Rulers of India: The Earl of Mayo

by William Wilson Hunter

'He had perfect confidence in his arrangements, and he declared that the insurrection could never assume any serious importance. But he was uneasy for the safety of persons living in isolated parts, and about the small bands of villains who would use a political disturbance as a shelter for local crimes. He said: "I dread more than anything else that a panic will be fed by newspaper reports, and that an outcry may get up that Ireland ought to be declared in a state of siege, and military law proclaimed. To this I will never yield, although I know my refusal will be misrepresented, and may for the moment intensify the alarm."'

It is unnecessary in a personal narrative to repeat what followed in the Fenian camp. 'The insurrection,' continues his colleague, 'if it may be dignified by that name, was immediately stamped out. Lord Naas put it down in his own way, yielding neither to threats nor entreaties; acting wisely and firmly, and allowing himself to be influenced neither by newspaper panics, nor by patriots in the House of Commons, nor by rebels outside it. When he returned to London, he went on with his Government Bills precisely as if nothing had happened, and no fewer than eighteen of his measures prepared in that year received the Royal assent.'

In January, 1867, his mother died. His father survived her only six months, and on 12th August, 1867, Lord Naas succeeded as sixth Earl of Mayo.

Meanwhile, the Conservative Ministry were in a minority in the House of Commons. It became clear in 1868 that a general attack might be expected, and that the Opposition would select Irish ground. Accordingly, in that session Mr. Maguire, then member for Cork, moved for a committee of the whole House to consider the state of Ireland. On this occasion Lord Mayo was made the mouthpiece of the Government. His speech, although not successful as a Parliamentary utterance at the moment, forms a most valuable contribution to the political history of Ireland.

'This speech,' writes one who was then associated with him, 'required very careful preparation. Lord Mayo proposed to show how, notwithstanding Fenianism and local disaffection, the general prosperity of Ireland was steadily increasing. This he unquestionably proved by facts, statistics, and arguments. The collecting and arranging of the facts would have tried a man in full health. And unhappily, Lord Mayo was at that time very far from well. The day before, he could not leave his house, and the day of his speech he was only a trifle better. He spent the whole twelve hours in checking his materials and figures, and, according to his custom while thus engaged, ate nothing. When he rose to speak, he was both ill and weak, and at one time could hardly proceed. It may be easily understood that he failed to give life or pleasantness to the dry details with which he had to trouble the House. As a matter of fact, the speech, although sound and complete in itself, proved a long and heavy one to the listeners. But when read afterwards, it struck us all as forming, in point of knowledge, truth, care, and logic, a complete answer to the charges brought by the Opposition.'

Lord Mayo himself felt very unhappy about it for some days. The fact seems to have been, that it was one of those speeches which, from the number and complexity of the details involved, are better read than heard. It is now an accepted authority regarding the state of Ireland, and a permanent storehouse of facts to which both parties resort.⁹ At the time it led to a rumour that Lord Mayo was leading on to the policy known as 'levelling up.' 'It was his wish,' writes one who knew his mind, 'that grants of public money might be made to institutions without respect to creed, whether Catholic or Protestant, established for the education, relief, or succour of his fellow-countrymen; and that no school, hospital, or asylum should languish because of the religious teaching it afforded, or because of the religion of those who conducted it. He would even, I think, have gladly seen such of the revenues of the Irish Church as might not be absolutely wanted for its maintenance applied to these purposes. So far, but so far only, he was for levelling up.'

⁹ See, for example, Earl Russell's Recollections and Suggestions, p. 344.

The feeling which, ten years before, forced itself on him during his second tenure of office, as to the difficulty of doing any real good for Ireland, had deepened since. The interval in opposition, and his experience as Chief Secretary for the third time, impressed him more strongly than ever with the necessity of Irish reform, and at the same time more keenly with the unlikelihood of his being permitted to effect it. So far as I am competent to hazard an opinion, it seems to me that his views went too far for his own friends, and not far enough to take the matter out of the hands of the other great party, to whom the task of more radical legislation for Ireland soon afterwards fell.

The sense of the English nation, moreover, appears to have been that the work would be best done by those whose general policy identified them with liberal measures. Lord Mayo believed intensely in the need of such measures for Ireland; but he did not belong to the reforming party in England, nor was it possible for him to frame a plan which would satisfy that party and at the same time retain the support of his own. It only remained for him to go on with his work faithfully, with however heavy a heart. Estimated by the number of Acts which he prepared and passed through Parliament, or by the executive improvements made in the Irish Administration, these three years (1866-68) were the most useful ones in his English career. But, judged by what he had hoped to effect, and what he now felt it impossible to accomplish, they were years of frustration and painful self-questioning. Shortly afterwards, with the bitterness of this period fresh in his memory, he wrote to a brother who had just entered Parliament for an English constituency: 'I advise you to leave Ireland alone. There is no credit to be got by interfering with her politics, and your position does not make it your duty to do so.'

But the way in which he bore up amid these difficulties, and the actual work which he managed to do in spite of them, had won the admiration of administrators unconnected with the party government of England. In the first half of 1868, one of the leading members of the India Council, a man of tried experience both in India and in the direction of her affairs at home, spoke to a brother of Lord Mayo as to the likelihood of his succeeding Lord Lawrence as Viceroy. He said that the feeling in the Indian Council pointed to him as the fittest man. On this being repeated to Lord Mayo, he replied: 'Not a bit. So-and-so is as fit as I am, and has a better claim.' But, later in the session, he one day said to his brother: 'Well, Disraeli has spoken to me about India! He mentioned that Her Majesty had asked him whom he thought of nominating for the office of Viceroy, should we still be in office when it became vacant; that he had brought forward my name among others, and that Her Majesty had expressed herself very graciously about the way I had conducted Irish affairs.' About the same time the Prime Minister mentioned to Lord Mayo that the Governor-Generalship of Canada would also be vacant, and gave him to understand that he might have that at once, while it was by no means certain that the Ministry would be in power next January, when the Viceroyalty of India actually demitted.