^ms:0W m^ - Pfe i M ' f ' g^ l^f" ■^M'Ste^' :?BL -i 1 " THE MARQUIS OF OALHOUSIE. STATESMEN SERIES. EDITED BY LLOYD C. SANDEES. THE MARQUIS OF MLHOUSIE (All Bights reserved.) STATESMEN SERIES. LIFE OF THE MARQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. EUREAU OF INTERNA] H'N.a RaATiOm j *• ;. :.i.- V of C&litornia ,..,-...-,» BY CAPTAIN L. I. TfEOTTER, AUTHOB OF "INDIA UlTOEB VICTOKIA." LONDON: W. H. ALLEN & CO., 13 WATERLOO PLACE, PALL MALL, S.W. 1889. LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, Limited, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. r7 PREFATORY NOTE. The following works have been consulted for the purposes of this biography : — Sir E. Arnold's Administration of the Marquis of Balhousie ; the Duke of Argyll's India under Balhousie and Canning; Sir C. Jackson's Vindication of Balhousie' s Indian Administration ; Lord Dalhousie*s Review of his Indian Administration ; Selections from the Beccyrds of the Government of India, No. III. ; Punjab Administration Reports ; Indian Progress Reports; Thornton's Indian Public Works; Kaye's Improvements in the Administration of India ; Clements Markham's Memoir of Indian Surveys; Marquis Wellesley's Indian Bespatches ; Indian Blue Boohs; Indian Office Records; Parliamentary Papers; and the Calcutta Gazette. Biographies : — Edwardes and Merivale's Life of Sir Henry Lawrence; Bosworth Smith's Life of Lord vi FBEFATOBY NOTE, Lawrence; Temple's Life of Lord Lawrence; Sir W. Napier's Life of Sir Charles Napier ; Bruce 's Life of Sir Charles Napier ; Gambier Parry's Life of Beynell Taylor ; Lady Edwardes' Life of Sir Herbert Edwardes ; Sir F. Goldsmid's Life of Sir James Outram ; Marsh- man's Life of Havelock; Kaye's Lives of Indian Officers, Sir R. Temple's Men and Events of my Time in India and Beport on Nagpur ; Sir H. Edwardes' Year on the Punjab Frontier; Sir G. Lawrence's Forty Years' Service in India ; Raikes's Notes on the North- West Provinces; The Punjaub, by an old Punjaubee; Lawrence Archer's Punjaub Campaign ; Sir W. Sleeman's Diary in Oudh; Sandford's Jowrnal of a Subaltern; Laurie's Second Burmese War; Kaye's History of the Sepoy War; Marshman's History of India; Trotter's History of India under Victoria; Chesney's Indian Polity ; Evans Bell's Empire in India ; Beveridge's History of India ; Sir W. Hunter's Indian Gazetteer; Talboys Wheeler's India under British Bule; Trotter's History of India from the Earliest Times. For Dalhousie's career in England: — Dean Ramsay's Scottish Life and Character; Sir T. Martin's Life of PBEFATOBT NOTE. vii the Prince Consort ; C. Greville's Diaries ; Hanna's Life of Chalmers, Obituary and other notices in : — Allen's Indian Mail ; The Friend of India ; Mofussilite ; Agra Messenger ; Calcutta Englishman; Delhi Gazette; Timss; Scots- man ; Standard ; Spectator, and the article on Dalhousie in the ninth edition of the Encgclopsedia Britannica, To all who have personally aided me in any way with materials for the work now completed, I beg to offer my sincere thanks. There is one kind friend, however, to whom such thanks are especially due for services which no words of mine can adequately express. To the zealous co-operation of Dr. Alexander Grant this book is indebted for most of those personal details which serve to fill up and enliven the narrative of a great man's public career. Besides the valuable body of notes and reminiscences which he placed so generously at my disposal, the perfect confidence placed by Lady Connemara in the discretion of her fathers intimate friend enabled him to furnish me with other information, such as her Ladyship would have deemed herself pre- cluded by her father's instructions from giving directly to a mere stranger. As one who served in India during the first six years viii PBEFATOBY NOTE. of Lord Dalhousie's Government, and again during the Mutiny, I may claim to have had some direct acquaintance with many of the topics handled in these pages. My subsequent studies of Indian history, carried on now for nearly thirty years, have enabled me, in my History of India under Victoria, to follow up the good work begun by those who first undertook the task of vindicating the greatest and noblest of Indian Viceroys from the reproaches cast upon him by his own countrymen during and after the catas- trophe of 1857. Further research in the writing of the present volume has served only to deepen my former conviction of the injustice which clouded the last years of a life remarkable for rare achievements and heroic sacrifices in the cause of duty. L. J. T. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. FROM HARROW TO THE HOUSE OF LORDS. 1812-1838. ' Birth of the Marquis of Dalhousie — His parents and ancestors — Canada and Harrow — Letter to Dr. Butler — Cardinal Manning's recollections — Lord Hastings' visit — The holidays — Christ Church — Studies and vacations — Death of Kamsay's elder hrother — His degree — Ramsay stands for the City of Edinburgh and is defeated — Member for Haddingtonshire — Death of his father — The Scottish secession question — Breach with Dr. Chalmers . p. 1 CHAPTER II. DALHOUSIE AS A CABINET MINISTER. 1839-1847. Death of Lord Dalhousie's mother, and his marriage — The Queen's visit — He becomes Vice-President of the Board of Trade — Pro- moted to the Cabinet — The Railway Commission — ^Plan for placing the railways under State control — Business of the department — Lord Dalhousie's talents — The Corn-Law debates — Lord Register |L;j of Scotland— Stories of the Duke of "Wellington — Resignation of Ijfl^ the Ministry — Dalhousie is offered the Governor-Generalship of India — His hesitation and his aunt's opinion — Farewells and departure — The A.D.C. p. 16 CONTENTS. CHAPTER III. THE SECOND SIKH WAR. 1848-1849. Landing of Dalhousie at Calcutta — State of India — Affairs of the Punjab — Murder of Vans Agnew and Anderson — Complicity of Mulraj — Siege of Multan and general revolt of the Punjab — Dalhousie's change of policy — Military preparations — Story of the war — Gilbert's flying column — Dalhousie's differences with Sir H. Lawrence — John Lawrence pronounces for immediate annexation — Sir H. Lawrence withdraws his resignation . p. 31 CHAPTER IV. THE ANNEXATION OP THE PUNJAB. 1849-1852. The deposition of Dhulip Singh — The Koh-i-Nur — Dalhousie's letter to the Secret Committee — Favourable reception of the annexation — Its results — Punishment of the disaffected and of Mulraj — The Board of Administration — Character of the Government — The Lawrences and Mansel — Dalhousie and Napier — The clashing of authorities — J^apier's resignation — The last passages of arms- Pacification of the Punjab — Collisions with Henry Lawrence — The Lawrence Asylum — Lord Stanley's visit to India . p. 51 CHAPTER V. PROGRESS IN THE PUNJAB AND THE CONQUEST OF PEGU. 1849-1853. Dr. Grant — His impressions of Dalhousie — Activity of the Governor- General — He recommends, the planting of the Punjab — The Agricultural Society — Prosecution of Lalla Joti Parsed — A list of reforms— The Wahabi fanatics— Border raids — Disorders in Oudh and the Deccan — Insolence of the Burmese — Dalhousie CONTENTS, xi demands satisfaction — The appeal to arms — Dalhousie organizes victory — The ultimatum — Landing of the forces — Conquest of the sea-board — Dalhousie's orders to Godwin — His visit to Rangoon — The annexation of Pegu sanctioned — The relief of Pegu — The province passes under British rule — Conclusion of the war — Beneficial results of the annexation — Dalhousie's statesman- ship p. 75 CHAPTER VI. PUBLIC SERVICES AND PRIVATE SORROWS. 1853-1854. Prosperity in the Punjab — Friction between the Lawrences — Sir Henry Lawrence offered the Political agency in Rajputana— His consequent mortification — John Lawrence appointed Chief Com- missioner — His work — Reynell Taylor — Death of Mackeson — Appointment of Edwardes as Commissioner of Pesh§,war — Treaty with Dost Mahammad — Death of Sir Henry Elliot — Dalhousie's voyages — Death of Lady Dalhousie — Appointment of Outram to Baroda — Institution of cheap postage — Liaugu- ration of Indian railways — The guarantee system and broad gauge — ^He discountenances the atmospheric principle — Establish- ment of the telegraph — Its use during the Crimean War and the Mutiny — The Ganges Canal — Irrigation works and steamers — Construction of hill-roads — A port and floating bridge for Cal- cutta — IneflQciency of the Military Board — Establishment of the Department of Public Works — Renewal of the Company's charter — The new Legislative Council — Visit to the shrine of Jagannath — Ill-health of Lord Dalhousie — His determination to finish his work p. 99 CHAPTER VII. SOCIAL REFORMS. 1850-1855. Law regulating succession to property — Satti, thaggi and kindred practices — Female infanticide — Improvement in the condition of Xll CONTENTS. the soldiers— Native education — Punishment of Dacoity — Bill for legalizing the marriages of widows — Alleviation of punishments — Abandonment of Bethune's Bill — Neutrality towards rival princes, and frontier policy — Punishment of law-breaking princes — Out- breaks in Calicut, Bengal and BoMram . , • P- 128 CHAPTER VIII. ^ TERRITORIAL ABSORPTION. 1848-1856. The question of adoption — Its application to Jhansi and Angria Colaba — Absorption of Satdra and Sambalpur — Difficulties at Nagpur — Dalhousie annexes Nagpur and Jhansi — Treatment of the heirless princes — Criticism of Dalhousie's policy — Affairs in Mysore — Absorption of the Camatic and Tanjore — Nana Sahib — The Moghul — Cession of Berar by the Nizam — Continued dis- order in Oudh — Dalhousie's recommendations — Annexation of the province — Dalhousie's dislike to the proceeding . . p. 143 CHAPTER IX. LAST DAYS IN INDIA. 1855-1856. Visit to Madras — Reforms in the Indian Medical Service — Summary of Dalhousie's work — His relations with the Court of Directors— The legislative council — Opinions of Outram and Temple — His insight into character — His intellectual pride — Relaxations of discipline — Real tenderness of his disposition — Letters to Captain Metcalfe and Mrs. Lawrence — Intercourse with the natives — Dalhousie as a companion — His habits — Hospitality and industry — His power over details — The Services — Love of order — Freedom from jobbery — His Minutes on the military establishment— Re- ports from the provinces— Farewell addresses — Dalhousie's reply — Note to John Lawrence — Minute on the Punjab — Last appearances — Letter to the Queen — Departure from Cal- cutta p. 162 CONTENTS. xiii CHAPTEE X. FROM SCOTLAND TO MALTA. 1856-1858. The Farewell Minute — Congratulations to Outram and Lawrence — Sufferings in Egypt — In the Solent — A Pension is voted him — Message from the Queen — Letters to Dr. Grant — Visit to London — Letters during the Mutiny — Outcry against his policy — Letters to Dr. Grant — Life at Edinburgh — Journey to Malta — "Winter at Valetta — Hostile criticisms and preparations for defence — Article in " The Friend of India " — Change for the worse — Com- ments on Indian and home affairs — Return to England . p. 194 CHAPTER XI. THE END. 1858-1860. The stay at Malvern — Last letter to Dr. Grant — Letter from Sir John Lawrence — Dr. Smith — Marriage of Lady Edith Ramsay — Improvement in Dalhousie's health — Death of Captain Mecham — Last Illness and Death — Conditions of his will — Tributes to his memory — Concluding remarks p. 216 LIFE OF THE MARQUIS OF DALHOUSIE, CHAPTER I. FROM HARROW TO THE HOUSE OF LORDS. 1812-1838. Birth of the Marquis of Dalhousie — His parents and ancestors — Canada and Harrow — Letter to Dr. Butler — Cardinal Manning's recollections — Lord Hastings' visit — The holidays — Christ Church — Studies and vacations —Death of Ramsay's elder brother — His degree — Ramsay stands for the City of Edinburgh and is defeated — Member for Haddingtonshire — Death of his father — The Scottish secession question — Breach with Dr. Chalmers. James Andrew Eamsay, first and only Marquis of Dalhousie, was born on April the 22nd, 1812, at Dalhousie Castle, the ancient seat of his forefathers, a few miles from Edinburgh. He was third son of George, ninth Earl of Dalhousie, a handsome, noble-looking Colonel of Foot, who had foug^ht under Wellinorton in j^^Spain, had led his regiment at Waterloo, and was * B 2 LIFE OF THE 3IABQUIS OF DALEOUSIE. presently to see himself Governor-General of Canada. In 1805, Earl George had married Christian, only child of Charles Broun of Colstoun, in Haddingtonshire. The Countess Christian could trace her lineage through several noble families back to the old Norman Counts of Poitou. On his father's side, James Ramsay came of an old Saxon stock, which had struck root in Scotland six centuries before his birth, and had since produced some names worthy of remembrance in Scottish story, from the renowned but ill-starred Sir Alexander, Warden of the Marches under David II., down to the Ramsays who fought at Namur and "Waterloo. The first Lord Ramsay won his peerage for loyal service rendered to James VI. of Scotland, whom he had rescued at a critical moment from the hands of his murderous jailor, the Earl of Gowrie. In 1633, his grandson, William, was made Earl of Dalhousie. Early in the 18th century, another kind of honour was bestowed on the Dalhousie of that day by the immortal author of The Gentle Shepherd, who extolled his patron in the well-known lines : — " Dalhousie of an auld descent, My pride, my stoup, mine ornament." When James Ramsay was three years old, his father took his seat for the first time as a Peer of the United Kingdom in the House of Lords. A few years later, his wife and two children — the second boy, Charles, iiad lately died — accompanied him to Canada,"] where JAMES BAMS AY AT HARROW. 3 little James spent some years of happy childhood amid scenes the memory of which was never to leave him. The one place in the world which he afterwards most longed to revisit was Canada. In his tenth year the boy was sent home in a small sailing brig, to begin his school life at Harrow, under the headmastership of Dr. George Butler. Even at that early age he had taken kindly to the practice of keeping a diary. To his school studies he brought a mind naturally quick, thoughtful, retentive, and already conscious of its latent powers. As a younger son of a poor Scotch lord, he knew how much depended on his own exertions, and got through his daily tasks with an industry spurred, no doubt, by the pride he always felt in his Ramsay forefathers. In after years his friends declared that he was prouder of being a Ramsay than of his fame as Governor- General of India.* With him, however, such a feeling bore the only fruit which can ever be held to justify it. Hector's prayer, that his son might live to be deemed " much better than his father," typifies the spirit in which men like James Ramsay accept the heritage of an old and honoured name. At Harrow, both James and his elder brother, Lord Ramsay, were private pupils of the good Dr. Butler, whose son, now Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, bears witness to the warm regard with which both his parents used to speak of " Jemmy Ramsay." That the regard was mutual, may be seen from the letter which, in 1850, the whilom pupil wrote to his old master, then * Dr. A. Grant's MS. notes. B 2 4 LIFE OF THE MARQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. Dean of Peterborough. The Dean had sent the Governor-General some "Bills of the School" — lists, namely, of the school as it stood in former years, with notes indicating what had since become of the boys. Dalhousie wrote thus in reply : — *'GovEKNMENT HousE, SiMLA, Octohev IMt, 1850. " My dear De. Bctlef, — For I must address you by the name which is the old familiar friend, rather than employ its more dignified successor, — you did not over-estimate the interest which I feel in all that belongs to Harrow, when you sent me the little pacquet of school bills that accompanied your letter. " It was like meeting a company of old friends to read over the list of 1826, and sad enough too ; for in all the wide circle of my charge here, I know of only two or three of the whole catalogue. I will send a copy to each of them. *' I have seldom seen the old place since we parted there in '27. Each time there was a change for the worse, and I felt more reluctant to return. One could bear up under the loss of even such a dignitary as ' Peach y's devil ;' but when on my last visit I found the studies burned down, and No. 1, Lower Eow, among the things that had been, I gave it up, and have never been there since. It gave me great pleasure to hear, however, that it was flourishing before I left England. " The tidings you give of your health are far from being so good as could be desired ; and I truly hope that the rest you are giving yourself now may repair, even at your years, the mischief which over- work has done. " It must be interesting to you to watch the various walk through the world of those who long since were under your hand, and it would not be unwelcome to you to know that, as one of that number, I often recal with gratitude the care you bestowed upon me, and which has helped to raise me to the unexpected height on which I stand ; while I remember even more gratefully still the constant kindncts with which you treated me. " As one goes on in life, many odd corners get hoarded up in one's memory. Still, numerous as they are, the little corner in the Library next the pupil-room door, where I used to sit and work alone, fills a HIS GEABACTEB. 5 prominent place among them ; Farnaby and puns to the contrary not- withstanding.* " With my best thanks for your kind letters, and my best wishes for you and yours, I remain always, my dear Dr. Butler, " Yours sincerely and gratefully, " Dalhousie. " The Very Rev. " The Dean of Peterborough, &j. &c. &c." This letter is still preserved at Harrow among the contents of the Vaughan Library, to which it was pre- sented by Dr. Montagu Butler, who succeeded Dr. Vaughan as head master. At school young E,amsay won for himself, not only the regard of his masters, but the good opinion of his school- fellows. From one of these, the venerable Cardinal Manning, who remembers him "perfectly as he then was," and who watched his after career with much interest, we learn that he was " very popular among the boys, and his character and bearing were, as they were through life, gentle, intelligent, and self-controlled.'' Of his intellectual gifts he is " less able to speak," for Ramsay was two forms below the future cardinal-arch- bishop ; and after their school and college days they hardly ever met again. But Eamsay's look and appearance, writes his Eminence, " are before me as if it were yester- day." One incident of his school-boy days may have helped to * Peachey kept the school-key, and rang the bell from Dr. Butler's house before school. His "devil," or assistant, was old Stag lies , (Thornton's llarroiv School). " Puns " is short for punishments, i.e., " impositions." G LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. kindle his young ambition. In 1823, the Marquis of Hastings returned home from India, which he had governed for nine years, with rare ability alike as a soldier and a statesman. In the following year he paid a visit to his old school, and won the hearts of the Harrow boys by giving them a present of two sovereigns apiece. So princely a largess from a gray-haired hero of such fine manners, of a presence so commanding, must have filled many a boyish heart with other sentiments than gratitude alone. The conqueror of the Marathas stood there in all his glory, and young Ramsay for one w^ould see in that s])lendid old Harrovian the embodiment of a greatness which he, too, might hope some day to rival. The boy's holidays were usually spent in Scotland among his own kith and kin. One of his father's special friends was Dr. Smith of Lasswade, the family doctor, whose son, Baird Smith, of the Bengal Engineers, was afterwards to bear a leading part in the siege of Delhi, and to die, in 1861, of the exhaustion caused by heroic efforts to grapple with an Indian famine. When Dr. Smith went the round of his patients, James Ramsay often rode beside him on his own pony, listening eagerly to the good man's stories about the people and traditions of the surrounding country. The Waverley Novels fed his young fancy with a rich store of characters and incidents dear to every Scottish reader ; and his mother's friend, Dean Ramsay of Edinburgh, must often have anmsed his hearers at the Castle with tales like those which have since gained so wide a celebrity in print. BAMS AY AT OXFOBD. 7 In those Beminiscences the Dean himself descrihes his old and valued friend, the Countess Christian, as " a very remarkable person .... eminently distinguished for a fund of the most varied knowledge, for a clear and powerful judgment, for acute observation, a kind hear^ and a brilliant wit." From her, no doubt, the future Marquis derived some of the finer intellectual qualities, which marked his boyhood, and shed their full lustre on his riper years. The Earl himself, who had mean- while come back from Canada, took a right fatherly interest in the mental progress of his favourite boy, and looked forward with proud confidence to his ultimate success in the life-battle which a poor Scotch lord's youngest son might be called upon to wage. The son on his side had a warm heart, in which the memory of his father's loving trustfulness was to flourish green and tender to the last. In the summer of 1829, the old Laird of Cockpen, as the Earl was often called from the parish he lived in, sailed with his son. Lord Ramsay, for India to replace Lord Comber- mere as Commander-in-Chief. Some months earlier, his son James had quitted Harrow for Oxford, where he matriculated in October. As a commoner of Christ Church, he found himself amidst a group of clever young men who were all to win high distinction in after years — Mr. Gladstone, Lord Canning, James Bruce (the future Lord Elgin), Kobert Phillimore, and Mr. Liddell, afterwards the scholarly Dean of Christ Church. The last-named had rooms adjoining Ramsay's, on the first 8 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALEOUSIE. floor of the '' Old Library." The two young men, being- of the same term, attended several courses of lectures together, and soon became very intimate friends. At the University, James Ramsay, with Mr. Temple for his tutor, threw himself manfully into the work that lay before him, and impressed all who knew him with a strong conviction of his intellectual and moral worth. There was no lack of ballast to all that brain. *^ Never man," wrote his friend. Dr. Liddell, " worked more honestly and patiently to achieve success ; and we all believed that the highest honours would reward his exertions.'* His great talents and untiring industry would have marked him out for distinction in almost any walk of life ; and at that time he himself cherished the hope and purpose of achieving eminence at the Bar or on the Bench. For pure scholarship of the Bentley or Porson type Ramsay was never remarkable, although at Harrow^, under Henry Drury's genial guidance, he had learned, says Dr. Liddell, to take a keen delight in the poetry of Horace and Catullus. But in those days at Oxford deep and accurate scholarship was not the chief requisite for a first class in litteris humanioribus. The examina- tions served rather to test a man's knowledge of Ancient History and Greek Philosophy, together with his success in answering general questions on these and kindred subjects, as treated by modern writers of accepted repute. Dr. Liddell has no doubt that in these directions his friend's "clear head, bright intelligence, and excellent BAMS ATS SCHOLABSEIP. memory," would have enabled him to carry off the highest honours ''without reaching a very high standard of scholarship." Such an opinion from a judge so com- petent, who was soon to stand among the foremost scholars of his day, must not be lightly regarded in view of circum- stances which left it an opinion still. During one of his vacations Ramsay refreshed his mind and body by travelling through Northern Italy, then pining under Austrian rule. He happened one day to pass a sign-post pointing to the little town of Sirmio, which Catullus glorified in his graceful poem. In Sirmiiim. There, nineteen centuries ago, dwelt the Latin poet in a villa overhanging the deep waters of Virgil's Lake Benacus, now known as Lake Garda. Dean Liddell well remembers the delight expressed by his friend in recalling Drury's comments on the poet's verses. On another occasion, when the two young men were reading Aldrich's Logic together, the joy with which, after some perplexity, Ramsay threaded his way through the mazes of the syllogism, was a thing which the Dean could never forget.* With all his self-confidence, Ramsay displayed none of the vanity or the self-conceit for which clever young men are often remarkable. He was at once too proud and too modest to put on the airs of a superior person. An event which presently for a time broke ofi" his Oxford studies gave a new turn to the course of his future life. In 1832, the last illness of his eldest brother, Lord Ramsay, * Dean Liddell's letter to tlic author. 10 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. called James Ramsay home to attend the death-bed, and to busy himself in his father's behalf with more urgent duties than that of reading for a First Class. " Just at the critical time " — says Dr. Liddell — " when a man preparing for the schools ought to review the work of his academical life, and gather up all the knowledge he has acquired in a form fit for exami- nation, Mr.Ramsay succeeded to his brother's inheritance, and was obliged to quit Oxford for some time to settle matters of family business." Owing to the break thus caused in his university training, Lord Ramsay, for such was now his courtesy title, resolved after his return to Oxford to forego all chance of taking high honours with his degree. At the "Great Go" examinations of 1833, he went up for an ordinary pass. So well did he acquit himself, that his examiners invited him to compete for honours. This he declined, preferring the safe obscurity of the pass list to the doubtful issues of a struo^j^le for which he deemed himself but ill prepared. The examiners therefore could only do what in such cases lay within their discretion. Instead of " gulfing " him with the herd of mere pass- men, they marked their sense of his merits by granting him an honorary Fourth Class.* Meanwhile, his father had returned in broken health from India to rest for a few years by his "ain fireside," and enjoy the companionship of his only surviving son. With the recent change in his fortunes, Lord Ramsay turned his ♦ Dr. Liddell's letter to the Times, December, 1860. HIS FIBST CANDIDATUBE. 11 thoughts away from the Bar to the wider and stormier prospects of political life. The Whig Ministry, which had ridden into power on the flood- tide of Parliamentary Reform, was already breaking to pieces in 1834 ; and Peel was rallying the discomfited Tories around his new^ Conservative flag. Under the short-lived Ministry of "Wellington and Peel a general election ushered in the new year, 1835. Lord Ramsay's sympathies and social surroundings drew him towards the party of which Peel was now the virtual head. With the boldness of youth he stood as candidate for the City of Edinburgh against such formidable opponents as Sir John Campbell, the future Lord Chancellor, and Mr. James Abercromby, who presently became Speaker of the House of Commons. His speeches at the hustings and elsewhere showed him master of a terse, fluent and vigorous style, lightened up by sallies of playful humour and quick repartee. In the very first days "of his canvassing he asserted his personal importance with a quiet firmness which caused some of his backers to open their astonished eyes. His election committee at their first meeting proceeded to discuss their plan of action without a thought of any need for consulting the candidate himself. At length, when everyone else had done speaking, Lord Ramsay stood up, and, remarking that he was the person chiefly con- cerned, began pointing out courteously, but firmly, to each member his proper place and functions in the common enterprise. The committee listened at first with amaze- ment, anon with admiring assent to the words of wisdom 12 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE, that fell from the lips of one so young, yet clearly so capable of conducting his own cause.* The young patrician bore himself manfully throughout a contest waged after the rough fashion of those boisterous days. Once, as he stood on the hustings, a dead cat was thrown at his head. That same evening the man who threw it was present with himself at a freemasons' meet- ing. As if to show that he bore no malice, Lord Eamsay went up to his assailant and shook him heartily by the hand. The speech in which he returned thanks to his sup- porters, after his inevitable defeat, gave no uncertain sound with regard to the future : — " I return," he said, " to my own pursuits with the sensation common to every man who feels that he has not to reproach himself with having buried his talents in the earth ; that so far as in him lay he has done his duty to his country, his fellows, and himself; and that, having cast his bread, upon the waters, he has only to await in patient confidence the day when it shall again be found." Not the least telling point of his speech was the joke which followed up its graver passages. Referring to the majority which had thrown him out, he clinched the goodwill of his audience by quoting the refrain of a familiar Scotch song: " Ye're daft to refuse the Laird o' Cockpen." It is easy to imagine what roars of good- humoured laughter followed the speaker as he turned away. His next opportunity came with the general elections in the summer of 1837, when Lord Ramsay won his seat ♦ Dr. Grant's MS. notes. THE NEW EABL OF DALHOUSIE. 13 for the shire of Haddington. His native pluck and good- humour carried him safely through an ordeal trying enough for most men. The number of miles he rode daily during his election canvass, and the numberless glasses of whiskey which policy and politeness compelled him to swallow, were, as he used to say, feats not un- worthy of the strongest and hardest-headed Scotsman. Lord Ramsay entered the new House of Commons thoroughly equipped, by three years of diligent study, for the due discharge of his political functions. But his father's death, in 1838, called him away from the threshold of his new career to take his seat in the House of Lords. To the late Earl's successor this change in his prospects must have seemed, if anything, a change for the worse. A Liberal Ministry was still in office, and might, in all likelihood, stay there for some years longer. There was small scope for his ambition in the drowsy atmosphere of the Upper House, enlivened though it sometimes was by the eloquence of a Lyndhurst or a Brougham. His active mind, however, found em- ployment, and sometimes profit, in listening to the speeches of his brother peers ; and he lost no opportunity of studying the details of legislative business as transacted in com- mittees of the Lords. Meanwhile, other matters claimed his attention nearer home. Being, like his father, a staunch Presbyterian, Lord Dalhousie had long since become an elder of the Kirk in his own parish of Cockpen. In 1839, he was appointed to represent the Dalkeith Presbytery in the 14 LIFE OF THE MABQVIS OF DALHOUSIE. General Assembly of the Kirk. By that time the reforming movement which, under the guidance of Dr. Chalmers, resulted in the Great Secession or Disruption of 1843, was in full swing. On some of the questions which came before the General Assembly, especially on the question of lay patronage, Lord Dalhousie seems to have voted with the party of reform. With that party he joined in condemning the encroachments of the civil courts on the special powers claimed by the General Assembly. He is even said to have favoured the motion made by Chalmers for a committee of inquiry into the matters at issue between the Assembly and the Civil Court. But when his name appeared on the list of Chalmers' committee, Lord Dalhousie not only refused to sit upon it, but delivered a solemn protest against the policy which he had been supposed to sanction. In accepting Dr. Chalmers' motion, the Church, he declared, "had already rung out her knell as the Established Church of Scotland." For his own part, he could no longer remain a member of the General Assembly. Suiting the action to the word, he took up his hat and walked out of the hall.* The true explanation of this seeming change of purpose lies, we think, not far below the surface. Dalhousie was, above all things, a statesman with a mildly Conservative list. In him at critical moments the statesman's prudence would step forward to moderate the churchman's zeal. He and Chalmers were close friends ; as such, they had * Friend of India, Jan. 31st, 1861. See also Hanna's Life of Br Chalmers ; and Buchanan's " Ten Years of ConflicV THE DISRUPTION MOVEMENT, 15 talked long and earnestly on the matters in dispute. But not even friendship could draw Dalhousie away from the path of apparent duty. Of intentional deceit or treachery on his part there can be no question. In all likelihood the two friends had not quite clearly understood each other's meaninor. Chalmers, full of his own thouo^hts and projects, may have mistaken his friend's silence for agree- ment, or his casual utterances for a pledge of active support; while Dalhousie may have failed at first to comprehend the full scope and purport of the great evangelical leader's impassioned outpourings. Party feeling on the question ran high, but Lord Dalhousie was neither a fanatic nor a partisan. While frankly owning the need for certain reforms, he would take no active part in any movement which might endanger the well-being, if not the very life, of a great national organism. He would have w^aited, in short, and worked by constitutional means, for those changes which the Evangelical party were to accomplish only by the disruption of his old ancestral Church. ( 16 ) CHAPTER II. DALHOUSIE AS A CABINET MINISTER. 1839-1847. Death of Lord Dalhousie's mother, and his marriage — The Queen's visit — He becomes Vice-President of the Board of Trade — Pro- moted to the Cabinet — The Railway Commission — Plan for placing the railways under State control — Business of the department — Lord Dalhousie's talents — The Corn-Law debates — Lord Register of Scotland— Stories of the Duke of Wellington — Resignation of the Ministry — Dalhousie is offered the Governor-Generalship of India — His hesitation and his aunt's opinion — Farewells and departure— Tlie A.D.C. In that same year 1839, Lord Dalhousie lost his mother, who died very suddenly in the house of her old friend, Dean Ramsay, where she was paying a visit. ' Three years earlier, in January, 1836, he himself had married Lady Susan Hay, eldest daughter of the eighth, and sister of the present, Marquis of Tvveeddale. Her father was an old soldier, who had served on Wellington's staff in the Peninsula, and was afterwards to hold the chief place in the government of Madras. From this union of two young and loving hearts sprang two children, Lady Susan and Lady Edith Ramsay, one only i'HE QUEEN'S VISIT. 17 of whom, as Lady Connemara, is living now. The young Countess was tall, fair, and comely, with a skin like alabaster, and a finely moulded hand and arm. She dressed elegantly, spoke French idiomatically and with perfect ease, and played with much taste and feeling upon her favourite instrument, the harp. Of all animals she loved dogs and horses the best. In Calcutta she was afterwards known as an excellent whip, and might often be seen driving a phaeton and pair along the Strand. A skilful horsewoman, she generally rode on the march from one place to another. Kind-hearted, liberal , of very domestic habits, Lady Dalhousie showed to most advantage in the ease and intimacy of private life. Li public she failed to do herself full justice, from an excess of shyness which people who did not know her were apt to mistake for pride. One day in September, 1842, Lord Dalhousie was sitting in the grounds before his house, pitching pebbles into the Esk, when a servant came running up to announce the Queen's arrival at the Castle. Her Majesty and the Prince Consort had driven over unexpectedly from Dalkeith House. The Earl hastened to greet his Royal visitors. *'We got out for a moment," are the words in the Queen's own Journal, '' and the Dalhousies showed us the drawing-room. From the window you see a beautiful wooded valley, and a peep of the distant hills." The house itself was " a real old Scotch castle, of reddish stone." Dalhousie playfully reminded Her Majesty that the last English Sovereign who had approached the Castle c 18 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. ] was Henry IV. ; and he *' had remained outside for weeks, '- and never gained admission." The stronghold which 'Henry had besieged in vain opened its doors at once to the young Queen of Great Britain. Meanwhile, Dalhousie was steadily making his mark as a budding statesman in the school of Sir Robert Peel. In politics, as in Church matters, he showed himself a Con- servative of the broader type, who would stand upon the ancient ways only when they seemed to him still the best for modern purposes. The year 1841 proved an eventful year in our home politics. The Anti-Corn Law League had lately opened, under Cobden's leadership, the great campaign against class tyranny and one-sided legislation which was to end, a few years later, in the removal of the corn duties and the adoption of Free Trade as the lodestar ; of our fiscal economy. The Melbourne Ministry, which had long been tottering, toppled over in September ; and the results of the new elections promised Peel and his ] followers an indefinite lease of power. For Dalhousie himself no place could at first be found in the new Ministry. But his turn came ere long, when Lord Ellenborough went out to India, and Lord llipon took his place at the head of the Board of Control. In 1843, j he entered ofiice for the first time as Vice-President of the Board of Trade, Mr. Gladstone becoming President i in Lord Ripon's room. That two such men would set to work in zealous rivalry for the common good was a thing of course. At Christ Church they had been comparative strangers, for Mr. THE BAIL WAY COMMISSION. 19 Gladstone was Dalhousie's senior by more than two years, and had taken his degree in 1831. And now, as col- leagues in one office, they saw but little of each other, for they worked apart, each taking his own separate share of departmental duty, and speaking for the Board in a different legislative House. Early in 1845, Mr. Gladstone resigned his post. By that time Dalhousie had given such proofs of administrative fitness that Peel at once preferred him to the vacant seat in his Cabinet. The new President of the Board of Trade had also to sit as head of the lately appointed Railway Commission. At that time English railways were few and undeveloped, and stage-coaches still ran over the greater part of these islands. But the popular demand for speedier modes of travelling was already bearing fruit in the growth of numerous schemes for developing the uses of the iron horse. It devolved on Lord Dalhousie to organise a department empowered to examine and report upon all such schemes before they received a Parlia- mentary sanction. This was a duty which taxed to the utmost his keen intellect, his planning energy, and his heroic capacity for taking pains. At the outset of his labours he was doomed to suflfer a grave disappointment. He had laid before Peel a sound and statesmanlike scheme for placing British railways under the direct control and management of the State. It provided, among other things, that no new line of railway should be sanctioned, except on some clear ground of public advantage, commercial or strategic- c 2 20 LIFE OF THE 3IABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. Had his advice been followed, some two-thirds of the enormous outlay since squandered on our railway system would have been saved, and the disastrous panic which followed the railway mania of 1845-6 would in all likeli- hood have been averted. But Peel lacked the courage, if not the will, to press upon Parliament a measure for which the country at large seemed far from ripe. It is true that every project for a new railway had to undergo some kind of scrutiny by the Board of Trade ; but the Board had no power to reject any scheme, against which no legal objection could be sustained. Private enterprise, free competition, and the sacred rights of landed property were the idols of the day ; and Parliament looked coldly upon any scheme which savoured of State interference with individual or class interests. Unity of plan and economy of organised means had small charm for a people impatient of State control, and fired with visions of all the good things fore- shadowed in the new facilities for quick travelling. And so the making of our home railways was handed over to a crowd of eager engineers, contractors, lawyers, financiers, of speculators who trafficked in railway shares, and squires who drove the hardest possible bargains for parting with ever so small a portion of their lands. The nature of his duties, and his zeal in discharging them, combined to lay upon the President's shoulders a burden which ultimately overtasked his bodily strength. The hardest work in Peel's Ministry fell to the lot of the hardest, ablest, most conscientious worker of his day, who DALHOUSIE'S LABOURS. 21 spent himself freely in his country's service, never letting the business of his department fall into arrear, nor caring to leave in other hands any matter for which he held himself mainly responsible. Whatever he had to do himself, or to oversee the doing of, was very sure to be done thoroughly. Everyone who worked with or under him owned the influence of a master mind and an upright spirit, largely tempered by the frank fine courtesy of a gentleman born and bred. No one could say of him what Wellington said of Peel, '' that he had no manners." If he knew how, on fit occasions, to be " familiar, but by no means vulgar," it was never safe, even in his most genial moments, to try taking a liberty with this self- respecting Laird of Cockpen, who cared neither to please the multitude nor to flatter the prejudices of his own class. The years of Dalhousie's subsequent rule in India were to be years of hard, incessant daily toil. But he was often heard to say that his work out there was a trifle compared to what he had gone through as a Cabinet Minister at home. In India he very seldom worked of an evening or went late to bed. At home he often sat at his desk from ten in the morning until two or three hours after midnight, the last to leave office as he had been among the first to arrive. In 1845, the business of his department was enormously increased, both by the new burst of commercial enterprise which crowned Peel's successes in the field of fiscal reform, and by the crowd of new railway projects which day after day poured into 22 LIFE OF THE MARQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. Whitehall [Gardens, awaiting at his hands their final doom. In the course of a few months no fewer than 332 schemes, involving a total outlay of 271 millions sterling, were laid before him for acceptance or rejection. Each of these schemes had to undergo a careful scrutiny from one who had thoroughly learned his business and was never tempted to scamp his work. The accepted schemes were passed on, singly or in groups, as Railway Bills to the Parliamentary Committees, which sat continuously all through that Session, even during the regular adjourn- ments ; and every such Bill which failed, for sheer lack of time, to pass through Committee, was allowed to stand over, tliat it might be taken up next year at the stage it had already reached. By midnight on the last day of November the number of projects lodged with the Board of Trade exceeded six hundred. It was the last day on which new applications could be received for that year. Such a scene of bustle and confusion had never been witnessed before in that neighbourhood. From all directions, in carriages, on horseback, or on foot, messengers came rushing up in frantic haste, each with his bundle of papers struggling to be first at the office door, that he might discharge his important errand before it should be too late. His official labours brought Dalhousie into contact with numbers of the leading business men of this country, all of whom were struck with his unfailing courtesy, his shrewd intelligence, business-like methods, clear-headed reasoning, and close yet comprehensive grasp of the THE STBESS OF WOBK, 23 matters in debate. His temper, naturally quick, and impatient of mean or foolish counsels, he had learned to keep under almost perfect control. It was only by a passing flash from his clear blue eyes, or the tell-tale working of his fine flexible lips, that one might sometimes guess at the sharp restraint he was putting upon himself. His own subordinates worked all the more zealously under a chief so resolute to do his duty, and see that others did theirs. His colleagues in the Cabinet lent a respectful ear to the counsels of the wise young Minister who had lately become the chief exponent of Peel's policy in the House of Lords. For, although the good old Duke of Wellington was still the nominal leader of his party in that House, it was Lord Dalhousie who bore the brunt of battle for his side in several warm debates on the Corn Laws and other moot questions of the hour. At last his health .gave way under the intense, never- ending strain upon mind and body. Excessive work was already undermining a constitution by no means strong. But, in spite of pain and sickness, he would hardly give himself a day's rest, and stuck to his various tasks with an endurance that might well be called heroic. Nor could illness keep him from once more fighting his chief's battles in the Upper House, when, in January, 1840, Peel threw off the last rag of Protectionist illusion, declared himself a convinced Freetrader, and called upon his followers to accept the principle of an untaxed loaf. The repeal of the Corn-Laws saved England from a great 24 LIFE OF THE MARQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. disaster, while it broke up the party which had carried Peel so brilliantly into power. For a few months longer the great Minister held his ground by sufferance mainly of his new Liberal allies, against the Irreconcilables, who disowned and vilified their former idol. At last, in June, a hostile vote of the Commons warned Peel no further to tempt his fate. Before worse happened, he decided to throw up a post no longer tenable. In the great debate of May, on the second reading of Peel's Bill in the Upper House, the two best speakers on Peel's side, according to Charles Greville, were Clarendon and Dalhousie : " both very good, particularly the latter. He will be a very leading man, for he is popular, pleasing, and has a virgin unsoiled reputation, nothing to apologise for, and nothing to recant ; and he is a good man of business, and an excellent speaker." (Gre- ville Memoirs, Part 2, Vol. II.) Shortly before his own retirement. Peel rewarded the services of his best and faithfullest subaltern with the Lord Registership of Scotland, a place then worth about £1,200 a year. The poor Scotch Earl thankfully accepted the boon thus opportunely proffered by one whom he had always held in the highest respect. But his warmest sympathies and his deepest reverence were reserved for the aged victor of Waterloo, to whose public worth men of all parties had at last combined to pay emulous homage, and whose simple greatness enthralled the heart even of so keen and world-worn a critic as Charles Greville. Some of the stories which in after years Lord Dalhousie I DALHOUSIE AND WELLINGTON. 25 was wont to tell about "the good gray head which ^1 men knew," were heard and noted down by his friend, Dr. Grant. When the news of our hard-won tight at Firozsha.hr reached England towards the end of January, 1846, there was great consternation among the Ministry over an event which some of them regarded as at best a drawn battle. At the meeting of the Council Peel himself spoke with deep concern of the heavy losses sustained by Gough's army, and indulged in dark fore- bodings of the danger that beset our Indian Empire. At this the old Duke suddenly lighted up : " Make it a victory," he said, " fire a salute and ring the bells." Certainly, Gough had lost a good many men ; but what of that ? " You must lose officers and men, if you have to fight a great battle. At Assaye I lost a third of my force." At a previous meeting of Ministers in 1844, when our relations with France had become very strained through the arrest of our consul at Otaheite, and the war party seemed in the ascendant, the Duke was sittinof silent and out of spirits. Mr. Goulburn noticing this, showed him a Blue Book which he had in his hands. " There is something here which I think would interest your Grace," he said, and began reading out the examination of a little boy whose knowledge of geography was exceedingly small. Several questions had been asked him about France, its departments, chief towns, and so forth, to none of which could the boy give a right answer. At last, losing all patience, he growled out, " I know nothing 26 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. about it, but I know this, that one Englishman can lick three Frenchmen." At this the Duke laughed out heartily, and patting the book as if it were the boy himself, said, " very good boy indeed — very good boy ! send him to Paris. Do a damned deal of good ! " When Dalhousie became Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports after the Duke's death in 1852, he declared that he would feel it almost a presumption to go and take pos- session of his old friend's room at Walmer Castle. Pitt's room, with its one window looking out on a bastion and an old gun, had been left unaltered until 1842, when the Queen went to Walmer for change of air. Before her arrival there, the Clerk of the Works had taken Pitt's room in hand, and covered the walls with paper of a very tawdry pattern, whereat the Duke swore lustily. When the Queen was going in 1846 to visit the Duke at Strath fieldsaye, the same official preceded her Majesty. The Duke, however, would have none of his improve- ments, and sternly ordered him off the place. " I just got a few tables and a harpsichord," he said to Dalhousie, " and I asked the neighbours to meet her." Her Majesty was greatly pleased with the old hero's simple welcome, so unlike the usual routine of grand preparations and courtly guests. One of those Ministerial dinners, which prelude the open- ing of a Parliamentary Session, was given by Wellington at Apsley House. Lord Lyndhurst sat next to the Duke. '* How wonderfully, Duke, you managed your commis- sariat in your Indian campaigns ! How did you do it ? " A HANDSOME OFFEB. 27 asked Peel's Lord Chancellor. "Oh! quite, quite easy when you know it," was the quick and curt reply. Dalhousie, of course, resigned office with the rest of his colleagues. There was one man, indeed, who pressed him not to go. The new Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, understood his value as a public servant, and begged him as a favour to retain his post. It was a rare compliment to so young a Minister, but Dalhousie grate- fully declined an offer which a statesman of more fluid principles might have deemed it politic to accept. Pre- ferring party to place, he withdrew for a time from official duties to the rest and relaxations of country life at home. The rest he sorely needed was not long to remain unbroken. In the course of 1847, it became known that Lord Hardinge, then Governor- General of India, sought to retire in the coming winter from the post he hai^ filled so ably for three years past. The brave old hero of Albuera, who had personally helped Gough to win the long doubtful fight at Firozshahr, and placed the humbled Punjab under the benign guardianship of Henry Lawrence, felt that now at last his work in India was over, and that he also in his old age needed timely rest. With a noble disregard for party claims and usages, Lord John Russell cast his eyes upon Lord Dalhousie as the fittest man he knew for the task of governing our great Eastern empire. When the offer of so splendid a post for a young statesman of thirty-five was first broached to him, Dalhousie hesitated, not from any distrust of his own 28 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. powers, but rather from unwillingness to mar his prospects of a great political career at home ; and much, also, from fear of weakenmg or compromising his own party by accepting so high an office at the hands of a political foe. On the latter point, however, the great Whig leader raised no sort of difficulty. Lord John was ready enough to employ on his own conditions a statesman of Dalhousie's unblemished character and rare genius for administrative work. The struggle of motives in Dalhousie's mind was naturally keen. His darling ambition w^as to win, like Pitt and Peel, the place of Prime Minister, to his thinking the most important of any held by a subject under the Grown. Compared with such a post, even the headship of the Indian Government, he used to declare, was of small account. He knew that a retired Grovernor-General stood a very poor chance of ever rising to the leadership of a great political party. On the other hand, he was still young, and, for an earl with wife and children, lamentably poor. The Colstoun estates, which had come to him through his mother, were heavily mortgaged, and the income of his father's property barely amounted to fifteen hundred a year. As Governor-General he would draw a salary of £25,000 a year ; and the post itself was one which at that time offered a tempting field for the energies and the experience of a just, wise, strong, self- reliant English ruler. Lord John's frank avowal that the acceptance of his offer would in no way compromise or alter Dalhousie's relations with his political friends turned BEPAUTUBE FOB INDIA. 29 the scale in favour of an Indian career. Dalhousie at length agreed to fill Lord Hardinge's place, and the popular verdict ratified the wisdom of Lord John's choice. One at least of his own relatives did not seem to hold with the popular verdict. A much-respected aunt, to whom he had written the news of his appointment, sent him this curt and candid reply: — "My dear James, — I received your letter on your appointment, and although I cannot think you fit for it, I nevertheless send you my congratulations." He was still so young — only thirty- five — that the good lady might well be excused for ques- tioning her nephew's fitness for one of the highest offices under the Crown.* His friends in Edinburgh gave him a farewell dinner, at which the toast of his health was prefaced by a graceful speech from the chairman, the Duke of Buccleugh. The toast was followed by a song, written in his praise, to the tune of " The Sprig of Shillelagh," by Mr. Moir, the poet "Delta," of Blackwood's Magazine. Leaving his two lassies under the charge of Dean Ramsay, and duly sped from the India House by the post-prandial blessings of the Court of Directors, the Governor-General elect, in company with his wife, his private secretary, Mr. F. Courtenay, and a few gentlemen of his staff, set out for India by the overland route in the latter part of November, 1847. One of his aides-de-camp was the Hon. Francis Fane, now Earl of Westmoreland. Lord Dalhousie * Dr. Grant's MS. 30 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. had begged the Duke of WelUngton, to name for his personal staff any young officer in whom his Grace took a special interest. " I would as soon recommend a wife to anybody as an A.D.C.," was the Duke's charac- teristic reply. He deigned, however, to mention his 1 young relative, and Captain Fane was duly appointed to the post he was to hold so worthily for several years. ( 31 ) CHAPTEE III. THE SECOND SIKH WAK. 1848-1849. Landing of Dalliousie at Calcutta — State of India — Affairs of tlio Punjab — Murder of Vans Agnew and Anderson — Complicity of Mulraj — Siege of Multan and general revolt of the Punjab — Dalhousie's change of policy — Military preparations — Story of the war — Gilbert's flying column — Dalhousie's differences "with Sir H. Lawrence — John Lawrence pronounces for immediate annexation — Sir H. Lawrence withdraws his resignation. On January 12tb, 1848, the guns of Fort William announced the landing in Calcutta of the youngest Governor-Greneral who has ever sat in the seat of Warren Hastings and Lord Wellesley. At the doorsteps of Government House, Dalhousie was greeted in due form by the brave and kindly veteran whose place he had come to fill. Six days later, Lord Hardinge was speed- ing down the Hugli on his way home, accompanied by his staunch friend Colonel Henry Lawrence, who, under stress of ill health, had resigned to other hands the task of reofeneratino^ Sikh rule at Lahore. At that moment not a cloud was anywhere visible in the political sky of India. Hardinge himself, with 32 LIFE OF THE MARQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. pardonable rashness, declared that the peace he left behind him would not be broken for the next seven years. *' India " — said the London Morning Herald — "is in the full enjoyment of a peace which, humanly speaking, there seems nothing to disturb." According to the Friend of India, then edited by the able John C. Marshman, the new Governor-General had arrived at a time "when the last obstacle to the complete, and apparently the final pacification of India has been re- moved, when the only remaining army which could create alarm has been dissolved, and the peace of the country rests upon the firmest and most permanent basis. . . . Not a shot is fired from the Indus to Cape Comorin against our will." Statesmen and journalists in both countries were nearly all of one mind on this matter ; and Lord Dalhousie, longing to renew in India on a larger scale those peaceful labours which had employed his youthful energies at home, might well be excused for sharing a belief so creditable to one side at least of our human nature. In this case however, as in so many others, it was the unforeseen that happened. To all appearance the Sikh power, as a source of danger to India, had been crushed for ever on the bloody field of Sobraon. The remnants of Ranjit Singh's old army had since been disbanded, and for two years past his capital had been garrisoned by British troops. A British Resident at Lahore guided and controlled the counsels of a Regency governing in the name of their boy-sovereign, Dhulip Singh. In the work ALL QUIET IN TEE PUNJAB. 33 that devolved upon him as Eesident, and erelong as virtual ruler of the Punjab, Henry Lawrence had been ably seconded by a picked band of subalterns, young soldiers of tried ability, high courage and good character, each of whom in the management of his own district showed himself a bold, skilful, self-reliant leader of men. When Lord Dalhousie arrived in India, the Land of the Five Rivers seemed on the whole as quiet and nearly as well-ordered as Yorkshire or Middlesex. In the course of 1846, a rebellion in Kashmir had been crushed by Colonel Henry Lawrence with the help of those very troops who had so lately fought against us at Sobraon ; and the fairest province of Ranjit Singh's dominions had been quietly handed over, in fulfilment of Hardinge's promise, to its new sovereign, the Eajput Gulab Singh. In December of the same year, Lai Singh, the prime mover in that rebellion, had been formally deposed from his high office, and sent off a prisoner to Ferozepore. By the Treaty of Bairowal, in the same month, the Sikh chiefs had agreed to set up a Council of Regency in the room of a plotting Queen-mother and her banished Vazir. Over this council Lawrence himself was to wield full powers of guidance and control, enforced by a strong garrison of British troops : and a captain of artillery thus became in effect, as Marshman puts it, " the successor of Ranjit Singh." With the transfer of the Queen-mother, in the following August, from her son's palace at Lahore to the safe seclusion of Shaikopiira, the last source of danger to the 34 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALEOVSIE, peace of the Punjab seemed for the time to have dried up. When Lawrence left Lahore, in December 1847, to enjoy his well-earned furlough, his successor found all quiet from Peshawar to the Biyas. In the adjacent province of Sind the administrative genius of Sir Charles Napier had already established peace, order, and social well- being among the people whom his arms had first subdued. The Hero of Miani had proved himself a strong, just, beneficent ruler, who left his successor the easy task of completing what he had so well begun. From other parts of India slight local disorders might be reported ; Calcutta itself was struggling with a sharp commercial crisis ; but of political trouble in any quarter nobody for the moment dreamed. This happy state of things lasted yet a few months longer, during which Dalhousie's letters to the India House contained no other reference to Kanjit Singh's kingdom than a casual remark about " forwarding papers relating to the Punjab." Employed as he was in mastering the details of his new office,'^ and considering the questions that came before his council, he saw no reason for distrusting the reports he received from the new Resident, Sir Frederick Currie, concerning the progress of afikirs beyond the Satlaj. So " all went merry as a marriage bell," until the hot winds of May were raging over the plains of Upper India. In the first days of that month Calcutta' was startled by tidings which boded ill for the continuance of peace and well-doing in the Punjab. Two Englishmen, Vans BEGINNING OF TEE BEVOLT. 35 Agnew of the Civil Service and his political assistant, Lieutenant Anderson, had been foully murdered in April at Multan, by the followers of Mulraj, the Governor of that city and the surrounding district. The murdered men had been sent thither by the Lahore Government to see a new Dewan, or Governor, installed in the room of Mulraj, who had lately asked permission to resign his post. If he did not instigate the murderers, Mulraj behaved like a willing accomplice in their crime. He proclaimed a holy war against the English, withdrew his family and treasures into the citadel, and made all haste to strengthen the defences and replenish the magazines of a stronghold which had thrice defied Kanjit Singh himself. The challenge thus flung out from Multan was promptly answered by one bold young Englishman, Herbert Edwardes, from his border post at Banmi, beyond the Indus. A soldier by profession and a statesman by force of circumstances, he foresaw the dangers which prompt action alone might yet avert. In a very short time, with help from a few friends and a loyal native prince, he found himself at the head of an army which by July 2nd had twice defeated the troops of Mulraj, and driven their leader within the walls of Multan itself. Multan, however, was a nut which Edwardes with his slender resources could not crack. Sir Frederick Currie would from the first have helped him to crack it, had his fears for the safety of Lahore been less keen, or the force of his arguments been more readily acknowledged by the D 2 36 LIFE OF TEE MARQUIS OF DALEOUSIE. commander-in-chief. At last, however, Carrie's urgency- won the day. Dalhousie gave him a free hand, and Lord Gough issued the orders which enabled General Whish, by the end of July, to begin his march upon Multan. The first days of September saw that city surrounded by our troops. The siege had begun, but the sudden treachery of our Sikh allies delayed for some months the expected issue, and marked a new stage in the process which turned a local outbreak into a widespread and dangerous revolt. While Whish was waiting for fresh reinforcements, the flames of rebellion kept rolling and crackling over the Punjab. From Multan to Peshawar there was hardly a spot, outside Lahore and the camp of General Whish, where an English officer, or a loyal native gentleman could stand against the rising tide of Sikh disaffection to a rule propped up by British bayonets. The same men who had so lately turned their swords into plough-shares were now rallying by thousands to the old familiar war-cry of Guruji-lce Fatha* ; while many of the new battalions which had just been raised .and drilled by British officers, swelled the ranks of that great army which Sher and Chatar Singh were mustering for one more fight against the cow-killing infidel and oppressor. Meanwhile, Dalhousie had been watching the course of events beyond the Satlaj with mingled feelings of surprise, annoyance, and perplexity. He had tried hard to avoid * ** Victory for the Guru,"— viz., Govind, the great soldier-priest. who organised the Sikhs as a figh ting brotherhood. ''WAB WITH A vengeance:' 37 meddling in a quarrel which primarily concerned the Lahore State. Mulraj should be treated as a rebel against his own sovereign, not as an enemy to the British Power. But now his dreams of peace, and of steady pro- gress in all that peace meant for India were rudely broken by the news which reached him day after day from Lahore. He had come out to India firmly believing in the wisdom and justice of Lord Hardinge's scheme for nursing the o^rowth of a strono^ and stable native Government in the Punjab. Every one around him piped to the same tune. It was not long, however, before he awoke from those pleasant illusions, and learned to realise the full meaning of events which made Henry Lawrence throw up his furlough, and start that autumn for Bombay. Even when Currie's letters from Lahore had taught Dalhousie the need of prompt action, Lord Gough from Simla still counselled delay, until the rains should be well over, and the cold season close at hand. If the Sikhs meant fighting — thought the grey-haired victor of Sobraon p • — they should have enough of it in our own good time. Out of deference to so tried a soldier, the Governor- General still pursued his labours in Calcutta and took his recreation at Barrackpore. But during September his mind was made up. He saw that the Multan outbreak was only the prelude to another fight for empire between the Sikhs and the English. " There is no other course open to us," he wrote to the Secret Committee at the India House, " but to prepare for a general Punjab war, and ultimately to occupy the country." 38 LIFE OF TEE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. Suiting the action to the word, he made all haste to leave Calcutta, while Gough was mustering troops for a grand campaign in the Punjab. At a farewell enter- tainment given, on October 5th, by the officers of Barrackpore, Dalhousie struck the keynote of his future policy in words which stirred his hearers like the blast of a trumpet. " I have wished for peace," he said, " I have longed for it ; I have striven for it. But unwarned by precedent, uninfluenced by example, the Sikh nation has called for war, and on my word, sirs, they shall have it with a vengeance." The speaker^s voice, bearing, and aspect were in thorough keeping with these resolute words. Dalhousie's patrician breeding spoke forth in his fine clean-cut features, ample forehead, and slightly aquiline nose, in his delicate complexion, and slender upright figure. There was a certain " pride in his port, defiance in his eye," which lent new emphasis to the firm, clear tones of his voice and the frank simplicity of his language. His calm keen eye shot out a glance of sudden fire, while his pale counten- ance glowed responsive to the strange excitement of the hour. In stature hardly up to middle height, he carried himself with the stately grace of a born ruler, of one indeed who, as people were already saying of him,- " looked every inch a king."* Dalhousie's policy in this connexion is clearly set forth in his Farewell Minute of February, 1856. Neither in the murder of British officers at Multan, nor in the sub- * Sir K. Temple's Men and Events of my Time in India. ^'MULTAN MUST BE TAKEN." 39 sequent revolt of Mulraj, could he discover any " pretext for quarrel with the Government of Lahore." Mulraj's offence was " sedulously distinguished from national wrong." The Sikhs themselves were bidden to punish the offender as a rebel against their own sovereign, and to " exact reparation for the British Government, whose protection they had previously invoked." It was not for him to draw the sword too readily in a quarrel which specially concerned the rulers of a foreign State. " But when," lie continues, " it was seen that the spirit of the whole Sikh people was inflamed by the bitterest animosity against us ; when chief after chief deserted our cause, until nearly the whole army, led by Sirdars who had signed the treaties, and by members of the Council of Eegency itself, was openly arrayed against us ; when, above all, it was seen that the Sikhs, in their eagerness for our ■destruction, had even combined in unnatural alliance with Dost Mohammad Khan and his Mohammedan tribes ; it became manifest that there was no alternative left. The question for us was no longer one of policy or of expediency, but one of national safety.'' The sword once drawn in the quarrel thus forced upon him, was not to be sheathed until his enemies had reaped the full reward of their rashness in defying the victors of Sobraon. The speech at Barrackpore foreshadowed the inevitable issue which Hardinge's policy had sought to avert, the issue which Napier had clearly foreseen in 1846, when he spoke of Hardinge's compromise as en- tailing another war, and expressed his belief that "the tragedy must be reacted a year or two hence."* By this time Dalhousie also knew that a second Sikh war could end only in the conquest of the entire Punjab. * Bruce's Life of Sir C. Napier, ch. 8. 40 LIFE OF TEE MABQUIS OF DALEOUSIE. Writing home to Sir Henry Lawrence some weeks earlier, Dalhousie had announced the change of policy to which events were already driving him. "Multan must be taken; and, as matter of self-preservation, the army, which has declared its object, must be met and crushed. The ulterior policy need not be promulgated till then ; but I say frankly, I see no halting-place midway any longer. There was no more sincere friend of Lord Hardinge's policy to establish a strong Hindu government between the Satlaj and the Khaibar than I. I have done all that man could do to support such a government, and to sustain that policy, T no longer believe it feasible to do so; and I must act according to the best of my judgment on what is before me." From this and other letters of the same period it is clear that Dalhousie could see no better way out of the existing troubles than to take measures for " obliterating a state which .... can never become a peaceful neigh- bour," but would always be a source of military annoyance, and therefore of much anxiety and expense.* Now that Lord Hardinge's experiment had proved a failure, what else remained — said in effect Lord Hardinge's successor — than to occupy and annex the Punjab? If the word annexation had not yet been spoken by him, the idea impressed itself more and more clearly on his mind's eye. This, however, was not for him the question of the moment. The capture of Multan and the suppression of armed revolt throughout the Punjab were the objects he had to strive for first of all. To this task he now ad- dressed himself with all the energy, foresight, firm purpose, and statesmanlike skill, that the occasion could demand. * Life of Sir H. Lawrence, Vol. II. THE ABMY OF TEE PUNJAB. 41 He made all needful arrangements for enabling Gough to take the field with an army at all points well equipped, abundantly supplied, and large enough to beat down all possible opponents. Leaving the senior member of his Council to carry on the Government of Bengal, he himself, with his able Secretary, Henry Elliot, and a picked staff of officers, made the best of his way towards the Satlaj. The era of Indian railways had not yet begun, and it took Dalhousie about a fortnight to reach Ambala, near the foot of the Simla Hills. From thence, in November, he marched on to the Satlaj, at Fcrozepore, which became his head-quarters during the campaign. Early in November, the leading brigades of Gough's army, under the dashing Cureton, were encamped beyond the Ravi, where it rolls past the walls of Lahore. A fortnight afterwards Gough himself crossed that river with the main body of his troops. Meanwhile, a separate column from Bombay was marching up the Indus Yalley, to aid Whish in the task of capturing Multan. By this time the Sikh leader, Sher Singh, after vainly threatening Lahore, had fallen back into his fortified camp across the Chinab, opposite Ramnagar. Gough's plans for the campaign, which opened with the advance of Cureton's column to the Chinab on November 22nd, were somewhat hampered by the Fabian tactics of the Governor-General, who feared that one false step on that side of the field might delay the early capture of Multan, and precipitate the loss of Atak, where the brave young Herbert still held out against hopeless odds. 42 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. The fiery veteran chafed under restrictions the policy of which he could not but question. In theory, perhaps, the soldier was justified rather than the statesman. Had Gough been free from the outset to take his own line, the fate of Sher Singh's army might have been decided at Sadulapur. It is idle, however, to speculate on what might have happened. Events, at any rate, seemed to work in favour of Dalhousie's waiting game.* Grough's eagerness to make use of the larger freedom at length allowed him by the Governor-General issued in the hard- fought battle of Chilianwala, which left the Sikhs strongly intrenched on the Jhilam, and Gough himself holding a part only of the ground his troops had so dearly won. The doubtful victory of January 13th, 1849, evoked 'a hurricane of public censure against a commander who had thrown away precious lives so recklessly for no appreciable gain. Dalhousie himself, no doubt, regretted his own hastiness in loosening the curb on his fiery Commander- in-Chief. In England the fears of the Ministry and the India House conspired with the popular outcry for the recall of their former favourite. At the prayer of the Duke of Wellington, then Commander-in-Chief at home, Sir Charles Napier set off" by the first steamer, to wipe out the effect of Lord Gough's alleged shortcomings. The brave old Irishman, however, saved him that trouble. The fall of Multan, on January 23rd, set the bulk of Whish's force free to hasten up the Punjab, and * Sir H. Havel ock, no mean authority, justified it even on military- grounds. See Marshman's Life of Havdock, FBOM GUJABAT TO TEE KHAIBAB. 43 join hands with Gough's army on its way to Gujarat, where the Sikhs had prepared to make their last stand. On February 21st, Gough fought and won " his last battle and his best," as he truly called it in a private letter announcino^ his resiOTation to the chairman of the India Board. For once Lord Gough had allowed his splendid artillery full play. " The battle of the guns " raged for several hours, until the Sikh fire was nearly silenced ; and then the long lines of British horse and foot, advancing as if on parade, swept like a vast flood over the shattered remnants of Sher Singh's proud array. When the infantry had done their work, the cavalry on either flank, with the light guns, followed up and scattered the retreating foe, never drawing rein until darkness stayed all further pursuit. Gough had won a great and well-nigh bloodless victory, which silenced his detractors, crushed the army of the Khalsa, and broke the neck of Sikh dominion in the Punjab. Only a day before the battle Dalhousie had replied to a letter in which Sir H. Lawrence, then back in his old place at Lahore, had given him the latest news from Gough's camp : — " I observe what you say regarding General Campbell having told you that there was ' no thought of crossing the Jhilam this season.' Your brother will have ere this reassured you on that point. What * thought ' the camp of the Commander-in-Chief has signifies very little. The camp's business is to find fighting; I find thought, and such thought as the camp has hitherto found is of such damned bad quality, that it does not induce me to forego the exercise of my proper functions I will only say now generally, that the camp will cross the Jhilam this season, and, please God, the Indus also ; . . . . 44 LIFE OF THE MARQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. that General Gilbert will command, and I hope the job will be well done. All this I communicated to the Commander-in-Chief some time ago." Referring, in the same letter, to a certain step taken by Major Edwardes without Sir Henry's sanction, he remarks that: — " there are more than Major Edwardes in the Kesidency who appear to consider themselves nowadays as Governor-General at least. The sooner you set about disenchanting their minds of this illusion, the better for your comfort and their own. I don't doubt you will find bit and martingale for them speedily. For my part, I will not stand it in quieter times for half an hour, and will come down unmistakably upon any one of them who may try it on, from Major Edwardes, C.B., down to the latest enlisted general-ensign-plenipotentiary on the establishment." * Dalhousie wrote as strongly as he felt when matters of discipline or public policy were concerned. " I am ordered to conquer the country," he had written to Lawrence a few days earlier, " and, please God, I will obey." And others, too, should obey him and his lieutenants in their turn. To gather up the full fruits of such a victory was now the one central object of all Dalhousie's acts and utterances. Yet more alive than Gough himself to the need of following up a beaten foe, he had already planned in outline the quick march that carried Gilbert's flying column across two hundred miles of difficult country, from Gujarat up to the mouth of the Khaibar Pass. His General Order of February 21st declared that the war " must be prose- , . * Bosworth Smith's Lord Lawrence. PUBSUIT OF THE AFGHANS, 45 cuted now to the entire defeat and dispersion of all who are in arms against us, whether Sikhs or Afghans." To the same effect he wrote to his Commander-in-Chief, urging him to drive the enemy, without rest or respite, from Doab to Doab, until he had cleared the last of them out of Atak and Peshawar. Gough, for his part, answered readily to the spur thus given him. Early on the morrow of Gujarat, the General of Dalhousie's own choice,* Sir Walter Gilbert, renowned for feats of horsemanship as well as arms, set off, at the head of 12,000 picked troops, on a chase which proved the fitting sequel to the previous victory. " By a series of rapid marches, scarcely excelled," says Kaye, " by any recorded in history," he ran down one body of Sikhs after another, and very nearly overtook Dost Mohammad's Afghans in their headlong flight from the Indus into the Khaibar. Before the middle of March at least 20,000 Sikhs, with their leaders, arms, and their remaining guns, had surrendered to " the flying General ; " and by the end of March his troops were resting peace- fully under the walls of Peshawar, which the Afghans had abandoned but a few hours before. From one end of the Punjab to the other not an armed foe was anywhere stirring, when the last of Akram Khan's horsemen disap- peared in the mountain gorges beyond Jamrud. Two months earlier, on February 1st, Sir Henry Lawrence had returned to the post which Sir F. Currie had been keeping warm for him. On his way to the Sikh capital he had halted at Ferozpore, to discuss * Bosworth Smith's Lord Lawrence. Vol. I. 4C LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. matters of State with the Governor-General. But to him the new master was not as the old. Hardinge had treated him like a friend and comrade ; Dalhousie's frankly courteous bearing was the reflection of a mind willing to heed wise counsel, but impatient of any attempt, real or apparent, to control its workings. The two men had met on this occasion for the first time, to settle the draft of a proclamation summoning the Sikhs to lay down their arms. Writing to Lawrence on February 1st, Dalhousie proceeds " plainly to tell his mind " about the draft which Sir Henry had written : — "It is objectionable in matter, because from the terms in which it is worded, it is calculated to convey to those who are engaged in this shameful war an expectation of much more favourable terms, much more extended immunity from punishment, than I consider myself justified in granting them. It is objectionable in manner because (unintentionally no doubt) its whole tone substitutes you personally, as the Kesident at Lahore, for the Government which you represent. It is calculated to raise the inference' that a new state of things is arising ; that the fact of your arrival with a desire to bring peace to the Punjab is likely to affect the warlike measures of the Government, and that you come as a peacemaker for the Sikhs, standing between them and the Government. This cannot be." Dalhousie goes on to assert the need of " entire identity between the Government and its Agent, whoever he is." Nothing, he insisted, must be said or done to raise the notion that the policy of the Indian Government depended on the presence of this or that Eesident at Lahore. " By the orders of the Court of Directors, that policy is not to be finally declared until after the country is subjected to our military possession, and after a full review of the SIB HENBY GIVES WAT. 47 whole subject. The order of the Court shall be obeyed by me." At the same time he saw no reason whatever to depart from his opinion that, in the interests of British India, "the power of the Sikh Government should not only be defeated, but subverted, and their djmasty ^ abolished." Unconditional submission, with a guarantee for the lives of all who surrendered, were the only terms which the proclamation should offer to those who had borne arms against us.* \ In every line of this letter Dalhousie paints his own portrait. He speaks his mind openly and plainly, without mincing his words, or seasoning reproof with fine compli- ments. Himself obeying the orders of the India House, he insists that others, however high their repute or great their services, shall obey him. The Governor-General's agents must carry out the Governor-General's policy, not their own. No proclamation issued by his authority shall speak in language of which he disapproves, or convey a meaning which seems to derogate from his official supremacy. As for the Sikhs, whom Lawrence would treat so tenderly, they deserve no special mercy from a Power whose former kindness they have so ill repaid. For a man so chivalrous, so proudly sensitive as Henry Lawrence, this no doubt was a bitter pill to swallow. He swallowed it however with a fair grace ; but the wound to his feelings still rankled. The soreness showed itself in the querulous tone of his letters to the Governor-General. On the expediency of annexing the Punjab, both his * Life of Sir H, Lawrence. Vol. II. 48 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALEOUSIE, present and his former patron were now of one mind. His brother John took the same side. But Sir Henry raised new objections to a measure, the abstract justice of which he no longer arraigned. "I did think it unjust," — he wrote in February — " I now think it impolitic. It is quite possible I may be prejudiced and blinded ; but I have thought over the subject long and carefully." Later in the month he complained that Lord Dalhousie misread his motives for seeking to conciliate Gulab Singh, the crafty ruler of Kashmir. Dalhousie assured his fretful subaltern that he had never meant to cast the faintest slur upon his good faith and purity of purpose. " I do not think there is anything in my letter which would carry that inference ; but if so, and if you have so con- strued it, I beg you to be assured I meant no words of mine ever to convey such a meaning. As for your not having my confidence, differences of opinion must not be understood as withdrawal of confidence. You give, and will, I hope, continue to give me your views frankly. I shall give you in reply my opinions as frankly." With these, and yet stronger assurances of goodwill for the deputy of his own choosing, Dalhousie sought to allay the ferment of a noble mind, disordered by the pressure of bodily disease, .and perplexed by the workings of a tender conscience and a temper quick to take fire. But Sir Henry was not to be comforted. He felt himself in a false position, as the instrument of a policy which jarred upon his judgment and his higher feelings. It had become for him a serious question whether he should not ELLIOT AT LAHOBE. 49 resign his post, rather than bear his part in any arrange- ment for annexing the Punjab. Before the middle of March, John Lawrence, then Commissioner of Jalandhar, paid Dalhousie a visit at Ferozepore. The question of annexation was the chief subject of their talk. John Lawrence for his part urged that such a measure should be carried out at once, before the hot weather set in and the Sikhs had time to rally round their old leaders. The arguments of one so shrewd, capable, and cool-headed, struck home to a mind long since prepared for such a consummation, but still uncertain as to the how and when. The Governor-General decided to act at once on his own responsibility, without waiting for the sanction he felt sure of obtaining from the Court of Directors. His accomplished Foreign Secretary, Henry Elliot, was dispatched to Lahore with a strong escort of British troops, to acquaint the few faithful Sirdars of the Council of Regency with the final orders of the Indian Government, and to arrange with them for the due disposal of the young Maharajah, Dhulip Singh. Henry Lawrence, on the other hand, felt that his services were no longer needed by a master who never took his advice. He begged leave therefore to resign his post. Dalhousie, however, had no wish to get rid of a public servant whose worth he frankly acknowledged, and whose personal influence might largely aid him in reconciling a conquered people to their new yoke. Elliot was sent to dissuade Sir Henry from taking a step so hurtful to the very interests he had most at heart. Was it meet, argued the E 50 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. envoy, to abandon at such a moment the chiefs and people he had known so well, for whose good he had toiled so zealously, and the hardship of whose lot no one else would have so fair a chance of mitigating as himself? Yielding to arguments which appealed to his best feelings, Lawrence withdrew his resignation, and prepared to throw himself, with a sore heart but a steadfast courage, into the work which his masterful patron was planning out for him. ( 51 ) I CHAFPER IV. THE ANNEXATION OF THE PUNJAB. 1849-1852. The deposition of Dhulip Singh — The Koh-i-Nur — Dalhousie's letter to the Secret Committee — Favourable reception of the annexation — Its results — Punishment of the disaffected and of Mulraj — The Board of Administration — Character of the Government — The Lawrences and Mansel — Dalhousie and Napier — The clashing of authorities — Napier's resignation — The last passages of arms — Pacification of the Punjab — Collisions with Henry Lawrence — The Lawrence Asylum — Lord Stanley's visit to India. On March 29th, 1849, the little son of Ranjit Singh*s slave-mistress sat for the last time on his]father's throne in the Hall of Audience at Lahore. The ministers of im- pending doom, Lawrence and Elliot, filled the place of honour among his councillors and sirdars. A motley- crowd of Englishmen, Sikhs and Mohammedans, listened in deep silence to the reading of the Proclamation w^hich Dalhousie himself had drawn up at Ferozepore. After a brief but clear recital of the mercies which our foes of 1845 had received from Lord Hardinge, this powerful manifesto set forth the manner in which those mercies had since been requited ; how the people, soldier}^, e2 Ai 52 LIFE OF TEE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. and chiefs of the Lahore State had risen against their accepted rulers, imprisoned and murdered British officers, and waged ^'a fierce and bloody war for the proclaimed purpose of destroying the British and their power." The Khalsa army had at length been utterly routed, and their Afghan allies chased back into their own hills. The Government of India had no desire for conquest ; but, for its own security, in the interests of those committed to its charge, it was bound to guard against the perpetual re- currence of unprovoked and costly wars. It was there- fore resolved upon " the entire subjection of a people whom their own Government has long been unable to control, and whom no punishment can deter from violence, no acts of friendship conciliate to peace." From that day forth all the territories of Maharajah Dhulip Singh would form part of the British Empire in India. As for the dethroned sovereign, he would be treated with all due respect and honour. The better behaved Sirdars would retain their rank and lands, while the fiefs of all prominent rebels would be forfeited to the State. Religious freedom, within reasonable limits, was guaran- teed to all creeds and persons alike. Lastly, the people were warned to submit themselves to a Government that bore hard only on the disaffected. This fateful document was read aloud in English, Persian, and Hindustani. The faithful Rajah Dinanath was the first to break the silence with a few words of politic assent : "It is the ' Lord Sahib's ' order, and we must obey." Another Councillor, the Rajah Tej Singh, THE LOBD SAHIB'S OBDEB. 53 then handed to his young master the paper of conditions, which Dhuhp Singh, aware of its purport, readily signed. As soon as Elliot had taken his leave, the British colours were hoisted on the citadel, and a thundering salute from British guns told all who heard it that the dynasty of Ranjit Singh no longer ruled over the Land of the Five Rivers. The agreement which Dhulip Singh, then a boy of twelve, had just signed, was presently ratified by Lord Dalhousie at Ferozepore. In exchange for a pension of fifty thousand a year, with free leave to dwell anywhere on British ground outside the Punjab, the young prince surrendered all claims to any of his father's domains, dignities, or treasures. Out of the spoils thus won for the Company, Lord Dalhousie reserved for the Queen of England one large diamond, the precious Koh-i-Nur, or Hill of Light, whose earlier history loses itself in the mists of old Indian legends, and whose later adventures, as it passed into the palaces of successive kings or conquerors, from Ujain to Delhi, Ispahan, Kabul, and Lahore, might furnish themes for many a stirring romance of real life. In the days of Aurangzib the famous jewel had enhanced the splendours of the Peacock Throne at Delhi. His grandson handed it over to the Persian conqueror. Nadir Shah, who bore it back on his turban to his own capital. From thence it passed by right of conquest into the hands of the Afghan Ahmad Shah. From Kabul it followed Shah Shuja, the last of the Durani princes, to the court of Ranjit Singh, who bought it on his own terms from the 54 LIFE OF TEE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. helpless prisoner-guest. After its final journey to England, it went through a course of cutting and polishing, which made it literally the brightest jewel in the British Crown. It was fortunate perhaps for Dalhousie that, in those days, no line of telegraph connected London with Calcutta, and that a letter from Ferozepore would take about six weeks in reaching England. The Court of Directors might call him to account for daring to settle by his own hand so stiff a problem as the future of the Punjab. But he knew that the step once taken at his own risk was practi- cally irrevocable. The great mass of public opinion was clearly on his side, and the letter he sent home to the Secret Committee, on the 7th April, set forth unanswerable reasons for what he had done. It was a letter worthy of the occasion and of the writer ; one of those lucid state-papers which, alike for style, matter, and logical treatment, have never been surpassed. After reviewing the events that led up to the late war, Dalhousie pointed to Sikh turbulence as a prominent fact which left him no choice between a thorough conquest and incessant warfare. The natives of India would believe that we had been worsted in our last struggle with a foe who had /* twice already rudely shaken our power in India," if we now agreed to any compromise, or shrank from the full assertion of our undoubted right to deprive that foe of all power to annoy us in the future. The least show of weakness before our Indian subjects and allies would embolden them to plot against our rule ; A MEMOBABLE LETTEB. 55 some day perhaps to fight us '' on other fields than those of the Punjab." Events had proved the utter futility of our attempts to establish a strong friendly power between the Afofhans and the British frontier : while the con- junction of Sikh and Afghan arms had been " a direct appeal to Mohammedan India." For the safety of our Indian Empire it had now become absolutely needful to extend our frontier to the Sulaiman Hills. After the war which ended in 1846, the Court of Directors had duly sanctioned Lord Hardinge's measures for confiscating the " richest provinces " of Dhulip Singh's realm.* The same principle was involved in the present case. Dalhousie, therefore, could not but feel assured that the Court would readily sanction the policy forced upon him by the issues of a second war, as unprovoked as the former. As for the little Maharajah, neither justice nor precedent could exempt him from sharing the penalty consequent on the sins of his unruly people. No feeling of " misplaced and mistimed compassion for the fate of a child " could turn the Governor-General aside from doing what seemed best for the public weal. The Sikhs, more- over, were few in number as compared with the peaceful population of the Punjab. Under our rule they would gradually settle down, as the Kohillas had done before them in Eohilkand. And he felt sure that in due time the Punjab would prove " not only a secure, but also a profitable possession." Its revenues would be enlarged * The Jalandhar Doab, between the Satlaj and the Biyas, with the hill-country between the Biyas and the Indus. 56 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALEOUSIE. by the forfeiture of so many jaigirs (military fiefs), by the union of Multan with the other provinces, by utilising the water power of its rivers, and the general fruitfulness of its light, loamy soil.* The answer from the India House to this masterly defence of a policy which all England may be said to have endorsed, was quite as favourable as the Governor- General could have desired. On one point only did the Court of Directors speak in somewhat hesitating tones. They expressed a guarded " hope that the financial expectations of the Governor- General may be realised." Meanwhile, both Houses of Parliament had duly voted their thanks to all concerned in the triumphant issues of the late campaign. The Earl of Dalhousie had been made a Marquis, and Lord Gough a Viscount, in honour of the crowning victory of Gujarat. Hardly a voice was anywhere raised against the subversion of a kingdom which twice within four years had defied the masters of India to mortal combat. No one could point out a better way of dealing with " the most formidable enemy we have yet encountered in India." Annexation, in fact, had become inevitable from the moment when Sher Singh made common cause with Mulraj. To Dalhousie belongs the credit not only of preparing for the final issue, but of seizing the right moment for carrying it into efi'ect. He had the courage, in short, to grasp with swift, sure hand, the prize which destiny and his own precautions had brought within his reach. ♦ Punjab Blue Book. ' THE NEW INDIAN PROVINCE, 57 The annexation of the Punjab, in 1849, ended the series of wars which sprang, directly or indirectly, out of the wanton invasion of Afghanistan in 1838. Ranjit Singh's prediction, as he looked at a coloured map of the Company's possessions, had now been verified — all India had " become red," from Cape Comorin to Peshawar. A few years earlier, the conquest of Sind had extended our western frontier to the hills of Biluchistan. With the conquest of the Punjab our Indian empire had been carried north-westward to its natural boundaries along the Sulaiman Range, while Gulab Singh paid yearly tribute for his Himalayan kingdom of Kashmir. The new province, including Jalandhar, covered an area of nearly 74,000 square miles — as large as Great Britain — with a population of about ten millions. Less than a fifth of these were true Sikhs ; the rest being mostly Mohammedans, of Hindu, Pathan, or Moghul descent. The bulk of the people, the peasants, traders, and artizans, cheerfully accepted a change of masters, which at least delivered them from Sikh oppression, and promised to let them follow their own callings and practise their own rites in peace and safety. As for the Sikh Sirdars and soldiery, they had learned too well the lesson of past events to think of striking another blow for their lost supremacy. Some months later, indeed, a few of their leaders were discovered weaving fresh plots against the public peace. But they had swiftly to pay for their folly, by exchanging the limited freedom of their own homes for prolonged imprisonment in Fort William. 58 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF BALHOTJSIE. In the course of June, Mulraj himself was tried by a special Court, and found guilty of the crimes laid to his charge. The mercy he had failed to show our murdered countrymen v/as presently granted him by the Governor- General. Having- reerard to the " extenuatinfy circum- stances " pleaded by the Court on his behalf, the Marquis of Dalhousie commuted the capital sentence to one of close imprisonment for life. This boon, if such he deemed it, the poor victim of circumstances did not live long to enjoy. All through March, Dalhousie had been engaged in working out with Sir Henry Elliot his plans for the future government of the Punjab. The first problem he had to solve was how to make the best use of Henry Lawrence's fine qualities and wide personal influence, without harm to the financial prospects and general well-being of the conquered province. Administration by Boards was a thing by no means to his taste : he had already struck hard at one such body, when he placed Captain James Eamsay at the head of Gough's Commissariat. But he could see no better way of solving this particular problem. He had found himself in very imperfect sympathy with an agent who would not give him all the confidence he asked for, a subaltern who was always on the verge of quarrelling with his captain on the slightest pretext. To place Sir Henry alone at the head of the new government would lead to perpetual friction between the supreme and the local authority. If a colleague or two of a different stamp were placed beside him, the needful harmony would THE BOABD OF THREE. 59 be secured, with no loss, if not with a sensible increase of working power. It was settled, therefore, that the Punjab should be governed by a Board of three Administrators. Sir Henry, as President, had for colleagues his brother John, then Commissioner of Jalandhar, and Charles Mansel, a civil officer of high standing, who had served with credit under James Thomason, and was know^n, says Sir E. Arnold, " to possess a thoughtful and inventive mind." * To each were assigned his appropriate duties in a system, as Kaye remarks, " of divided labour and common responsibiUty." They shared among them the task of establishing peace, order, and good government in the Punjab. The knightly President himself was charged with the conduct of all political affairs. These included the disarming of the people, the negotiations with the chiefs, the enrolling of the new regiments, the arrangements for educating the young Maharajah, and the duties of general peace-maker between the new Government and the classes that suffered most from the late catastrophe. To John Lawrence, already known as a great civil administrator, and the leader of a brief but brilliant campaign during the late war, was entrusted the department of revenue and finance ; while Mansel supervised all matters of police and public justice. Each division, or shire, of the new province was placed under its own Commissioner, aided by a picked staff of subalterns, civil and military, who, in Kaye's words, had to * Arnold's Administration of Lord Dalhousie. Vol. I. 60 LIFE OF TEE MABQUIS OF BALHOUSIE. act as *' judges, revenue-collectors, thief-catchers, diplo- matists, conservancy officers, and sometimes recruiting- sergeants and chaplains, all in one." * Some of these, such as Edwardes, Nicholson, Abbott, Mackeson, Reynell Taylor, and George Lawrence, had already taken honours in the public service ; others wanted only the opportunity to show themselves equal to any need, an opportunity which came to them sooner than they expected. The civil officers included such men as MacLeod, Montgomery, Edmonstone, and others of the Thomason school, who have since made their mark in Indian history. The nearly equal mixture of soldiers and civilians in the Punjab Commission betokened the conditions under which the new province might best be governed. Dalhousie was determined to get the fittest men he could from both services for a work which neither by itself seemed able adequately to discharge. Between the purely military rule which Napier had lately wielded in Sind, and the hard and fast system of Eegulation Law enforced in our older provinces, he chose the middle course which circumstances seemed to call for, and after events entirely justified. The soldier would find himself at home in the rude unsettled highlands along the Indus, while the trained civilian might play his part in the more fertile and populous regions between Jalandhar and Multan. The Board itself, as a whole, was invested with supreme powers of life and death, and with entire control of the revenue, the excise, and the troops required * Kaye's Sepoy War. Vol. I. THE LAWBENCE BBOTHEBS. 61 for frontier defence. Of its three members, Henry- Lawrence was the most popular, as well as the most renowned. Compared with his younger, and since more famous brother, he had, as John used to say of him, " the stronger grip of men." Chaucer would have called him, "a veray parfit gentil knighte,'* and Wordsworth might have taken him for the model of his " Christian Warrior." Sir Henry was one of those who would have sympathised with the fallen Darius much rather than with his Macedonian conqueror. He was beloved, where John Lawrence was oftener feared or respected. His fine character, ripe experience, and the sway he wielded over the hearts and minds of the classes lately dominant in the Punjab, alike marked him out for the special business of tempering the cold winds of British supremacy to all who would feel most keenly the loss of their former places, powers, perquisites, and immunities ; to all, in short, who had any reason for preferring the old order to the new. * In all Sir Henry's actions sentiment, according to Sir R. Temple, played as forward a part as reason. With John Lawrence, on the other hand, reason was always the main motor. The two men, in fact, for all their brotherly likeness, seemed, on the whole, to set off and complement each other. This was exactly what Lord Dalhousie wanted. He knew that John was made * For good word-portraits of Sir H. Lawrence, the reader may be referred to Kaye's Lives of Indian Officers and his Sepoy War, Vol. I. ; to the Life by Edwardes and Merivale ; to Arnold's Administration of Dalhousie ; and to Sir K. Temple's Men and Events of my Time in India, pp. 55-57. The last is perhaps the most complete. 62 LIFE OF TEE MABQUIS OF DALEOUSIE. of sterner stuff, was a man altogether after his own heart ; one of those shrewd, cautious, hard-working, resolute officers who might safely be trusted to carry out a given policy in the way that seemed best to him. Sir Henry represented the poetry of Indian statesmanship ; John its hard direct prose. As one of Thomason's ablest pupils, John Lawrence would take good care that the Punjab should be so governed as to prove ere long a blessing rather than a burden to our Indian empire. Certain classes might suffer in the process, but even-handed justice was all they could look for, and their loss could only redound to the general gain. That the Punjab should come to pay its own expenses, that no one class of the people should be favoured more than another, that everything should be done by means of good laws, cheap and equal justice for all, a well-ordered fiscal system, and a prudent outlay on public works, to promote the well- being of the people at large, and to develop the varied resources of the province — such were the objects in aid of which the younger Lawrence exchanged his post at Jalandhar for yet weightier, if less inviting tasks at Lahore. The third of this triumvirate, Charles Mansel, was, above all things, an able financier, on whose support John Lawrence might safely depend in his efforts to secure a wise economy of the public means. Mr. Robert Mont- gomery, who was ere long to take Hansel's place on the Board, had been a school-fellow of both the Lawrences, and had since made his mark as a settlement officer under A FBANK AND TIMELY WABNING. 63 Thomason. His character, training, and special aptitudes inclined him on the whole to side with John Lawrence, while his genial friendship for both the brothers helped to smooth over some rough places in their official road. Hardly had the new Board set to work when Dalhousie was on his way to Simla, where Lady Dalhousie awaited his coming. From one of the fir-clad heights, which look northward across a sea of hills to the great Snowy Range of the Upper Himalayas, and southward on the hill stations of Dagshai and Kassauli, he kept watch all that summer over the progress of his subalterns' labours in the Punjab. Simla had not then become the regular summer-capital of British India; but now and again a Governor-General had stopped a few months there on his way up or down country; and for some years past its cool breezes and glorious landscapes had tempted thither, or to the rival station of Mussoorie, all who could get away for a season from their duties in the sun-scorched plains below. To Simla also came up, in June, the new Commander- in-Chief, Sir Charles Napier. Before landing at Calcutta the victor of Miani knew that Gujarat had been fought and won, that no war remained on his hands, and that Dalhousie meant to govern the Punjab in his own way. All this held out no very cheering prospect to a man of Napier's parts and ambition. He himself would greatly have preferred a purely military government for the new conquest, with Sir Charles Napier at its head. He objected to governing through a Board, especially a 64 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE, Board in which he had no place. He talked, however, of confining himself strictly to his own duties, and " offering no opinion on other matters." But his first interview with the Governor-General showed what value the latter placed on the fiery old soldier's powers of self- I control. " I have been warned. Sir Charles," said Lord " Dalhousie, with a frank smile, " not to let you encroach on my authority, and I will take good care that you don't." And it was not long before the guest discovered that " this young man," whom at first he rather liked, as " seemingly a good fellow," with " no head for governing this empire," was at least a man of his word.* Napier found himself not only warned off the Viceroy's ground, but debarred even from meddling in a matter which seemed to fall within his own province. For the j safe guarding of his new frontier Dalhousie had resolved ' to raise ten regiments of horse and foot, with a few batteries of guns, a body of Sappers, and an enlarged I Guide Corps, and to place this " Frontier Field Force " under the orders, not of his Commander-in-Chief, but of ^ the Board of Administration at Lahore. This arrange- ^ ment, however wise and salutary, gave sore offence to one who deemed himself fit for any post that might be offered him ; and ere long the " seemingly good fellow " became transformed in Napier's mind into " a young Scotch lord as weak as water, and as vain as a pretty woman or an ugly man." His scorn for the Lawrence brothers, and all who served under them, expressed itself freely in his * Life of Sir C. Napier, Vol. IV. Arnold's Lord Dalhousie, Vol. I* NAFIEB CALLED TO ACCOUNT. 65 private letters, and presently inspired the writing of a long and disparaging Minute on the whole administration of the Punjab. This challenge provoked a paper controversy, which raged for several months, in the course of which some hard blows were given and taken. Napier had the pen of a strong, racy, trenchant writer, but the brothers had on their side the heavier metal of special knowledge and arguments based on solid facts. s Hardly had the combatants ceased firing at each other, when Napier fell foul of the Governor-General himself. In the latter part of 1849, a few of the Sepoy regiments quartered in the Punjab showed signs of mutiny, because the extra pay for foreign service was withheld from soldiers serving on British ground. The troops beyond the Indus were alone excepted from this rule. In spite of the exemplary punishment inflicted on the ringleaders, another regiment, the 66th, mutinied, in February 1850, at Govindgarh. Some weeks later, by Napier's orders, the guilty regiment was drummed out of the service on public parade, and its colours, arms, and regimental number were made over to the Nasiri Battalion, which had been recruited from the highlands of Nipal. In thus taking upon himself to " fling the Gorkha Battalion into the scale, as Brennus did his sword," the Commander-in- Chief was clearly trespassing on forbidden ground. He had no right either to disband one regiment or to put another in its place. The Government, however, over- looking the trespass, gave its ungrudging sanction to F GCy LIFE OF THE 3IARQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. measures which the pubhc safety might be held to warrant. But the wilful old soldier had done something else, which no prudent Governor-General could overlook. On January 20th, he had issued an order concerning the Sepoys' rations which virtually annulled the rules laid down by Lord Hardinge's Government in 1845. For this w-anton invasion of his supreme authority, the Governor-General, as soon as he had reached Calcutta, called the offender to strict account ; warning him plainly that he would " not again permit the Commander-in-Chief, under any circumstances, to issue orders which shall change the pay and allowances of the troops serving in India, and thus practically to exercise an authority which has been reserved, and most properly reserved, for the Supreme Government alone." In the paper duel which arose out of this strong utterance., Dalhousie came oif an easy victor. He had all the advantage, not only of the better cause, but of wider knowledge, a more disciplined temper, and a clearer head. Napier was angry and struck hard, but his blows never quite got home. He sought to justify his action by arguments which Dalhousie picked to pieces, and by innuendoes which were speedily pointed against himself. The impulsive veteran of sixty-nine, who in March, 1849, had declared his trust in the Native Army to be " firm as Ailsa rock," was contending a year later that forty thousand Sepoys in the Punjab were " infected with a mutinous spirit"; that the people of a disarmed and tranquil province, were hostile to our rule ; that, but for his own promptitude, the Empire itself had been in serious danger. NAPIEB OVEBMATCHED. 67 Dalhousie, in his turn, exposed the hollowness of these alarmist pleadings, whicli he condemned as " extravagant and mischievous exaggerations." Had the army been so mutinous and the Empire in so much danger, would the Commander-in-Chief, he asks — retorting Napier's sneer at his own absence far away at sea — have marched off at such a moment to Peshawar, where no mischief was brewing, instead of hovering about " the spot where discontent was loudest and where danger was thickest " ? And if things looked so serious as to justify the order of January 20th, would Sir Charles have declared in his order of January 16th, that, except for '* a few malignant, dis- contented scoundrels," he had never seen " a more obedient, more honourable army " than that which he commanded ? In presuming to alter at his own discretion the pay and allowances of his troops, Napier claimed " a power which has never heretofore belonged to any Commander-in-Chief in India; which is not enjoyed by the Commander-in- Chief of the British Army itself ; and which no constituted Grovernment could ever allow." Dalhousie further showed that Napier and his advisers were entirely wrong in supposing that the revised Rules of August, 1845, were practically unknown to the Bengal Sepoys. They had been enforced without a murmur ol regiment after regiment for some years past. The support he had always given to his Commander-in-Chief had not been withheld even from his order of January 20th ; for that order had been officially confirmed, so far as it concerned the Sepoys in the Punjab. He was " much F 2 68 LIFE OF TEE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. concerned " that any act of his should cause Napier to resign his command. But he regretted still more that his Excellency should take so hasty a step " on grounds so insufficient and untenable." On every point in dispute, Dalhousie's Minute of June 14th amply justified his previous letter to the Commander-in-Chief. Napier wrote home for leave to resign a post which he, thus shackled, no longer cared to hold. The home authorities heartily approved of Lord Dalhousie's action, and the Court of Directors at once | piepared to fill up the vacant office. When the papers on the whole subject were laid by the Kussell Cabinet before the old Duke of Wellington, he summed up with ^ his usual honesty against the Commander of his own | choice. From the evidence before him, it was clear that the mutiny had been too partial, and the danger to India too small, to justify Napier's reversal of a Government . order. In recording his displeasure at Napier's action, I the Governor-General had done no more than his duty. In December, 1850, Sir William Gomm took over the high command which Napier, before he held it, had seemed j pre-eminently fitted to adorn. i In the same month Napier fired off a parting shot at his opponent, through a Minute which he had really penned in July. This second attempt to place Dalhousie in the wrong evoked a rejoinder yet more crushing than the last. Napier's reply to the Minute of June 14tli began with a quibble, and ended, after many pages of railing rhetoric, in a defiant sneer. The writer expressed ^ NAPIEB'S PABTING SHOT. 69 himself with his usual vigour, and with even less than his usual discretion. Dalhousie's first impulse was to take no notice of a document which merely travelled over old ground. Before he read it Napier was on his way home. But the fear lest silence should be construed into dis- courtesy, led him to record in the following January a Minute which fully and finally disposed of every plea set up by Napier in his own defence, and disproved with calm convincing clearness every imputation cast by the rude old warrior upon Dalhousie himself. " Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just " ; but the best cause may suffer through the weakness of its champions. Against such a champion as Dalhousie his opponent had no chance. Out of his own mouth, and on the evidence of his own acts, Napier was convicted of defending himself from just censure by aspersions entirely fanciful, and statements wide of the truth. The very passages which Napier, against all rule, had quoted from Dalhousie's private letters, were turned to his own discomfiture by one whose private letters never conflicted with his public utterances. " There is not one sentence " — he writes — " in the quota- tions given by the Commander-in-Chief, or in any other of the letters, which countenances the assertion, that I recognised the existence of any such great public emergency as that which he now vainly labours to establish." Napier would not be satisfied with this double defeat. In the retirement of his home at Oaklands, in Hampshire, the old man nursed his grievance against the viceroy, whose pen had proved as masterful as his deeds. A 70 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALEOUSIE. volume written by Napier and published after his death in 1853, renewed the old controversy in a more offensive shape. All the old fallacies and mis-representations were laid before the public as if they had never yet been fairly answered. Dalhousie scorned to pay back his dead assailant in his own coin. ''Sir Charles Napier," he wrote, *' has gone to his grave, and I shall put forth no reply, either now or hereafter, to the personal attack he has left behind him." He contented himself with pub- lishing in the Calcutta Gazette the papers relating to Napier's resignation, in order that " the country should be put in possession of both sides of that public question." * Some of these documents had already appeared in Napier's book. In publishing the whole of them Dalhousie merely forestalled the known wish and purpose of the home authorities. Meanwhile, the building up of a strong, just, humane Government in the Punjab, on the lines sketched out by Dalhousie himself, went steadily forward at a pace which the most sanguine could hardly have foreseen. When the Governor-General for the first time travelled about his new province, during the winter of 1849-50, he found the great bulk of the people already disarmed and quietly accepting the new rule ; the Khalsa soldiery settling down to the labours of the plough or taking service in the new police and the Frontier Force ; a line of hill-forts rising at given points along the border ; and work already doing * Selection from the Records of the Government of India, No. III. Calcutta, 1853. PBOGBESS OF THE PUNJAB. 71 on the roads which were to connect these outposts with the country behind them. In that cold season, so welcome always to our countrymen in Upper India, the Lawrence brothers were setting an example of zeal, energy, and honest painstaking, which every officer in the Punjab Commission felt bound, as far as he could, to follow. Wherever he went therefore, Dalhousie was sure to see manifest traces of the beneficent change which its new masters were bent on bringing about in the land of the Five Rivers. The summer of 1850 found Dalhousie again at Simla. Among his visitors there was John Lawrence, who came up at his request to discuss Sir Henry's project of a trip to Kashmir. During the past winter Sir Henry had ridden all round the Punjab, visiting every station, care- fully inspecting all the frontier posts and hill-passes from Ladakh and Peshawar to the Derajat, reviewing the local troops and police, conversing with visitors of all classes, and receiving sometimes two hundred petitions in one day.* Against the President's lengthened absence from Lahore, on so useful an errand, the Governor-General had nothing to say. But when in April Sir Henry proposed for his health's sake to spend the rainy season in Kashmir, Dalhousie felt it needful to speak out on behalf of Sir Henry's colleagues. " I need not assure you," he writes, on April 25, " that I have per- sonally every desire to assent to what may be for your benefit ; but, liowever much I might wish to consent to measures advantageous to * Kaye's Lives of Indian Officers. Vol. II. 72 LIFE OF THE MARQUIS OF DALHOUSiE. your health, I am bound to say in candour that I could only consent to this scheme this year, in the hope and belief that it will render such absence unnecessary iti future years Your absence will neces- sarily confine at present the other members at Lahore. Of Mr. Mansel's habits I know nothing ; but it is impossible that, after the active movements of your brother's life for so many years, imprisonment in one place can be otherwi;e than bad for him." * This reminder was not unfriendly nor ill-timed. Sir Henry's frequent tours about the country might be good for his health and in some ways for the public service. But they tended to throw upon his colleagues an undue share of hard office-work, to lessen the weight of his own in- fluence both at the Council Board and with the Governor- General, and at last to widen the gulf of disagreement between himself and his brother John. Sir Henry, how- ever, mistook the well-meant warning for a virtual charge of " undue seeking after ease." Dalhousie in reply assured him that he was *' one of the very last men in India against whom any one could throw out such a hint. But, whether for health or otherwise, I am bound frankly to tell you that I did not think absence habitually for half the year nearly was compatible with your office, or fail to your colleagues. Gulab Singh's territories can't be said to be within your charge." As adventures come to the adventurous, so people who are always looking out for snubs generally contrive to find them. Something like this was Sir Henry's mental attitude towards a viceroy with whom nature and circum- stances alike placed him out of sympathy. He hotly * Life of Sir II. Laicrence. Vol. II. SIB HENBTS ANGBY FANCY. 73 resented from Lord Dalhousie the plain speaking which he himself was wont to practise upon others. The bitter- ness which he could not always hide from his Chief breaks out in a vehement letter to John, written in June, 1851 : — " Bad enougli to snub us," he says, " when we were wrong, intending to do right ; but to be insulted by assumptions and tittle-tattle is too bad I am heartily sick of this kind of letter. One works oneself to death, and does everything publicly and privately to aid the views of a man who vents his impertinences on us in a way whicii would be unbecoming if we were his servants."' ♦ The snubbing letter which provoked this outburst is not given by Sir Henry's biographer. But from all those which have been published we are warranted in reducing the apparent mountain of Dalhousie's offences to an in- significant mole-hill, thrown up by too hasty credence of a misleading report. Mistaking a strong rumour for a fact, Dalhousie had written off to restrain the Lahore Board from moving the Guide Corps to the new hill station of Marri. His manner may have lacked sweetness and genial warmth; but his letters to Henry Lawrence express all the deference and kindly regard due not only from one gentleman to another, but from a wise and just ruler to an officer of tried ability and eminent desert. When Sir Henry, for instance, in 1852, was seeking help from the native gentry towards the funds of his Lawrence Asylum for the children of our English soldiers, Dalhousie argued certain points with him in the spirit alike of a statesman and a true friend. * Life of Sir H. Laicrence. Vol. II. 74 LIFE OF THE MARQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. " I saw no objection," he wrote, in September, " because I kuow perfectly that your integrity and your honour would prevent your ever taking a gift for the Asylum under circumstances which would inter- fere with your public duty ; but, on the other hand, you know very well that there are plenty who would be glad to misrepresent any act of yours, and to injure you if they could ; and, as I confess, I do not believe that any one of the Chiefs contributes to such an institution as the A8)dum, from which they and theirs derive no direct benefit, except from a desire to please you, and to gain favour in the local or Supreme Government, I think your detractors will very probably try to represent that you are using your official position virtually to obtain support for an object in which you take a strong personal interest from persons who are under your authority." * In a letter written some months earlier, Dalhousie's regard for Sir Henry's welfare takes an almost playful turn. Lord Stanley, the future Earl of Derby, had lately come out to see as much of India as he could in six months. Meeting the Lawrence brothers at Lahore, he proposed to travel under Henry's guidance along the Punjab frontier, from Peshawar to the borders of Sind. Dalhousie misliked a project that boded danger to the travellers at a time when our troops were out after the plundering clansmen of Yusufzai and Kohat. " I have no suspicion," he writes to Henry, " of your rashness ; at the same time recollect that, if any ill-starred accident should happen, it will make a good deal of difference whether it happens to Lord Stanley and Sir H. Lawrence, or to John Tomkins and Bill Higgins. I think he will hamper you with a troublesome responsibility in visiting the frontier posts, which you are anxious to see ; and altogetlier I don't like it. One can't prohibit a man going where he wishes to go in British territory ; but I wish you would put him off it, if you possibly can." f It is hardly needful to say that Lord Stanley was not so easily put off. * Life of Sir H. Lawrence. Vol. II. t Ibid. ( 75 ) CHAPTER V. PEOGEESS IN THE PUNJAB AND THE CONQUEST OF PEGU. 1849-1853. Dr. Grant — His impressions of Dalliousie — Activity of the Governor- General — He recommends the planting of the Punjab — The Agricultural Society — Prosecution of Lalla Joti Pursad — A list of reforms — The Wahabi fanatics — Border raids — Disorders in Oudh and the Deccan — Insolence of the Burmese — Dalhousie demands satisfaction — The appeal to arms — Dalhousie organizes victory — The ultimatum — Landing of the forces — Conquest of the sea-board — Dalhousie's orders to Godwin — His visit to Eangoon — The annexation of Pegu sanctioned — The relief of Pegu — The province passes under British rule — Conclusion of the war — Beneficial results of the annexation — Dalhousie's statesmanship. Among those who accompanied Lady Dalhousie up to Simla in 1849, was Alexander Grant of the Bengal Medical Service, who had made his mark as a young, but skilful assistant-surgeon during the Chinese War of 1841-42. Since his return to India in 1844, he had served with growing credit both in the field and in charge of civil stations. In September 1848, a few weeks after he had taken up the duties of civil surgeon at Chapra, in Bengal, a very courteous letter from the new Governor- General invited him to attend on Lady 76 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. Dalhousie during her husband's absence in the North West. " No medical officer in the service " — wrote Dalhousie — " has been more strongly recommended than yourself, and I am truly desirous of obtaining the benefit of your services and your skill during the period, uncertain in extent, in which I may be compelled to be absent." As Lady Dalhousie was herself to move into camp on October 7th, Dr. Grant was requested to come down at once to Calcutta, with the assurance that his temporary withdrawal from Chapra would injure neither his present income nor his future prospects. On a sultry day, about the close of a month the most depressing of all in that moist tropical climate. Dr. Grant had his first interview with the high-bred, stately "little man " at Government House. Dalhousie at once entered into the business in hand, and speedily impressed his visitor by " the force and directness, as well as the courtesy of one whose confidence and friendship I was destined to enjoy till the close of his life." Youthful-looking even for his years, erect in gait, with a slim well-knit figure crowned by a noble, handsome, Titianesque head, lighted up by a pair of large, bright, blue eyes — '' really quick, clear, honest eyes" — to the frank courtesy of his manner he added " an air of authority that commanded respect and even awe." The force indeed of his personal ascendency was acknowledged even by such a man as Sir James Outram, who declared that he never left Dalhousie's presence without feeling his own inferiority. His forehead was broad and deep ; the nose slightly DALHOUSIE AND BE. GBANT. 77 aquiline with fine, clearly chiselled nostrils. He had a shapely and most expressive mouth, with long, thin, flexible lips that played in quick answer to every turn of thought and feeling ; now compressed with pain or passing annoyance, anon relaxing into perfect sweetness or over- flowing humour. To all this may be added a voice so clear, sweet, and musically intoned, that his visitor found its fascination quite irresistible. It tells strongly in Dalhousie's favour, that the impression he made at first on Dr. Grant was only confirmed and deepened by years of close and constant intimacy. Out of this meeting grew up a friendship which neither time nor circumstance availed to weaken. Dr. Grant at once took medical charge of the Countess on her long march up country through Allahabad and Agra to the Hills. On reaching Simla in the following spring, he found himself appointed surgeon to the Governor-General also, in the room of Dr. Bell. Thenceforth for seven years, with one or two brief intervals, he was to accompany his patron and friend whithersoever the latter's duties or his health mi^ht lead him. The two met again at Simla in June 1849. There, or at Mahasu, some ten miles further inland, Dalhousie stayed until November, when the mountain-ranges stand out clearest under a bright blue sky. During the rains his health failed so seriously that Dr. Grant advised him either to return home or take a sea voyage. Some weeks of the cold season were spent in marching leisurely through the Punjab to Multan. At Lahore he witnessed a grand 78 LIFE OF THE 3IABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. review of the troops under Sir Charles Napier, and exchanged visits vi^ith young Dhulip Singh, whom he had placed under the kindly tutelage of Dr. John Login, and in whose well-doing he never ceased to take an almost fatherly interest. In camp and on the march, Dalhousie generally wore a suit of light-brown "puttoo" and a white "Solah" helmet girt with a puggree. His favourite horse " Maharajah," was a beautiful light-grey Arab of pure blood and great intelligence. On all state occasions Maharajah bore himself as if proudly conscious of his rider's dignity. From Multan Dalhousie voyaged down the Indus to Karachi, holding darbars by the way at Sakhar and Haidrabad, for the reception of princes and chiefs in Sind. Crossing over to Bombay in the latter part of January, 1850, he embarked thence for Calcutta, touching by the way at Galle, Singapore, Malacca, Penang, and Moulmain. At Penang, which then pertained to British India, he saw a gibbet standing inside the prison walls. This he ordered to be removed outside, lest the people of England should " impeach him for infringing on the Englishman's indefeasible right to be hanged in public." After some weeks spent in legislative and other work at Government House, Dalhousie in April posted off to the hill-station of Simla, whither Lady Dalhousie had gone up before him. Simla, during the rainy season, is no fit place for anyone who specially dislikes an atmosphere resembling that of a very damp cellar. In the course of June, therefore, under Dr. Grant's strong persuasion, Dalhousie DALHOUSIE ON THE MABCH. 79 withdrew to the loftier slopes of Chini in the Kanavvar district, which borders on Tibet. Here, at a height of 9,000 feet above the sea, he dwelt for three months under almost cloudless skies, in a land covered with vineyards, near the stream of the Upper Satlaj, where it foams along between dark cliffs 1,500 feet high. Whether at Simla or at Chini, he gave himself little rest from the toil which his strong sense of duty, and the pride he took in mastering every detail of the matter in hand, alike urged him, in spite of bodily pain and weakness, to undergo. Leaving Simla again in November, he spent the cold season in marching all about the Punjab, visiting in turn most of the chief towns and new stations between the Satlaj and the Khaibar, receiving a large gathering of wild hill-chiefs at Peshawar, inspecting the salt-mines of Kalabagh on the Indus, and seeing for himself what im- provements were going forward under the new rule. Amonor those who attended the darbar at Wazirabad was the Rajah Gulab Singh of Jammu, whom Hardinge's policy had raised in 1846 to the throne of Kashmir. In the course of his interview with Hardinge's successor 'the wily old Rajput caught up the skirt of Dalhousie's coat, and cried out in tones of manifest sincerity, "Thus do I grasp the skirts of the British Government, and I will never let go my hold." Marching back from Jhilam. in the spring of 1851, by way of Sialkot and Kangra, Dalhousie arrived once more at his summer capital in May. Tliat year his health 80 LIFE OF THE MARQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. was so much improved that he went no further than Mahasu for a few weeks' change of air. There were some hasty critics who looked upon his recent wanderings as so much waste of time and energy. One clever journalist twitted him with '' a restless activity of motion resembling that of the squirrel in his cage, rapid but useless." According to the same writer, he " has traversed the empire from one extremity to the other, but has achieved nothing." Such random guesses fell as wide of the mark, as did Napier's estimate of Dalhousie's intellect as remarkable only for cleverness in catching up small things " which he should leave to his shoes." Others, with little more justice, murmured at the delay in ordaining this or that measure of long-desired reform. To the bulk, however, of the Anglo-Indian public, Dalhousie was already revealing himself as a ruler worthy to stand beside the greatest of his forerunners. In the India of those days a Governor-General soon stamped his own character on every branch of the ad- ministration. His countrymen knew from many sure tokens that Dalhousie would be master in his own govern- ment ; that his published minutes alone proved him fully capable of dealing with great questions in his own way ; that wherever he went, the best part of his time was devoted solely to the public service, and to the furtherance of well-considered schemes for the general good. Work- ing always ohne Hast, ohne Bast, he displayed not the fruitless activity of the squirrel, but the patient, systematic industry of the ant. THE TBEE-PLANTING MINUTE. 81 One of those clear, weighty, well- worded minutes by which he sometimes took the world, as it were, into his confidence, was penned in February of this year for the special guidance of the Punjab Board, and appeared a few months later in all the leading journals of British India. This document was in itself a sufficient answer to the squirrel theory. Speaking of his recent travels through the Punjab, the writer calls the Board's attention to a matter which especially struck himself. *'I refer to the almost total absence of forest trees, and even of fruit trees and of bushes ; leaving the whole territory one continuous stretch of unrelieved plain, neither adorned by the foliage which is its natural ornament, nor stocked with the timber requisite for a thousand purposes in the every- day life of the people who dwell in it." Some remedy should at once be found for so manifest an evil, the cause of which " certainly is not to be traced to any natural unfitness of the soil for producing forest and fruit trees, in any part of the country which is not actually desert." In certain districts there are very fine timber trees, and mango groves " not surpassed by any which I have yet noticed in the older provinces." The rapid growth of the trees but lately planted in gardens and military stations " shows clearly that the soil, with a little care, is a grateful one ; and that there is all the encourao-e- ment to a planter, which the rapid progress of his work and an early return for his labours are calculated to afford." The Governor-General proceeds to show how seriously G 82 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. ■-ii this dearth of wood affects the comfort and well-behig ; of all classes in the province, increasing the cost of fuel, of building, of the public works ; encouraging the ex- tortions of native princes ; marring the natural healthiness ! of the climate, and driving the peasantry to burn as fuel ; the dung which might else go to fertilise the soil. The cost of wood fuel " forms comparatively a small item in the expenditure of officers and others whose salaries are ample ; but its scarcity produces a serious and injurious ; drain on the seven rupees a month of the Sepoy, and the \ still smaller pittances on which other classes in can- 1 tonments and cities are obliged to eke out a pinched subsistence." 1 In the matter of remedies for such evils, the Govern- ment, he thinks, should enlist the co-operation of the people themselves, by taking counsel with the village - elders on the best way of planting certain portions of the villasre lands. At the same time the Board could beo^in working towards the same ends by planting the banks of ] the Bari Doab and other canals, as well as the great lines : of road, with quick-growing shady trees ; " and wherever a dak-bungalow, or public building, or a chokee (police station) is erected, there, unless a space be wanting, should trees be planted." Towards the creation of fuel preserves a beginning might be made by planting some of the grass-lands around Lahore and Sialkot with such of the jungle bushes as would serve best for the growth of copse. " Few of us," concluded Dalhousie, ^' will gather the I TEE AGBICULTUBAL SOCIETY. 83 fruit where now we plant. But if we succeed in framing this design and advance it in some degree towards com- pletion, we may at least enjoy the satisfaction of feeling that we shall leave behind us an heritage for which posterity will be grateful." Such were the closing words of a State paper which reveals not only the range of Dalhousie's practical knowledge, but the breadth and depth of his sympathies with the people in whose behalf he spoke. The Marquis of Tweeddale had applauded the selection of his son-in-law for the Indian post on the ground of his being " a first-rate farmer ; " and such, among other things, the progress of this great experiment showed him to be. The Punjab Board answered his call to action by planting a million of young trees around Lahore and in the plains adjacent, forming nurseries, supplying the peasantry with seeds and cuttings, belting the'' roads with verdure, and covering broad tracts of meadow-land with the promise of future firewood. With his help in advice and money, the Agricultural Society of the Punjab pushed their researches, schemes, experiments in every direction. They showed the pea- santry how to till their fields to the best advantage, both for themselves and the State. New kinds of timber were imported into the province. Cotton, sugar-cane, flax, tobacco, and root crops took the place of less serviceable growths. Tea-gardens began to flourish on the Kangra and Marri hillsides. A flock of choice rams, imported from Sydney, gave a strong impulse to the production of wool for export. Silk culture was for the first time g2 84 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSTE. started in a land where mulberry trees abound. The Board itself made noteworthy efforts to improve the existing breeds of horses and cattle, and it drew, as it were, the first sketch for that system of forest conservancy which has since been completely organised for the whole of India. An event which happened in the spring of this year, 1851, deserves notice in connection with the new system of trial by jury in a Company's Court. Lalla Joti Parsad, the great contractor, who had fed our armies, often at his own expense, in all the campaigns of the last decade, w^as tried before the Sessions Judge of Agra on various charges of peculation and fraud. John Lang, a clever barrister, and the wittiest of Anglo-Indian journalists, conducted the defence. His quips, jests, and sarcasms amused the public at the expense of all concerned in the criminal prosecution of a man so worthy, it seemed, of a very different reward. After a trial prolonged through twelve days, a mixed jury of British subjects acquitted the prisoner on the leading charges, and the rest were speedily withdrawn. An official inquiry ere long confirmed the substantial justice of the verdict. The prosecution was a blunder, for which Thomason who ordered, and Dalhousie who sanctioned it, were in some measure no doubt to blame. If the Lalla's accounts were not absolutely faultless, the Government still owed him a large sum for unpaid advances. The result, how- ever, went far to atone for the previous indiscretion. In spite of Lang's jibes and jeers, it showed that a Company's ONE YEAR'S WOBK 85 jury could do substantial justice to a native gentleman arraigned by a Company's prosecutor before a Company's judge. And it gave Dalhousie a powerful lever for those reforms which made the Indian Commissariat equal to any in the world. The summer of 1851 was the last which Dalhousie was to spend in the Simla Hills. By this time his " Koman hand " had traced out a brilliant record of administrative progress. His very travels in quest of health were marked by unsparing devotion to public business. By sheer might of genius and a resolute will he achieved results which astonished even those who were least aware of his bodily sufferings. In one year only, 1850, he had ordained or sanctioned a long list of measures for improving the State machinery, for removing the burdens on trade, and furthering the social and industrial progress of the whole country. All the old transit and frontier duties were swept away, the coasting trade of India was thrown open, the works on the Ganges Canal, the Bari Doab Canal, and the great highway from Delhi to Lahore and Peshawar were pushed forward as fast as the funds at his command permitted ; steamers were plying upon the Indus, and a railway line from Bombay to Tanna was actually begun. Small-cause courts were opened in the Presidency towns. An experimental "lightning-post," as the natives called the electric telegraph, was laid down between Calcutta and Kedgeree. New barracks on a larger and healthier scale were ordered, and other measures taken for improving the comfort or the health of the European troops. 86 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF BALHOUSIE. Dalhousie's care for the white soldiers, who form the nucleus of British power in India, extended to the smallest details, such as the furnishing of their barrack-rooms with punkahs and punkah-coohes, and the employment of commissariat cattle to fill the regimental baths. Some of his shortest Minutes were among the most characteristic. In the course of 1852, the magistrate of Patna had brought to his notice one of those plots in which the Wahabi Mussulmans of that city are mixed up with a band of Moslem fanatics in the distant hills of Sitana and Swat. Some years earlier, these Puritans of Islam had been found tampering with our Sepoys in the height of the first Sikh war, and now they were caught plotting with refugees and fanatics beyond the Punjab border. In his Minute of September, the Governor-General owns that the party in Sitana are "doing their best to induce the Mussulmans in India to join in a holy war. They have been doing so for years, and the letters now detected seem to me to show that their efforts have met with very little success. They ask for money, they ask for arms and recruits, and the terms in which they write seem to me conclusive of the ftict that they have obtained very little of the one and very few of the other." That letters have passed between them and the Patna Wahabis, and that recruits from Patna have joined the Ghazi colony at Sitana, he takes for proven. He himself has seen " a sort of ballad which has been printed at Calcutta, invoking all true Mussulmans to join the standard of the faith and THE PATNA WAHABIS. 87 rise against the infidel." But Dalhousie was not the man to tremble at every shadow. He would neither ignore nor magnify the seeming danger. The Wahabis of Patna were few in number, and he saw "no reason to suppose that there is any more movement or intrigue at present going on than must at all times be expected among the Mussulmans in India." Nevertheless, the matter, though seemingly insignificant, demanded careful watching. He bade the magistrate of Patna keep his eye on all suspected persons, and frustrate their evil designs by means of the law, which, he remarked, was " amply sufficient for the purpose." Similar instruc- tions were issued to the Lahore Board. No leniency was to be shown to proved offenders, especially those convicted of plots against the Government whose salt they were still eating. In another Minute he gives the Board a few plain and pithy directions for dealing with those concerned in such plots. The ringleaders should be duly brought to trial, but the minor culprits " may be dismissed with a warning," and in some cases perhaps on bail. He objects to police surveillance, as a likely source of grievous oppression. "The thanks of the Government may be given to Mr. Carnac for his vigilance and his exertions. I see no necessity for strewing about more thanks than this." As for attacking the Sitana fanatics, he repeats that, " since they are insignificant, they may be let alone as long as they are quiet. At any rate, this is not a propitious time for such a movement. We have already irons enough 88 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. in the fire on the north-west frontier without heating another unnecessarily." That year, indeed, had been marked by frequent fighting between our troops and the robber-tribes along the Punjab frontier. In those days a raid from one side was generally followed by a punitive raid from the other, which resulted in the burning of several villages and the shedding of more or less blood. " These border raids," wrote Dalhousie, in 1856, " must for the present be viewed as events inseparable from the state of society which for centuries past has existed among the mountain tribes." The recourse to armed reprisals was taken only when all milder means of gaining redress for deeds of outrage and murder had been tried in vain. In every case, according to Sir R. Temple, the chastisement of a guilty tribe served to deter them from further outrages, and inclined them to live at peace with a neighbour whose arm was so very long. The results of Dalhousie's labours in the field of legislation will be set forth in another chapter. In 1851, he took up the great question of postal reform, which the Court of Directors had at length empowered him to work out according to his own ideas. At the same time he was carefully shaping out and discussing with the powers at home his plans for covering India with many thousand miles of railway and telegraph lines. From Simla also he watched the growing disorders in Oudh and the Deccan with an impatience heightened , by the reports received from his political agents. For the present he contented ANOTHER WAB IMMINENT. 89 himself with warning the reckless ruler of Oudh to mend his ways while there was yet time. To the Nizam himself he wrote a letter, demanding the cession of Berar, in payment of his long-standing debt to the Indian Govern- ment. After holding State darbars at Kalka and Pinjore, the great Marquis left Simla in November, marched across the Hills to Mussoorie, and pursued his way through the wooded valley of Dhera to the plains about Rurki, where stood the great aqueduct built by Major Cautley to receive the head- waters of the Ganges Canal. From Rurki he passed onwards through the fertile province of Eohilkhand, to Cawnpore and Benares. Leaving Lady Dalhousie to go leisurely down the Ganges, he himself hastened on to Calcutta, where he arrived before the end of January, 1852, only to find himself placed on the very brink of a Burmese war. '•' Of all the Eastern nations with which the Government of India has had to do, the Burmese " — wrote Dalhousie — " were the most arrogant and overbearing." For more than twenty years past they had steadily broken every pledge contained in the Treaty of Yandabu. A series of petty annoyances had driven our envoys away from the court of Ava. A few years later our Commercial Agent was worried into leaving his post at Rangoon. Things went on from bad to worse, until in 1851 two British merchants were imprisoned without trial, and heavily fined for offences of w^hich they were altogether guiltless, A petition from the European traders at Rangoon bore 90 LIFE OF THE 3IARQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. to Calcutta one long tale of insult and outrage inflicted by Burmese officers and underlings. Mindful of Lord Wellesley's maxim, that an insult offered to the British flag at the mouth of the Ganges, should be resented as promptly and fully as an insult offered at the mouth of the Thames, Dalhousie demanded a fair compensation for British losses, and called upon the Burman Government to remove the Governor of Rangoon, and receive a British Aorent either at Rancroon or Ava. Evasions and insults were the only answers thus far accorded to his just demands. On January 6th, 1852, British envoys were kept waiting to no purpose in the sun outside the Governor's Palace at Rangoon. Pending an apology for this crowning insult, Commodore Lambert seized a king's ship lying in the river, and declared a blockade of the Burmese ports. Instead of an apology the Governor replied by accusing of drunkenness and false witness the officers who had come to wait upon him with his own consent. Dalhousie's forbearance was not yet exhausted. For some months past he had striven his best to avert the issue which Burmese arrogance was forcing upon him. War was the last thing which a ruler of his enlightened views and humane ambitions could desire. He had tried all peaceful means of obtaining bare redress for wrongs done to peaceful British subjects by Burmese officers ; but his demands had been met only by fresh provocations. Still pointing out to the Burmese Government an easy way of escape from the fate of their own seeking, the Governor- DALHOUSIE PEEP ABES FOB WAB, 91 General at length prepared for war. His Minute of February 12th reviewed the progress of the quarrel, and set forth the reasons for his appeal to arms. The Government, he argued, could not afford to *' appear for one day in an attitude of inferiority," nor hope to maintain peace and submission among its own subjects, if it gave countenance, even for one 'day " to a doubt of the absolute superiority of its arms, and of its continued resolution to maintain it." In the spirit of these brave words Dalhousie buckled to a task of no common difficulty. Rangoon must be taken within three months' time, before the rains set in. His Commander-in-Chief, Sir William Gomm, was far away in Sind. He resolved to become his own AVar- Minister. Never since Lord Wellesley's time, says Marshman, " had such a display of superb energy been witnessed in India." Dalhousie's skill in oraanisinH" warfare amidst trying conditions would have done no discredit to Carnot or Wellington. No fear of responsi- bility, no regard for official punctilio was allowed to stand in his way. The Bombay Government at once acted on the instructions sent from Calcutta. He exacted a tardy compliance with his orders from the recalcitrant Governor of Madras. The 38th Bengal Sepoys refused to cross '' the dark water." A regiment of Sikhs, who had no caste scruples on that point, readily took their place. The Tenasserim province was nearly drained of live stock, and other requisites for an army in the field. Wooden huts for the troops, with carpenters to set them up, were ordered 92 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. from Mcaulmain, and bakehouses erected along the Tenasserim coast. Nothing, in short, was wanting that foresight could devise, and prompt energy aided by a full purse could make ready betimes against the coming struorale. Meanwhile, Dalhousie persevered in his efforts to win by peaceful means the redress which Burmese insolence still perversely refused. The King of Ava was required to disavow the acts of his deputy at Rangoon, to remove that officer from his post, and to make due apology for past offences. The demand for compensation was now raised from ten thousand rupees to a hundred thousand pounds. When the King complied with all these terras, and agreed to receive a British Resident at Rangoon, the blockade of his ports should be withdrawn, and peace re-established between the two powers. If these con- ditions were not accepted before April 1st, war would certainly ensue. By the end of March a powerful fleet, bearing a small but well-appointed army, was speeding across the Bay of Bengal. On April 2nd, a Burman battery firing on the little Proserpine, as she steamed up the Rangoon river under a flag of truce, announced the opening of the Second Burmese War. On Sunday, the 14th, after the fleet had silenced the river batteries, Godwin's soldiers stormed the Great Pagoda of Rangoon. With the capture of Bassein in May, the whole Burman sea-board passed into our keeping. Before the year's end our troops were virtual masters of Pegu. MASTEBLY ABBANGEMENTS. 93 Throughout this period Dalhousie's guiding hand was always visible. His secret orders to General Godwin — than which, says Arnold, nothing could be " more masterly in grasp, more prescient, or more practical " — mapped out clearly and precisely the course which Godwin was to follow, so far as circumstances might allow. That Kangoon and Martaban should be taken with the least possible delay, and firmly held under all difficulties and dangers, was a point on which he laid particular stress. " With a nation so ridiculously, but mischievously conceited andv arrogant," as the Burmese, no other course could well be adopted. In view of the sickness which had wasted our troops in the first Burmese War, the holding of Kangoon during the rainy season might seem a task of no common hazard. But Dalhousie's provident care for the health and comfort of Godwin's soldiers forbade all special anxiety on this score. Thanks to his precautions aided by Godwin's management, one sadly prominent feature in the campaign of 1825-6, the losses from disease, was nearly absent from the campaign of 1852. In April of this year the Governor-General sent off' his ailing wife, under Dr. Grant's care, to Ceylon, where she was to spend some months in the hill climate of Newera Ellia. He himself fought through the hot season in Calcutta until July, when he crossed over in the Feroze to Eangoon. There, in the first days of August, he found our troops in good health, well-housed, well- fed, eager for the long-expected march to Prome. He held Godwin fully justified in standing fast during the 94 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. rainy season, but pressed upon him the need of moving forward in October, lleturning presently to Calcutta, he hurried on the despatch of reinforcements from Bengal and Madras, and awaited the final sanction of the India House to his plans for punishing the Burmese. The answer from the India House untied his hands. From the first he had held that " conquest in Burmah would be a calamity second only to the calamity of war." But the war since forced upon him involved only a choice of evils, and the least of those evils he found in the ultimate conquest of Pegu. In no other way, he argued, could the friendly people of Pegu, who asked only to be rid of their present masters, be insured against those savage reprisals from the like of which they had suffered after the first Burmese War. And the advantages, political and commercial, of such a course would speedily outweigh the drawbacks incident to any extension of the Company's frontiers. The Court of Directors, in their reply, allowed that the possession of Pegu might seem rather a choice of evils than ''a positive and unmixed good." But they agreed in thinking that such an issue would be best alike for England and the people of Pegu. " It may be doubted indeed " — they wrote — " whether the relations even now established between you and that people have not already imposed upon you the obligation of pro- tecting them." Dalhousie, therefore, was free to consider the annexation of Pegu as " the just and necessary result of the war he had been driven to wage." Thus supported by the powers at home, Dalhousie DALHOUSIE CUTS THE KNOT 95 hastened to carry out the policy which his own judgment and the force of circumstances ahke enjoined. There was no need as things stood to prolong the war by marching on the Burmese capital, if the friendly province of Pegu could be held safely by a British garrison. '' To march to Ava," he wrote to a friend, ^Svill give no peace unless the army remain at Ava ; in other words, unless we absorb the whole Burmese Empire. That necessity may come some day. I sincerely hope it will not come in my day."* With the capture of Prome in October, we had £:ained command of the frontier between Peo^u and Upper Burmah, and nothing remained for us but to keep firm hold of the ground already won. To obtain from Burmah "both adequate compensation for past injury and the best security against future danger," had from the first been Dalhousie's one end and purpose. How could that purpose be better fulfilled, than by keeping possession of a province whose people everywhere greeted us as friends, and besought us to deliver them from the crushing yoke of their merciless Burman lords ? Humanity alone would almost have justified the course which Dalhousie elected to pursue. On December 11th, Godwin once more started from Eangoon, to relieve the little garrison which, under Major Hill, was bravely holding the town of Pegu against assailants who pressed him very hard. It gladdened Dalhousie's heart to hear of the brilliant service done by his favourite Sikhs in the fight and subsequent pursuit of 96 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. the routed foe. "I hope," he had written earlier to Godwin — " the Sikhs will please you if they get a chance, and do honour to me who recommended them. ... I think they v;ill go a-head. Lord help the Burmese that come across them if they do, for they are bloody fellows." In the latter part of December, after Godwin's return to Rangoon, the fairest province in the Burman Empire was placed by proclamation under British rule. The Peguers were bidden thankfully to accept the yoke of a master at once strong, just, and merciful. When the last of the Burmese troops had been chased over the new frontier, the Indian Government would consider the war as ended. Captain Arthur Phayre, already known as a successful administrator in Arakan, was made Com- missioner of Pegu, while the Martaban district was handed over to the Commissioner of Tenasserim, Colonel Bogle. No formal treaty with the King of Burmah confirmed our title to the new conquest. Dalhousie's efforts to that end were foiled in April and May, 1853, by the steady refusal of Burmese envoys to sign aw^ay their master's j rights over any part of his dominions. The Governor- General cut the knot without more ado. In his minute of the previous November, he had urged upon the India Board the policy of holding the ground already won, without seeking for the formal sanctions of a treaty which, he felt certain, would be " of no more value than the reed with which it is written." As the Board still wished PEGU ANNEXED. 97 him at least to attempt the process of negotiation, he had loyally complied with their request. But Burmese ob- stinacy left him free to carry out his first intentions. The war by this time was virtually over. His proclama- tion of June 30th announced the renewal of peace, the raising of the river blockade, and the desire of the Indian Government for friendly intercourse with that of Burmah. The army of Ava was therefore broken up ; and thus ended a war which, at a cost of less than two millions, threw into the Company's hands a goodly province, des- tined ere long to pay more than its own expenses, and peopled by a race of peaceful husbandmen and traders, whose loyalty to their new masters was to abide unshaken throughout the troubles of 1857. The filling up of the British sea- board from Arakan to Maulmain, and the open- ing of the broad Irrawaddy to foreign trade, were results which readily commended themselves to the nation at large. In answer to the strictures published at the time by Eichard Cobden, it is enough to say that the Peguers had annexed themselves to British rule before Dalhousie made up his mind to occupy their country. The Governor- General for his part could afford to smile at critics who denounced his policy as a crime. "The British nation " — he quietly remarked to a friend — "will one day^find that Pegu pays, and the crime of having placed it under British protection will be condoned." How well the new province has paid, how steadily it has prospered under our rule, is already a commonplace of Indian history. Throughout these transactions nothing' stands out H 98 LIFE OF TEE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. clearer than the masterly common-sense which inspired Dalhousie's aims and carried his designs to a prosperous issue. There is no reason whatever to suppose that he intended from the first to annex Pegu. Satisfaction for the past and security for the future were the objects which guided his action from first to last. For these ends he would have been content, on the failure of more peaceful means, to occupy two Burman ports as a guarantee for the payment of a moderate fine. Burmese obstinacy marked out for him the course which he afterwards followed in furtherance of his original design. The fruits of his own foresight, combined with favouring circumstances, gave to that design a wider development, and enabled him to close a short but successful war by a measure which justified itself to all competent and impartial critics. Dalhousie saw clearly what duty, justice, and expediency alike bade him do, and he did it thoroughly without regard for vain forms and conventions, at the least possible outlay of money and human life. To have carried on the war for the chance of extorting an illusive treaty from a wily and barbarous monarch, would have involved a cruel sacrifice of life and money for no countervailing good. Treaty or no treaty, Dalhousie was not the man to yield up to its late masters a province whose people were eager to help and fight for us against ^tyrants of their own race. i i ( 99 ) CHAPTER VI. PUBLIC SERVICES AND PRIVATE SORROWS. 1853-1854. Prosperity in the Punjab — Friction between the Lawrences — Sir Henry Lawrence offered the Political agency in Rajputana — His consequent mortification — John Lawrence appointed Chief Com- missioner — His work — Reynell Taylor — Death of Mackeson — Appointment of Edwardes as Commissioner of Peshawar — Treaty with Dost Mohammad — Death of Sir Henry Elliot — Dalhousie's yoyages — Death of Lady Dalhousie — Appointment of Outram to Baroda — Institution of cheap postage — Inaugu- ration of Indian railways — The guarantee system and broad gauge — He discountenances the atmospheric principle — Establish- ment of the telegraph — Its use during the Crimean War and the Mutiny — The Ganges Canal — Irrigation works and steamers — Construction of hill-roads — A port and floating bridge for Cal- cutta — Inefficiency of the Military Board— Establishment of the Department of Public Works— Renewal of the Company's charter — The new Legislative Council — Visit to the shrine of Jagannath — Ill-health of Lord Dalhousie — His determination to finish his work. In the beginning of 1853,* while Dalhousie was in Calcutta, a change, which he had long deemed inevitable, took place in the government of the Punjab. By that time the Land of the Five Kivers had fairly earned its * He had just succeeded the Duke of Wellington as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, H 2 100 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. right to be called a model province. A year earlier, the Lahore Board had declared that " in no part of India had there been more perfect quiet than in the territories lately annexed." Favouring seasons had largely aided the Lawrence brothers in the great work of transformation which Dalhousie had committed to their hands. Three years of wise, just, mild, yet energetic rule, had raised the youngest of our Indian provinces to a level with Bengal or Bombay. Dalhousie, indeed, in his Minute of May, 1853, could " boldly affirm that life and property are now, and have for some time been, more secure within the bounds of the Punjab, which we have held only for four years, than they are in the province of Bengal, which has been ours for very nearly a century." In forwarding to the India House the Board's detailed report for the first three years — " an able, clear, full, and most interesting document" — he dwelt with just complacency on the financial issues of his great experiment. In those three years the Punjab had yielded to the Imperial revenues a net surplus of about £400,000 a year. But the little rift within the lute had meanwhile been growing wider. The friction between Henry and John Lawrence on some points of public policy began, in 1852, to hinder the due workhig of the State machine. The very depth of their brotherly feelings served to embitter their official disagreements. To their common friend and colleague, Eobert Montgomery, each confided his grievances against the other. Henry complained that John was always thwarting him in little questions of FBICTION AT LAEOBE. 101 patronage and preferment, besides daily vexing him by his way of dealing with pensioners and jagirdars. John, for his part, referred in self-defence to the heavy work which Henry's ill-health, his long and frequent tours, and his impatience of details, had thrown from the first upon his own shoulders. He had yielded many a point to Henry against his own convictions, " but found it did little good." If ever they difi'ered openly on any subject, Henry was sure to take offence. For some time Montgomery, in his own words, " served as a regular buffer between two high-pressure engines." But, as the year 1852 wore on, his task became more and more impossible. At last each of the brothers separately offered to resign his post. This gave Dalhousie the opportunity for which he had long been waiting. He himself had not been sparing of good advice, frankly offered in a kindly spirit, to both disputants alike. But when he found that these " dif- ferences of opinion were becoming more frequent and more acrid," and that public business was being hindered by the very desire of each to " avoid cause for engaging in them," he resolved, on fit occasion, to take the step which he had officially foretokened. The Lahore Board had splendidly answered its framer's purposes, and so long as Sir Henry held on to his post, the Governor-General would not think of disturbing him. But the case was altered now that Sir Henry had of his own motion desired to go. The time had come for placing the Punjab under a Chief Commissioner, who should also be " a thoroughly 102 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALEOUSIE. trained, and experienced civil officer." In the letter from which these words are quoted, Dalhousie proposed to transfer Sir Henry as Political Agent to Eajputana, on the same high salary as he was then drawing at Lahore. It was natural that Sir Henry should wince under the blow he had thus invited. He felt as one who had been taken too literally at his word. As for replacing him by a trained civilian, had not he himself in twenty-one years undergone a thorough training for any civil post? To some of his friends he complained of the scant courtesy with which he had been treated, even after Dalhousie had assured him of his perfect freedom to go or stay. For the sake of peace, however, he was ready to make way for his brother, who, next to himself, was far the fittest man in India for the post of Chief Commissioner. Sir Henry in short felt, in his own words, "deeply mortified," and therefore showed himself more or less unreasonable. Dalhousie, for his part, had always treated him with the most courteous forbearance, even when his own temper must have been most sorely tried by his subaltern's readiness to misunderstand him. In his long private letter of December, 1852, there is not a word at which Sir Henry in cold blood could have taken just ofience. Dalhousie never dealt in superlatives, but he said enough to show the high value he set upon Sir Henry's services, and the care he took to do nothing which might needlessly wound the other's feelings, or in the least discredit his public position. Sir Henry himself, a few weeks later, owned to having misread the Governor- JOEN LAWBENGE BEIGNS ALONE. 103 General's meaning, and declared himself ready to set out at once for Kajputana. Before the end of January, 1 853, his sorrowing face and gaunt figure had passed away for ever from Lahore. In February, John Lawrence saw himself gazetted Chief Commissioner for the Punjab, with Montgomery and Macleod for his chief assessors in the departments of justice and finance. Sir Henry's feelings on this occasion were embittered by the out-spoken sympathy of many warm friends, who revered and loved him as their common father. It was inevitable that he and they should wax wroth against him who had thus favoured the younger, at the expense of the elder and more popular brother. But, in common fairness alike to Lord Dalhousie and John Lawrence, it must be allowed, with Sir Henry's biographer, Herman Merivale, that the Governor-Greneral, lookino^ at thino^s from his own stand-point, could not have acted otherwise than he did. He was responsible for the government of the Punjab. He was free, in effect, to choose his own instruments for carrying out the policy of his own preferring. He may have moved too fast in some directions to please the lieutenant whom he had placed at the head of affkirs. But the lieutenant's relations with his chief had been severely strained Sir Henry, in his biographer's words, '* had long regarded Lord Dalhousie as his enemy." A good deal of the work which he had been set to do had fallen in fact upon John's shoulders. By his own admission, the time had come when either he or his brother must leave the Punjab. Both the brothers had 104 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. offered to retire. Henry himself had thus given Dalhousie the opening for which the latter would else have waited some time longer. What then could Dalhousie do but accept Sir Henry's resignation, abolish the Board, which had served its purpose as an useful makeshift, and place the Punjab under a single ruler whose ideas were more in harmony with his own ? The new Chief Commissioner was soon to make it clear that the Punjab had lost nothing by the change in its government. On the foundations he had helped to lay John Lawrence in the next few years was to build up a fabric which stood unshaken by the great hurricane of the Sepoy Mutiny. Those four years, said Herbert Edwardes John's right-hand man in 1857, " were years of herculean labour, not only to the Chief Commissioner, but to every man under him, high or low We doubt if India has ever seen a province with a civil government so strong, so simple, so wise, so moderate, so pure, so good to live under, as that of the Punjab. Honour, all honour to coachman John ; and honour, too, to the team which pulled the coach ! " To all the good work done or under- taken in three of those four years, Dalhousie gave a watchful, active, unflagging support. With John Lawrence he could always discuss affairs by letter with the perfect freedom of an intimate friend, who had no need to pick his phrases any longer. Nor did John Lawrence fail thankfully to acknowledge his great master's helping hand in all the measures which glorified his own rule. \ A COMPLIMENTABY MINUTE. 105 To the President and members of the defunct Board Dalhousie rendered full justice in his minute of May, 1853. **I desire, on my own part," he wrote, "to record in the most emphatic manner an acknowledgment of the obligations of the Government of India to those distinguished ofl&cers, and its admiration of the ability, the energy, the judgment and indefatigable devotion with which they discharged the onerous and responsible duties entrusted to them, and of which I have been for several years a close and grateful observer. I request them to receive the most marked assurance of the cordial approbation and thanks of the Governor- General in Council, and at the same time I beg leave to commend them to the favour and consideration of the Honourable Court." If he could be very stern towards an officer who shirked his duty, or showed himself in any way unfit for his post, Dalhousie knew how and when to bestow heart-felt praise on those who really deserved it. He may have erred with the best intentions in removing the brilliant Captain Hodson from his place of honour in the Punjab, on evidence afterwards shown to be one-sided. But nothing could have been more kindly or gracefully worded than the letter he wrote, in 1852, to Major Reynell Taylor, when " the Bayard of the Punjab " was about to exchange his duties on the frontier for a well-earned furlough to England.* "My dear Taylor, — The power of encouraging and rewarding such men as yourself is one of the few things which make the labour and anxiety of ruling men in some degree bearable. I have seen your progress with great satisfaction. I earnestly hope you may have future opportunities for gaining distinction which you are so fitted to win. Farewell, my dear Taylor. Always yours sincerely, " Dalhousie." * Gambler Parry's Life of EeyneU Taylor. 106 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. When Taylor returned to India in 1855, he found his old patron ready to serve him as far as he could. His old appointment in the Derajat had meanwhile been handed over to the high-souled John Nicholson. But the command of the Guide Corps had just then fallen vacant, and Taylor received the offer of that coveted post until something else should turn up. " I am heartily glad " — wrote his old Chief — " to get you back again ; and you may be assured I have not forgotten your claims nor will lose sight of your interests." In the following year, Taylor reappeared as a civil officer at Sialkot, and in 1857, became Deputy Commissioner of Kangra, where he kept good watch and ward during the troubles of that stormy year. The death of Colonel Mackeson by the knife of an Afghan assassin, in September, 1853, struck Dalhousie with a chill of genuine sorrow for the loss not only of a distinguished officer, but of a dear and valued friend. The death of such a man, said Dalhousie in a General Order, "would have dimmed a victory." As chief as- sistant to George Clerk at Peshawar, in the first Afghan war, Mackeson had shown a marked capacity for political work under trying conditions. In 1848, Dalhousie had selected him for special service with Lord Gough's Army of the Punjab.. When the Punjab was annexed, he took care to reserve a good place for Mackeson in the new Government. In the summer of 1850, Mackeson suc- ceeded George Lawrence as Commissioner of Peshawar. The blow which prematurely closed his career opened EDWAMDES AND DOST MOHAMMAD. 107 to his successor, Herbert Edwardes, the road to achieve- ments yet more splendid than any which then seemed within his reach. It was part of the new Commissioner's duties to keep watch and report on all matters beyond the Punjab frontier. Hitherto, Dalhousie had been content to let the Afghans severely alone, to ignore them as possible factors in his foreign policy. His views on this point accorded with those of John Lawrence, who had never forgotten the disastrous follies of the first Afghan war. When the Khan of Khokan, in 1854, besought our help against the Russians, Lawrence, with Dalhousie's full consent, replied in the negative. With regard to so near a neighbour as Dost Mohammad, however, Edwardes held it best to overlook past offences, and treat the Amir as a possible friend, in view of the turn which affairs were already taking in Persia. In the course of 1854, Edwardes learned that Dost Mahommad was ready, on the least encouragement, to hold out the hand of friendship to his former foes. John Lawrence shook his head at the notion of a treaty which would " end in mixing us up in Afghan politics and affairs more than is desirable." Dalhousie, on the other hand, deemed it " most desirable, but most difficult to bring about." With a wise trust in Edwardes's skill and prudence, he left him free to carry on the negotiations which resulted in the Treaty of March, 1855, that bound the wily old Amir to be *' the friend of our friends and the enemy of our enemies." He also proposed that the treaty should be signed by its real author. It 108 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALH0U8IE. was only at Edwardes's own request, that the honour designed for him was transferred to John Lawrence, who, in a private letter to his subaltern, declared that " all the merit of the affair, whatever it may be, is yours." The great Marquis had lately lost another of his right- hand men, by the death, in 1853, of his chief Secretary, the bright and gifted Sir Henry Elliot. It was he who, under Dalhousie's guidance, had drafted the set of in- structions on which the Lawrence brothers built up the government of the Punjab. In the ranks of the Bengal Civil Service, there were few whose character stood so high as Henry Elliot's, when Lord Hardinge selected him, after long and careful enquiry, for the important post of Foreign Secretary to his Government. Hardinge's suc- cessor had soon found him worthy of the utmost con- fidence and esteem. Sir Henry's tact in dealing with the native princes often soothed them into ready com- pliance with the great Lord Sahib's plain-spoken demands. His fine social qualities made him an ornament of Dalhousie's private circle, while the depth and breadth of his Oriental learning, as shown in his great work on the Mohammedan historians of India, won him a high place among the foremost scholars of his day. He died at the Cape in his forty-sixth year, at the moment when Dalhousie had selected him to fill Thomason's place at Agra. In February, 1853, Dalhousie left Calcutta for a voyage along the wooded coasts of Arakan. Some days were usefully spent in visiting the chief places and ports on that side of the Bay of Bengal, from Chittagong to DEATH OF LADY DALHOUSIE. 109 Akyab and Kyuk-phyu. In all such excursions his quick eye and fruitful brain helped each other in pointing out new fields of usefulness on which his government might begin at least to labour. New surveys, harbour- works, lighthouses, roads, canals, and so forth, were promptly taken in hand after due reckoning up of the probable cost. A part of the Ganges Flotilla was trans- ferred to the Irrawaddy, and a good road was cut through the hills that divide Pegu from Arakan. His next voyage took him, in December, to Rangoon, where he found already abundant tokens of the change from Burman to British rule. After some days of sight- seeing and wholesome talk with Colonel Arthur Phayre, he went up the Irrawaddy under Phayre's guidance, to look in, by the way, at Prome, Meeaday, and Thayat- Myo. From the last-named place he travelled along the northern frontier of his new province, of which formal possession was taken under a royal salute. Returning in January, 1854, from Prome to Rangoon, he sailed along the coast| up the westernmost outlet of the Irra- waddy, to the busy port of Bassein. From thence he pursued his voyage back to Calcutta, full of wise plans for encouraging the trade and promoting the general welfare of Pegu. Between these two visits to the earliest and the latest of our Burman conquests an event had happened which clouded the whole remainder of Dalhousie's life. On May 6th, 1853, Lady Dalhousie breathed her last on board the sailing-ship which was bearing her home. She 110 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. had left her husband early in the year, on a voyage round the Cape, for the one purpose of seeing her children and returning in the next cold season to Calcutta. But the hope she had so long cherished was not to be fulfilled. The poor lady, whose health, it was thought, the long sea-voyage might greatly benefit, suffered from sea- sickness all the way home, and died of sheer exhaustion within sight of our island shores. The first tidings of her death were imparted to her husband by his Military Secretary, Major James Kamsay, on Dalhousie's return home from the customary evening drive along the Course. He fell to the ground as if suddenly stricken dead. From that time forth the sense of his bereavement never left him : the light had fairly gone out of his life. For the first two days he shut himself up alone with his grief. Then he wrote a line to Courtenay, begging only for " work, work," no matter of what kind. For several months he would see no one except on urgent business, and seldom left his room even for a drive. Letters of condolence reached him from the Queen and the Duchess of Wellington; and one most tender and touching letter from his eldest daughter. Lady Susan Ramsay, first taught him, in his own words, that he had "still something left to love." In work, hard work, however, he found his chief solace, until, in January, 1855, Lady Susan came out to cheer his lone- liness and melt the frost from his heart. The sun- shine of that fair young presence — she was then but seventeen years old — played softly about his troubled PBOGBESS OF BAILWAYS. Ill spirit, lighting up the darkness it might not wholly dispel. He was still, by his own confession, " unfit company for any one," when Colonel Ontram called upon him in September. But his zeal for the public service and his helpfulness to officers of approved worth seemed to gain new force and purpose from his private sorrows. He appointed Outram one of his honorary aides, and sent him back as Eesident to Baroda, as soon as the arrangements for transferring that State from the control of the Bombay Government to that of the Governor-General had been completed. The year so fatal to Dalhousie's happiness, proved rich indeed in achievements largely due to his own guiding in- fluence and strength of will. In this year, India, for the first time, received the boon of a cheap, uniform postage, on the lines traced out by William Tayler, Lord Hardinge's Postmaster-General. Thenceforth, a single letter could be sent from Peshawar to Cape Comorin, or from Karachi to Dibrugarh, for half an anna, or three farthings ; while the charge for newspapers was reduced to one anna. To Dalhousie also was mainly owing that reduction of postal rates between any part of India and the British Islands, through which, as he said, " the Scotch recruit at Peshawar could write to his mother at John-o'-Groat's House, and send his letter free for sixpence," the rate theretofore charged between Peshawar and Lahore. In April of the same year, the first section of an Indian railway line was opened for traffic, and 400 people were 112 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. borne along the twenty-four miles from Bombay to Tanna| at the rate of twenty miles an hour. The new mode of travelling rose at once into favour with the natives of Western India. Fifteen months later, trains were running on the Bengal side between Howrah and Hugli, and by the end of 1854 this line was opened as far as Eaniganj. Before that time Dalhousie had won the sanction of the Court of Directors to a large and carefully studied scheme for making 4,000 miles of railway by means of guaranteed \^ companies, "directly but not vexatiously controlled" by the Indian Government. This scheme, as unfolded in his Minute of 1853, one of the most powerful that ever issued even from his powerful pen, mapped out a large preliminary system of trunk lines '' connecting the interior of each | Presidency with its principal port, and connecting the several Presidencies with each other." Every argument that he could think of was brought to bear, in aid of his appeal to the India House, against putting oif an enterprise so fraught with commercial and political advantage to the vast territories placed under his charge. " Great tracts," he wrote, " are teeming with produce they cannot dispose of. Others are scantily bearing what they would carry in abundance, if only it could be conveyed whither it is needed Ships from every part of the world crowd our ports in search of produce which we have, or could obtain in the interior, but which at present we cannot profitably fetch to them." If the Indian Government felt unequal to taking up so large and costly an enterprise on its own occount, it DALEO USIE'S BAIL WA Y SCHEME, 113 might still do much towards drawing private capital and private energy into a country where both were urgently needed. Dalhousie, therefore, proposed to help the pro- moters of Indian railways by a free grant of the necessary land, and by a guarantee of five per cent, interest on all their outlay for a definite term of years. The Court's answer yielded almost everything for which Dalhousie had pleaded ; and he could now rejoice at the prospect of a time not far distant, when the journey from Calcutta to Delhi and Lahore would be reckoned by hours instead of days, when the chief cities of India would be all linked together by iron roads, and " a corps might leave England after the heat of the summer was over, and be quartered before Christmas on the banks of the Satlaj, without any exposure on its way, and with four months before it of the finest climate under the sun." During the next two years, the works and surveys on all the lines then sanctioned went briskly forward. In the course of 1855, nearly 1,400,000 passengers of all castes and creeds travelled over some part of the two hundred miles then opened for traffic. In the last Minute he ever wrote, the Governor-General could say with perfect truth, that the Court of Directors had "every reason to be satisfied with the progress made in the construction of Indian railways since 1849, and with the prospect of future return." If the natives of India were slow to invest their rupees in railway shares, they were quick enough to realise the advantage of cheap travelling at the rate of twenty-five or I 114 LIFE OF TEE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. thirty miles an hour in carriages drawn by the Fire- Horse of the West. Caste-pride forgot itself under the magic of swift locomotion and low fares. Many a Brahman cheerfully took his seat amidst travellers of the lowest caste. Even the Dharma Sablia, the Great Council of Hindu orthodoxy, which had lately pleaded for the re- vival of Sattif decided with one voice that pilgrims might freely travel by rail, instead of trudging piously on foot. In everything connected with the making of railways, the whilom President of the Board of Trade proved the breadth and thoroughness of his researches, the quick, keen play of his mental vision, the' practical soundness of his judgment, and showed the strong self-reliance of a born leader. From the first he saw that something more was needed for the due development of Indian railways, than the mere granting of land to a railway company. Nothing could be done without English capital, and English capital could not then be tempted into such an enterprise without some further guarantee. Happily, Sir James Hogg had become the ruling spirit of the India House, and his suasive pleadings won from his colleagues their final sanction to the guarantee system, under which the 4,000 miles of railway, planned by Lord Dalhousie, were ultimately laid down. The system, as adopted by the Court of Directors, differed sensibly for the worse from that propounded by the Governor-General. The restric- tions which Dalhousie would have placed on the amount of money guaranteed, and on the time during which the BAILWAY GAUGES. 115 guarantee should run, were disallowed by his honourable masters, with results that might have been predicted. On the subject of gauges Dalhousie's decision was not set aside. After full inquiry, and much consultation with merchants, engineers, and other experts, he had selected a gauge of 5 J feet as altogether the most suitable for India's present and future needs. To his thinking, the conditions of an Indian climate, the bulky nature of such goods as grain, wool, and cotton, and the special requirements of military transport, concurred in calling for an adequate breadth of gauge. As the land required for railways would be given over by the Indian Government, the difference in cost between a narrow and a broad-gauge line would count for little compared with the advantages offered by the latter. He held it false economy to start a new railway system on a scale too small for ulterior needs and likelihoods. The wisdom of his views was afterwards called in question ; but time and experience are working steadily on his side. In discussing the numberless details of his great scheme, he set his face against methods and devices which had already been known to fail elsewhere. One of the Bombay engineers proposed to apply the atmospheric principle to the passage of railway trains down the stupendous slopes of the Bore Ghat. Dalhousie could not forget the utter failure of atmospheric lines in England, and " the common spectacle" of carriages on the Croydon line '* standing motionless for want of power to move them." He avowed his '' consternation at the thought " of what might happen I 2 116 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. from a like failure on the Bombay side, '* when a train should be descending the Thall Ghat on a gradient of 1 in 37, with curves of 30 chains radius, for seven miles together." If he rightly understood the proposal sub- mitted to him, he could only say " with complete deference to opinions better than" his own, that according to existing experience this seemed to him " to be a desperate nostrum." The year 1853 saw the practical outcome of Dalhousie's efforts to bind all India together by a girdle of telegraph wires. In the middle of 1852, his detailed scheme for this end was laid before the India House conclave by his trusty envoy, Dr. William O'Shaughnessy. So strong was the influence he had come to wield in that quarter, that the needful sanction was easily secured. For several months O'Shaughnessy busied himself in enlisting work- men and collecting materials for the great undertaking which he himself was to carry through. In November, 1853, the first posts of a telegraph line from Calcutta to Agra were set up. In the following March, a message was flashed from Agra along the completed line to Government House. By the end of January, 1855, the wires had been carried from Agra to Bombay and Atak on the Indus; and from Calcutta to Madras. A year later, O'Shaughnessy could report that 4,000 miles of electric telegraph had been laid down in working order in little more than two years. The difficulties encountered in the making of these lines were, in Dalhousie's own words, " such as have no existence in the civilised and TELE GB APE LINES. 117 cultivated countries of Europe." The wires were carried on bamboo poles, or on pillars of stone and iron, over broad swamps and rocky wastes, through dense and deadly jungles, up wild mountain steeps, across seventy large rivers, at an average cost of little more than £50 a mile. Add to these the difficulties caused by white ants, wild beasts, savage men, a trying climate, by the scarcity of trained workmen, and the failure of old scientific appliances, and Lord Dalhousie might well boast that "the establishment of the electric telegraph in India may / challenge comparison with any public enterprise which has been carried into execution in recent times amonff CD the nations of Europe, or in America itself." For his share in this great achievement O'Shaughnessy was rewarded with a Knighthood of the Bath. Dalhousie resolved that the telegraph should not be treated as a source of surplus revenue to the State. Hardly had the leading lines been opened when their political usefulness was put to a remarkable test. Two regiments of British cavalry were urgently needed for service in the Crimea. The 10th Hussars were then at Puna, and the 12th Lancers at Bangalore. In reply to a message from the Bombay Government all needful instructions were promptly wired back from Calcutta, and an answer arrived in the same evening from Bombay. It took but twelve hours to transact a piece of business which, a year earlier, would have required at least thirty days. The orders telegraphed to Bangalore were carried 118 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. out so promptly that the Lancers reached the coast at Mangalore before the transports were ready to receive them. Thus two splendid regiments, mustering between them 1,300 sabres, were shipped off to the seat of war with a promptitude which earned the cordial thanks of the Home Government. On the very day when Outram took into his own hands the government of Oudh, a line of telegraph from Cawnpore to Lucknow was begun by Dalhousie's orders. In eighteen working days the line was completed, even to the laying of a cable, 6,000 feet long, in the bed of the Ganges. "All well in Oudh" was the message flashed by Outram to Calcutta on the last day of Lord Dalhousie's rule, in reply to the question, " Is all well in Oudh ? " The answer was received in time to greet Lord Canning on his first arrival. Thanks to Dalhousie's foresight, the telegraph averted many a disaster during the mutinies of the following year. It gave John Lawrence and his officers timely notice of the murderous outbreaks at Meerut and Delhi. It enabled Canning to correspond for a time with Henry Lawrence at Lucknow, with John Colvin at Agra, and with Lord Elphinstone at Bombay. It hastened the despatch of Outram's best regiments, on their return from Persia, to the scene of danger in Bengal. Wherever the wires remained intact, it was still possible to thwart the plans of insurgent villagers or mutinous Sepoys. A Knighthood of the Bath had lately been conferred on Colonel Proby Cautley, of the Bengal Artillery, I THE GANGES CANAL, 119 " whose genius designed and whose energy so rapidly completed" that noble work, the Ganges Canal, which Dalhousie described as standing " foremost among all the works of irrigation that the world as yet has ever seen." Its main stream alone, he wrote, in 1856, " nearly equals the aggregate length of the four greatest canals in France. It greatly exceeds all the first-class canals of Holland put together," and its length of 525 miles is " five-fold greater than that of all the main lines of Lombardy united." The making of this grand water-way, designed alike for boat trafiic and irrigation, began in 1846 ; and the main stream from Hardwar to Cawnpore was formally opened by Mr. John Colvin on April 8th, 1854. When Cautley himself was leaving India, a few weeks later, Dalhousie gave him a farewell salute from the guns of Fort William, and declared in a General Order the regret of his Government at their lack of power to bestow more lasting honours upon the hero of an achievement "unequalled among works of its class and character throughout the world." A word of praise, however, is specially due to the two men whose zeal and energy enabled Cautley to com- plete so early the task of his own designing. But for James Thomason, Lieutenant-Governor of Agra, and Lord Dalhousie, the progress of the great undertaking would have been delayed by many years. To the former, who died just before its completion, Dalhousie had entrusted the general supervision of the canal works ; a charge which no one could have fulfilled more admirably. 120 LIFIJ OF THE MABQUIS OF DALEOUSIE. Dalhousie himself had spared no effort to push on the work which Hardinge had hegun. Out of the million and a half thus far expended on the canal, his own Government had contributed all but the ninth part. " No financial pressure," he wrote, " no exigencies of war, were suffered to interrupt the progress of that great work." " Of all the works of public improvement which can be applied to an Indian province, works of irrigation " — wrote Dalhousie — " are the happiest in their effects upon the physical condition of the people." One of those great designs, whose progress he watched over and aided in every possible way, was the Bari Doab Canal in the Punjab ; a work inseparably linked with the name of its projector and chief engineer, Colonel Robert Napier, the future hero of Magdala. This noble water-way, which distributes the flood of the Eavi over the country around Lahore and Amritsar, and the thirsty plains between the Eavi and the Biyas, was advancing rapidly towards com- pletion before Dalhousie left India. When it was opened in 1859, it might fairly claim, in the words of the Lahore Board, to be " second in India only to the Ganges Canal, and equal, if not superior, to the finest irrigation canals in Europe." Even in the moist regions of Bengal there was room, in Dalhousie's opinion, for helping nature by artificial means. Before he left India he had strongly advised the India House to sanction a comprehensive scheme for irrigating the districts of Shahabad and Bahar, by a series of large reservoirs and a canal drawn from the WATEBWAYS AND BOADS. 121 \river Son. Many years had to pass, however, before the great scheme projected by Colonel Dickens became a recorded fact The strong impulsion which Dalhousie gave to irrigation works throughout India was equalled by the progress made in "works for improving the general communications of the country." It was one of his dearest hopes that India might erelong be covered with a network of navigable rivers and canals. Under his auspices the Indus was becoming the great highway between Europe and the North-Western Provinces. His steamers plied regularly between Karachi and Multan, and sometimes even made their way as far as Jhilam. His surveyors discovered the means of opening a continuous water-way for steamers at all seasons throughout Pegu and Tenasserim. A line of steamers went up the Brahmaputra to the furthest corner of Assam. Both the Ganges and the Bari Doab Canals were designed not only to fertilise the land, but to carry the traffic passing up by boat from Cawnpore and Multan. In Southern India also Dalhousie's influence forwarded the making or the improvement of navigable canals. Before he left India, the great Trunk Road across the Punjab, from Ludiana to Peshawar, was nearly completed, " under every natural difficulty that can be conceived." These words from his farewell Minute may be applied with yet greater force to the road which Lieutenant Forlong carried over the Yoma Eange from Arakan into Pegu. Another great work undertaken by Dalhousie's 122 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. orders was the road designed by Major Kennedy and engineered by Captain Briggs, which wound its way from Kalka up the Himalayas, past Dagshai, to Simla and Chini. Before 1850 the hill-roads had been little better than mountain-paths, traversed by loaded coolies and small pack-ponies. The new road as far as Simla was made wide enough for wheeled carriages, with a rise of no more than three feet in every hundred. From Simla upwards to Chini it averaged a breadth of six feet. Dalhousie hoped that erelong Chini itself might become the best of convalescent stations for sick European soldiers, and looked forward to a time when the *' Kennedy Koad " would serve as a highway for a growing commerce with Tibet. Neither of these expectations has thus far been fulfilled. One good purpose vrhich Dalhousie sought to further by making hill-roads suitable for wheeled traffic, was the doing away with that old system of forced labour which always scandalised his moral sense. The growing difficulties and dangers of a voyage up the Hugli to Calcutta had become a source of anxiety to all concerned in the trade of that busy port. The noble river, which in the days of Clive and Watson had borne our largest men-of-war easily up to Chandarnagar, was getting more and more clogged with shoals and banks formed by the mud and sand yearly washed down from the Ganges to the sea. In view of the manifest danger to a trade whose value had doubled in six years, Dalhousie took steps for opening a new port on the Matla Creek, at a point^about twenty-five miles south-east of Calcutta. From DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WOBKS. 123 this point a broad deep channel leads down through the jungle-swamps of the Sundarbans into the Bay of Bengal. Having quietly bought '^ for an inconsiderable sum,"|the whole of the land required for his purpose, he set to work upon the needful improvements, and projected the line of railway which was afterwards to connect Calcutta with the new outlet for its sea-borne trade. Thanks, however, to engineering science and persistent dredging, the fears , which prompted the taking of these wise precautions have as yet found no final confirmation. The projected railway was not opened before 1863 ; the Calcutta trade still flows somehow along its former channels ; and the lonely port on the Matla bears the name of Lord Canning, who, says Marshman, " treated the whole project with supreme contempt." The need of bridging the broad Hugli, in order to link Calcutta with the railway-terminus at Howrah, was another point to which Dalhousie gave close attention. Experimental borings in the river-bed were begun before he left India. But many years had to elapse ere a project so beset with difficulties took final shape in the construction of a massive pontoon bridge. The promotion of public works in all parts of India was an object which always lay very near his heart. For . years past the aggregate outlay on such works had seldom exceeded a hundred thousand a year. The Indian revenues might suffice for the payment of all ordinary charges ; but who could expect them to provide for " the innumerable and gigantic works" which the due im- 124 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. provement of so great an Empire urgently demanded ? The cost of such works, argued Dalhousie, must be defrayed, in part at least, by loans ; and their manage- ment entrusted to some more competent body than a Military Board of three old gentlemen, whose hands were already too full of miscellaneous affairs. "With the consent of the India House he hastened, in 1853, to carry out another of those great reforms which signalised his rule. He organised a special Department ,of Public Works, controlled by a secretary for each of the three Presidencies, with the aid of a chief engineer for every Province. To the regular staff of military engineers, he added a complement of civil recruits, some brought direct from England, others trained in the new colleges at Eurki, Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta. A list of the works designed for each Province was to be laid yearly before the Supreme Council. The Budget Estimates of 1854 provided for an outlay of two millions and a half on public works begun or sanctioned. In the following year the estimated outlay rose to three millions, the bulk of which had to be defrayed by loans. For the four years from 1849 to 1852, the revenue accounts had shown a surplus. Thenceforth, said Dalhousie, deficits must inevitably recur, unless the Grovernment should abandon the duty which, in his opinion, it owed to the territories entrusted to its charge. Meanwhile, the Military Board had been relieved of various other duties, which Lord Dalhousie had long since desired to place in fitter, at least more responsible hands. THE COMPANTS CHABTEB. 125 Even as early as 1848, he would have swept the Board away as a glaring anachronism. But the Court of Directors, he playfully remarked, would at once have exclaimed " What is the boy about ? " The process of extinction went on, however, step by step. The Board was to undergo an easy and lingering death. Dalhousie began by relieving it of all control over the Army- Commissariat. The Stud Department was next removed from its charge. A little later, the care of the ordnance stores and factories was transferred to one responsible officer. With the creation of a Public Works Department vanished the last excuse for the Board's existence ; and in 1854 it ceased to exist. The question of renewing the East India Company's Charter had come before Parliament in 1853. Lord Aberdeen's Ministry was then in office. After a series of hot debates, the Company obtained, for five years only, a new lease of its political power, purchased by the loss of nearly all its patronage. Thenceforth the ranks of f the Covenanted Civil Service were to be recruited, not by the nominees of the India House, but by young men who could pass through the mill of competitive examina- tions. Two important changes, mainly due to Dalhousie's prompting, were made in the local government of India. The great and populous province of Bengal, which had hitherto been ruled by the Governor-General, or in his absence by the senior member of his council, was thence- forth placed under the charge of a Lieutenant-Governor appointed for a term of years. The legislative functions 126 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIK of the Supreme Council were transferred to a new Legislative Council of thirteen members, four of whom would represent the governments of Bengal, Agra, Madras, and Bombay, while two were to be judges of the Supreme Court of Bengal. Two more might be selected by the Governor - General himself, whose Executive Council made up the remainder. The new Council met for the first time in May, 1854, Dalhousie himself presiding. Under his guidance rules for the due despatch of business were laid down. Erelong Calcutta rejoiced in the unwonted spectacle of a little Senate, whose debates were conducted orally with open doors. In November of this year, the great Marquis had to recruit his shattered health by a sea-voyage along the Orissa coast to Puri, an ill-smelling city of lodging-houses, crowded at certain seasons with pilgrims who come to worship at the famous shrine of Jagannath. During his stay here he passed through the Lion Gate into the vast square, wherein the great Pagoda sacred to Vishnu, " the Lord of the World," towers above more than a hundred smaller temples. The priests of the temple showed him over its four halls, in one of which lay the rude armless image of the popular god ; while in its own corner stood the huge clumsy car in which, next summer, the idol would again be dragged to his country house a mile off, by thousands of frantic devotees. Christmas found Dalhousie back again in his own capital ; in health no better than before, but resolute as 1 THE SACBIFICE TO DUTY, 127 ever to obey the call of apparent duty. His term of office had already been prolonged, at the request of the India House, by two years. The Home Government now besought him to stay on yet one year more. In vain did the watchful Dr. Grant warn him of the serious risk he would incur by so doing. Dr. J. Jackson, whom Grant called in to see his patient, delivered himself to the same effect. Dalhousie thanked them both for their timely warnings, but declared that he would take the consequences on his own head. ** Believing it to be my duty to remain in India during this year " — he wrote to Grant — "in fulfil- ment of my pledge, and trusting in the Providence of God to avert from me those indirect risks against which you have so clearly and faithfully warned me, I have resolved to remain." Dalhousie himself knew what another year in India meant for one who had stayed there far too long already. But the Oudh problem was still to solve, and the Court of Directors counted upon his help towards solving it aright. ■pm- Return to ■ VLVAkv of C.RlilornJa ( 128 ) CHAPTER VII. SOCIAL REFOEMS. 1850-1855. Law regulating succession to property — Satti, thaggi and kindred practices — Female infanticide — Improvement in the condition of soldiers — Native education — Punishment of Dacoity — Bill for legalizing the marriages of widows — Alleviation of punishments — Abandonment of Bethune's Bill — Neutrality towards rival princes and frontier policy — Punishment of law-breaking princes — Out- breaks in Calicut, Bengal and Bolaram. Dalhousie's care for the well-being of his subjects was inspired by the large humanity of a mind attuned to the best moral tendencies of his day. No Viceroy ever trod more boldly on the path marked out by Lord William Bentinck, and followed, when time allowed him, by Lord Hardinge. That rulers existed only for the good of the ruled was the guiding principle of his government. To do away with abuses, to redress manifest wrongs, to deal equal justice to all men, to study their moral as well as their material good, to scatter abroad, in short, the full blessings of a wise, just, and civilised rule, were the ends which the great Proconsul kept before him throughout his Indian career. No respect for long-established usage was allowed to PBOTECTION OF CONVEBTS. 129 hinder the accomplishment of a just reform. In 1850, he carried through his Council an Act enforcing the righteous principle that no man should be robbed of his inheritance on account of his change of creed. Under the Hindu law, a convert from the faith of his fathers incurred a kind of civil outlawry. He lost all right to any property inherited from his Hindu forefathers. His wife was free to disown him ; his children shunned him as a social outcast. Dalhousie boldly declared that the State was bound to keep in its own hands the right of regulating succession to property. The new law, of course, gave the convert no protection from social out- lawry ; but it secured him from the secular penalties attached to his religious apostasy. His full rights as a citizen and a British subject were thenceforth declared inviolable. As early as 1829, Lord W. Bentinck had decreed that Satti, or the burning of Hindu widows on their husbands* funeral pile, should be punished as murder throughout British India. Lord Hardinge had tried his best to put down the same practice in the Native States. But Satti was an ancient institution which died hard, especially among the Rajput ladies of Udaipur, Alwar, and Bikanir. Dalhousie's warnings were accepted as commands by the chiefs and princes to whom he addressed them. In one case, however, he had to go beyond threats. The reported Satti of a Rajput widow in the little State of Dongarpur, then under British management, called for prompt action on his part. A special inquiry brought out the truth. K 130 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. The Brahman priests who conducted, and the young chief who took part in the forbidden sacrifice, were punished with three years' imprisonment, while the Thakur, or chief, who allowed the Satti, forfeited half his revenue for the same term. In the same spirit ne warmly encouraged the efforts of his officers in various parts of India to suppress infanticide, Thaggij kidnapping, human sacrifices ; to improve the structure and discipline of jails ; to found schools and colleges for the benefit of all classes ; and to promote the moral as well as the physical welfare of the European soldier in every possible way. When ill-health forced Colonel Campbell to resign the task of humanising the savage Khands of Grumsur, Dalhousie thanked him warmly for his successful services, and expressed his hearty regret at the cause of their premature conclusion. When Outram's raid against jobbery and wrong-doing in high places at Baroda brought him into conflict with the Government of Bombay, Dalhousie's influence won from the India House a virtual censure on Lord Falkland's harsh dealing towards an officer of such high desert. Through him Outram afterwards returned with flying colours to Baroda, which had just been transferred from the political charge of the Bombay Government to that of the Governor-General. On Sleeman's retirement, in 1854, from the Kesidentship at Lucknow, Dalhousie at once selected *' the Bayard of India " to fill his place. Female infanticide was a practice which had long been known to flourish, chiefly among the Rajput tribes in FEMALE INFANTICIDE. 131 Central and Western India. For many years past the Company's officers had striven, with more zeal than success, to root out a practice commonly traceable to the joint workings of caste-pride and social habits which had all the force of religion. Rajput weddings were very costly things ; no Rajput father would let his daughter marry beneath her caste-rank, and a daughter unmarried meant deep and indelible disgrace. For the daughter of a poor but high-born Rajput marriage became impossible. Rajput mothers had learned to sacrifice their girl-babes to the Moloch of caste-rules and family honour. From time to time some heads of Rajput families pledged themselves to put down the horrible practice, and to curtail the wedding expenses. But neither pledges nor penalties could make much headway against the stream of inherited habits and beliefs. The pledges were con- tinually broken, and the punishment, here and there, of a proved offender was denounced by his friends as cruel tyranny. Kindness and tact succeeded, where threats and espionage had failed. In 1845, the Chohan Rajah of Mainpiiri was formally thanked and honoured for sparing the life of a little grand -daughter. Next year the number of girl-children saved alive iu the Mainpuri district was trebled.* Some years earlier Colonel Hall had well- nigh suppressed infanticide in Mairwara, by persuading the Mairs to cut down their marriage expenses. In November, 1851, at Mainpuri, a great meeting of Rajput * Raikes' Notes on the North-Western Provinces. k2 132 LIFE OF TEE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. gentry, summoned by the Commissioner of Agra, agreed in applying the same medicine to the social distemper of their own province. The success of an experiment largely due to the personal influence of Charles Raikes encouraged Lord Dalhousie to pursue the same means on a larger scale for dealing with child-murder in the Punjab. The prevalence of this crime beyond the Satlaj had first been discovered by John Lawrence, while yet Com- missioner of Jalandhar. Later inquiries had shown how widely, from what various causes, the cruel custom had spread among Sikhs, Hindus, Mohammedans, even to the wandering herdsmen of the plains. The moral influence of British rule had begun to fight against the evil, sometime before 'its full extent and virulence had been ascertained. But Dalhousie was heartily at one with Lawrence in desiring to stamp out the evil altogether by enlisting the people themselves on the side of their new masters. In October, 1853, a great gathering of Punjabi chiefs and gentlemen met John Lawrence and his leading officers on the plain outside Amritsar, to discuss the remedies proposed by Lawrence for a great national disgrace. After due discussion, the native chiefs and delegates all swore, with evident heartiness, to observe the rules that should thereafter be framed on the bases to which they had now agreed. These rules, as presently arranged by mixed committees, prescribed a large reduc- tion of marriage expenses, on a scale that fairly accorded with the means of every class and household. The same rules were adopted in other parts of the GREAT MEETING AT AMBITSAB. 133 Punjab, wliere similar meetings came off with like results. The ruler of Kashmir threw himself into the movement with emulous zeal. At a conference of all his Rajput chiefs with Montgomery, not far from Sialkot, G-ulab Singh was represented by his son and heir, who promised to enforce among his father's subjects reforms like those already adopted throughout the Punjab. As earnest of his own intentions, Gulab Singh took off for ever the tax levied on all wedding-s in Kashmir. Several of the leading- Sikh chiefs, and many of the wealthier citizens at Lahore and elsewhere, celebrated their children's weddings in accordance with the new rules. The example thus set found willing followers, and child-murder soon fell out of fashion with people who might hope to see their daughters decently married at the cost of only a few rupees. ''The position of the native soldier in India" — wrote Dalhousie in 1856 — " has long been such as to leave hardly any circumstance of his condition in need of improvement. The condition of the European soldier, on the other hand, was susceptible of great improvement, and has received it liberally. His terms of service, his food, his lodging, have all been bettered during these years ; and infinitely greater care than heretofore has been bestowed upon his occupation, his recreation, and his health." In all these improvements the Governor- General himself bore a leading part, as became a wise statesman who was also a soldier's son. He forbade the issue of the morning dram, encouraged the use of beer instead of spirits, improved the quality of the soldiers' 134 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. rations, and provided separate quarters for the married men. Eeading-rooms and workshops formed a special feature in all the new barracks, and swimming-baths were decreed for the European soldiers at every station. Punkahs were '*hung in every barrack as in a private house." Under his auspices, soldiers' gardens were laid ' out in all the chief cantonments, the regimental schools i were supplied with furniture, books, and stationery, and a ! normal school for training schoolmasters was opened at i the Lawrence Asylum. To the one convalescent depot j at Landour, Dalhousie added five more in different parts ■ of the Himalayas. By his orders the old school for • soldiers' orphans was transferred from the moist, hot-house "■ atmosphere of Lower Bengal, to the bracing mountain air of Sanawar. With a view to check the "grave and growing evil " of crimes committed in the hope of trans- portation to the colonies, Dalhousie ordered the building of a great military prison, in which all convicts sentenced to long terms of bondage should be immured. To all practical schemes for educating the people he lent his heartiest support. The school which Drinkwater « Bethune, Law Member of his Council, had opened in - May, 1849, for Hindu girls of the w^ealthier classes, was kept up after his death by Lord and Lady Dalhousie, under the latter's active superintendence. He was the first Viceroy who proclaimed the need of educating girls as well as boys. To his strong influence Calcutta owed the founding of new, and the improvement of old, colleges for the native youth of Bengal. Under his auspices, SPBEAD OF EDUCATION. 135 Thoraason at Agra, and the Lawrences at Lahore, pro- ceeded to diffuse the light of modern learning through district after district in Northern India. Sir Charles Wood's memorable despatch of July, 1854, gave Dalhousie a shock of pleased surprise. It contained, he said, " a scheme of education for all India, far wider and more comprehensive than the local or the Supreme Government could have ventured to suggest." Not a day was lost by him in building up the fabric of which this document furnished the general plan. Before he left India a regular system of State-aided schools, primary, middle, and high, with a competent staff of teachers and inspectors, under a director for each province, had been set at work over nearly the whole of British India, while the univer- sities of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay were all but ready for the birth. In 1852, the Governor-Generars wrath was stirred by the alarming prevalence of Dacoity, or gang-robberies, in the districts adjacent to Calcutta. To him it seemed intolerable that such crimes should be found to flourish almost within the shadow of Government House. Mr. Wauchope, the active magistrate of Hugli, was specially appointed to deal with the daring ruffians whose murderous outrages recalled the rough old times of Warren Hastings. So well did the special commissioner discharge his errand, that many Dacoits were soon hunted down, their bands broken up, and their leaders driven for shelter into the French settlement of Chandarnagar. In the last years of his rule Dalhousie waged war 136 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. against another of those time-hallowed usages which offended alike his sense of justice and his humanity. With his concurrence, a Bill for legalising the marriages of Hindu widows was laid before his Leorislative Council. The marriage of widows was a thing unknown to Hindu law. Formerly the widow, who might be a mere child of eleven or twelve, could take her choice between doing Satti and leading a life among the dreariest and most degraded that any mortal could conceive. When Satti was made penal, no wonder that here and there a widow was tempted to marry again. For the offspring of such marriages there was no legal standing. In questions of inheritance they could claim only the bastard's share. Some of the more enlightened Hindus of Bengal had earnestly besought the Government to make such unions valid by law. Thousands of natives signed a petition expressing their belief that perpetual widowhood was nowhere plainly commanded by the Hindu Scriptures. On the other hand, all strict Brahmans of the high conservative school raised the usual cry of wanton inter- ference with the national creeds, and brought forward an array of texts which told strongly against the advocates of reform. All sorts of dreadful consequences were predicted if the Government were to break faith with its subjects, by passing a measure so hateful to all right-thinking Hindus. Such clamours had been heard so often before on like occasions that no wise statesman gave serious heed to them. Pressure of business, the Santhal rising, and other THE BETHUNE BILL. 137 causes delayed, indeed, the progress of Barnes Peacock's Bill "to remove all leo^al obstacles to the marriao^e of Hindu widows." But a few months after Dalhousie's retirement the measure he had supported on grounds of manifest duty and public advantage became law. To all kinds of wrong-doing Dalhousie showed himself a stern and resolute foe. One of the measures passed by his Council dealt out exemplary punishment on police officers " guilty of corruption." The native police of his day were a terror to their own countrymen, good and bad alike. To extract a confession of guilt or the payment of a revenue claim by means of exquisitely cruel tortures, was a practice winked at, if not encouraged, by police officers in every province. In his efforts to check these and kindred evils, Dalhousie was stoutly seconded by John Lawrence in the Punjab and Lord Harris at Madras. Other Acts of his G-overnment enlarged the civil and criminal powers of the Munsiffs or native judges, abolished the branding of convicts, repealed the old laws against usury, provided for the well-being of native emigrants to the colonies, and gave due protection to public officers who might in good faith have exceeded their lawful powers. It was seldom that Lord Dalhousie had to go back from an enterprise once taken in hand. His tact in feeling the pulse of public opinion ensured the due success of his bold and forward statesmanship. Once at least, however, in 1849, he found himself at issue with a large section of his countrymen in India. The "Black Act" of 1836 had, 138 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. for the first time, made Europeans amenable in civil suits to the higher courts of the East India Company. Drink water Bethune's Bill of 1849 proposed to make another step forward in the direction thus pointed out. It would have empowered the Company's Courts to try Europeans on any criminal charge save one of murder. It seemed to Dalhousie that India was ripe for a reform demanded by every rule of justice and common sense. What could be more absurdly unfair and wasteful than the old class-privilege, under which an Englishman charged with theft at Peshawar must be carried, with all the witnesses, down to Calcutta, to stand his trial before the Supreme Court of Bengal ? If the Company's Courts were fit for anything, they could surely be trusted to deal equal justice to white men and black, in cases at least of ordinary crime. The exemption of Europeans from criminal process in these courts was a mere relic of old days and special circumstances. As a safeguard of British supremacy it was no longer needed. Unhappily, the bulk of our countrymen in Bombay and Calcutta would not look at the question by the dry light of reason and plain facts. So violent an outcry raged against Bethune's Bill, that the Government decided to drop it altogether. It was left for Dalhousie's successor to renew the fight against race-privilege with happier results. Little as he loved the " veritable tyrant," who reigned by British sufferance over *'the fertile and unhappy province of Kashmir," Dalhousie would take no part in the strife which at one time raged between Gulab Singh JUSTICE ON EVILBOEBS. 139 and his rebellious nephew Jowahir Singh. The same rule of strict neutrality he observed towards the rival princes who, after their father's death, fought for the sovereignty of Bhawalpur. When the Daudputras de- cided in favour of the eldest brother against the son of his father's choice, Dalhousie accepted the former as their Nawab, on the one condition that his rejected rival should suffer no harm. With the Khan of Khilat he concluded a treaty which served to secure the frontier of Sind from foreign attack. The Eajah of Sikhim on the other hand had to pay dear for his audacity in seizing and detaining a political officer who was travelling under the Eajah's safeguard. British troops marched to his capital in the mountains ; Dr. Campbell and his friend were set free ; but the offender was stripped of the lands bestowed on him after the Nipalese war, and no more rent was paid him for Darjeeling itself. To law-breakers and evil-doers of whatever rank, the Governor-General could be stern enough. The petty State of Mamdot, in Sirhind, was ruled by a Nawab whose atrocious tyranny drove Dalhousie to remove him from power, and place his kingdom under British manage- ment. The titular Nawab of Bengal had allowed one of his followers to be beaten to death by the bastinado almost at the door of his tent. For this offence against humanity he was deprived of his special powers and immunities, and the number of guns in his salute was largely reduced. Mir Ali Murad, Khan of Khairpur in Sind, the 140 LIFE OF THE MARQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. successful plotter of Sir C. Napier's day, was found guilty in 1851 of a gross forgery, which had given him pos- session of some large districts that belonged of right to the Indian Government. Dalhousie at once degraded him from his sovereign rank, and deprived him of all his lands save those inherited from his father. In February, 1855, the great Marquis left his capital on another of those cruises which gave fresh tone to his weakened frame and enabled him to visit new parts of his Indian Empire. After calling at Trincomalee and Galle, the Feroze steamed round Cape Comorin up the Malabar Coast, to the historic city of Calicut, nestled deep in palm-groves and largely peopled by Mohammedan Moplas, whose bursts of murderous phrenzy made them a terror even to our Sepoys. In September of this very year, Conolly, the magistrate, was cut to pieces in his own verandah by a band of these fierce children of Arab forefathers. From Calicut the Viceregal party pursued their way inland to the Nilgiris or Blue Mountains of Southern India. Here they tarried for several months, passing the hot season chiefly at Coonoor and Kotagiri, where the force of the Monsoon rains is greatly broken by the higher ranges on the west. In October, they moved on to the yet loftier uplands of Utakamand. In spite of his broken health and sharp bodily sufferings, Dalhousie gave himself little rest from the cares and labours of his high office. In March, as Courienay wrote to Outram, he was " very ill, though he keeps up his pluck and his spirits wonderfully." Through the latter BIOT AT BOLABAM. 141 part of this very journey he had to be carried, wrapped up in blankets, in a hammock slung from a pole. All through the year he was engaged in correspondence with his Council, with Outram at Lucknow, and with the Court of Directors on the affairs of Oudh. Early in the year his heart was saddened by the death of Colonel Armine Mountain, his old friend and Military Secretary, who had lately become Adjutant-General of the Queen's troops in India. " A nobler or more accomplished soldier " — says Marshman — " and a more amiable and more estimable man, has seldom adorned the ranks of the British Army." In July, the peace of Bengal was rudely broken by a furious outbreak of the Santhal highlanders, who spared neither Hindus nor white men in their tumultuous march through Birbhiim. Happily, the East Indian Eailway had just been opened as far as Kaniganj, and Mr. Halliday's Government might well be trusted to cope with the immediate danger to Bengal. Before he left India, Dalhousie knew that Bengal was safe, that martial law in the Santhal country had given place to the rule of a special Commissioner, unfettered by the forms and usages of Eegulation Law. In September, the station of Bolaram in the Nizam's Dominions became the scene of a riotous outbreak, in which Brigadier Colin Mackenzie, a fine old officer of the Madras Army, narrowly escaped the fate of poor Conolly at Calicut. A noisy train of Mohammedans, keeping the festival of the Moharram, passed along the European lines in defiance of Mackenzie's orders. The brigadier, 142 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALBOUSIE, losing his temper, rushed out upon the merry-makers, carried off their flags, and bade them begone. Half-an- hour later, a yelling mob, led by some troopers of his own brigade, poured into his compound, wounded one of his officers, fired shots at the ladies inside his house, and left the Brigadier himself for dead from a dozen sword-cuts. Mackenzie in time recovered from his wounds; but Dalhousie's sympathy with the victim of such an outrage, could not blind him to the fact, that Mackenzie's rash- ness had provoked the onslaught which cost him so dear. The imprisonment of a few ringleaders, and the dismissal of every native officer who had taken any part in the riot, were all the punishment which his sense of justice allowed him to exact. ( 1^3 ) CHAPTER VIII. TERRITOKIAL ABSORPTION. 1848-1856. The question of adoption — Its application to Jbausi and Angria Colaba — Absorption of Satara and Sambalpur — Difficulties at Nagpur — Dalhousie annexes Nagpur and Jhansi — Treatment of the heirless princes — Criticism of Dalhousie's policy — Affairs in Mysore — Absorption of the Carnatic and Tanjore — Nana Sahib — The Moghul — Cession of Berar by the Nizam — Continued dis- order in Oudh — Dalhousie's recommendations — Annexation of the province — Dalhousie's dislike to the proceeding. In this record of the great Proconsul's labours and achievements, nothing has been said, as yet, of the special policy which marked his dealings with the Native States ; a policy first expounded in his Minute of April, 1 848. The Rajah of Satara, a small Maratha State in Western India, had just died childless, leaving only an adopted heir. No consent to that adoption had been given by the Paramount Power, that is, the Indian Government, without whose consent the adopted son could inherit nothing but the personal rights and possessions of his adoptive father. In 1834, the Court of Directors had expressly ruled that no heir by adoption should thence- forth be acknowledged, save " as a special mark of favour 144 LIFE OF THE 3IABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. and approbation " ; and in two or three cases this principle had already been enforced. Lord Dalhousie, therefore, had good reason to maintain that, " wherever the right to territory by lapse is clear, the Government is bound to take that which is justly and legally its due, and to extend to that territory the benefits of our sovereignty, present and prospective." Opposed as he was to any avoidable extension of frontiers, he could not " conceive it possible for any one to dispute the policy of taking advantage of every just opportunity for consolidating the territories that already belong to us, by taking possession of States that may lapse in the midst of them ; for thus getting rid of those petty intervening principalities which may be made a means of annoyance, but which can never be a source of strength." Dalhousie honestly believed that the people of Satara had everything to gain by a process which would ensure them "a perpetuity of that just and mild government which, under native rulers, they enjoyed only by fits and starts." The documents by which he justified his theory were duly forwarded to Leadenhall Street, and the Directors decided by a large majority, that the Governor- General was free to annex Satara. It was, therefore, quietly absorbed in 1849. Sir George Clerk himself, then Governor of Bombay, an Indian statesman of the first rank, and a staunch friend of native dynasties, had been driven to admit that the sanction of the Paramount Power " is by custom required to render an adoption to a principality valid." Answers ABSOBPTION OF LAPSED STATES, 145 to the same purport had been sent to Bombay by the several Residents at native Courts. In 1831, the Bombay Government had resolved to "continue to grant, or to withhold its permission to adopt, according to circum- stances/' When the Eajah of Jhansi died, in 1835, the Indian Government, ignoring his adoption of a boy the day before his death, appointed one of his uncles to succeed him. Three years later, the claims of the adopted boy were again disallowed, and another uncle filled the vacant gaddi. In 1841, the State of Angria Colaba, and, in 1843, the little State of Mandvi lapsed to the Indian Government, which in both cases had refused to permit adoption. On the former occasion. Lord Auckland's Government plainly declared their intention to *' persevere in the one clear and direct course of abandoning no just and honourable accession of territory or revenue, while all existing claims of right are at the same time scrupulously respected." * The law which required the sanction of Government for the adoption of a son applied to all persons holding lands directly from the State, whether on feudal or rent-free tenure. It is evident, therefore, that the " dreadful and appalling" doctrine of lapse, as Kaye called it, was nothing new or startling to Indian experience in 1848. Under the old Moghul rule no heir by adoption could . enter on his Raj without the payment of a handsome Nazr, or tribute, to the paramount lord. Permission to adopt implied the power to refuse it— a power often * Sir C. Jackson's Vindication of Lord DalJiousie. L 146 LIFE OF THE MARQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. exercised in the old Moghul days. If the tribute demanded was not paid, the law of lapse at once came into action. In his dealings with Satara, Dalhousie declined, for very- good reasons, to waive the right which had accrued to his Grovernment as successor to that of the Moghuls. In the interests of British India he enforced a law which, in the words of Sir Charles Jackson, Advocate-G-eneral for Bengal, and afterwards Judge of the Supreme Court, " was the settled public law of India, repeatedly acted on by the Indian Government, and sanctioned by the Court of Directors, long before he landed in that country." Sir G. Clerk had pleaded that the absorption of Satara was barred by the treaty which, thirty years before, had bestowed that kingdom on its first Kajah, *' his heirs and successors." But Dalhousie naturally failed to see how the heirs and successors could be made to include an adopted son, whose adoption had never been sanctioned by the Government. In default of such sanction, which Dalhousie could not have given because he had never been asked to give it, there remained no successor who came within the terms of the treaty. Why, then, should he refrain from taking over a fief, which one of his pre- decessors had granted on a tenure which had now expired ? Satara blocked the road between our military stations at Poena and Belgaum ; it had fallen to the Company by right of conquest in 1818 ; and his strong faith in the blessings of a just and civilised rule, made him deaf to the warnings or the prophecies of those who regarded native dynasties mainly from a picturesque and poetical SAT ABA AND SAMBALPUB, 147 point of view. With him the happiness and well-doing of the many far outweighed the possible discontent of an idle, pampered, pleasure-seeking few. In 1849, the Kajah of Sambalpur, in the highlands watered by the Mahanadi, died without male issue ; and 4,000 square miles of hill and forest, thinly peopled by wild tribes and settlers from Bengal, were added without a protest to the Company's rule. Nobody, then or after- wards, cared to question the justice of this measure, to which Dalhousie himself, in his last Minute, gave not even a passing word. And yet, during the storm of the Mutiny, while Nagpur and Satara remained fairly quiet, Sambalpur was in fierce and obstinate revolt, due in part to the previous mistakes of our own settlement-officers. In 1852, Dalhousie was inclined to apply the principle of lapse to the little State of Karauli, in Rajputana. But the friends of native dynasties found strong allies in the House of Commons, and the Court of Directors drew a nice distinction between " protected allies," such as Karauli, and " a dependent principality," like Satara. The Company at that time had to sail against the wind of popular suspicion, and Karauli therefore retained its sovereio^n rifyhts intact. In his letter to the India House, the Governor-General had stated the arguments on both sides with a fairness which some of his critics failed to imitate towards himself. He owned that an isolated State like Karauli would not help to consolidate our Indian Empire. " Though not a very old State, still it is a Bajput principality, and . . . L 2 148 LIFE OF THE MARQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. has the claim of antiquity in its favour." To set aside the adopted heir might cause alarm and dissatisfaction among the Rajput princes. Such alarm would be un- founded ; for the Government, he presumed, would never think of interfering with *' the customary modes of suc- cession among these old Eajput States, whose antiquity, whose position and feelings would all make it our policy to leave them in the possession of such independence as they now enjoy." But it might perhaps be deemed un- desirable to run any risk of exciting even a false alarm by refusing to allow the adoption in Karauli. To himself the arguments " appear to preponderate in favour of causing Karauli to lapse," but he refers the whole question to the Court of Directors, " soliciting an immediate reply." His letter was despatched in September, 1852. The Court's answer reached Calcutta in the following March. It bade Dalhousie recognise the adoption of Bharat Pal. By this time, however, a rival claimant w^as in the field, whose rights, as next-of-kin, were affirmed by the leading nobles and the Queen-Mother herself. Eather than give *' a wrongful decision," in such a case, Dalhousie risked the possible dangers of delay. Further enquiries con- ducted by Sir H. Lawrence, Low's successor in Eajputana, made it clear that Madan Pal was indeed the rightful heir. It was shown, moreover, that the late Rajah, as a minor, had no power to adopt a son. At last, without further reference to England, Dalhousie decided in favour of Madan Pal. No harm, whatever, had come of the delay ; but the Governor-General's timely disobedience I THE STATE OF NAGPUE. 149 brought upon him a severe rebuke from the Court of Directors.* By the end of that year, 1853, the same question recurred, touching the larger and more important State of Nagpur. Its Eajah had just died without an heir, natural or adopted. The Company's charter had been renewed, and the Court of Directors could listen at their ease to the voice of so wise a charmer as Lord Dalhousie. In a long well-reasoned Minute, the latter demonstrated the justice and propriety of annexing Nagpur. The Eajah himself, he pleaded, had deliberately abstained from adopting an heir. Justice, custom, and precedent, alike left the Government absolutely free to act as it deemed best. Policy alone must decide whether the sovereignty " conferred on a Gujar, in 1818, shall be conferred on somebody else as a gift a second time." No doubt the maintenance of the Nagpur Kaj would be " highly acceptable to the native sovereigns and nobles in India," and many persons of high authority would, for that single reason, advocate such a course. Their feelings he could understand and respect. But he, for one, could not honestly bring himself to admit that " a kind and generous sentiment should outweigh a just and prudent policy." From the reports of three successive Kesidents at Nagpur, he gathered that the peo[)le at large would cheerfully accept a change of rulers. To him all other considerations were as naught, compared with the interests ♦ Sir 0. Jackson's Vindication ; and H. Merivale's Life of Sir H. Laiorence. 150 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. of the people of Nagpur. *'I conscientiously declare/' he wrote, " that unless I believed that the prosperity and happiness of its inhabitants would be promoted by their being placed under British rule, no other advantages which could arise out of the measure would move me to propose it." Those other advantages indeed were far from small. The State of Haidarabad would thus be girdled round by British territory. An unbroken line oi communication would cross the Peninsula from Calcutta to Bombay. English enterprise would find new openings in the cotton fields of the Berai Valley ; and their pro- duce might erelong be borne by rail to the capital of Western India. Such a prospect might well have tempted a less scrupulous statesman to strive for that end which Dalhousie justified on high moral grounds. *' Me- thinks the lady doth protest too much," was the thought which occurred to some, even of those who favoured the new policy. But Dalhousie was no hypocrite. If he ever deceived himself, it was not in his nature to deceive others. Honesty of purpose and a high-minded zeal for the public good marked alike his utterances and his deeds. His belief in the blessings of civilised rule was not less deep and sincere than his moral standard was high and his ambition unselfish. He never swerved from what seemed to him the path of duty, nor would he shrink from following that path because policy or solid profit might point the same way. Dalhousie's Minute was duly laid before his Council, One of its members. Colonel John Low, pleaded strongly, ABSOBPTION OF JHANSL 151 but in vain, for the principle of leaving native states under native rulers, however worthless according to our ideas. The other two agreed with the G-overnor-General. In February, 1854, Nagpur became a British province, and the Court of Directors gave their full sanction to the step thus taken in accordance with the views expressed by them in 1849. About the same time, the little State of Jhansi, in Bundelkhand, underwent the fate of Satara and Nagpur. Its last ruler had died childless in November, 1853, and his widow claimed the sovereignty for a child of live, his adopted son. Acting on the principles laid down by the India House in 1843, and guided by the words and acts of Sir Charles Metcalfe in 1835, Dalhousie at once rejected the claim, as altogether groundless. Had he decided in the Rani's favour, it is possible that some scores of English men and women might not have been murdered in 1857. But this unforeseen result of his action tells in no way against the justice or the wisdom of his scheme for replacing all lapsed dynasties of a certain kind by the direct rule of a British Overlord. In all his dealings with defunct dynasties, Dalhousie took care to inflict no needless suffering on the families and dependents of heirless princes. So tender was his respect for native usage, that, when the Eesident of Jhansi proposed to make over all the property of the late Rajah to his widow, he declared that his Government had no power so to dispose of property which by law would belong to the adopted son. " The adoption was good for the 152 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSTE. conveyance of private riglits, though not for the transfer of the principality." His alleged despoiling of the Nagpur princesses is an absolute myth, born of ill-natured gossip and nurtured by personal spite or political prejudice. It has no shadow of warrant in known and recorded facts. The Ranis were treated with all possible courtesy. They were asked to point out what portion of the palace treasures and furniture they wished to keep for their own use. They were assured that out of the remainder full provision would be made for all the Bhonsla family. In his Minute of June, 1854, Dalhousie himself had specified the principle on which he proposed to act. None of the property should be " alienated from the family, but neither should it be given up to be appropriated and squandered by the Ranees." Captain Elliot was enjoined to show the ladies " under every provocation the courtesy due to their rank, their sex, and their changed condition." Under no circum- stances should he use force for the recovery of the gold mohurs hidden away within the palace. It were better, said Dalhousie, " to fail in obtaining them than to enter the palace apartments for that purpose." Like the Begams of Oudh in the time of Warren Hastings, the Ranis of Nagpur fought hard for the whole of that treasure, a part only of which was their lawful due. Captain Elliot loyally fulfilled his orders, and some of the treasure, not all, was at length surrendered into his hands. The proceeds went towards the Bhonsla Fund, which Dalhousie set aside for the benefit of the Bhonsla family. " THE SPOILS OF BBIGANDS:' 153 Handsome pensions were assigned to the mother and five widows of the dead Kajah. The whole sum granted to the family and its retainers fell little short of £80,000 a year, or nearly a fourth of the revenues of Nagpur. In plain truth, it was not Dalhousie who despoiled the Eanis, but the Ranis who sought to despoil their own kinsfolk ; for much of the treasure buried in the palace was allowed to remain in their own keeping, lest the Government should lay itself open to the charge of outraging the privacy of the Zanana. To one eloquent historian these acts of sound policy suggest the process of " counting out the spoils of brigands in a wood." We are assured by the same stern censor, that Dalhousie " struck at the root of Hindu religion, and cut out of Hindu law its highest and gentlest enactment." It is hard to say which of these two imputations falls wider of the truth. The Grovernor- General had carefully refrained from touching the question of adoption on its private or religious side. In each case the adopted son was left free to enjoy his new father's property, and to secure the ultimate welfare of his father's soul. So far from cutting anything out of Hindu law, Dalhousie merely applied one of its plainest rulings to the several cases that came before him. If his annexations struck no real blow either at law or religion, the talk about brigands counting out their spoils may be dismissed as futile rhetoric, along with Kaye's description of the terror inspired among all the native princes by the extinction of a few *' dependent States," in accordance with a principle laid down by the 154 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. Court of Directors, and carefully defined by Dalhousie himself. The State of Mysore, in Southern India, still had its own native dynasty — the same which Lord Wellesley had set up again after the fall of Tippoo. But for many years past that dynasty had ceased to govern, except in name. When Lord W. Bentinck relieved the Rajah of all his sovereign powers, and placed the government in the hands of a British Commissioner, Mysore became virtually a British province. The incapable Eajah retained the outward style and received the pension of a king. His appeal to Lord Hardinge, in 1847, for the restoration of his government, was met by a decided refusal. In 1856, he appealed again to Lord Dalhousie. But a statesman who would lose no just opportunity for absorb- ing native kingdoms was little likely to replace Mysore, which Mark Cubbon had ruled so long and ably, under the sway of any native potentate. After due inquiry into the whole question, Dalhousie rejected a claim for which he could discover no legal warrant. In the last months of his rule he extinguished two ])hantom royalties in Southern India, for whose further existence no good cause could be shown. The titular Nawab of the Carnatic having died childless in 1855, Dalhousie resolved, after due consultation with the Madras Government, to make an end of an useless, expensive, and possibly mischievous pageant. He pensioned off the Nawab's uncle, Azim Jah, paid his debts, and ranked him first among the native nobles of Madras. But the CLAIMS OF TEE NANA SAHIB. 155 title and dignities of Nawab were thenceforth as dead as their late owner. Next year he dealt after the same fashion with the titular sovereignty of Tanjore, a Maratha State, founded by a brother of Sivaji, the government of which had long since been assumed by Lord Wellesley. On the same principles of justice and sound policy, Dalhousie rejected the claim of the Nana Dandhu Panth to the princely pension enjoyed by his adoptive father, Baji Eao, the last of the Maratha Peshwas, from 1819 down to his death in 1853. The Nana's right to the old Peshwa's private property in land or money no one disputed, and he was allowed to retain for life the town and domain of Bhitiir, on the Ganges, where the exiled pensioner had died. But his claim to the old man's pension and his titles was utterly untenable from any point of view ; and his appeal to the Home Government against Dalhousie's decision met with a prompt and merited rebuff. He, too, like the Eani of Jhansi, brooded over his fancied wrongs, until the hour came when he could wreak his full vengeance on the helpless prisoners at Cawnpore. There was another phantom royalty whose removal Dalhousie had not been the first to demand. Within his castled palace at Delhi still lived the pensioned sovereign who represented the house of Akbar, the Great Moghul cf Queen Elizabeth's day. Within his palace walls the old puppet-king of Delhi still wielded the power of life- and death over some thousand followers and dependents. Down to 1834, the Company's coinage had been issued in 156 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. his name, and the Mohammedans of Northern India still regarded him as their political head. Dalhousie longed to get rid of a tawdry and expensive mockery, which might any day become a positive danger. In that great palace by the Jamna he saw not only a sink of debauchery and corruption, but the focus of many Intrigues against the British power. Kegard for the feelings of the India House alone prevented him from decreeing the extinction of the Delhi dynasty as soon as the reigning puppet, then seventy years old, might die ; but he induced his next heir, Prince Fakr-ud-din, to sign a treaty, binding him, on his father's death, to quit Delhi altogether, for his country-house by the Kutab, twelve miles off. The Prince's death, in 1856, seemed to thwart the fulfilment of Dalhousie's purpose. But the dynasty he had doomed to peaceful extinction was to sign its own death-warrant in the murderous outbreak of the following year. From the first days of his rule, Dalhousie's attention was continually drawn towards the Nizam's dominions, where every form of disorder, violence, and misrule had been rampant for years past. The Nizam was heavily in debt to the Indian Government. Of the monev his servants screwed out of the people very little went towards meeting the interest on his loans, or defraying the expenses of his Contingent Force. In 1843, Lord Ellenborough had warned him plainly of what must happen if he did not speedily mend his ways. In 1849, Dalhousie in- formed him, through General Fraser, that unless the bulk of his debt was paid by the end of 1850, the Indian CESSION OF BEBAB. 157 Government would take measures for its own protection. The term of grace was extended from time to time, but to little purpose. Towards the end of 1852, Fraser was replaced by Low. Dalhousie's patience had worn itself out. Low's instruc- tions were very clear, and the royal spendthrift, yielding at last to the prayers and arguments of his own ministers, signed, in 1853, the treaty which transferred to British keeping the fertile province of Berar ; the very province which a former Nizam had received as a gift from Lord Hastings. The cession included two smaller districts, one of which Dalhousie, in 1855, restored to its late ruler. Berar itself was to be held by the Indian Government in perpetual trust for the Nizam, into whose treasury the net surplus, if any, on the yearly revenue would be paid. For this happy settlement of a prolonged and troublesome dispute, the Governor-General and his Eesident were cordially thanked by the Court of Directors. The Nizam got rid of a debt which he could not or would not pay, the Company suffered no loss by the bargain, and Berar itself entered on a course of peaceful and assured prosperity. We now come to the last of those great questions, in the solving of which Dalhousie bore an active and note- worthy part. Long before 1855 it had become clear that some radical change was needed in the government of Oudh. One viceroy after another, from Lord William Bentinck to Lord Hardin ge, had striven to check misrule in the fair province which Wellesley had raised into a 158 LIFE OF TEE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. kingdom. Since Wajid All's accession to the throne in 1847, matters had been going steadily from bad to worse. : Colonel Sleeman's reports on the state of the country \ showed that such things as government, law, and justice had no existence in Oudh, that the strong everywhere preyed upon the weak, that the Garden of India was fast becoming a thorn-covered wilderness, that violence and rapine stalked through the land, while the King amused himself with a court of fiddlers, singers, buffoons, and dancing-girls. Sleeman's successor at Lucknow, Colonel James Outram, found all these 'evils flourishing as rankly as ever in 1855. He too, like Sleeman before him, called upon the Governor- General to enforce his treaty-rights against a dynasty which in fifty years had repeatedly broken all its pledges, and to assume the government of a country whose native rulers could not be trusted to govern it for themselves. From his retreat in the Nilgiris, Dalhousie answered his agent's call in a Minute which reviewed the political history of Oudh during the past fifty years. He showed how greatly British forbearance had prolonged and deepened the sufferings of the people under native rule. In seeking, however, to amend their lot, we should refrain, as far as possible, from lowering the dignity and authority of a line of princes, who had at least been true to their allegiance. Dalhousie, therefore, would leave to the King his royal title and position, while the Company might take the whole government of Oudh for ever into their own DALHOUSIE'S SCRUPLES. 159 hands. The revenues should be charged with liberal stipends for the King and his family ; and the net surplus, after defraying all charges, might be applied to " the general good of that Empire, of which Oudh originally was, and still is, no more than a province." His objections to " so extreme a measure as the annexa- tion of the territory, and the abolition of the throne," were based on a scrupulous regard for the treaty-rights of a dynasty which, with all its short-comings, had " aided us as best they could in the hour of our utmost need." Holding the King's consent indispensable to any transfer of his sovereign authority, he proposed to secure that consent by threatening to withdraw his Resident and the British troops from Oudh. The King, he argued, would "readily foresee the consequences" involved in such a withdrawal, and would thus be led to accept the only conditions on which those consequences could be averted. He evidently reckoned, as Sir Charles Jackson has pointed out, on Wajid All's fear of a swift and general rising of his own subjects, as soon as our troops marched away from Oudh. Low himself believed that their departure would be followed by insurrections which would compel their speedy return. This part of Dalhousie's scheme found no favour with his own Council, who held that the G-overnment would be playing fast and loose with the people of Oudh, if it opened to the King a loophole of escape from the obliga- tions and the penalties involved in the Treaty of 1801. Dalhousie's hands, in truth, were tied by his love of justice and his sense of public honour. The treaty which IGO LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALEOUSIE. Lord Auckland had made with Wajid Ali, in 1837, modified in various ways the treaty of 1801. The new treaty had been disallowed by the Court of Directors. But this fact had never been imparted to the King himself, or anv of his Ministers. It was unknown even to Lord Hardinge in 1847, and to Colonel Sleeman in 1851. Dalhousie felt that the wrong thus done to our ally ought to be repaired before any steps were taken to rescue his people from the evils of prolonged misrule. But all the answer he received from England to his remarks and suggestions on this point, was an injunction to wait upon events and, in other words, to ** let sleeping dogs lie."* On the main issue raised by this clear, exhaustive Minute of June, 1855, the transfer namely of the govern- ment into British hands, the members of his Council were in hearty agreement with the G-overnor-General. Two of them, Messrs. Dorin and Grant, were for going further, even to the entire annexation of Oudh ; while Mr. Barnes Peacock differed from his chief only on one or two points of detail. The whole question was then referred to the Court of Directors. Their answer reached Calcutta on January 2nd, 1856. Dalhousie read it as a positive order to annex Oudh. This was more than he himself had desired ; but his sense of duty to his Honourable Masters led him at once to execute a decree to the practical justice of which he could raise no valid ob- jection. Ill as he was then, his measures were promptly taken. Troops were ordered to the Oudh frontier. * Sir C. Jackson's Vindication. ANNEXATION OF OUDH. 161 Outram banded to the King a letter from Dalhousie with the treaty which Wajid Ali was invited to sign. The King fell to weeping, and refused to sign a covenant which left him still a sovereign within his own palace, with a handsome yearly allowance for himself, his retinue, and his family. Wajid Ali being still obstinate, Outram had to act without his consent. On February 7th, he issued the proclamation in which Dalhousie declared Oudh thence- forth a British province. Outram himself became Chief Commissioner, his civil officers took charge of the different districts ; British troops held the capital ; and the people everywhere submitted peacefully to their new masters. Without a shot fired or a blow struck in behalf of the fallen dynasty, the last and not least fruitful of Dalhousie's public labours was brought to a successful close. In his Minute of February 13th, the great Proconsul still held to the views expressed in his Minute of the previous June. Nor did he conceal his own disrelish for the more extreme measures which, in obedience to orders, he had just been carrying out. The statesman who has been charged with " one dominant passion " for annex- ation, was in fact opposed to the annexation of Oudh ; and all the evidence on record shows, in the words of Sir C. Jackson, " that his part in the transaction was the last sacrifice which he made on the altar of duty." ( 162 ) CHAPTER IX. LAST DAYS IN INDIA. 1855-1856. Visit to Madras — Eeforms in the Indian Medical Service — Summary of Dalhousie's work — His relations with the Court of Directors — The legislative council — Opinions of Outram and Temple— His insight into character — His intellectual pride — Relaxations of discipline — Real tenderness of his disposition — Letters to Captain Metcalfe and Mrs. Lawrence — Intercourse with the natives — Dalhousie as a companion — His habits — Hospitality and industry — His power over details — The Services — Love of order — Freedom from jobbery — His Minutes on the military establishment — Re- ports from the provinces — Farewell addresses — Dalhousie's reply — Note to John Lawrence — Minute on the Punjab — Last appearances — Letter to the Queen — Departure from Calcutta, In the last days of October, 1855, Dalhousie bade farewell to the Nilgiris, and began his march by way of Banga- ore and Arkot to Madras. At Mysore he examined with keen interest the official papers written by Arthur Wellesley, in the days when he was Governor of Mysore. Three days he halted at Bangalore, under the hospitable roof of General Cubbon. At Madras, as the guest of Lord Harris, he passed five days in a ceaseless round of business and festivities, which nearly wore him out. THE BETUBN TO CALCUTTA. 163 On November 15th, he embarked from the southern capital in the Feroze, to pay one last visit to the thriving city of Kangoon, and to discuss with Phayre himself the results of his mission to the Court of Ava in the early part of that year. On his voyage from Eangoon to Calcutta he found time to visit the island of Negrais, and the new port of Dalhousie, near the mouth of the Bassein Kiver. December saw him once more at Govern- ment House, bowed down and crippled by an exhaust- ing disease, but still intent on doing his duty to the last, and leaving no arrears of business for his destined successor. Nothing but sheer strength of will, backed by Dr. Grant's skilful and constant care, could have enabled him to complete the long list of his public services by the measures needed for the future govern- ment of Oudh. In the midst of these new labours he found time for penning a long, earnest, well-reasoned despatch to the Court of Directors, on the subject of reforms, great and little, in the Indian Medical Service. For the ground- work of this noble and powerful appeal on behalf of a most deserving but rather neglected body, he was largely indebted to Dr. Grant. The letter itself set forth the grievances and ^claims of the Company's medical officers with the full force and clearness of a practised writer and a high-minded statesman, who saw exactly where the shoe pinched. It was impossible for him, on the eve of his departure, to " find time for everything," or attempt to propose any further reforms. " There is, however," M 2 164 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. he wrote, " one department which calls for improvement so loudly, which calls for it so justly, which is so easily susceptible of full improvement, which is so worthy of it, and will so promptly and amply repay it, that I cannot be content to leave India without submitting my views regarding that portion of the service to the Honourable Court." In the forefront of his proposals he naturally placed the extinction of the Medical Board in each Presidency. Its powers should be concentrated in a Director-General, appointed, not by seniority, but selection. The same principle should govern the appointment of superintending and staff surgeons. Certain improvements in the pay, pensions, and privileges of medical officers were earnestly recommended, in order to place them on a more equal footing with officers of the fighting branches. Why, for instance, should honours and rewards for service in the field be withheld from the medical officer, " who comes constantly under fire like other men ? " In yet stronger terms did the great Marquis lash out against the rule which, on certain occasions, placed an old surgeon "below the youngest ensign last posted to a corps." He could see no possible justification for " a system which postpones service to inexperience — age to youth; a system which gives a subaltern who is hardly free from his drill pre- cedence over his elder, who perhaps has served through every campaign for thirty years ; a system which treats a member of a learned profession, a man of ability, skill, and experience, as inferior in position to a cornet of MEDICAL GBIEVANCES. 165 cavalry just entering on the study of the pay and audit recjulations." He found it " impossible to conceive how such a system as this can have been maintained so long, on the strength of no better argument than that *it has been,' therefore * it ought to be.' " Keverence for old things, merely because they are old, never formed an item of Dalhousie's political creed. Of the reforms for which he pleaded so earnestly in this Minute of February, 1856 — the last he penned as Governor-General — nearly all were granted by the Court of Directors in their despatch of June, 1857. The grievance of which he had complained most strongly was removed by a new rule, which gave medical officers serving on mixed committees precedence according to their relative rank. With the annexation of Oudh, Dalhousie's work in India was at last over. In those eight years of incessant labour he had won for himself a name at least as splendid as any that ever graced the annals of British India. In the greatness, number, and lasting worth of his public services, he seemed to outshine all former Governors- General. With the administrative genius of Hastings, and the high imperial aims of Wellesley, he had combined the forward, beneficent statesmanship of Bentinck. The marvellous success of his schemes for governing the Punjab and Pegu would alone have stamped him as a statesman of the highest order. The very strength and fervour of his belief in the blessings of English rule, if they made him less tolerant of Eastern ways and feelings, 1C6 LIFE OF TEE MABQUIS OF DALEOUSIE. served at least to deepen and develop his strong human interest in the well-being of the millions committed to his charge. He knew too much of the native princes and courts of his day to cultivate their goodwill at the expense of their misgoverned subjects. His sympathies went with the suffering people, not with their weak, vicious, idle, pleasure-loving masters. Policy and justice alike im- pelled him to give the former a fair chance, wherever possible, of bettering their lot by a change from Native to British rule. Wherever the change was effected, experience has thus far shown that Dalhousie was right in his generation, from his own standpoint of right and duty. In these days, when native chiefs and princes go to school under English masters, try to govern after English, methods, and enjoy certain rights of adoption guaranteed I by the Crown, the old reasons for such a transformation may seem to have gone out of date. But the principle which Dalhousie asserted, the right of the Paramount Power to rule in the place of an extinct dynasty, has never, in fact, been disavowed ; for the privilege of adoption granted by Lord Canning's Government to the native princes was expressly limited to the formal adoption of an heir by the reigning prince during his own lifetime. Not a word was said about adoption by the widow after her husband's death. In the cases of Nagpur and Jhansi, the reigning prince had left no heir, lineal or adopted. In that of Satara an heir had been adopted only in the prince's dying moments, DALHOUSIE'S TACT. 167 without the knowledge or the sanction of the Para- mount Power. Fortunate in his epoch, Dalhousie turned his opportu- nities to the best account. Others before him had taken up the questions of railways, irrigation, and postal reform ; but to him, above all men, belongs the credit of pushing those questions vigorously forward to the widest practical issues. Like Napoleon, he ignored the word " impossible." And, unlike some of his predecessors, he knew how to obey as well as to command. He had always treated the great men of Leadenhall Street with a deference even greater than that which he expected from his own subor- dinates. His political and administrative successes were largely owing to the tact he showed in his intercourse with the Honourable Court. It almost seemed as if they had originated the very measures which their Governor- General was commending most earnestly to their approval. So soon, and so thoroughly, did he win their confidence, that very few of his proposals were disallowed, or even modified, by the powers at home. The same tact and courtesy governed his relations with his own Council. On every question debated by that little Cabinet, he sought to win them over by force of arguments founded on a careful marshalling and dispas- sionate review of all the facts. To those who differed from him he would listen patiently, and reply with unfailing courtesy, point by point. It was seldom, how- ever, that any councillor could hold his ground long against a reasoner so masterly and so well equipped. N/ 168 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. Even Sir John Grant, afterwards Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, found himself overmatched by a statesman who could give such excellent reasons for all he did or proposed to do. From the first, indeed, Dalhousie had impressed himself upon his colleagues as a leader whom the best of them might safely follow, whithersoever he chose to take them. That strong personality, which seemed to repel a Napier or a Henry Lawrence, helped, no doubt, to make matters smooth for him in the council-room at Calcutta no less than in Leadenhall Street and Cannon Row. But his success in leading other men to adopt his views and carry out his purposes sprang, in the first instance, from the proofs he gave them of his marvellous industry, his practical thoroughness, sound judgment, and rare intellectual power. Even in the reformed Legislative Council of 1854, his leadership was accepted as a thing of course by men of high standing who had grown gray in the public service. "There is the master, and we are the little boys under him," said Chief Justice Sir Lawrence Peel in no spirit of irony, to his brother Judge, Sir James Colville, while Dalhousie was laying down rules of procedure for the body which had just been remodelled on his own lines. And yet the master knew, and rejoiced in knowing, that this enlarged Council contained the germs of representa- tive government for all India; germs which might, he hoped, under careful nursing, spring up some day into hardy and wholesome life. After more than thirty years that hope remains unfulfilled, but to judge from the drift EIS KINGLY NATURE. 169 of popular feeling, both here and in India, the day of its fulfilment must be near at hand. This kingliness of soul, this strong imperious nature, which shone forth from his expressive countenance, seemed to fascinate and overawe nearly all with whom he came into personal contact. "Those who were most intimate with him " — says Dr. Grant — " accorded to his ability and sagacity something scarcely short of absolute worship. Sir James Outram told me that he had had intercourse with the Duke of Wellington, Sir Eobert Peel, and other leading statesmen in England, but never felt so awed, so stricken by his own inferiority, as in his interviews with Lord Dalhousie who had always treated him most kindly." To the same effect writes Sir Kichard Temple who, as a young man and secretary to John Lawrence, had some- times conversed with the Governor-General, and been much impressed by the great man's kindness in setting him at his ease. " By those who had served him loyally ^ he was regarded as a trustworthy friend ; but even they looked up to him with a certain awe." In many cases, however, something of affection mingled with the awe. To all who worked hard and ably under his orders Dalhousie showed himself a kindly patron and a staunch friend. His own ambition fired theirs. His sympathy with honest and intelligent workers encouraged them to fresh exertions. He insisted, in 1851, that John Lawrence should take a holiday at Simla ; and when Lawrence's health seemed breaking down from overwork, he begged the Court of Directors to waive their furlough 170 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALEOUSIE. rules on his friend's behalf. It was very seldom that his insight into character played him false, that he gave his confidence to the wrong man. If he was prompt to punish manifest short-comings, he never stinted his praise where praise was due. No former vicero}^, save Lord Wellesley, had equalled him in the art of selecting the fittest men for the tasks required of them, of training up a band of subalterns quick to comprehend, and zealous to execute their leader's designs. Under his auspices there had arisen a school of statesmen whose achievements in after years reflected some of their lustre on Dalhousie himself. In matters of detail the great Marquis often gave his officers a free hand. But any evasion of his positive commands, any departure from his clear instructions, was an offence which he could not overlook. " In cases where he had a right to be masterful," says Sir R. Temple, " he was prompt to vindicate authority ; and whenever he received a provocation justly to be resented, he had quite a special faculty for making his displeasure dreaded." On such occasions his anger seldom, if ever, vented itself in spoken words. He made it a rule to administer his rebukes in writing, and the process of putting pen to paper never failed to calm him down. With him self- knowledge pointed the way to self-control. What cynical or unfriendly persons took for his Scotch caution was really due to his proud self-respect, and the inbred courtesy of a gentleman. Only in a flash of his eye or in the movement of his upper lip could any one detect the workings of his wounded spirit. THE FIBE UN DEB THE SNOW. 171 The very effort he sometimes made to repress his feelings had a chilling effect on those who offended or raisliked him. Seeing only the snow-covered crest of the volcano, they concluded that no fire glowed within. To them this fiery, sensitive, gracious nobleman appeared cold, haughty, hard-hearted, full of arrogance and self- conceit. But the freezing manner proved in fact the intensity of the mental flame. Dalhousie could be cold and haughty enough towards those who hurt his feelings or proved unworthy of his esteem. Like Pitt, he had a lofty scorn, which he could not always help showing, for all that seemed to him paltry, hollow, or ignoble. From intellectual arrogance he was not perhaps entirely free ; and he resented, even from a Napier, the least encroach- ment upon his authority. As Governor-General of India he exacted from every one the observance due to his imperial office, the state and dignity of which he himself on all fit occasions was very careful to uphold. Not that he delighted for its own sake in any kind of pomp and splendour ; his natural taste in this regard being almost as simple as Napier's; as simple, in fact, as the diction of his own Minutes. There was nothing theatrical about his public progresses and State durbars. But he liked to do all things decently and in order, and felt himself bound, as the first man in all India, to observe the ceremonial usages of his rank and time. In less important matters he took his own line. The members of his household, the officers of his personal staff, were seldom required to sit down to dinner in full- 172 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE, dress uniform. During his marches the old rule, ob- served even by Lord Auckland, which forbade anyone in camp from preceding the Governor-General, was invari- ably ignored. On these and such-like occasions Dalhousie bore himself towards his followers rather as the head of his family than as Head of the State. They regarded him in their turn with the loving reverence of disciples for a master in whose wisdom and goodness they could place unbounded trust. Of the warmth and tenderness of his heart some instances have been given already. He loved his motherless daughters almost as fondly as he had loved his wife. He wept as he read the nev7s of the nmrder of Agnew and Anderson at Multan. He burst into tears on learning the death of Sir Robert Peel. " Alas ! alas ! " were the only words he wrote to Dr. Grant, on forwarding to him the letters which announced the fatal close of Colonel Mountain's illness. He mourned for Mackeson and Elliot as dear and tried friends. His friendship for John Lawrence was deep and lasting. In the last days of his rule he found time to write Temple one of those kindly letters, which they who received them valued above all public honours. The only personal favour he ever asked of the Court of Directors was, that Dr. Grant might have six months' leave of absence, in order to attend him during the voyage home. Dr. Grant himself delights in dwelling on " the almost womanly tenderness " with which his friend and patient responded to every kindly and affectionate impulse. But DALHOUSIE'S THOUGHTFULNESS, 173 neither his tenderness of heart nor his exquisite faculty for enjoyment, ever passed the bounds prescribed by his strong good sense, high moral breeding, and proud devotion to his duty. The members of his personal staff had good reason to love and respect a chief who treated them with unfailing courtesy, never wounded their self- esteem, took a friendly interest in all their doings, and gave them a wide latitude in matters of dress and con- versation. The few survivors of that choice family party which gathered round him and Lady Susan in 1855, still look back with melancholy pleasure to those days of free and happy fellowship passed in the sweet seclusion of the Blue Hills. Of his kindly thoughtfulness for others a pleasing instance occurred in 1849, while he and his party were at Lahore. In the private Treasury of the Palace was found the portrait of Sir Charles Metcalfe, which he had presented forty years before to Eanjit Singh. On the back of it were written the words "my old friend." This portrait, with young Dhulip Singh's consent, Dalhousie secured for himself, in order that he might hand it over as a free gift to his Aide-de-Camp, Captain James Metcalfe. " I hope " — he wrote, referring to the inscrip- tion on the back — "you will accept it from me, who, though not an old acquaintance, am your sincere friend, Dalhousie." Another instance of a like nature is recorded in the Remmiscences of Sir George Lawrence, eldest brother to the noble pair whose fame was destined to over-shadow 174 LIFE OF THE MARQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. his own. As Political Agent at Peshawar in 1848, Georofe Lawrence had done his best for months to baffle the secret purposes of the traitorous Sikh Grovernor, Chatar Singh. But before the end of October, the whole of the Peshawar Valley was in revolt, and his post of peril outside the city became no longer tenable. Lawrence with his wife and children, his assistant Bowie, and Thompson, the medical officer, escaped to Kohat. But the treachery of an Afghan Chief threw the whole party into the hands of Chatar Singh, who held them as prisoners of war until the wrecks of the Sikh army were far away from the field of Gujarat. On the 8th March, Mrs. Lawrence and her children found themselves safe and well in General Gilbert's camp beyond the Jhilam. Soon after their arrival at Lahore, Mrs. Lawrence received from Lord Dalhousie a letter which must be given in full : — " Madam, — Since I cannot have the pleasure of seeing you here, I am sure you will permit me to take the liberty of addressing to you myself my hearty and cordial congratulations on your being once again in the midst of your family, and of those who have been long watching your fate with painful interest. " The kindness of your friends has permitted me during that time to see many of your notes which you never meant for any mere official eye; and I trust you will not think I take too great a liberty in saying — for even at the risk of your displeasure I must say it — that the perusal of them during the long course of your captivity, showing to me the gallant heart you kept up under it, the cheery face you put upon it, and the uncomplaining and confiding patience with which you bore it all, has filled me with a respect for your character and admiration for your conduct, which, if I were fully to express them, you would perhaps suspect me of flattery. " In the hope of one day paying my respects to you in quieter times than the past, and some pleasanter place than Peshawar, I am, &c., " Daijiousie." HIS BEGABB FOB NATIVE FEELING. 175 At the time when this letter was written, the Governor- Greneral was up to his ears in business connected with the Sikh War and the future government of the Punjab. Night after night he and Sir Henry Elliot sat up together settling the details of his political programme. But no stress of graver pre-occupations could restrain him from doing one of those kindly and gracious offices, which the occasion and his own feelings seemed to demand. In his intercourse with native chiefs and gentlemen, Dalhousie observed a scrupulous regard for the forms and niceties of Eastern etiquette. No surer guides in such matters, no worthier masters of the ceremonies could he have desired, than his foreign secretaries, Sir Henry Elliot and Sir George Edmonstone. His own tact and courtesy turned their teaching to the best possible account. In Calcutta he saw much of Prince Gholam Mohammad, the old and respected heir of the terrible Tippoo. He liked to visit the Amirs of Sind, who lived in comfortable exile near Dum-dum, until in 1854 they were allowed by him to return to their own land, and settle quietly down at Haidarabad. His personal bearing towards Mulraj and the captive Sikh leaders, expressed the sympathy he could feel for ftillen greatness. His tender concern for Dhulip Singh's welfare showed itself in many ways ; and no one was better pleased than himself, when the young Maharajah, of his own accord, became a convert to that Christian faith which he has since as formally abjured. It is admitted even by his friends, that he liked to breathe an atmosphere oP general deference, and stood a 176 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. little too much at times upon his dignity. But when he put off his official manner, few men could be more agreeable. He kept the best side of his character for his particular friends and his softer hours. While travelling, he was a delightful companion, full of playful sallies and pleasant trifling. Dr. Grant bears witness to *' the exquisite charm of his conversation." It was lively, pithy, epigram- matic; rich in anecdote and whimsical allusions, and coloured with the play of a grotesque and teeming fancy. He had a keen sense of the ludicrous, a ready and retentive memory, a clear, musical, sympathetic voice, and a manner which charmed every guest who sat beside him. His full blue eye beamed with intelligence and tender sympathy ; and in calm or happy moments the expression of his mouth was refined and even gentle. At other times the lips would be suddenly compressed by a spasm of pain, or the upper lip would curl, now with inward mirthfulness, anon with irrepressible scorn. In India he was wont to rise about six, and spend two or three hours in reading official documents, and turning over the Anglo-Indian newspapers, which lay on his breakfast table. At half-past nine he would sit down at his desk, which he never quitted, even while he ate his lunch, before half-past five. Eight hours of continuous brain-work was enough, he would say, for any man ; and to this rule he generally adhered. His tastes, especially in the matter of food, were simple ; he ate little and drank less at the quiet family dinners which he loved. In the evening he amused himself with reading the home EIS PEBSONAL HABITS. Ill papers, a magazine or review, and sometimes a new novel. During the last year of his rule, nothing pleased him better than to read one of the Waverley Novels aloud to his eldest daughter. He was liberal with his purse, and stinted none of the hospitalities which his position demanded. But his weak and failing health rendered party-giving more of a penance than a delight. A day of weariness and suffering was sure to follow one of those entertainments in which he played the host so graciously. For the same reason he avoided many occasions for public parade, and for holding State durbars. Although he never concealed his dislike to speaking in public, yet when duty required him to make the effort, he showed himself splendidly equal to the need, speaking with perfect ease, clearness, and felicity of style and treatment. On such occasions his rich and ready memory supplied him with apt quotations and illustrative facts. His appetite for work, even in the steamy heat of Calcutta, astonished all beholders. *'To those around him " — writes Dr. Grant — *' he seemed enamoured of his task ; even in that hot and depressing climate, the intel- lectual exertion which he liked, brought relief rather than lassitude, for business seemed not only easy, but delightful to him. He went with heart and soul into details, and to the driest subjects he gave vitality." The chief clerk of his Foreign Office was once heard to say that, ** if Lord Dalhousie had been a writer paid by the sheet, he would have earned a considerable income." His own hand wrote N 178 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALEOUSIE. out the first draft of every important despatch and letter, and the clerks who copied his papers were surprised to find in them so few erasures and interlinings. His hand- writing was as clear and neat as his diction, and although he wrote rapidly, it betrayed no marks of haste. ** I have on mail days" — says the friend from whom we have quoted — " seen the sheets pouring in upon the private secretary as fast as he was able to make a copy of them." Even Mr. Gladstone, according to Dean Eamsay, envied his old colleague this remarkable power of mental com- position. Not less remarkable was his talent for resuming inter- rupted work. In the middle of a sentence he would stay his hand to look into a telegram just received, to send an answer to some trivial message, or to give his orders to the Aide-de-Carap for the day. The interruption ended, he returned to his writing and finished the sentence without pausing to collect his thoughts. Before the government of Bengal was taken off his shoulders, Dalhousie was accustomed to devote one day in the week to the special business of that province. It was all the time that he could honestly spare from other and perhaps more imperative duties ; but in one of his days not a minute was ever wasted. One of his secretaries, who afterwards served under more than one Lieutenant- Governor of Bengal, remarked to Dr. Grant that '* one day of Lord Dalhousie was worth six of any other man." It was wittily said of him by somebody in the Punjab, that he wrote sixty Minutes to the hour. The reader THOBOVGHNESS OF HIS WOBK. 179 must bear in mind that, in those days the government of India was mainly carried on by writing. The Duke of Wellington had once told Dalhousie of a visit he paid his brother, the Marquis Wellesley, at Calcutta. Wellesley, he said, was " so full of his foreign policy, that I found a room full of boxes containing civil cases in arrear. I asked him to let me clear them off, got permission, and did it in a month — yes, all in a month." It was characteristic of Wellesley to give all his mind to foreign policy, and leave home matters to take care of themselves. Dalhousie on the other hand, bestowed equal care on every branch of his imperial duties. Nothing seemed too great or too small for his skilful handlinor. From the conduct of the war with Burmah, and the management of his relations with native princes, down to arranging the ceremonial niceties of a durbar, his guiding hand was visible at every turn. His secretaries were not his ministers in the latest sense of the word. Sir Henry Elliot used to say with a pleasant smile, that he spent most of his time as Foreign Secretary in pursuing his own historical studies. Dalhousie's care for the efficiency of the public service in all its branches showed itself in many significant ways. He would have no young civilians idling about Calcutta on pretence of studying. He cut down the time allowed for preparatory studies from twenty-two months to six. The fitness of junior civil officers for promotion to any of the higher grades was tested by means of periodical examinations. Similar rules were applied to the "un- N 2 180 LIFE OF TEE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. covenanted " services, such as the police, the finance department, and the minor branches of the revenue system. All officers, civil and military, were forbidden to hold office in any trading company. Promotion by mere seniority was a rule which Dalhousie never could tolerate. He insisted that merit should have a voice in the selection of army officers for all the higher commands. In non-regulation provinces like the Punjab and Pegu, and throughout the uncovenanted service, promotion by merit became the rule. No officer was allowed to serve on the army or general staff who failed to pass an exami- nation in Hindustani. The State accounts were placed under the charge of an Accountant-General ; and no effort was spared to accelerate the process of preparing and revising the financial estimates for each year. As a sworn foe to promotion by mere length of service, Dalhousie had sought to remedy one of the worst defects in the regular native army of Bengal. The native officers of that army were men who had mostly risen from the ranks by seniority alone ; " old imbeciles merely," as Outram said, who had no control over the men, and were almost useless as links between the privates and their white officers. Dalhousie assured Outram that he had " seriously considered the matter," but had finally deferred to the opinions of some of the highest officers in the Bengal array, who, one and all, strongly deprecated any change in the system as a dangerous innovation.* His wonderful mastery of details never weakened his • Goldsmid's Life of Outram. Vol. II. [ EIS LOVE OF OBDEB. 181 grasp of general principles and great ends. Within his own province he saw things clearly and he saw them whole. How he got through so vast an amount of public business, was always a puzzle to slower or less careful men. The secret of his success was largely owing to that love of order, *' Heaven's first law," which came to him perhaps as a natural gift, but which his scrupulous sense of duty, his early training, and his ambition to excel, must have led him to cultivate to the best advantage. There were no loose papers on his desk, and his boxes contained no arrears of office work. The day's task was finished within the day. No question, however un- important, was put off to a more convenient season which might never come. The lassitude of ill-health never kept him from his post of labour. Few men knew what a force he sometimes put upon himself rather than seem to fail in the doing of his regular tasks. Even on the march he would work away as hard as though he were at his desk in Simla or Calcutta. And with him all this painstaking and precision were pure gain, for his keen intellect pierced at once to the heart of the matter in hand, through the mass of verbiage and technicality which often overlay it ; while his method of dealing even with the most difficult cases was not more swift than sure. A ruler so just, high-minded, and conscientious was little likely to perpetrate or connive at official jobs. His public life was as pure as his private. He dispensed his patronage with a single eye to the public good. Just as 182 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOVSIE. he insisted that merit rather than seniority should regulate promotion in the public service, so did he ignore the claims of friendship, cousinhood, country, or class, to his especial favour. In bestowing appointments, he took counsel with his head rather than his heart, selecting only men of acknowledged worth or of manifest promise, who might be trusted to do their duty well and zealously by the State. John Lawrence, Arthur Phayre, and James Outram were the kind of men which he delighted to honour. In the latter part of 1855, Dalhousie had despatched two good regiments of British Foot to the seat of war in the Crimea. Before complying with his orders from Downing Street, he had penned an earnest and powerful protest against the policy of weakening his Indian garrison in order to feed an European war. India, he declared, was weak enough already in European troops. If any of these were now withdrawn for other service, he could no longer answer for the safety of our position, " amidst multitudes so innumerable, amidst peoples and sects various in many things, but all alike in this, that they are the lately conquered subjects of our race, alien to them in religion, in language, in colour, in habits, in all feelings and interests." The troops had to be withdrawn, nevertheless ; but Dalhousie would not be silenced while he had strength to hold his pen. On the last day of his presence in Council he laid upon the table a series of nine Minutes, which recorded his final views on the whole question of India's military needs. In order to maintain HIS MINUTES ON THE ABMT. 183 a safe proportion between the Native and the European troops, he besought the G-overnment to cut down the regular Sepoy army of Bengal by 14,000 men, and to strengthen the British garrison with several regiments of horse and foot. Only one of these Minutes was ever published. Two others could not be found when Sir C. Jackson, some years later, wanted to consult them ; and the nature of their contents had to be gathered from other sources. One of these weighty but neglected papers proposed to replace four regiments of Native by two new regiments of European cavalry raised for the Company's service. Two other Minutes proposed to increase the European infantry then serving in India from 31 to 37 battalions, four of which might be raised by the Company for service in Bengal and Madras. The officers for these were to be obtained by disbanding eight regiments of Native Foot. Next came a proposal to remove the invalid companies at Chunar to some place more suitable for garrison duty. One of the missing Minutes propounded a scheme for strengthening the European artillery by doubling the number of men in each company. A sixth Minute proposed to cut down by ten non- commissioned officers and 200 men each of the regular regiments of Native infantry in Bengal, to make each of the Gorkha battalions 800 strong, and to raise four irregular regiments of 800 men each for special service in the Punjab. In the seventh Minute, Dalhousie desired to reduce the regular Bengal cavalry to 300 men a regiment, 184 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. and the irregular cavalry to 400, while four new regi- ments of irregular horse might be added to the strength of the Punjab garrison. The next Minute proposed to add two lieutenants to every regiment, in order to make up for the absence of so many officers on Staff employ. Lastly, he proposed to remodel the Commissariat Service, by making it a separate department of the Army Staff. These Minutes, coupled with Dalhousie's protests against withdrawing troops for the Crimea, and with his efforts to make the British Army in India as efficient as possible in all its ranks and equipments, should suffice to clear Dalhousie from the charge of blindness to the military needs of our Indian Empire. Had the Home Government listened betimes to his prayers and proposals, India would have been better prepared to confront the Mutiny of 1857. As I have said elsewhere, " it was clearly no fault of his that the ship he had steered so long with unchanging fortune was afterwards all but lost through the blind economy which kept down the numbers of her English crew." * As for that *' rooted conviction of the fidelity of the Sepoy," which Kaye imputes to him, no warrant for such a phrase can be found in any of his recorded acts or utterances. It is simply absurd to suppose that such a conviction could have been cherished by a statesman of Dalhousie's mental calibre, who had read so much of recent Indian history, whose own experience must have confirmed the teaching of past events, and whose latest * India under Victoria, Vol. I. SCHEME OF YE ABLY BEPOBTS. 185 Minutes proved his anxiety to reduce and neutralise the overgrown Sepoy array of Bengal. In his controversy with Napier no such conviction is either expressed or implied ; and his farewell Minute merely refers to the Sepoys' "condition" as hardly capable of further im- provement. Among the last of his public services was the General Order instructing the heads of the different provinces to send in yearly to the Supreme Government a detailed report of the administrative work done in each province during the past year. These reports were to show forth all matters of any public moment, each new measure of reform, judicial, legislative, or financial ; everything, in short, that concerned the welfare of the people at large. It was Lord Dalhousie's parting hope and prayer for India, that, " in all time to come these reports may form, in each successive year, a happy record of peace, prosperity, and progress." How prophetic was the hope then uttered, the later records of our rule in India would suffice to show. It is hardly possible to exaggerate the debt which India owes to the far-seeing statesman, the enlightened lawgiver, the bold, skilful, zealous administrator, whose public career closed on the last day of February, 1856. \Vhat Marshman wrote of him more than twenty years ago — "To his genius is to be ascribed the grateful fact that the India of 1867 presents so pre-eminent a contrast to the India or 1847 " — may be applied with even greater force to the India of to-day. While his actual achievements surpassed 186 LIFE OF THE MARQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. the dreams of Bentinck, he imposed upon his successors the duty and the privilege of developing and completing his own far-reaching plans. The wisest of them have been content to cultivate the o^arden which he laid out and stocked so carefully. At best ^they have but reaped a richer harvest from the fields which he had prepared and watered. If the people of India are now on the whole more prosperous, more enlightened, self-reliant, ambitious, energetic, than they were forty years ago, the diiference is mainly owing to the reforms accomplished or set on foot by Lord Dalhousie during the eight years of his strong but beneficent rule. It would take some pages even to enumerate the multitude of minor reforms which " the little man " had crowded into those eight years, reforms which, says Mr. Talboys Wheeler, '* to this day are felt and appreciated by Asiatics as well as by Europeans." In every branch and grade of the public service, in every field of commercial and industrial enterprise, from the search for iron, coal, and borax to the lighting of Calcutta with gas, and the storage of pure water for the citizens of Bombay, it was he who originated, guided or propelled the good work recorded in the last and greatest of his State papers, which reviews the course of his administration from beginning to end. The last days of his rule were cheered by abundant tokens of public gratitude, admiration, reverence, even love for the great Proconsul who was leavinor India in the full blaze of his well-earned renown, at an age when most « IF THE CUBTAIN SHOULD DBOP NOW." 187 statesmen have all their honours to win. At the capitals of the three Presidencies, crowded meetings were held in his praise. The natives of Calcutta joined in paying their farewell homage to the great Lord Sahib whose fame was in every mouth. Farewell addresses, signed by men of all classes, creeds, and colours, poured in from every province of his broad empire. Journalists vied with each other in the warmth alike of their praises and their regrets. There were few Englishmen indeed in India who did not share in those regrets, even while they predicted for the retiring Viceroy a great and glorious career in his own land. Dalhousie himself, however, knew that his day of work was over, that the sun of his public life was fast setting. In his touching reply to a farewell address from the citizens of Calcutta, he said — " You have made kindly allusion to the future that may await me. I do not seek to fathom that future. My only ambition long has been to accomplish the task which lay before me here, and to bring it to a close with honour and success. It has been permitted to me to do go. I have played out my part ; and while I feel that in any case the principal act in the drama of my life is ended, I shall be well content if the curtain should drop now upon my public course I am wearied and worn, and have no other thought or wish than to seek the retirement of which I stand in need, and which is all I am now fit for." On the same occasion he uttered those words of warning which now read like a prophecy of what was to happen in 1857. " No prudent man, having any knowledge of Eastern affairs, would venture to predict a prolonged continuance of peace in India. We 188 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE, have learned by hard experience how a diiference with a native power, which seems at first to be but the little cloud no bigger than a man's hand, may rapidly darken and swell into a storm of war, in- volving the whole empire in its gloom. We have lately seen how, in the very midst of us, insurrection may rise like an exhalation from the earth, and how cruel violence, worse than all the excesses of war, may be suddenly committed by men who, to the very day on which they broke out in their frenzy of blood, have been regarded as a simple, harmless and timid race, not by the Government alone, but even by those who knew them best, who were dwelling among them, and were their earliest victims." And yet Dalhousie was afterwards accused, not only of helping to bring about the Mutiny, but of obstinate blindness to the very dangers which he has here so vividly pourtrayed. While he was still resting in the pleasant park of Barrackpore, a note from John Lawrence, who had just reached Calcutta, drew forth the following reply : — " My deab old boy. — I have just received your letter, and as I shall be in Calcutta to-morrow evening for good, I will not give you the trouble of coming on here ; but will see you, and with sincere pleasure, on Tuesday forenoon. As for my health, Jan Larin, I am a cripple in every sense. Ever yours most sincerely, •* Dalhousie." A few days later, on February 25th, the Grovernor- General laid before his Council a Minute which obtained their hearty concurrence. It urged the Court of Directors to relieve future Viceroys and their council of a burden no longer bearable, by making the Punjab a separate Province under a Lieutenant-Governor, who might also be empowered to rule over Sind. With or without Sind, pleaded Dalhousie, the Punjab needed a Lieutenant- LAST DAYS OF HIS BULE. 189 Governor, and the right man for that post was the " very able and eminent " John Lawrence. It was more than two years before Dalhousie's wishes were to be fulfilled. Between the pressure of illness and the numerous calls of public duty, his strength was nearly exhausted before the end of February, 1856. "It is well," — he remarked on the 26th to Dr. Grant — "that there are only twenty-nine days in this month. I could not have held out two days more." The wonder is that he held out so long. On the 28th he met his Council for the last time, and, business over, bade each one of his colleagues a kindly farewell. Dorin, the senior member, in a speech full of manifest feeling, dwelt on the harmony which had always existed between the Viceroy and his Council, and declared that not one angry word had ever passed among them in that room. On the last day of the month — it was leap year — the new Governor- General, Lord Canning, passed up the broad flight of steps that lead into Government House. Above him, dressed in full uniform and propped up on crutches, stood the retiring Viceroy, backed by the members of his Council. Beside these stood his tried friend, John Lawrence, who had come down from Lahore to see the last of his honoured Chief. As Canning reached the topmost step, Dalhousie came forward to greet his old college friend, and conduct him to the Council-room, where he had to take the oaths of office. The contrast between these two was not confined to their 190 LIFE OF TEE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. bodily appearance, for Canning's manner, it seems, was shy and rather awkward ; while the other, despite the ravage wrought by hard work and prolonged illness, bore himself with the easy frankness and stately grace of yore. Standing at the window beside his old Chief, while Canning was taking the usual oaths, Lawrence asked Dalhousie what he felt at that moment. " I wish I were in Canning's place, and he in mine," was the impulsive answer, " and then, wouldn't I govern India ! But no " — he added with a pathetic smile — "I could not wish my worst enemy to be the poor, miserable, broken-down dying man I am now." A painter like Maclise might have made something out of that suggestive scene. On the same day he wrote to the Queen — " Although no prudent man will ever venture to predict the certainty of continued peace in India, Lord Dalhousie is able to declare, without reservation, that he knows of no quarter in which it is probable that trouble will arise." On the strength of this guarded avowal, those v^ho were wise after the event charged him with culpable blindness to the signs of coming danger. But the facts and appear- ances of the moment were all on his side., nor did any white man in India then foresee the troubles of the following year. The next five days were spent by Lord Dalhousie in receiving and answering farewell addresses, in friendly talk with Lawrence, and in close and frequent conference with the new Viceroy on matters of State. He would have asked the Home Government to confer a baronetcy THE LAST SUNDAY IN INDIA. 191 on the Chief Commissioner of the Punjab. But Lawrence, pleading his poverty, declined to accept anything more than the Knighthood of the Bath, with which a few weeks later he was to know himself honoured. As Governor-G-eneral, Dalhousie had made a point of attending the services of the Church of England. On his last Sunday in India, he went as a private person to the Scotch Church in Calcutta. Some old Indians may still remember seeing him carried in a chair to the seat reserved for him in the gallery. It pleased him greatly that the chaplain, Mr. Herdman, made no sort of allusion to the presence of so distinguished a visitor. To sit there like any other mortal, and take his part in the simple worship of his own country, was all that he desired. To clergymen of all sects he was courteous and friendly. His piety, sincere and deep, was altogether free from cant, parade, and fanaticism. He read the Bible daily, morning and evening, and lived up to its teaching in every essential point; allowing others the same liberty of conscience which he claimed for himself. On the afternoon of March 6th, all Calcutta turned out to line the roads along which the Great Proconsul would pass down to the stairs of Prinsep's Ghat. Before entering his carriage, he shook hands with an eager throng of friends and admirers. The guns were fired and the troops presented arms, as he drove away from the broad steps of Government House. The leave-taking at the Ghat was a sight which none who witnessed it could forget. 192 LIFE OF THE MARQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. The attempted cheers of the well-dressed crowd that saw him totter on his crutches towards the river-side,* faded away into a silence more eloquent than the loudest hurrahs. The ladies were nearly all in tears, and strong men turned pale with sad misgivings of the future. Captain Charles D'Oyly, one of his aides-de-camp — ■ says Dr. Grant — " was so affected that he fell into my arms." Almost everyone seemed to feel that Dalhousie was going home, not to win fresh laurels, but only to die. What he himself felt on this occasion may be gathered from the words he spoke next day, with his eyes full, to Dr. Grant. " Yesterday's ceremony was as sad as any funeral could be ; but the gay appearance of the flag- decked ships and the cheers of the sailors gave us a little heart." Among the spectators of that last memorable and moving scene, was Dalhousie's friend and future champion, Sir Charles Jackson, who speaks of what he saw that evening on the Maidan of Calcutta as a remarkable instance of Dalhousie's capacity both for exciting and feeling sympathy. On the one side was a whole popula- 1 tion, " moved as one man with a deep sense of regret and admiration " ; on the other sat the departing statesman, overcome by an emotion as deep as that which he had aroused. *' Many " — he adds — *' who witnessed that triumphant departure, had a melancholy foreboding that the curtain was falling on the last act of a great public ♦ He suffered from a diseased bone in one of his legs. A SAD FABEWELL. 193 career." Others hoped that he might live to '^ enter on a new course of honour and success." But no one " in that vast assemblage dreamed that, in a few years, the great reputation of their departing Grovernor would be doubted, sneered at, and assailed, or that it would ever be necessary to defend an administration that had been one brilliant and uninterrupted success." o ( 1^4 ) CHAPTER X. FEOM SCOTLAND TO MALTA. 1856-1858. The Farewell Minute — Congratulations to Outram and Lawrence — Suflferings in Egypt — In the Solent — A Pension is voted him — Message from the Queen — Letters to Dr. Grant — Visit to London — Letters during the Mutiny — Outcry against his policy — Letters to Dr. Grant — Life at Edinburgh — Journey to Malta — Winter at Yaletta — Hostile criticisms and preparations for defence — Article in " The Friend of India " — Change for the worse — Com- ments on Indian and home affairs — Keturn to England. During the voyage home, by way of the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, Dalhousie gave much of his time to the completion of a task which he had begun in the last hours of his rule. This was the famous Farewell Minute in which he reviewed the whole course of his Government, *' not for the purpose of justifying disputed measures, or of setting forth a retrospective defence of the policy which may, on every several occasion, have been adopted ; but for the purpose of recalling the political events that have occurred, the measures that have been taken, and the progress that has been made," during the eight years of his administration. He enters on this review " with the THE FABEWELL MINUTE. 195 single hope that the Honourable Court of Directors may derive from the retrospect some degree of satisfaction with the past, and a still larger measure of encouragement for the future.'* This clear, concise and stately record of work done or undertaken in these eight eventful years, fills forty-five pages of printed folio ; so hard was it even for a hand so masterly to compress within due limits all the facts it undertook to set forth. It was written for the most part in pencil by one whose health was ruined beyond repair, who felt that his days were already numbered as he lay there crippled, racked, exhausted, from the inroads of an insidious disease which completely puzzled the doctors. But his invincible pluck carried him through this crowning effort with marvellous success. His intellect burned as strong, bright, and clear as ever; his wonderful memory showed no trace of decay. Every paragraph in this noble masterpiece contains in little a whole chapter of Indian history. Every sentence glows with life and clear meaning. Even the driest subjects, the briefest references, seem touched with the fire of true genius. For close-knit strength and clearness of diction, combined with the classic purity of a style free alike from baldness and bombast, Dalhousie had no equal among former Viceroys, and very few indeed among English statesmen of any age. As a writer he takes his stand beside Caesar and Wellington. " No attempt has been made to embellish the narrative. It is for the most part a simple recital of what the 2 196 LIFE OF TEE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. Government of India has done. If the recital should seem dry in itself, it may be hoped that the results which it exhibits will not be thought by the Honourable Court to be unprofitable or disappointing." These are nearly the closing words of a review which, according to the latest biographer of Henry Lawrence, is couched in "language somewhat reminding the reader of the self- laudatory inscriptions of Darius the Mede and other Oriental sovereigns." It is strange that a critic generally so shrewd and just as the late Mr. Herman Merivale should have so misread the real spirit and purpose of this noble Apology. If it reminds the reader of anything written by an Oriental sovereign, it can remind him only by force of contrast. In relating the events of his rule, Dalhousie is very careful to keep himself as much as possible in the background. He never seems to say " Alone I did it ; " with the statesmen who boasted of having brought about the First Afghan War. It is the Indian Government or some of its chief agents, not himself alone, to whom the reference is almost always made. Only two paragraphs out of 180 are allotted to the Sikh and Burmese Wars. Of the remainder nine- tenths are taken up with the tale of peaceful progress along a hundred lines. At Galle, Dalhousie learnt to his great joy that John Lawrence and James Outram had both been gazetted Knights of the Bath. From that place he wrote off on March 14th, to congratulate Outram " very heartily on the well-earned honour," which, thanks, be it said, to LETTER TO JOHN LAWBENCE. 197 Dalhousie's earnest pleadings, the Indian Bayard had at last received. " As long as I live," he added, " I shall remember with genuine pleasure our official connection ; and shall hope to retain your personal friendship. A letter now and then from you, when you can find time, would be a great gratification to me." * His letter of the 20th to John Lawrence, written at sea on board the Feroze, was couched in yet warmer and more familiar phrases. '* You would take for granted my joy in this recognition of your merits and services. But I must give you joy, nevertheless, in words, and I do it from my heart No man ever won the honour better, and of all your relatives and friends not one has greater gratification in seeing honour done to you than I have. Pray offer my warmest con- gratulations and my kindest wishes to Lady Lawrence. I was very miserable in parting from you all upon the Ghaut that day. Of all I leave behind me, no man's friendship is more valuable to me, no man's services are more highly estimated by me, than yours. God bless you, my dear John ; write to me as you promised, and believe me now and always your sincere friend, Dalhousie." f The Feroze, which bore its noble burden as far as Suez, was one of the finest and prettiest war steamers of the fa- mous old Indian Navy. Its commander, Captain Rennie, was renowned, not only for feats of daring in the Chinese and Burmese wars, but for his skill and enterprise as a marine surveyor. Of him and Hewitt of the Moozuffer, it has been well said by the historian of the Indian Navy, that they " were officers such as Nelson loved to have under his command."^ During this, his last voyage on * Goldsmid's Life of Outram. Vol. II. t B. Smith's Life of Lord Lawrence. Vol. I. X Low's History of the Indian Navy. 198 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. board his favourite steamer, Dalhousie was seldom free from suffering, and needed all the care which his loving daughter and his faithful surgeon could render him in their several ways. He was carried on shore by the boat's crew at Suez. Before going over the ship's side he shook hands warmly with all the officers, while ring- ing cheers from the whole crew and a farewell salute from the ship's guns greeted the sick man's passage towards the landing-place. In those days the journey across the desert in vans to Cairo, and thence by river and rail to Alexandria, was a rough experience for invalids. By the time he reached Alexandria, Dalhousie became very ill. He had to be carried thence on board the steamer, and again on shore at Malta, where he was fain to rest for ten days, before resuming his voyage home. On the last day of her voyage, as the Tribune frigate steamed up the Solent on her way to Southampton, she met the Royal Yacht bearing Prince Albert across from Osborne to Portsmouth, where the 8th Hussars, newly landed from the Crimea, awaited his inspection. " Know- ing the freight she bore," says Sir T. Martin, " the Prince caused her to be hailed from the Royal Yacht, in hopes of exchanging • salutations with the ex-Viceroy, who was known to have left India much broken in health." But Dalhousie was below at the moment, and in his crippled state could only have reached the deck by being hoisted up through the hatchway. Before this could be done, the two vessels had parted company. THE MESSAGE FROM THE QUEEN, 109 On May 13th, he set foot once more on English ground, at a time when all England was yet astir with public rejoicings over the peace which had lately closed the Crimean War. On the very next day the East India Company voted him a pension of £5,000 a year in acknowledgment of services, for which in their opinion no reward could be deemed too great. In London the physicians whom he consulted held out to him strong hopes of ultimate recovery after a due period of perfect rest and freedom from mental care. A day or two after his arrival he received a message followed by a letter of kindly welcome from the Queen herself. He wrote at once to thank Her Majesty for her " surpassing kindness and condescension." " Such gracious words," he added, "from a sovereign to a subject . . . create emotions of gratitude too strong and deep to find fitting expression in any other than the simplest words." He therefore begged permission to thank Her Majesty "from his inmost heart for the touching and cheering welcome home, which he feels to be the crowning honour of his life." The Queen's gracious words, remarks Sir Theodore Martin, " were but the climax of many, which had told Lord Dalhousie, during his Viceroyalty, of his Sovereign's approval." Nothing indeed had cheered him in his public labours or consoled him under his private sorrows so greatly as did one of these approving or sympathetic letters from his royal mistress. Towards autumn he was well enough to undertake 200 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. the long journey to Edinburgh, where he spent some days in exchanging cordial greetings with many old and faithful friends. The physicians there also looked hopefully upon his case, though it puzzled them. His happiness at that time was clouded only by the pang of parting with the friend who for so many years had watched over his health and shared the intimacies of his daily life. The feelings which he would not trust himself to express by word of mouth found vent in the following letter to Dr. Grant: — "Arrochau, Sept. 2Gth, 1856. *' The time of your departure has now come eo near, that I can no longer defer to bid you the farewell which I have till now avoided, and which even now I am reluctant to say. I felt very sad when we parted at the Station under the North Bridge; and even with the preparatory training which your absence in the North has given me, I shall long feel strange, ill at ease, and altogether amiss in the absence of the kind and sedulous daily care which I have been long accustomed to receive from you. I thank you a thousand times for it all ; my confidence in your judgment and skill was entire and unabated from first to last; and my gratitude for your never-flagging attention to myself and to that dear sufiering companion whom I lost will remain in my memory as long as I have memory left. *• I please myself with the belief that your last act of kiudness in returning to England with me has not been without its advantages, as it has certainly not been without pleasures for you. When you return to Calcutta, you will be at the top of the tree, as far as personal reputation and prospects are concerned. But if ever you suppose that I can in any way, or in any matter, great or small, be of any use to you professionally or otherwise, you may be assured that you can at all times command my best services and my most cordial exertions- for the accomplishment of your wishes. " Susan sends you her best and kindest regards, and Edith repeats the message. Farewell, and God- bless you. Write to me often, and never cease to believe me your sincere friend, " Dalhousie." « OH, FOB ONE HOUR OF DALHO USIE ! " 201 The request to write often was loyally fulfilled. Grant himself landed at Calcutta on December 1st. Amidst the heavy and multifarious duties which devolved upon him in the eventful years that followed, he wrote by every mail to his sick friend letters full of interesting news, public and private, gleaned from his own informants or the journals of the day. These were answered almost as regularly by Dalhousie himself for the first two years after his friend's return to India. The winter of 1856-7, which he spent with his children at Dalhousie Castle, left him weaker and more suftering than before. " I am weak, incapable of exertion or resolution, tormented with the numbness of my nose and throat — without any appetite, and done," were the words he wrote to Grant from Edinburgh in the spring of 1857. Meanwhile, he had been greatly cheered by Grant's report of the interest shown in his condition by the people of Calcutta. "I very often wish myself back there," — he writes in reply. During the troubles of that year in India, there were few who would not have re-echoed that wish on their own behalf. " Oh, for one hour of Lord Dalhousie ! " was the longing expressed again and again, in words of unvarying bitterness, by those who had just heard of some murderous outbreak, some cruel disaster, which, but for official blunder- ing, might not have occurred. If the blame thus cast on others was not always merited, there was reason enough for the faith which inspired it. Canning, in short, was not Dalhousie ; and so the great mutiny, which Dalhousie 202 LIFE OF TEE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. would have quelled in its first onset, was allowed to riot over the greater part of Northern and Central India. From Edinburgh, Dalhousie went up in June to London, for warmth and medical advice. " I can now walk about the room," he writes, " but I seldom do, and for all the purposes of life I am quite useless. My own conviction is, that climate is of more consequence to me than either waters, or any- other nasty product of land or sea. I shall therefore play the sun- flower, and shall seek for the next twelve months to ' turn on my God when he sets the same look which I turned when he rose.' In plain prose, I shall follow warmth through the seasons. Susan (in whom I place more medical confidence than in anybody since you left me) and I have discussed the subject She and Edith decidedly incline to Malta I believe they are right, and I think we shall end in passing the winter there." Both daughters hoped good for him from the sea- voyage, and Lady Susan "sees another merit in the geographical fact that Malta is so far on the way back to India." Of Indian affairs, as of home politics, he knows and hears nothing, except through the newspapers. But Outram's success in the Persian War, and the credit gained therein by Eennie, gave him '^ real pleasure, sadly alloyed by the miserable tidings of poor Etherse^/'s unhappy fate." * In the same letter he says — " We have here absolutely no news. There is nothing moving in Parliament or in politics. Palmerston enjoys a truce both from foes and friends — the latter much more dangerous to him than * Captain Ethersey, of the Indian Navy, had died by his own hand in the delirium of brain disease, brought on by over- work and worry. NEWS OF THE GREAT MUTINY. 203 the former I am happily indifferent to the whole concern." A few days later he writes — "I can't get myself into good spirits about my own state, but try to be thankful for such amendment as there is." Very different was the strain in which he wrote on July 5th. By that time all England had become aware of the tragedies enacted at Meerut and Delhi on May 10th and 11th. Grant's letter of the 18th had told Dalhousie all that the writer knew of that momentous outburst. " You can well imagine," his friend answers, " with what deep grief I have heard the tidings which the last mail has brought. In a public and private sense all is bitter I can think of nothing else but this outbreak ; and, though no alarmist, as you well know, I await with the keenest anxiety the tidings which next mail and successive mails shall bring us. From this side I can tell you nothing but what the journals will tell you better; for I am still closely secluded, and have seen nobody but Lord Panmure [his cousin, then head of the War Office], and from his reserve I did not expect to hear much I am very sad, my dear Grant, at the state of things on your side.'* After a few weeks spent in the bracing air of Malvern, Dalhousie returned to town early in August, to see Sir Benjamin Brodie, before the great surgeon went off for his holidays. He agreed with Brodie in thinking that he had steadily improved during his stay at Malvern. *' Still the complaint is there, and I see no end to it ; nor can I consider myself nearer recovery than I was a year ago, while in respect of the throat, I am in even a worse condition." In the same letter of August 10th, he assures Grant that he is wrong "in supposing that I hear 204. LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. everything! from other quarters. Some officials are very kind in writing to me, when under such pressure of work and anxiety, but I am not sure that I have the voice of puhlic opinion." The last mail had brought no news of the capture of Delhi, and the general disappointment was therefore great. " But the spirit on the whole is good, and all parties — with some rare and discreditable ex- ceptions — are disposed to join in supporting the Govern- ment in what they have resolved and are labouring to do." He was very anxious about the health of his cousin, " the Brigadier," W. Maule Ramsay, from whom he had just received a few lines telling of his safe arrival at Agra, after the narrow " squeak " he had had for it on June 14th, when Sindia's Contingent rose at Gwalior, and murdered every white man they came across. " I earnestly hope," adds Dalhousie, " that you may be able to give good accounts of your brother in Oudh when you next write. This is a sharp and searching time for us all." As time wore on, the voice of public opinion waxed louder and more loud against the late Viceroy, whose policy was supposed, in one way or another, to have led up to the great catastrophe of 1857. The public, ignorant, horrified, and utterly bewildered, looked round for a scapegoat, and their self-elected teachers in the Press fastened upon Lord Dalhousie as the author of an outbreak directly due to the issuing of cartridges greased with lard and beef-fat. The friends of Sir Charles Napier THE CHAINED EAGLE. 205 accused him of placing a blind trust in the loyalty of the Sepoys, and of failing to keep up the British garrison at its proper strength. The friends of native dynasties charged him with fomenting rebellion by his policy of annexing Native States. Others complained of the mischief he had wrought by rash reforms and innovations, which turned large classes of natives into secret enemies of our rule. Dalhousie, in short, became the mark for every arrow which ignorance, ill-will, or party prejudice could level at the statesman who had done more than any former Viceroy to strengthen the foundations of British rule in India. On August 25th, Dalhousie writes to Grant from Edinburgh : — " These wretched events in the East make me quite miserable. Of course there are plenty who inculpate me, and although it is very hard to be incapacitated from defence when one believes onesel^ without blame, I believe that I care less for the blame and for the defencelessness than for the misfortunes which lead men to blame, and render defence of my administration necessary. In the meantime, the rest of mind which I feel to be essential to my progress towards recovery is gone. Nevertheless, I am, on the whole, better than when I wrote to you last." Writing from Edinburgh, on September 24th, in reply to Grant's latest budget of news, he says : — " The local Government at such a time was, of course, certain to be accused and reviled; but there are some points on which I cannot help feeling that they have fairly exposed themselves to attack from first to last. This last business at Dinapore exceeds all powers of imagination. General Lloyd, it is said, put undue faith in the Sepoys ; but why was it left to General Lloyd, or to General or Mr. Anybody, to order the measures so obviously necessary to safety ? The exten - 206 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. sion of disturbance below Benares is the worst intelligence we have yet received. My whole heart is sick and sore at what I hear ; and the mental anxiety and disquietude which are produced by what is going on in the scenes of my services, I am conscious is. retarding the course of my progress towards health." Referring to the death of one of his old secretaries, Major Banks, at Lucknow, and to the reported death of another, Captain D'Oyly, who happily lives still as Sir Charles D'Oyly, he exclaims : " My Grod I what rending asunder is here of the household which, a few months since, was living so happily together in the Hills ! " He was then living quietly at Edinburgh, where he sat to Sir J. Watson Gordon for the portrait which afterwards went out to the Legislative Council. On every other day he went over to Dalhousie Castle, where, thanks to the fine weather, he was usually able to sit in the sun, and to " doddle about " upon " Golden Foot " — the Burman pony which he had first ridden in the Nilgiris — to the improve- ment of his general health. His eyes, however, remained very weak and sore. On October 7th, he hears the solemn tolling of the bells which called the citizens to offer up their united prayers for the safety of their imperilled countrymen in India : — "I have not been able to join," he writes, " for I have passed the last two days in bed'; but God knows, my dear Grant, I do pray with all my heart for that blessing, without which even the splendid efforts which have been made for the restoration of our fame by those who have been fighting for it in Hindustan will have been made in vain. The last mail gave a dreadful shock to all who were looking to Luck- now, and to my poor friends the Coupers among others. I have been THE VOYAGE TO MALTA. 207 doing my best to cheer their hopes by the few rags of comfort which your letter and others contained, and I trust in God the result may answer to our hopes." His wife's favourite dog, Minnie, had been sitting for lier likeness, " and will give more trouble before it is done than the whole I^ational Gallery of Portraits. Steele has finished a charming bust of Susan, and the model of a statue of me ; * and Watson Gordon has finished his picture for the Legislative Council, so far as the man is concerned. So you see we have been doing a great deal for posterity." Later in the same month he and his daughters set out for Malta. On the 29th, when his voyage in the Indus was nearly over, he wrote Grant a few lines of tender condolence on the death of his brother in Havelock's camp at Cawnpore. "Still," he adds, *'you may be ])roud to remember that, in a time which tried all men's mettle, he did a high duty well and gallantly, and set an example which the best men among us might be glad to follow." Grant's letter of October 8th, with its good news about the taking of Delhi and the relief of Lucknow, found Dalhousie settled for the winter at Valetta, in a house standing close to the harbour. Behind the house were ''beautiful terraced gardens, accessible in quiet to me and my crutches at any time." The winter in Malta had for him "a bad beginning — our poor old Minnie is * This statue was afterwards placed in the Dalhousie Institute, in Dalhousie Square, Calcutta, the Tank Square of former days. 208 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. dead," from the effects of a fall as she tried to leap ashore. " She lies buried in the garden here, and there are very few human beings whose death would make me so sad as the loss of this dumb old friend has done. You at least will recall a thousand reasons why this should be so — and it is so." Happily, the portrait painted at Edinburgh would remain with him still. He had brought with him his own carriage, and he had the free use of the Governor's barge; and there were "lots of eigh teen- penny two-oars, which I like much better." The weather up to date — November 12th — had been " infernally hot, stuffy, and choke-full of mosquitoes ; in short, not at all a bad imitation of Chowringhee in November." That the Government would give Lord Canning their full support he takes for granted. But on the first night of the next Session " will commence a general action which may last as long as the siege of Sebastopol. I am glad that I am excluded from the fight, nolens volens ; some- times I fret at the thought of absence, even when com- pulsory. Anyhow, there seems not the remotest possibility of my being sound enough for action, even in the spring." It was hard, indeed, for one so sensitive, who had sacrificed his life in his country's service, to find himself a dumb and passive target for all kinds of unmerited abuse. He could not but wince at times under so much injustice ; but he made up his mind to suffer and be still, knowing that a nation in a panic was apt to turn upon its truest benefactors, but that time and truth were working steadily on his side. In happier circumstances he would have A CHANGE FOR THE WORSE. 209 plunged into the fray, for sheer love of fighting. He once said he would rather have commanded the 26th Came- ronians, his father's old regiment, than be Governor- General of India. But, as things were, he let all hostile criticism pass unanswered, referring his friends to the minutes and despatches which recorded the grounds for every act of his government, and declaring his belief that future historians would do full justice to his deserts. Meanwhile, however, he was gathering materials which might some day be used in his defence. In his letter of November 27, he asks his friend to try and look up for him a report of the speech made by Sir C. Napier at Delhi, in 1849, on presenting a new set of colours to the 4 1st N.I. His object was of course to show that Napier in those days had no sort of misgiving as to the loyalty of Bengal Sepoys. In due time Grant fished out the speech from a copy of the Delhi Gazette. It abounded, as Dalhousie expected, in unqualified praise of the Native Army. A brief period of improved health was followed in December by a change for the worse. " I am less hopeful, more directly desponding, than I have ever yet been,". he writes, on the 29th. "I have been so unlucky as to get cold, which has given me sore throat, and has brought back my worst suffering, the tic all over the left side of my head. My rest is destroyed, my appetite again wholly gone. I loathe the sight of food, and in spite of tonics and careful treatment, with which I have no fault to find, I am low, languid, sick, deaf, stupid, weak and miserable." He was greatly pleased, however, at learning that Dr. John Forsyth had been placed at the head of the Indian p 210 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. Medical Service. ''Give him my warm congratulations when he turns up, and my best and kindest regards." Another incident reported from Calcutta must have gratified him even more. A bold and powerful article in his defence had lately appeared in the Friend of India, then edited by Mr. Meredith Townsend. The article was read by the late Sir George Yule, then Mr. Yule, the brave and watchful Commissioner of Bhagalpur. He sent the editor a draft for Es. 500, " in the hope that, by its application to some good object . . . you may receive a portion of such pleasure as the perusal of your article has given me." The editor in his turn wrote thus to Dr. Grant : — " I cannot resist the inclination to give Lord Dalhousie a great pleasure. The enclosed note is from a civilian who was not one of his follow- ing. It will show at least the intense sympathy and respect for him still existing in India." A note of thanks from Dalhousie for the pleasure thus afforded him was duly conveyed to Mr. Townsend. The Christmas season in Malta was unusually cold, wet, and raw. Cut off from the open air, which was his " life- blood," Dalhousie could not get rid of his cold. " The tic in my head," he writes on January 11th, " has been desperate — my sleep totally gone — and a loathing of food more abject than in the hottest of hot weather." On the 27th he reports himself a little better, but the snow was lying deep by the wayside, as he drove the day before to Citta Vecchia. He is glad to hear Grant's news about his younger brother, who, '4ias early smelt BETTER AND WOBSE. 211 powder and in right good company," and he hopes his health '' will prove as stout as the rest of him." He is " sincerely gratified by the distinguished part which George Couper has taken " in the defence of Lucknow. His letter of February comments feelingly on the news of fresh massacres in Oudh. *'It will rouse airain the appetite for vengeance, already so strong ; and complicate and exasperate everything." His doctor considers him better decidedly. *' I may be better medically, but prac- tically I am no better. I croak ten times worse than any Maidan crow that sits on Lord William Bentinck's head [in Calcutta]. I am as deaf as the Ochterlony Monument, and as dull as the pulpit in the Old Cathedral." He was very sorry to hear of the poor old Bishop's death, " if one may be sorry for what I feel convinced is great gain for him." Of that worthy but rather eccentric prelate, Daniel Wilson, he used to speak as a first-rate man of business, but when the good Bishop had a point to gain his astuteness had to be watched. " It is just two years to-day," he writes, on the last day of February, 1S58, " since I laid down the office of Governor-General ; and, ill as I then was, upon my word, my dear Grant, I was a better man than I feel myself at this moment When we have two sunny, bright days together, I get better at once; when, as is more usual, the barometer goes the other way, I am all wrong." He had just heard the " astounding " news of Palmerston's overthrow on the Conspiracy Bill. Lord Derby's return to power would be '' a severe blow to Lord Canning, and probably perplex him a good deal." He p2 212 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALEOUSIE. has heard both from D'Oyly and from Mecham ; " so we have ffot news of the relics of the old staff." In the same letter he begs his friend to show a little kindness to a young civilian named Charles Temple, son of " a most worthy man who was for many years my tutor, and to whose teaching and early discipline I consider that I owe most of the success I may have gained, and all the little good there is in me. I have not seen the lad, but he came out second of his term and is very well spoken of." On March 13th, Dalhousie refers to the prospects of the new Ministry as a matter in which he has no interest. " I wish well to Lord Derby himself ; but his colleagues in the Commons have treated me so unfairly as a public man, and used me so scandalously, that I could have no sympathies with them, whether in office or out of it." The public seemed disposed to treat Lord Derby fairly ; but it was " not in the nature of things " that his govern- ment should last long. The Whigs, if they gave up quarrelling among themselves, might overturn it at any moment. The weather had improved, but was still very cold, and his throat no better. On the 28th he writes to say " how grieved we were to hear of your being ill, and how much obliged to you I am for taking the trouble of writing to me, when so lately on your back." Dr. Grant had been laid up with a sharp attack of dysentery, from which he was slowly recovering when he wrote last. On April 13th, Dalhousie declared himself rejoiced to find that his old friend was able for « ir MADE M7 EEABT ACHE." 213 his work again. The same mail had brought him a letter from Courtenay, who wrote " not gaily, but con- tentedly, I think, of the progress he makes, slow as it is, and I was very glad to perceive that you thought he might wholly recover his health," about which Dalhousie had been very apprehensive. In the same letter he mentions the arrival of Mrs. Couper and Mrs. Banks, two of the ladies who had survived the horrors and the hardships of the memorable defence of the Lucknow Kesidency. The former " looked as little like the wasted remains of the besieged as could well be." But Mrs. Banks, " poor little soul, had all the gaiety and brightness utterly taken out of her — ^so pale and sad, and so subdued, compared with what she was when I last saw her leading poor Banks captive, that it made my heart ache to look at her, and think of what had come to pass in the interval since we parted at Barrackpore." He hears from England that the chances of the Derby Ministry had been much weakened by Lord Ellenborough's India Bill. If the Whigs could make up their quarrels and settle their pretensions, " the Bill will go, and with it the Government .... and under such circumstances the Bill would go, if it were as good in reality as people now think it bad. All of you, including himself, will be surprised to see Dorin's name among the proposed Crown Councillors. I am very glad of it, for I have a great regard for Dorin [then still a member of the Supreme Council] ; but I certainly did not look for his name, as I did not know that he stood so high with Lord Ellenborough in that personal favour which has dictated many of his nominations Some of these are good men, but obviously they are selected because 214 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALEOUSIE, of their connexion with his own rule. The notion of supplanting Willoughby by Pringle in the representation of Bombay is grotesque." In the same letter he reported " most lovely summer weather, dry and warm." He was keeping out as much as possible in the open air. " I am still very hoarse" — he adds — ''but I can make a sound; which I hardly could do some time ago." On the 29th of April he writes : — •' I was much concerned to read the account you give of Courtenay. , , , , The Brigadier arrived, looking thin and a good deal older, and much quelled in spirits. The latter are beginning to rise again already He does not report to mo so well of your health as I hoped, and should wish to hear him. Beware, my good friend, how you follow my stupid example, and do not remain in India when your health requires you to leav« it — either from a sense of supposed duty, or from any other motive. I have paid heavily for doing so, and I believe now that I shall continue to pay to the end of my life. I should be glad to warn you off a similar fate." The subject of India and Indian legislation was too sad for him to write " even a single line about it." That his residence in Malta had been for him a failure, he felt assured. The Indus^ in which he had secured a passage home, was expected daily ; so he was packing again, and "driven to the verge of suicide three times a day in consequence." On May 9th, he writes for the last time from Malta. The packing is over, and " we are riding at single anchor, waiting for the Indus, which is expected to night." Dr. Stilon — '* a sensible and modest man, free from humbug or professional charlatanry of any sort " — had seen him the day before, and pronounced him, on the whole, distinctly NO BEST FOB TEE MIND. 215 better than in the past November. He was thinner, his face no longer puffy, and his aspect wholesome. "The tic alone refuses to surrender, and it persecutes me disagreeably." Looking back on the past two years, Dalhousie for his part could not but feel that his real progress had been very small. Kest for mind and body was the one tonic which all the doctors agreed in prescribing for him ; but what rest of mind could he know while England was passing through the crisis of an Indian Mutiny, in which so many of his friends and followers were involved ? ( 216 ) CHAPTER XI. THE END. 1858-1860. The stay at Malvern — Last letter to Dr. Grant— Letter from Sir John Lawrence — Dr. Smith — Marriage of Lady Edith Eamsay — Improvement in Dalhousie's health — Death of Captain Mecham — Last Illness and Death — Conditions of his will — Tributes to his memory — Concluding remarks. The Indus made a beautiful passage horae, but Dalhousie, contrary to his usual experience, was " mortally sea-sick all the way." The old pains in his head returned, and a new complication had set in from an affection of the left eye, which, growing daily worse, had finally landed him with " double vision." In London he " saw the old triumvirate"* of medical men, by whose advice, after ten days of suffering, he betook himself once more to Malvern. Writing thence to Grant on June 17th, he says : — " Ten days at Malvern — no better — tonic doing no good. Always sick ; head damnable ; eye not a bit better ; throat very decidedly worse. I therefore resolved to see Dr. Gully of this place, and, if he proposed nothing violent, to put myself in his hands." Dr. Gully, like * Sir Benjamin Brodie, Sir Ranald Martin and Mr. T. A. Stone. ''DON'T BOTHEB ABOUT INDIA." 217 everyone else whom he had consulted, ascribed his illness to an overwrought brain, and tried, as most of them had done, to effect some improvement in his general health. The weather since his landing in England had been " quite lovely, but excessively hot." He had heard much of late from Courtenay and the Brigadier ; and " although it is not my fashion to despond, all that I have been hear- ing makes me very low. And the doctors say to me, ' Keep your mind easy, and don't bother yourself about India ! ' " / . On July 8th, after three weeks of Dr. Gully's treatment, he reported himself decidedly stronger ; ''in proof of which, I may mention, that yesterday I walked more than half a mile on my crutches alon^^ the road. My appetite is improved ; so is my sleep. The neuralgic pain in the head is diminished, though not removed. Altogether I have a bettersome feeling ; hut the vision of my eye is not mended, my throat is not improved, and my leg is as it was." Time of course was needed for a fair trial of Gully's system ; and the weather, turning cold and raw after excessive heat, had been against him. " How anybody survives one summer in these British isles is the wonder." The progress of events in India he did not regard as at all satisfactory ; and the uneasiness in the Maratha country was " a disagreeable complication " of affairs. Of the India Bill, then virtually through the Commons, he thinks that " though it is very far still from what it should be (even if it was to be at all), still it is very much better than when it was first produced. 218 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. .... The Commons have passed it in sheer despair of ever under- standing the subject, and to get rid of it ; voting against Palmerston, or Lord John Russell, or Gladstone, or anybody else who attempted to stand for a moment in the way of that desired end. Whether the Lords will do the same remains to be seen." This was the last letter which Grant was ever to receive from his suffering friend. After a while the change to Malvern and the treatment there failed as every other change and treatment had always done. Long afterwards Dalhousie sent his friend a message by Colonel Bowie, one of the old staff; who had gone to see his old Chief at Dalhousie Castle before returning to India from sick leave. " Tell Dr. Grant," he said, " that I owe replies to many correspondents, and will begin by writing to him first." "But, alas! he was never able," says Dr. Grant ; " and those dear to him and around him, often hinted to me not to discontinue my letters, which were a great pleasure to him. So I continued occasionally to write to him to the close of his life in December 1860." Nor was Dr. Grant left without frequent news of his poor friend's condition. Almost every mail brought him a letter, either from Lady Susan, or from the Brigadier, who, in the autumn of that year, joined Dalhousie at Malvern, and became thenceforth a very useful and im- portant member of his cousin's household. Lady Susan was a watchful and devoted nurse, and General Ramsay's unfailing services to his dying kinsman ceased only when all need for them was over. On June 16th, Sir J. Lawrence writing from Marri, WANTED, A DICTATOB. 219 draws a gloomy picture of affairs in India, laments the absence of a strong man at their head, and cries aloud for more troops from England to suppress a rising which has grown into " a great guerilla war." He himself has no influence with people in power at home. " You, my Lord," he pleads, " are differently situated ; you have done great things for India. By coming forward now and inducing the Ministry to act decidedly, you may be instrumental in saving this great Empire to England. In one word we want more European soldiers in India and —a dictator." This stirring appeal from his old lieu- tenant found Dalhousie far too weak and ill to make himself heard or felt in his country's service, however sore her need. The next year, 1859, was spent by the invalid mostly at Palhousie Castle, with an occasional trip to Edinburgh. At his own hom.e his ancient friend. Dr. Smith of Lasswade, attended him regularly as his medical adviser. One of Ramsay's letters to Grant contains a touching instance of Dalhousie's delicate regard for others' feelings. Smith was a fine specimen of the old school of country doctors ; but he had long since past his prime. The good old man's sight was now so impaired, and his hand so shaky, that in touching the patient's throat with caustic he seldom, if ever, touched the right spot. Dalhousie himself was aware of his friend's mistake, but in Smith's presence not a hint of it ever escaped his lips ; nor was any one else allowed to hint it, lest the old man should feel hurt at such a reflexion upon his skill. 220 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALEOUSIE. It was in this year that his younger daughter, Lady Edith, was married to Sir James Fergusson, of Kilkerran, who afterwards became Governor of South Australia, and of Bombay, and who is now Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. She was married from Dalhousie Castle, and Dalhousie himself made a good speech at the wedding breakfast. Her first child was born in her father's lifetime. Lady Edith died at Adelaide, after a short illness, in 1872 ; sincerely lamented by all who had known her, or heard of her good deeds in South Australia. Towards the close of this year Dalhousie rallied to an extent which astonished and cheered all around him. Writing to Grant on December 18th, when the snow lay six inches deep, and the thermometer stood all day at 22°, Ramsay declared that his kinsman was " better in his general health " than he had ever seen him before. *' He comes to breakfast, luncheon, and dinner ; he eats well, sleeps very fairly, has become quite strong and healthy-looking, and has increased a good deal in bulk." Dalhousie had developed a new capacity for standing cold, the more amazing by contrast with his sufferings in the previous winter. He himself began to talk of going up to London in the spring, and some of his friends were even hoping that next May would see him sitting once more in the House of Lords. The improvement continued far into the following year. In the last days of 1859, it gave him strength to with- stand the shock he felt on hearing of the cruel death of a DEATH OF DICK MECEAM. 221 favourite aide-de-camp, Captain Mecham of the Bengal Artillery, who had oeen murdered, in November, as he lay in his dhoolie, on the way from Bannu to Kohat. " Dick Mecham," as everyone called him, was travelling to join the Staff of Sir George Edmondstone, Lieutenant- Governor of the North- West Provinces, when a band of Waziri robbers fell upon him, unarmed and weak from illness, and slew him out of sheer devilry. On learning the sad news about one so young, brave, accomplished, and warm-hearted, Dalhousie's eyes, said Ramsay, " filled immediately, and he could hardly speak for some time. Indeed, for some days he appeared to think of nothing else." Seldom as he used his pen now, he wrote off at once to condole with Mecham's father. The members of the old staff subscribed for a memorial tablet, which was set up in Calcutta Cathedral, bearing an inscription written by Dr. Grant himself. Early in May, 1860, Dalhousie was strong enough to go up to London, where, with the exception of one week spent at Brighton, he stayed until August 8th. During that time he consulted Dr. Bence Jones, who discovered manifest symptoms of Bright's disease of the kidneys. After Dalhousie's return to Scotland, this opinion was fully confirmed by Sir Robert Christison. Some weeks later the mischief in the kidneys was complicated by softening of the brain. The strong mind began to wander, the marvellous memory to grow dim. Now and agaia his mental or his bodily powers seemed to rally, but the long struggle was clearly drawing to an end. 222 LIFE OF TEE MABQUIS OF DALEOUSIE. As autumn passed into winter his condition grew more and more distressing to those around him. At times he could sit up and read or talk with his wonted intelligence ; but oftener he would fancy himself back in India, among the scenes and companions of former days. He would ask when Dr. Grant was coming to see him, and wonder why he kept away so long. He would talk about old days in the Nilgiris as if he were still there, and speak of Mecham as still alive, complaining that now his name was never mentioned. In one of his lucid intervals he brightened up with pleasure on hearing how feelingly Lord Canning had spoken of him when he opened a new section of the East Indian Railway at Rajmahal. " Susan," he said to his daughter, who had read out the speech, " Canning is a gentleman." On coming to his senses after a paralytic seizure, he would say to Eamsay, *' Now Brigadier, when I am dead, you must stay here and take care of poor Sue, for she will require it." He had several of these seizures during the last month of his life, and each time the same request was repeated in the same words. To his patience under so much suffering, Ramsay himself bore admiring witness. " All the time I have been with him, I have never heard him complain once" At noon of Tuesday, December 17th, he became unconscious, and so continued until 6 • 30 on the evening of the 19th, when he drew his last breath in the presence of Lady Susan and General Ramsay. For a few days before the end he had been free from pain. He and Lady BALEOUSIWS WILL. 223 Susan had been for years devoted to each other. During the last four hours, the latter, in spite of her own weak health, never once quitted her father's bedside. The funeral took place on the 26th ; Eamsay acting as chief mourner in the room of Lord Panmure, the new Earl, who was too unwell to appear in his own person. A long train of mourning and private carriages followed the hearse, and before it marched the tenantry of the Dalhousie estates. All that was left of James Andrew Eamsay, the first and last Marquis of Dalhousie, was laid in the family vault near the church of Cockpen. Ten years afterwards an obelisk was set up in the adjacent cemetery ; and the inscription at its base ran thus : — " In the adjacent family vault lie the remains of the Marquess of Dalhousie. Born, April 22, 1812. Died, December 19, 1860. " They rest from their labours, and their worJcs do follow them." " This monument is erected by his daughter, "Susan Georgiana."* In July, 1860, Dr. Bence Jones had strongly advised Dalhousie to go home and stay there. Alive to the latent m.eaning of such advice from so high an authority, the dying statesman had no sooner returned to Scotland, than he made a final settlement of his worldly affairs. By a clause then added to his will, he made over all his letters and private papers to the charge of his daughter, now Lady Connemara. At her death, " or sooner if she * In 1863, Lady Susan was married to the Hon. Robert Bourke, now Lord Connemara, brother of the Lord Mayo who governed India from 1869 to 1872. 224 LIFE OF THE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. should think fit," all these and other documents bearing on the history of the Dalhousie family, were to be delivered to the holder of the title of Dalhousie, who was solemnly entreated, as by a voice " issuing from the grave," to let " no portion of the private papers of my father or myself be made public, until at least fifty years shall have passed after my death." * In vain did his own agent, Mr. Harry Watson, brother of Sir J. Watson-G-ordon, fight against the insertion of this particular clause, as unfair to Dalhousie himself. Mr. Watson afterwards told Dr. Grant how his Lordship had justified himself by quoting the uses to which the Duke of Buckingham had turned the family papers collected at Stowe. Some of these papers were of a date so recent, that their publication could not but hurt the feelings of many persons then alive. The death of the great Marquis in the forty-ninth year of his age furnished a suggestive theme for the pens of able writers in all the journals of the day. The sounds of censure and disparagement, which had embittered his last years were drowned in the general chorus of regret for the early close of a life so full of splendid achieve- ments, so rich in the promise of yet greater deeds to come. Each of the leading journals gave its own sketch of the dead statesman's public career, and the Friend of India^ was enabled to add some noteworthy and life-like touches concerning the man himself. * Encyclopedia Britannica, Article *' Dalhousie." Vol. VI. t Then edited by Dr. George Smith. MTTH AND BJEALITY, 225 The time was not yet ripe for a large and just apprecia- tion of Lord Dalhousie's public worth. Men's judgments had been so clouded by the dust-storm of the Indian Mutiny, that few could then see, as clearly as did the writer in the Friend of India, the absurd injustice of linking the great Proconsurs name with the disasters of 1857. The mythical Dalhousie, whose rash reforms, ruthless annexations, and blind economy had provoked, intensified, or prolonged the terrible crisis of that year, still darkened the fair fame of the real Dalhousie, who had made the Government of India strong enough to withstand the worst hurricane that ever in this century has raged against the empire founded by Clive. It is true that the myth itself already stood confuted by patent facts. With the exception of Oudh and Jhansi, none of the annexed provinces had shown the least desire to rise against their new masters. Pegu remained perfectly tranquil, even in the absence of British troops. The conquered Punjab became the recruiting-ground whence thousands of Sikhs and Pathans sallied forth to aid us in re-taking Delhi and Lucknow, and suppressing mutiny and revolt elsewhere. Not one of the great native princes, whom Dalhousie's policy was said to have estranged from us, made common cause with his rebel countrymen. Many an outbreak in Oudh and elsewhere would have been prevented, had the Home Government taken up betimes Dalhousie's schemes for strengthening the British garrison, and cutting down the native army in Bengal. What stress he had always laid on the dangers, sudden Q 226 LIFE OF TEE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. and unforeseen, which begirt our rule in India, the reader has seen already. Had Dalhousie been at Calcutta instead of Canning, it is certain that the Sepoys at Dinapore would never have had the chance of spreading panic and disorder through Bengal and Bahar ; nor would William Tayler have been punished for saving his own province from untold disaster, in spite of a Government which gave no heed to his repeated warnings. The world has moved since then ; and the true Dalhousie has well-nigh emerged from the clouds which passion and prejudice raised up between him and the nation he had served so well. Whatever record may leap to light among the papers still kept by his orders under lock and key, materials enough for a cool and dispassionate judgment of the noblest and greatest of Indian Viceroys are already to hand. Time is working steadily on his side : — "Crescit, occulto velut arbor ssvo, Fama Marcelli." Three years after his death the Duke of Argyll glorified his old colleague with characteristic vigour in the pages of the Edinburgh Review. In 1865, Sir C. Jackson stood forth to vindicate the memory of his former Chief, in a volume which admirably fulfilled its special purpose. History, in the hands of John Marshman, paid up, a few years later, the full arrears of justice, previously withheld by Kaye and Arnold. Sir Richard Temple and some other writers have lately followed in Marshman's track. It is not too much to say with that TEE EVIDENCE OF FACTS. 227 impartial historian that Dalhousie " exhibited perhaps the finest example which ancient or modern history affords, of ^ what can be accomplished for the benefit of mankind by an enlightened despotism acting upon a large theatre." Dalhousie, it seems, " had no imagination," because his policy towards native rulers displeased the zealots for a sounding sentiment and the idolaters of old use and wont. He might with equal justice be accused of disloyalty to the Crown, because, in view of the disasters caused by official blundering in the Crimean war, he declared that " the people of England might well be discontented with their aristocratic Government." A less imaginative ruler would have shown none of that sympathy with the weak and the oppressed which forms one of his strongest claims to our lasting admiration. *' I can recall instances," says Sir C. Jackson, " within my own knowledge when Advo- cate-General, of Lord Dalhousie's indignation when acts of oppression and torture had attracted his notice in the public prints, and of his readiness to protect the native population from the recurrence of those acts." In the light of plain facts it is no longer possible to regard him as a statesman who, according to Henry Lawrence had " very little heart ; " whom Kaye described as greatly wanting in sympathy with his native subjects ; who, according to Sir E. Arnold, was possessed by one dominant passion which sometimes drove him far beyond the bounds of '^ conventional justice, generosity, and good faith." If the foregoing pages have not altogether missed their mark, they will have helped the reader not only to appre- 228 LIFE OF TEE MABQUIS OF DALHOUSIE. ciate the statesman's matchless services to his country, but to reahse in the man himself that perfect union of manly- strength and womanly softness, which Schiller typified in these lines from his Song of the Bell : — **Denn, wo das Strenge mit dem Zarten, Wo Starkes sicli und Mildes paarten, Da gibt es einen guten Klang." Dalhousie's character had the true ring. Its hidden tenderness may have been equalled, it could not have been excelled, by its conspicuous power and strength. INDEX. B. Baroda, placed under the Governor- General, 130. Bengal, placed under a Lieutenant- Governor, 125; Santhal rising in, 136. Berar, Cession of, 157. Bethune, Drinkwater, his school for Hindu girls. 134 ; his abortive Bill, 138. Bhawalpur, disputed succession in, 139. Brodie, Sir Benjamin, is consulted by Lord Dalhousie, 203. Burmah, causes of dispute with, ;^89-90; war declared with, 92; British successes in, 92; peace proclaimed with, 97. Butler, Dr. George, Head Master of Harrow, 3; his regard for '* Jemmy Ramsay," 3. Calcutta, Dalhousie's arrival at, 31; his return to, from Simla, 89; his long seclusion in, 110; r'his last days in, 186-92. ' Campbell, Colonel, his successful , labours among the Khands, 130. t Canning, Earl, at Christ Church, I with young Ramsay, 7; meets Dalhousie at Government House, Calcutta, 189 ; his speech at Rajmahal, 222. Cautley, Sir Proby, designs and carries out the Ganges Canal, 119. Chalmers, Dr., his difference with Dalhousie, 14. Chatar Singh, revolts at Peshawar, 36 ; surrenders his prisoners, 174. Chilianwala, Battle of, 42. Clerk, Sir George, Governor of Bombay, 144; objects to the absorption of Satara, 146. Currie, Sir Frederick, Resident at Lahore, 34 ; urges the despatch of troops to Multan, 35 ; quits Lahore, 45. D. Dalhousie, Christian, Countess of, 2; described by Dean Ramsay, 7 ; death of, 16. Dalhousie, George, ninth Earl of, 1; goes to Canada, 2; Com- mander-in-Chief in India, 7 ; his death, 13. Dalhousie, James Andrew Ramsay, Marquis of, his birth, ancestry, and early childhood, 1-2 ; his school-days, 3-6; his career at Oxford, 7-10 ; becomes Lord Ramsay, 10 ; candidate for Edin- 230 INDEX. burgh, 11 ; incidents of the canvass, 11 ; his election for Had- dington, 12 ; becomes Earl of Dalhousie and a member of the General Assembly, 13-14 ; with- draws from the latter, 14 ; marries Lady Susan Hay, 16; his wel- come to the Queen, 17 ; joins Sir K. Peel's ministry, 18 ; becomes President of the Board of Trade, 18; his labours on the Kailway Commission, 19 ; his health gives way, 23 ; his services in the House of Lords, 23 ; beccraies Lord Kegister of Scotland, 24 ; resigns office, 27; appointed Governor-General of India, 27 ; letter from his aunt, 29; de- parture for Calcutta, 29; finds India perfectly tranquil, 31 ; gives Sir F. Currie a free hand, 36 ; prepares for war with the Sikhs, 37-8 ; his speech at Bar- rackpore, 38 ; resolves to con- quer the Punjab, 39 ; his journey to Ferozepore, 41 ; resolves that Gough shall cross the Jliilam, 43 ; discusses terms of proclama- lion with Sir H. Lawrence, 46; his peremptory letter, 46 ; his attempts to pacify his Resident, 48 ; consults John Lawrence, 49 ; sends Elliot to Lahore, 49 ; his arrangements for annexing the PuujalD, 52 ; his letter to the India House, 54 ; commutes the sentence on Mulraj, 58 ; his plans for administering the Punjab, 59-60 ; his first interview with Napier at Simla, 64; forms the Frontier Field Force, 64; he censures Sir C. Napier, 66 ; his reply to Napier's attacks, 67-9 ; he objects to Sir H. Lawrence's frequent absences from Lai i ore, 71 ; his letter about Lord Stanley, 74 ; invites Dr. Grant to attend on Lady Dalhousie, 76 ; appoints him his own surgeon, 77 ; his journeys and voyages in the cold season of 1849-50, 77, 78; his visit to Kanawar, 79 ; his second progress through the Punjab, 79 ; his Minute on tree-planting, 81-2 ; his zeal for developing the resources of the Punjab, 83 ; his enormous industry, 85 ; his Minutes on the Patna Wahabis, 86-7 ; his view of the border raids, 88 ; leaves Simla for the last time on his way to Calcutta, 89; his attempts to avert war with Burmah, 90; his prepara- tions for war, 91 ; becomes his own War Minister, 91 ; his in- structions to Godwin, 93; his visit to Rangoon, 93; proclaims the annexation of Pegu, 94 ; his proclamation of June, 1853, 97; his policy justified, 97 ; takes Sir H. Lawrence at his word, 102 ; appoints John Lawrence Chief Commissioner of the Punjab, 103; his tribute to the defunct Board, 105 ; his encouragement of Reynell Taylor, 105-6; his sorrow for the death of Mackeson, 106; sanctions the treaty with Dost Mohammad, 107; visits Rangoon and the new frontier, 109 ; his grief at the death of Lady Dalhousie, 110; sends Outram back to Baroda, 111; his great postal reforms, 111 ; his great scheme of railways for India, 112-15; establishes the telegraph system, 116-18; his zeal in support of the Ganges Canal, 119 ; and of the Bari D§,ob Canal, 120; his efforts to im- prove the general communica- tions, 121 ; his plans for a nuw port on the Matla, 122 ; organizes a Department of Public Works, 124; abolishes the Military Board, 125 ; opens the new Legis- lative Council, 126 ; visits Puri, 126; resolves to stay one more year in India, 127; his en- couragement of social reforms, 129 ; his crusade against infanti- cide, 130-33 ; his care for the European soldier, 133-34; hia educational policy, 134-35 ; he INDEX. 231 suppresses Dacoity in Bengal, 185 ; legislates on behalf of Hindu widows, 136; supports Bethune's abortive Bill of 1849, 138 ; his foreign policy, 139 ; his journey to the Nilgiris, 140 ; his policy towards lapsed States, 143 ; Satara, 144-46 ; Sambalpur, 147; Karauli, 147-48; Nagpur, 149-50 ; his faith in the blessings of British rule, 150; fate of Jhansi, 151 ; his regard for private rights and social usages, 151 - 53 ; declines to restore the Mysore Raj, 154 ; his ex- tinction of phantom royalties, 154 ; rejects the claims of Nana Sahib, 155 ; his dealings with the Delhi princes, 156; obtains Berar from the Nizam, 157 ; his views regarding Oudh, 158 ; his measures for annexing it under orders from home, 160-61 ; ap- points Outram Chief Commis- sioner, 161; "his last sacrifice on the altar of duty," 161 ; re- turns for the last time to Cal- cutta, 163; his scheme for re- forming the Medical Service, 163 -65 ; review of his career, 165-67; his tact and courtesy, 167; his faculty of leadership, 168 ; his commanding person- ality, 169 ; his kindliness to the deserving, 169; his choice of fit agents, 170 ; his manner of deal- ing rebukes, 170 ; his lofty scorn of base things, 171 ; his sense of his own dignity, 171 ; his easy relations with his staff, 171- 72 ; his kindly thouo:htfulness, 173-74; his intercourse with native chiefs and gentry, 175; the charm of his softer hours, 176; his personal habits, tastes, &c., 176-77; his appetite for work, 177 - 78 ; " sixty minutes to the hour," 178; thorough- ness of his labours, 179 ; his care for administrative efficiency, 179 ; his enmity to promotion by mere seniority, 180; his love of order, 181 ; purity of his patron- age, 181-82 ; his protest against weakening his English garrison, 182 ; his last Minutes on the Indian Army, 182-85 ; his scheme of Yearly Reports from the local governments, 185 ; what India owes to him, 185-86 ; marks of public regret at his approaching departure, 186-87 ; his reply to a farewell address, 187 ; his letter to John Lawrence, 188; the strain upon his failing health, 189 ; takes leave of his Council, 189; his meeting with Lord Canning, 189-90; his letter to the Queen, 190 ; his last Sunday in India, 191; his triumphal departure from Calcutta, 191-92 ; his Farewell Minute, 194-95 ; his letters to Lawrence and Outram, 196-97; his sufferings on the voyage home, 198 ; his arrival in England, 198-99; his reply to the Queen's message, 199 ; bids farewell by letter to Dr. Grant, 200 ; his state of health in April, 1857, 201 ; his letter to Grant on hearing of the Mutinies, 203; begs Grant to tell him all the Indian news, 204 ; he becomes the popular scapegoat, 204-5 ; his strictures on the Indian Government, 205 ; his life at Edinburgh, 206; his voyage to Malta, 207 ; his letters thence to Dr. Grant, 208; his note of thanks to Mr. Townsend, 210; reports himself no better, 211 ; discusses the prospects of the new Ministry, 212 ; is grieved to hear of Grant's illness, 212 ; his meet- ing with two ladies from Lucknow, 213 ; his remarks on Lord Ellenborough's India Bill, 213; his account of "the Brigadier," 214; prepares to leave Malta, 214 ; goes to Malvern and puts himself under Dr. Gully, 216 ; writes his last letter to Grant, 217-78 ; his thoughtfulness for Dr. Smith, 219 ; his health 232 INDEX. improves for a time, 220; his grief for Captain Mecham, 221 ; his last visit to London, 221 ; returns home to die, 222; his death and funeral, 222-23; his will 223-24; his character vin- dicated, 226-27. Dalhousie, Susan, Marchioness of, 16 ; accompanies Lord Dalhousie to India, 29 ; her journey to Simla, 75 ; her voyage down the Ganges to Calcutta, 89; spends some montlis in Ceylon, 93; her death at sea, 109, Dalhousie Castle, 1; the Queen's visit to, 17; Dalhousie's last days in, 219. Delhi, state of things at, 155-56; mutiny at, 203 ; capture of, 225. Dhulip Singh, Maharajah of La- hore, 32 ; his last Durbar, 51-2 ; surrenders his crown, 53 ; ex- changes visits with Lord Dal- housie, 78. Dorin, Mr., his farewell speech to Lord Dalhousie, 189, D'Oyly, Captain Charles, his emo- tion at parting from Dalhousie, 192; false report of his death, 206. E. East India Company, last renewal of its charter, 125 ; great reduc- tion of its patronage, 125 ; Bill for the abolition of, 213. Edwardes, Major Herbert, leads a force from Bannu against Mulraj, 35; becomes Commissioner of Pesh§,war, 107 ; concludes a treaty with Dost Mohammad, 107. Elliot, Sir Henry, becomes Foreign Secretary to Lord Dalhousie, 41 ; dissuades Sir H. Lawrence from retiring, 49-50 ; present at Dhulip Singh's last durbar, 51 ; aids in drawing up a scheme of govern- ment for the Punjab, 5-8; his untimely death, 108. Febgusson, Sir James, marries Lady Edith Ramsay, 220. G. Gladstone, Eight Hon. W. E., at Christ Church, 7 ; becomes Presi- dent of the Board of Trade, 18 ; his retirement, 19. Godwin, General, commands the troops in the Burmese war, 92 ; relieves the garrison of Pegu, 95 ; returns to Rangoon, 96. Gomm, Sir William, becomes Com- mander-in-Chief in India, 68. Gough, Lord, orders the march upon Multan, 36 ; takes the field against the Sikhs, 41 ; fights the battle of Chilianwala, 42 ; wins the crowning victory of Gujarat, 43. Grant, Dr. Alexander, Civil Sur- geon at Chapra, 75; his first interview with Lord Daliiousie, 76; appointed Surgeon to Lord Dalhousie, 77; sends Daliiousie to Chini, 79 ; his warning to Lord Dalhousie, 110; accom- panies Dalhousie to England, 198 ; returns to Calcutta, 201 ; his illness, 212 ; continues writing to Lord Dalhousie, 218. Gujarat, battle of, 43. Gulab Singh, becomes Mararajah of Kashmir, 83 ; attends the Durbar at Wazirabad, 79 ; takes off the tax on weddings, 133. Gwalior, Mutiny at, 204. H. Hardinge, Viscount, his retire- ment from India, 31 ; his last treaty with the Sikhs, 33. Hastings, Marquis of, pays a visit to his old school, 6. Hodaon, Captain William, his re- moval from his post, 105. Hogg, Sir James, his strong sup- port of Lord Dalhousie, 114. INDEX. 233 I. Indian Ciyil Service, opened to public competition, 125; Dal- ;hoiisie'8 reforms in, 179-80. J. Jackson, Sir' Chaeles, his remarks on Dalhousie's Oudh Minute, 161 ; his account of Dalhousie's departure, 192; his vindication of Dalhousie's policy, 226-27. Jhansi, death of its rajah, 151 ; annexation of, 151. K. Kabauli, treated as a protected ally, 147. Kashmir, made over to Gulab Singh, 29. Khilat, treaty with the Khan of, 120-139. L. Lahore, garrisoned by British troops, 33; Council of Regency in, 33 ; Dhulip Singh's last Durbar at, 51-2 ; becomes the seat of the new Government, 62; visited by Dalhousie, 77; John LawreuQe replaces his brother at, 103. Lai Singh, sent as prisoner to Ferozepore, 33. Lang, John, acts as counsel for Joti Parsad, 84. Lawrence, Colonel George, serves under Sir Henry in the Punjab, 60 ; his release by Chatar Singh, 174. Lawrence, Colonel, Sir Henry, takes charge of the Punjab, 33 ; crushes a rebellion in Kashmir, 33 ; goes home on furlough, 34 ; returns to Lahore, 43; meets Lord Dalliousie at Ferozepore, 45; his differences with Lord Dalhousie, 47-8 ; becomes Presi- dent of the Punjab Board, 59; his character, 61 ; his relations with Lord Dalhousie, 71-4; his differences with John Lawrence, 100; quits Lahore for Rajpu- tana, 103. Lawrence, John, visit to Dalhousie at Ferozepore, 49; becomes second member of the Punjab Board, 59; his character, 61; his visit to Simla, 71; his dif- ferences with Henry Lawrence, 100; becomes Chief Commis- sioner of the Punjab, 103 ; his successful rule, 104 ; his crusade against infanticide, 132 ; meets Dalhousie in Calcutta, 189 ; his conversation with Dalhousie, 190; obtains his knighthood, 191 ; his last letter to Dalhousie, 218. Legislation, Act regulating suc- cession to property, 129; laws against infanticide, 132-33 ; Dacoity, 135 ; Bill for legalising the marriage of Hindu widows, 136 ; Liiw against corruption in the police, ]37; Act enlarging the powers of Munsiffs, 137 ; Act repealing the Usury Laws, 137 ; new Emigrant Act, 137. Liddell, Rev. H. G., D.D., Dean of Christ Church, his reminiscences of Dalhousie at college, 8-10. Lucknow, death of Major Banks at, 206 ; relief of, 207 ; recapture of, 225. M. Mackenzie, Brigadier Colin, his misadventure at Bolarara, 141-42. Mackeson, Colonel, his services and death, 106. Manning, The Rev. Henry, Cardinal Archbishop of West- minster, his reminiscences of young Ramsay, 5. Mansel, Charles, becomes third 234 INDEX. Member of the Punjab Board, 59 ; his financial ability, 62. Mecham, Captain Kichard, death of, 221. Montgomery, Robert, succeeds Mansel at Lahore, 62 ; he mediates between the Lawrence brothers, 101 ; becomes Judicial Commissioner, 103. Mountain, Colonel Armine, his death and character, 141. Mulraj, Governor of Multan, 35 ; heads the revolt against the Lahore Government, 35; his trial and sentence, 58. Multan, murder of British officers in, 35 ; siege of, 36 ; capture of, 42. Mysore, Dalhousie's policy towards, 154 ; visited by Dalhousie, 162. N. Nagpue, death of its rajah, 149; annexation of, 151. Napier, General Sir Charles, goes out as Commander-in-Chief, 42 ; his first interview with Dal- housie, 64 ; his controversy with the Lahore Board, 65 ; his deal- ings with the mutinous Sepoys, 65 ; called to account by the Governor- General, 66; Ids recriminations, 66-7 ; resigns his command, 68 ; his posthumous attack on Dal- housie, 70. Napier, Colonel Robert, designs the Bari Doab Canal, 120. Nizam, The, cedes Berar to the Indian Government, 157. o. O'Shaughnessy, Sir William, his mission to the India House, 116 ; his services in connection with t«legragh, 116-17. Oudh, disorders in, 88 ; Outram's report on, 158 ; Dalhousie's pro- posals concerning, 159 ; annex- ation of, 160; massacres in, 211. Outram, Sir James, his impression of Lord Dalhousie, 76; his re- turn to Baroda, 111 ; becomes Resident at Lucknow, 130; his report on the state of Oudh, 158; becomes Chief Commissioner of Oudh, 161; is made a K.C.B., 196. P. Parsad, Lala Joti, trial of, 84. Peel, Sir Robert, leads the Con- servative party, 1 1 ; becomes Prime Minister, 18 ; rejects Lord Dalhousie's railway scheme, 20; repeals the Corn Laws, and resigns office, 24. Pegu, entered by our troops, 92 ; annexed, 96 ; happy results, 97 ; visited by Dalhousie, 109. Phayre, Colonel Arthur, becomes Commissioner of Pegu, 96 ; visits the new frontier with Lord Dal- housie, 109 ; his mission to Ava, 163. Punjab, state of the, 33; progress of revolt in, 35 ; Gough's cam- paign in, 41-3, annexation of, 49 ; progress of, under our rule, 70-84 ; raids on the frontier, 88 ; change of government in, 103 ; canals and roads in, 120-21. Puri, visited by Dalhousie, 126. E. Ramsay, Lady Edith, her birth, 16 ; placed under Dean Ramsay's charge, 29 ; goes with her father to Malta, 207 ; is married to Sir James Fergusson, 220 ; her early death, 220. Ramsay, George, Lord, 2 ; at Harrow, 3 ; his death, 9. Ramsay, Lady Susan, 16 ; placed in charge of Dean Ramsay, 29 ; INDEX, 235 rejoins her father in India, 110 ; accompanies her father home, 198; accompanies her father to Malta, 207 ; writes frequently to Dr. Grant, 218 ; her devotion to her dying father, 223 ; erects an obelisk to his memory, 223. Kamsay, Rev. E. B., Dean of Edin- burgh, his character of the Countess Christian, 7 ; takes charge of Lord Dalhousie's children, 29. Eamsay, General W. Maule, his "narrow squeak" at Gwalior, 204; meets Dalhousie at Malta, 214; rejoins him at Malvern, 218 ; takes charge of his house- hold, 218; his letters to Grant, 219-20 ; attends Dalhousie's funeral, 223. Rangoon, capture of, 92 ; visited by Dalhousie, 93-109, &c. Eennie, Captain, his services, 197. Russell, Lord John, asks Dalhousie to retain his post, 27; appoints Dalhousie Governor-General, 27. S. Sambalpuk, passes under British rule, 147. Satara, lapse of, 143 ; absorption of, 146. Satti, first made illegal by Lord W. Bentinck, 129 ; Dalhousie's measures against, 129. Sher Singh joins the revolt, 36; his campaign against Gough, 42-3 ; his surrender, 45. Sikhim, punishment of its Rajah, 139. Sleeman, Colonel "William, his reports on the condition of Oudh, 158. Smith, Dr., of Lasswade, his rides with young Ramsay, 6 ; attends Lord Dalhousie in his last years, 219. Taylor, Major Rbynell, serves in the Punjab, 60; takes his fur- lough, 105 ; returns to the Pun- jab, 106. Temple, Sir Richard, his im- pressions of Lord Dalhousie, 169-70. Thomason, James, his share in con- structing the Ganges Canal, 119; his zeal on behalf of education, 135. W. WahIbis, the, tamper with the Sepoys, 86 ; found plotting with refugees on the frontier, 86; Dalhousie's Minutes against, 87. Wajid Ali, his misrule in Oudh, 158; his deposition, 158. Wellington, Duke of, joins the Peel Ministry, 11 ; Stories told of him by Dalhousie, 25-6 ; his opinion of Sir C. Napier, 68. Wood, Sir Charles, his Education Despatch, 135. RETURN TO the circulation desk of any University of California Library or to the NORTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY BIdg. 400, Richmond Field Station University of California Richmond, CA 94804-4698 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS • 2-month loans may be renewed by calling (510)642-6753 • 1-year loans may be recharged by bringing books to NRLF • Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due date DUE A S STAMPED BELOW JAN 4 2007 DD20 12M 1-05 U.C.BERKELEY LIBRARIES