FIRST VICEROY

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 25, 31 January 1933, Page 14

FIRST VICEROY

WELFARE OF-INDIA.

BICENTENARY DOINGS

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, Bth December. Three ex-Viceroys of India—Lord Irwin, Lord Beading, and Lord Hardinge—joined in the bicentenary celebrations of .Warren. Hastings. Wreaths •were laid before the simple monument to his memory in "Westminster Abbey, and meetings were arranged ' by the Boyal Empire Society. Many people visited exhibitions of portraits, manuscripts, and personal relics of the famous first Governor-General in India, which have been arranged atthe British Museum and Westminster School. The Dean of Westminster, who was accompanied by Sir Edward JF. KnappPisher, the Receiver-General, received members of deputations at the Abbey in. the morning, and there was an informal procession at 11 o'clock to the place in the North Transept, where a mellowed marble tablet, surmounted by a bust, sets out the integrity and virtues of Hastings. The.Dean of Westminster, standing by the monument, said they were gathered to do honour to ons who would always hold a high place among the founders of our Empire, and who in a very peculiar and particular Bense belonged to Westminster School and Abbey. . Prince Arthur of Connaught represented the Duke of Connaught, president of the Eoyal Empire Society, at the meeting in the afternoon held in th> great hall of Westminster School. . HAPPINESS BBFOEE TRADE. Lord Read'Tg said! that Warren Hastings was not only the first but the greatest Governor-General who ever ruled over India. If they, surveyed the history of India of those days and remembered the times in which '•*• men lived and the difficulties with which they were confronted, they would find that Hastings set himself at once 'to separate the commercial exploitation of India from the good government of India, and to make sure that the welfare and happiness of India and its population, were of greater importance than trade, and the lines he had laid down were the lines on which India was administered to this day. ■' "I have striven to see Warren Hastings," he continued, "perhaps fancy, maybe a day dream, watching us sitting round the table at the BoundTable Conference, trying by all means in our power to reach a maximum of agreement in relation ,to the constitution which is to come into effect for the federation of all India. When I look around this hall and see those -who have- taken such a part in the affairs of India I wonder whether they will agree with me in the main that if we can now bring this "federation scheme into existence we shall nave perfected thework, as far as it can be perfected at this moment, which was embarked upon by Warren Hastings. We should recall him as the man who built the foundation and who really erected the first part of the edifice which, in truth, has gained us much honour and glory throughout the world." AMENDMENT OF A TABLET. It was announced that the First Commissioner of Works in the House of Commons had stated that afternoon that lie was prepared to give favourable consideration to a proposal so to amend the tablet marking the spot in Westminster Hall where Hastings stood his trial as to commemorate also' his acquittal. A generous Fellow of the Eoyal Empire Society, he said, had undertaken to bear the whole cost'of this'amendment. A meeting was held at the Eoyal Empire Society in the evening when Professor'H. H. Dodwell gave an address. Warren Hastings's administration, he said, was a. lasting;, warning to ill-considered legislation, as applied1 to a remote dependency. Hastings must proudly be regarded by British people as perhaps the greatest man of his century and certainly the most ill-used man who was ever sent to govern British India. (Cheers.)