BOOK II
UNDER THE QUEEN
1858-1876
CHAPTER I
CANNING, ELGIN, AND LAWRENCE
AN era of Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform succeeded the Crimean War. Lord Palmerston, the most unquiet of Foreign Ministers, was forced to be a peaceful Prime Minister when the nation wanted peace. Great events succeeded each other in the world’s history. Italy won her independence in 1860. America cemented her Union in blood, shed in a great civil war. Prussia wrested provinces from Denmark, and entered on her career of aggrandisement. Russia planned her march eastward. Lord Palmerston witnessed all this, and did not move. The rise of great nations called forth his jealousy, but did not provoke his interference. He died in 1865, when there was peace in his country.
For Englishmen had entered on a period of domestic reforms. The great fiscal reforms of Mr. Gladstone, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, removed bit by bit all restraints on trade. Mr. Cobden concluded his Commercial Treaty with France in 1859. The Paper Tax was removed in 1860. Other taxes were repealed, and yet the revenues went up by leaps and bounds with the expansion of trade.
A Reform Bill was introduced after Lord Palmerston’s death, but was defeated. But the nation demanded the measure; and a Reform Bill, introduced by Mr. Disraeli, was passed. Mr. Gladstone succeeded him as Prime Minister in 1868, and his first administration was marked by other reforms. The Irish Church was disestablished. The first Irish Land Act was passed. A system of National Education was organised. An Army Reform was effected. The Ballot Act was passed. The High Court of Justice was established.
Indian history reflects this peaceful progress during the first eighteen years of the Crown Administration. Lord Canning became the first Viceroy of India. Few of those who had protested against his “clemency,” and had petitioned for his recall, knew of the task he had performed, or the trial he had undergone. It often happened during the dark days of the Mutiny that the silent and indefatigable worker passed the best part of the day and all the night at his desk. One winter morning he had worked from midnight till midday, without rest and without interval for breakfast; he then fell back exhausted, the action of the brain had ceased. Nor was it Lord Canning alone who bore this burden. His wife, the faithful partaker of all his anxieties, often shared his labours. She sat up, far into the night, copying secret letters and despatches which were not allowed to pass through the ordinary official channels. They bore the burden together; and they came out triumphant.
The Mutiny was at last over. A great Darbar was held at Allahabad on November 1, 1858, and Lord Canning read the Queen’s Proclamation to the assembled men. This greatest of all Indian Darbars was dignified without ostentation, impressive without vaingloriousness. At another Darbar, held at Cawnpur, the new Viceroy made a welcome announcement. The rule against adoption which had brought princely dynasties to a close, was abolished. The Government of the Queen recognised the ancient right of adoption in Indian princes. Every ruling chief in India breathed more freely when they heard this announcement. The nation received the new administration of the Crown with acclamation.
Proceeding on his journey, Lord Canning visited the great cities of Northern India and the Punjab, and reached the frontier town of Peshawar in February 1860. Retracing his steps, he paid a short visit to Simla, and returned to Calcutta in the heat of May. His health had been undermined by incessant labours; but no considerations of health kept him from his duty. Another arduous tour was undertaken in autumn; and the Viceroy held a Darbar at Jabalpur to meet Holkar and Sindh and other chiefs of Central India. It was necessary for him to be everywhere, to meet the princes and the people of India after the Mutiny. It was necessary to reassure them and to consolidate the empire in their good wishes and loyalty.
A great sorrow fell on Lord Canning in 1861. On his return from a fresh tour in Northern India he found his wife seriously ill. Lady Canning had caught the Teri fever on her journey from Darjeeling; she rapidly sank under the fatal illness, and died in November. Then the strong heart of the indefatigable worker broke. “I went into the death chamber,” writes his private secretary, “the proud, reserved man could not restrain his tears, and wrung my hand with a grip that showed how great his emotion was.” In March 1862 Lord Canning left India—a dying man.
In no period of modern Indian history—except under the beneficent rule of Lord William Bentinck—were so many great reforms crowded within so short a period as during the administration of Lord Canning. But the greatest of his task was to promote the agricultural wealth of India—to secure to the tillers of the land the profits of cultivation. The land question is at the root of the prosperity of all agricultural nations; and Lord Canning’s generous endeavour to solve that question in the interests of the people will be narrated in a future chapter. It is enough to mention here that the Bengal Rent Act of 1859 extended to the agricultural population of the Province a protection they had never enjoyed before; and the provisions of this Act were before Mr. Gladstone when he framed his first Irish Land Act ten years after. More than this, Lord Canning sought to protect agriculture in all the Provinces of India from harassing re-settlements and increasing State-demands. If that wise measure had been adopted, India would have witnessed less of those recurring famines which are the saddest feature of Indian history during the last quarter of the nineteenth century.
High education also received the Viceroy’s attention. The Universities of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay were established in 1857 on the model of the London University. The inspiring influences of a Western Education reached a larger circle of the population. Indian society responded to this stimulus. The greatest writers of Bengal, Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar, Madha Sudan Datta, and Bankim Chandra Chatterjea, made their mark in the early ‘sixties. Never, since the time of Lord William Bentinck, was so much of high aspiration and healthy ambition manifest among the people as in the early years of the Queen’s Government, and under her first Viceroys.
In legislation, too, Lord Canning’s administration stands apart from all subsequent times. The Indian Penal Code, which had been drafted by Macaulay and the first Law Commission in 1837, was passed in 1860. Codes of Civil and Criminal procedure were passed; and the Police was organised and regulated by a new Act.
The Governor-General’s Council, as reconstituted by the Act of 1861, consisted of five Ordinary Members. Lord Canning distributed the work among the Members, and placed each of them in charge of a separate department. The Council was thus converted into a Cabinet, of which the Governor-General was the head. The Member in charge of a department dealt with all ordinary questions, and only placed serious matters before the Governor-General for his consideration. When there was a disagreement in opinion, the question was brought up for discussion before the Council. This system of administration, first introduced by Lord Canning, obtains to the present day. Its only defect, which should have been rectified since the time of Canning, is, that there is no representation of popular opinion in the administration of the empire.
Judicial administration was reorganised. High Courts were established in Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, in 1861, by the amalgamation of the Company’s Courts and the Queen’s Courts. Sir Barnes Peacock, a distinguished lawyer, sat as Chief Justice of the High Court at Calcutta. Rama Prasad Roy, son of the distinguished Raja Ram Mohan Roy, was appointed the first Indian Judge of the Calcutta High Court, but died shortly after his appointment. The most distinguished of his successors was Dwarka Nath Mitra, whose sound judgment and fearless independence commanded the respect and admiration of all.
The army was reconstructed, and India was garrisoned with 70,000 European troops and 135,000 Indian troops. This vast army has been considerably increased since, and has been made a reserve for Great Britain’s Imperial requirements in Asia and in Africa.
But the most difficult problem which faced Lord Canning was finance. It had been decided by the British Government to throw the whole cost of the Mutiny Wars on the Indian finance; and the Debt of India increased by over forty millions sterling. The annual interest of this Debt was enormous, and Indian tax-payers were called upon to meet the demand. James Wilson, a sound political economist, and for some time Financial Secretary to the Treasury, was sent out as the first Financial Member of the Governor-General’s Council. He created a State paper currency, and he imposed a Licence tax and an Income tax to meet the growing expenditure.
Lord Canning’s work in India was done. Public opinion in England and in India had lost its bitterness. Englishmen had come to form a juster estimate of the first and greatest of Indian Viceroys. “In that land of the West,” said a parting address given to Lord Canning, “if justice and humanity be ever honoured, you cannot but hold a distinguished place.” But Lord Canning was not destined for higher honours. He died in June 1862, in the fiftieth year of his age. His body was buried in Westminster Abbey, close to the remains of his illustrious father. England’s long roll of bright names has not many that are brighter than George Canning the Prime Minister, and Charles Canning the first Viceroy of India.
Lord Elgin arrived in India in March 1862, and proved himself a worthy successor to Lord Canning. He pursued the same policy of peace, and he felt the same sympathy with the people of India. His father is better known to Englishmen for those priceless sculptures he brought from Athens, known as the “Elgin Marbles.” The son was of about the same age as Lord Canning, and had been his fellow-student at Oxford; and he had distinguished himself as Governor-General of Canada from 1847 to 1854. While on his way to China with British troops in 1857, he had heard of the Indian Mutiny; and had promptly diverted the Chinese expedition to the aid of India. Five years after, he came to India as Viceroy and Governor-General. Much was expected from a ruler who knew his work, and who sympathised with the people. But he died in the year after his arrival, and therefore left no mark on Indian administration.
The question then arose, who was to succeed Lord Elgin? Dalhousie and Canning had sacrificed themselves to the toil of Indian administration, and had returned to their country only to die. Elgin had fallen before he was two years in India. The idea suggested itself that a constitution, seasoned by long residence in India, was best suited for Indian work. And the claims of Sir John Lawrence were paramount. True, he was not a peer. True, that no Indian civilian except Sir John Shore had ever been confirmed as Governor-General before. But exceptional circumstances compelled a departure from the usual rule.
The Act for the Better Government of India had been passed by Lord Derby’s Government in 1858; and his son, Lord Stanley, was the first Secretary of State for India. The Conservative Government fell in 1859, and Sir Charles Wood became Secretary of State for India under the Liberal Government which succeeded. He had been President of the Board of Control when India was ruled by the East India Company; he had reorganised education in India by his famous Despatch of 1854; and he brought to his new office an intimate knowledge of Indian affairs, combined with a sound judgment and a determined wish to do justice to the people. His Under-Secretary, Lord de Grey, afterwards became Marquis of Ripon and Viceroy of India.
Sir John Lawrence had been appointed a Member of the India Council in 1859, and had worked under Lord Stanley and Sir Charles Wood for four years, when the death of Lord Elgin created a vacancy in India. Public opinion in England pointed to the veteran of the Punjab as the most worthy successor; and Sir Charles Wood had seen enough of him to come to the same opinion. On the morning of November 30, 1863, Sir Charles looked into the room of Sir John Lawrence at the India Office and said, “You are to go to India as Governor-General. Wait here till I return from Windsor with the Queen’s approval.” The same evening Sir Charles returned with the royal approval.
Sir John Lawrence arrived at Calcutta in January 1864. He knew the people of India as few Englishmen ever knew them; and he was fortunate in his Councillors. Henry Sumner Maine, perhaps the greatest English jurist of the time, was his Legal Member. The veteran Sir Charles Trevelyan, who had been the colleague of Bentinck and Macaulay thirty years before, was his Finance Minister. And Robert Napier, afterwards Lord Napier of Magdala, was his Military Adviser.
One restless subordinate gave him some trouble. Sir Bartle Frere, then Governor of Bombay, was an Imperialist. He had drawn up a paper attacking Sir John Lawrence’s frontier policy. The paper was meant for Lord Elgin or his yet unknown successor. It fell into the hands of Sir John Lawrence when he succeeded Elgin. Lawrence defended himself in his own manly style. And when the papers went up to the Secretary of State, Sir Charles Wood justly remarked: “Nothing could be more precipitate and rash than Frere’s tirade against the Punjab policy.”1 In lavish expenditure, and in vast schemes of improvement also, Sir Bartle Frere was as rash as Lawrence was cautious and economical. And the new Viceroy had much to do to restrain his precipitate subordinate.
A great Darbar was held in Lahore in October 1864. Lawrence spoke to the assemblage of six hundred Princes and Chiefs of India in their spoken tongue—a feat which no other Governor-General before or after him could have performed. A short war with Bhutan ended in the British annexation of the Doars, on condition of payment of half the revenue to the Bhutan State. A severe famine visited Orissa in 1866; the relief operations were inadequate; and the loss of life was severe. The land question was eternally before the Government. Lord Canning had conferred security of tenure to the cultivators of Bengal; Lawrence pursued the same useful policy in Oudh and in the Punjab. And agreeing with Lord Canning, Sir John Lawrence recommended a Permanent Settlement of the State-demand from the soil in all Provinces of India. His aim was to form a strong middle class, and to promote the agricultural wealth of the people. For those were days when the welfare of the people was the first consideration with the rulers.
The expenditure on the Army was reduced by Sir John Lawrence from £13,182,000 at the commencement of his administration to £12,990,000 at its close. Nevertheless there was a recurring deficit; and the total deficit during his five years’ rule came to nearly 3¾ millions sterling. Taxes imposed on the people had reached their limit. Taxes imposed on commerce evoked an opposition from British merchants which the Government could not face. “If the Licence Tax is vetoed,” wrote Sir John Lawrence to the Secretary of State in 1867, “I cannot conceal from myself the conviction that all taxation which can affect, in any material degree, the non-official European community, will be impracticable. So far as their voices go, they will approve of no tax of the kind. They desire that all taxation should fall on the natives.”2
And, writing privately to Sir Erskine Perry, then a Member of the Indian Council, Sir John Lawrence said: “The difficulty in the way of the Government of India acting fairly in these matters is immense. If anything is done, or attempted to be done, to help the natives, a general howl is raised, which reverberates in England, and finds sympathy and support there. I feel quite bewildered sometimes what to do. Every one is, in the abstract, for justice, moderation, and such like excellent qualities; but when one comes to apply such principles so as to affect anybody’s interests, then a change comes over them.”3
One unjust addition to the Indian Debt was strongly but unsuccessfully opposed by Lawrence. Great Britain had a little war of her own with King Theodore of Abyssinia in 1867. Robert Napier, then Commander-in-Chief of the Bombay army, was sent to the expedition; and the banner of St. George, in the florid language of Mr. Disraeli, was planted on the mountains of Rasselas. But the cost was enormous, and a large portion of it was meanly and unjustly thrown on India, with its disorganised finances and its annual deficits. “I believe I am right,” wrote Sir John Lawrence, “that all the expenses of the British troops employed in the Mutiny who came from England, were paid out of the revenues of India, I recollect very well that, in 1859 and 1860, India was even charged for the cost of unreasonably large numbers of men who were accumulated in the depots in England, nominally for the Indian service. . . . In the present case, India has no interest whatever in the Abyssinian expedition, and it appears therefore to me that she should pay none of its cost.”4 Lawrence asked for simple justice, but he asked in vain.
It remains only to say a few words about that frontier policy with which the name of Lawrence is so intimately connected. Sir Charles Wood had ceased to be Secretary of State for India in 1866. He had retired in ill-health from the India Office, and was called to the Upper House with the title of Lord Halifax. Lord de Grey—afterwards Marquis of Ripon—succeeded him in February 1866. But the Liberal Government fell shortly after; and Lord Cranborne—afterwards Marquis of Salisbury—became Secretary of State for India in July 1866. He, too, held that office only for a short time, and was succeeded in March 1867 by Sir Stafford Northcote. And Northcote was succeeded by the Duke of Argyll in 1868, when the Liberals again came into power.
It was in keeping with the spirit of the times that all the Secretaries of State under whom Sir John Lawrence worked—Sir Charles Wood, Lord de Grey, Lord Cranborne, Sir Stafford Northcote, and the Duke of Argyll—agreed with him in his frontier policy. All of them approved of his unalterable resolution to hold to the strong natural frontiers of India, and not to seek a new frontier in the limitless mountains of Afghanistan.
For Lawrence maintained that to extend the western limits of India was to go half-way to meet the dangers we professed to fear; that it was to leave our natural frontier of an unpassable river and mountain walls for a frontier which was everywhere and nowhere; that it would compel us to fight the enemy away from our base with a hostile population around us; that it was to make enemy of the Afghans who wanted only to be left alone to be our friends; and that it would be wasting millions of the Indian money, sorely needed by a population crying aloud to be saved from the tax-gatherer on the one hand, and from actual starvation on the other. Accordingly, when there was a scramble for the Afghan throne after the death of Dost Muhammad in 1863, Lawrence held firmly to his policy—a policy of Masterly Inactivity, as it has been described—until the Afghans had settled their quarrels. And in 1868, when Shere Ali, one of the sons of Dost Muhammad, had succeeded in winning his father’s throne, Sir John Lawrence, with the full approval of the Government in England, recognised him as the de facto ruler of Afghanistan.
But this policy of Sir John Lawrence, wise, consistent, and successful, was not to pass unquestioned. Sir Bartle Frere, who had attacked his Punjab frontier policy in 1863, was now a Member of the India Council. He was a disciple of the “forward school,” and he found a strong colleague in Sir Henry Rawlinson, another Member of the India Council. And Rawlinson raised the question once again in his famous Memorandum, proposing measures “to counteract the advance of Russia in Central Asia, and to strengthen the influence and power of England in Afghanistan and Persia.” It is remarkable that no disciple of the forward school ever proposed that England should pay for strengthening her influence and power in Afghanistan and Persia. If such a proposal had been made, British tax-payers would have known how to deal with it. Every proposal of the forward school was based on the assumption that the people of India should pay the cost.
Sir Henry Rawlinson’s Memorandum was forwarded to Sir John Lawrence. Lawrence replied to Rawlinson, as he had replied to Bartle Frere five years before. And the covering Despatch to the several Minutes, recorded on this occasion, clearly formulates the Lawrence policy for all time to come.
“We object to any active interference in the affairs of Afghanistan by the deputation of a high British officer with or without a contingent, or by the forcible or amicable occupation of any post or tract in that country beyond our own frontier, inasmuch as we think that such a measure would, under present circumstances, engender irritation, defiance, and hatred in the minds of the Afghans, without, in the least, strengthening our power either for attack or defence. We think it impolitic and unwise to decrease any of the difficulties which would be entailed on Russia, if that Power seriously thought of invading India, as we should certainly decrease them if we left our own frontier and met her half-way in a difficult country, and, possibly, in the midst of a hostile or exasperated population. We foresee no limits to the expenditure which such a move might require, and we protest against the necessity of having to impose additional taxation on the people of India, who are unwilling, as it is, to bear such pressure for measures which they can both understand and appreciate. And we think that the objects which we have at heart, in common with all interested in India, may be attained by an attitude of readiness and firmness on our frontier, and by giving all our care and expending all our resources for the attainment of practical and sound ends over which we can exercise an effective and immediate control.
“Should a foreign Power, such as Russia, ever seriously think of invading India from without, or, what is more probable, of stirring up the elements of disaffection or anarchy within it, our true policy, our strongest security, would then, we conceive, be found to lie in previous abstinence from entanglements at either Kabul, Kandahar, or any similar outpost; in full reliance on a compact, highly equipped, and disciplined army within our own territories or on our own border; in the contentment, if not in the attachment of the masses; in the sense of security of title and possession, with which our whole policy is gradually imbuing the minds of the principal chiefs and native aristocracy; in the construction of material works within British India, which enhance the comfort of the people while they add to our political and military strength; in husbanding our finances and consolidating and multiplying our resources; in quiet preparation for all contingencies which no Indian statesman should disregard; and in a trust in the rectitude and honesty of our intentions, coupled with the avoidance of all sources of complaint which either invite foreign aggression or stir up restless spirits to domestic revolt.”
Footnotes