THE ACTUAL PROCESS OF VICEREGAL GOVERNMENT
Lord Mayo took his oaths as Viceroy on the 12th January, 1869. The
same evening he set to work with characteristic promptitude to learn
from his predecessor what personal duties were expected of him, and
by what methods he could discharge them most effectively, and with
the strictest economy of time.
The mechanism of the Supreme Government of India consists of a
Cabinet with the Governor-General as absolute President. The weakness
of that Government in the last century, down to the time of Lord
Cornwallis, arose from the fact that the Governor-General was not
absolute within his Cabinet, but merely _primus inter pares_, with a
single vote which counted no more than the vote of any other member,
except in the case of an equal division, when he had the
casting-vote. This attempt at government by a majority was the secret
of much of the misrule which has left so deep a stain on the East
India Company's first years of administration in Bengal. {81} Sir
Philip Francis and his brother Councillors appointed by the
Regulating Act of 1773, brought the system to a dead-lock. The hard
task then laid upon Warren Hastings was not only government by a
majority, but government in the teeth of a hostile majority. It is to
the credit of Lord Cornwallis that before accepting the office of
Governor-General in 1786, he insisted that the Governor-General
should really have power to rule.
The new plan subsisted with little change till 1858, the last year of
the East India Company. While the Governor-General retained the power
of over-ruling his Council, as a matter of fact he wisely refrained,
except in grave crises or emergencies, from exercising his supreme
authority. Every order ran in the name of the President and the
collective Cabinet, technically the Governor-General in Council. And
under the Company every case actually passed through the hands of
each Member of Council, circulating at a snail's pace in little
mahogany boxes from one Councillor's house to another. 'The system
involved,' says a former Member of Council, 'an amount of elaborate
minute writing which seems now hardly conceivable. The
Governor-General and the Council used to perform work which would now
be disposed of by an Under-Secretary.'
Lord Canning, the first Viceroy under the Crown, found that, if he
was to raise the administration to a higher standard of promptitude
and efficiency, he must put a stop to this. He remodelled the {82}
Government 'into the semblance of a Cabinet, with himself as
President.' Each Member of the Supreme Council practically became a
Minister at the head of his own Department--or the 'Initiating
Member' of the Department--responsible for its ordinary business, but
bound to lay important cases before the Viceroy, whose will forms the
final arbitrament in all great questions of policy in which he sees
fit to exercise it.
'The ordinary current business of the Government,' writes Sir John
Strachey, 'is divided among the Members of the Council, much in the
same manner in which, in England, it is divided among the Cabinet
Ministers, each member having a separate Department of his own.' The
Governor-General himself keeps one Department specially in his own
hands, generally the Foreign Office; and Lord Mayo, being insatiable
of work, retained two, the Foreign Department and the great
Department of Public Works. Various changes took place in the Supreme
Government even during his short Viceroyalty, but the following table
represents the _personnel_ of his Government as fairly as any single
view can. It shows clearly of what the 'Government of India' was made
up, apart from the immediate staff of the Viceroy. But it should be
mentioned that Lord Mayo was fortunate in having in Major (now
General Sir) Owen Tudor Burne, a Private Secretary of the highest
capacity for smoothly and effectively transacting business. Major
Burne did much to lighten the personal labour of the Viceroy, and
became his most intimate confidante and friend.
{83}
+--------------------+--------------------+----------------------+
| DEPARTMENT. | MEMBER OF COUNCIL. | CHIEF SECRETARY. |
+--------------------+--------------------+----------------------+
| I. Foreign | THE VICEROY. | Sir C. U. Aitchison, |
| Department | | K.C.S.I. |
| II. Public Works | THE VICEROY. | Divided into |
| Department | | branches. |
| III. Home | Hon. Sir Barrow | Sir E. Clive Bayley, |
| Department | Ellis, K.C.S.I. | K.C.S.I. |
| IV. Department of | Hon. Sir J. | Mr. A. O. Hume, C.B. |
| Revenue, | Strachey, | |
| Agriculture, | K.C.S.I. | |
| and Commerce | | |
| V. Financial | Hon. Sir R. | Mr. Barclay Chapman, |
| Department | Temple, K.C.S.I. | C.S.I. |
| VI. Military | Major-General the | General H. K. Burne, |
| Department | Hon. Sir H. | C.B. |
| | Norman, K.C.S.I. | |
| VII. Legislative | Hon. Sir Fitzjames | Mr. Whitley Stokes, |
| Department | Stephen, Q.C., | C.S.I., D.C.L. |
| | K.C.S.I. | |
+--------------------+--------------------+----------------------+
Lord Mayo, besides his duties as President of the Council and final
source of authority in each of the seven Departments, was therefore
in his own person Foreign Minister and Minister of Public Works. The
Home Minister, the Minister of Revenue, Agriculture, and Commerce,
and the Finance Minister, were members of the India Civil Service,
together with the Secretaries and Under-Secretaries in those and in
the Foreign Department. Of the other two Departments, the Military
was presided over by a distinguished soldier, and the Legislative by
an eminent member of the English Bar.
Routine and ordinary matters were disposed of by the Member of
Council within whose Department they fell. Papers of greater
importance were sent, with the initiating Member's opinion, to the
Viceroy, who {84} either concurred in or modified it. If the Viceroy
concurred, the case generally ended, and the Secretary worked up the
Member's note into a Letter or Resolution, to be issued as the orders
of the Governor-General in Council. But in matters of weight, the
Viceroy, even when concurring with the initiating Member, often
directed the papers to be circulated either to the whole Council, or
to certain of the Members whose views he might think it expedient to
obtain on the question. In cases in which he did not concur with the
initiating Member's views, the papers were generally circulated to
all the other Members, or the Governor-General ordered them to be
brought up in Council. Urgent business was submitted to the
Governor-General direct by the Secretary of the Department under
which it fell; and the Viceroy either initiated the order himself, or
sent the case for initiation to the Member of Council at the head of
the Department to which it belonged.
This was the paper side of Lord Mayo's work. All orders issued in his
name. Every case of real importance passed through his hands, and
bore his order, or his signature under the initiating Member's note.
Urgent matters in all the seven Departments went to him, as I have
said, in the first instance. He had also to decide as to which cases
could be best disposed of by the Departmental Member and himself, and
which ought to be circulated to the whole Council or to certain of
the Members. In short, he had to see, as his orders ran in the name
of the Governor-General in {85} Council, that they fairly represented
the collective views of his Government. The 'circulation' of the
papers took place, and still does, in oblong mahogany boxes,
air-tight, and fitted with a uniform Chubb's lock. Each
Under-Secretary, Deputy-Secretary, Chief Secretary, and Member of
Council gets his allotted share of these little boxes every morning;
each has his own key; and after 'noting' in the cases that come
before him, sends on the locked box with his opinion added to the
file. The accumulated boxes from the seven Departments pour into the
Viceroy throughout the day. In addition to this vast diurnal tide of
general work, Lord Mayo had two of the heaviest Departments in his
own hands, as Member in charge of the Foreign Office and of Public
Works.
The more personal duties of the Viceroy divided themselves into three
branches. Every week he personally met, in the first place, each of
his Chief Secretaries; in the second place, his Viceregal or
Executive Council; and, in the third place, his Legislative Council.
Each of the seven Secretaries had his own day with the
Governor-General, when he laid before His Excellency questions of
special importance, answered questions arising out of them, and took
his orders touching any fresh materials to be included in the files
of papers before circulating them.
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 {86} 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 {87} 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 {88} 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 {89} 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 {90} 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 {91}
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 {92} 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.'
{93} At first, Lord Mayo worked at night, carrying on the labours of
the day long after his guests and household were asleep. But India
soon taught him that her climate put limits even on a strongly-built
constitution like his own, and he had to give up the practice. It may
be imagined that much accurate prevision was required to lay out the
paper side of Lord Mayo's work described above, so that it might be
as little as possible interfered with by the more public functions of
the Viceregal office. His interviews with each of his Secretaries,
and the meetings of his Executive and Legislative Councils, were
fixed for specified hours on certain days, and from the printed
scheme on his table no departure was permitted. But a large mass of
ceremonial and personal business could not be thus laid out
beforehand.
One day it was a foreign embassy, or a great feudatory who had come a
thousand miles with his retinue to pay his respects; another day it
was the return visit of the Viceroy; a third day it was the laying of
some foundation-stone; a fourth, the inspection of a local
institution or hospital; a fifth, a rapid run upon a railway to see
some new works, or examine a bridge across a deltaic estuary hitherto
deemed uncontrollable by engineering skill; a sixth, the letting in
of the water at the head-lock of a canal; a seventh, a great speech
as Chancellor of the Calcutta University, or some words of
encouragement at the distribution of prizes at a college or school.
No hard-and-fast scheme could provide for {94} this multifarious
aspect of his duties. But he looked (and looked with just confidence)
to his Private Secretary to reduce the interference thus caused to
his regular work to the minimum. Whenever the ceremonial permitted,
he avoided an interruption of his day's work by giving up the hour
for the evening's gallop to it.
In the following narrative of the great measures initiated or carried
out during Lord Mayo's Viceroyalty there are several omissions which
Lord Mayo would have deemed most unjust. They refer not to what he
himself did, but to the assistance which he derived from others. But
with few exceptions his coadjutors are still alive, and some of them
still hold high office. This book is not written in praise or
dispraise of living men. Yet, at almost every page, I have felt that
I am doing the central figure of it a wrong by isolating him from his
surroundings. He was essentially a man who went through life girt
about with friends, and a memoir which fails to develop that side of
his character leaves half his story untold. This, however, is one of
the conditions under which a contemporary biography ought to be
written; and no one can feel the air of ungraciousness which it may
impart to my work, especially to the Indian sections of it, more
keenly than the writer himself.
While, however, Lord Mayo in the following narrative stands out more
prominently from among those who shared his labours than he himself
would {95} have deemed right, his method of working renders the
injustice less than it might have been in the case of some other
Viceroys. He had a remarkable faculty for listening to everything
that could be said on a subject, and then shaping from many divergent
counsels a course which was distinctively his own. No one could tempt
him into the error of being led to state his own conclusions first
and then to ask his adviser's opinion about them. He had the art of
making every one feel that he followed with a personal interest their
exposition of a case; but at the same time that his interest was that
of a judge, not of a partisan.
In India the Provincial Administrations and Heads of Departments
represent the initiative, the Secretariats the critical element in
the Government. A Head of a Department is almost _ex officio_ a man
who has something to propose. And his plans of improvement, however
admirable in themselves, and however economical they may purport to
be at the outset, mean in the end increase of expenditure. The
function of the Secretariat is to pull such schemes to pieces, to
expose their weak points, and to put on the drag upon every proposal
that sooner or later will cost money. A strong Viceroy acts as
arbiter between the two sets of forces thus constantly in motion.
Those who had to do business with Lord Mayo were constantly struck by
his happy combination of the qualities required for this delicate
part of his office. He was adored by the more ardent administrators
for {96} the interest with which he listened to their plans. Every
one felt sure of a fair hearing. But those who misinterpreted his
courteous sympathy into official approval found, by a very brief
experience of his method of working, that they were mistaken. For
between this initial stage and ultimate action lay an ordeal of
inquiry and criticism, a process of weighing which he sometimes
renewed afresh in his own mind, even after his responsible advisers
had been convinced of the expediency of the proposed measure. He
insisted that each question should be thoroughly fought out by his
subordinates, sending it, if necessary, back and back, till every
disputed point was absolutely disposed of, before he allowed himself
to express his own views; nor did he commit himself to a line of
action until the chances had been exhausted of his having to alter
it, in consequence of new evidence coming to light. He had the art of
bringing to a focus whatever was sound in the advice of conflicting
Councillors, and all parties felt that their strongest arguments had
entered into, and were fairly represented by, the conclusion at which
he arrived. But they also felt that that conclusion was his own, and
that he would adhere to it. This openness to suggestion and to plans
of administrative improvement, followed by a carefully protracted
period of criticism and scrutiny, and backed by stedfastness in the
practical action which consummated it, formed the secret of Lord
Mayo's success as an Indian Viceroy.
{97} The strong individuality which marked his measures produced a
corresponding sense of personal responsibility in his own mind. Amid
the difficulties and trials, to be presently narrated, this feeling
sometimes pressed upon him with a weight under which even his robust
nature heaved. 'It is a hard task,' he wrote to a friend during the
first dark months of his grapple with deficit; 'but I am determined
to go through with it, though I fear bitter opposition where I least
expected it. I have put my hand to the work, and I am not going to
turn back; and I will kill, before I die, some of the abuses of
Indian Administration.'
{98}