CALIFORNIA

LORD LYTTON'S

INDIAN ADMINISTRATION

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

THE most important public post ever held by Lord Lytton was offered to him at a time when he was contemplating the immediate close of his official career. He was then only forty-four years of age, but having two years previously succeeded, on the death of his father, to the title and family estate, his longing desire was to retire from public life, and devote the remainder of his days to the exclusive pursuit of literature and his home duties. In the spring of 1875 he had been appointed Minister of Legation at Lisbon, and this he intended to be his last diplomatic post.

The Governorship of Madras had been offered to him early in this year; this he had refused after consulting his medical adviser, who solemnly assured him that the constitutional delicacy from which he suffered was of a kind to be specially aggravated and increased by the climate and work in India, and that he could not with safety accept such a post.

On November 23, 1875, he received the following letter from the Prime Minister:

B

Mr. Disraeli to Lord Lytton

'2 Whitehall Gardens, S.W.: November 23, 1875.

'My dear Lytton,-Lord Northbrook has resigned the Viceroyalty of India, for purely domestic reasons, and will return to England in the spring.

'If you be willing, I will submit your name to the Queen as his successor. The critical state of affairs in Central Asia demands a statesman, and I believe if you will accept this high post you will have an opportunity, not only of serving your country, but of obtaining an enduring fame.

Yours sincerely,

'B. DISRAELI.'

To this letter Lord Lytton replied:

Lord Lytton to Mr. Disraeli

'Lisbon: December 1, 1875.

'My dear Mr. Disraeli,-No man was ever so greatly or surprisingly honoured as I am by your splendid offer, nor could any man possibly feel prouder than I do of an honour so unprecedented, or more deeply anxious to deserve it.

'But I should ill requite your generous confidence were I to accept the magnificent and supremely important post for which you are willing to recommend me to the Queen, without first submitting to your most serious consideration a circumstance which cannot be already known to you, and in which you will probably recognise a paramount disqualification.'

He then went on to explain that the condition of his health would, he feared, at times render him incapable of prolonged mental labour coupled with

anxiety, and, at any rate, prevent him from counting on the enjoyment of that physical soundness and strength which might otherwise have helped to counteract his inexperience of all administrative business and his ignorance at the outset of Indian affairs. This consideration he urged not upon private but upon public grounds: 'I assure you most earnestly,' he wrote, that if, with the certainty of leaving my life behind me in India, I had a reasonable chance of also leaving there a reputation comparable to Lord Mayo's, I would still without a moment's hesitation embrace the high destiny you place within my grasp. But the gratitude, industry, and will which must help me to compensate all my other deficiencies afford no guarantee against this physical difficulty. I am persuaded that you will not misunderstand the hesitation and anxiety it causes me.

. . If there be reasons unknown to me which, upon purely public grounds (the only ones I would ask you to consider), still dispose you to incur such a risk, an intimation from you to that effect will relieve me from all hesitation. In that case, and in that case only, I shall regard your letter, not as an offer which I can decline, compatibly with my intense appreciation of the undeserved honour it involves, but as a high and glorious command, which it would be a dereliction of duty to disobey.'

The answer to this letter was telegraphed on December 20:

Mr. Disraeli to Lord Lytton

'Hatfield: December 20, 1875.

'We have carefully considered your letter, and have not changed our opinion. We regard the matter as settled.'

On January 7, 1876, Lord Salisbury, then Secretary of State for India, telegraphed to Lord Lytton:

'Announcement of your appointment has been officially made and well received. Very important that you should come home soon, as many preparations to be made and much business to be transacted.'

Lord Lytton prepared to leave Lisbon at once, and was in England by the end of January. His wife and children followed him as soon as possible, and he undertook to sail for India by March 20.

Writing to an intimate friend on the eve of his departure from Portugal, he said: 'I have the courage of the coward in front of battle, and shall march on with an unflinching step.' The decision he had taken was one, he knew, which involved the temporary farewell to all that was most cherished and pleasant in the life he had laid out for himself; but whatever the fate now before him, he could face it with the knowledge that he had neither rashly courted nor selfishly shirked it. In the first year and a half of his sojourn in India few could know or understand the extent of the physical misery which he endured. But the breakdown which he had dreaded never came, and the often ailing condition of his health was not allowed to interrupt or interfere with the work he had undertaken. From the moment that he accepted the appointment he set himself to grapple with the subjects with which in the future he would have to deal. He began, as he expressed himself to a friend, knowing nothing of India except its myths.' Shortly after his arrival in England, after holding interviews with his friends of the Cabinet, Mr. Disraeli, Lord Salisbury, and Lord Carnarvon, he writes: The work is over

whelming, and most puzzling and strange to me, but intensely interesting.'

Before entering upon the narrative of Lord Lytton's Indian administration it is necessary to give some account of the situation, especially with regard to the foreign policy of the Indian Government and its relations with the frontier State of Afghanistan, such as it was left by Lord Northbrook on his retirement.

ceding Lord

resignation

The importance of keeping Russia at a distance Summary of from the North-West Frontier of India, by establish- events preing barriers against the advance of her power and the Northbrook's spread of her influence, has been recognised by successive Indian governments ever since the beginning of the century. It is only with regard to the proper methods and measures for attaining these objects that opinions have differed. The gradual growth and recent development of two distinct schools, representing two different policies advocated for dealing with affairs beyond our frontier, have been recently summarised by Sir Alfred Lyall in the following terms:

Up to the era of the Napoleonic wars, and so long as India was only accessible from Europe by sea, the continental politics of Asia gave the English in India very little concern. The limits of our possessions were still far distant from the natural or geographical boundaries of the country over which our dominion was gradually expanding. But from the beginning of this century, when it became known that Napoleon was seriously entertaining the project of an expedition by land against British India, the project of fortifying ourselves against any such invasion from the north-west by a system of alliances with the Asiatic powers beyond the Indus and the