Lord Lawrence

by Sir Richard Carnac Temple

As Governor-General he had all the power entrusted to that high functionary by the Acts of Parliament settling the Constitution of British India. As Viceroy he represented the Sovereign on all occasions.

On his arrival at Calcutta he was greeted most cordially by all classes of his countrymen, from the soldiers and sailors upwards. Loud was the chorus of British voices, thick was the concourse of Natives, as the stately vessel, bearing him as its freight, steamed up the broad reaches of the tidal Hooghly, between banks crowned with groves of the cocoa-nut, the palm and the bamboo, approached the forest of masts in the harbour of the Indian capital, and anchored near the ramparts of Fort William, close to the palace of the Governor-General.

Landing in Bengal, he met that section of the Indian population which had but little direct concern in the War of the Mutinies, and was therefore less cognisant of his deeds than the Natives of Northern India; still the Bengalis in their way strove to do him honour. His first levée was one of the most numerously attended levées ever held in Calcutta. He was full of alacrity, and if ever in his life he wore a smiling aspect it was then. Things had heretofore gone well with him in the estimation of all men East and West. The farewell addresses on leaving the Punjab, the addresses of welcome on reaching England, the congratulations at home on his new appointment, the notes of gladness on his return to India, were all present to his mind, and he was breathing the popularis aura. Few men, climbing to estate so high as his, have known so little of ungenerous objections or of actual misrepresentation, as he had up to this time. He was hardly prepared, perhaps, for the fitful moods of public opinion in such a country as India, for the wearing anxieties, the lesser troubles, even the annoyances, to be endured at intervals for some years before the moment when he should lay down the supreme power, and again look back with some pride and satisfaction upon another arduous stage accomplished in life’s journey.

He came by the overland route in December at the most favourable season of the year and escaped sea-sickness. As sea life was never quite suitable to his temperament, he did not read nor write much during the voyage, but he must have had time to arrange his thoughts respecting the imperial charge which had been committed to him. As a rule, he meant to deal with matters as they should arise—knowing that these would be numerous, and confident in his own power to dispose of them—rather than to shape out any policy or policies in his mind, or to descry any particular goal which he would strive to reach. Nevertheless he landed in India with certain ideas which might, according to his hope, be realised. As they are quite characteristic of him, some allusion may be here made to them.

During his sojourn in England he had been much impressed with the importance of sanitation or sanitary administration, as likely to become the pressing question of the immediate future. The insanitary condition of Indian cities had affected him in his younger days, and in later years his letters contain allusions to the subject. But something more than spasmodic effort was needed for that rectification which he would now make an imperial concern. To stimulate his recollections he would direct his morning rides to the unhealthiest parts of Calcutta, and one of his first measures after assuming the general government was to appoint a Sanitary Commission.

But the principle of sanitation had in his mind a special application. He appears while in England to have been conferring with Florence Nightingale regarding military hospitals and the health of the European soldiery. Here, again, as a young man, he had grieved over the intemperance existing among these troops, and partly attributable to injudicious regulations which had been subsequently modified. The War of the Mutinies had brought home to his mind, with greater force than ever, the supreme value of these men to the Eastern empire. He then set himself to observe their barracks, and especially their hospitals, which he used to visit in times of epidemic sickness. He would now use all his might as Governor-General to give them spacious and salubrious barracks, suitable means for recreation, and other resources for the improvement of their condition.

In former years he had witnessed the effects of drought upon districts destitute of artificial irrigation; and it was notorious that drought is the recurring plague not only of the continental climate of Mid-India, as physical geographers term it, but also of the southern peninsula. He had seen the inception of the Ganges canal, the queen of all canals ever undertaken in any age or country; and he would now stimulate the planning and executing of irrigation works great and small.

For this, however, capital was needed, so his financial instinct warned him that the Government of India must cease constructing these necessary works out of revenue—a tardy and precarious process—but must open a capital account for the nation, whereby India might borrow money for reproductive works, on the principle which prevails in all progressive countries.

Lastly, he had while in England reconsidered the principle of what is known as the Permanent Settlement of Bengal, which was much disapproved by the administrative school of his earlier days. He had now come to think that this Settlement possessed much political advantage, in strengthening the basis of landed prosperity, and thus attaching all landowners to the British Government; and so far he was actually prepared to extend it to some other districts beyond Bengal. But he was as keenly alive as ever to its imperfections, as it had neglected the rights of subordinate occupiers. He looked back with thankfulness upon the efforts which had been made in North-western India to preserve these rights. Having some fear that they might in certain circumstances be overridden, he resolved to champion them when necessary. This resolve brought about some trying episodes in his subsequent career.

Thus there were at least five large matters of imperial policy arranged in his mind from the very outset as he set foot once again on the Indian shore. The public sanitation, the physical welfare of the European soldiery, the prevention of famine by irrigation works, the capital account of the national outlay for material improvement, the settlement of agrarian affairs,—these were principles long fixed in his mind. But his conception of them had been widened or elevated by his sojourn in England, and by the fresh influences of political thought there.