DALHOUSIE.* Tina career of a great administrator must of necessity
be full of disputed questions, which the exigencies of his position forbid him to clear up by the easy method of personal ex- planation. He is dependent upon posterity for his justifica- tion, and that justification can only come when the echoes of old controversy have died away, and the events of his life can be viewed from the sober standpoint of history. The work of the man whà ranks ivith Hastings and Wellesley as one of the Makers of our Indian Empire' stands in peculiar need, nbt of • • The Life of the Marquis of Dalhousie, K.T. By Sir William Lee-Warner, K.C.S./. 2 vols. London; Macmillan and Co. [26a. not.]
apology—apology and Dalhousie can never be associated—but of sympathetic and well-informed exposition. He was a reformer, and at the cost of his own health created a new country; he had barely left it when the edifice he had built seemed to crumble in the fires of the Mutiny; and when the ordinary man, arguing post hoc ergo propter hoc, put the blame of the debcicle on his reforms, he maintained during the last painful months of his life a proud and tragic silence. His work has been vindicated long ago, but we welcome anything which casts new light on so remarkable a career. Sir William Lee-Warner has had access to the whole mass of the papers, including the most interesting private letters between the Viceroy and the Directors and Cabinet in England, as well as the correspondence with colleagues like the Lawrences, Napier, and Gough. On the whole, the book is a real contribution to recent history and a worthy memorial to a great memory. It is not without faults both of style and substance. The writing frequently tends to be careless ; the arrangement is often imperfect, and tha habit of indulging in sketches of Dalliousie's character at odd places in the narrative weakens the general impression made on the reader. Sir William Lee- Warner has also, we think, adopted a tone of apologetic fervour which is a little unfortunate. On many points no defence is needed, and others are defended with a vehemence which is sometimes extravagant. Much may be pardoned to a biographer's enthusiasm, but in the case of so strong and self-contained a character as Lord Dalhousie a more dignified form of eulogy is demanded. In the portrait the light is so strong and the shading so slight that we forget the man in the paragon. This is the one fault we have to find with the author; and it is more than balanced by the merits which the book owes to his industry and experience.
The career of Dalhousie is one to which recent history can provide few parallels. Educated at Harrow and Christ Church, he showed early a devotion to politics and a strenuousness of character which marked him out among other young men of his class. He stood for Edinburgh and failed, and ultimately entered Parliament as Member for East Lothian in 1837. Some years of comparative inactivity fol- lowed. He interested himself in Scottish Church affairs, and opposed Dr. Chalmers on the question which led to the Dis- ruption ; but ordinary political life did not greatly interest him, and the comparative narrowness of his fortune made it difficult for him to join in the game on equal terms. In 1845, after his father's death, he entered Sir Robert Peel's Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade, and in the work of his Department realised that his true bent was toward an adminis- trative rather than a Parliamentary career. One of the chief events of these years was the warm friendship which he formed with the Duke of Wellington, a friendship which was of great assistance to him in after life. He had been considered for the Governor-Generalship of India on Lord Ellenborough's resignation, and in 1847, when Lord Hardinge retired, he was offered and accepted the greatest administrative post under the British crown. For the remaining ten years of his life he never knew leisure, and scarcely knew health ; his home was broken up by his wife's death ; he was the subject of abuse and misunderstanding in India and at home beyond what falls to the ordinary lot of a Pro- consul. It is impossible even to summarise the incidents of those years, but we would recommend all who desire to know the maximum of human capacity to study Sir William Lee- Warner's narrative. In those days the Governor-General had also to do the work of Governor of Bengal, unassisted by any Lieutenant-Governor. He fought two important wars, in Burmah and the Punjab ; he added Pegu, the Punjab, Oudh, and several smaller territories to the British Empire; be was mainly responsible for the raising of the Sikh regiments, which a few years later were to justify themselves so worthily. He revised the whole internal administration of the country, and most of the constructive reforms on which modern India was built date from his day. Like all great administrators, he was a master of detail; but he knew when to interfere and when to give a free hand to a traded servant. No Governor was ever more nobly served by subordinates ; but it is not too much to say that it was the man at the helm who made the work of the Lawrences possible, and it was in the brain of the Governor-General that policies originated. Of his disputes with Lord Gough and Sir Charles Napier it is
statement of Gough's cage along with Sir William Lee- Warner's chapters. A , masterful man will, as a rule, be served without friction; but in the case of colleagues whose status is nearly on a level with his own, there must come moments of sharp conflict, in which there may be something to be said for both protagonists.
He is the chief annexationist among Viceroys; but his foreign policy cannot be called aggressive. He wished to have an understanding with his neighbours, a desire which brought about the treaties with Afghanistan and Beluchistan ; but be had no desire to extend the responsibilities of the Indian Government unless driven by sheer necessity. The annexation of native territories after failure of legitimate heirs was justified by the whole tenor of the contract which Wellesley made with the feudatory States. Oudh was a more difficult problem. Morally its annexation was authorised by the scandalous misgovernment of its rulers, and no one can say that they had not ample warnings of their fate. It is indubitable that the act was one of the causes of the Mutiny; but it must not be forgotten that the method of the annexa- tion was not that which Dalhousie desired, but was dictated to him by the Board in England; and that, since it took place on the eve of his departure, it was left to a successor, who did not fully comprehend the situation, to enforce the details. Some of Lord Canning's acts, done in all good faith, were un- doubtedly breaches of the terms which his predecessor had arranged. But it is on his internal administration that we must rest the chief claim of Dalhousie to statesmanship. No Governor understood better the value of reproductive expen- diture. He attracted private capital to India by his judicious railway contracts, and the modern system of roads, telegraphs, canals, and of public works generally, owed its inception to him. He abolished the Board system, which had been much abused, and put a single authority at the head of every public Department. With the assistance of Sir Charles Wood he laid the foundations of a great educational scheme, and he waged successful war upon such customs as suttee and in- fanticide. He led the way, too, in developing the material resources of the land, and the present Forest Department is due to him, as well as much of the later activity in mining and tea-planting. Finally, he effected important constitu- tional changes, altered the whole conditions of admission into the Civil Service, created the Legislative Council, and raised Bengal into a separate province, detached from the direct control of the Governor-General. Bringing a fresh mind to Army reform, he amended the military side of the Govern- ment and reformed the status of the European troops in the country. To the disregard of his urgent appeal for the strengthening of the English regiments in India the early catastrophes of the Mutiny were largely due.
He departed leaving behind him a great edifice of govern- ment, and in a year the Mutiny seemed to have destroyed it. But its foundations had not been built on the sand, and when the smoke cleared away men saw that it was scarcely touched. No part of Sir William Lee-Warner's book is better than the chapter in which he analyses the cause of the great upheaval and its relation to Dalhousie. His government was the beginning of a new India, and the Mutiny was the lire struck from its conflict with the old. elf in a sense his reforms were the cause of it, they were also its cure. The consolidation of the land by means of railways, roads, and telegraphs, as well as the firm grasp which his viceroys had on the Punjab, enabled us in a short time to stamp out the embers of dis- affection; and no higher proof can be given of the wisdom of his policy than the fact that after it was all over no change was contemplated ; the wounds of the Mutiny were healed on the Dalhousie tradition. When we turn from his work to his character and private life we find the same singleness and purity of purpose. He died in his forty-ninth year, having sacrificed health, home, friends, the common pleasure of life, for the State. When his wife died he begged his secretaries to feed him with papers, finding in his work the only anodyne for his sorrow. Pm-sued by terrible congenital ill-health, his energy and courage never for a moment faltered, and he contrived to wring out of the twenty-four hours of the day a quantity of work which few have equalled. In disposition the pride of a
great family was tempered with a wide toleration and a con- sistent kindliness. He never forgot that he was a Scottish noble, and he exacted his due from inferior and superior alike. It required no common force of character to dictate to a Cabinet at home, and to men like Henry and John Lawrence, Gough and Napier. But while he was sensi- tive in this sense, he never showed the intolerance of criticism and the feverish haste to justify themselves which some administrators have displayed. After his return he refused to enter into controversy with the Press, and he forbade his friends to do it for him. He kept rigidly aloof from party politics, "he spoke rarely in public, and set to his subordinates an example of dignified reserve." He has been accused, curiously enough, of lack of imagination ; but he had sufficient to forecast truly the permanent needs of the country, and the spiritual fire which burned in him pro- foundly impressed the native population whom he governed. His work may be best summed up in the words of his biographer as a "bringing into harmony of the works of his great predecessors, Warren Hastings and Wellesley," the con- solidation of the policies of the past into the stable tradition which dominates modern India. As for his character, there is a sentence in one of his note-books which casts much light upon the mingled pride and spiritual force of the man. "To fear God," he wrote, "and to have no other fear, is a maxim of religion, but the truth of it and the wisdom of it are proved day by day in politics."
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