Rulers of India: The Earl of Mayo

by William Wilson Hunter

The Viceroy also gives one day a week to his Executive Council, consisting of the Executive Ministers or 'Members of Council' mentioned in the table [above], with the Commander-in-Chief as an additional Member. In this oligarchy all matters of Imperial policy are debated with closed doors before the orders issue; the Secretaries waiting in an ante-room, and each being summoned into the Council Chamber to assist his Member when the affairs belonging to his Department come on for discussion. As all the Members have seen the papers and recorded their opinions, they arrive in Council with a full knowledge of the facts, and but little speechifying takes place. Lord Mayo, accustomed to the free flow of Parliamentary talk, has left behind him an expression of surprise at the rapidity with which, even on the weightiest matters, the Council came to its decision, and at the amount of work which it got through in a day. His personal influence here stood him in good stead. In most cases he managed to avoid any actual taking of votes, and by little compromises won the dissentient Members to acquiescence. In great questions he almost invariably obtained a substantial majority, or put himself at the head of it; and under his rule the Council was never for a moment allowed to forget that the Viceroy retained the constitutional power, however seldom exercised, of deciding by his single will the action of his Government.

In hotly debated cases the situation is generally as follows. The Viceroy and the Member of Council in charge of the Department to which the case belongs have thoroughly discussed it, and the proposal laid before Council represents their joint views. These views have gone round with the case to the other Members of Council, and been 'noted' on by them. When the question comes before the Council, no amount of talking can add much new knowledge to the elaborate opinions which each of the Members has recorded while the papers were in circulation. Several of these opinions are probably in favour of the policy proposed by the Member in charge of the question, and supported by the Viceroy; others may be opposed to it. When the matter came up in the meeting of Council, Lord Mayo generally tried, by explanations or judicious compromises, to reduce the opposition to one or two Members, and these might either yield or dissent. The despatches to the Secretary of State enunciating the decision of the Government of India specify the names of dissentient Councillors, and append in full such protests as they may deem right to record.

To take a hypothetical instance. Supposing a frontier expedition had been decided on, and the Commander-in-Chief desired a more costly armament than was really needed. A Commander-in-Chief's business is to make the success of an expedition an absolute certainty, and to that end he is supported by two strongly-officered Departments—the Adjutant-General's and the Quartermaster-General's. The business of the Government of India is to take care that no expenditure, not required to ensure success, shall be permitted. To this end the Commander-in-Chief's plans and estimates are scrutinised first by the Viceroy and his Military Member of Council, with the aid of the Military Secretariat, and are then considered in Council. The Commander-in-Chief is not necessarily an officer with a keen regard for financial considerations. The Military Member of Council and his Secretaries are invariably selected for their administrative and Indian experience. They are distinguished soldiers, but soldiers whose duty it is for the time being to deal also with the financial aspects of war. Thus, it might possibly happen that a Commander-in-Chief demanded a costly equipment of elephants or camels for a service which, as ascertained from the local facts, could be as efficiently and more economically performed by river-transport or bullock-train. Such a divergence of opinion would probably disappear when each side had stated its case in the papers during circulation; or at any rate a line of approach to agreement would have been indicated.

If the question actually came up for discussion in Council, the Viceroy and the Military Member would be as one man, and they would in all likelihood have the Financial Member on their side. The Commander-in-Chief would have such of the other Members as had been convinced by his written arguments, or who deemed it right in a military matter to yield to the weight of his military knowledge, and to the fact that the direct responsibility for the operations rested with him. And that weight would tell very heavily. For the experience of Indian officials leads them to believe that the man whose business it is to know what is needed, does, as a matter of fact, know it best. If the Viceroy saw that, after his side of the case was clearly stated, an opinion still remained in the minds of the Council in favour of the Commander-in-Chief's plan, he would probably yield. On the other hand, if the arguments left no doubt as to the sufficiency of the counter-proposals by the Viceroy and the Military Member, the Commander-in-Chief would either withdraw his original scheme, or strike out some compromise.

Similar divergences might take place between two sections of the Council in regard to the foreign policy of the Government, or the railway system, or a great piece of legislation, or in any other Department of the State. Each Member comes to Council with his mind firmly made up, quite sure that he is right, and equally certain (after reading all the arguments) that those who do not agree with him are wrong. But he is also aware that the Members opposed to him come in precisely the same frame of mind. Each, therefore, while resolved to carry out his own views, knows that, in event of a difference of opinion, he will probably have to content himself with carrying a part of them. And once the collective decision of the Government is arrived at, all adopt it as their own. Lord Mayo has recorded his admiration of the vigour with which each Councillor strove for what he considered best, irrespective of the Viceregal views; and of the generous fidelity with which each carried out whatever policy might eventually be laid down by the general sense of his colleagues. It is this capacity for loyally yielding after a battle that makes the English talent for harmonious colonial rule.

Besides his personal conferences with each of his Chief Secretaries, and the hebdomadal meeting of the Executive Council, the Viceroy devoted one day a week to his Council for making Laws and Regulations. This body, known more shortly as the Legislative Council, consists of the Viceregal or Executive Council, with the Lieutenant-Governor of the Province where the Viceroy may be residing, and also certain non-official Members as representatives of the Native and European communities. The Viceroy presides. Practically, it does not initiate measures; most of the laws which it frames come up to the Government of India from the Provincial Governments in the shape of proposed enactments. They are first considered by the Viceroy and Legal Member, then circulated to the whole of the Executive Councillors, and decided on in the Executive Council before being brought before the Legislative Council as a draft Bill.

The Legislative Council next appoints a committee of its own Members to consider the Bill, and after various publications in the Gazette, rejects, modifies, or passes it into law. The Legislative Council is open to the public; its proceedings are reported in the papers, and published from the official shorthand-writer's notes in the Gazette. The law-abiding nature of the English mind, and the attitude of vigorous independence which the Anglo-Indian courts maintain towards the Executive, render it necessary to obtain the sanction of a legislative enactment for many purposes for which an order of the Governor-General in his Executive Council would have sufficed under the Company. Indeed, almost every great question of policy, not directly connected with foreign affairs or military operations, sooner or later emerges before the legislative body. If all the official Members hold together, the Viceroy has an official majority in the Legislative Council. And as no measure comes before it except after previous discussion and sanction by the Governor-General in his Executive Council, this represents the normal state of votes in the Legislature.

Lord Mayo was a rigid economist of time. Each day had its own set of duties, and each hour of it brought some appointment or piece of work mapped out beforehand. He rose at daybreak, but could seldom allow himself the Indian luxury of an early ride, and worked alone at his 'boxes' till breakfast at 9.30. At 10, his Private Secretary came to him with a new accumulation of boxes, and with the general work of the day carefully laid out. Thereafter his Military Secretary (an officer of his personal staff, and distinct alike from the Military Secretary to the Government of India, and from the great Departments of the Adjutant-General and Quartermaster-General under the Commander-in-Chief) placed before him in the same manner special questions connected with the army. By 11 Lord Mayo had settled down to his boxes for the day, worked at them till luncheon at 2; and afterwards till just enough light remained to allow him a hard gallop before dark. On his return, he again went to his work till dinner at 8.30; snatching the half-hour for dressing to play with his youngest boy, or to perch him on his toilet-table and tell him stories out of the Old Testament and Shakespeare. About a year after his father's death, the child (now a man!) repeated to me wonderful fragments from a repertory of tales thus acquired, his memory jumbling up the witches of Macbeth with the witch of Endor.

There were few days in the year in which Lord Mayo did not receive at dinner, and not many in the week in which there was not an entertainment at Government House afterwards—a ball, or state concert, or private theatricals, or a reception of Native Chiefs, or an At Home of some sort or other. Whatever had been his labour or vexations and disappointments throughout the day, they left no ruffle on his face in the evening. He had a most happy talent for singling out each guest for particular attention, and for throwing himself during a few minutes into the subject on which each was best able to talk. 'There are few connected with him,' writes his Private Secretary, 'who do not remember the many instances of his leaving his room full of anxiety on some great impending question, and at the next moment welcoming his guests and charming all who enjoyed his hospitality, European and Native, by his kindness, joyousness, and absence of officialism.'