We were unfortunately prevented by lack of space last week
from expressing our deep regret at the death on Friday fortnight of Lord Ripon, who was in his eighty-second year. He was born ten years before Queen Victoria came to the throne, during his father's brief Premiership. He was one of the few remaining links with the early Victorian period. He first held office as Under-Secretary for War just after the Mutiny. He was the friend of Maurice, Kingsley, and Hughes. A Radical by disposition, he remained so through his long and honourable career; yet he was wisely capable of moderation whenever he saw that the choice was between a compromise and nothing. In 1874 he became a Roman Catholic, and this step caused him to remain out of public life till 1880, when he became Viceroy of India. By his administration in India he will always be remembered. We cannot honestly say that most of the changes he introduced were for the good of India. The storms he provoked were rather a check to the steady development of government along the established lines. He was right in reversing Lord Lytton's Afghan policy, and India owed him a debt of gratitude; but in all his internal reforms—the Vernacular Press Act, the expansion of local self-government, the Ilbert Act, and others—he assumed a Western aptitude among the Indians for self-government which did not really exist. But he was a brave, resolute, and generous man, of delightful personality, who served his country faithfully in the way he believed to be right.
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