SOMETHING ABOUT INDIAN VICEROYS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXIX, Issue 252, 25 October 1898, Page 3

SOMETHING ABOUT INDIAN VICEROYS.

It is difficult for a mere observer of outward things—and it might be difficult for an accomplished student of inward things—in India to determine exactly what is required to make an English viceroy popular with the natives. And of course, in saying that, one means natives who live near enough the seat of government to know anything, about the viceroy, for the real bulk lives remote, in jungles, and has not heard of viceroys nor English at all. There is a great cosmopolitan crowd,- however, domesticated in bhustis, or clusters of mud huts, with the smoke pouring out at the doors, so primitive is their construction. And this crowd congregates in lumps every day, squats on its heels, puffs at its nubblebubble, or pipe, and discusses the political situation, represented mainly by the price of rice. Whether this daily and potent sum is affected by the 'lord sahib's' personal appearance, or how lis almost imperceptible fluctuations are governed, is something that natives settle among themselves; but no doubt they do associate the governing power in some way with the fraction of a mill taken from or put into their pockets, and mourn or rejoice accordingly and diurnally.

The period of a governor general or viceroy's term being five years, and the office having been created in 177-1, there have been almost as many of these incumbents as there have been Presidents of the United States: History shows the personal traits of some of them, as, for instance, Warren Hastings; some of them are voices of the mutiny, like Lord Lawrence; and one certainly—Lord Cornwallis—occupies a place in the history of two hemispheres. Lord Auckland is personally known through his sister's, Emily Eden, famous letters, and some have places aside from their records at Government House. The older Lord Elgin will always be better known to fame than as a viceroy by his Parthenon plunderings—the Elgin marbles—on which he made money, and by which he gave the whole British nation a taste for archaeology, and priceless education it might not otherwise have got for itself.

Lord Mayo was greatly liked by ihe masses in India. His horrible death at the hands of a thug in the convict Andaman Islands was the act of a fanatic, and had nothing to do with his popularity. Lord Mayo was big in person and heart, genial and gay. Lady Mayo was not as popular, but as she was ambitious,and entertained sumptuously the English liked the regime. Anything for sport in India, and the Mayos ran Government House 'wide open.'

Lord Northbrook, who followed, was a gaunt, stiff, awkward man, whom natives much disliked. He was a Baring, with no bearing, some Calcutta wit said of him, and his title was given him expressly for India, as Mr Curzon's will be if he goes. Very thin, stiff and shy was Baron, now Earl, Northbrook, and the only unmarried one (he was a widower) of all the recent viceroys. Lord Northbrook made a great mistake, as far as his popularity with natives was concerned, when he threw a casting vote in the Baroda case and deposed the gaekwar of that state. There had been six commissioners sitting, three native and three English. After a long and perfectly absurd trial, during which the magnificent gaekwar was proved to have been a potentate of the most puerile and plebeian order, the 'oppressed ruler,' as his English counsel called him throughout, was convicted by the English half of the jury and acquitted by the native, as might have been expected. Lord Northbrook's act was regarded as most ill judged in England, so that he pleased neither nation.