The division was taken at four in the morning of December 17th, when the Government was defeated by 305 to 286. In the evening Lord Derby handed his resignation to the Queen at Osborne.

The coalition between the Peelites and the Whigs and Radicals, which Disraeli so much disliked, but of which he would certainly not have disapproved had they crossed over and joined himself and Lord Derby, was now formed. Lord Aberdeen came into office as Prime Minister, though he was little more than the nominal head of this remarkable but ill-fated Ministry, which included, as is well known, Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, and Mr. Gladstone. In this extraordinary combination the office of joint secretary of the old Board of Control for India was held by Robert Lowe.

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CHAPTER IV

THE BOARD OF CONTROL-INDIA AND SIR JAMES OUTRAM

HISTORIANS of all parties and opinions have commented on the strange and unaccountable allotment of offices in Lord Aberdeen's Ministry of all the Talents. Certainly, it must have been startling to thoughtful observers to find Lord Palmerston, whose sole delight and study was in foreign affairs, at the Home Office; and Lord John Russell, who was never happy unless engaged in some project of domestic reform, figuring as Foreign Secretary. In a minor way, the office allotted to the ex-member of the Legislative Council of New South Wales would seem at first blush almost as absurdly anomalous. Nothing could have been more calculated to unfit a man for the office of Secretary of the India Board than Robert Lowe's eight years of active public life in Sydney. The fact that, under the late Lord Halifax, then Sir Charles Wood, he managed as a humble member of this ill-fated Aberdeen Government to do some really good work for India and the Empire is a signal proof of his political adaptability and insight.

The Government of India at this time, as is well known, was of a dual character, consisting of the Board of Control, representing the Government and people of England; and the Chairman and Court of Directors, representing the shareholders of the East India Company. It is an interesting fact that during the years in which Robert Lowe held the office of Secretary to the Board of Control, that most delightful of men of letters, Thomas Love Peacock, was Chief Examiner at the India House, having under him no less a personage than John

Stuart Mill. So far as I have been able to ascertain, these official duties led to no friendship, or even acquaintance, between Lowe and Peacock, a circumstance which all lovers of good things will deplore. Nor did Lowe and Mill apparently get to know each other at all intimately until afterwards, when both were members of the Political Economy Club and the House of Commons. They were never, in the real sense, intimate, as they were not particularly sympathetic; and, strange as it may seem, I have a feeling that Lord Sherbrooke would have preferred the author of Crotchet Castle—who, though he ridiculed everybody and everything, including both poets and political economists, was a real flesh-and-blood individual-to his more famous philosophic successor at the India House, who gave us the Elements of Logic and Principles of Political Economy.

On June 3rd, 1853, Lowe's official chief, Sir Charles Wood, introduced the Government of India Bill in a speech,' writes Greville,' of unexampled prolixity and dulness.' There is no doubt that it is both prolix and dull, but those who have had to wade through several years of Hansard will be chary as to the use of the word 'unexampled.' It has always been said that the Queen took a very lively interest in this measure, as, indeed, she has ever done in matters affecting her Indian Empire. The Bill-which, as far as the work of getting together the data on which its provisions were based, and of defending it in Parliament, was as much Lowe's as Sir Charles Wood's-eventually passed both Houses with triumphant majorities. It was necessarily of the nature of a compromise; but as any step in the direction of increasing the Imperial control lessened the patronage of the East India Company, it was not favourably received by the Chairman and Directors in Leadenhall Street. Lowe himself, from the day that he assumed the office of Secretary, took infinite pains, not only in connection with Sir Charles Wood's Bill, but-as was his wont-with the subject of India generally.

The Government of India Bill was, as already stated, a compromise; and while it left the East India Company still in control of the appointments to the Indian Army, it substituted the system of competition in lieu of nomination for the Civil Service. It also reduced the Court of Directors from thirty members to eighteen, six of whom were to be nominated by the Crown. Lowe himself, subsequently, on the hustings, frankly stated that the measure was far from a complete or ideal one, but that it afforded the necessary steppingstone to the abolition of the India House, and the direct government of that vast and magnificent dependency by the Crown and Parliament of Great Britain. In the House of Commons he supported the measure of his chief with marked ability. The present Earl of Derby, then Lord Stanley, the most competent parliamentary critic of the century, brought himself into deserved prominence in this Indian debate. He delivered not what is admiringly termed a slashing attack on the Government proposals, but submitted them to searching analysis in a calm, unimpassioned speech marked by unusual knowledge of the subject. He was then a young man of about six-and-twenty, and it was doubtless this speech that impelled Lord Palmerston to tempt him with the seals of the Colonial Office on the death of Sir William Molesworth in 1855, and which led to his becoming the first Secretary of State for India in his father's second Cabinet, three years later.

Lowe replied to Lord Stanley on the night of June 23rd, and it is evident from the tone and tenor of the speech that he fully recognised the ability displayed by the sagacious and critical young nobleman. Lord Stanley had pleaded for delay on the ground that there was a lack of knowledge in England on Indian affairs which made legislation hazardous. To this Lowe replied:

The noble lord, who had displayed an acquaintance with the subject which itself was an answer to the argument that there was no information in England with reference to Indian matters, had

stated that there was no danger of an insurrection taking place. Still, it was desirable now, as it had ever been, that we should have a strong Government in India. From one end to the other the whole Eastern world was in commotion. Looking to the west, we found that there was a quarrel between Russia and Turkey. Going a little farther south, the whole of Asia was in a most critical state. Going to the north, Bokhara was in revolt. Eastward, again, the Emperor of China had awakened from a sleep of ages, and entered upon active enterprise. And going further south, we found ourselves in a state of possibly interminable war with the Burmese. Though everything might be tranquil then in India, we were yet surrounded by commotions and difficulties, and were bound to make our Government there as strong as we possibly could.

This, he argued, was the fatal objection to a policy of delay. He then defended the compromise with the East India Company on the subject of patronage. Lord Stanley had asked, 'If you take away some, why do you not take away all?' Lowe said that their plan of competitive examinations for the Indian Civil Service was an experiment. It was, therefore, better to proceed cautiously, and not to interfere with the Military Service. Some of the most distinguished of soldiers might not have shone in examinations; but he thought that some intellectual test was necessary for the Civil Service. He spoke at considerable length on this part of the subject, and it must be admitted with a full sense of the important and responsible duties entrusted to the small band of English officials placed in positions of authority over the teeming millions of India.

It is probable that Lowe, like most able men of his generation (including Lord Stanley himself), thought too highly of the literary and scholastic training which we loosely call education. Mr. Kipling, in his remarkable series of Indian tales, has shown us in the most dramatic manner that the qualities which enable us to rule in the East are moral and physical rather than mere intellectual qualities; and that we require in our heads of districts and other official representatives in India, courage, grit, resource, physical strength