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Book 3 – The Outbreak of the Mutiny – 1856–1857

Chapter 1

When, on the last day of February, 1850, “the Most Noble” the Marquis of Dalhousie placed the Portfolio of the Indian Empire in the hands of his successor, all men said that a great statesman and a great ruler was about to depart from the land. The praises that were bestowed upon him had been well earned. He had given his life to the public service; and many feared, as they sorrowfully bade him farewell, that he had given it up for the public good.

He stood before men at that time as the very embodiment of Success. Whatsoever he had attempted to do he had done with his whole heart, and he had perfected it without a failure or a flaw. The policy which during those eventful eight years had been so consistently_ maintained was emphatically his policy. The success, therefore, was fairly his. No man had ever stamped his individuality more clearly upon the public measures of his times. There are periods when the Government fades into an impersonality; when men cease to associate its measures with the idea of one dominant will. But during the reign then ended we heard little of “the Government “; in every one’s mouth was the name of the individual Man.

Character of Lord Dalhousie

And in this remarkable individual manhood there was the very essence and concentration of the great national manhood; there was an intense Englishism in him such as has seldom been equalled. It was the Englishism, too, of the nineteenth century, and of that particular epoch of the nineteenth century when well-nigh everyone had the word “progress” on his lips, and stagnation was

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both disaster and disgrace. A man of strong convictions and extraordinary activity of mind, he laid fast hold of the one abstract truth that English government, English laws, English learning, English customs, and English manners, are better than the government, the laws, the learning, the customs, and the manners of India; and with all the earnestness of his nature and all the strength of his understanding he wrought out this great theory in practice. He never doubted that it was good alike for England and for India that the map of the country which he had been sent to govern should present one surface of Red. He was so sure of this, he believed it so honestly, so conscientiously, that, courageous and self-reliant as he was, he would have carried out this policy to the end, if all the chief officers and agents of his government had been arrayed against him. But he commenced his career at a time when the ablest of our public functionaries in India, with a few notable exceptions, had forsaken the traditions of the old school – the school of Malcolm, of Elphinstone, and of Metcalfe – and stood eager and open-armed to embrace and press closely to them the very doctrines of which they perceived in Dalhousie so vigorous an exponent. He did not found the school; neither were his opinions moulded in accordance with its tenets. He appeared among them and placed himself at their head, just at the very time when such a coming was needed to give consistency to their faith, and uniformity to their works. The coincidence had all the force of a dispensation. No prophet ever had more devoted followers. No king was ever more loyally served. For the strong faith of his disciples made them strive mightily to accomplish his will; and he had in a rare degree the faculty of developing in his agents the very powers which were most essential to the fitting accomplishment of his work. He did not create those powers, for he found in his chief agents the instincts and energies most essential to his purpose; but he fostered, he strengthened and directed them, so that what might have run to weed and waste without his cherishing care, yielded under his culture, in ripe profusion, a harvest of desired results.

As his workmen were admirably suited to his work, so also was the field, to which he was called, the one best adapted to the exercise of his peculiar powers. In no other part of our empire could his rare administrative capacity have found such scope for development. For he was of an imperious and despotic nature, not submitting to control, and resenting opposition;

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and in no situation could he have exercised a larger measure of power in the face of so few constitutional checks. His capacities required free exercise, and it may be doubted whether they would have been fully developed by anything short of this absolute supremacy. But sustained and invigorated by a sense of enormous power, he worked with all the energies of a giant. And he was successful beyond all example, so far as success is the full accomplishment of one’s own desires and intentions. But one fatal defect in his character tainted the stream of his policy at the source, and converted into brilliant errors some of the most renowned of his achievements. No man who is not endowed with a comprehensive imagination can govern India with success. Dalhousie had no imagination. Lacking the imaginative faculty, men, after long years of experience, may come to understand the national character; and a man of lively imagination, without such experience, may readily apprehend it after the intercourse of a few weeks. But in neither way did Dalhousie ever come to understand the genius of the people among whom his lot was cast. He had but one idea of them – an idea of a people habituated to the despotism of a dominant race. He could not understand the tenacity of affection with which they clung to their old traditions. He could not sympathise with the veneration which they felt for their ancient dynasties. He could not appreciate their fidelity to the time-honoured institutions and the immemorial usages of the land. He had not the faculty to conceive that men might like their own old ways of government, with all their imperfections and corruptions about them, better than our more refined systems. Arguing all points with the preciseness of a Scotch logician, he made no allowance for inveterate habits and ingrained prejudices, and the scales of ignorance before men’s eyes which will not suffer them rightly to discern between the good and the bad. He could not form a true dramatic conception of the feelings with which the representative of a long line of kings may be supposed. to regard the sudden extinction of his royal house by the decree of a stranger and an infidel, or the bitterness of spirit in which a greybeard chief, whose family from generation to generation had enjoyed. ancestral powers and privileges, might contemplate his lot when suddenly reduced to poverty and humiliation by an incursion of aliens of another colour and another creed. He could not see with other men’s eyes; or think with other men’s brains; or feel with other men’s hearts.

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With the characteristic unimaginativeness of his race he could not for a moment divest himself of his individuality, or conceive the growth of ancestral pride and national honour in other breasts than those of the Campbells and the Ramsays.

And this egotism was cherished and sustained by the prevailing sentiments of the new school of Indian politicians, who, as I have said, laughed to scorn the doctrines of the men who had built up the great structure of our Indian Empire, and by the utterances of a Press, which, with rare ability, expounded the views of this school, and insisted upon the duty of universal usurpation. Such, indeed, was the prevailing tone of the majority, in all ranks from the highest to the lowest, that any one who meekly ventured to ask, “How would you like it yourself?” was reproached in language little short of that which might be fitly applied to a renegade or a traitor. To suggest that in an Asiatic race there might be a spirit of independence and a love of country, the manifestations of which were honourable in themselves, however inconvenient to us, was commonly to evoke as the very mildest result the imputation of being “Anti-British,” whilst sometimes the “true British feeling” asserted itself in a less refined choice of epithets, and those who ventured to sympathise in any way with the people of the East were at once denounced as “white niggers.” Yet among these very men, so intolerant of anything approaching the assertion of a spirit of liberty by an Asiatic people, there were some who could well appreciate and sympathise with the aspirations of European bondsmen, and could regard with admiration the struggles of the Italian, the Switzer, or the Pole to liberate himself, by a sanguinary contest, from the yoke of the usurper. But the sight of the dark skin sealed up their sympathies. They contended not merely that the love of country, that the spirit of liberty, as cherished by European races, is in India wholly unknown, but that Asiatic nations, and especially the nations of India, have no right to judge what is best for themselves; no right to revolt against the beneficence of a more civilised race of white men, who would think and act for them, and deprive them, for their own good, of all their most cherished rights and their most valued possessions.

So it happened that Lord Dalhousie’s was a strong Government; strong in everything but its conformity to the genius of the people. It was a Government admirably conducted in accordance with the most approved principles of European

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civilisation, by men whose progressive tendencies carried them hundreds of years in advance of the sluggish Asiatics, whom they vainly endeavoured to bind to the chariot-wheels of their refined systems. There was everything to give it complete success but the stubbornness of the national mind. It failed, perhaps, only because the people preferred darkness to light, folly to wisdom. Of course the English gentlemen were right and the Asiatics lamentably wrong. But the grand scriptural warning about putting new wine into old bottles was disregarded. The wine was good wine, strong wine; wine to gladden the heart of man. But poured into those old bottles it was sure, sooner or later, to create a general explosion. They forgot that there were two things necessary to successful government; one, that the measures should be good in themselves; and the other, that they should be suited to the condition of the recipients. Intent upon the one, they forgot the other, and erred upon the side of a progress too rapid and an Englishism too refined.

But at the bottom of this great error were benign intentions. Dalhousie and his lieutenants had a strong and steadfast faith in the wisdom and benevolence of their measures, and strove alike for the glory of the English nation and the welfare of the Indian people. There was something grand and even good in the very errors of such a man. For there was no taint of baseness in them; no sign of anything sordid or self-seeking. He had given himself up to the public service, resolute to do a great work, and he rejoiced with a noble pride in the thought that he left behind a mightier empire than he had found, that he had brought new countries and strange nations under the sway of the British sceptre, and sown the seeds of a great civilisation. To do this, he had made unstinting sacrifice of leisure, ease, comfort, health, and the dear love of wedded life, and he carried home with him, in a shattered frame and a torn heart, in the wreck of a manhood at its very prime, mortal wounds nobly received in a great and heroic encounter.

Great always is the interest which attaches to the question of succession; greatest of all when such a ruler as Dalhousie retires from the scene. Who was to take the place of this great and successful statesman? Who was to carry out to its final issue the grand policy which he had so brilliantly inaugurated? This was the question in all men’s mouths as the old year passed away and the new year dawned upon India; in some

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sort a remarkable year, for was it not the centenary of the great disaster of the Black Hole which had brought Clive’s avenging army to Bengal? Ever at such times is there much talk of the expected advent of some member of the English Cabinet, some successful Colonial Governor, or some great Lord little experienced in statesmanship, of high lineage and dilapidated fortune. And so now there was the wonted high tide of speculation and conjecture, wild guesses and moonshine rumours of all kinds, from dim possibilities to gigantic nonsenses, until at last there came authentic tidings to India that the choice had fallen on Her Majesty’s Postmaster-General, one of the younger members of Lord Palmerston’s Cabinet.

Antecedents of Lord Canning

Scarcely within bounds of possibility was it, that, in the midst of so great an epidemic of faith in Lord Dalhousie, England could send forth a statesmen to succeed him, whom her Anglo-Indian sons would not receive with ominous head-shakings, denoting grave doubts and anxious misgivings. Another great man, it was said, was needed to understand, to appreciate, to maintain, the policy of the hero whom they so glorified. But they knew little or nothing of Viscount Canning, except that he was the bearer of a great name.

1822

Thirty-four years before, all England had been talking about the acceptance of the Governor-Generalship by this man’s father. There were a few, then, who, looking at the matter solely from an Indian point of view, exulted in the thought that one who had done such good service at the Board of Control, and whose abilities were known to be of the very highest order, was about to devote some of the best years of his life to the government of our great Eastern empire. There was another and a baser few, who, festering with jealousies, and animosities, and dishonourable fears, joyed most of all that they should see his face no more for years, or perhaps forever. But the bulk of the English people deplored his approaching departure from among them, because they felt that the country had need of his services, and could ill bear the loss of such a man. And it was a relief to them when the sad close of Lord Castlereagh’s career brought George Canning back from the visit, which was to have been his farewell, to Liverpool, to take his place again in the great Council of the nation.

Great, also, was the relief to George Canning himself – great

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for many reasons; the greatest, perhaps, of all, that he was very happy in his family. In the first year of the century he had married a lady, endowed with a considerable share of the world’s wealth, but with more of that better wealth which the world cannot give; the daughter and co-heiress of an old general officer named Scott. No man could have been happier in his domestic life; and domestic happiness is domestic virtue. Blind to the attractions of that Society in which he was so pre-eminently formed to shine, he found measureless delight in the companionship of his wife and children. And as an Indian life is more or less a life of separation, it was now a joy to him to think that the brief vision of Government House, Calcutta, had been replaced by the returning realities of the English fireside150.

Gloucester Lodge, 1822

At this time the great statesmen had a son in his tenth year, at school with Mr. Carmalt, of Putney, on the banks of the Thames. He was the third son born to George Canning151; born during what was perhaps the happiest period of his father’s life, his residence at Gloucester Lodge. This was the boy’s birthplace. Lying between Brompton and Kensington, it was at that time almost in the country. There was not, perhaps, a pleasanter place near Town. It had a strange, memorable history, too, and it was among the notabilities of suburban London. In the days of Ranelagh, it had been, under the name of the Florida Gardens, a lesser rival to that fashionable haunt; and from this state, after an interval of desertion and decay, it had developed into a royal residence152. The Duchess of Gloucester bought the Gardens, built there a handsome Italian villa, lived and died there, and, passing away, bequeathed her interest in the estate to the Princess Sophia, who sold it to Mr. Canning. And there, in this pleasant umbrageous retreat,

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on the 14th December, 1812, was born the third son of George Canning, who, in due course, was christened Charles John.

The Putney School

In 1822, as I have said, when George Canning woke from his brief dream of Indian vice-regal power to take the seals of the Foreign Office, this boy Charles was under the scholastic care of Mr. Carmalt, of Putney. In those days his establishment enjoyed a great reputation. It was one of the largest and best private schools in the neighbourhood of London, perhaps in the whole kingdom, and, as the sons of our highest noblemen mingled there with those of our middle-class gentry, not a bad half-way house to the microcosm of Eton or Harrow. The impression which Charles Canning made upon the minds of his schoolfellows was, on the whole, a favourable one. He was not a boy of brilliant parts, or of any large popularity; but he was remembered long afterwards as one who, in a quiet, unostentatious way, made it manifest to ordinary observers that there was, in schoolboy language, “something in him.” One, whose letter is now before me, and who was with him for nearly two years in the same room at the Putney school, remembered, after a lapse of more than a third part of a century, the admiration with which he then regarded young Canning’s “youthful indications of talent, and amiable and attractive manners.”

Eton

Two years after George Canning’s surrender of the Governor-Generalship, his son Charles left Mr. Carmalt’s and went to Eton. Eton was very proud of the father’s great reputation, and eager to embrace the son; for, verily, George Canning had been an Etonian of Etonians, and had done as much, as a scholar and wit, to make Eton flourish as any man of his age. It was, perhaps, therefore, in a spirit of pure gratitude and veneration, and with no “hope of future favours,” that worthy Provost Goodall, than whom perhaps no man ever had a keener appreciation both of scholarship and of wit, on intimation made to him that George Canning wished his son to be entered as an oppidan, sent Mr. Chapman, one of the masters of the school153, who had been selected as the boy’s tutor, to examine him at Gloucester Lodge. These examinations, which determine the place in the school which the boy is to take, are commonly held in the tutor’s house at Eton, not beneath the parental roof. But

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the Minister’s son was examined in his father’s library and in his father’s presence at Gloucester Lodge; a double trial, it may be thought, of the young student’s nerve, and not provocative of a successful display of scholarship. But it was successful154. Charles Canning was declared to be fit for the fourth form, and on the 4th of September, 1824, he commenced his career. It is on record that he was “sent up for good” for his proficiency in Latin verse. It is on record, also, if the recording minister at Eton does not kindly blot out such traces of boyish error, that he was also sent up for bad; in more correct Etonian phraseology, “in the bill,” marked for the flogging block. And it is traditional that the avenging hand of Head-master Keate was sometimes stayed by a tender reluctance to apply the birch to the person of Secretary Canning’s son. On the whole, perhaps, it is historically true that, at Eton,. he had no very marked reputation of any kind. He was good-looking, and a gentleman, which goes for something; but I do not know that he was a great rower, a great cricketer, or a great swimmer, or was in any sense an athlete of the first water and the admiration of his companions; and, scholastically, it is remembered of him that he had “a reputation rather for intelligence, accuracy, and painstaking, than for refined scholarship, or any remarkable powers of composition.”

But on passing away from Eton, the stature of his mind was soon greatly enlarged. At the close of 1827, having risen to the Upper division of the fifth form, he received the parting gifts of his schoolfellows; and soon afterwards became the private pupil of the Rev. John Shore, a nephew of Sir John Shore, Governor-General of India, and known to a later generation as Lord Teignmouth. This worthy Christian gentleman and ripe scholar lived, but without church preferment, at Potton, a quiet little market-town in Bedfordshire, receiving pupils there of the better sort. Among the inmates of his house was the grandson of the first Lord Harris, with whom Charles Canning

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entered into bonds of friendship, riveted at Oxford, strengthened in public life at home, and again by strange coincidence in India, and broken only by death. Here, doubtless, he made great progress in scholarship.

August 8th, 1827

Perhaps the death of his father, and the after-honours which were conferred on the family, and, more than all, the subsequent calamitous end of his elder brother155, awakened within him a sense of the responsibilities of his position, and roused him to new exertions. Though born the third in succession of George Canning’s sons, he was now the eldest, the only one. He and his sister alone survived. He was now the heir to a peerage, sufficiently, though not splendidly, endowed, and there was a public career before him. He applied himself to his books156.

Oxford

His next step was to the University. In December, 1828, he was entered on the Roll as a Student of Christ Church, Oxford, as his father had been entered just forty years before. Among the foremost of his fellow-students were Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Bruce, and Mr. Robert Phillimore157, all of whom lived to take parts, more or less prominent, in public affairs. Among other members of the same distinguished house, at that time, was the young Lord Lincoln, heir to the Dukedom of Newcastle, and the representative of the great Scotch House of Ramsay, ennobled by the Earldom of Dalhousie. But the most intimate of all his associates was the present Lord De Tabley, with whom he lived in the closest bonds of friendship to the latest day of his life. By him, and a few other chosen companions, he was dearly loved and much respected; but neither achieving nor seeking extensive popularity among his contemporaries, he was regarded by the outer University world as a man of a reserved and distant manner, and of a somewhat cold and unimpulsive temperament. The few in the inner circle knew that he was not cold; knew that he had a true loving heart, very loyal and constant in its affections; knew that in the society of his familiar friends he had a pleasant, a genial, and sometimes a playful manner, that

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he had a fine scholarly taste, a fund of quiet humour, a keen appreciation of character, and that he was, all in all, a delightful companion. They had great hope, too, of his future career, though he did not seem to be ambitious; nay, rather, it appeared to those who closely observed him, that he was haunted and held back by the thought of his father’s renown, and a diffidence of his own capacity to maintain the glories of the name. But, although he did not care to take part in the proceedings of debating societies, and, apparently, took small interest in the politics of the great world, he was anxious that at least his. University career should do no dishonour to his lineage, and that if he could not be a great statesman, he might not stain the scholarly reputation enjoyed by two generations of Cannings before him. He strove, therefore, and with good results, to perfect himself in the classic languages; and even more assiduous were his endeavours to obtain a mastery over his own language. At an early age he acquired a thoroughly good English style; not resonant or pretentious; not splintery or smart; but pure, fluent, transparent, with the meaning ever visible beneath it, as pebbles beneath the clearest stream.

His efforts bore good fruit. In 1831 he wrote a Latin Prize Poem, on the “Captivity of Caractacus”; and recited it in the great hall of Christ Church, standing beneath his father’s picture158. And in the Easter term of 1833 he took his degree, with high honours: a first class in Classics, and a second in Mathematics. He was then in his twenty-first year, and Parliament would soon be open to him. But he was in no

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hurry to enter upon the realities of public life. He was diffident of his oratorical powers; he was constitutionally shy; and it did not appear to him that the House of Commons was a theatre in which he was ever likely to make a successful appearance. Moreover, he had other work in hand at that time; other yearnings to keep down any young ambitions that might be mounting within him. Love and courtship filled up a sweet interlude in his life, as they do in the lives of most men whose story is worth telling; and, in due course, they bore the rich fruit of happy wedlock. On the 5th of September, 1835, the Honourable Charles John Canning espoused the Honourable Charlotte Stuart, eldest daughter of Lord Stuart De Rothesay, a lady of a serene and gentle beauty, and many rare gifts of mind.

But, after a year of wedded life, he was prevailed upon to enter Parliament, and in August, 1836, he was returned for Warwick. In that month, however, Parliament was prorogued, and on its reassembling at the commencement of the following year, he was content to be a silent member. His opportunities, indeed, were very few, for his whole career in the House of Commons extended over a period of little more than six weeks. During the month of February and the early part of March he attended in his place with praiseworthy regularity159. But, on the 15th of the latter month, his mother, Viscountess Canning, died; and, on the 24th of April, he took his seat in the House of Lords.

For nearly twenty years he sate in that House, taking no very prominent part in the debates, but doing his duty in a quiet, unostentatious way, and gradually making for himself a reputation as a conscientious, painstaking young statesman, who might some day do good service to his country and honour to his great name. His political opinions, which were shared by most of his distinguished cotemporaries at Christ Church, were characterised by that chastened Liberalism which had found its chief exponent in Sir Robert Peel; and when, in 1841, that great Parliamentary leader was invited to form a Ministry, Lord Canning, Lord Lincoln, and Mr. Gladstone were offered, and accepted, official seats. The seals of the Foreign Office had been placed in the hands of Lord Aberdeen. He had

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a high opinion of, and a personal regard for, Lord Canning, and there was no one whom the veteran statesman wished so much to associate with himself in office as George Canning’s son. About the same time another distinguished member of the House of Lords was also moved by a strong desire to have the benefit of the young statesman’s official co-operation and personal companionship. This was Lord Ellenborough, who. on the formation of the Peel Ministry, had been appointed President of the Board of Control, but who had subsequently been selected to succeed Lord Auckland as Governor-General of India. He offered to take Canning with him in the capacity of Private Secretary.

Creditable as this offer was to the discernment of Lord Ellenborough, and made in perfect sincerity, it was one little likely to be accepted by a man of high social position, good political prospects, and a sufficient supply of the world’s wealth. Lord Canning elected to remain in England, and entered official life as Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. He liked his work; he did it well, and he had the entire confidence of his chief. But he did not take an active part in the debates and discussions of the House of Lords. The presence, in the same Chamber, of the Chief of his Department, relieved him from the responsibility of ministerial explanations and replies, and his constitutional reserve forbade all unnecessary displays. It was not, indeed, until the Session of 1846 found him in the office of Chief Commissioner of Woods and Forests, that he took any prominent part in the business of the House. If the position which he then held afforded no opportunity for the development of his powers either as an orator or a debater, it kept him continually in Parliamentary harness, and the training was of service to him. It lasted, however, but a little time. At the end of June, 1846, Sir Robert Peel and his colleagues resigned, and a Whig Cabinet was formed under the leadership of Lord John Russell.

Lord Canning was then “in opposition,” but in heart he was a Liberal, and willing to support liberal measures, without reference to the distinctions of party. When, therefore, in May, 1848, Lord Lansdowne moved the second reading of the Jewish Disabilities Bill, Lord Canning was the first to speak in support of it. He answered Lord Ellenborough, who had moved the amendment, and he voted against all his old colleagues then in the Upper House, with the exception of Lord

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Hardinge. But in 1850 he supported, in a speech displaying an entire mastery of the subject, the resolution of Lord Derby condemnatory of the Foreign Policy of Lord Palmerston; and he spoke against the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, introduced by Lord John Russell. So little, indeed, was he considered to be pledged to any party, that when the Russell Cabinet resigned in the spring of 1851, and Lord Derby was invited to form an administration, the great Conservative leader saw no reason why he should not invite Canning to become a member of it. The offer then made was a tempting one, for it was the offer of a seat in the Cabinet second in importance only to that of the First Minister. To the son of George Canning it was especially tempting, for it was the offer of the seals of the Foreign Office. In that office the father had built up his reputation, and the son had already laid the foundation of an honourable career of statesmanship. It was the department which, above all others, Lord Canning best knew and most desired. He had served a long apprenticeship in it, and if his humility suggested any doubts of his capacity to direct its affairs, they must have been removed by the manner in which he was invited to take their direction.

The offer now made to him was made through his old official chief, Lord Aberdeen, who pressed him to accept it. But there were many grave considerations which caused him to hesitate. He had sat for some years on the same ministerial bench with Lord Derby, but the latter had separated himself from his party, and the cause of the disruption was the liberal commercial policy of Sir Robert Peel, in favour of which Canning had freely declared his opinions. He had condemned the foreign policy of the Whig party; but, on the other hand, there were matters of home government in which his liberality was far in advance of the opinions of Lord Derby and his colleagues; and, on the whole, he felt that he could not honestly and consistently support the Administration which he was invited to enter. Ho judged rightly, and in such a case he judged wisely. Lord Derby failed to construct a Ministry, and the Whigs resumed office for another year. This was the turning-point of Lord Canning’s career, and it is impossible to say how different might have been the story which I am now about to write, if these overtures had been accepted.

In the following year, Lord Derby again endeavoured, and with better success, to form a Ministry, but its career was of

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brief duration. In November, its place was filled by an Administration under the premiership of Lord Aberdeen, composed of the leading members of the Governments both of Sir Robert Peel and Lord John Russell. In this Coalition Ministry Lord Canning held the office of Postmaster-General. Though held by many a distinguished man, the post was not one to satisfy the desires of an ambitious one. But he was not disappointed or discouraged. He knew the difficulties which lay in the path of his leader160, and he addressed himself cheerfully and assiduously to his work, with a steadfast resolution to elevate the importance of the appointment he held, by doing in it the largest possible amount of public good. In this office he had first an opportunity of displaying that high conscientious courage which bears up and steers right on, in spite of the penalties and mortifications of temporary unpopularity. What was wrong ho endeavoured to set right; and knowing how much depended on the personal exertions of individual men, he strove, even at the expense of certain very clamorous vested interests, to obtain the utmost possible amount of competency for the performance of all the higher departmental duties. During his administration of the Post-office many important reforms were instituted, and much progress made in good work already commenced. So effectually, indeed, had he mastered all the complicated details of the department, that when the Coalition Ministry was dissolved and a new Government formed under Lord Palmerston, the public interests required that there should be no change at the Post-office; so Lord Canning was reappointed to his old office, but with further acknowledgment of his good services in the shape of a seat in the Cabinet. But it was not ordered that he should hold the office much longer. There was more stirring work in store for him. His old friend and contemporary, Lord Dalhousie, was coming home from India, and it was necessary that a new Governor-General should be appointed in his place. Practically the selection, in such cases, was made by the Imperial Government, but constitutionally the appointment emanated from the East India Company. The President of the Board of Control and the Chairman of the Court of Directors commonly took counsel together, when the Cabinet

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had chosen their man; and then the nomination was formally-submitted to the Court. There is always, in such cases, much internal doubt and conflict among those with whom the selection rests, and much speculation and discussion in the outer world. It was believed in this instance, that some member of the Ministry would be appointed; but people said in England, as they said in India, that it would be no easy thing to find a fit successor for Lord Dalhousie; and when at last it transpired that the choice had fallen on Lord Canning, men shook their heads and asked each other whether there was anything great about him but his name. In Parliament the propriety of the appointment was questioned by some noisy speakers, and there was a general feeling in society that the appointment was rather a mistake. But those who knew Lord Canning – those especially who had worked with him – knew that it was no mistake. They knew that there was the stuff in him of which great administrators are made.

Appointment to the Governor-Generalship, 1855

On the first day of August a Court of Directors was held at the India House, and Lord Canning was introduced to take the accustomed oath. On the evening, of that day the Company gave, in honour of their new servant, one of those magnificent entertainments at which it was their wont to bid God-speed to those who were going forth to do their work. Those banquets were great facts and great opportunities. It was discovered soon afterwards that the expenditure upon them was a profligate waste of the public money. But the Government of a great empire, spending nothing upon the splendid foppery of a Court, was justified in thinking that, without offence, it might thus do honour to its more distinguished servants, and that, not the turtle and the venison, but the hospitality and the courtesy of the Directors, thus publicly bestowed upon the men who had clone their work well in civil or military life, would find ample recompense in increased loyalty and devotion, and more energetic service. Many a gallant soldier and many a wise administrator carried back with him to India the big card of the East India Company inviting him to dinner at the London Tavern, and religiously preserved it as one of the most cherished records of an honourable career. There were many, too, who hoarded among their dearest recollections the memory of the evening when they saw, perhaps for the first and the last time, England’s greatest statesmen and warriors, and heard them

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gravely discourse on the marvel and the miracle of our Indian Empire. Nor was it a small thing that a man selected. to govern a magnificent dependency beyond the seas, should thus, in the presence of his old and his new masters, and many of his coadjutors in the great work before him, publicly accept his commission, and declare to the people in the West and in the East the principles which were to regulate his conduct and to shape his career. The words uttered on these occasions rose far above the ordinary convivial level of after-dinner speeches. There was a gravity and a solemnity in them, appreciated not merely by those who heard them spoken, but by thousands also, to whom the Press conveyed them, in the country which they most concerned; and on the minds of the more intelligent Natives the fact of this great ceremonial of departure made a deep impression, and elevated in their imaginations the dignity of the coming ruler.

Seldom or never had this ceremonial assumed a more imposing character than that which celebrated the appointment of Lord Canning to the Governor-Generalship of India. In the great Banqueting Hall of the London Tavern were assembled on that 1st of August many members of the Cabinet, including among them some of Canning’s dearest friends; others besides of his old companions and fellow-students; and all the most distinguished of the servants of the Company at that time in the country. Mr. Elliot MacNaghten, Chairman of the East India Company, presided, and after dinner proposed the accustomed toasts. It was natural and right that, when doing honour to the newly-appointed Governor-General, the speaker should pay a fitting tribute to the distinguished statesman who was then bringing his work to a close; it was natural and graceful that tribute should be paid also to the worth of the elder Canning, who had done India good service at home, and had been selected to hold the great office abroad which his son was proceeding to fill; but there was something to a comparatively untried man perilous in such associations, and the younger Canning, with instinctive modesty, shrunk from the invidious suggestion. Perhaps there were some present who drew comparisons, unfavourable to the son, between the early careers of the two Cannings, which had entitled them to this great distinction; but when the younger stood up to speak, everyone was struck – the many judging by busts and pictures, and the few recalling the living likeness of George Canning – by his

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great resemblance to his father. The singularly handsome face, the intellectual countenance, and, above all, the noble “Canning brow,” like a block of white marble, bespoke no common capacity for empire, and gave emphatic force to the words he uttered. He said, after the usual expression of thanks for the kind words spoken, and the kind reception accorded to them, that the kindness which he had received had not created any delusion in his mind, for whether he contemplated the magnitude of the task that awaited him, or the great achievements of the distinguished men who had preceded him, he was painfully sensible that the labourer was unequal to the great work that had been entrusted to his hands. He was not ashamed to confess that there were times when he was tempted to shrink from the responsibility that awaited him. But this feeling, he added, was not inconsistent with his determination to devote all the energies of his mind, every hour, nay, every minute of his time, every thought and every inspiration, to the discharge of the duties which he had that day accepted from the hands of the Company. There were, however, other considerations, which had greatly reassured and encouraged him; “You have,” he said, turning to the Chairman, “assured me, this day, of what you rightly describe as the generous confidence and co-operation of the Court of Directors. I thank you for that assurance, and I rely on it implicitly, for I know the body of which you are the head are, wherever they bestow their confidence, no niggards in supporting those who honestly and faithfully serve them.” And then, not perhaps without a knowledge of what, more than a quarter of a century before, his father had said on a similar occasion161, he added, “I feel that I can also rely on the cordial support and sympathy of my noble friend at the head of the Government, and of all those colleagues with whom I have had the proud satisfaction of serving as a Minister of the Crown, but, above all, I delight in the co-operation – for on that I must daily and hourly rely – of those two admirable bodies, the Civil Service and the Army of India. I hardly know

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whether there is any feature of our Government, any portion of our institutions, upon which Englishmen may look with more honest exultation than those two noble branches of our Public Service. The men of those branches have done much for the advancement of India, and have sent forth from their ranks men who were efficient in war and peace, in numbers of which any monarchy in Europe might be proud, and who have rescued their countrymen from charges formerly, and not unjustly, levelled against them of dealing sometimes too harshly with those whom they were hound to succour and protect. Sir, it is the possession of such men which enables you to exhibit a spectacle unequalled in the world’s history – that of a hundred and fifty millions of people submitting in peace and contentment, in a country teeming with wealth, to the government of strangers and aliens.”

Then, after a few more words on the high character of the Services, and a brief declaration of the fact that he assumed office “without a single promise or pledge to any expectant,” he proceeded with increased gravity and solemnity of utterance, almost, indeed, as one under the spell of prophecy: “I know not what course events may take. I hope and pray that we may not reach the extremity of war. I wish for a peaceful time of office, but I cannot forget that in our Indian Empire that greatest of all blessings depends upon a greater variety of chances and a more precarious tenure than in any other quarter of the globe. We must not forget that in the sky of India, serene as it is, a small cloud may arise, at first no bigger than a man’s hand, but which, growing larger and larger, may at last threaten to burst, and overwhelm us with ruin. What has happened once may happen again. The disturbing causes have diminished certainly, but they are not dispelled. We have still discontented and heterogeneous peoples united under our sway; we have still neighbours before whom we cannot altogether lay aside our watchfulness; and we have a frontier configuration that renders it possible that in any quarter, at any moment, causes of collision may arise. Besides, so intricate are our relations with some subsidiary states, that I doubt whether in an empire so vast and so situated it is in the power of the wisest Government, the most peaceful and the most forbearing, to command peace. But if we cannot command, we can at least deserve it, by taking care that honour, good faith, and fair dealing are on our side; and then if, in spite of us, it should

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become necessary to strike a blow, we can strike with a clear conscience. With blows so dealt the struggle must be short and the issue not doubtful. But I gladly dismiss from my mind apprehensions that may not be realised, and joyfully recognise a large arena of peaceful usefulness, in which I hope for your kind assistance and co-operation.”

Equally surprised were the few then present, who were familiar with Lord Canning’s parliamentary utterances, and the many, who had never heard him speak, but had been told that he was “no orator”; for the speech which they now heard from his lips was all that such a speech ought to have been. It was impressive rather than impassioned; slowly spoken, with a deliberate gravity, every sentence making itself felt, and every word making itself heard in the farthest corners of that great Banqueting Hall. There were few present in whose estimation the speaker had not risen before he resumed his seat; few present who did not, years afterwards, remember with strong emotion that picture of the little cloud rising in an unexpected quarter, and in time obscuring the firmament and overshadowing the land. Some, perhaps, thought also of another speech, then delivered by a more practised speaker; for the First Minister of the Crown, on that August evening, let fall some memorable words. It was only in common course that he should speak of the qualifications of his colleague for the high office to which he had been appointed; only in common course that he should express his gratitude to the Company who so materially lightened the cares of the Sovereign and her ministers. But when Lord Palmerston dwelt on “the significant fact that, whereas of old all civilisation came from India, through Egypt, now we, who were then barbarians, were carrying back civilisation and enlightenment to the parent source,” and added, “perhaps it might be our lot to confer on the countless millions of India a higher and a holier gift than any real human knowledge; but that must be left to the hands of time and the gradual improvement of the people,” he supplemented Lord Canning’s prophecy, though he knew it not, and pointed to the quarter from which the little cloud was to arise.

But although Lord Canning had been sworn in at the India House, and had stood before the magnates of the land as Governor-General elect, he was still a member of the Cabinet and her Majesty’s Postmaster-General. Parliament was prorogued on the 14th of August, and in accordance with that wise

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official usage, which recognises the necessity of holidays no less for statesmen than for schoolboys, the Queen’s Ministers dispersed themselves over the country, and Lord Canning went to Scotland. It had been settled that he should receive from the hands of Lord Dalhousie the reins of Indian Government on the 1st of February, 1856, and his arrangements, involving a short sojourn in Egypt, and visits to Ceylon, Bombay, and Madras, had been made with a view to his arrival at Calcutta on that day. But at Dalhousie’s own request, his resignation was subsequently deferred to the 1st of March. When this request was first made to him, Canning thought that the intention of the change was simply to allow the old Governor-General more time not only to consummate the annexation of Oudh, but to confront the first difficulties of the revolution; and it appeared to him, thinking this, that the postponement might be interpreted alike to his own and to his predecessor’s disadvantage. It might have been said that the new Governor-General shrank from encountering the dangers of the position, or that the measure was so distasteful to him, on the score of its injustice, that he could not bring himself to put his hand to the work. Both assumptions would have been utterly erroneous. The question of the annexation of Oudh had been a Cabinet question, and as a member of the Cabinet, Lord Canning had given his assent to the policy, which after much discussion in Leadenhall and in Downing-street, found final expression in the Court’s despatch of the 19th of November. The policy itself had been already determined, although the precise terms of the instructions to be sent to the Government of India were still under consideration, when Dalhousie’s proposal reached him; and he was willing to accept all the responsibilities of the measure. The proposed delay, therefore, did not at first sight please him; but when, from a later letter, he learnt that Dalhousie required a few more weeks of office, not for special, but for general purposes; that he needed time to gather up the ends of a large number of administrative details, the case was altered, and he assented, with the concurrence of the Court of Directors, to the change162.

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A few days afterwards, Lord Canning turned his face again towards the South, to superintend the final arrangements for his departure, and to take leave of his friends. Thus the month of October and the greater part of November were passed; but not without some study of Indian questions, some useful training for the great work upon which he was about to enter. On the 21st of November he went by command to Windsor, accompanied by Lady Canning, who was among her Majesty’s cherished friends, and on the 23rd returned to London, after taking final leave of the Queen. Another day or two, and he had commenced his overland journey to the East. From the French capital he wrote, on the last day of November: “I intended to leave Paris this afternoon, but I received notice in the morning that the Emperor wished to see me to-morrow, so that it will be Tuesday morning (December 4th) before we embark at Marseilles. We still hope to reach Alexandria on the 10th.” He arrived there, however, not before the 12th, and after a day’s halt pushed on to Cairo, where he was received and entertained magnificently by orders of the Pacha, who was at that time absent from his capital.

The party consisted of Lord and Lady Canning, his nephew Lord Hubert de Burgh163, Captain Bouverie, A.D.C., and Dr. Leckie. There was abundant time for an exploration of the wonders of Egypt, and, as the fine climate of the country invited a protracted sojourn there, it was arranged that some weeks should be spent in pleasant and profitable excursions, and that they should embark at Suez about the middle of the month of January. “The Pacha was in Upper Egypt until to-day,” wrote Lord Canning to Mr. MacNaghten, on the 17th of December, “when he returned to this neighbourhood. I am to see him tomorrow, and on the following day we set out on our expedition up the Nile. Thanks to a steamer, which the Pacha lends us, we shall be able to accomplish all we wish, and to embark on the Feroze immediately upon its arrival at Suez,

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which, according to a letter from Lord Dalhousie, that met me at Alexandria, will not be until close upon the 12th of January. . . . The magnificence, not to say extravagance, of our reception here far exceeds anything that I had expected. I shall need to be very profuse of my thanks to the Pacha to-morrow.”

It would be pleasant to follow Lord Canning and his family on their river-voyage, the grateful experiences of which he has himself recorded, but these personal incidents have no connection with the stern story before me, and the temptation, therefore, to enlarge upon them must be resisted. The programme of his movements given in the above letter to the Chairman of the Company, was realised. with but little departure from the original design. The Governor-General elect halted at Aden, where, under the guidance of Brigadier Coghlan164 – an officer of the Company’s Artillery, one of those excellent public servants who, partly in a military, partly in a diplomatic capacity, represent great interests and undertake great responsibilities in the East – Lord Canning made his first acquaintance with the Sipahi Army of India. From Aden he steamed to Bombay, where he arrived on the 28th of January, 1856, and first planted his foot on Indian soil. “I found,” he wrote to Mr. MacNaghten on the 2nd of February, “that Lord Dalhousie had given orders that I should be received with the full honours of Governor-General in possession; and of course I did nothing to check or escape from the demonstrations with which we were met, though I did not desire or expect them. I have been unceasingly busy for two-thirds of every twenty-four hours since our arrival; and by the 5th or 6th I hope to have seen nearly all that calls for ocular inspection in the city and its neighbourhood.. We shall then embark for Madras; for I have given up all thoughts of stopping at Ceylon, unless to coal, and hope to arrive there on the 14th or 15th. I cannot sufficiently congratulate myself on having come round by this Presidency. It has shown me much that I should not easily have learnt otherwise.” It was a disappointment to him that he had not time to visit Ceylon, for his old Eton tutor, Chapman, had developed into Bishop of Colombo, and there would have been a grand old Etonian pleasure, on both sides, in talking over old times. But there was consolation in the thought that his friend Lord Harris, his fellow-pupil in the Bedfordshire market-town, was

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Governor of Madras. In that presidency he spent a few pleasant days, sojourning at Guindy, and then on the 25th of February set out to face the realities of Indian Government, and steamed up the Bay of Bengal.

February 29, 1856

On the last day of February, Lord Canning disembarked at Calcutta; and, proceeding to Government House, at once took his oaths of office and his seat in Council. It is the custom in such cases. No time is left for any question to arise as to who is Governor-General of India. So brief did the whole operation appear to him, that he wrote home that he had been sworn in and installed “within five minutes after touching land.” As his dignities and responsibilities commenced at once, so did his work. At the end of his first week of office, he wrote that such had been the pressure of public business, that he had found time only for “one look out of doors” since he arrived. During that first week Lord Dalhousie tarried in Calcutta, and the past and future of the Government of India was discussed with interest, the depths of which were stirred by varying circumstances, between those earnest-minded men; the one all readiness to teach, the other all eagerness to learn. Dull and prosaic as its details often appear to Englishmen at a distance, it is difficult to describe the living interest with which statesmen in India of all classes, from the highest to the lowest, perpetually regard their work.

First days of Government

No man ever undertook the office of Governor-General of India under the impression that it would be a sinecure. But it is scarcely less true that no man, whatever opinion he may have formed in England, ever entered upon its duties without discovering that he had greatly underrated the extent of its labours. The current of work is so strong and so continuous; so many waters meet together to swell the stream; that at first even a strong man trying to breast it may feel that he is in danger of being overwhelmed. Time lessens the difficulty; but at the outset, the multiplicity of unfamiliar details distracts and bewilders even the sharpest wit and the clearest brain; and the first result is apt to be a chaos. Box after box is placed upon the Governor-General’s table; and each box is crammed with papers rugged with the names of strange men and stranger places, and references to unknown events and incomprehensible states of society. By some means or other, he must master the antecedents of every case that comes before him for decision; and there are

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often very intricate cases purposely left for his decision, that he may not be embarrassed by the judgments of his predecessor. Week after week goes by and little impression is made upon this pile of work. “Another fortnight is gone,” wrote Lord Canning towards the end of March, “and I am beginning to gather up by slow degrees the threads of business, as it passes before me; but it is severe work to have to give so much time to the bygones of almost every question that comes up; and some weeks more must pass before I shall feel myself abreast of current events.” There was a strong conscientiousness within the new Governor-General which would not suffer him to pass anything lightly over, and he endeavoured to understand all that came before him even at the risk of some inconvenient delays.

So he did not rush at his work; but quietly confronted it, and was in no haste to impress people with a sense of the profundity of his wisdom and the greatness of his self-reliance. He knew that he had much to learn, and he adopted the best means of learning it; for he invited all the chief agents of his Government, scattered over the country, especially those who were representing British interests at the Native Courts, to correspond confidentially with him on matters relating to their respective charges; an invitation which gave to every man thus addressed full liberty to declare his sentiments and to expound his views. And thus he escaped the danger on the one hand of surrendering his own judgment, by succumbing to the influence of some two or three public functionaries immediately attached to the Executive Government, and, on the other, of the overconfident exercise of a dominant self-will rejecting all external aids, and refusing to walk by other men’s experiences. He knew that there was no royal road to a knowledge of India , and he was well content that the first year of his administration should be unostentatiously devoted to the great duty of learning his work.

The Council

There were able men, too, at his elbow to assist him to a correct knowledge of facts, and to the formation of sound opinions. The Supreme Council consisted at that time of General John Low, Mr. Dorin, Mr. John Peter Grant, and Mr. Barnes Peacock.

General Low

Of the first I can say little in this place that has not been already said. The only charge laid against him by the assailants of the Government was that he was well stricken in years. But although one who had fought beside Malcolm at Mehidpur, and then not in his first

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youth, must have lost some of the physical energy that animated him in his prime, his intellect was unimpaired. Ceasing to be a man of action, he had subsided gracefully into the condition of a councillor, the Nestor of the Political Service, a veteran without a stain. No man had so large an acquaintance with the Native Courts of India; no man knew the temper of the people better than John Low. He could see with their eyes, and speak with their tongues, and read with their understandings. And, therefore, he looked with some dismay at the wide-spread Englishism of the Dalhousie school, and sorrowfully regarded the gradual dying out of the principles in which he had been nurtured and trained, and to which, heedless of their unpopularity, he clung with honest resolution to the last. Dalhousie had too often disregarded his counsel; but he had always respected the man. And now Canning equally admired the personal character of his colleague, but was not equally minded to laugh his principles to scorn.

Mr. Dorin

Of the two Bengal civilians who sat in that Council, it may be said that the one owed his position there apparently to chance, the other to his unquestionable abilities. Mr. Dorin was not a man of great parts; he was not a man of high character. If he had any official reputation, it was in the capacity of a financier; and finance was at that time the weakest point of our Government. He had limited acquaintance with the country, and but small knowledge of the people. He had no earnestness; no enthusiasm; no energy. He had a genius for making himself comfortable, and he had no superfluous activities of head or heart to mar his success in that particular direction. He had supported the policy of Lord Dalhousie, and had recorded in his time a number of minutes expressing in two emphatic words, which saved trouble and gained favour, his concurrence with the most noble the Governor-General; and now if the new ruler was not likely to find him a very serviceable colleague, there was no greater chance of his being found a troublesome one.

John Peter Grant

In John Grant the Governor-General might have found both. He was many years younger than his brother civilian, but he had done infinitely more work. In him, with an indolent sleepy manner was strangely combined extraordinary activity of mind. He was one of the ablest public servants in the country. With some hereditary claim to distinction, he had been marked out from the very

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commencement of his career, no less by a favourable concurrence of external circumstances than by his own inherent qualifications, for the highest official success. No young civilian in his novitiate ever carried upon him so clearly and unmistakably the stamp of the embryo Councillor, as John Grant. In some-respects this was a misfortune to him. His course was too. easy. He had found his way; he had not been compelled to make it. He had not been jostled by the crowd; he had seen little or none of the rough work of Indian administration or Indian diplomacy. It had been his lot, as it had been his. choice, to spend the greater part of his official life in close connection with the Head-Quarters of the Government; and, therefore, his opportunities of independent action had been few; his personal acquaintance with the country and the people was not extensive; and his work had been chiefly upon paper. But as a member of a powerful bureaucracy his value was conspicuous. Quick in the mastery of facts, clear and precise in their analytical arrangement, and gifted with more than common powers of expression, he was admirably fitted to discharge the duties of the Secretariat. He was a dead hand at a report; and if-Government were perplexed by any difficult questions, involving; a tangled mass of disordered financial accounts, or a great conflict of authority mystifying the truth, he was the man of all others to unravel the intricate or to elucidate the obscure. Comparatively young in years, but ripe in bureaucratic experience, he entered the Supreme Council towards the close of Lord Dalhousie’s administration. But he had sat long enough at the Board to establish his independence. He expressed his opinions freely and fearlessly; and his minutes, when minute-writing was in vogue, were commonly the best State papers recorded by the Government of the day. Closely reasoned, forcibly expressed, with here and there touches of quiet humour or subdued sarcasm, they cut through any sophistries put forth by his colleagues, with sharp incisive logic, and clearly stated the points at issue without disguises and evasions. On the whole, he was a man of large and liberal views, the natural manifestations of which were, perhaps, somewhat straitened by an acquired official reserve; and no one questioned the honesty of his intentions or the integrity of his life.

Barnes Peacock

Mr. Barnes Peacock was the fourth, and, as is commonly called, the “Law Member” of Council. An English lawyer, appointed to aid the great work of Indian

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legislation, he was a member of the Executive rather by sufferance than by right. In a limited sense, he was supposed to represent the popular element in the Council. There was no very violent conflict of class interests in those days. But so far as such division existed at all, he was regarded as the exponent of the views of the non-official Englishman and of the Europeanised Natives of the large towns, whose interests are bound up with our own. For the institution of the Company he was believed to have no respect, and for the exclusive system of Government by the Company’s servants no toleration. He had a clear head, an acute understanding, but by no means a large mind. Assiduous hi the work of law-making, he was the very soul of the Legislative Council; and had he confined his efforts to the work of moulding into draft-acts the ideas of other men, he would have been an invaluable public servant. But he sometimes went beyond this; and, when he did so, he commonly went wrong. For knowing little of the people of India, and having only thoroughly English notions of philanthropic reforms and legislative beneficences, he would have taught the people better manners with a rapidity for which they were not prepared, if he had unrestrainedly followed out his own ideas of social improvement. Indeed, he had already threatened to limit the polygamies of the Natives of India, and, doubtless, had a draft-act for the purpose on the legislative anvil, when circumstances arrested his career of reform. But, although it was in the legislative department that his especial strength lay, he did not confine himself to it. He grappled manfully with all the varied details of the general administration. There were times when his legal penetration was of service in the disentanglement of knotty questions of executive government, and he sometimes recorded minutes distinguished by no common powers of special pleading. But, on the whole, this laborious addiction to business was an encumbrance and an embarrassment to the Ministry; and Lord Canning had soon reason to complain of the conscientious excesses of his colleague. A general disinclination to take anything for granted impeded the progress of business; and the Governor-General, not without a feeling of admiration for a defect that had its root in honesty of purpose, endeavoured, and with good success, to wean the law member from his habit of mastering details which he was not expected to understand, and keeping back business which it was desirable to dispose of whilst he was working up the past history of a

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Native State, or calculating grain-bags in a commissariat account. There must have been some inward promptings of self-knowledge in Canning’s own mind to assure him that this laborious conscientiousness was a part of his own nature; but he felt, at the same time, that his larger scope of responsibility demanded from him a larger scope of action, and that what was right in the Governor-General was not therefore right in his departmental colleague.

Such were the fellow-labourers with whom Lord Canning was now about to prosecute the work of Government. On the whole, the Council was not badly constituted for ordinary purposes of administration in quiet times. It contained, indeed, many of the essential elements of a good Board. What it most wanted was military knowledge; for General Low, though an old soldier of the Madras Army, had seen more of the Court than of the Camp; and it was rather in the diplomacies of the Native States than in the conduct of warlike operations, or in the details of military administration, that he had earned, by hard service, the right to be accepted as an authority165. It was a constitutional fiction that, in an Indian Council, the necessary amount of military knowledge was supplied in the person of the Commander-in-Chief, who had a seat in it. The seat, though legally occupied, was for the most part practically empty, for duty might not, and inclination did not, keep the military chief at the Head-Quarters of the Civil Government. But it happened that, when Lord Canning arrived in India, he found General Anson in Calcutta. And it was a pleasure to him to see in the Indian capital a face that had been familiar to him in the English.

General Anson

The appointment of the Honourable George Anson to the chief command of the Indian Army took by surprise the English communities in the three Presidencies, who had seen his name only in the Racing Calendar, or in other records of the Turf. But there was one thing at least to be said in his favour: he was not an old man. It was not in the nature of things, after a long European peace, that good service should be found in the officers of the Queen’s Army unaccompanied by the weight of years. But the scandal of imbecility had risen to such a height, the military world had

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grown so sick of infirmity in high places – of the blind, the lame, the deaf, the obesely plethoric – that they were prepared to welcome almost anyone who could sit a horse, who could see from one end to the other of a regiment in line, and hear the report of a nine-pounder at a distance of a hundred yards. There was nothing to be said against George Anson on this score. He could hear and see; he could ride and walk. He was of a light spare figure, well framed for active exercise; and his aspect was that of a man who could “stand the climate.” But with all men who first brave that climate in the maturity of life, there is a risk and an uncertainty; and appearances belied Anson’s capabilities of resistance. During the hot weather and rainy season of 1856, the heats and damps of Bengal tried him severely; and Lord Canning more than once wrote home that his military colleague was reduced to a skeleton, and had lost all his bodily strength and all his buoyancy of spirit. But, at the same time, he spoke of the Chief as one who had many excellent points, both as an officer and as a man. The precise limits of authority vested in the chief civil and military functionaries are so ill defined, that, when the powers of both are combined in one individual, it is a mercy if he does not quarrel with himself. When they are divided, as is commonly the case, a conflict of authority is inevitable. And so at this time, the Governor-General and the Commander-in-Chief soon came into official collision; but it never grew into personal strife between Lord Canning and General Anson. The public prints hinted that there was a rupture between them; and the same story travelled homewards and penetrated Cannon-row. But the Civilian wrote, that though there had been some special points of difference between them, the temper of the Soldier was so charming, and he was so thoroughly a gentleman, that it was quite impossible to quarrel with him. The inevitable antagonism of official interests could not weaken the ties of personal regard; and when Anson, in the month of September, left Calcutta on a tour of military inspection in the Upper Provinces, he carried with him no kindlier wishes than those which attended him warm from the heart of the Governor-General166.

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Footnotes

150. “The unsullied purity of Mr. Canning ‘s domestic life,” says his last and pleasantest biographer, “and his love of domestic pleasures (for after his marriage he seldom extended his intercourse with general society beyond those occasions which his station rendered unavoidable), were rewarded by as much virtue and devotion as ever graced the home of an English statesman.” – Bell’s Life of Canning.

151. At this time Charles was the second surviving son. The eldest, George Charles, born in April, 1801, died in March, 1820. The second brother was in the navy.

152. See Bell’s Life of Canning, chapter x., which contains an animated sketch of the early history of Gloucester Lodge, and of the social and domestic environments of the great statesman’s residence there.

153. Afterwards Bishop of Colombo; now retired.

154. I am indebted for this incident to Sir Robert Phillimore, Queen’s Advocate. The memorandum from which it is taken adds: “The well-known description of the storm in the first Aeneid, ‘Interea magno misceri murmure pontum,’ &c., was the passage chosen for the trial of his proficiency,. and the Bishop now remembers the anxiety with which the father watched the essay of his son, and the smile of approval which greeted his reading of the rather difficult transition, ‘Quos ego – sed motos,’ &c., and the final ‘Not so bad,’ which followed at the close of the whole translation.”

155. William Pitt Canning, then a Captain in the Royal Navy, was drowned while bathing at Madeira, in September, 1828.

156. It need scarcely be indicated that the widow of George Canning, on his death, was created a Viscountess, with remainder to his eldest son.

157. The present (1861) Chancellor of the Exchequer; the late Lord Elgin, Governor-General of India; and the present Queen’s Advocate.

158. I am indebted for this to Sir Robert Phillimore. I give the incident in his own words: “In the year 1831, he won the Christ Church prize for Latin verse. The subject was ‘Caractacus Captivus Romani ingreditur.’ The verses were, as usual, recited in the hall. It was a remarkable scene. In that magnificent banqueting-room are hung the portraits of students who have reflected honour upon the House which reared them by the distinctions which they have won in after life. Underneath the portrait of George Canning, the recollection of whose brilliant career and untimely end was still fresh in the memory of men, stood the son, in the prime of youth, recalling by his eminently handsome countenance the noble features of the portrait, while repeating the classical prize poem, which would have gladdened his father’s heart. Generally speaking, the resident members of Christ Church alone compose the audience when the prize poem is recited. But on this occasion there was a stranger present – the old faithful friend of Mr. Canning, his staunch political adherent through life – Mr. Sturges Bourne. Ho had travelled from London for the purpose of witnessing the first considerable achievement of the younger Canning.” – MS. Memorandum.

159. His name is to be found in all the principal division lists. He voted sometimes against Lord Melbourne’s Government, but more frequently with it.

160. In a “coalition ministry” there is necessarily an exceptional number of claimants for the higher offices with seats in the Cabinet. In the arrangements then made the seals of the Foreign Office fell, in the first instance, to Lord John Russell.

161. The occasion alluded to was the farewell banquet given by the East India Company to Sir John Malcolm, on his appointment to the government of Bombay. Then it was that George Canning said: “There cannot be found in the history of Europe the existence of any monarchy which, within a given time, has produced so many men of the first talents, in civil and military life, as India has first trained for herself, and then given to their native country.”

162. “As long,” he wrote to the Chairman, “as it turned upon Oudh alone, I felt that there was some difficulty in making the change proposed by Lord Dalhousie, and some risk of its intention being misrepresented to the disadvantage of both of us. But it is now clear that for other reasons, apart from Oudh, and for the general winding up of the work on his hands, it will be a great help to him to have a month more time. These are his very words to me; and I cannot hesitate, so far as I am concerned, to do that which will be agreeable and convenient to him, and probably advantageous to the public interests. I hope, therefore, that you will feel no difficulty in complying with Lord Dalhousie’s wish, by putting off my succession until the day he names.” – Lord Canning to Mr. Macnaghten, September 20, 1855. – MS. Correspondence.

163. Afterwards Lord Hubert Canning. [Now Marquis of Clanrikarde. – G.B.M.]

164. Afterwards Sir William Coghlan, K.C.B.

165. Shortly after Lord Canning’s arrival, General Low went to England, but returned at the commencement of the cold weather (1856–57).

166. What Lord Canning wrote about General Anson is so honourable to both that it is quite a pleasure to quote it. “We get on admirably together,” wrote the Governor-General in June. “His temper is charming, and I know no one whom I should not be sorry to see substituted for him.” And again, in October: “I am not surprised at the report you mention that Anson and I do not get on well together, because such a rumour was current in Calcutta two or three months ago, and even found its way into the newspapers. I believe it originated in a difference between us on two points; one (of much interest to the Indian Army), the power of the Commander-in-Chief to withhold applications for furlough, transmitted through him to the Governor-General in Council; the other, an authority to exercise something very like a veto upon the Governor-General’s selections of officers for civil and political service. Upon both of which I found it necessary to disallow his pretensions. But neither these disagreements, nor the report to which they gave rise, have for a moment caused any misunderstanding or reserve between us. It would be very difficult to quarrel with any one so imperturbably good-tempered, and so thoroughly a gentleman.” – MS. Correspondence.

This collection transcribed by Chris Gage
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