CHAPTER IX_Rulers of India: The Earl of Mayo

THE END

One branch of the internal administration in which Lord Mayo took a

deep interest was prison discipline. The subject had come prominently

before him when Secretary for Ireland, and his Indian diaries contain

valuable remarks and suggestions noted down after inspecting the

local jails. He found a chronic battle going on between the District

Magistrate, who was _ex officio_ the head of the District jail, and

the Medical Officer who was responsible for the health of the

prisoners. The District Magistrate was determined that prison should

be a distinctly uncomfortable place for the criminal classes within

his jurisdiction. The Medical Officer was equally determined to bring

down the terrible death-rate which obtained in Indian jails. Indeed,

the more enthusiastic doctors would have liked to dismiss every

convict at the end of his sentence, weighing several pounds heavier

than when he entered the prison gates.

Lord Mayo had therefore to deal with the opposite extremes of

severity and leniency. On the one hand, {188} he was resolved that

the discipline of Indian jails should be a really punitive

discipline. On the other hand, he wrote, 'You have no right to

inflict a punishment of death upon a prisoner who has only been

sentenced for a term of years or for life,' by keeping him in a

disease-stricken jail. Among the most distressing and clamant cases

which came before him was the great Convict Settlement in the Andaman

Islands, in which the mortality amounted in 1867 to over 101 per

thousand. The measures taken by Lord Lawrence and Lord Mayo, had by

1870 brought down the death-rate to 10 per thousand. But the

inquiries made by Lord Mayo disclosed a laxity of discipline

productive of scandalous results. In 1871 a cruel and mysterious

murder committed in the Penal Settlement, and which had been somewhat

slightly reported on by the responsible officers, forced on Lord

Mayo's mind the necessity of a complete change in the system pursued.

He found that a few English officials with a handful of soldiers were

holding down, in an isolated island group, 600 miles across the sea

from Bengal, the 8000 worst criminals of Northern India. Many of them

came from the fierce frontier races; most of them were life

prisoners, reckless, with no future on this earth. The security of

such a settlement depends on clear regulations, exact subordination

among the officials, and strict discipline among the convicts. The

inquiries conducted under Lord Mayo's orders in 1871, disclosed the

absence of every one of these {189} essentials of safety. He found

dissension and disobedience among the authorities; and a state of

discipline that allowed a convict to accumulate a practically

unlimited store of liquor, with which to madden himself and his

comrades to further crime. It was a murder committed after a general

debauch of this sort that led the Viceroy to reconsider the

constitution of the Settlement.

The work occupied Lord Mayo's thoughts at Simla during the early half

of 1871. He found that he had to create a government for a Colony

'which, assuming that only life-prisoners were sent, would ultimately

contain 20,000 convicts.' In the first place, therefore, he had to

put together an administrative framework of a texture that would

withstand severe strain, and ensure the safety of the isolated

handful of Englishmen in charge of the islands. In the second place,

he desired that the new constitution of the Settlement, while

enforcing a stricter surveillance and discipline, and increasing the

terrors of transportation, more especially to new arrivals, should

eventually allow of a career to the industrious and well-behaved; and

as it were open up a new citizenship, with local ambitions and

interests, to the exiles whose crimes had cut them off alike from the

future and the past in their native land.

He resolved, in the third place, to establish the financial

arrangements of the Colony on a sounder basis; and he hoped that the

measures which raised the convicts out of criminal animals into

settlers {190} would also tend to render them self-supporting. A Code

of Regulations was drawn up under his eye, and revised with his own

pen; and true to his maxim, that for any piece of hard administrative

work 'a _man_ is required,' he sought out the best officer he could

find for the practical reorganisation of the Settlement. He chose a

soldier of strong force of character and proved administrative skill,

and in the summer of 1871 sent him off with the new Regulations to

his task.

'The charge which Major-General ---- is about to assume,' wrote Lord

Mayo in a Viceregal Note, 'is one of great responsibility. In fact, I

scarcely know of any charge under the Government of India which will

afford greater scope for ability and energy, or where a greater

public service can be performed. I fully expect that under his

management the Andamans, Nicobars, and their dependencies, instead of

being a heavy drain upon the Government, may at no distant period

become self-supporting. The charge of the Colony to the Indian

Exchequer has averaged 150,000 pounds a year; each transported felon

costs the country more than 1 pound 12_s._ a month' [the average

monthly cost in Bengal jails being then 11_s._ 5_d._ per man].

Lord Mayo then points out in detail the means by which he hoped this

change would be effected, 'by a proper system of rice and pulse

cultivation'; by breeding goats, and a more economical meat supply;

by the adoption of jail-manufactured clothing, and {191} the growth

of cotton and flax; by using the 'timber grown on the islands instead

of imported timber'; 'by substituting Native troops for free police,'

and by 'more economical steam communication' with the mainland. The

immediate saving from these measures was estimated by the proper

authority at 30,000 pounds a year. The Viceroy next comments on the

recent reports 'that there is no system of supervision or

discipline.' He then sets forth, in a well-considered summary, the

points to be attended to in this important branch of the ordering of

a convict colony.

The new Superintendent set to work to reorganise the Penal Settlement

with great vigour. But he found that the changes really amounted to

introducing a new government. While, therefore, after six months he

was able to report encouraging results, he desired that Lord Mayo

should 'personally realise the magnitude and difficulty of the task.'

'Progress has been made,' the Superintendent wrote to the Viceroy's

Private Secretary, 'but I am anxious that Lord Mayo should himself

see what has been done, before we commence the clearing. No one can

thoroughly understand this place until he has seen it.' 'I look to

the Governor-General's visit,' he again wrote in the midst of his

difficulties, 'to set all these matters straight.'

On the 24th January, 1872, the Earl of Mayo left Calcutta on his cold

weather tour. His purpose was first to visit Burma, next to call at

the Andamans {192} on the return passage across the Bay of Bengal,

and then to inspect the Province of Orissa. In each of these three

places, weighty questions of internal policy demanded his presence.

After completing his work in Burma, he cast anchor off Hopetown in

the Andamans at 8 A.M. on the 8th February, 1872. A brilliant party

of officials and guests accompanied the Viceroy and the Countess of

Mayo in H. M.'s frigate _Glasgow_, and on the attendant steamship

_Dacca_.

Lord Mayo landed immediately after breakfast, and during a long day

conducted a thorough inspection of Viper and Ross Islands, where the

worst characters were quartered. Ample provisions had been made for

his protection. A detachment of free police, armed with muskets,

moved with the Governor-General's party in front, flank, and rear.

The prisoners were strictly kept at their ordinary work; and on Viper

and Ross Islands, the only ones where any danger was apprehended, the

whole troops were under arms. One or two convicts, who wished to

present petitions, handed them to an officer in attendance, without

approaching the Viceroy; and the general feeling among the prisoners

was one of self-interested satisfaction, in the hope of indulgences

and pardons in honour of the visit.

The official inspection was concluded about 5 o'clock. But Lord Mayo

desired, if possible, to create a sanitarium, where the fever

patients might shake off their clinging malady. He thought that Mount

Harriet, a {193} hill rising to 1116 feet a mile and a half inland

from the Hopetown jetty, might be suitable for this purpose. No

criminals of a dangerous sort were quartered at Hopetown; the only

convicts there being approved ticket-of-leave men of good conduct.

However, the Superintendent despatched a boat to convey the guards to

the Hopetown jetty.

'We have still an hour of daylight,' said Lord Mayo, bent on the

sanitarium project, 'let us do Mount Harriet.' On landing at the

Hopetown jetty he found gay groups of his guests enjoying the cool of

the day, and had a smile and a kind word for each as he passed. 'Do

come up,' he said to one lady, 'you'll have such a sunset.' But it

was a stiff climb through the heavy jungle and only one recruit

joined him. His own party were dead tired; they had been on their

feet for six blazing hours, and Lord Mayo, as usual the freshest

after a hard day, begged some of them to rest till he returned. Of

course no one liked to give in, and the cortege dived into the

jungle. When they came to the foot of the hill, the Viceroy turned

round to one of his aide-de-camps, who was visibly fatigued now that

the strain of the day's anxiety had relaxed, and almost ordered him

to sit down.

The Superintendent had sent on the one available pony, but Lord Mayo

at first objected to riding while the rest were on foot. When half

way up, he stopped and said: 'It's my turn to walk now; one of you

get on.' At the top he carefully surveyed the capabilities of the

hill as a sanitarium. He thought he saw his {194} way to improve the

health of the Settlement, and with the stern task of reorganisation

to make a work of humanity go hand in hand. 'Plenty of room here,' he

cried, looking round on the island group, 'to settle two millions of

men.' Presently he sat down, and gazed silently across the sea to the

sunset. Once or twice he said quietly, 'How beautiful.' Then he drank

some water. After another long look to the westward, he exclaimed to

his Private Secretary: 'It's the loveliest thing I think I ever saw:'

and came away.

The descent was made in close order, for it was now dark. About

three-quarters of the way down, torch-bearers from Hopetown met the

Viceroy and his attendant group of officials and guards. Two of his

party who had hurried forward to the pier saw the intermittent gleam

of the torches threading their way through the jungle; then the whole

body of lights issued by the bridle-path from the woods, a minute's

walk from the jetty. The _Glasgow_ frigate lay out on the left with

her long line of lights low on the water; the _Scotia_ and _Dacca_,

also lit up, beyond her; another steamer, the _Nemesis_, was coaling

nearer to Hopetown, on the right. The ships' bells had just rung

seven. The launch with steam up was whizzing at the jetty stairs; a

group of her seamen were chatting on the pier-end. It was now quite

dark, and the black line of the jungle seemed to touch the water's

edge.

The Viceroy's party passed some large loose stones {195} to the left

at the head of the pier, and advanced along the jetty; two

torch-bearers in front, the light shining strongly on the tall form

of Lord Mayo, in a grey tussa-silk coat, close between his Private

Secretary and the Superintendent; the Flag-Lieutenant of the

_Glasgow_ and a Colonel of Engineers a few paces behind, on left and

right; the armed police between them, but a little nearer the

Viceroy. The Superintendent turned aside, with Lord Mayo's leave, to

give an order about the morning's programme, and the Viceroy stepped

quickly forward before the rest to descend the stairs to the launch.

The next moment the people in the rear heard a noise as of 'the rush

of some animal' from behind the loose stones: one or two saw a hand

and a knife suddenly descend in the torch-light. The Private

Secretary heard a thud, and instantly turning round, found a man

'fastened like a tiger'[1] on the back of the Viceroy.

[Footnote 1: I use his own words.]

In a second twelve men were on the assassin; an English officer was

pulling them off, and with his sword-hilt keeping back the Native

guards, who would have killed the assailant on the spot. The torches

had gone out; but the Viceroy, who had staggered over the pier side,

was dimly seen rising up in the knee-deep water, and clearing the

hair off his brow with his hand as if recovering himself. His Private

Secretary was instantly at his side in the surf, helping him up the

bank. 'Burne,' he said quietly, 'they've hit me.' Then, in a louder

voice, which was {196} heard on the pier, 'It's all right, I don't

think I'm much hurt,' or words to that effect. In another minute he

was sitting under the smoky glare of the re-lit torches, on a rude

native cart at the side of the jetty, his legs hanging loosely down.

Then they lifted him bodily on to the cart, and saw a great dark

patch on the back of his light coat. The blood came streaming out,

and men tried to stanch it with their handkerchiefs. For a moment or

two he sat up on the cart, then he fell heavily backwards. 'Lift up

my head,' he said faintly: and said no more.

They carried him down into the steam launch, some silently believing

him dead. Others, angry with themselves for the bare surmise, cut

open his coat and vest, and stopped the wound with hastily torn

strips of cloth and the palms of their hands. Others kept rubbing his

feet and legs. Three supported his head. The assassin lay tied and

stunned a few yards from him. As the launch shot on in the darkness,

eight bells rang across the water from the ships. When it came near

the frigate, where the guests were waiting for dinner, and jesting

about some fish which they had caught for the meal, the lights in the

launch were suddenly put out, to hide what was going on in it. They

lifted Lord Mayo gently to his cabin: when they laid him down in his

cot, every one saw that he was dead.

To all on board, that night stands out from among all other nights in

their lives. A silence, which seemed as if it would never again be

broken, {197} suddenly fell on the holiday ship with its 600 souls.

The doctors held their interview with the dead--two stabs from the

same knife on the shoulder had penetrated the cavity of the chest,

either of them sufficient to cause death. On the guest steamer there

were hysterics and weeping; but in the ship where the Viceroy lay,

the grief was too deep for outward expression. Men moved about

solitarily through the night, each saying bitterly to his own heart,

'Would that it had been one of us.' The anguish of her who received

back her dead was not, and is not, for words.

At dawn the sight of the frigate in mourning, the flag at half-mast,

the broad white stripe darkened to a leaden grey, all the ropes

slackened, and the yards hanging topped in dismal disorder, announced

the reality to those on the guest steamer who had persisted through

the night in a hysterical disbelief. On the frigate a hushed and

solemn industry was going on. The chief officers of the Government of

India on board assembled[2] to adopt steps for the devolution of the

Viceroyalty. In a few hours, while the doctors were still engaged on

the embalming, one steamer had hurried north with the Member of

Council to Bengal, another was ploughing its way with the Foreign

Secretary to Madras, to bring up Lord Napier of Ettrick, to Calcutta,

as acting Governor-General. UNO AVULSO, NON DEFICIT ALTER. The {198}

frigate lay silent and alone. At half-past nine that night, the

partially embalmed body was placed in its temporary coffin on the

quarter-deck, and covered with the Union Jack.

[Footnote 2: Sir Barrow H. Ellis (Member of Council) presiding, with

Mr. C. U. Aitchison, C.S.I., Foreign Secretary, and others.]

The assassin received the usual trial and the usual punishment for

his crime. Shortly after he had been brought on board, in the launch

which carried his victim, the Foreign Secretary asked him why he had

done this thing. He only replied, 'By the order of God.'[3] To the

question whether he had any associates in his act, he answered,

'Among men I have no accomplice; God is my partner.'[4] Next morning,

at the usual preliminary inquiry before the local magistrate, when

called to plead, he said, 'Yes, I did it.'[5] The evidence of the

eye-witnesses was recorded, and the prisoner committed for murder to

the Sessions-Court. The Superintendent, sitting as chief judge in the

Settlement, conducted the trial in the afternoon. The accused simply

pleaded 'Not guilty.' Each fact was established by those present when

the deed was done; the prisoner had been dragged off the back of the

bleeding Viceroy with the reddened knife in his hand. The sentence

was to suffer death by hanging. The proceedings were forwarded in the

regular way to the High Court at Calcutta for review. On the 20th

February this tribunal confirmed the sentence; and on the 11th March

the assassin was {199} taken to the usual place of execution on Viper

Island, and hanged.

[Footnote 3: _Khuda ne hukm diya._]

[Footnote 4: _Mera sharik koi admi nahin; mera sharik khuda hai._]

[Footnote 5: _Han, main ne kiya._]

The man was a highlander from beyond our North-Western Frontier, who

had taken service in the Punjab Mounted Police, and had been

condemned at Peshawar for slaying his blood-feud enemy on British

soil. The Court took a merciful view of the case and sentenced him to

transportation for life at the Andamans. In his dying confession,

years afterwards, he stated that although he had not struck the blow,

he had conspired to do the murder. But the slaying of a hereditary

foe in cold blood was no crime in his eyes, and ever since his

conviction in 1869, he said he had made up his mind to revenge

himself by killing 'some European of high rank.' He therefore

established his character as a silent, doggedly well-behaved man; and

in due time was set at large as a barber among the ticket-of-leave

convicts at Hopetown.

During three years he waited sullenly for some worthy prey. On the

morning of the 8th February, when he heard the royal salute, he felt

that his time had come, and sharpened a knife. He resolved to kill

both the Superintendent and the Viceroy. All through the day the

close surveillance gave him no chance of getting to the islands which

Lord Mayo visited. Evening came, and his victim landed unexpectedly

at his very door. He slipped into the woods, crept up Mount Harriet

through the jungle side by side with the Viceroy; then dogged the

party down {200} again in the dark: but still got no chance. At the

foot he almost gave up hope, and resolved to wait for the morrow. But

as the Viceroy stepped quickly forward on the jetty, his grey-suited

shoulders towering conspicuous in the torch-light, an impulse of

despair thrilled through the assassin. He gave up all idea of life,

rushed round the guards, and in a moment was on his victim's back.

He was a hillman of great size and strength. When heavily fettered in

the condemned cell, he overturned the lamp with his chained ankle,

bore down the English sentry by brute strength of body, and wrenched

away his bayonet with his manacled hands. He made no pretence of

penitence, and was childishly vain of being photographed (for police

inquiries in Northern India) as the murderer of a Viceroy. Indeed,

some of the above details were only got out of him by a native

officer who cunningly begged him for materials for an ode on his

deed, to be sung by his countrymen. Neither his name, nor that of his

village or tribe, will find record in this book.

The passionate outburst of grief and wrath which then shook India,

the slow military pomp of the slain Viceroy's re-entry into his

capital, the uncontrollable fits of weeping in the chamber where he

lay in state, the long voyage of the mourning ship, and the solemn

ceremonial with which Ireland received home her dead son--all these

were fitting at the time, and are past.

{201} 'Yesterday,' said one of the Dublin papers, 'we saw a State

Solemnity vitalised by the subtle spell of national feeling. Seldom

are the two things united in an Irish public funeral. When imperial

pomp is displayed, the national heart is cold. When the people pay

spontaneous homage to the dead, the trappings of the State are

absent, its voice mute. Yesterday, for once, this ill-omened rule was

broken. Government and the people united in doing honour to an

illustrious Irishman.' The Indian Press had given vent to the wild

sorrow of many races in many languages; the English newspapers were

full of nobly expressed tributes; Parliamentary chiefs had their

well-chosen utterances for the nation's loss. But Lord Mayo, as he

sat on the top of the sea-girt hill and gazed towards the west, where

his dear home lay beyond the sunset, would have prized that united

mourning of his countrymen above any panegyric. They laid him at last

in the secluded graveyard which he had chosen on his own land.

INDEX

AFGHANISTAN, 119-130.

AFZUL KHAN, 121-122.

AGRICULTURE, department of, 182-184.

AITCHISON, Sir C. U., 83, 197.

ALWAR, 107-110.

AMBALA Darbar, 124-126.

ANDAMAN ISLANDS, penal settlement of,

death-rate in, 188:

state of discipline, 188-9:

Lord Mayo's reforms, 189-90:

Lord Mayo's visit, 192-195:

his assassination, 195-7.

ARGYLL, Duke of, 143, 159:

quoted, 176.

ARMY, European,

reductions after the Mutiny, 158-9:

Lord Mayo's proposed reforms, 159-161, 166-168:

his care for the welfare of the troops, 168-170.

ARMY, Native,

reductions after Mutiny, 158-9:

Lord Mayo's proposed reforms, 161-165, 167-8.

ARNOLD, Matthew, quoted, 56.

BALUCHISTAN, 130-2.

BAYLEY, Sir E. Clive, 83.

BHOPAL, 111-112.

BOMBAY, 74-76.

BOURKE, Colonel the Honourable John, 41-2.

BOURKE, John, of Kill and Moneycrower, 19.

BOURKE, Honourable Richard, Bishop of Waterford and Lismore, 19.

BOURKE, Richard Southwell, 17. See Earl of Mayo.

BOURKE, Robert,

fifth Earl, 19-22:

succeeds to the Earldom of Mayo, 37.

BURKE, Sir Bernard, 70.

BURMA, 135, 191.

BURNE, General H. K., 83.

BURNE, General Sir Owen Tudor, 82:

quoted, 92, 195.

CANAL, Ganges, 177.

CANAL, Sarda, 178.

CANAL, Suez, 72-74.

CANALS, of the Jumna, 178.

CANNING, Lord, 81:

quoted, 99.

CENSUS of Bengal, 181.

CHAPMAN, Mr. Barclay, 83.

CLIFFORD, Lady de, 28.

CLONCURRY, Lord, 42.

COMMERCE, Department of, 182-184.

DALHOUSIE, Marquess of, 7:

his annexation of the Punjab and conquests, 11-13.

DAUNT, Mr. O'Neill, 36:

quoted, 37.

DERBY, Earl of,

quoted, 11, 40:

quoted, 45-6, 48.

DISRAELI, Mr., 44, 54:

quoted, 55, 69, 75.

DOST MUHAMMAD, 120.

DUNKELLIN, Lord, 44.

DURAND, Sir Henry, 143, 163, 165.

EAST INDIA COMPANY, 7-9, 80-81.

EDINBURGH, Duke of, 112:

his visit to India, 185-6.

EDUCATION, 179-181.

EDUCATION of Native Princes and Chiefs, 117-118.

ELLIS, Hon. Sir Barrow, 83, 197.

EXPENDITURE, Public Works, 144.