13 APRIL 1861, Page 15

THE NEW VICEROY OF INDIA.

LORD Canning, after a reign of six Years, unequalled in the history of India for incident awl anxiety, is at length about to retire. His successor, it is said, is the Duke of Newcastle, and a selection less open to criticism could hardly have been made. The public voice pointed to only two other candidates, and to both serious objections might be raised. Sir John Lawrence, though the ablest of Indians, is still an Indian, and the policy of never submitting India to a man bred up in its school is one which ought never to be abandoned. However able or distinguished, he is sure to be either the head of a party, or devoted to the extension of a system. Sir John Lawrence is both. His plan for the limitation of idolatry, statesmanlike in por- tions, was in others as extravagant as that of Sir Herbert Edwardes, while he would be urged on by outside pressure to acts beyond the limit of tolerance which he himself laid down. The ability of Lord Elgin, again, which is taken for granted in England, is not believed in very strongly east- ward of the Cape. He is strongly condemned by a large party in China, and in India he contrived to leave an impres- sion among the officials the reverse of reverential. What is required moreover in India just now is not a diplomatist but an administrator, and an administrator specially fami- liar with the organization of a great military department. The Duke of Newcastle was popularly supposed to have failed in the Crimean campaign, but the juster appreciation of Parliament condemned the system which neutralized his high administrative power. Had he remained in office to carry out the reforms he himself projected, the revival of British efficiency which signalized • the close of the war would have been carried to his account. With the details of amalgamation to arrange, be will have even wider scope for the experience acquired during the calamities of 1854. No man not intimately acquainted with the springs of Indian society can form an idea of the obstacles which beset a revolution so thorough as that just sanctioned, of the jealousies to be soothed, the claims to be satisfied, even the dangeis of armed resistance to be temperately removed. For all this work no man can be better fitted than a peer who, to the weight of high social position—a point of the first importance in India where the governing class is at once plebeian and exclusive—adds a personal acquaintance with the policies of Europe, and an intimate knowledge of the details of an army. h is a mistake to suppose that such questions as amalgamation will bring up can be decided by a Commander-in-Chief, though he be like Sir Hugh Rose, a man of the bureaux. His assistance will be of the highest value, but Anglo-Indians look to the Viceroy for final deci- sion, and on all financial points the Commander-in-Chief has merely the right of giving one opinion among the five which the Viceroy is obliged to hear, and empowered to set aside. The task undertaken by the Duke of Newcastle is not of the sort which place-hunters are apt to envy or desire. India is the grave of official reputations, and with the ashes of the mutiny not yet cooled, an army of five thousand officers to reorganize, a civil service to base upon new principles, a dying cultivation to revive, and a cultivation vital to England to develop, with war pending in Europe, and the Mussulman revival still unsubdued, the administration of the empire will be a task about as pleasant as the govern- ment of Ireland before the repeal of the penal laws. The very first task of the Duke of Newcastle will be to restore official subordination, the subordination of the Viceroyalty to the British Minister, and of the services to the Viceroy. Both have been most grievously impaired by the mutiny, and the personal position of Lord Canning. The mutiny gave every man who could keep his district a petty king- dom, and the officers who succeeded were naturally re- luctant to resign their independent power, to sink once more from satraps into clerks. For nearly twelve months, also, Lord Canning, satirized by Lord Ellenborough and snubbed by Lord Stanley, was in the position of a steward who hourly expects his dismissal. An Indian official, more- over, is nearly as irremovable as the holder of a patent place, and Lord Canning, who, with many high qualities, has a sort of Stuart talent for exciting enmities, found his authority weakened by party feeling among his own subor- dinates. His orders were often quizzed in the letters which acknowledged them. One officer of high rank stormed a city in the teeth of written instructions ; and another transmitted a circular with the marginal comment that lie did not intend to obey it. The spirit thus developed is by no means allayed, and coupled with the anger the amalga- mation is sure to create, will require the exercise of both tact and forbearance before it is subdued.

Nor is the financial difficulty much less harassing than the administrative. Sir Charles Wood gives us periodically couleur de rose statements about an equilibrium which is to be produced next year, or the year after, or any other time in the far-distant future. These statements are thus far true, that the revenue is improving, that opium will yield this year nearly seven millions sterling, that the new customs and stamp duties are producing two millions, and that the income tax will yield as much. But an Indian budget is a marvellously slippery article. The result of the famine will be the sacrifice of half the revenue of the North-West for a year. The drought is extending to Bombay, and may seriously affect the southern division of Madras, and will certainly bring down the customs revenue once more to its old level. The deficit of seven millions, therefore, though partly sup- plied is not "choked," and must be met by reductions none but a strong Viceroy can carry out. Every step in this direction is unpopular. Every economy affects some service, or some class, or some interest which has the power of making itself directly felt, and against which there is no nation to appeal. The Viceroy upon such a point stands alone, as alone as a Czar, and without that support a liberal Czar will always find in the public opinion of' the civilized world. The civilized world knows and cares nothing about Indian details, and the Viceroy must fight his battle alone, winning, if he does win it, by years of dreary poring over papers, and writing of memoranda, every one of which he is conscious makes him a bitter personal foe. It re- uires a man who looks to England and not India for his applause, and who is sure of fair construction by his colleagues, to stand up against the tempest of obloquy from his own circle an innovating Governor-General is certain to encounter. The Duke of Newcastle is little likely to be moved by official clamour, and it is this rather than any resistance from without which, in a dependency like India, checks advance. If he can proceed on his course like Lord William Bentinck, the "sneering Dutchman" who re- generated the civil administration restore official discipline, compel obedience to orders like those of Lord Stanley for the sale of wild land, and reorganize the army on some principle more intelligible than that of keeping eighty thousand Euro- peans to watch three hundred thousand natives, he will do more towards the permanent retention of the Indian Empire than the greatest conqueror who ever set foot upon its shores.