expose us to destruction 
 in detail.' Dark indeed must have been the prospect
 
 122 EARL CANNING 
 
 when men such as Lawrence, Edwardes and Nicholson 
 could feel such desperate alternatives to be within 
 sight. Happily, the moment for adopting one or other 
 of them never came. We can read Lord Canning's 
 letter, giving the grounds of his own decision on the 
 point, merely as a vivid picture of the situation and 
 of the terrible perils which at the moment beset the 
 British rule. 
 
 ' My answer to your question about Peshawar,' he 
 wrote to Lawrence on July 15th, 'will be, Hold on to 
 Peshawar to the last. I should look with great alarm 
 to the effect in Southern India of an abandonment of 
 Peshawar at the present time — or at any time until 
 our condition in the south becomes either more 
 desperate or more secure. Kemember how fearfully 
 weak we are in Central Lidia, and everywhere to the 
 south of it. It is true that in Central India itself 
 things are already at their worst. Holkar himself, as 
 well as his troops, has turned against us, and, although 
 I do not know the same for certain of Sindbia, I have 
 little doubt of it. But as yet the wave of rebellion 
 has not reached the Narbada. The Nizam and the 
 Gaekwar are still staunch, and believe in our su- 
 premacy. Nagpur too is kept down. If we were 
 now to abandon territory, no matter how distant, it 
 would be impossible that faith in the permanency of 
 our rule should not be shaken. The encouragement 
 to join the league against us would be irresistible and 
 immediate ; its effect would be felt long before we 
 should receive any material benefit from the force
 
 HIS VIEW OF AFFAIRS 123 
 
 which would be set free by the abandonment : and in 
 the event of a rising in the Deccan, or on the side of 
 Baroda, our position would be hopeless unless we 
 could keep the Native Governments on our side. I 
 look upon Central India as gone, and to be re- 
 conquered ; and I believe that Southern India, that 
 is, from Gujarat on the west to Nagpur on the east, 
 and downwards to Cape Comorin, is at present in 
 a more critical position than any part of the Punjab, 
 not excepting Peshawar itself. Sir Patrick Grant is 
 pretty sure of the Madras Army, and some three or 
 four regiments will be brought to Bengal to ease our 
 exhausted Europeans. The family system of the 
 Madras regiments gives the Government a great hold 
 on them, especially in the present case, when the 
 families will be left in Madras. Still, if the Deccan 
 were to rise, the Madras Army would not be equal to 
 cope with the difficulty ; and the Cavalry, almost 
 entirely Muhammadan, could not be trusted, in spite of 
 all checks upon it. On the Bombay side, I fear there 
 is already some taint in the army. How can it 
 be otherwise"? One half is Hindustani, and pretty 
 much of the same materials as the Bengal regiments. 
 I should not like to see them tempted by any open 
 resistance to us in Gujarat or elsewhere near at 
 hand to them. ... Of Delhi I know nothing later than 
 the 19th, and I begin to despair of hearing any good 
 from there. The arrival of Chamberlain and Nicholson 
 is the best remaining ground of hope.' 
 In a postscript he adds : —
 
 124 EARL CANNING 
 
 ' I have objected to the abandonment of Peshawar 
 upon one ground alone — the bad effects which would 
 result from it at the present crisis ; and this for the 
 moment is the paramount objection. But I also 
 incline to the mountain boundary in preference to the 
 river. The expense is inordinately large, and will 
 continue so as long as a large European force is 
 retained on the other side of the Indus. Yet, as 
 a military frontier, I have never seen the case 
 satisfactorily made out in favour of the river.' 
 
 Amid such anxieties throughout this eventful year, 
 Lord Canning continued to perform his arduous task 
 with unruffled calmness and unshaken nerve. One of 
 his letters to Lord Granville towards the end of 1857 
 breathes a serene and magnanimous spirit, and shows 
 how thoroughly he had thought out the grounds 
 which rendered a policy of conciliation essential. 
 
 ' Look at a map. With all the reinforcements 
 you have sent (all the Bengal ones are arrived, except 
 800 men) Bengal is without a single European 
 soldier more than we had at the beginning of the 
 Mutiny, Calcutta alone excepted, which is stronger. 
 Twenty-three thousand men have moved through 
 Bengal, and in Bengal we are still dependent (mainly) 
 upon the good- will — I can't say affection, and interest 
 — well understood by themselves — of the natives. 
 
 ' Suppose (not an impossibility, although I hope not 
 a likelihood) — suppose that hostilities train on, and 
 that we don't make our way with Oudh and other 
 disturbed places, that our strength becomes again
 
 A CONCILIATORY POLICY 1 25 
 
 a subject of doubt — will it be the part of a wise 
 Government to keep such a population as that of the 
 three great Provinces in a loyal frame of temper? 
 Can you do so, if you proscribe and scout as unworthy 
 whole classes % 
 
 ' For God's sake, raise your voice and stop this. As 
 long as I have breath in my body, I will pursue no 
 other policy than that I have been following: not 
 only for the reason of expediency and policy above 
 stated, but because it is immutably just. I will not 
 govern in anger. Justice, and that as stern, as 
 inflexible as law and might can make it, I will 
 deal out. But I will never allow an angry and 
 undiscriminating act or word to proceed from the 
 Government of India as long as I am responsible 
 for it. 
 
 ' I don't care two straws for the abuse of the papers, 
 British or Indian. I am for ever wondering at myself 
 for not doing so, but it really is the fact. Partly from 
 want of time to care, partly because an enormous 
 task is before me, and all other cares look small. 
 
 'I don't want you to do more than defend me 
 against unfair or mistaken attacks. But do take up 
 and assert boldly that, whilst we are prepared, as the 
 first duty of all, to strike down resistance without 
 mercy, wherever it shows itself, we acknowledge that, 
 resistance over, deliberate justice and calm patient 
 reason are to resume their sway; that we are not 
 going, either in anger or from indolence, to punish 
 wholesale ; whether by wholesale hangings and burn-
 
 126 EARL CANNING 
 
 ings, or by the less violent, but not one bit less 
 offensive, course of refusing trust and countenance 
 and favour and honour to any man because he is of 
 a class or a creed. Do this, and get others to do it, 
 and you will serve India more than you would 
 believe.' 
 
 Those who raved against Lord Canning little knew 
 of the nobility of the man whom they were en- 
 deavouring to ruin. The friends who were admitted 
 to his confidence found that, under a cold and un- 
 impassioned exterior, there glowed the warm instincts 
 of chivalry. Sir Frederick Halliday, who was Lieu- 
 tenant-Governor of Bengal in 1857 and in constant 
 and confidential communication with the Governor- 
 General, narrates how, on one occasion, when the 
 outcry against him was loudest, Lord Canning showed 
 him papers illustrating the scandalous brutality of 
 certain of the special tribunals. The Lieutenant- 
 Governor urged their publication, by way of reply to 
 his calumniators. ' No,' said Lord Canning, taking 
 the papers and locking them up in his drawer, ' I had 
 rather submit to any obloquy than publish to the 
 world what would so terribly disgrace my countrymen. 
 It is sufficient that I have prevented them for the 
 future.' 
 
 At the opening of the new year Lord Canning 
 decided to move to Allahabad, both for freer oppor- 
 tunities of communication with the Commander-in- 
 Chief during the impending operations in Oudh and 
 Rohilkhand, and with a view to a more complete
 
 AT ALLAHABAD 1 27 
 
 mastery of the Oudh question and to the re-organisation 
 of the government of the North-Western Provinces, 
 many parts of which had lapsed into something like 
 anarchy. Colonel Stuart, who was Military Secretary 
 to the Governor- General during these eventful months, 
 gives in his diary a vivid idea of the anxious and 
 dispiriting circumstances under which Lord Canning 
 assumed the functions of the Lieutenant-Governor, and 
 addressed himself to this serious enhancement of his 
 already heavy task. 
 
 In February Mr. (Sir W.) Muir, the Secretary to the 
 Government of the North-Western Provinces, arrived 
 from Agra with a staff of fifty clerks, awaiting in- 
 spiration from his new Chief and adding hourly to 
 his toils. The tremendous strain of the past year was 
 beginning to tell upon the Governor-General's health. 
 In January, Lady Canning, herself bearing sad evidence 
 of the anxieties which her Indian life had involved, 
 learnt with apprehension that a respite at Simla was 
 out of the question for her husband. She began to feel 
 doubtful of his physical ability to bear the burthen, 
 and to wish for his resignation. Lord Canning, how- 
 ever, was in no mood to shirk his task, or spare nerve 
 or muscle in its accomplishment. Again and again 
 Colonel Stuart's diary records feats of long continued 
 effort, such as no man can accomplish with impunity — 
 entire nights passed at the desk — long days without 
 an instant's intermission devoted to despatches for 
 which an English mail was waitinof. On the loth 
 January, Colonel Stuart records that, after labouring
 
 128 EARL CANNING 
 
 incessantly from 2 a.m. till luncheon time, without 
 even an interval for breakfast, Lord Canning ' fell 
 back, quite exhausted, and could do no more. The 
 action of the brain had ceased. This has happened 
 before. . . .' Lord Granville mentions that somewhat 
 similar seizures had, at an earlier period of his life, 
 befallen Lord Canning ; once in the House of Lords, 
 and once again when, shooting with the Prince 
 Consort, he was apprehensive, for an instant, of 
 having fired in the direction of the Prince of Wales. 
 Whatever might be the cause, Lord Canning showed 
 himself no mercy. A half-hour's stroll before dinner, 
 a visit to some military hospital, an occasional ride, 
 sometimes, by his doctor's injunction, a short drive at 
 sunrise — such was the nearest approach to relaxation 
 which zeal and conscience allowed him. Nor did he 
 labour alone. Lady Canning shared his toil. General 
 Stuart's diary makes more than one allusion to occa- 
 sions on which that faithful companion laboured far 
 into the night, copying letters or despatches which, 
 for one reason or another, were not allowed to pass 
 through the ordinary official channels. 
 
 In the meantime Lidian affairs were attracting 
 attention in England. In January, 1858, Lord 
 Palmerston had introduced a Bill transferring the 
 government of India from the East India Company 
 to the Crown. The measure was one which, though 
 not so intrinsically important as its form suggested, 
 was grave enough to give the Governor-General 
 some anxiety. He was apprehensive that, on the
 
 CHANGE OF MINISTRY 129 
 
 removal of the time-honoured barriers which safe- 
 guarded Indian topics from interference, Parliament 
 might be betrayed into rash and ill-considered action. 
 In February a new cause of disquietude was added. 
 Lord Palmerston's defeat on his Conspiracy to Murder 
 Bill brought into office a Ministry, many of whose 
 members had shown themselves ready to criticise in 
 no friendly spirit Lord Canning's Indian administra- 
 tion — Lord Derby, Mr. D'Israeli, the impetuous and 
 rhetorical Ellenborough. How was Lord Canning to 
 work with a new and, probably, unfriendly Cabinet 1 
 The embarrassment was not lessened by the circum- 
 stance that by the mail, which brought the tidings 
 of the change, Lord Canning received no communica- 
 tion from any member of the new Government, but 
 merely private letters from Lord Granville and Lord 
 Aberdeen, dissuadino- him from resignation. The 
 Governor-General was thus obliged to address the 
 new President of the Board of Control without having 
 learnt his views with regard to his continuance 
 in office. He wrote, accordingly, that he had no 
 intention of resigning unless called upon to do so ; 
 but, at the same time, letting Lord Ellenborough 
 understand that he would submit to no improper inter- 
 ference. The next mail cleared away all uncertainty 
 by bringing three letters from Lord Ellenborough, 
 friendly in tone and based on the assumption that Lord 
 Canning did not contemplate resignation. Letters 
 from Mr. Gladstone, Lord Stratford de KedclifFe, Lord 
 Granville^ and from the Chairman of the East India
 
 130 EARL CANNING 
 
 Company, all pointed in the same direction. Mr. Vernon 
 Smith, though not counselling resignation, showed him- 
 self a better prophet than the rest by drawing a dis- 
 couraging picture of the inconveniences likely to arise 
 from Lord Ellenborough's hasty and dictatorial mood 
 — a prophecy of the soundness of which Lord Canning 
 was soon to experience disagreeable proof. 
 
 The course of events in India, however, left the 
 Governor-General but scanty leisure to weigh the 
 chances of attacks from home. The Mutiny was far 
 from being dead. Lucknow, since the relief of its 
 garrison in the November of the preceding year, had 
 remained in the hands of the insurgents. The 
 Commander-in-Chief was in favour of the next 
 movement being directed against the rebels to the 
 north-westward, in Rohilkhand, leaving the reduction 
 of Lucknow — a very serious enterprise — to be accom- 
 plished later in the year. Lord Canning, however, 
 decided that the capture of the Oudh capital ought to 
 be forthwith undertaken. There were good reasons 
 for the decision. The fall of Lucknow would have 
 a great moral effect. It had filled the public eye. 
 For many months all India had beheld the un- 
 precedented spectacle of an English garrison barely 
 able to hold its own behind the Residency entrench- 
 ments. Ever since the relief in November it had 
 defied us. Friend and foe were now watching its 
 fate. Outram, who had remained on guard at the 
 Alambagh, an outpost a few miles south, had been 
 frequently and fiercely assailed. It was now for the
 
 CAPTURE OF LUC KNOW 131 
 
 English to attack. The defences of the city had been 
 greatly strengthened since the English garrison quitted 
 the Residency in November of the preceding year. 
 Its present garrison was estimated at 130,000 men, 
 of whom 27,000 were trained Sepoys and 7000 
 Cavalry. Three formidable lines of resistance had 
 been constructed against an advancing enemy. The 
 palaces, gardens, mosques and public buildings, with 
 which a series of luxurious Sovereigns had embellished 
 the city, had been converted into formidable strong- 
 holds. Sir Colin now, by a skilful disposition, dimin- 
 ished the cost and peril of the assault. The city of 
 Lucknow lies along the south bank of the river 
 Gumti, one of the great affluents of the Ganges, 
 which traverses the Province of Oudh. In this 
 direction the defences had been comparatively neg- 
 lected. Taking advantage of this omission, Sir Colin, 
 on March 5th, sent Outram across the river to operate 
 on its northern side, whence he would be able to 
 enfilade the enemy's powerful positions from an un- 
 expected quarter and divert much of their attention, 
 while Sir Colin, with the main force, fought his 
 way, day by day, through the loopholed streets and 
 strongly barricaded buildings of the city. The 
 programme was brilliantly realised ; but the re- 
 sistance was obstinate, and it was not till March 17th 
 that the Residency was occupied and the last of the 
 rebels driven out. One of those mishaps, which so 
 often in military history mar the splendour of a 
 success, favoured the escape of most of the garrison, 
 
 I 2
 
 132 EARL CANNING 
 
 some into Rohilkhand, where Nana Sahib and other 
 leaders were established in force, some into the 
 jungles of Oudh, where, buried in their forest strong- 
 holds, hundreds of warlike Chieftains welcomed all 
 comers to the standard of rebellion. The capture 
 of Lucknow may be regarded as the fourth great 
 episode in the re-establishment of British rule. The 
 fifth was now to commence. Rohilkhand, the country 
 which lay along the left bank of the Upper Ganges, 
 had for many months been a dangerous centre of 
 disturbance. Lord Canning resolved that measures 
 for its subjugation must be at once undertaken. Sir 
 Colin Campbell, whom a well-deserved peerage had 
 by this time converted into Lord Clyde, proceeded 
 to effect this object by a concentration of forces, 
 advancing from different points of the compass upon 
 Bareilly, the capital of the Province. A few weeks 
 sufficed for the accomplishment of this programme. 
 Before the close of May, 1858, a decisive engagement 
 had shattered the fortunes of the rebel cause. Bareilly 
 had been recovered ; the leaders of the rebellion had 
 fled into Oudh, and British rule was re-established 
 throughout Rohilkhand. 
 
 Meanwhile, a great campaign was being fought in 
 Central India. The English leaders had throughout 
 been harassed, on the Jumna line of communication, 
 by the pressure exercised by the Gwalior Contingent 
 and other rebel forces from the Raj pu tana side. It 
 was determined to relieve this pressure by a great 
 strategic operation from the rear of the a&sailants.
 
 S/J? HUGH ROSE'S MARCH 133 
 
 The programme was that two British columns should 
 simultaneously advance, one, the more eastern, from 
 Jabalpur, due northward across Bundelkhand to 
 Banda — the other moving north-eastward from Mhow 
 upon Jhansi and Kalpi. Sir Hugh Rose's series of suc- 
 cesses, while in command of the latter column, forms 
 one of the most interesting and splendid chapters of 
 English military history. Leaving Indore at the be- 
 ginning of 1858, he fought his way northward, early in 
 February relieved the beleaguered garrison of Sagar, 
 and on the 21st March appeared before Jhansi, above 
 the granite walls of which floated the banner of the 
 insurgent Rani. The fort was of great strength, 
 standing on a lofty rock, its walls of solid masonry 
 and bristling with guns. Its garrison of 11,000 men 
 was fired with the fierce enthusiasm of their leader. 
 The besiegers opened a cannonade. For seventeen 
 days the English batteries poured in a ceaseless fire of 
 shot and shell. A breach had been effected, when 
 news arrived that Tantia Topi was advancing from 
 the direction of Kalpi, with 23,000 men and twenty- 
 eight guns, to the relief of the beleaguered Princess, 
 Sir Hugh, without allowing an instant's pause in the 
 operations of the siege, led a portion of the besieging 
 force against his new foe, drove Tantia Topis army 
 headlong into the jungle, and returned m two days 
 to deliver a successful assault upon the fortress. 
 Jhansi captured, the victorious General was soon on 
 the road to Kalpi, and, on the 22nd May, encountered 
 the rebel force and inflicted a repulse which seemed
 
 134 EARL CANNING 
 
 to have definitely settled the fortunes of the campaign. 
 But the heart of the fierce Maratha woman was still 
 unquelled. On June 4th arrived the startling news 
 that the Rani and Tantia Topi had combined 
 their shattered armies, had threatened Gwalior's 
 capital — that Sindhia, marching to oppose them, had 
 been deserted by his army and had fled to Agra, and 
 that the Fort of Gwalior was in the rebels' hands. It 
 was a dying rally ; for, before the third week in June 
 had closed, Gwalior had been recovered, and Sir 
 Robert (Lord) Napier, catching the rebel army between 
 Agra and Gwalior, had practically annihilated it. 
 Tantia Topi, eff'ecting his escape, continued till the 
 spring of the following year to elude his pursuers, 
 a cordon of whom surrounded him on every side ; but, 
 so far as concerned co-operation with the northern 
 mutineers, the rebellion in Rajputana and Central 
 India had been effectually crushed. The wavering 
 Chiefs had no longer reason for indecision. The 
 British ascendancy was secured. This, the sixth 
 great episode of the Mutiny, may be regarded as 
 practically concluding it. 
 
 In the autumn Lord Clyde surrounded the Oudh 
 rebels with a cordon of concentrating armies, and 
 gradually swept them across the frontier into Nepal. 
 The spirit of resistance was by this time broken. The 
 Begam of Oudh, who had been one of the chief 
 leaders in resistance, made overtures of submission ; 
 the leading landholders followed her example ; and 
 by the close of the year nothing remained to be done
 
 CLOSE OF THE MUTINY 135 
 
 but to hunt down the refugees, who were still lurking 
 in the surrounding regions of Nepal and the jungles 
 that fringe the base of the Himalayas. 
 
 In May, 1859, ^^^ Hope Grant, who had been 
 entrusted with the task of stamping out the last 
 embers of rebellion, was able to report that Oudh 
 was completely tranquil and the Mutiny at an 
 end. 
 
 Such, in the barest possible outline, is the story of 
 the great military revolt with which it was Lord 
 Canning's task to deal. From first to last it occupied 
 two years. For the first six months the tide of 
 rebellion rose fast and flowed strongly against the 
 rulers of the country. The fall of Delhi came at 
 a moment when the fortunes of England in India 
 seemed to be trembling in the balance, and, but for 
 some such signal demonstration of prowess, the 
 wavering powers of India would presently have 
 thrown in their lot with that which seemed the 
 winning cause. Lord Clyde's rescue of the Lucknow 
 garrison and great victory, at the close of the year, 
 over Tantia Topi struck one staggering blow at the 
 rebel cause ; his capture of Lucknow a second ; Lord 
 Strathnairn's campaign in Central India a third. The 
 honour of these splendid successes is justly due to the 
 Generals, by whose genius, and the troops by whose 
 gallantry and endurance they were achieved. The 
 general superintendence and direction of the entire 
 series of campaigns, by which the Mutiny was stamped 
 out and the pacification of India secured, rested with
 
 136 EARL CANNING 
 
 the Governor-General. The responsibility was Lord 
 Canning's ; and to him, too, his countrymen's gratitude 
 is due for a result which restored the endangered 
 prestige of British arms, and settled conclusively the 
 question of British supremacy in the East. 
 
 Mutinous symptoms came to light wherever native 
 troops were quartered, over a vast local area in 
 Upper and Central India, from the garrisons on the 
 Indus frontier to cantonments on the confines of 
 Assam and across the Bay of Bengal— from the foot of 
 the Himalayas to the capital of the Deccan and the 
 towns which skirt the Western Ghats. The enormous 
 extent of the struggle, its terrible vicissitudes, its 
 dark spots of agony, reverse or mistake, the awful 
 possibilities which beset it, its splendid successes, its 
 long array of noble acts of heroic self-sacrifice, will 
 leave it, so long as Enghshmen prize their country- 
 men's best achievements, among the most fascinating 
 chapters of our military annals. 
 
 Its causes are still to a large extent shrouded in the 
 same mystery as hid it from contemporary onlookers. 
 At the best the diagnosis must be imperfect ; for many 
 things about the patient's condition and temperament 
 are hidden from us. In such cases it is only pre- 
 sumptuous sciolism which would profess to explain 
 the sequence of events, to indicate the course by which 
 this or that disaster might have been avoided, or to 
 criticise those, to whose hands the conduct of the crisis 
 fell, from the standpoint of superior sagacity. The 
 Mutiny transcended experience. It bafiled skill ; it
 
 LESSONS OF THE MUTINY 137 
 
 bewildered statesmanship ; it was full of surprises to 
 those who were least likely to be surprised ; it misled 
 the wisest and the best informed. It bequeathed to us 
 the unpretentious lesson that the government of two 
 hundred millions of human beings, about whom the 
 governing race know little except that they differ, 
 toto caelo, from themselves in temperament, belief, 
 taste, and the way of looking at life — is likely to 
 produce unexpected results and to be diversified by 
 unexpected incidents. The occurrence of panics is 
 one of them, though it may be hoped that the 
 fraction of the population, which is yearly raised out 
 of absolute ignorance, will tend, as years go on, to 
 render the occurrence of panics less probable. But, 
 to this day, no great bridge is begun in India without 
 a local panic, baseless and childish as that to which 
 the greased cartridges gave rise. 
 
 A second modest lesson follows on the first, namely, 
 that India is not a country with which it is well to 
 play pranks — political, administrative, or philan- 
 thropic. The English rule in India, as Sir James 
 Stephen has well observed, represents a belligerent 
 civilisation ; England must be prepared to fight as well 
 as to civilise. When, as in 1857, she allows other 
 considerations to outweigh the observance of this 
 precaution, she runs a frightful risk. As a civilised 
 and civilising administration she does, every day, 
 things which millions of her subjects misunderstand, 
 dislike, or disapprove. It is beyond the scope of 
 mortal faculty to conjecture at what point mis-
 
 l$H EARL CANNING 
 
 understanding, dislike or disapproval, may break 
 out in an infectious form, and suddenly convert a 
 tranquil community into a realised chaos. Ignorance, 
 superstition, the wild promptings of heredity, remain 
 — despite a fair exterior of civilisation — tremendous 
 forces. Their combinations can be as little antici- 
 pated, as little controlled, as the atmospheric con- 
 ditions which produce a cyclone. 
 
 Amid such surroundings it behoves the ruler to 
 watch carefully, to move slowly; to innovate with 
 cautious reluctance, to turn a deaf ear to the 
 mutterings of ignorance and impatience or the syren 
 song of inexperienced benevolence, and — not least — 
 while busy with his peaceful task, to have, like the 
 Jews of Nehemiah, his weapon near at hand and fit 
 for use. 
 
 That there were plenty of malcontents in India 
 delighted to do the British Government an ill turn 
 by encouraging disloyalty, spreading mischievous 
 rumours and raising false hopes, may be taken for 
 granted. But of a conspiracy in the sense of common 
 action, systematically directed towards a common 
 end, there is nothing that deserves the name of 
 evidence. The most searching inquiries failed to 
 produce any direct proof of such a conspiracy. 
 
 ' It is Sii- John Lawrence's very decided impression,' 
 so wrote one who was certainly well qualified to 
 judge, ' that the Mutiny had its origin in the army 
 itself; that it is not attributable to any external or 
 antecedent conspiracy whatever, although it was
 
 CAUSES OF THE MUTINY 139 
 
 afterwards taken advantage of by designing persons 
 to compass their own ends ; and that its proximate 
 cause was the cartridge affair and nothing else. Sir 
 John Lawrence has examined hundreds of letters 
 on this subject from natives, both soldiers and 
 civilians. He has, moreover, constantly conversed 
 on the matter with natives of all classes ; and he 
 is satisfied that the general — indeed the universal 
 — opinion in this part of India is to the above 
 effect.' 
 
 The behaviour of the Sepoy regiments throughout 
 was hardly reconcilable with the idea of a con- 
 spiracy. The 1 9th Native Infantry, who may be said 
 to have led off the Mutiny at Berhampur, were 
 obviously more frightened than rebellious ; and, when 
 their fright was over, would gladly, had they been 
 allowed, have returned to their allegiance. Incen- 
 diarism — which was the almost invariable prelude of 
 a military outbreak — is the act rather of men wishing 
 to attract attention to their grievances than of member^ 
 of a plot, whose object would be to escape notice. 
 Again and again it was obvious that, up to the very 
 moment of mutiny, it was uncertain, even with 
 the men themselves, what line they would take, and 
 that some accident — a word, a cry, a sudden alarm — 
 turned the agitated and wavering multitude to the 
 side of rebellion. Again and again mutinies took 
 place under conditions which precluded the possibility 
 of eventual success. Among the leaders of the move- 
 ment there was no real aofreement. The Kinsr had
 
 140 EARL CANNING 
 
 great difficulty in maintaining his ascendancy in 
 Delhi. Nana Sahib's first act was to persuade the 
 Cawnpur mutineers to return with him to that city 
 instead of joining the common cause ; and in Oudh, 
 each of several rebel parties played its own game, 
 regardless of, and often in opposition to, the interests 
 of the rest. In connexion with this branch of the 
 subject, it is satisfactory to remember that no Native 
 State took part against us, though the loyalty of two 
 of them led to the desertion of their armies — that 
 several of them gave us active and valuable help — 
 that, outside the central region of disaffection, the 
 upper classes showed no indication of sympathy 
 with the movement, and in Lower Bengal plainly 
 discountenanced it, and that, though several of the 
 leaders of the movement were, as might have been ex- 
 pected, persons who considered themselves aggrieved 
 by the British administration, their conduct was 
 obviously rather the outcome of individual idio- 
 syncrasy than the natural result of English policy. 
 Nothing that it was in the power of the Government 
 to do, or to refrain from doing, would have made 
 Nana Sahib anything but a treacherous savage, or 
 have tamed the fierce Maratha blood that throbbed 
 in the heart of the Rani of Jhansi. 
 
 The circumstance that the North- Western Provinces 
 were overrun by the mutineers, that the Oudh Taluk- 
 dars, en masse, joined the rebel cause, and that Lord 
 Canning thought right, in re-organising the land- 
 revenue system of the Province to do so on a basis
 
 THE LAND QUESTION 141 
 
 more favourable to their position than that which had 
 been accorded to them in the Provisional Settlement 
 operations at the time in progress, has been the excuse 
 for much misplaced denunciation of the policy of 
 land-administration, of which Mr. Thomason was the 
 most distinguished advocate in the North-West Pro- 
 vinces, and which Lord Lawrence had rigorously 
 enforced in the Punjab. It may be sufficiently 
 described as a system which looked with disfavour 
 on the various landlord interests, which in India have 
 a tendency to grow up between the State on the one 
 hand and the original owner and actual cultivator 
 of the soil on the other. It has sometimes been even 
 asserted that the area of the insurrection was co-^: 
 extensive with that in which this policy had been 
 allowed free play, and that, in fact, it was one of the 
 motive causes of which the Mutiny was an effect. It 
 would be difficult, without plunging into a still existent 
 controversy, to set forth the grounds on which such 
 a view is regarded by an important school of Indian 
 administrators as unsound and fallacious. It is true, 
 no doubt, that the curtailment of their privileges did 
 incline the Oudh Talukdars to take part against the 
 rulers who had ordered that curtailment. It is true 
 too, that the Oudh peasantry were unable to resist 
 the combined influences of the Talukdars and the 
 mutinous soldiery, and joined with them in assailing 
 the power, whose main object had been the im- 
 provement of their condition. It may be conceded, 
 moreover, that the liberal concessions made to the
 
 142 EARL CANNING 
 
 Talukdars on the close of the Mutiny secured their 
 ready adhesion to the cause of order, and so facilitated 
 the tranquillisation of the country. But all this does 
 not prove that the advocates of the territorial magnates 
 were right, or that the supporters of the peasant 
 interest were wrong, or that the Government had 
 erred in its endeavour to protect the feeblest class of 
 the population from oppression. The condition of the 
 occupiers of the soil must, so long as Indian society 
 remains in its present phase, be one of the principal 
 objects of solicitude to any Government which re- 
 cognises the welfare of the mass of the inhabitants, 
 rather than the conciliation of a small and privileged 
 class of proprietors, as the object of its existence. The 
 system of land settlement, which is known by the 
 name of its most distinguished advocate, Mr. Thomason, 
 has, it is certain, contributed enormously to the well- 
 being of the agricultural classes wherever it has been 
 introduced. It has rescued large sections of the popu- 
 lation from suffering and degradation ; it has arrested 
 the triumph of the high-handed oppressor ; it has 
 vindicated popular rights, which had been trampled 
 under foot by violence, or juggled away by fraud and 
 chicanery. Its introduction may, in some instances, 
 render the task of government more difficult ; but 
 that which is difficult is often right ; and it may none 
 the less be the dut}^ of an enlightened and benevolent 
 administration to adhere to its policy of protecting 
 the weak, and to refuse to purchase the adhesion of 
 the strong by condoning oppression. That such a
 
 THE INDIAN PEASANT 143 
 
 policy is not inherently adverse to loyalty was 
 sufficiently proved by the fact that, of the many 
 thousands of native soldiers who fought on the English ^ 
 side in the Mutiny, by far the larger proportion had 
 been enlisted in a Province where the system had 
 been long and actively at work.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Lord Canning's Assailants 
 
 Throughout the eventful two years which followed 
 the outbreak of the Mutiny, it was Lord Canning's fa,te 
 to be almost incessantly the object of hostile criticism, 
 on the part sometimes of the European community at 
 Calcutta, sometimes of Parliamentary leaders or jour- 
 nalists at home. It was inevitable that it should be 
 so. At periods, which arrest public attention and 
 profoundly stir public feeling, views are quickly 
 formed, strongly expressed, and pass from man to man 
 with a rapid contagion. Under such a Government, 
 too, as that of India, there is none of the relief which 
 the outspokenness of Parliamentary interpellation in 
 England affords to popular mistrust, misapprehension 
 or disapproval. Many things which Lord Canning 
 and his colleagues did at the outset of the Mutiny 
 were mistrusted, misapprehended and disapproved by 
 those among whom he lived, and to whom the events 
 of the day were matters of grave personal significance. 
 As wave after wave of disastrous news came rolling 
 in. the tension of feeling grew intense, and Lord 
 Canninsf's calm mood and untroubled demeanour 
 were unendurably irritating to a society which was
 
 ~^Xi, 
 
 PETITION FOR CANNING'S RECALL 145 
 
 becoming anything but calm. The Calcutta public 
 was impatient. Lord Canning had no leisure, 
 perhaps no inclination to allay its impatience. The 
 English press was embittered. Public opinion be- 
 came increasingly estranged. Towards the close of 
 1857 the European public of Calcutta and Bengal 
 addressed a petition to the Queen, setting forth in 
 vivid colours the various calamities of which India 
 hfd of late been the theatre, alleging that these 
 calamities were 'directly attributable to the blindness, 
 weakness and incapacity of the Government,' and 
 praying Her Majesty to mark her disapproval of the 
 policy pursued by the Governor-General by directing 
 his recall. 
 
 The Indian Government forwarded this document 
 to the Court of Directors, offering no general reply, 
 but pointing out, in marginal notes, various errors of 
 fact in the allegations of the petition. The petition, 
 thus annotated, forms, accordingly, an authentic sum- 
 mary of the grounds of Lord Canning's unpopularity 
 with the European community. Bootless as it gene- 
 rally is to resuscitate an extinct controversy, it 
 is interesting to consider some of the grounds of 
 complaint, and to realise the sort of difficulties with 
 which — in addition to anxieties necessarily inherent 
 in such a struggle, carried on a thousand miles away, 
 — Lord Canning had to contend in the society around 
 him. The grievance as to the tardiness of the 
 Government in utilising the proffered services of the 
 Volunteers proved not to be of a very substantial 
 
 K
 
 146 EARL CANNING 
 
 order. Lord Canning's general arrangements, on the 
 first outbreak of the Mutiny at Meerut, were admitted 
 to have been made with praiseworthy expedition. 
 Without an hour's delay he had summoned aid from 
 every available quarter — Madras, Bombay, Ceylon, 
 Lord Elgin and General Ashburnham on their way, 
 with several English reoiments, to China. But the 
 Calcutta Volunteers' offer of their services had not 
 been received with corresponding alacrity. Lord 
 Canning now explained how matters really stood. 
 The original offer. May 20th, to serve 'as special 
 constables or otherwise ' had been forthwith ac- 
 cepted. On June 12th, when it was ascertained 
 that service as special constables was distasteful, and 
 that there was a general wish that a Volunteer Corps 
 should be enrolled, this measure also was adopted. 
 The Volunteers had been informed, and truly in- 
 formed, that ' there was no apprehension of disturbance 
 in Calcutta, and that if, unfortunately, any disturbance 
 should occur, the means of crushing it utterly were 
 at hand.' Valuable, accordingly, as had been the 
 assistance of the Volunteers, especially in inspiring 
 confidence in the European and Eurasian population, 
 it could not be conceded that Calcutta had ever been 
 threatened, or that the safety of the city had been 
 owing to the 800 Volunteers, ultimately enrolled, or 
 that their numbers would, as the petition alleged, 
 have been four or five times as great but for the 
 supposed discouragement, offered by the Government 
 in the first instance.
 
 GROUNDS OF COMPLAINT 147 
 
 Another complaint was, that during the whole 
 siege of Cawnpur, i.e. from June 4th to July 15th, no 
 attempt was made to relieve it ; that the Government 
 might, by enrolling Volunteers, have set free the 
 Calcutta garrison for this purpose, as well as^ if 
 necessary, the 2000 or 3000 British sailors in the 
 port. To this the Government replied that every 
 possible exertion had been made to relieve Cawnpur 
 — that troops had been pushed 500 miles up the 
 country at the hottest season of the year by means 
 before unused — that 100 soldiers had been thus 
 conveyed to Cawnpur before the outbreak, and that, 
 even supposing the whole Calcutta garrison to have 
 been at the Government's disposal, the absence of 
 transport rendered it physically impossible to send 
 forward a single soldier in addition to the numbers 
 actually sent. 
 
 The delay in disarming the three native regiments 
 at Dinapur was another grievance on which the 
 petitioners relied. The answer was : — First, that, as 
 there was at this station but a single weak European 
 regiment, confronted by three native regiments, and 
 as the mutinous temper of the Sepoys was by no 
 means certain, the Government had not thought it 
 expedient to prematurely risk so hazardous an ex- 
 periment: second, that the delay of an English 
 regiment on its way to reinforce Havelock, who was 
 waiting fast-bound at Cawnpur, unable for want of 
 strength to advance to the relief of Lucknow, was 
 a certain evil ; the necessity of disarming the Dinapur 
 
 K 3
 
 14S EARL CANNING 
 
 regiments by no means certain ; and that, with a view 
 to this consideration, the General in command at 
 Dinapur, though empowered to stop some of the 
 troops on the march up country, if he decided it 
 to be necessary to disarm the Sepoys, had hesitated 
 to do so : and, thirdly, that, after all, the Dinapur 
 regiments did not mutiny till they had been almost 
 driven to do so by the weak and clumsy measures 
 which the local authorities unfortunately adopted for 
 disarming them. 
 
 As to the next ground of complaint, the restriction 
 of the liberty of the press, the petitioners complained 
 especially of the ' aggravation of an inherently odious 
 measure by the weak and wanton confounding of 
 loyal subjects with the seditious and rebellious,' 
 in other words, by the extension of the rules to 
 European as well as to native newspapers. The 
 answer was that the measure was not aimed solely 
 at sedition, but at the prevention of intelligence 
 which, for the special reasons of the moment, it 
 was not expedient to divulge, and of attacks 
 calculated to inflame disaffection at a crisis when 
 it was all-important to guide public feeling in the 
 right direction. In these aspects the English press 
 was as much in need of supervision as the native. 
 The only instance in which, under the Act, a licence 
 had been withdrawn from any English newspaper, 
 and that only for a few days, was ' one on which an 
 important measure of the Government was stigmatised 
 in language directly and obviously calculated to weaken
 
 GROUNDS OF COMPLAINT 149 
 
 its authority and to bring it into hatred and contempt 
 among all classes of Her Majesty's subjects ' — a degree 
 of licence which it was impossible, in the existing 
 condition of India, to concede. 
 
 The next complaint referred to a measure passed 
 in September, 1857, necessitating a licence to carrj^ 
 arms and ammunition. ' Notwithstanding the broad 
 line of distinction,' the petitioners urged, ' which was 
 afforded to the Legislature by the fact of the present 
 movement being avowedly one of race and religion, 
 the Governor-General and his Council refused to make 
 any such distinction, and the Act was made applicable 
 to the Christian as well as the native races.' This 
 the petitioners stigmatised as 'highly offensive and 
 dangerous.' The Government replied that the muti- 
 neers formed but a small class of the native popu- 
 lation, the great bulk of which continued loyal : that 
 any general distinction, grounded on race, would be 
 unjust and invidious ; and that all necessary relaxation 
 could be effected by the power of exempting individuals 
 or classes, for which the Act provided. 
 
 The next topic of complaint was a measure which, 
 now that we can look at the subject in cold blood, 
 stands among^ Lord Canning's strongest claims to 
 respect. During the early months of the Mutiny it 
 had been necessary to invest various civil officers and 
 ' commissions ' — often, in fact, consisting of a single 
 individual, selected by the local authority and offering 
 no adequate guarantee of experience or self-restraint 
 — with summary powers of trying and sentencing
 
 l5o EARL CANNING 
 
 all persons suspected of desertion or mutiny. These 
 powers, as was inevitable, had been freely and some- 
 times indiscriminately used. In July, accordingly, 
 the Governor- General issued a Resolution for the 
 instruction of these tribunals, indicating the lines 
 of distinction which, with a view to justice and the 
 ultimate pacification of the country, ofiicials should 
 observe in dealing with various classes of suspects 
 brought before them. Many soldiers in regiments 
 which had mutinied had shown no sympathy with 
 the movement, but had gone quietly to their homes. 
 To hang such men as mutineers after a summary trial 
 was needless and cruel severity. Instructions were, 
 accordingly, given that the civil tribunals were, for 
 the future, to deal only with such deserters as were 
 found with arms in their possession, or were charged 
 with specific acts of rebellion, or belonged to regiments 
 which had murdered their officers or committed other 
 murderous outrage. All other deserters were to be 
 made over to the military authorities for regular trial. 
 The petition treated these directions as tantamount 
 to an amnesty to all mutineers except those who had 
 taken an active part in the murder of their officers or 
 others ; ' and denounced such leniency as ' misplaced, 
 impolitic, and iniquitous,' as calculated to ' excite con- 
 tempt and invite attack by exhibiting the Government 
 as so powerless to punish mutiny, or so indifferent 
 to the sufferings of its victims, as to dispense with 
 adequate retribution,' and as thus tending to a pro- 
 longation of the struggle. It is a curious instance
 
 THE RESOLUTION OF JULY 151 
 
 of the misleading effects of popular passion that 
 such obvious and moderate precautions against in- 
 discriminate vengeance should have been regarded 
 with disapproval, and that even in England the 
 ' clemency ' of their author — for it was on this 
 occasion that the historical nickname of their author 
 first saw the light — should have been made a topic 
 for satirical and depreciatory comment. 
 
 Another count of this long indictment showed still 
 more distinctly the real temper of Lord Canning's 
 accusers. It alleged that, notwithstanding numerous 
 instances of treachery on the part of Muhammadan 
 officials, the Governor-General had continued to show 
 his confidence in that class of men by sanctioning the 
 appointment of a Muhammadan to be ' Deputy Com- 
 missioner ' of Patna, a place of great importance and 
 trust, and of other Muhammadans to other places of trust, 
 ' to the great offence and discouragement of the Christian 
 population of this Presidency.' The letter in which 
 the Commissioner at Patna justified the appointment 
 specially instanced in the petition, puts in a striking 
 light the dangers against which Lord Canning had at 
 this period of his career to contend. The gentleman 
 whose appointment was thus denounced was a Calcutta 
 advocate in large and lucrative practice. He had, 
 throughout, taken an active part in supporting the 
 cause of order, urging his countrymen and co- 
 religionists to loyalty, and supplying useful informa- 
 tion, for obtaining which he had special facilities, to 
 the Government. He had abandoned his professional
 
 152 EARL CANNING 
 
 avocations in order to assist the Behar authorities at 
 a moment when things were at the worst in that 
 Province. His assistance had been invaluable in 
 maintaining tranquillity and in checking outbursts 
 of Muhammadan excitement. The return made by 
 English newspapers for these valuable services had 
 been unfortunate. ' He has,' wrote the Commissioner, 
 ' been the object of ceaseless vituperation. The most 
 treacherous motives have been attributed to him, and 
 he has become, in fact, the hete noire of the English press. 
 The main ground of attack against him has been that 
 he was a Muhammadan. The whole of the Calcutta 
 press, apparently without exception, have taken up 
 the idea that this is a Muhammadan rebellion, not 
 merely in the sense that the Sepoys were worked 
 upon by individual Muhammadans — which may or 
 may not be true — but that the entire Muhammadan 
 community is disaffected, and merely waits its oppor- 
 tunity to rise and throw off the British yoke. I 
 need not point out how destitute of foundation this 
 notion is, how entirely unrestrained many millions of 
 Muhammadans in Bengal have been during the last 
 five months, except by their own feelings of loj'alty, 
 and how quiet the Muhammadan villages of Southern 
 Behar have been, while Brahmin and Rajput villages 
 were rising round them. Articles like this have a 
 
 O 
 
 direct tendency to excite disaffection among large 
 masses of the population, and to convert what is now 
 a military revolt into a national rebellion.' 
 
 ' Your Majesty's petitioners submit,' so ran the
 
 A POLICY OF REPRESSION 153 
 
 concluding passages of the petition, ' that the only 
 policy by which British rule and the lives, honour, 
 and properties of your Majesty's Christian subjects in 
 this country can in future be secured, is a policy of 
 such vigorous repression and punishment as shall 
 convince the native races of India— who can be 
 influenced effectually by power and fear alone — of the 
 hopelessness of insurrection against British rule, even 
 when aided by every circumstance of treachery, sur- 
 prise and cruelty.' The adoption of any milder 
 policy would, the petitioners urged, be regarded as 
 springing wholly from conscious weakness^ would 
 lead, at no distant date, to a recurrence of the same 
 scenes, and so endanger the future tranquillity of 
 British India. 
 
 Language such as this tells its own tale. It is the 
 language of rage. There was much to excuse it. It 
 would be well to bury it in oblivion, but that it is 
 impossible, without recalling it, to understand the 
 perils of the time and the inestimable service which 
 Lord Canning rendered to his countrymen in the 
 determined and courao-eous resistance which he offered 
 to a mood which, if it had prevailed, would have gone 
 far to make the ultimate pacification of the country 
 impossible. 
 
 Less excuse can be offered for the political par- 
 tisanship which made the allegations of the Calcutta 
 petition the pretext for an attempt to exclude the 
 Governor-General's name from the vote which, early in 
 1858, was carried through both Houses of Parliament,
 
 154 EARL CANNING 
 
 thanking the Indian services, civil and military, for 
 then- zeal in the suppression of the Mutiny. These 
 ungenerous attacks on the representative of the 
 Sovereign, engaged in a life and death struggle for 
 the maintenance of the English supremacy in the 
 East, can be now remembered only with sorrow that 
 English statesmen should have been guilty of so 
 ignoble a lapse. They stand a warning to politicians 
 not to tempt the ill-informed and hasty suffrage of 
 a popular assembly to expressions of opinion which, 
 however they may gratify the temper of the moment, 
 are soon recognised as unjust, and have to be repu- 
 diated by leaders and followers alike with confusion 
 and remorse. The moment of this attempted slight 
 was that at which, more than at any other period 
 of his career. Canning's nobility of character was 
 safeguarding the Empire from a great danger and 
 Englishmen from an indelible disgrace. 
 
 In the spring of 1858 Lord Canning encountered 
 another and still more serious controversial tempest. 
 On the fall of Lucknow a Proclamation was addressed 
 to the landholders. Chiefs and inhabitants of Oudh, 
 which became — thanks to Lord Ellenborough's im- 
 pulsiveness — the topic of a fierce Parliamentary fight. 
 It is worth while to consider it with more attention 
 than such quarrels, for the most part, deserve, because 
 it throws light on Lord Canning's general policy in the 
 pacification of Oudh, and on the diflicult problems 
 which, in the task of pacification and reconstruction, 
 he was continually called upon to solve.
 
 THE OUDH PROCLAMATION 155 
 
 From the outset of the Mutiny, Lucknow had been 
 a main centre of rebellion ; for many months a British 
 force had been besieged there ; for many months it had 
 defied the English rulers of the country. The entire 
 Province had joined in the rebellion. The landowners, 
 with hardly an exception, had turned against the 
 Government, and sent their retainers to aid the 
 besiegers at Lucknow. The peasantry, too ignorant 
 or too feeble to appreciate the efforts of the British 
 officials in their behalf, had followed their Chiefs. 
 Lucknow now lay at the conqueror's mercy; the 
 subjugation of the Province was a mere question 
 of time. It was necessary to announce to the in- 
 habitants the terms on which the Government was 
 ready to accept their return to allegiance. Lord 
 Canning had learnt by experience that Proclamations 
 are not the surest or safest mode of influencing the 
 natives of India. He would have preferred, had it 
 been possible, to communicate the intentions of the 
 Government by instructions issued to officers attached 
 to the columns marching through the country. This 
 being impracticable, a Proclamation was necessary, 
 and the question was as to the terms which would 
 best meet the ends of justice and conduce to the 
 pacification of the Province. The conclusions arrived 
 at by Lord Canning were : — First, that all questions of 
 punishment with death, transportation or imprison- 
 ment of rebels, however inveterate and unnecessary their 
 hostility might have been, ought, in the special circum- 
 stances of the Oudh population, to be set aside : next.
 
 156 EARL CANNING 
 
 that the one declared punishment for rebellion should 
 be confiscation of proprietary rights in the soil ; such 
 penalty, however, to be enforced with an indulgent 
 hand, and to be remitted on timely submission or 
 other valid ground. The Proclamation, accordingly, 
 announced that, with a few specified exceptions in 
 which loyalty had been maintained, ' the proprietary 
 rio-ht in the soil was confiscated to the British 
 Government ; who would dispose of such right as 
 might seem fitting.' To landowners, who should make 
 immediate surrender, their lives and honours were 
 secured, provided that 'their hands were unstained 
 with English blood, murderously shed.' For further 
 indulgence 'they must throw themselves upon the 
 justice and mercy of the British Government.' 'To 
 those who come promptly forward,' it was added, 
 ' and supported the Government in the restoration of 
 order, the indulgence will be large, and the Governor- 
 General will be ready to view liberally the claims 
 which they may thus acquire to a restitution of their 
 former rights.' 
 
 The last provision had been added in deference to 
 the objection urged by Sir James Outram, the Chief 
 Commissioner of Oudh, that the announcement of the 
 Government's intention to confiscate the landowners' 
 rights would drive them to desperate and prolonged 
 resistance, and render it in vain to hope for their 
 services on the side of order. 
 
 The Proclamation was unfavourably viewed in 
 Outram's camp, and there were those present who
 
 LORD ELLENBOROUGH'S DESPATCH 157 
 
 had the means of making their objections known 
 in high quarters in England. The moment was 
 unfortunate. Lord Palmerston's defeat on the Con- 
 spiracy to Murder Bill had just caused a change 
 of Ministry, and a private letter addressed by Lord 
 Canning to Mr. Vernon Smith, President of the 
 Board of Control, explaining the Proclamation and 
 attenuating its apparent severity, had not been 
 transferred by the outgoing official to his successor. 
 Lord EUenborough, reading the Proclamation as it 
 stood, considered the confiscating clause as excessive 
 and impolitic in its severity. His colleagues fully 
 shared his views. The opportunity for vii'tuous 
 indignation and denunciatory rhetoric proved too 
 strono; for a Minister whose foible was indiscretion. 
 The machinery of the Board enabled its President, 
 by addressing the Indian Government in the ' Secret 
 Committee,' to emancipate himself from the ordinary 
 trammels of extraneous interference. To Lord Ellen- 
 borough's stormy genius such a chance was irresistible. 
 Preparing the way by a summary, not too accurate, 
 of the relations of the English Government to Oudh, 
 and of the course of events which had led up to 
 annexation, he thus delivered his assault : — 
 
 ' We must admit that, under the circumstances, the 
 hostilities, which have been carried on in Oudh, have 
 rather the character of legitimate war than that of 
 rebellion, and that the people of Oudh should rather 
 be regarded with indulgent consideration than made 
 the objects of a penalty exceeding in extent and in
 
 158 EARL CANNING 
 
 severity almost any which has been recorded in 
 history as inflicted upon a subdued nation. 
 
 ' Other conquerors, when they have succeeded in 
 overcoming resistance, have excepted a few persons 
 as still deserving of punishment, but have, with a 
 generous policy, extended their clemency to the great 
 body of the people. 
 
 ' You have acted upon a different principle ; you have 
 reserved a few as deserving of special favour, and you 
 have struck, with what they will feel as the severest of 
 punishment, the mass of the inhabitants of the country. 
 
 ' We cannot but think that the precedents from 
 which you have departed will appear to have been 
 conceived in a spirit of wisdom superior to that 
 which appears in the precedent you have made. 
 
 ' We desire that you will mitigate in practice the 
 stringent severity of the decree of confiscation you 
 have issued against the landholders of Oudh. 
 
 ' We desire to see British authority in India rest 
 upon the willing obedience of a contented people. 
 There cannot be contentment when there is general 
 confiscation. 
 
 ' Government cannot long be maintained by any 
 force in a country where the whole people is rendered 
 hostile by a sense of wrong ; and if it were possible 
 so to maintain it, it would not be a consummation to 
 be desired.' 
 
 Lord Canning bore the attack with characteristic 
 coolness. He had already, in his correspondence 
 with Outram, indicated the grounds on which the
 
 CANNING'S JUSTIFICATION 159 
 
 policy of the Proclamation was to be justified. 
 Making all allowance for the special circumstances of 
 the Oudh landowners, the fact remained that they 
 had shown themselves strenuous and determined 
 rebels. Confiscation of their lands was declared as 
 the general penalty ; the means of escaping were 
 shown to be within reach of all without loss of 
 honour. ' Nothing more is required of them than 
 that they should promptly tender their adhesion 
 and help to maintain peace and order.' To concede 
 more than this would have been to treat rebels ' not 
 only as honourable rebels, but as enemies who had 
 won the day ; ' would have led the people of Oudh 
 to the conclusion that rebellion against the British 
 Government could not be a losing game, and, ' though 
 perhaps productive of an immediate return to order, 
 would not have placed the future peace of the Province 
 on a secure foundation.' 
 
 The argument that the rebellion of the Talukdars 
 had been provoked by the unjust manner in which 
 the Government had dealt with their estates, was 
 met by the fact that among the most inveterate 
 of our opponents were several Talukdars, who had, 
 confessedly, benefitted by the administrative changes 
 introduced in the land system since the annexation of 
 the Province. Nor, on the whole case, was any valid 
 reason shown for departing from the rule that the 
 penalty of confiscation had been incurred, and that 
 relaxation of that sentence could be obtained only 
 by submission.
 
 i6o EARL CANNING 
 
 Lord Canning's reply to Lord Ellenborough's on- 
 slaught dealt at the outset with the exceptional 
 circumstances which attended it, and the position 
 in which it placed the Governor- General. Though 
 written in Secret Committee, it had been made 
 public in England three weeks before it reached 
 the Governor-General, and, within a few days of 
 his receipt of it, would be read in every station 
 in Hindustan. The disapproval which it conveyed, 
 publicly endorsed by the Ministry, had been tele- 
 graphed to India, and must necessarily increase the 
 difficulties of the Government by weakening the 
 authority of its head, raising delusive hopes, and 
 encouraging resistance. ' No taunts or sarcasms,' 
 Lord Canning continued, ' come from what quarter 
 they may, will turn me from the path which I 
 believe to be that of my public duty. I believe 
 that a change in the head of the Government of 
 India at this time, if it took place under circum- 
 stances which indicated a repudiation, on the part 
 of the Government in England, of the policy which 
 has hitherto been pursued towards the rebels of 
 Oudh, would seriously retard the pacification of the 
 country. I believe that that policy has been, from the 
 beginning, merciful without weakness, and indulgent 
 without compromise of the dignity of the Govern- 
 ment. I believe that, wherever the authority of 
 the Government has been re-established, it has become 
 manifest to the people in Oudh, as elsewhere, that the 
 indulgence to those who make submission, and who
 
 LORD CANNING'S REPLY l6l 
 
 are free from atrocious crime, will be large. I believe 
 that the issue of the Proclamation, which has been so 
 severely condemned, was thoroughly consistent with 
 that policy, and that it is so viewed by those to 
 whom it is addressed. I believe that policy, if 
 steadily pursued, offers the best and earliest prospect 
 of restoring peace to Oudh upon a stable footing. 
 
 ' Firm in these convictions, I will not in a time of 
 unexampled difficulty, danger and toil, lay down, of 
 my own act, the high trust which I have the honour to 
 hold ; but I will, with the permission of your Honour- 
 able Committee, state the grounds upon which these 
 convictions rest, and describe the course of policy 
 which I have pursued in dealing with the rebellion 
 in Oudh. If, when I have done so, it shall be deemed 
 that that policy has been erroneous ; or that, not 
 being erroneous, it has been feebly and ineffectually 
 carried out ; or that, for any reason, the confidence of 
 those, who are responsible for the administration of 
 Indian affairs in England, should be withheld from 
 me, I make it my respectful but earnest request, 
 through your Honom-able Committee, that I may be 
 relieved of the office of Governor-General of India 
 with the least possible delay.' 
 
 Lord Canning next proceeded to point out that his 
 assailants' argument threw a grave shade of doubt on 
 the lawfulness of the British annexation of Oudh, and 
 regarded the rebel population rather as engaged in 
 legitimate warfare than as rebels against duly con- 
 stituted authority. Such a point was, of course, 
 
 L
 
 l62 EARL CANNING 
 
 beyond the competence of a servant of the Govern- 
 ment, which had ordered the annexation, either to 
 raise or to discuss. But the fact that a Minister of 
 the Crown could speak hesitatingly of the right of the 
 Government to rule the country was calculated to give 
 a stimulus to the spirit of turbulence, and to unite 
 the various factions of disorder — hitherto without 
 concert or cohesion — in the common cause of national 
 resistance to a foreign oppressor. 
 
 Coming to the actual merits of the dispute, Lord 
 Canning next traced the course of British administra- 
 tion in the newly-annexed Province, the oppression, 
 fraud, or chicanery, which infected the majority of 
 the Talukdar titles, the collapse of the endeavour 
 to reinstate the proprietary occupants of the soil in 
 their supposed rights, the consequent impracticability, 
 on the one hand, of recurring to the status quo imme- 
 diately previous to the Mutiny, and thus renewing an 
 admittedly unsuccessful experiment, or, on the other, 
 of putting a premium on rebellion by re-establishing 
 the Talukdars in privileges which, previous to the 
 Mutiny, we had declared to be unjust and inadmissible. 
 The attempt, at such a moment, to adjudicate their 
 rio-hts would have been attended with insurmountable 
 difficulties : nor would ' confiscation ' be understood by 
 the landowners as necessarily operating a permanent 
 alienation of their rights, but merely as placing in 
 the hands of Government the means of punishing 
 persistence in rebellion, and, in case of submission, of 
 substituting an undeniable for a doubtful title, and of
 
 SURRENDER OF THE TALUKDARS 163 
 
 attachinj; to the fiat of restoration such conditions 
 as the new conditions of the Province might appear to 
 necessitate. 
 
 Lord Canning was able to clench his argument by 
 reports, showing that large numbers of Talukdars 
 were responding to the Proclamation by tendering 
 their allegiance ; that many more, who wished to do 
 so, were deterred by the armed bands still at large 
 in the Province ; and that, as soon as this terrorism 
 had been arrested, the acceptance of the terms of the 
 Proclamation throughout the Province might be con- 
 fidently expected. 
 
 The hopes thus expressed were fully realised. No 
 sooner had the bands of mutineers, to which the 
 jungles of Oudh afforded so convenient a refuge, been 
 broken up or driven across the Nepal frontier, than 
 the Talukdars came freely forward to tender their 
 submission. Within eighteen months Lord Canning, 
 in p-ivinfj an account of a Darbar which he had held 
 at Lucknow in October for the Oudh Talukdars, was 
 able to declare that the tranquillity of the Province 
 was completely established, and that it was his con- 
 viction that in no part of Lidia was opposition to the 
 Government less likely to be encountered. These 
 happy results he attributed chiefly to the introduction 
 of a simple system of administration, suited to the 
 usages of the people, to a light assessment of land 
 revenue, and to the measures whereby the Government 
 had been enabled to confer on the Talukdars a 
 permanent and hereditary proprietary title in the 
 
 L 2
 
 164 EARL CANNING 
 
 estates which had been restored to them. With 
 few exceptions, the Talukdars had, he said, re- 
 sponded to the summons to Lucknow. Many had 
 come, however, in the fear that occasion would be 
 taken to punish their delinquencies. ' They are now,' 
 he said, 'preparing to return to their homes, to all 
 appearance reassured and gratified.' 
 
 In the spring of 1861 still more striking evidence 
 was afforded of the promptness and thoroughness of 
 the pacification of the Province. On the 6th April, 
 1 861, a deputation of nineteen of the principal Oudh 
 Talukdars were received in Darbar by the Viceroy 
 at Calcutta. Their address attested in no faltering 
 terms the degree in which the administration of Oudh 
 had conciliated the confidence and goodwill of its 
 landed classes. Making all due allowance for the 
 Oriental hyperbole in which parts of it are conceived, 
 their address conveys a strong sense of the gratitude 
 with which the superior landowners recognised the 
 generous leniency with which they had been treated 
 at the close of the Mutiny and the restoration of 
 privileges so seriously curtailed at annexation. They 
 referred especially to Lord Canning's Darbar of 
 October, 1859. The Viceroy was able to say in reply 
 that there was ' no part of Hindustan more flourishing 
 or more full of promise for the future. The ancient 
 system of land tenure has been restored, but has 
 been placed on a new and clear foundation. The 
 preservation of the great families of the soil has been 
 encouraged and facilitated. The rights of the humbler
 
 PACIFICATION OF OUDH 165 
 
 occupants have been protected. Garrisons have been 
 reduced, police diminished. The country is so tranquil 
 that an English child might travel from one end of it 
 to the other in safety ; so thriving that its people 
 have been the most prompt and liberal of all the 
 natives of India in responding to the cry of their 
 famishing: brethren of the North- West.' 
 
 Such was the end of the rash and ill-considered 
 attack, which nearly shipwrecked an English Ministry, 
 cost its author his seat in the Cabinet, and might, 
 but for Lord Canning's calmness, have produced a 
 calamitous disturbance in Indian administration at 
 a moment still sorely beset with difficulty and peril. 
 I have dwelt upon it at length because no other 
 incident in Lord Canning's career displays, so far as I 
 am aware, in more striking colours his characteristic 
 qualities of thoroughness in preparation, wisdom in 
 action, and magnanimity under undeserved attack.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Pacification 
 
 The events of 1857 had the effect of turning a 
 sti'ong current of English thought and feeling in the 
 direction of India. What did such a convulsion mean ? 
 Of Avhat disease in the body politic was it the out- 
 come ? What defects in the administrative machinery 
 had occasioned so sudden, so serious a collapse ? In 
 July, 1857, Mr. D'Israeli, in the last debate of the 
 session, had taken the view that the revolt was not 
 military but national, and had proposed, by way of 
 remedy, a Royal Commission to enquire into grievances, 
 and a large increase of the European force. The 
 people of India should, he urged, be made to feel ' that 
 there was a hope for them in the future, and be taught 
 at once that the relations between them and the 
 Sovereign would be drawn nearer.' The House re- 
 fused to interfere with the action of the Government, 
 but accepted Lord John Russell's proposal to vote an 
 address, expressive of their readiness to support the 
 Crown in any effort necessary to restore tranquillity. 
 There could be little doubt that among such restorative 
 measures would be a modification of the English branch 
 of the Indian Government. In July, 1857, Lord
 
 IRANSFER OF GOVERNMENT TO CROWN 167 
 
 Palmerston had represented to the Queen the in- 
 conveniences occasioned by the so-called ' double 
 Government ' of India, that of the Board of Control and 
 that of the Court of Directors. In December he laid 
 before Her Majesty the heads of a plan, recommended 
 by a Committee of the Cabinet, for superseding this 
 cumbrous and obsolete machine. In February of the 
 following year Lord Palmerston introduced a Bill 
 for giving effect to these recommendations. Lord 
 Ellenborough in the House of Lords objected that the 
 supremacy of British rule should be completely es- 
 tablished before structural questions of administration 
 could be properly discussed. It was, however, apparent 
 that the main weight of Parliamentary opinion inclined 
 to a transfer of the government of India from the 
 East India Company to the Crown. The Company 
 was too powerful a corporation to resign its powers 
 and dignities without a struggle. Earl Grey in the 
 Lords and Mr. Earing in the Commons presented the 
 Directors' protest against the threatened extinction. 
 Lord Palmerston, in introducing his Bill, pointed out 
 the inconvenience of the double government, the delay 
 and confusion involved in a procedure which kept 
 momentous despatches oscillating between Cannon 
 Row and Leadenhall Street — the obscurity thrown 
 on the real seat of power and the real responsibility. 
 He proposed to substitute an Indian Council, presided 
 over by a Secretary of State, with a seat in Parliament, 
 in lieu of the Court of Directors, the Secret Committee, 
 and the President of the Board of Control. ' I am not
 
 1 68 EARL CANNING 
 
 afraid,' he said, in defending the general policy of his 
 Bill, ' to trust Parliament with an insight into Indian 
 affairs. Parliament will do fully as well as the 
 Directors.' An amendment, hostile to the proposed 
 measure, moved by Mr. T. Baring, evoked from Sir G. 
 Cornewall Lewis a statesmanlike disquisition on the 
 subject, which put the case for the transfer in its most 
 convincing aspect. The petition against the Bill, he 
 said, was based on two fallacies ; one, that it was by 
 the Company that the East Indian Empire had been 
 acquired ; another, that the administration of the 
 Company had been extraordinarily good. A very 
 slight historical retrospect sufficed to expose the 
 futility of these assumptions. As for the pretension 
 to administrative excellence, there had never been 
 a worse government than that of the East India 
 Company from 175<S to 1784. Its good character 
 had been earned since Parliamentary control had 
 compelled it to be good. Pitt's contrivance of the 
 Board of Control had secured the much-needed sub- 
 ordination. Dundas had completed it in 1793. The 
 petition fallaciously assumed that the government of 
 India since the battle of Plassey had remained 
 unchanged ; but, in truth, there had been continuous 
 change — a continuous absorption by the State of 
 powers which could not safely be wielded by a 
 corporation. The Company's powers, mercantile and 
 administrative, had been constantly curtailed. Their 
 China monopoly went in 1813; their other trade 
 privileges had followed in 1833. On the last oc-
 
 S/Ji G. C. LEWIS ON THE COMPANY i6g 
 
 casion, in 1853, a third of the Directors had been 
 made nominees of the Crown. The Mutiny, though 
 not attributable to the existing system, showed how 
 clumsily it worked and what delays it involved. The 
 present arrangements merely threw obscurity on the 
 seat of power. Parliament, by which all improvements 
 had been effected, was becoming daily more conscious 
 of its responsibilities in the matter ; and it was 
 expedient that, with the responsibility, should go 
 the outward semblance of authority. Mr. Baring's 
 amendment was negatived ; but the Bill had still to 
 encounter some rough weather in the passage through 
 Parliament. 
 
 Lord Palmerston's defeat on the Conspiracy to 
 Murder Bill imposed upon his successor the task of 
 elaborating the measure by which the transfer was to 
 be effected and the administrative arrangements which 
 it would involve. Lord Derby's position was em- 
 barrassing. The vote on the introduction of the Bill 
 had pledged the House to the principle of the transfer, 
 and the Minister had now to construct a measure 
 embodying that principle and to carry it against 
 a hostile majonty. Some of the provisions of the 
 new Bill were, with good reason, criticised as designed 
 rather with a view to Parliamentary support than in 
 the interests of the better government of India. Such, 
 for instance, was the proposal to vest the election of 
 one-half of the eighteen members of Council in five 
 of the great trading centres of England. To Her 
 Majesty's objection to this proposal Lord Ellenborough
 
 I JO EARL CANNING 
 
 replied that commercial interests ought to be adequately 
 represented in the Council, and that any other method 
 securing commercial representation was not likely 
 to find favour with the House of Commons. Lord 
 Ellenborough's view, however, proved to be mistaken, 
 for Mr. Bright and the Liberal party condemned the 
 proposal, and Lord Derby was compelled to admit 
 that the Queen's disapproval was endorsed by the 
 general feeling of the country. The Bill underwent 
 many vicissitudes, and at one time seemed in danger 
 of being shipwrecked in the storm aroused by Lord 
 Ellenborough's indiscreet onslaught on Lord Canning's 
 Proclamation to the Oudh landholders. The House 
 agreed to proceed by the way of Resolutions, and 
 ultimately, on the 2nd August, 1858, the measure 
 became law. 
 
 The transfer of the government of India from the 
 Company was rather a formal than a substantial 
 change. The effect was little more than to bring the 
 ostensible machinery of administration into closer 
 accordance with the real facts of the case, and to clear 
 away arrangements which tended to obscure them. 
 India had become far too important a member of the 
 body politic to admit of its being administered by 
 any other authoritj'' than a Government in direct 
 touch with and directly amenable to the House of 
 Commons. Parliament must, in the last resort, 
 override every other authority. It was necessary, 
 accordingly, that a Secretary of State, subject, as 
 every other Head of a Department, to Parliamentary
 
 THE QUEEN'S PROCLAMATION 171 
 
 control, should be the ostensible depository of power ; 
 and that the Council of India, whatever powers of 
 advice or interpellation it might enjoy, should be 
 shown to be clearly subordinate to him. This was, to 
 so large an extent, the state of the existing relations 
 of the Directors to the President of the Board of 
 Control that the change, though imposing in ap- 
 pearance, was less important than it seemed. 
 
 In October Lord Canning received the Proclamation, 
 which announced to the people of India the transfer 
 of the government from the Company to the Queen. 
 By the same mail he learnt that Her Majesty had 
 appointed him her first Viceroy. His letter to the 
 Queen, acknowledging his new dignity, breathed a 
 tone well befitting a great occasion and the serious 
 responsibilities which it entailed. ' It is,' he wrote, 
 ' Lord Canning's earnest hope and prayer that, so 
 long as this high function shall be in his trust, it may 
 be administered in a spirit not unworthy of your 
 Majesty, and that, when he shall deliver it again into 
 your Majesty's hands, it may be found to be without 
 spot or stain from any act or word of his.' 
 
 The Royal Proclamation, translated into the many 
 languages and dialects in use throughout the wide 
 territorial confines of the Empire, was read with the 
 proper ceremonial splendour in all the great centres 
 of population and at every civil and military station 
 in India on the ist November, 1 858. The Proclamation 
 possesses an especial interest for Englishmen from the 
 circumstance that its present form is, in some measure,
 
 172 EARL CANNING 
 
 due to Her Majesty's criticisms on Lord Derby's 
 original draft. The Minister was requested to frame 
 it, ' bearing in mind that it is a female Sovereign who 
 speaks to more than a hundred millions of Eastern 
 people, on assuming the direct government over them, 
 and after a bloody war, giving them pledges, which 
 her future reign is to redeem, and explaining the 
 principles of her government. Such a document 
 should breathe feelings of generosity, benevolence, 
 and religious toleration, and point out the privileges 
 which the Indians will receive in being placed on an 
 equality with the subjects of the British Crown, and 
 the prosperity following in the train of civilisation.' 
 
 The Proclamation issued on November ist was, in 
 all respects, in accordance with these requirements. 
 It announced that Her Majesty had resolved to take 
 upon herself the government of the territories in 
 India heretofore administered in trust for her by the 
 East India Company; and called upon all her subjects 
 in India to bear true allegiance. It constituted Lord 
 Canning first Viceroy and Governor-General ; it 
 confirmed all officials of the East India Company 
 in their appointments ; guaranteed the scrupulous 
 maintenance of all treaties and engagements made 
 with the Native Princes ; promised that the rights, 
 dignity, and honours of Native Princes should be 
 respected by the Queen, and guarded from infringe- 
 ment as jealously as her own. 
 
 ' We hold ourselves bound to the natives of our 
 Indian territories,* the Proclamation continued, ' by
 
 THE PROCLAMATION 1 73 
 
 the same obligations of duty which bind us to all our 
 other subjects : and those obligations, by the blessiug of 
 Almighty God, we shall faithfully and conscientiously 
 fulfil. Firmly relying ourselves on the truth of 
 Christianity, and acknowledging with gratitude the 
 solace of religion, we disclaim alike the right and the 
 desire to impose our convictions on any of our 
 subjects. We declare it to be our royal will and 
 pleasure that none be in anywise favoured, none 
 molested or disquieted, by reason of their religious 
 faith or observances ; but that all shall alike enjoy 
 the equal and impartial protection of the law ; and 
 we do strictly charge and enjoin all those who may 
 be in authority under us, that they abstain from all 
 interference with the rehgious belief or worship 
 of any of our subjects on pain of our highest dis- 
 pleasure,' 'And it is further our will that, so far 
 as may be, our subjects, of whatever race or creed, 
 be freely and impartially admitted to offices in our 
 service, the duties of which they may be qualified 
 by their education, ability, and integrity, duly to 
 discharge.' 
 
 The Proclamation went on to assure the landowners 
 of the Queen's sympathy with their attachment to 
 their ancestral possessions, and her desire that they 
 should be defended in their rights, and, generally, 
 that, in framing and administering the law, due 
 regard should be had to ancient usage and custom. 
 Coming to the question of the rebellion, the Queen 
 announced her desire to show mercy in pardoning
 
 174 EARL CANNING 
 
 those who had been misled by false reports and 
 ambitious men, and who now desired to return to 
 the path of duty. 
 
 The conditional offer of pardon, announced in Lord 
 Canning's Oudh Proclamation, was confirmed. The 
 Proclamation further promised the royal clemency to 
 all offenders except those convicted of having directly 
 taken part in the murder of British subjects. To 
 those who had willingly given asylum to murderers 
 or had acted as leaders of instigators in revolt, their 
 lives only were guaranteed ; but a large indulgence 
 in awarding punishment was promised in the case of 
 men misled by a too credulous acceptance of false re- 
 ports. To all others in arms against the Government 
 the Proclamation announced unconditional pardon, 
 amnesty, and oblivion of all offences on return to 
 their homes and peaceful pursuits. 
 
 Tlie ensuing ist January was specified as the date 
 before which compliance with the terms of pardon 
 must be made. 
 
 This royal utterance was accompanied by another, 
 emanating from the newly-appointed Viceroy, calling 
 upon all Indian subjects to yield a loyal obedience 
 to the Sovereign. The two Proclamations were 
 recognised throughout India as announcing the con- 
 clusion of a struggle which the vast majority of the 
 inhabitants of the country regarded with disapproval, 
 if not with active dislike ; which, to large classes, 
 near the scene of action, was a source of serious 
 danger, discomfort and loss ; and which, it had now
 
 EFFECT OF THE PROCLAMATION 175 
 
 for months been evident, could end only in the 
 discomfiture and destruction of the insurgents. They 
 had a good effect in placing before the many millions 
 of Indian subjects, instead of the intangible and 
 mysterious abstraction known as 'The Company,' 
 the living personage of a Sovereign interested in 
 their lot, desirous of their welfare, powerful enough 
 to crush opposition, but inspired by sentiments of 
 justice, and prompt to exercise the grand prerogative 
 of mercy — the mother of sons who could come amongst 
 them, one of whom was one day to be their Sovereign ; 
 another who could lead their armies ; a third whose 
 office reminded them that they were subjects of the 
 greatest naval Power in the world. 
 
 The sentiments entertained by the vast masses of 
 India to the dynasties who at various periods have 
 conquered, governed and, frequently, oppressed them, 
 have never, it is reasonable to suppose, been those of 
 enthusiastic affection. If he is left to till his field 
 and eat its produce in peace, the Indian peasant 
 recks little of far-ofi", vague thrones and authorities, 
 which touch him less nearly than the behaviour of his 
 landlord or the course of the seasons. But the millions 
 of Indians know that they are no longer harried by 
 invading armies, trampled on by lawless magnates, 
 or pillaged by licensed robbers under the guise of 
 officialdom : and they know that for these ineffable 
 exemptions the English Raj is the safest guarantee. 
 r Many of the Princes and Chieftains of India are, 
 there is reason to believe, bound to the English throne
 
 176 EARL CANNING 
 
 by ties of sincere respect and even personal attach- 
 ment ; and there is among all a widely diffused belief 
 that then own interests are best served by the security 
 of British rule. 
 
 A few days after the issue of the Queen's Pro- 
 clamation — as though to give a last poetic touch to its 
 completeness, and in a striking form to typify the 
 collapse of rebellion — the last of the Mughal Emperors, 
 having been tried by a British tribunal and convicted 
 of criminal complicity in the crimes of the mutineers, 
 passed, a State prisoner, through Allahabad, on his 
 journey to Burma, where for the rest of his days he 
 was confined. 
 
 The Viceroy's anxieties, however, were not yet at 
 an end. Shortly after the issue of the Royal Pro- 
 clamation a portion of the British force, hitherto in 
 the Company's employ, startled the authorities by 
 a mutinous demonstration of a somewhat serious 
 order. They contended that, having enlisted for 
 service under the East India Company, they could 
 not be transferred, without their own consent, to the 
 service of the Crown, and they demanded either their 
 discharge or fresh bounty money. 
 
 At Allahabad, Meerut and other important can- 
 tonments, collisions were with difiiculty avoided, 
 and the Government was obliged ultimately to grant 
 discharge to all who desired it, a measure which 
 cost the English army the loss of some 10,000 men 
 and produced a dangerous excitement in the native 
 mind, now fortunately too completely cowed to admit
 
 FINANCIAL TROUBLES 1 77 
 
 of any bad use being made of a dangerous oppor- 
 tunity. 
 
 The suppression of a rebellion is but one portion of 
 the task which it involves on the Government of the 
 country in which it occurs. On his return to Calcutta, 
 early in 1859, Lord Canning found himself confronted 
 with financial difficulties of the gravest order. The 
 Mutiny had involved an enormous deficit in an ex- 
 chequer in which, even in normal times, it was not 
 always easy to maintain an equilibrium. The measures 
 adopted to restore it created alarm and distrust in 
 the commercial world. A proposal to introduce a 
 system of licensing trades and professions raised a 
 storm of opposition. Lord Canning, convinced of the 
 necessity for extraneous aid, wrote to England to re- 
 quest the services of an experienced English financier, 
 a request which was answered by the deputation, in 
 November, 1859, ^^ -^^^' James Wilson to deal with 
 the emergency. 
 
 At this time Lord Canning received another valuable 
 reinforcement in Sir Bartle Frere's arrival as a member 
 of his Council. The aid was opportune, for the Govern- 
 ment had by no means recovered from the disorgani- 
 sation consequent upon so violent a shock as the 
 Mutiny had occasioned. There was much uneasiness, 
 much bitterness. Lord Canning had not yet regained 
 the goodwill of his countrymen in Calcutta. The 
 ofiicial, the non-official, and the native community 
 were on unfriendly and discordant terms. Sir Bartle 
 Frere soon became Lord Canning's trusted friend and 
 
 t M
 
 1 78 EARL CANNING 
 
 counsellor, and remained so till his departure in 1 862. 
 His wise advice, kindly and genial temperament, and 
 tact in dealing with delicate and difficult questions, 
 contributed in no small degree to the establishment 
 of pleasanter relations of confidence and respect 
 between Lord Canning and the European community. 
 
 In the autumn of 1859 the Viceroy proceeded to the 
 Upper Provinces, for the purpose of receiving the 
 Feudatory Chiefs in Darbar, and rewarding those 
 whose loyalty during the rebellion had been con- 
 spicuous. At Cawnpur he found awaiting him the 
 huge array of tents which Eastern etiquette prescribes 
 as the proper equipment for the ceremonial progress 
 of the ' Great Lord Sahib.' Here Lord Clyde, the 
 Commander-in-Chief, had also pitched his camp. 
 Each had his own little world of business and 
 pomj^, and the two magnates were followed in their 
 movements by an attendant population of 20,000 
 souls. 
 
 Cawnpur still showed sad traces of the tragedy of 
 which it had been the scene two years before. There 
 had been but little leisure to do proper honour to the 
 victims of that dark tragedy. The site of the well, 
 where lay tlie bodies of the massacred women and 
 children, was neglected and weed-grown. The Ul- 
 fated entrenchment, where the little garrison made 
 its last stand, was close at hand to Lord Canning's 
 camp. The sight brought home to him and his 
 companions the desperate character of the attempted 
 defence. The slender mud parapet, hastily thrown up.
 
 THE VICEROY'S TOUR 1 79 
 
 had dwindled nearly to the level of the ground, and, 
 in many places, had wholly disappeared. 
 
 From Cawnpur, in October, the Governor-General 
 marched into Oudh, visited the Alambagh — the out- 
 post of Lucknow, where, after the withdrawal of the 
 British garrison, Outram had so gallantly kept guard, 
 and where Havelock's honoured ashes lay — and 
 entering Lucknow in state, cheered the hearts of the 
 assembled Chieftains by proclaiming the inauguration 
 of a policy, under which the privileges and position 
 of great landowners would be more sympathetically 
 recognised than under the late regime. The announce- 
 ment was received with enthusiasm. 
 
 The policy which it embodied has been elsewhere 
 discussed. Not to touch further on a still unex- 
 hausted controversy, it may suffice for the present 
 purpose to say that Lord Canning's dealings with 
 the Oudh Talukdars, whatever may have been their 
 ultimate consequences to the occupiers of the soil, 
 had, at any rate, the effect — at the moment su- 
 premely important — of conciliating the upper classes 
 and of restoring tranquillity to a disordered com- 
 munity with unexpected speed and completeness. 
 There may have been in Lord Canning's appreciative 
 audience many whose rights had been unfairly dis- 
 regarded, and some who were capable of using their 
 newly-conceded privileges with a wise and merciful 
 consideration of other and subordinate interests in the 
 soil. But experience has shown that the precautions 
 designed by Lord Canning for the protection of those
 
 i8o EARL CANNING 
 
 interests were — like the provisions enacted by the 
 Permanent Settlement in the interest of the Bengal 
 rayat — seriously inadequate. Subsequent legislation 
 has been undertaken with the view of securing the 
 Oudh peasantry from oppression. But their security 
 is still far from being complete. All that can be 
 said is that Lord Canning took up the matter at 
 a point at which one experiment had signally failed. 
 His own experiment must be pronounced to have 
 been, in its ultimate results to the occupants of the 
 soil ^, a failure ; as regarded the grave and pressing 
 necessities of the moment, it was a brilliant success. 
 
 Another announcement, made at a Darbar which 
 Lord Canning held a few days later at Cawnpur, 
 was received, with heartier acclamation. The rule 
 against adoption, which had brought several princely 
 families to a close, on the failure of natural heirs, was 
 for the future to be relaxed, and the right of adoption 
 to be recognised by the British Government as affect- 
 ing sovereignty as well as property. Every reigning 
 family in India breathed more easily for the news 
 that the Government had discarded a policy which 
 doomed many of them, sooner or later, to extinction. 
 Compliments, congratulations, thanksgivings filled the 
 air. It was now evident that the British Government, 
 whose designs against caste and religion had created 
 
 ' Oudh has now only about 15,000 'occupancy tenants,' i.e. 
 tenants with certain privileges as to permanency of tenure and 
 non-enhancement of rent, as against two and a half millions of 
 tenants at will, who are, practically, without any protection.
 
 DA REAR AT AGRA l8l 
 
 a panic two years before, intended to use its victory 
 with moderation. The same scene was re-enacted at 
 Agra, where, in grand Darbar, towards the close of No- 
 vember, Sindhia — whose loyalty, despite his mutinous 
 army, was unimpeached — and other faithful adherents, 
 received the generous recognition of their services 
 to the State, ' Never in the history of British rule,' 
 says an eye-witness of these ceremonies, 'had there 
 been more real significance in the signs of public 
 rejoicing — the brilliant cavalcades — the processions of 
 elephants — the streets lined with multitudes, eager, 
 gazing, silent, almost voiceless, and rapt in attention 
 — the house-tops crowded with spectators — the illu- 
 minations, with the spray of fountains and the flash 
 of light on the forms of mosques, minarets, temples, 
 marked by luminous lines against the black sky.' 
 
 In the midst of all, Lord Canning's fine presence, 
 the marble brow, well-chiselled features, and dignified 
 mien, rendered him to the public eye a fit representative 
 of British rule and of the humane and beneficent 
 policy which it was his ambition to realise. 
 
 After visiting Meerut, the indefatigable Viceroy 
 allowed himself one of the rare intervals of relaxation, 
 which are to be discovered in the whole of his Indian 
 career — an excursion along the banks of the Ganges 
 Canal to the famous spot at which the sacred river 
 emerges from the Himalaya, and twin snow-clad 
 summits in the horizon look down on the cradle of 
 two of the mightiest of Indian streams. Lord Canning 
 closed the year at Delhi — scene of so many vicissitudes,
 
 1 82 EARL CANNING 
 
 tomb of so many departed dynasties— its famous story 
 now enriched by another episode, stranger than any 
 yet enacted on that well-trodden stage. 
 
 Marching across the watershed which separates the 
 waters of the Ganges Valley from those of the Indus 
 system, the Viceroy reached Ambala, received the 
 Cis-Sutlej Chieftains in Darbar, and conferred a 
 well-earned reward on their conspicuous loyalty by 
 announcing that the right of adopting an heir to 
 their rights of sovereignty — not recognised by previous 
 rulers of the Punjab — was henceforth to form part of 
 their prerogative. Towards the close of February 
 i860, the Viceroy reached Peshawar, rode into the 
 famous Khaibar Pass, held a Darbar for the wild 
 Chieftains of the Indus frontier, and discussed with 
 the officials certain questions of local policy which 
 could be best decided on the spot. On his return, he 
 took the opportunity for a hurried glance at the 
 far-famed Kangra Valley — one of the loveliest gems 
 of Himalayan scenery — and brought his long and 
 fatiguing journey to a close at Simla on April loth. 
 
 Lord Canning was not, however, destined to enjoy 
 repose. Matters were going badly in Calcutta. The 
 new Finance Minister's projects for restoring the 
 shattered finances of the country had not been 
 favourably viewed. His proposal for an income 
 tax was especially disliked. Sir Charles Trevelyan, 
 the Governor of Madras, had raised the standard 
 of revolt and declared against the impost. The 
 crisis demanded the Viceroy's presence at Calcutta.
 
 RETURN TO CALCUTTA 183 
 
 Early in May, accordingly, Lord Canning left Simla, 
 and reached Calcutta on the 21st. The task of 
 traversing the great plain of Hindustan in the hottest 
 season of the year is one which no Englishman can 
 accomplish without distress and risk to health. The 
 traveller who, wearied with a six months' official 
 tour and long continuance of public functions, passes 
 from the cool heights of the Himalaya to the blazing 
 plain below, with no relief to be expected but the 
 torrential downpour of the monsoon, lays a tremendous 
 burden on his powers of physical endurance. In Lord 
 Canning's case, the journey was only in too complete 
 accordance with the systematic disregard of every 
 prudential consideration which was undermining his 
 constitution, and which sent him home, two years 
 later, a dying man. 
 
 In Calcutta numerous important questions awaited 
 him. The financial trouble was acute. The indigo 
 planters, an important interest by no means inclined 
 to submit to an imagined grievance, had raised a 
 controversy as to their relations to the rayats^ with 
 whom they had to deal and whom they frequently 
 oppressed. The renewal of the measure which im- 
 posed the necessity of a licence for carrying arms on 
 Europeans as well as natives gave rise to another 
 storm from the English in Calcutta. Angry meetings 
 assembled in the Town Hall, learned Judges in the 
 Legislative Council gave the weight of their authority 
 against a rule which, considering the events of the 
 two preceding years, Europeans not unnaturally re-
 
 1 84 EARL CANNING 
 
 sented. Peace and popularity seemed as remote 
 from the Viceroy as ever. Another question, bristling 
 with difficulties, was that of the rewards to be 
 accorded to officials for their services during the 
 Mutiny — a matter on which strong feelings were 
 certain to be entertained, and any injustice, or 
 supposed injustice, to be bitterly resented. Sir C. 
 Wood's measure for the amalgamation of the European 
 force in India with the Queen^s army had now 
 been passed, and the arrangements for carrying it 
 into execution involved a heavy burden on the 
 Indian authorities and especially on the Head of the 
 Government. 
 
 In the autumn of i860 Lord Canning started on 
 another tour in Upper India, received the Bengal 
 Rajas at Patna and Benares, and, crossing into 
 Central India, held a Darbar at Jabalpur for the 
 benefit of Holkar, Sindhia, and other Maratha 
 magnates. 
 
 Returning by Lucknow, where he performed a 
 pleasant task in receiving in Darbar the Baillie- 
 Volunteer Guard, some of the most distinguished 
 heroes of that gallant defence, the Viceroy in February 
 returned to Calcutta, where a host of important 
 questions were awaiting his arrival — military re- 
 organisation, consequent on the recent changes in 
 the Indian army — alterations in the structure of the 
 Legislative Councils, and the creation of High Courts 
 in which the old Supreme Court of Warren Hastings' 
 day, and the Sadr Court, in which Civilian Judges
 
 BUSIA'ESS AT CALCUTTA 185 
 
 dealt with native cases, were to be amalgamated in 
 a single tribunal. Each of these important changes 
 involved prolonged consideration, warm controversy 
 and difficult adjustment of conflicting interests and 
 opinions alike in England and India.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 Reconstruction 
 
 Such a trial as the Mutiny strained every part of 
 the State machinery and detected its weak points. 
 It had brought to light some weak points in the 
 Governor-General's Council, executive and legisla- 
 tive. In 1 86 1 an Act- was passed to deal with these 
 defects. 
 
 Attention has often been drawn to the cautious 
 and tentative process by which the machinery of 
 Indian Government has been gradually brought into 
 its present form. The history of the Indian Councils 
 is no exception to the rule. Legislation on the 
 subject has been a series of experiments, at first not 
 at all successful. The original object both of the 
 Council and the Supreme Court had been to provide 
 a check upon the Governor-General's power, always 
 tending to become dangerously absolute. An official, 
 who found himself the immediate embodiment of 
 despotic power to many millions of subjects and over 
 vast ranges of territory, and separated by a wide 
 interval of space and time from all superior authority, 
 lapsed, naturally, into the mood which resents and 
 defies extraneous control. Advice from home was
 
 THE GOVERNOR-GENERAL' S COUNCIL 187 
 
 frequently disregarded ; orders from home were fre- 
 quently disobeyed. It was necessary to surround the 
 Governor-General with coadjutors, who would put an 
 effectual curb on personal idiosyncrasy, especially on 
 the idiosyncrasy of disobedience. The Act of 1773 was 
 an attempt to found a system which should render 
 independence on the part of the Governor-General 
 impossible. The Government was to be carried on by 
 the Governor-General and a Council. The Governor- 
 General had a casting-vote, but in other respects had 
 no superior powers to the members of his Council. 
 A combination of three members — such as that which 
 Sir Philip Francis and his two allies effected against 
 Warren Hastings — rendered the Governor-General 
 powerless. Experience soon showed the futility of 
 the hope that the policy of an Empire could be 
 directed by the fluctuating majority of a Board. 
 Warren Hastings made no secret of his disgust at 
 the unworkable system which he was called to 
 administer, and of the difficulties which, owing to it, 
 beset him in his attempt to guide the ship of State 
 through the tempests of that troubled epoch. 
 
 In 1784 Mr. Pitt's Act was designed to mitigate the 
 evil by reducing the number of Councillors to three, 
 with the result that, if the Governor-General had but 
 a single supporter in his Council, he would command 
 a majority. Lord Cornwallis was sagacious enough 
 to perceive that, even thus enhanced, the Governor- 
 General's supremacy was precarious and to insist, as 
 a condition of his acceptance of the post, that the
 
 1 88 EARL CANNING 
 
 Governor-General should have power to overrule the 
 Council. Subsequent experience showed the necessity 
 of still further change in the same direction. On the re- 
 newal of the Company's charter in 1796, the supreme 
 authority of the Governor-General over the whole of 
 India was recognised, and his power to overrule his 
 Council in executive matters unreservedly asserted. 
 In legislative matters he still remained dependent on 
 a majority which the support of a single member of 
 his Council would secure. 
 
 The Act of 1833 emphasised the distinction between 
 the executive and legislative functions of the Govern- 
 ment, by providing that an additional member should 
 be added to the Executive Council when engaged in 
 legislation. Larger powers were at the same time 
 concentrated in the Governor-General. The legis- 
 lative functions of the Madras and Bombay Councils 
 were abolished ; and even their executive independence 
 was curtailed by the abolition of all powers of inde- 
 pendent expenditure. 
 
 On the renewal of the Company's Charter in 1853, 
 the Governor-General, who, under the Act of 1833, 
 had been ex-officio Governor of Bengal, was relieved 
 of this duty. It was physically impossible that he 
 should discharge it, and it had, in fact, been very 
 inadequately discharged. Some faint approach to 
 a representative system in the Governor-General's 
 Council was effected by the introduction of members 
 nominated as special representatives of the several 
 Presidencies. The Council — thus enlarged in numbers
 
 THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL 189 
 
 and fortified by standing orders suggestive of Parlia- 
 mentary procedure, the presence of a considerable 
 number of members exercising no other duties but 
 those of legislation, and the practice of holding de- 
 bates in public — developed an inconvenient tendency 
 to independence. A recognised ' Opposition ' assumes 
 that its members are prepared to be responsible for the 
 result of their policy and to enforce it if they get the 
 chance. But in India the opponents of the Govern- 
 ment cannot assume its responsibility or even share it. 
 The Government is bound to defend the country, to 
 maintain order, and to provide against national in- 
 solvency. No one can relieve it of this obligation. 
 The Governor- General, and the Secretary of State 
 behind him, must, in the last resort, determine how 
 these objects can be best secured. The legislative 
 members of the Governor-General's Council, moreover, 
 could only in a very limited sense be regarded as repre- 
 sentative. They were nominees of the Government, 
 chosen on the ground of supposed familiarity with 
 certain local areas and administrative topics. These 
 obvious considerations had sometimes been foi-gotten. 
 Precautions were now taken against such forgetfulness. 
 The legislative power of the Council was diminished 
 by distributing it among separate legislatures. With 
 this object the powers, of which the Madras and Bombay 
 Governments had been stripped in 1833, were restored 
 to them, and a safety-valve for the local energy of 
 Bengal, the North- Western Provinces, and Oudh was 
 provided by authorising the Government of India
 
 190 EARL CANNING 
 
 to create local legislatures for them, whenever the 
 occasion demanded. 
 
 The Governor-General's Council, as constituted by 
 Act of 1861, and as, in all material particulars, it has 
 since remained, consists of five ordinary members, three 
 of whom must have official experience of India. Of 
 the others, one must be a barrister or a Scotch advocate, 
 and is in charge of legislation ; another has charge 
 of finance. The Commander-in-Chief may be, and 
 always is, an extraordinary member of Council. By 
 an Act passed in 1874, the Crown was empowered to 
 increase the number of ordinary members by creating 
 a sixth member^ for Public Works, a power which 
 the growing importance of this Department renders 
 highly expedient. For the purpose of legislation the 
 Executive Council of the Governor-General is enlarged 
 by additional members, not less than six nor more 
 than twelve in number. Half of them must be 
 non-official. Among them are invariably some dis- 
 tinguished natives and some of the leading merchants 
 of Calcutta. 
 
 The arrangements, instituted by Lord Canning, 
 have borne the test of thirty years' trial with con- 
 siderable success. The inconveniences, occasioned 
 by the tendency of the Council to become a little 
 Parliament, have been checked. On the other hand, 
 within the limits prescribed by the conditions of 
 the case, much work of the utmost importance 
 has been done ; many useful discussions have been 
 held ; conflicting views have been boldly advanced
 
 INDIAN LEGISIATION 191 
 
 and pertinaciously combatted ; intricate questions 
 have been thrashed out ; prolonged controversies 
 have been brought to a satisfactory close. The 
 rule which compels members to sit while addressing 
 the Council gives its meetings the informal air of 
 a committee room, and discourages the tendency to 
 rhetorical display. Many native gentlemen of high 
 position and character have taken an active part in 
 the deliberations of the Council, and have materially 
 assisted the Government by their exposition of the 
 native view of the case. Leading merchants have 
 contributed their commercial experience towards the 
 elucidation of business and finance. The Calcutta 
 Bar has sent its leaders to fortify the Council in 
 discussions where their professional knowledge was 
 of especial importance. Much valuable legislation 
 has been achieved. All the main departments of 
 law, civil and criminal, have been embodied in Codes, 
 which now cover the whole area of life except that in 
 which religious or customary rules prevail. These 
 Codes, so far as lucidity, simplicity and precision are 
 concerned, need not fear comparison with any of the 
 systems of the Western World. 
 
 Another change of great importance to the despatch 
 of business in the Governor-General's Council was 
 initiated by Lord Canning by means of a power con- 
 ferred on him by the Indian Council's Act. Comment 
 has often been made on the accumulated arrears 
 which characterised this period of the Indian Govern- 
 ment. There may have been qualities in the Viceroy's
 
 192 EARL CANNING 
 
 temperament which conduced to such accumulations. 
 But in no case would it have been practicable, as the 
 official machine was then worked, for public business 
 to be despatched wdth adequate promptness. Sir 
 John Strachey, the greatest living authority on topics 
 of Indian administration, has given an interesting 
 account of the causes which rendered such delays 
 inevitable and necessitated a change of procedure. 
 From the fhst institution of Indian Councils the 
 idea had always been that public business was trans- 
 acted by the Governor-General and his whole Council, 
 and that, consequently, every detail, however insigni- 
 ficant, was to come before every member. Disputed 
 questions were decided in accordance with the votes of 
 the majority, the Governor- General having a casting- 
 vote. This mode of conducting public business was 
 commended by no less competent an observer than 
 Mr. J. S. Mill as ' one of the most successful instances 
 of the adaptation of means to an end which political 
 history, not hitherto prolific in w^orks of skill and 
 contrivance, has yet to show;' and its probable 
 destruction was deplored as one of the disastrous 
 consequences of a change by which Indian insti- 
 tutions had been ' placed at the mercy of public 
 ignorance and the presumptuous vanity of public 
 men.' The system has perished. Sir John Strachey 
 explains, not from the causes anticipated by Mr. Mill, 
 but for the excellent reason that it was unworkable. 
 'A more cumbrous and, I might say, a more impossible 
 system of administration for a great Empire could
 
 THE PORTFOLIO SYSTEM 193 
 
 hardly have been invented.' Events often necessitated 
 the presence of the Governor-General in other parts of 
 India. The senior member then became President, 
 and carried on the Government, the rule being that 
 all matters of importance should be referred to the 
 Governor -General. Thus, to use Sir H. Maine's 
 language, ' the absence of the Governor-General from 
 the Council dislocated the whole machinery of the 
 Government.' Every important question had to jour- 
 ney backwards and forwards between the Governor- 
 General and his Council before its settlement could be 
 achieved. Thus it resulted ' a great deal of work was 
 done twice over, and a great deal was never done at all.' 
 Such a system worked well enough in early days, 
 when the business of the Governor-General's Council 
 was comparatively small and unimportant ; but the 
 developments of Lord Dalhousie's reign and the in- 
 creased magnitude, intricacy and importance of the 
 current business of the Council rendered its con- 
 tinuance impossible. The legislation of 1861 provided 
 an easy remedy. The Indian Council's Act enabled 
 the Governor-General to make rules for the more 
 convenient transaction of business in his Council and 
 gave validity to all acts done in accordance with 
 such rules. Exercising this power, Lord Canning 
 distributed the work among the various members, 
 and placed each in charge of a separate department 
 in the administration. The Council was thus virtually 
 ' converted into a Cabinet, of which the Governor- 
 General was the head.' The Foreign Office, i.e. the 
 
 N
 
 194 EARL CANNING 
 
 branch of the administration which regulates the 
 relation of the Government with Native States and 
 other countries, is generally retained in the Governor- 
 General's own hands ; but the Home Department, the 
 Departments of Eevenue and Agriculture, Finance 
 and Commerce, Military, Public Works, and Legis- 
 lation are now each the especial domain of the 
 individual member in charge, and he is primarily, 
 and to a large extent solely, responsible for the 
 despatch of business which arises therein. In each 
 case the Secretary places it, ready for disposal, before 
 the member in charge. If it is unimportant, the 
 member passes final orders ; in more serious matters 
 he submits his orders to the Viceroy for approval. 
 If the Governor-General concurs with the member 
 in charge, and thinks further discussion unnecessary, 
 his orders are final. If he disagrees with the 
 member in charge, or on other grounds thinks that 
 the case should come before the Council, he passes 
 orders to that effect. The Council remains technically 
 responsible for all acts of every member ; but the real 
 burden of all, except that of his own department, is 
 removed; the intolerable delay of joint consultation is 
 avoided in all but cases of importance, and the power 
 of the Council for controlling the huge machine of 
 administration is enormously increased. As matters 
 now stand, it is not too much to say that, but for this 
 arrangement, the Executive Council, whatever might 
 be the powers of despatch of individual members, 
 could not keep abreast of its business for a week.
 
 AJ?A/V REORGANISATION 1 95 
 
 A still more important work of reconstruction was 
 effected in the army. The experience of the Mutiny- 
 had left no doubt as to the necessity of fundamental 
 change. The European force of 45,000 men, as Lord 
 Dalhousie had left it^ had been proved to be disastrously 
 insufficient. The numbers of the native army were in 
 a still more striking degree excessive. It was now 
 resolved that the proportion of native to European 
 troops should, for the future, not exceed two to one, 
 and that the field and other Artillery should be 
 exclusively manned by Europeans. The numerical 
 effect of the arrangements thus carried through was 
 to garrison India with an European force of about 
 70,000 European and 135,000 native troops. The 
 number of the Europeans was reduced in later years 
 to 62,000: but in 1885 political considerations, arising 
 out of the proximity of Russia to our north-west 
 frontier, led to an increase of the European force by 
 11,000, of the native force by 19,000 men; and in 
 1887 the Indian army consisted of 230,000 men of all 
 arms, of whom 73,000 were British. 
 
 The question of numbers was comparatively simple. 
 Grave differences of opinion arose as to the future 
 organisation of the force. There Avas an old-standing 
 controversy, dating from the days of Pitt, as to the 
 policy of maintaining a local European force. That 
 force had grown speedily in the early times of the 
 Company, and within a few years of Plassey had 
 numbered more than 1 1,000 men. Pitt had appreciated 
 the inconvenience and danger of an army independent 
 
 N %
 
 196 EARL CANNING 
 
 of the Home Government. He had insisted in 1784 
 on a reduction of the Company's troops ; and, a few 
 years later, when circumstances rendered it necessary 
 to increase the English garrison, he had resisted the 
 Company^s demand that the addition should be made 
 to the local force in its employ, basing his resistance 
 on the ground that consolidation of the two armies 
 was expedient, and ' sooner or later, must be attempted.' 
 The maximum of the local force was then fixed at 
 12,000 men. The necessities of the Crimean War had 
 led to this maximum being raised to 20,000 ; and 
 when the Mutiny broke out, about a third of the 
 European army in India consisted of local troops. 
 
 The question now arose as to the proportion of the 
 increased European force to be assigned to the local 
 army. Strong professional jealousies at once blazed 
 out. The Company's servants, civil and military, 
 watched with alarm an impending curtailment of 
 their traditional privileges. The Indian Government, 
 still smarting from the effects of a system which 
 subordinated the defence of India to the necessities of 
 English politics, backed up its officials in demanding a 
 substantial increase of the local army. Lord Canning 
 urged that at least a moiety of the European army 
 should consist of local troops. The Military Com- 
 mittee of the Indian Council made a still bolder 
 claim, namely, that of the whole European force, all 
 the Artillery, three-fourths of the Cavalry, and two- 
 thirds of the Infantry should belong to the local 
 army. These proposals were little likely to find ac-
 
 AMALGAMATION OF THE TWO FORCES 197 
 
 ceptance with the authorities in England. The Queen 
 and Prince Consort had previously expressed a strong 
 opinion on the desirability of amalgamation. At that 
 time Lord Derby had been opposed to the change, and 
 Lord Palmerston had acquiesced in Lord Derby's view. 
 The insubordinate behaviour of a portion of the Euro- 
 pean force at the close of the Mutiny helped to 
 strengthen the case for amalo:amation. ' I think that 
 it is necessary,' Sir W. Mansfield (Lord Sandhurst) 
 had written in 1859, 'not only for our future safety 
 in India, but as an example to Her Majesty's army, 
 which cannot but be affected by the dangerous 
 example before it, that the local European army should 
 cease to exist.' He supported his view by a grave 
 picture of the lengths to which the European ]\Iutiny 
 had gone. In May, i860, the Cabinet determined on 
 amalgamation, and in August the House of Commons 
 gave legislative sanction to the change by enacting 
 that Europeans should not for the future be recruited 
 for local purposes in India. The creation of Staff 
 Corps for each of the Presidencies for the supply of 
 ofiicers for native regiments, and for staff employment, 
 as well as for numerous civil duties — judicial and 
 executive — supplemented the organic changes involved 
 in the amalgamation of the two armies, and provided 
 effectually against the grave inconveniences which 
 had been experienced under the previous regime.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 Finance 
 
 The Mutiny marks the inauguration of a new era 
 in Indian jfinance. When order was sufficiently 
 restored to allow the question of public revenue 
 and expenditure to be considered, the position was 
 recognised as extremely grave. Each of the Mutiny 
 years had ended in an enormous deficit. So far all 
 parties agreed. As to the means of rehabilitation 
 there was less unanimity. The first effbrts of the 
 Government to retrieve the position of its exchequer 
 provoked such strong conflicts of opinion that, on his 
 return to Calcutta in 1859, Lord Canning considered 
 it desirable to obtain the assistance of an English 
 financier whose experience and prestige would inspire 
 confidence and overrule opposition. The appointment 
 of Mr. James Wilson fulfilled these conditions. His 
 experience as Secretary to the Board of Control, as 
 Financial Secretary to the Treasury, and, at the time 
 of his Indian appointment, as Vice-President of the 
 Board of Trade, invested his opinion with all the desired 
 authority. He arrived at Calcutta in November, 
 1859, made a tour of inspection through Upper India, 
 and in his Budget speech, February i860, he re-
 
 MR. WILSON'S FIRST BUDGET 199 
 
 viewed the situation. The picture was sufficiently 
 gloomy. The three years of the Mutiny had involved 
 an aggregate deficit of more than thirty millions 
 sterling, to which it was estimated that the current 
 year would add another six and a half millions. The 
 national debt had grown from fifty-nine and a half to 
 nearly ninety-eight millions, and the burden on the 
 taxpayer was thus enhanced by an addition of two 
 millions to the annual charge for interest. These 
 figures were the more alarming because a longer 
 retrospect showed that the normal condition of the 
 Indian Exchequer was one of constantly recurring 
 deficit. Of the fifty-nine years of the centur}^, forty- 
 four had ended in indebtedness. Every period of 
 war, from Lord Wellesley's splendid campaigns down 
 to Lord Dalhousie's latest conquests, had involved 
 formidable accretions to the debt. It was only, 
 in fact, in the intervals of tranquillity, too rarely 
 accorded to a military Empire, that the Government 
 could pay its way. Its expenditure had now for 
 four years exceeded its income by an average of nine 
 millions per annum. The main remedial expedient — 
 hastily adopted in 1859 — a great enhancement of 
 custom duties — though it had added largely to the 
 revenue, was beginning to work its own defeat in 
 decreasing imports, and convinced the Finance Ministei 
 that a fundamental readjustment of the tariff" was 
 essential. 
 
 Mr. Wilson proposed to meet the emergency by the 
 imposition of three taxes : — a license tax of one, four,
 
 20O EARL CANNING 
 
 and ten rupees on various trades and professions ; an 
 income-tax on all incomes above £10 per annum ; 
 and a tax on native-grown tobacco, corresponding, as 
 nearly as might be, with the existing customs duty on 
 the imported article. A portion only of this programme 
 was ever carried into execution ; but Mr. Wilson's 
 Budget is, none the less, memorable in the chronicles of 
 Indian administration as having enunciated principles 
 which have since been accepted canons of financial 
 policy. The abolition of export duties on Indian 
 products, such as tea, hemp and jute, gave an enormous 
 impulse to local industries ; while the reduction of 
 import duties, even in a moment of emergency, was 
 an emphatic recognition of the essential unsoundness 
 of a prohibitive tariff and of the evils thereby en- 
 tailed upon a country's commerce. A great manu- 
 facturing system has, since the Mutiny, grown up in 
 India in the bracing atmosphere of free trade ; while 
 twenty millions' worth of Manchester cloths and yarns 
 find their way annually to the homes of the Indian 
 population. 
 
 Another point of importance, as to which Mr. Wilson's 
 Budget sounded no uncertain note, was the claim, 
 put forward in influential official quarters, for the 
 exemption of Madras and Bombay Presidencies from 
 the additional taxation necessitated by the Mutiny, 
 on the ground that their armies had not shared in 
 the insurrection. Mr. Wilson treated this narrow and 
 unstatesmanlike pretension with the contempt which 
 it deserved. The Indian Empire must, he pointed
 
 MR. WILSON'S BUDGET 301 
 
 out, be looked at as a whole. Such expenses as that 
 of suppressing the Mutiny were essentially imperial, 
 and the attempt to localise them could only be jus- 
 tified on the ground of a narrow and baneful pro- 
 vincialism. ' We are one great dependency under 
 one Sovereign, and we have one clear duty before 
 us — to unite with all our efforts and all our means 
 in maintaining her Empire prosperous and inviolate.^ 
 
 Another point which Mr. Wilson's Budget raised 
 and decided was the liability of the Bengal landholders, 
 under the Permanent Settlement, to the general taxa- 
 tion of the country. The concession to them by the 
 State of the right to hold their lands at settled rates 
 has sometimes been put forward as justifying a 
 claim to exemption to other burdens common to the 
 entire community. The Finance Minister now dis- 
 tinctly declared this contention to be unsustainable. 
 He showed, from Lord Cornwallis' Minutes, that no 
 such exemption was contemplated by the framers of 
 the Permanent Settlement ; and he pointed out how 
 unsound and dangerous a policy it would be to relieve 
 the richest and most privileged class in India from its 
 lawful share in the national expenditure, and how 
 essential it was, in the general interest of the country, 
 to adhere strictly to the rule laid down by Lord 
 Cornwallis himself, that 'all who enjoy the protection 
 of the State must pay for it in accordance with their 
 means.' 
 
 In matters of structural reform Mr. Wilson prin- 
 cipally insisted on the creation of efficient machinery
 
 302 EARL CANNING 
 
 for controlling, and so diminishing, military outlay. 
 No means for any such control at present existed. 
 The uncertainty which beset the present, future, and 
 even past expenditure in this department was proof 
 enough of the necessity of a change of system. 
 Occasional efforts at retrenchment— such as the ap- 
 pointment of Financial Commissions — might palliate, 
 but could not cure, the chronic evil of inefficient 
 supervision. Lord Ellenborough, in 1842, had touched 
 the weak spot of Indian finance when he complained 
 that there was ' no one officer charged with the duty of 
 viewing the expenditure of the country as a whole, and 
 of considering every item of charge, not by itself only, 
 but with reference to the total charge upon the revenue.' 
 But the reforms instituted in compliance with Lord 
 Ellenborough's suggestion had been inadequate. There 
 was no sufficient concentration of authority and duty 
 in the same hands. The desideratum was to regulate 
 every branch of the public expenditure, civil and 
 military, by a system of exact estimates, formally 
 submitted for sanction to an authority competent to 
 revise them with reference to the necessity of the 
 case and the resources of the exchequer. 
 
 Among the more cheerful incidents of Mr. Wilson^s 
 Budget was his hearty tribute to the strict and accurate 
 justice which had characterised Lord Canning's War 
 administration. ' The future historian of India,' he 
 said, ' when recording the occurrences of the last 
 three years, if he be a man of fine discrimination, 
 will dwell with pride upon the fact that at that
 
 TRIBUTE TO LORD CANNING 203 
 
 moment India was governed by a nobleman who 
 never, in the midst of the greatest peril, allowed 
 his judgment to be swayed by passion, or his fine 
 sense of honour and justice to be tarnished by even 
 a passing feeling of revenge. For perhaps the first 
 time in any Asiatic war, Lord Canning adopted, 
 throughout the whole of this campaign, the most 
 scrupulous principle of integrity. Whatever service 
 was performed, whatever provisions were supplied, 
 were strictly paid for, and when, under the vigorous 
 administration of the Punjab, contributions were 
 exacted, the obligations have all been acknowledged 
 and faithfully repaid. However much such a mode 
 of conducting a campaign may add to its present 
 expense, the statesman who pursues it is far more 
 than repaid in the permanent stability which he thus 
 gives to an Empire. I cannot but believe that we 
 are already reaping the benefits of it in the great 
 repose which has spread itself over India, and which, 
 I am convinced, will enable us to deal the more 
 effectually with our present financial difiiculties.' 
 
 When, in the spring of the following year, another 
 Finance Minister, Mr. Laing, introduced his Budget, 
 his account of the situation was scarcely less gloomy 
 than that given by his predecessor. The deficit of 
 i860 had been more than six millions, five of which 
 had been met only by the dangerous expedient of 
 reducing the cash-balance. The profit to the State 
 from the newly-proposed taxes had, there was reason 
 to fear, been over-estimated. The difficulty of facing
 
 204 EARL CANNING 
 
 an excess expenditure of five and a half millions was 
 enhanced by the consideration that twenty millions 
 were urgently needed for the construction of a rail- 
 way system, which all parties agreed to be a first 
 essential to the future prosperity of the country. The 
 expedient of military economies might have seemed 
 to be exhausted, for the reduction had been enormous. 
 The cost of the army in India and England, which in 
 the year before the Mutiny, had been about thirteen 
 and a half millions, had risen in 1858 to nearly twenty- 
 five millions. In 1859 this enormous total had been 
 reduced by four and a quarter, and in i860 by two 
 and a half millions. 
 
 Mr. Laing then approached the year 1861 with 
 a dangerously reduced cash- balance, with expenditure 
 five and a half millions in excess of income, and with 
 new taxes producing only one and a half millions, 
 while twenty millions were urgently needed for railway 
 construction. 
 
 The great reduction was to be in army expenditure. 
 Much had already been done ; but, despite the 
 stringent measures of the two preceding years, room 
 might still, the Finance Minister considered, be found 
 for retrenchments which the financial position showed 
 to be indispensable. It was essential to curtail ex- 
 penditure by another three and a half millions. The 
 ultimate efi'ect on the numerical strength of the army 
 was as follows. Just before the outbreak of the 
 Mutiny in May, 1857, the army consisted of 45,000 
 Europeans and 260,000 natives, in all 311,000 men.
 
 MILITARY REDUCTIONS 205 
 
 Subsequently to the Mutiny the number of Infantry 
 regiments in Bengal was reduced from a hundred and 
 forty-six, as it had been in 1857, to seventy-two ; the 
 Bombay and Madras armies underwent similar re- 
 ductions. Altogether seventy-seven native regiments 
 had been reduced since 1859. At the same time the 
 number of men in each regiment was reduced to 
 an uniform standard of 600 privates. 50,000 military 
 police were disbanded. The effect of these changes 
 was to reduce the number of the native army from 
 284,000 to about 140,000 men, a reduction, inclusive 
 of the 50,000 police, not far short of 200,000 men. 
 The numerical reductions of 186 1, with corresponding 
 retrenchments in commissariat, ordnance, and other 
 establishments, resulted in a saving of about three 
 millions and a quarter. Another half-million was 
 retrenched from civil expenditure. The year's 
 revenue, by increase in salt duties and natural 
 development, was estimated to show an increase of 
 two millions. 
 
 Another half-million was provided by an arrange- 
 ment, which has subsequently developed into the 
 most important characteristic of the modern financial 
 system, its decentralisation. It took its rise in 
 Mr. Laing's proposal to confide to the local govern- 
 ments certain items of taxation — in the present 
 instance tobacco — leaving them to make the best use 
 they could of its proceeds for local purposes, instead 
 of the assignment which they would, had the financial 
 position allowed, have received from the Imperial
 
 2o6 EARL CANNING 
 
 Budget. The advantage of entrusting the local 
 governments with large departments alike of revenue 
 and expenditure, and so giving them an interest in 
 their economical administration, has been so tri- 
 umphantly established by subsequent experience that 
 the originators of the system have not, perhaps, 
 received all tlie honour they deserve for their courage 
 in venturing upon so bold a departure from the 
 existing system. The area both of revenue and 
 expenditure, which is now subject to provincial 
 control, has increased from a few hundred thousands 
 of pounds to many millions, and it tends continually 
 to increase with the growth of confidence in the system 
 which its successful working has engendered. 
 
 The result of these heroic remedies was that Mr. 
 Laing found himself in the enjoyment of a surplus, 
 which he proposed to employ partly in more liberal 
 grants to public works and to education, partly in 
 still further lowering the duties levied on Manchester 
 goods, and partly in the release of the lower class of 
 contributors to the income-tax ^ — those whose incomes 
 ranged between £%o and ^50 per annum from liability 
 to that impost. This exemption affected some 500,000 
 or 600,000 contributors, and the Finance Minister was 
 able to point with satisfaction to the circumstance that, 
 while Lord Canning had closed his administration 
 with the exemption of five millions of tax-payers 
 from liability to license tax, his successor was inaugu- 
 rating his with a corresponding concession to the 
 largest and neediest classes upon whose incomes it
 
 MR. LAING'S BUDGET 207 
 
 had seemed necessary, in a moment of embarrassment, 
 for the State to lay its hand. 
 
 The most interesting portion of Mr. Laing's state- 
 ment, however, was that in which he dealt with the 
 general character of the Indian revenue. His views, 
 he admitted, had been greatly modified by a longer 
 acquaintance with the subject: — 'It is only by degrees, 
 and as the result of close enquiry, that the conviction 
 has forced itself on my mind that the revenue of India 
 is really buoyant and elastic in an extraordinary de- 
 gree.' In support of this view he pointed out that 
 the national revenues had increased by eleven millions 
 in five years, and that, though half of this increase 
 was due to fresh taxation, acquisition of new territory 
 and other exceptional causes, it was not possible to 
 put the normal growth of Indian revenue for the pre- 
 vious ten years at less than ^^700, 000 per annum — 
 an increment which it was reasonable to suppose 
 would have been greater but for the large amount of 
 additional taxation meanwhile imposed. ' I know of 
 no other country,' the Finance Minister observed, ' of 
 which it can be said that her revenue is increasing bv 
 ^'750,000 per annum, while her expenditure has been 
 reduced in one year by four millions ; and that she is 
 maintaining an equilibrium, while expending out of 
 revenue four millions a year on public works and 
 another million for interest on unfinished railways.' 
 
 The financial strength which Mr. Laing was the 
 first to announce, perhaps to discover, is now a matter 
 of notoriety to everyone with the slightest familiarity
 
 3o8 EARL CANNING 
 
 with Indian administrative topics. The cheerful 
 view of the prospects of Indian finance, thus expressed 
 by one of the earliest of Indian Finance Ministers, is 
 deserving of attention, because the embarrassments 
 of its Exchequer, the unsoundness of its financial 
 policy, and its probable or impending insolvency 
 have been favourite topics with ignorant critics of the 
 Government of India. The truth is that in no depart- 
 ment can Indian administrators show a bolder front 
 to their assailants. The larger portion of the National 
 Debt is now understood to be represented by great 
 engineering projects, which have ah-eady enormously 
 enriched the country, and which, when fully deve- 
 loped, will be the grandest national possession in the 
 world. Despite the disturbances arising from the fall 
 in Exchange, the automatic growth of Indian revenue 
 — the outcome of growing wealth and property — 
 cannot be put at less than a million sterling per 
 annum; and, on the whole, the general position of 
 Indian finance is infinitely stronger than it was when 
 Mr. Laino; reviewed it.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 Last Days 
 
 India was now at peace. The year 1861, so rich 
 in troubles in the Western Hemisphere, was a tranquil 
 one in the East- The Mutiny was in its last spasms. 
 Rao Sahib, the nephew of the Nana, was making des- 
 perate efforts to keep alive the embers of Rebellion, but 
 it was practically extinct. The year, however, brought 
 its own anxieties. The monsoon rains in Bengal were 
 of unprecedented violence. The Ganges, Narbada, 
 and Godavari, and their mighty affluents, swelled into 
 raging seas, burst their banks, and carried devastation 
 far and wide. Great tracts were flooded ; crops 
 were ruined ; roads and bridges carried away : the 
 homes — the livelihood of millions of cultivators dis- 
 appeared. To this calamity succeeded an outbreak of 
 cholera, which raged with especial violence in the 
 Upper Provinces of Bengal and in the Punjab. 
 Calamities of this order thi'ow a great additional 
 load of labour and anxiety on the head of the Govern- 
 ment. Lord Canning remained, hard at work, till the 
 close of October, when he started on another tour to 
 the North. The most interesting incident of the tour 
 was a Darbar held at Lucknov^ with the benevolent 
 
 o
 
 210 EARL CANNING 
 
 object of devising a check on the crime of infanticide, 
 a crime, at the time, rife among the Rajputs of Oudh. 
 More than 200 of the Oudh nobility attended it, and 
 Lord Canning addressed them in the impressive 
 language of which he was so perfect a master. The 
 Talukdars readily agreed to the remedial measures 
 which he proposed, and Lord Canning completed this, 
 his last Indian tour, with the cheering hope that an 
 effectual blow had been struck at an inhuman custom. 
 On the ] oth November the Viceroy reached Calcutta, 
 where a domestic catastrophe awaited him. Lady 
 Canning had been visiting Darjiling, the lovely Hill 
 capital of Bengal, during her husband's hurried journey 
 to the North. She was to meet him on his return. 
 Her journey southwards lay through a malarious tract 
 of country, rendered more than usually unhealthy by 
 the excessive rainfall of the year. Lady Canning was 
 attacked by fever. On her arrival in Calcutta, she 
 was found to be seriously ill. The disease rapidly 
 assumed an alarming aspect, and in a few days it was 
 apparent that her vital energies were fatally impaired. 
 She rapidly sank and expired in the early morning of 
 November i8th. The death of this accomplished and 
 gracious lady affected all classes profoundly. The 
 bitterness of its sorrow to the Viceroy was enhanced 
 by its occurrence at a moment when the task of an 
 Indian Viceroyalty was so nearly accomplished, and 
 when husband and wife alike were counting the hours 
 till the day which would set them once more free to 
 enjoy the pleasures of home life in England.
 
 LADY CANNING'S DEATH 211 
 
 The calamity broke through his accustoined stoicism. 
 ' When, in obedience to his orders,' writes his Private 
 Secretary, ' I went into the death-chamber, the proud, 
 reserved man could not restrain his tears, and wrung 
 my hand with a grip that showed how great his 
 emotion was.' Lady Canning's funeral took place at 
 Barrackpur. the Governor-General's country seat on 
 the banks of the Hugli, where the skill of engineers 
 and gardeners has carved an Eastern landscape into 
 agreeable resemblance to an English park. Here at 
 a lovely bend of the river — Lady Canning's favourite 
 haunt — her body rests. ' Honours and praises,' so 
 runs the epitaph, which her husband's hand inscribed. 
 ' written on a tomb are, at best, a vain glory : ' vain, 
 too, the regrets of saddened hearts, which mourned far 
 and wide in India the loss of the beautiful and gifted 
 woman, who had with such fortitude and devotion 
 shared the anxieties and lightened the labours of Lord 
 Cannino's troubled reign. Her serene courage in 
 hours of danger and anxiety, when the hearts of many 
 around her were failing them for fear — her readiness 
 to help in all beneficent projects — her sympathy with 
 all human suffering — her nobility of character, shining 
 bright above catastrophe and vicissitude, made her 
 death a public loss — a common sorrow — and make her 
 memory now one that Englishmen treasure among the 
 precious relics of their country's past. 
 
 Lord Canning's work was nearly done. His suc- 
 cessor was to arrive in March. All the great topics 
 were disposed of ; but he was still busy with arrange- 
 
 3
 
 212 EARL CANNING 
 
 merits as to Burma and the territory now known as 
 the Central Provinces, each of which had acquired 
 sufficient importance to be placed under an adminis- 
 tration of its own. Public opinion in Calcutta had 
 lost its bitterness ; the English community were learn- 
 ing to take a juster and more rational view of the 
 ruler, whom, in the hour of excitement, they had so 
 fiercely criticised. The Press honestly admitted the 
 transcendent services which the departing Viceroy 
 had rendered to his country. Farewell addresses 
 breathed a tone of sincere regret, Europeans and 
 natives vied with each other in testifying affection and 
 respect. ' Safe may you return to your native land ' 
 — such was the burden of one of these addresses: — 
 'the good wishes of all attend you. In that land of the 
 West, if justice and humanity be ever honoured, you 
 cannot but hold a distinguished place.' Little did 
 the framers of these kindly phrases anticipate how 
 vain were their good wishes, or in how few months 
 the object of their too tardy appreciation would be 
 beyond the reach of human praise or blame. 
 
 On March 12th Lord Elgin arrived, and a week 
 later Lord Canning took his departure. He was in 
 great depression of spirits — ' pale, wan, toil-worn and 
 grief- stricken,' as an onlooker observed. Like Dal- 
 housie he left India a widower ; like him, too, though 
 he knew it not, a dying man. Like Dalhousie he had 
 devoted himself with almost fanatical self-devotion to 
 a task too grand, too weighty for human infirmity, the 
 task of ruling India as the highest ideal of sfovernment
 
 LORD CANNIXG'S DEATH 213 
 
 and strictest dictates of conscience would prescribe. 
 But Dalhousie's labours, great and beneficent as they 
 were, had been performed in the exhilarating atmos- 
 phere of success and popularity. Lord Canning had, 
 not less heroically, confronted unexampled difficulties 
 and disasters amidst storms of obloquy. Each played 
 his part nobly. England may well be proud of both. 
 
 On Lord Canning's return to England, good hopes 
 were at first entertained of his restoration to health. 
 Alarming symptoms, however, soon developed them- 
 selves. The physician who had been his medical 
 attendant in India was summoned, and recognised 
 at once that the end was near at hand. On Lady 
 Clanricarde devolved the painful duty of informing her 
 brother that his days were numbered. Lord Canning 
 received the intelligence with characteristic stoicism : 
 ' What ! so soon ? ' he exclaimed, and forthwith pre- 
 pared himself for death. 
 
 During the few weeks which remained he received 
 farewell visits from Lord Granville, Lord Harris, Lord 
 de Tabley, and others of his kinsmen and friends. On 
 January 1 7th he died. It was discovered after death 
 that his constitution had been far more completely 
 undermined than there had seemed reason to suppose 
 to be the case, and that toil, anxiety and the tremendous 
 strain on nerve and brain had pronounced his doom 
 while he was still labouring, with no apparent dimi- 
 nution of energy, at the completion of his arduous 
 task. 
 
 He was buried in Westminster Abbey, close to the
 
 214 EARL CANNING 
 
 spot wliei'e lie the remains of his father and Lord 
 Stratford de RedchfFe, and where an impressive group 
 of the three Cannings now stands to remind English- 
 men of the public services of a gifted and distinguished 
 race. Among the mourners who gathered in that last 
 home of so many of England^s choicest sons^ two 
 heroes of the Mutiny were to be seen — the rugged and 
 soldier-like Clyde, supporting his friend Outram, now 
 too enfeebled to walk without assistance — worthy 
 mourners, indeed, at such a grave. The three men 
 had stood side by side in the crisis of England's fate : 
 together they had confronted that dark hour of anxiety ; 
 together they had planned, laboured, and hoped. They 
 had often differed, as it was likely that such strong 
 natures should. Success had come, and all the honours 
 of success, and now to one of them, the end. For his 
 companions, too, the end was near at hand. 
 
 A generation has passed. The grave has closed 
 over many another of the men who, in that crisis of 
 their country's fate, served England loyally and well. 
 In the same sacred precinct, another of the companions 
 of Canning's work — John Lawrence — brave and con- 
 stant heart — has been laid to his rest. Strathnairn, 
 the brilliant genius of victory — Napier, honoured and 
 beloved, have passed away into the silence. Already 
 the haze of distance has settled on the events of the 
 Mutiny. The din of battle grows faint — the cannon's 
 roar — the crash of the charge — the shouts of victory 
 — the sobs — the groans ; faint, too, the clatter of angry 
 tongues — the shrill dispute — the eager blame, the storm
 
 THE END 215 
 
 of faction fight which raged so high and shrill. We 
 look at the men, at the events of that time, through a 
 calmer atmosphere and with steadier eyes. We can 
 read theii' meaning and gauge their worth. We think 
 of them with reverence, with gratitude, with just and 
 patriotic pride. Their names are familiar words to 
 us, and will be, it may be hoped, to generations of 
 Englishmen yet unborn. Their greatness is our own 
 — a precious national possession. Amid much in 
 modern life that is vulgar, ignoble, and commonplace, 
 the achievements of our countrymen in the Mutiny 
 shine out distinct. They were on an heroic scale ; 
 nor least heroic the serene and resolute mood, the un- 
 shaken nerve, the firm justice, the loftiness of soul, 
 with which Canning, rising nobly to the duties of 
 a foremost post in an eventful epoch, piloted his 
 country's fortunes in that dark hour across that 
 tempest-driven sea.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Aberdeen, Lord, 129. 
 
 Act of 1833, India Council, 188. 
 
 Agra, DarMr at, iSi. 
 
 Allahabad, 96. 
 
 Amir of Cabul, 41 : treaty with, 
 
 49-58- 
 Anson, General. 86. 
 Arms, Licence to carry, 149. 
 Army, Local European, 195. 
 Army, reconstructed by Lord 
 
 Canning, 195. 
 AuMY, The Sepoy, 68-74. 
 
 Baillie, Volunteer-Guard, 184. 
 Baring, Speech on behalf of East 
 
 India Company, by Mr., 167. 
 Benares, Darbar at, 1 84. 
 Bengal, defenceless condition of, 
 
 95- 
 Berhampur, Outbreak at, 139. 
 Budgets of Indian Government, 
 
 199. 
 Budgets of 1S60-61-62, 204. 
 
 Calcutta, public feeling in, 145 : 
 
 Lord Canning's unpopularity at, 
 
 183. 
 Campbell, Sir Colin, 110. 
 Canning, George, 22: marriage, 
 
 22 : appointed Governor-General 
 
 of India, 23: Foreign Secretary, 
 
 24: death, 31. 
 Canning, Lady, 32, 127, 128: 
 
 her death, 210, 211. 
 Canning, l^ord, general policy, 
 
 16: ancestors, 20: birth, 23: 
 
 entry at Eton, 24 : Eton life, 
 29: Oxford, 30: marriage, 32: 
 Under-Secretary of State for 
 Foreign Affairs, 32 : becomes 
 Postmaster - General in Lord 
 Aberdeen's Ministry, 34 : ap- 
 jDointed Governor-General, 35 : 
 speech at the East India Com- 
 pany's banquet, 36 : assumes 
 office at Calcutta, 38 : conscien- 
 tious and exact character, 44 : 
 mode of dealing with mutineers, 
 90: view of the position in May, 
 1857 ; ^^^ unpopularity in Cal- 
 cutta, 117: decides to hold on 
 to Peshawar, 122: letter to 
 Lord Granville, 1 24 : assumes 
 government of North-Western 
 Provinces, 127: change of Min- 
 istry, 128: attacks in Calcutta 
 Press, 145: replies to petition 
 for his recall, 145 : attempt to 
 exclude him from Parliamentary 
 vote of thanks, 153: is attacked 
 by Lord Ellenborough, 1 54 : 
 defends Lucknow Proclamation, 
 155 : replies to Lord Ellen- 
 borough, 161 : receives Oudh 
 deputation in Calcutta, 164 : is 
 appointed first Viceroy of India, 
 171 : his Viceregal Proclama- 
 tion, 174: post -Mutiny anx- 
 ieties, 176: is joined by Sir 
 B. Frere, 177 : proceeds to the 
 LTpper Provinces, 178: visits 
 Cawnpur, 178: Lucknow, 179:
 
 2l8 
 
 INDEX 
 
 his policy towards Oudh Talak- 
 dars, 179: his inadequate mea- 
 sures for protection of Oudh 
 jjeasantry, 180: visits Meenit, 
 181 : Delhi, 181 : Ambala, Pe- 
 shawar, 182 : KtCngraand Simla, 
 returns to Calcutta, 182: anx- 
 ieties and unpopularity at Cal- 
 cutta, 184: visits Patnil, Be- 
 nares, Lucknow, 184: changes 
 in Council, 190: introduces 
 Portfolio system, 191 : views 
 as to local army, 196: tribute to 
 Canning's equity by Rlr. Wilson, 
 203 : closes his career by exemp- 
 tion of 5,000,000 contributors to 
 licence tax, 206 : last tour to 
 the North, 209 : Lady Canning's 
 death, 211 : farewell addresses, 
 212: improved tone of feel- 
 ing in Calcutta, 213: return 
 to England, and death, 213: 
 funeral in Westminster Abbey, 
 214. 
 
 Cawnpur, massacre at, 106: efforts 
 to relieve, 147 : Lord Canning 
 at, 178 : Darbar at, 180. 
 
 Charteh of Company renewed, 
 188. 
 
 ' Clemency Canning,' origin of 
 phrase, 151. 
 
 Clyde, Lord, at Cawnpur, 178. 
 
 Complaints of Europeans against 
 Lord Canning, 147. 
 
 Conspiracy to Murder Bill, 
 Lord Palmerston's, 157. 
 
 Cornewall Lewis speaks against 
 the East India Company, 168. 
 
 CoRNWALLis, Lord, 187: on right 
 conferred by Permanent Settle- 
 ment, 201. 
 
 Court op Directors, Lord Can- 
 ning's defence to, 145. 
 
 Crimean War, withdrawal of 
 Indian troops for, 196. 
 
 Dalhousie, policy of Lord, 10. 
 Delhi, 53, 92, 108 : the King of, 
 
 176 : Lord Canning at, 181. 
 Derby, Earl of, proposes scheme 
 
 of Indian Government, 170. 
 
 DiNAPUR, disarming of Sepoys at, 
 148. 
 
 D'IsiiAELi proposes Royal Com- 
 mission, 167. 
 
 Double Government, Lord Palm- 
 erston proposes abolition of, 
 167. 
 
 Edwardes, Sir H., 100. 
 
 Elasticity of Indian finance, 
 207. 
 
 Ellenborough, Lord, attack on 
 Lord Canning, 55, 157, 165 : 
 Lord Canning's reply to attack 
 of, 159: on financial reform, 
 202. 
 
 Financial Measures, 200. 
 
 Financial Reform, necessitated 
 by Mutiny, 199 : Lord Ellen- 
 borough on, 202. 
 
 Financial Troubles caused by 
 Mutiny, 177. 
 
 Force, European and native, be- 
 fore Mutiny, 195 : since Mutiny, 
 
 195- 
 
 Frere, Sir Bartle, 177. 
 
 Government of India, Act for 
 the better, 170. 
 
 Governor -General's Council, 
 History of, 186-189 : 190. 
 
 Grant, Sir Hope, 135. 
 
 Granville, Earl, 25 : his friend- 
 ship with Lord Canning, 35. 
 
 Grey, Petition against transfer of 
 East India Company, presented 
 by Earl, 167. 
 
 Halliday^ Sir Frederick, 126. 
 Hastings, Lord, 9. 
 Havelock, 105. 
 Hearsey, General, 71-84. 
 
 Inam Commission, 61. 
 
 Indebtedness of Indian Govern- 
 ment, 199. 
 
 India, Act for the better govern- 
 ment of, 1 70 : Council's Act 
 1861, 186.
 
 INDEX 
 
 219 
 
 Jhansi, R:mf of, 99. 
 
 July, 1S57, Resolution of, 150. 
 
 Laing, lit, Hon. Samuel, 203. 
 
 Landowners, 66. 
 
 Lawrence, Lord, early ofEcial 
 life ; his service under Lord 
 Hardinge, 57: view of critical 
 state of Punjab, 100: prompt 
 action on outbreak of Mutiny, 
 100: question of surrendering 
 Peshawar, 1 20 : urges siege of 
 Delhi, 121 : Lord Canning's let- 
 ter to, 122: death, 214. 
 
 Lawrence, Sir Henry, 64-74. 
 
 Legislation, Indian, 191. 
 
 Legislative Council, 189-190. 
 
 LUCKNOW, 97-108 : relief of gar- 
 rison, 112 : Proclamation, 154 : 
 Darb^r at, 179. 
 
 Mansfield, Sir W., on the local 
 force, 197. 
 
 Makatha States, 59. 
 
 Meerut, 91. 
 
 Military Reductions, 1859- 
 1861, 205. 
 
 Mill, Mr. J. S., 192. 
 
 Montgomery, Sir Robert, 100. 
 
 MUHAMMADANS, Policy towards, 
 151. 
 
 MuiR, Sir W., 127. 
 
 MuSALMANS, attitude of, 65. 
 
 Mutiny, Lessons of, 17: First 
 outbreak, 82 : fall of Delhi, 
 108: relief of Lucknow, ill : 
 defeat of Tantia Topi, 113 : fall 
 of Lucknow, 131 : reduction of 
 Rohilkhand,i32: siege of JhiCnsl, 
 133: defeat of Tantia Topi, 133: 
 lessons of, 136-8. 
 
 Mutiny, The European, 176. 
 
 Nana Sahib, 61. 
 Napier, Lord, 134, 214. 
 Napier, Sir Charles, 72. 
 National Debt of India, 208. 
 Nicholson, John, 100. 
 
 Occupancy Tenants in Oudh, 
 180. 
 
 Oudh, Troubles in, 42 : Lord 
 Canning's policy in, 154: speedy 
 pacification of, 163 : tenantry 
 insufficiently safe-guarded, 180. 
 
 Outram, disapproves Lucknow 
 Proclamation, 156. 
 
 Palmerston, Lord, 64 : defeat of, 
 
 157- 
 
 Patna, Commission of, 151 : Dar- 
 b;ir at, 184. 
 
 Permanent Settlement, Riglits 
 of landholders under, 201. 
 
 Persian War, 40. 
 
 Peshawar, Lord Canning at, 182. 
 
 Pitt, Mr., contemplates abolition 
 of Local European Force, 195. 
 
 Pitt's Act, 1784, to amend In-, 
 dian Council, 187. 
 
 Portfolio System introduced into 
 Executive Council, 193. 
 
 Press, Control of, 148 : tribute 
 to Lord Canning by Calcutta, 
 212. 
 
 Proclamation, Lord Canning's, on 
 fall of Lucknow, 154: announc- 
 ing transfer of Government to 
 Crown, 171 : Lord Canning's, on 
 transfer of Government, 174. 
 
 Punjab, 54-98. 
 
 Rao Sahib, 209. 
 Religious Disquietude, 63, 
 Resolution of thanks to civil 
 and military services, 153. 
 
 Secretary of State, Supremacy 
 of, 189. 
 
 Sepoy Army, 68. 
 
 Simla, Lord Canning at, 182. 
 
 Staff Corps, Creation of, 197. 
 
 Stephen, Sir James F., 137. 
 
 Strachey, K.C.S.L, Sir John, on 
 the Governor-General's Coun- 
 cil, 192. 
 
 Stratford de Redcliffe, Lord, 
 21. 
 
 Stuart, Colonel Charles, Diary 
 of, 127. 
 
 Talukdars, Lord Canning's e.\-
 
 220 
 
 INDEX 
 
 platiation of policy towards, 
 159-162 : announcement of 
 generous policy towards, 1 79, 
 
 Tantia Topi, 135. 
 
 Tenants in Oudh, Lord Can- 
 ning's measures for protection 
 of, 180. 
 
 Thomason, land policy of Mr., 
 141. 
 
 Transfer of Indian Government 
 
 to Crown, Effects of, 171. 
 Tkevelyan, Sir Charles, 1S2. 
 
 Vellore, 94. 
 
 Vernon Smith, Mr., 130. 
 
 Wellesley, Marquess of, 9. 
 WiLLOUGHBY, Lieutenant, 93. 
 Wilson, Rt. Hon. James, 177. 
 
 THE END.
 
 RULERS OP INDIA 
 
 TEE CLARENDON PRESS SERIES OF INDIAN 
 HISTORICAL RETROSPECTS 
 Edited by Sir W. W. Hunter, K.C.S.I., CLE. 
 Price 28. 6d. each 
 The following volumes have been arranged for : — 
 I. ASOKA : and the Political Organiaation of Ancient India, by 
 Professor Rhys-Davids, LL.D., Ph.D., Secretary to the 
 Eoyal Asiatic Society, Professor of P;tli and Buddhist Litera- 
 ture at University College, London ; Author of The Hihhert 
 Lectures, 1881 ; Buddhism, dx. 
 II. AKBAR : and the Rise of the Mucjlial Empire, by Colonel 
 Malleson, C.S.L, Author of .4 History of the Indian Mutiny; 
 The History of Afyhanidan ; Herat, dc. [Published.] 
 
 III. AVIiANGZEB : and the Decay of the Mughal Empire, by 
 
 Sir William Wilson Hunter, K.C.S.I., M.A. 
 
 IV. MABHU RAO SINDHIA : and the Hindu, Reconquest of 
 
 India, by H. G. Keene, Esq., M.A., CLE., Author of The 
 Moghul Empire, dc. [Immediately.] 
 V. LORD CLIVE: and the Establishment of the English in India, 
 by Professor Seelet, M.A., Professor of Modern History in 
 the University of Cambridge, Author of The Expansion of 
 England, &c. [Provisionally arranged for.] 
 VI. DUPLEIX : and the Straggle for India by the European 
 Nations, by Colonel Malleson, C.S.L, Author of The 
 History of the French in India, Ac. [Published.] 
 VII. WARREN HASTINGS: and the Founding of the British 
 Administration, by Captain L. J. Trotter, Author oi India 
 under Victoria, rfc. [Published.] 
 
 VIII. THE MARQUESS OF CORNWALLIS: and the Consolida- 
 tion of British Rule, by W. S. Seton-Karr, Esq., sometime 
 Foreign Secretary to the Government of India, Author of 
 Selections from the Calcutta Gazettes, 3 vols, (i 784-1 805). 
 [Published.] 
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 Author oiThePunJab Chiefs, dr. [Provisionally arranged for.] 
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 fellow of Queen's College, Oxford, Author of 2'he Decennial 
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 of India, presented to Parliament ( 1 885) , &c. [In the Press.] 
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 Governing and. Non-trading Potver, by Demetrius Boulger, 
 Esq., Author of England and, Russia in Central Asia; The 
 History of China, &c. [In the Press.] 
 
 XII. VISCOUNT HARDINGE: and the Advance of the British 
 Dominions into the Punjab, by liis Son and Private Secretary, 
 the Eight Hon. Viscount Hardinge. [Published.]
 
 Rulers of India Series {continued). 
 
 XIII. THE MARQUESS OF DALHOUSIE : and the Final 
 
 Development of the Compamfn Rule, hy Sir William Wilson 
 HuNTEa, K.C.S.I., M.A. [Published.] 
 
 XIV. CLYDE AND STRATRNAIRN : awl the Suppression of 
 
 the Great Revolt, by Major-General Sir Owen Tddob 
 BuRNE, K.C.S.I., sometime Military Secretary to the Com- 
 mander-in-Chief in India. [Published.] 
 
 XV. EARL CANNING: and the Transfer of India from the 
 Company to the Crotvn, by Sir Henry S. Cunningham, 
 K.C.I.E., M.A., Author of British India and its Rulers, etc. 
 [Published.] 
 
 XVI. THE EARL OF MAYO: and the Consolidation of the 
 Queen's Rule in India, by Sir William Wilson Hunter, 
 K.C.S.L, M.A. [Published.] 
 
 O.XFORD University Press Warehouse, Amen Corner, London, 
 AND ALL Booksellers. Price 2«. 6d. each volume. 
 
 £Dpinion.s of t6e Press 
 
 on 
 
 SIR WILLIAM HUNTER'S 'DALHOUSIE.' 
 
 ' An interesting and exceedingly readable volume Sir William 
 
 Hunter has produced a valuable work about an important epoch in 
 English history in India, and he has given us a pleasing insight into 
 the character of a remarkable Englishman. The " Rulers of India" 
 series, which he has initiated, thus makes a successful beginning in his 
 hands with one who ranks among the greatest of the great names which 
 will be associated with the subject.' — The Times. 
 
 ' To no one is the credit for the improved condition of public intelli- 
 gence [regarding India] more due than to Sir William Hunter. From 
 the beginning of his career as an Indian Civilian he has devoted a rare 
 literary faculty to the task of enlightening his countrymen on the subject 
 of England's greatest dependency .... By inspiring a small army of 
 fellow-labourers with his own spirit, by inducing theui to conform to his 
 own method, and shaping a huge agglomeration of facts into a lucid and 
 intelligible system. Sir W. Hunter has brought India and its innumer- 
 able interests within the pale of achievable knowledge, and has given 
 definite shape to the truths which its historj' establishes and the 
 problems which it suggests. . . . Such contributions to literature are apt to 
 be taken as a matter of course, because their highest merit is to conceal 
 the labour, and skill, and knowledge involved in their production ; 'out 
 they raise the whole level of public intelligence, and generate an 
 atmos]ihere in which the baleful influences of folly, ignorance, prejudice, 
 and presumption dwindle and disappear. . . . No one we think, who fairly 
 studies Sir W. Hunter's exact and lucid narrative of these transactions, 
 can question the result which he seeks to establish — namely, that Lord 
 Dalhousie merely carried out with moderation and skill a policy
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS ON ' DALHOUSIE' {continued). 
 
 deliberately adopted by the GovL-rnment before his arrival in the country 
 — a policy the strict legality of which cannot be disputed, and which was 
 inspired by the growing sense that sovereigns exist, not for their own 
 enjoyment, but for the happiness of their subjects.' — Satufihiy Review. 
 
 ' Admirably calculated to impart in a concise and agreeable form a clear 
 general outline of the history of our great Indian Empire.' — Economist. 
 
 ' A skilful and most attractive picture. . . . The author has made good 
 use of public and private documents, and has enjoyed the privilege of 
 being aided by the deceased statesman's family. His little work is, 
 consequently, a valuable contribution to modern history.' — Academy. 
 
 ' The book should command a wide circle of readers, not only for its 
 author's sake and that of its subject, but partly at least on account of 
 the very attractive way iti which it has been published at the moderate 
 price of half-a-crown. But it is, of course, by its intrinsic merits alone 
 that a work of this nature should be judged. And those merits are 
 everywhere conspicuous. ... A writer whose thorough mastery of all 
 Indian subjects has been acquired by years of practical experience and 
 patient research.' — The AthencBum. 
 
 ' Never have we been so much impressed by the great literary abilities 
 of Sir William Hunter as we have been by the perusal of "The Marquess 
 of Dalhousie." . . . The knowledge displayed by the writer of the motives 
 of Lord Dalhousie's action, of the inner working of his mind, is so com- 
 plete, that Lord Dalhousie himself, were he living, could not state them 
 more clearly. In the next place the argument throughout the book is so 
 lucid, based so entirely upon facts, resting upon official documents and 
 other evidences not to be controverted, that the opponents of Lord 
 Dalhousie's policy will be sorely put to it to make a case against him. 
 . . . Sir William Hunter's style is so clear, his language so vivid, and 
 yet so simple, conveying the impressions he wishes so perspicuously that 
 they cannot but be understood, that the work must have a place in 
 every lilirary, in every home, we might say indeed every cottage.' — 
 Evening News. 
 
 ' Sir William Hunter has written an admirable little volume on 
 " The Marquess of Dalhousie " for his series of the " Rulers of India." 
 It can be read at a sitting, yet its references — expressed or implied — 
 suggest the study and observation of half a life-time.' — The Daily News. 
 
 ©pinions of tfie Ptes.s 
 
 ON 
 
 SIR WILLIAM HUNTER'S 'LORD MAYO.' 
 
 ' Sir William W. Hunter has contributed a brief but admirable 
 biography of the Earl of Mayo to the series entitled " Rulers of India," 
 edited by himself (Oxford, at the Clarendon Press). The volume is in 
 every way worthy to rank with the same writer's well-known "Mar- 
 quess of Dalhousie," contributed to the same series. ..." The present 
 volume exhibits a memorable stage in the process by which those 
 dominions, old and new, were welded together into the India of the 
 Queen." This is the keynote of the volume ; but it deals also with a 
 strong and attractive personality, never perhaps appreciated at its due
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PEESS ON 'LOUD MAYO' {continued). 
 
 worth in this country, except by the few who followed the course of 
 Lord Mayo's government and policy in India, and it gives a very in- 
 teresting account of the mechanism of Indian Government, and of the 
 prodigious labour it imposes on those who are responsible for it.' — 
 The Times. 
 
 ' Sir William Hunter has given us a monograph in which there is a 
 happy combination of the essay and the biography. We are presented 
 with the main features of Lord Mayo's administration unencumbered 
 with tedious details which would interest none but the most official of 
 Anglo-Indians ; while in the biography the man is brought before us, 
 not analytically, but in a life-like portrait.' — Vanity Fair. 
 
 ' In telling this story in the monograph before us, Sir William 
 Hunter has combined his well-known literary skill with an earnest 
 sympathy and fullness of knowledge which are worthy of all commenda- 
 tion. . . . The world is indebted to the author for a fit and attractive 
 recoi'd of what was eminently a noble life.' — The Acadeuiy. 
 
 ' The sketch of The Man is full of interest, drawn as it is with com- 
 plete sympathy, understanding, and appreciation. But more valuable 
 is the account of his administration. No one can show so well and 
 clearly as Sir William Hunter does what the policy of Lord Mayo con- 
 tributed to the making of the Indian Empire of to-day.' — The Scotsman. 
 
 ' The story of his life Sir W. W. Hunter tells in well-chosen language 
 — clear, succinct, and manly. Sir W. W. Hunter is in sympathy with 
 his subject, and does full justice to Mayo's strong, genuine nature. 
 Without exaggeration and in a direct, unaffected style, as befits his 
 theme, he brings the man and his woi'k vividly before us.' — The 
 Glasgow Herald. 
 
 'AH the knowledge acquired by personal association, familiarity with 
 administrative details of the Indian Government, and a strong grasp of 
 the vast problems to be dealt with, is utili-sed in this presentation of 
 Lord Mayo's personality and career. Sir W. Hunter, however, never 
 overloads his pages, and the outlines of the sketch are clear and firm.' 
 — The Manchester Express. 
 
 ' This is another of the " Rulers of India " series, and it will be hard 
 to beat. . . . Sir William Hunter's perception and expression are here at 
 their very best.'— T^e Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 'The latest addition to the "Rulers of India" series yields to none of 
 its predecessors in attractiveness, vigour, and artistic portraiture. . . . 
 The final chapter must either be copied verbally and literally — which 
 the space at our disposal will not permit — or be left to the sorrowful 
 perusal of the reader. The man is not to be envied who can read it with 
 dry eyes.' — Allen's Indian Mail. 
 
 ' The little volume which has just been brought out is a study of Lord 
 Mayo's career by one who knew all about it and was in full sympathy 
 with it. . . . Some of these chapters are full of spirit and fire. The 
 closing passages, the picture of the Viceroy's assassination, cannot fail 
 to make any reader hold his breath. We know what is going to 
 happen, but we are thrilled as if we did not know it, and were still 
 held in suspense. The event itself was so terribly tragic that any 
 ordinary description might seem feeble and laggard. But in this 
 volume we are made to feel as we must have felt if we had been on 
 the spot and seen the murderer " fastened like a tiger " on the back of 
 the Viceroy.' — Daily News, Leading Article.
 
 SDpinions of tbe Press 
 
 MR.W.S.SETON-KAIlIl'S'COE,NWALLIS.' 
 
 ' This new volume of the " Rulers of India " series keeps up to the 
 high standard set by the author of " The Marquess of Dalhousie." For 
 dealing with the salient passages in Lord Cornwallis's Indian career no 
 one could have been better qualified than the whilom foreigu secretary 
 to Lord Lawrence.' — The AUiencBum. 
 
 'Lord Cornwallis has been very pi'operly included in the list of those 
 " Rulers of India " whose biographies are calculated to illustrate the 
 past growth and present development of the English administration in 
 that country. His nanue is connected with several great measures, 
 which more, perhaps, than any others have given a special colour to our 
 rule, have influenced the course of subsequent legislation, and have made 
 the Civil Service what it at present is. He completed the administrative 
 fabric of which Warren Hastings, in the midst of unexampled difficulties 
 and vicissitudes, had laid the foundation.' — The Saturday Eeview. 
 
 ' We ho]ie that the volumes on the " Rulers of India " which are 
 being published by the Clarendon Press are carefully read by a large 
 section of the public. There is a dense wall of ignorance still standing 
 between the average Englishman and the greatest dependency of the 
 Crown, although we can scarcely hope to see it broken down altogether, 
 some of these admirable biographies cannot fail to lower it a little. . . . 
 Mr. Seton-Karr has succeeded in the task, and he has not only pre- 
 sented a large mass of information, but he has brought it together in an 
 attractive form. . . . We strongly recommend the book to all who wish 
 to enlarge the area of their knowledge with reference to India.' — New 
 York Herald. 
 
 'The "Rulers of India" series. This outcome of the Clarendon 
 Press grows in value as it proceeds. The account of Cornwallis is from 
 the pen of Mr. W. Seton-Karr, who was formerly Foreign Secretary to 
 the Government of India, and whose acquaintance with Eastern affairs 
 has been of obvious service to him in the compilation of this useful 
 manual.' — The Olobe. 
 
 ' One might almost say that the history of our great Indian Empire 
 might be read with comparative ease in the excellent " Rulers of India 
 Series," published at the Clarendon Press at Oxford. ... Of Cornwallis 
 it might be said he transformed the East India Company's servants 
 from merchants to administrators, and determined to place them above 
 jobbery, which he despised.' — The Independent. 
 
 ' We have already expressed our sense of the value and timeliness of 
 the series of Indian historical retrospects now issuing, under tiie editor- 
 ship of Sir W. W. Hunter, from the Clarendon Press. It is somewhat 
 less than fair to say of Mr. Seton-Karr's monograph upon Coi'nwallis 
 that it reaches the high standard of literary workmanship which that 
 series has maintained. . . . His accurate and lucid summary of the necessi- 
 ties which dictated Cornwallis's policy, and the methods by which he 
 initiated and, to a great extent, effected, the transformation of our rule 
 in India from the lines of an Oriental despotism to those with which we 
 are now familiar, is as attractive as it is instructive.' — The Literary 
 World.
 
 HDpinions of tl)e press 
 
 COLONEL MALLESON'S 'DUPLEIX.' 
 
 ' In the character of Dupleix there was the element of greatness 
 that contact with India seems to have generated in so many European 
 minds, French as well as English, and a broad capacity for govern- 
 ment, which, if suffered to have full play, might have ended in giving 
 the whole of Southern India to France. Even as it was, Colonel 
 Malleson shows how narrowly the prize slipped from French grasp. 
 In 1783 the Treaty of Versailles arrived just in time to save the 
 British power from extinction.' — Times. 
 
 ' Colonel Malleson's Life of Dupleix, which has just been published, 
 though his estimate of his hero differs in some respects from Lord 
 Stanhope's and Lord Macaulay's, may be accepted as, on the whole, a 
 fairly faithful portraiture of the prophetic genius to whom the possi- 
 bility of a great Indo-European Empire first revealed itself. Had the 
 French profited by all the advantages they possessed when Clive 
 exchanged the counting-house for the army, the history of India, and 
 perhaps of Europe also, might have been different.' — Standard 
 (leading article). 
 
 ' The " Rulers of India " series, edited by Sir W. W. Hunter, and 
 published at the Clarendon Press, Oxford, is one of the very best of 
 the serial collections which are now so popular. All the writers of 
 these little volumes are well-known and acknowledged authorities on 
 the subjects with which they deal. Not the least interesting volume 
 in this particular series is Colonel Malleson's biography of Dupleix . . . 
 It was to Dupleix, and not to Clive, that the idea first occurred of 
 founding a European Empire in India ... It is a stirring story, and 
 full of moral for the administrators of India at this hour.' — Echo. 
 
 ' One of the best of Sir W. Hunter's interesting and valuable series. 
 Colonel Malleson writes out of the fulness of familiarity, moving with 
 ease over a field which he had long ago surveyed in every nook and 
 corner. To do a small book as well as this on Dupleix has been done, 
 will be recognised by competent judges as no small achievement. 
 When one considers the bulk of the material out of which the little 
 volume has been distilled, one can still better appreciate the labour 
 and dexterity involved in the performance.' — Academy. 
 
 ' Colonel Malleson has here written a most compact and effective 
 history of the French in India in a little handbook of 180 pages. He 
 gives a brief summary of French enterprise in India from the first, 
 and clearly outlines the grand designs that rose in the fertile brain of 
 Dupleix. Colonel Malleson's chapter on the " Downfall of Dupleix " 
 is as touching as anything we remember to have recently read, and his 
 chapter on Clive and his work may be read with interest and pleasure, 
 even after the glowing and brilliant account of Macaulay.' — Koncon- 
 f or mist. 
 
 'Well arranged, lucid and eminently readable, an excellent addition 
 to a most useful series.' — Record.
 
 Do 
 
 RErf:REl>"CES 
 opened 
 
 
 
 Maldii 
 
 ■ Paddiphol o. 
 
 TTlc nurturals dUiLote tiije height aheve stxL iwrf in- ir 
 J7u> ^ap isf irvt^ndect only to ej^ubit thepriruTipaL 
 , ^^def' -rivers &c. iji India-. 
 
 'I 
 
 
 (Jaraularh Fr-ess. Oirfyrd-
 
 ©pinions of tftc Press! 
 
 COLONEL MALLESON'S 'AKBAR.' 
 
 ' Colonel Malleson's interesting monograph on Akbar in the "Rulers 
 of India " (Clarendon Press) should more than satisfy the general 
 reader. Colonel Malleson traces the origin and foundation of the 
 Mughal Empire ; and, as an introduction to the history of Muhanima- 
 dan India, the book leaves nothing to be desired.' — St. James's Gazette. 
 
 * Akbar was certainly a great man. Colonel Malleson has done well 
 to tell his story thus succinctly and sympathetically : hitherto it has been 
 mostly buried from the mass of readers. The book is in our idea a 
 piece of thoroughly well-executed work, which cannot fail to recommend 
 still further a series which has begun right well.' — Nonconformist. 
 
 ' The cliief interest of the book lies in the later chapters, in which 
 Colonel Malleson presents an interesting and singularly pleasing 
 picture of the great Emperor himself and the principles which governed 
 his enlightened and humane administration.' — Literary World. 
 
 ' It is almost superfluous to say that the book is characterised by 
 the narrative vigour and the extensive familiarity with Indian history 
 to which the readers of Colonel Malleson's other works are accus- 
 tomed.' — Glasgoio Herald. 
 
 ' This volume will, no doubt, be welcomed, even by experts in 
 Indian history, in the light of a new, clear, and terse rendering of an 
 old, but not worn-out theme. It is a worthy and valuable addition 
 to Sir W. Hunter's promising series.' — AthencBzim. 
 
 ' Colonel Malleson has broken ground new to the general reader. 
 The story of Akbar is briefly but clearly told, with an account of what 
 he was and what he did, and how he found and how he left India. . . . 
 The native chronicles of the reign are many, and from them it is still 
 possible, as Colonel Malleson has shown, to construct a living portrait 
 of this great and mighty potentate.' — Scots Observer. 
 
 ' Akbar is, after Mohammed himself, the most striking and interest- 
 ing figure in Mussulman history. Few men of any age or country 
 have united in equally successful measure the gifts of the conqueror, 
 the organiser, and the philosophic statesman . . . His personal charac- 
 ter is even more exceptional among Oriental rulers than his intel- 
 lectual brilliance . . . He is the only great Mussulman ruler who 
 showed himself capable of rising out of the narrow bigotry of Islam to 
 a lofty and comprehensive view of religious truth. The life and rule 
 of such a man is a noble theme for a great historian.' — Speaker. 
 
 ' The brilliant historian of the Indian Mutiny has been assigned in 
 this volume of the series an important epoch and a strong personality 
 for critical study, and he has admirably fulfilled his task. A luminous 
 exposition of the invasions of India by Babar, Akbar's grandfather, 
 makes a good introduction to Asiatic history of the sixteenth century. 
 Akbar's own career is full of interest, and to the principles of his in- 
 ternal administration Colonel Malleson devotes in the final chapter more 
 than a quarter of the pages of his book. Alike in dress and style, this 
 volume is a fit companion for its predecessor.' — Manchester Guardian. 
 
 P 2
 
 SDpinions of tbc IPress 
 
 CAPTAH TROTTEE'S 'WAEEEI HASTIiaS.' 
 
 ' The publication, recently noticed in this place, of the " Letters, 
 Despatches, and other State Papers preserved in the Foreign Depart- 
 ment of the Government of India, 1772-17S5," has thrown entirely new 
 light from the most authentic sources on the whole history of Warren 
 Hastings and his government of India. Captain L. J. Trotter's 
 War HEN Hastings, a volume of the " Rulers of India " series, edited 
 by Sir W. Hunter (Oxford, at the Clarendon Press), is accordingly 
 neither inojiportune nor devoid of an adequate raison (Veire. '' The 
 present volume," says a brief preface, " endeavours to exhibit for the 
 first time the actual work of that great Governor-General, as reviewed 
 from the firm stand-point of the original records now made available to 
 the students of Indian history." Captain Trotter is well known as a 
 competent and attractive writer on Indian history, and this is not the 
 first time that Warren Hastings has supplied him with a theme.' — 
 The Times. 
 
 ' He has put his best work into this memoir . . . Captain Trotter's 
 memoir is more valuable [than Sir A. Lyall's] from a strictly historical 
 point of view. It contains more of the history of the period, and it 
 embraces the very latest information that casts light on Hastings' re- 
 markable career . . . His work too is of distinct literary merit, and is 
 worthy of a theme than which British history presents none nobler. 
 It is a distinct gain to the British race to be enabled, as it now may, 
 to count the great Governor-General among those heroes for whom 
 it need not blush.' — Scotsman. 
 
 ' Captain Trotter has done his work well, and his volume deserves 
 to stand with that on Dalhousie by Sir William Hunter. Higher 
 praise it would be liard to give it.' — Neto York Herald. 
 
 ' This is an able book, written with candour and discrimination.' — 
 Leeds Mercury. 
 
 ' Captain Trotter has done full justice to the fascinating story of the 
 splendid achievements of a great Englishman.' — Manchester Guardian. 
 
 ' This neat little volume contains a brief but admirable biography of 
 the first Governor-General of India. The author has been fortunate in 
 having had access to State papers which cover the period of the 
 entire rule of Warren Hastings.' — The Neivcastle Chronicle. 
 
 ' In preparing this sketch for " The Rulers of India," Captain 
 Trotter has had the advantage of consulting the "Letters, despatches, 
 and other State papers preserved in the Foreign Department of the 
 Government of India, 1772-85," a period which covers the entire 
 administration of Warren Hastings. The present volume, therefore, 
 may truly claim tliat it " exhibits for the first time the actual work of 
 the great Governor-General, as reviewed from tlie firm stand-point of 
 original records." It is a book which all must peruse who desire to 
 be " up to date " on the subject.' — The Globe.
 
 Opinions of t&c IPrcss 
 
 YISCOOTT HAEDII&E'S 'LORD HAEDIN&E.' 
 
 ' An exception to the rule that biographies ought not to be entrusted 
 to near relatives. Lord Hardinge, a scholar and an artist, has given 
 us an accurate record of his father's long and distinguished services. 
 There is no filial exaggeration. The author has dealt with some con- 
 troversial matters with skill, and has managed to combine truth with 
 tact and regard for the feelings of others.'- — The Saturday Revieio. 
 
 'This interesting life reveals the first Lord Hardinge as a brave, 
 just, able man, the very soul of honour, admired and trusted equally 
 by friends and political opponents. The biographer . . . has produced a 
 most engaging volume, which is enriched by many private and official 
 documents that have not before seen the light.' — The Anti-Jacobin. 
 
 ' Lord Hardinge has accomplished a grateful, no doubt, but, from 
 the abundance of material and delicacy of certain matters, a very 
 difficult task in a workmanlike manner, marked by restraint and 
 lucidity.'— TAe Fall Mall Gazette. 
 
 ' His son and biographer has done his work with a true appreciation 
 of proportion, and has added substantially to our knowledge of the 
 Sutlej Campaign.' — Vanity Fair. 
 
 ' The present Lord Hardinge is in some respects exceptionally well 
 qualified to tell the tale of the eventful four years of his father's 
 Governor-Generalship.' — The Times. 
 
 'It contains a full account of everything of importance in Lord 
 Hardinge's military and political career ; it is aiTanged ... so as to 
 bring into special prominence his government of India ; and it gives a 
 lifelike and striking picture of the man.' — Academy. 
 
 ' The style is clear, the treatment dispassionate, and the total result 
 a manual which does credit to the interesting series in which it figures.' 
 —The Globe. 
 
 ' The concise and vivid account which the son has given of his 
 father's career will interest many readers.' — The Morning Fost. 
 
 'Eminently readable for everybody. The history is given succinctly, 
 and the unpublished letters quoted are of real value.' — The Colonies 
 and India. 
 
 ' Compiled from public documents, family papers, and letters, this 
 brief biography gives the reader a clear idea of what Hardinge was 
 both as a soldier and as an administrator.' — I'he Manchester Examiner. 
 
 ' An admirable sketch.' — The New York Herald. 
 
 'The Memoir is well and concisely written, and is accompanied by 
 an excellent likeness after the portrait by Sir Francis Grant.' — The 
 Queen.
 
 HDpinions of t^e Pre^s 
 
 ON 
 
 MAJOR-GENERAL SIR OWEN BURNE'S 
 * CLYDE AND STRATHNAIRN.' 
 
 *In " Cl3^(le and Strathnairn," a contribution to Sir William Hunter's 
 excellent "Rulers of India" series (Oxford, at the Clarendon Press), 
 Sir Owen Burne gives a lucid sketch of the military history of the 
 Indian Mutiny and its suppression by the two great soldiers who give 
 their names to his book. The space is limited for so large a theme, but 
 Sir Owen Burne skilfully adjusts his treatment to his limits, and rarely 
 violates the conditions of proportion imposed upon him.' . . . ' Sir Owen 
 Burne does not confine himself exclusively to the military narrative. 
 He gives a brief sketch of the rise and progress of the Mutiny, and 
 devotes a chapter to the Reconstruction which followed its suppression.' 
 . . . ' — well written, well proportioned, and eminently worthy of the 
 series to which it belongs.' — The Times. 
 
 ' Sir Owen Burne who, by association, experience, and relations with 
 one of these generals, is well qualified for the task, writes with know- 
 ledge, perspicuity, and fairness.' — Saturday Review. 
 
 ' As a brief record of a momentous epoch in India this little book is 
 a remarkable piece of clear, concise, and interesting writing.' — The 
 Colonies and India. 
 
 'In this new volume of the excellent "Rulers of India" series, 
 Major-Gen eral Burne gives in a succinct and readable form an account 
 of the Mutiny, its causes, its nature, and the changes in army organisa- 
 tion and civil administration which followed upon it.' — Glasgow Herald. 
 
 ' Like the rest of the book, this part is not only excellently written, 
 but is excellently reasoned also.' — The National Observer. 
 
 ' Sir Owen Burne, who has written the latest volume for Sir William 
 Hunter's " Rulers of India " series, is better qualified than any living 
 person to narrate, from a military standpoint, the story of the suppres- 
 sion of the Indian Mutiny.' — Daily Telegraph. 
 
 * Sir Owen Burne's booli on " CXyAe and Strathnairn " is worthy to 
 rank with the best in the admirable series to which it belongs.' — 
 Manchester Examiner. 
 
 ' The book is admirably written ; and there is probably no better 
 sketch, equally brief, of the stirring events with which it deals.' 
 Scotsman. 
 
 ' Sir Owen Burne, from the part he played in the Indian Mutiny, and 
 from his long connexion with the Government of India, and from the 
 fact that he was military secretary of Lord Strathnairn both in India 
 and in Ireland, is well qualified for the task which he has undertaken.' — 
 The Athenaeum. 
 
 ' Sir W. W. Hunter acted wisely in commissioning Sir Owen Tudor 
 Burne to write the lives of " Clyde and Strathnairn " for this series 
 (Clarendon Press). Neither of these generals was, strictly speaking, a 
 Ruler of India : still the important period of the Mutiny is so contained 
 in the story of their exploits, that perhaps it was as well to choose them 
 as the personages round whom might be grouped the history of that 
 stirring period. . . . Sir O. T. Burne's book is well worthy of a place in 
 the most valuable of the many series now issuing from the Press.' — The 
 Header.
 
 WORKS BY SIR HENRY CUNNINGHAM, K.C.I.E. 
 
 THE HERIOTS. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 ' 'Phis novel will confirm the good opinions which " The Chronicles of Dustypore " and 
 "The Creruleans" had won for their author. . . . Sir Henry h:us a neat turn for epigram, 
 which makes his symposia of smart people sparkling and sometimes racy ; he is brimful 
 of the wit of the French cynics, and can caj) it on occasion with his own. . . . Lady 
 Heriot is a charming old lady whom it is a privilege to have met even in a novel." — 'I'imex. 
 
 'This is a work of genius. . . . "The Heriots" leave us with a large circle of new 
 friends, whose acquaintance it has been a privilege to make, and many of whose sayings 
 it is ple;i.sant to remember. Several of the characters may fairly claim to be original 
 creations in English fiction.' — Academy. 
 
 ' It is an eminently readable novel, as well as a singularly clever one.' — Guardian. 
 
 ' We are glad to welcome home the delightful author of "The Chronicles of Dustypore " 
 and "The Coeruleans." ..." The Heriots " is not a novel with a purpose . . . but for all 
 that it produces an effect on the reader's mind, and favours the belief that purity and 
 goodness are better possessions than allotments in "going" companies and villas on the 
 Thames. And it teaches this gratifying lesson amid a whirl of talk and society. . . . People 
 will do well to read " The Heriots." ' — Speaker. 
 
 ' A story of much literary excellence. In style and matter it has a fine aroma of 
 intellect and culture, and it is jiervaded by a taste for what is good and true and 
 beautiful in life and human nature. We do not propose to give an outUne of Sir Henry 
 C\mningham's story; but the reader may be assured that it is as highly interesting as 
 a narrative destitute of lurid sensationalism can well be. It is brightened by chapters of 
 unusually good conversation of the brisk and consciously brilliant sort. Altogether this 
 is perhajis the best story that Sir Henry Cunningham has produced since he delighted 
 Indian readers with his "Chronicles of Dustypore.'" — Scotsman. 
 
 'Is not only a powerful novel, but conspicuous amongst publications of the same 
 character for the healtliiness of its tone, the brUliancy of its dialogue, and the simplicity 
 of its plot. His book is a chapter of the history of the world in which we live. It is more 
 even than that. It is a chapter wliich embodies the experiences of a lifetime — a chapter 
 which those would do well to study who are fond of calling evil good, and good evil ; 
 a chapter which the pure-minded BngUshman and Englishwoman will cherish as giving, 
 in a refined and taking style, illustrated by brilliant dialogues and scenes of ever- 
 increasing interest, a lesson from which there is no one so wise that he cannot derive 
 alike profit and pleasure.' — Evening News. 
 
 'The author of those capital books, "The Coeruleans" and "The Clironicles of 
 Dustypore," stands quite apart from the oi'dinary run of novelists, for he has learning 
 enough and to spare, and, although he never displays it unduly, yet he makes his 
 readers pleasantly conscious of an atmosphere of good reading and good sense. . . . Sir 
 Henry Cunningham's new novel does not fall below the high standard of its predecessors. 
 — Manchester Examiner, 
 
 ' It is seldom that in an age of three-volume novels we come across one so thoroughly 
 satisfactory as "The Heriots." It is brilliant as a picture of social life, it sparkles witli 
 epigram, its presentation of character is varied and graphic. . . . For all its excellence it 
 is nevertheless thoroughly unbookish; its fluent elegance, its lively jests, its happy 
 allusiveness, possess the crowning grace of apparent spontaneity.' — Daily News. 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LONDON. 
 
 THE CCEBULEAirS. A Vacation Idyll. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 ' This is a novel of uncommon merit. In an elegant style, and with considerable power 
 of satire and epigram, Mr. Cunningham gives us sketch after sketch of the various 
 Anglo-Indian types of character. . . . On the whole we should say that Ccerulean 
 officialdom is unusually favoured in its personnel. There does not appear to be a dull 
 day in the whole of Coerulea. Everybody is witty, and the repartees which fly about are 
 almost too good to be natural. . . . "The Coeruleans" appeals to a high standard of taste 
 and intelligence, and we shall be surprised if it does not achieve success.' — Times. 
 
 'Middle-aged people remember as one of the cleverest short novels they ever read 
 a book called "Wheat and Tares." . . . Once only, so far as we know, until now has the 
 writer reminded readers of fiction of his existence. But the talent, though apparently
 
 PRESS OPINIONS ON THE CCERULEANS {contimml). 
 
 hidden, has after all been at usury. Good as was " Wheat and Tares" twenty years ago, 
 " The Coeruleans " must be accounted even better. There was wit in that; in this there 
 is a riper wit, and abundance of wisdom as weU.' — Alheiueum. 
 
 ' It is a joyful relief to come upon a pleasant and natural story, admirably written by 
 a gentleman and scholar, who is at the same time blessed with a constant flow of quiet 
 but most effective humour. Such a story is "The Cceruleans." . . . Mr. Cunningham's 
 fityle is not only correct, but elegant — with an elegance now unhappily rare ; and all that 
 he writes is forcible and self-contained. There is not a dull page in the book.' — 
 Haturday Review. 
 
 'Several theories of Indian government are discussed in this brilliant book ("The 
 Coeruleans"), and the writer has much to say on this question that is well worth 
 consideration if it may not always command assent.' — Academy. 
 
 "'The Coeruleans" is an unusuaUy pleasant and entertaining novel. It is clever, 
 original, and refined, full of bright scenes and amiable conversations, as weU as excellent 
 studies of character. Above all, it contrasts favourably with the majority of clever 
 novels of the day by the preponderance of agi'eeable people among its characters.'— 
 Guardian. 
 
 WHEAT AND TARES. Crown 8vo. 3.5. <Sd. 
 
 ' Its excellences are great and rare, within the range of what a novelette can be. The 
 dialogue is unusually brilliant, natural, and easy. The fun is quiet, subtle, and 
 continuous ; and the illustrations of hidden thoughts and the shading off of the finer 
 traits of character are at once ingenious and truthful. But, above all, it has thi-oughout 
 the unmistakable impress of a refined and delicate taste.' — Saturday Review. 
 
 ' The tone throughout is that of a gentleman and a scholar, the style is singularly pure, 
 and the whole book has a perfume of many men's thoughts. ... In several respects the 
 best novel of the year. . . . There are some features in "Wheat and Tares" wliich ciin 
 be praised almost unreservedly. . . . The author of " Wheat and Tares" has a tact and 
 though tfulness that may carry him far, and two or three passages seem to show that he 
 is capable of real elevation. His pi-esent work will probably place him with the pubUc ; 
 let him write in future with a single view to his art.' — Spectator. 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LONDON. 
 
 CHBONICI.es op DUSTYPOBE : a Tale of Modern Anglo-Indian 
 Society. Crown 8vo. 'js. (>d. Also a Popular Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 
 2s. 6d. 
 
 ' It is not often that a novel reader comes aoi-oss a story so bright, so amusing, and so 
 sparkling as these " Chronicles of Dustypore." . . . Those who have never been in India 
 may learn from the " Chronicles of Dustypore " more of India than they could gather 
 from hundreds of more pretentious volumes.' — Saturday Review. 
 
 'This is a very refreshing book to get, for though it deals with a hot and dusty 
 country, where, as the author tells u.s, there is sand everywhere, and a good deal in the 
 heads of the officials, we cannot complain of there being any in the clear brain of the 
 writer. Everything is exceedingly fresh and bright, the conversations are brUliant 
 without being overstrained; the characters are thoroughly natural, and many of tliem 
 recognizable to those who have been in India. . . . Perhaps one of the great charms about 
 the book is its good nature ; there is none of that spiteful tone which has hitherto 
 cliaracterized all stories relative to station life in India. It is evidently the work of a 
 gentleman, and as such is most agreeable reading, ^'e have a vivid pictuie of In<lian life, 
 and the sketches of scenery and existence in that land are most excellent.' — Vanity Fair. 
 
 ' Contrary to the wont of novels treating of Anglo-Indian life, which are generally to 
 the English reader inexpressibly weai'iaome, the "Chronicles of Dustypore" are bright, 
 clever, and amusing, and just the kind of thing wherewith to while pleasantly away an 
 otherwise tedious hour. . . . The whole of the " Chronicles of Dustypore " bear the mark 
 of having been written by no unpractised or unfamiUar hand, and we commend them 
 heartily to all who may wish to amuse themselves for a timewitli the small joys, sorrows, 
 frailties, and misfortunes of a certain very lively and entertaining fraction of society.' — 
 Morning Post. 
 
 SMITH, ELDER, AND CO., LONDON.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
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