Lord Lytton has virtually superseded the Government of Madras in
the management of the Famine, entrusting absolute control to the Duke of Buckingham personally, aided, or rather guided, by General Kennedy, an officer who has dealt successfully with the famine in Bombay. As the Government of Madras is organised by Act of Parliament, it is contended that these ar- rangements are illegal, and a very well-informed correspondent of the Times writes to complain bitterly that the arrangements are- parts of a plot for reducing Madras to the position of a Lieutenant- Governorship. We wish they were, but fear they are mere make-shift expedients to tide over an immediate difficulty. As we have tried to show elsewhere, the Madras Government, with its double accountability to the Viceroy and the Secretary of State, with its inexperienced Governors, who are neither inde- pendent nor subject to orders, and with its chronic hostility to the central power, is never strong enough for its work. Southern India ought either to be made a separate Dependency, as Mr.. Bright long ago recommended, or to be reduced, like Bengal, to a Lieutenant-Governorship, with a chief whose business it is, not to be dignified, but to be efficient
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