NOTE 23

THE SECRETARY OF STATE AND THE VICEROY.

This issue was raised, for instance, during the Viceroyalty of Lord Northbrook, when Lord Salisbury was Secretary of State, Mr. Bernard Mallett’s memoir of Lord Northbrook contains the following noteworthy remarks upon the subject by Lord Cramer, who, as Major Baring, was Private Secretary to Lord Northbrook:—­

There can be no doubt that Lord Salisbury’s idea was to conduct the government of India to a very large extent by private correspondence between the Secretary of State and the Viceroy.  He was disposed to neglect and, I also think, to underrate the value of the views of the Anglo-Indian officials ...  This idea inevitably tended to bring the Viceroy into the same relation to the Secretary of State for India as that in which an Ambassador or Minister at a foreign Court stands to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs ...  Lord Northbrook’s general view was the exact opposite of all this, and I am strongly convinced that he was quite right ...  He recognized the subordinate position of the Viceroy, but he held that Parliament had conferred certain rights not only on the Viceroy but on his Council which differentiated them in a very notable degree from subordinate officials such as those in the diplomatic service ...  Lord Northbrook regarded the form of government in India as a very wise combination which enabled both purely English and Anglo-Indian experience to be brought to bear on the treatment of Indian questions.  He did not by any means always follow the Indian official view; but he held strongly, in the first place, that to put aside that view and not to accord to the two Councils in London and Calcutta their full rights was unconstitutional in this sense that, though the form might be preserved, the spirit of the Act of Parliament regulating the government of India would be evaded.  In the second place, he held that for a Viceroy or a Secretary of State without Indian experience to overrule those who possessed such experience was an extremely unwise proceeding, and savoured of an undue exercise of that autocratic power of which he himself was very unjustly accused.

NOTE 24

THE DIFFICULTIES OF LOYAL HINDUS.

A Hindu gentleman who has taken a considerable part in the struggle against Brahmanical disloyalty and intolerance in the Deccan has sent me a copy of a letter addressed to the Times of India in which he explains the peculiar difficulties with which loyal Hindus find themselves confronted:—­