THE VACANT GOVERNORSHIP OF MADRAS.
THE death of Lord Hobart at Madras on the 27th April throws a very important and rather difficult piece of patronage into the hands of Lord Salisbury, and his next selection will be scanned with unusual interest. Madras for many years past, indeed, with short intervals, ever since the time of Munro, has not been very lucky in her Governors, and her turn ought to have arrived to obtain the services of a strong and, if possible, an original man. There has been a tendency to regard the Governorship of this Presidency as an appointment which may fittingly and profitably close a decorously successful career, as a great though not very agreeable "place," and to confer it on some diplomatist who has done pretty well, or Colonial Governor who has not failed, or needy noble who has begun to decline in force, but who has claims not lightly to be set aside. Quite a long succession of second-rate but tolerably competent men have ruled in the Presidency, and have passed away. leaving exceedingly little mark. Sir E. Pottinger ; Sir C. Trevelyan, who almost alone among Indians has twice the re- putation at home he ever had in India ; Sir W. T. Denison ; Lord Napier ; Lord Hobart, were all men of some mark in other capacities, and all quite entitled to the promotion, but no one of them turned out a great Governor, or left the impress of a personal character upon the Administration. Sir E. Pottinger is best remembered for his interference with Lord Dalhousie's plan for bringing the King of Burmah to reason, and the rebuke he thereby drew down upon himself ; Sir C. Trevelyan was recalled for a resistance to the Income-tax which was undoubtedly wise in principle, but which was pushed to a length that threatened to break up the official machine ; Sir W. Denison, with all his Australian reputation, was more of an able litterateur and theologian than a good Governor ; Lord Napier, though not unsuccessful, was in Madras just what he is in the House of Lords, a man of parts rendered com- paratively useless by a certain flightiness of mind, and an indis- position to begin his thinking by accepting the facts around him ; and Lord Hobart was, from temperament and conviction as to the best policy for India, somewhat too quiet. People said his business in life was to conciliate Mussuhnans, and though that was a libel, the popular voice hit the weak point of his Adminis- tration. The initiative of government in Southern India has been left to the " experienced " local men, or to circumstances, and the tendency of official life in the Presidency has been therefore to go to sleep. The great dependency, with its 132,000 square miles, nearly three Englands, 23,000,000 of population, and revenue of some ten millions, has not, it is true, been ill-governed. The profound quiet which usually reigns there, the absence not only of any political danger, but of ordinary rioting, proves that, and there have been plenty of thoughtful papers written and sent home ; but still, Madras does not advance like the other provinces. Cities do not grow fast there. Trade does not expand into big figures. Wealth does not increase suffi- ciently. The people do not make themselves heard enough. There is a sort of languor in the Presidency which makes itself felt, and which has its effect on the administrative services. The Madras Army, though very useful and faithful under some provocations, tends always to degenerate into a laxly-organised police force. The Madras Civil Service is, we should say, of the four divisions of that service in India the one most com- fortable for an ordinary man, and is apt to be avoided by the most energetic and ambitious of the competitors, who do not, we may add, in their avoidance always display quite their usual amount of intelligent self-interest. Ordinary Englishmen are apt to think that since Tippoo fell, the Vellore mutiny in the only thing that has happened in Madras. A good, -strong Governor, with a mind and an ambition and some magnetic power, the sort of man Sir Andrew Clarke would be if he were Governor, might find a good deal of very effective work to do in Madras. He might settle that question of the Army which Viceroys and Governors and Commanders-in-Chief and Gene- rals in command have been pottering at for a generation, with no particular result either to our military strength or our financial prosperity, except to turn most Madras officers into so many Arvalans, men "all naked feeling and raw life," who are always defending themselves against unjust treatment, which. no doubt, they sometimes receive. He could put more " go " into the Civil Service, which is a little too small, and a little too much inclined to form a snug party, and a little too contented with itself and all that has been. He could bring the Madras specialty, its passion for engineering, into play more usefully, perhaps, than has yet been done—though all engineers in Madras will be wroth at the suggestion, for do they not understand hydraulics, and is not canal-making the end alike of science and nature and man ? — and he may even face the problem which every successive Governor has shrunk from, the necessity of killing Madras—the city—and transferring the capital to some place where trade and progress and civilisation are at all events things possible of attainment. We will not attempt to decide where the capital ought to be, though we should like to buy Pondicherry at a hazard ; but it certainly ought not to be on the most ex- posed point of a dangerous coast, where a ship is always in as much danger as she would be in off Newfoundland in a fog, where cargo ought to be landed in lifeboats and passengers in Cap- tain Boyton's dress, and where there is no natural inlet,
harbour, or commercial amenity of any kind. The Isle of Lundy is about as natural a place for a great city as Madras is, and difficult as it is to move any capital, even if it is an accidental city like Madras, and costly as the operation might be—unless the Government had the brain and nerve to ex- propriate the entire site of its new city before it announced the reason why—the work will have to be accomplished before the Presidency can ever attain its proper position in the Continent. At present it is a big man with permanent lock-jaw, and of course it does not grow fat.
There is plenty for a strong Governor to do, and the post might easily be made a fairly tempting one, even if Lord
Salisbury should think it expedient, which it is not just now, though the policy may usually be sound, to confine his selection to the Peers. The salary is £12,000 a year, with allowances, and ought to be £18,000 without them; the climate is tolerable, though depressing, the society not more stupid than elsewhere in India, and the Neilgherry Hills, with their exceptionally pleasant atmosphere, are easily ac- e-essible. The work is, no doubt, laborious, and made harassing by the perpetual struggle for a little independence of Calcutta and Downing Street, which is always going on and never at- tained. A Governor of Madras somehow never is quite happy,
the contrast between his position and his power in the Empire being too much for his temper. He always feels that he is being "sat upon" by somebody or other—the Madras Member of the Supreme Council, or the Viceroy, or the Secretary of State, or somebody—that because his people are quiet he is the last to be heard, and that because he secures a surplus his revenue is regularly taken away from him. He is always in a state of aggra- vation, more or less justifiable, but always a little ludicrous to Calcutta, but still he has his compensations. He has not often the severe cares of -his fellow-Governors, who may set a king- dom in flame by a blunder ; he has a very great bit of the world to administer ; he has full control, if he likes to exercise it, over the whole Administration ; he has most valuable pat- ronage, and he has a population—the Mohammedan—to manage which requires a good deal of adroit statesmanship. It is a pleasanter position, climate excepted, than most Colonial Go- vernorships, and ought to attract much more of the best sort of competition than it does. It goes begging, nevertheless, some- times, the best men, peers and officials with careers before them, shrinking from a post in which failure has so often oc- curred, and success helps them so little towards advancement in the Empire. No Viceroy benefits much by occupying the seat of the Great Mogul, but no Governor of Madras benefits by his career at all. Unless he is recalled, it is usually for- gotten, and among the thousand Members of the two Houses, probably not ten could state any one thing which Lord Tweed- dale or Lord Napier did at Madras, or remember any one thing about Sir C. Trevelyan's career there except his departure. A Governor in Madras thinks himself shunted off the main line as he would not be even in a great colony, and the man who eagerly desires the post is almost sure to be wanting to make a purse. Nevertheless, we trust that Lord Salisbury will this time find a man whose career has not been gone through, who is not con- tent if nobody rebels, who will venture to act without five years of writing, and who has sufficient repute to induce both Calcutta and Downing Street to leave him just a little alone. A Governor who would really govern, who would pick his men and insist on efficiency, and open a question all the more readily because it was large and complex, is the Governor that Madras just now requires. Is there no Lord William Bentinck floating about in the sea of political life? We must say, " Absit omen," though, after using that illustration, for Madras had only just welcomed the greatest of Indian statesmen when he was recalled, to answer for a mutiny with which he had nothing to do beyond remedying its effects. That is the habitual luck of Madras.
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