SIR ANTONY MACDONNELL.

Otago Witness, Issue 2667, 26 April 1905, Page 67

SIR ANTONY MACDONNELL.

(M.A.P.)

— Schooldays. —

I have given my readers a description in old days of the small boarding-school in Athlone m which I was taught. It was tlv>re, when I was 10 veais of age. that I first saw the man who is now known to the world as Sir Antony MacDonnell. Other people aie able, of course, to see a great change in him in the 46 years which have passed since that time ; but to me he remains almost the same in appearance as he was when first I saw him. He is a little grey ; there are deep lines in the face ; the resolution, which is its most dominating expression, has been intensified by years of tremendous power and almost awful responsibilities ; but I can see underneath all these tilings the same face as I beheld when, a shivering and shy schoolboy, I wandisred into the playground of the school to which we then both belonged. Already people had begun to forecast a future ot distinction for him. He was easily the head of all his classes ; se.emed to be equally good with his mathematics and his classics ; and. if I mistake not, got the prize for general excellence, the prize which was the blue riband of the school.

— Prizeman. —

If boys desired to continue their education they went from this school either to Maynooth to train for the priesthood, or to the Queen's College, in Galway, to go into one of tb,~ professions, or into the civil service. He is some three or four years oldiar than I am ; and he left the school in Athlone three years before I did. Then my turn came to go to the college in Galway ; and again I saw him. I was not long in the college when I found that the name which stood high above that of any othsr student in the place for success was that of Sir Antony MacDonnell. Everybody was talking about him. He carried off every prize that a student could carry off ; and he took a gold medal at his degree examination. Still more people talked of his powers as a speaker. ' We had in the college a society which was known as the Literary and Scientific Debating Society, and hei-e it was that 3 r oung students first had an opportunity of speaking in public. There were meetings to which the public of the town wer.s invited, and for two or three years the orator who was supreme at all such gatherings was Sir Antony MacDonnell. I never heard him, curiously enough ; I forget .exactly why at this moment, but I remember to this day the enthusiastic description given, of one of his speeches by Mr J. J. Clancy, now a member of the Irish party, and, like myself, both a school-fellow and collegefellow of Sir Antony MacDonnell. I remember how he described the speech as rising higher and higher, like the flight of a bird, and thrilling people more and more at cv.cry sentence, until, in the end, he sat down amid thunders of applause. — The Civil Service. —

This was the kind of reputation which might mean anything or nothing in the life of a man of action, and still more of an official. The late Lord Ridley carried off .everything in school and college ; there never was such a prizeman ; and yet, poor man, his political career, on the whole, was rather a failure. But already, while he was still little more than a boy, Sir Antony MacDonnell gare proof that his future was going to be equal to his reputation as a student. I suppose few people in England and' of this epoch can realise the curious and joyous thrill of hope, and glorious and dazzling ambition, which oper.ed up on the narrow and iron horizon of the young Irishman when the Indian civil serive was thrown open to competition. Here was a great, an almost incredible, chance of passing from obscurity to glory, from grinding poverty to wealth which might, so far as thes/i poor boys thought, have been great enough to have made even Sardanapalus envious. It was whispered that the salary began at the enormous jfigur.9 of £800 a year, and that it ascended sometimes until it reached such gigantic and alpine heights as several thousands a year. And 1 the young civil servant became a ruler of nvm, and) lie was able to live in the magnificence of India, which the youthful imagination saw in all the poetic hues of inexperience and poetry.

• — His First Triumph. —

But, then, like all great dreams, there were fiery swords that barred) the portals. There were but some 40 or 50 places, if so many, and for th,°se all the schools of rich England, all the universities, all the great coaching' establishments, like Wren's, sent in their first and their best pupils, and to think of a young fellow educated' in our small, badly-equipped, remote college in a little ruined western town in Connaught having a chance among such splen-didly-trained competitors seemed to "be a mere empty and cheating- dii-.eaxn. But when MacDonnell went "off to London, almost the first thing we heard' was that our prize pupil had proved more than a match for almost any of them ; he came out ainona the hundreds who were competing either third or fifth, or something of that kind. And it was almost immediately after his return from this might y and almost incredible triumph in London that I saw him again.

— A Helpful Comrade. —

There are things which occur to one in the sensitive period of boyhood, and especially when one is starting on a new and unknown experience — which always remain with one. I remember to this day, for instance, and I love him for it, that one 3ay — shy and doubtful, and ignorant oi everything — I was helped out of my troubles at a deputation to the late W. E. Forster by Mr Senior, now the capable editor of the Field ; and I remember his kindness the more distinctly and gratefully because it was in such contrast with the poor attempts at chaffing a youngster

which the reporters thought funny. I have the same kind of recollection with lcgard to Antony MacDonnell. Another youth thought it very funny to give me an entirely erroneous account of what an examination in the college wns like. I repeated this to MacDonnell, who immediately set me right, and gave me several useful hints. It is all forty years ago, pud yet I remember it now as though it were but yesterday ; and I will remember it as long as I can remember anything.

— Leaving Home. — •

In a few months after this MacDonnell disappeared from the sight and knowledge ot his countrymen and his old playmates. One began soon, however, to hear of wiry ; and, as time went on. one became accustomed to hoar of his extraordinary success. That little college in the small and ruined western town did send some remarkable people to India. Among our contemporaries at that same epoch was the late M»- Macaulay — who had a career almost as brilliant as that of Sir Antony MacDomiell — who was one of the first to try and penetrate into Tibet, and who died suddenly in Calcutta just as his splendid career was reaching its climax. Another, belonging to a somewhat later period, was Dr Freyer, the celebrated surgeon, who to day, I am told, after a brilliant career in India, is making an income in London which might make eA-en a Lord Chancellor green with envy. Of the students who remained at home some became judges, and one of them to-day, Mr John Atkinson, is the Attorney-general for I. eland.

— In India. —

It was naturally not as an orator that Sir Antony MacDonnell made his mark in India, but as a man of action. And as a man of action he must have been one of the ablest and most statesman-like of that great and notable band of men who govern India, for -he started, as will be seen, with no advantage of fortune or of class. He is a Catholic ; he is — as he himself says — a Liberal in politics ; he is an Irishman, therefore, with somewhat unpopular views. These things do not count in India so much as they do at home ; but still they do count. It would be -ridiculous to say that the race even there is the same for a man who starts with high family connections, with great English family alliances, with popular views, with some private fortune, as for the Irishman who has no family relative in high places, no fortune except his salary, no likings except those which are hateful to the majority of men in power.

— A Strong Man. —

And Siv Antony MacDonnell has another great disadvantage — he is lacking in that suavity and pleasantness of manner which is one of the charms and "one of the causes of the success of many of his countrymen. Even the late LorcKJlussell was not more outspoken, more careless of corns that he trod on, less ready to suffer fools gladly. Sir Antony MacDonnell, though socially he is quite agreeable, and, indeed, delightful, is as an official strong, resolute, stern, even a mer-

ciless man. His frankness of condemnation reached something like Bismarck's in plainness of speech. And the result was that while no man has warmer or stouter friends, no man has more bitter enemies. Like the elephant, ~he has crushed his way onward ; straight, strong, unyielding, crushing down everything weak or foolish, mean or dishonest that he met i i his way. This made him to many men so disagreeable that they chose to resign rather than serve under him ; there arb cases, indeed, in which it is said that men have broken their career at its most glorious and promising hour because of this feeling.

— Gigantic Energy. — •

And yet there are Anglo-Indians who speak of MacDonnell with enthusiasm. And there is one thing above all others which speaks with undeniable cerfainty in his favour, and that is the important things for which he was employed. Whenever there was work of gigantic difficulty — a crisis of appalling possibilities — in India while MacDonnell was there, he was the man picked out of all that great body of public servants to confront it and to cenquer it. Does anybody realise what some of these tasks which have to be faced by a single Englishman, or Irishman, or Scotsman in India sometimes mean? xhink, for instance, of what MacDonnell had to do when he had to face one of the famines which hang over the pcoole of India like so many dread and awful simirges from Heaven. Just think that on the head, the heart, the nerve of one man may depend the question whether millions of people are to live or to die in all the hideous and slow agony of starvation. Try and draw a picture in your imagination of these dumb, helpless millions — almost children in their impotencee — lifting up their poor, shrivelled arms to this mighty potentate, and begging him to confront and to conquer the awful shadow called Hunger.

And think of these people if you can, not in more units, not in mere hundreds, not even in thousands in numbers, but think of them in that awful multituclinousncss of millions which is the characteristic of a population so appallingly dense as that of India. I have spoken of all these millions being do pendent on the brain and heart and ner\ c of one man ; by that, of course, I do not mean that even as great an official as MacDonnell did not have beside him as colleagues men of almost as great force and brilliancy as himself. But then in these great crises so much depends on the head, and if there be a chief who is lax, who is apathetic, who is cold, who is cowardly, then his evil spirit will percolate and descend until the whole service will be unmanned and demoralised. And it requires too little to destroy a great service in such an hour of peril ; th? jjai"-

tition between saving millions and losing millions is so thin when hunger is in the land.

-Forty Years' Record. —

Forty-seven millions of people — that is the kingdom which MacDonnell had to govern, and to govern with powers as despotic as those of the Autocrat of all the Russias. Even a great man might fail in such nigh enterprises ; in a record extending, over forty years there might be some failures without showing that MacDonnell was not a great official, but ' there is no record ot any such failure/ From India he i ssent to Burmah — just newly conquered, requiring me tenderest handling in that moment of transition between the barbarism of the old and the civilisation of the new government, which is always the hardest to pass over ; and again he who had conquered Famine, conquers Anarchy, and leaves a State already emerging to the light.

— From Mayo to Bombay. —

And think that this great ruler of men came from the modest dwelling of a country gentleman with a small estate in the far-off county of Mayo in the dim, bleak, moist West of Ireland ; and what a*■ vast distance between the two dwellings — the modest house in Mayo, the palace in Blirmah ! There were only two prizes left of all the many prizes of Indian life for Sir Antony MacDonnell. The first was" the Governor/ship of Bombay, the second was the Viceroyalty. The Viceroyalty may be dismissed as not within the reach of any Indian Civil servant now ; the epoch of politicians sent from Home to take up the Yiceroyalty has come to stay. The Governorship of .oomhay, however, was so much, the right of Sir Antony to claim, after his other great services, that, if he applied for it, he could scarcely have been refused it. And what a prize it is ! The salary, I believe, is something like £10,000 a year ; it is held for five years : it generally brings with it a peerage, if the man -who has held it desires it. In short, it would have been the golden cupola of tiie fabric which Sir Antony MacDonnell had built in all those forty years* of brilliant work.

—In Dublin Castle.—

It was at this moment hi his career that the suggestion was made to him that he should devote himself to the services of Ireland. Ireland, with four millions and a-half of people — an Under-secretaryship to one who had been an autocrat ; besides all this, the possibility, the certainty, in fact, of all the horrors and strifes and misrepresentations of Irish official life with its fierce party spirit ! It was not an inviting prospect to any man if he preferred ease and comfort to the performance of great duties. By this time there was no reason for Sir Antony MacDonnell to work either in Ireland or in India. He has earned his pension ; he had a place on the Indian Council worth something, I believe, like £1200 a year ; and it is no secret that he is a man who has been thrifty, though generous, and has accumulated a considerable amount from the great salaries he has been receiving for many years. There was the choice of London, with just enough to do to occupy his mind, with a handsome income, and the craving for rest that even the most active must sometimes feel, as they have passed the meridian of life ; there was the opportunity of taking or refusing the Governorship of Bombay. Here was the prospect on one side, and gloomy Dublin Castle, with its old-fashioned methods, its intrigues, its fierce, inner warfare, its loneliness, on the other.' Ivo man could hesitate which was the more agreeable prospect.

— A Typical Irishman. — Bub Sir Antony MacDonnell was pressed hard from various sides to take up tne liish office, among others by some whom it were not meet here to mention ; and, above all, he was pressed by that inner voice which always rings in the breast of any Irishman worth his name — that voice which calls upon him to try and do something to raise his land and people from the Slough of Despond in which they now welter. And in the end these influences prevailed. '±he Governorship of Bombay became vacant ; he wanted to leave after he had had some experience of his Irish life and its undreamt-of difficulties. He was pressed to stay, and in Dublin Castle Sir Antony MacDonnell still is

This man, who has plaj-ed so large a part in the history of India, and recently in the history of Ireland, is a man of somewhat small stature — he is, say, five feet six. He has a short, round, typically Irish face. The eyebrows are thick and bushy ; from underneath them gieam biilliant, piercing, resolute eyes ; the jaw is square and strong ; the voice is deep and authoritative. Wherever yon saw him you would know that he was a man of masterful temper, of tenacious purpose. And those who tiy to light mid to throw him will find him a very awkward customer.— T. P.