and endurance, rather than capacity to pass examinations or solve scholastic problems. This, on the face of it, is true enough. But surely, other things being equal, the educated man should be the superior of the uneducated. In justice to Lord Sherbrooke, too, it should be remembered that he was never a blind adherent of any special university curriculum. He was a firm believer in the advantages of mental discipline and training, but he had never any bigoted belief in set formulæ. However, as he is rarely more amusing or characteristic than when descanting on education in general, and Oxford in particular, a further extract from his reply to Lord Stanley may not unfitly be given :

I heard a noble lord in another place a short time ago, with infinite knowledge, eloquence, and ingenuity, plead the cause of ignorance, and so persuasively that, were I ignorant, I would only wish to listen to such a teacher. The noble lord said that it would be a great calamity to admit these persons to a public examination; that we should get nothing but blockheads; that there is nothing so bad as an over-educated man; that the Government would secure the services of none but pedants and schoolmasters. That is not the experience of this House or of the country. Who takes the lead in this country? Upon whose lips do deliberative assemblies hang? On whom does the fate of the nation depend? Those who in early life have shone in such contests and examinations. It is very well to talk of the system of cramming. There is, no doubt, a great deal too much of it in the universities; but the cause of it is that the examinations fall into the hands of the same men who prepare the candidates, and thus arise traditions as to what different men taught to their pupils, which form the staple of the examinations of Oxford and Cambridge. At Oxford there were curious points in Aristotle handed down from time to time, and at Cambridge problems connected with the names of the authors who invented them, not to be found in books, and forming a sort of discipline arcana. I am happy to think that many dodges of my own invention are still taught at Oxford under my name. But that system is totally unnecessary. It is the fault of the examiners, and because the examinations are conducted on a narrow, illiberal, and pedantic scale, instead of being substantial, and being made the test not only of memory, but of mind, intellect, and acumen.

On the following evening Macaulay, in support of the India

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Bill, spoke for the last time in the House of Commons. The most striking portion of his speech was that devoted to the proposed admission to the Indian Civil Service by open competition, in lieu of favour and influence. Macaulay maintained as resolutely as Lowe himself that the men who were first in ⚫ the competition of the schools have, as a rule, been first in the competition of life. The greatest man,' he said, 'who ever governed India was Warren Hastings, and he had been in the front rank at Westminster.' Sir Charles Metcalfe, the ablest Indian Civil Servant he himself had ever known, was of the first standing at Eton. Lord Wellesley, the most distinguished aristocrat who had ruled over India, was likewise a man of Oxford reputation. It is not necessary to refer at any length to this famous speech. To this day, in their struggles against the encroachments of rivals favoured by birth and influence, and especially against military competitors, the Indian civilians always take their stand (to use their own words) on what Macaulay and Lowe meant by the provisions of the India Act of 1853.'

In its Committee stage Lowe defended the India Bill with great skill and amazing knowledge against many influential members, whose attacks had evidently been inspired by the Court of Directors. In one of these speeches he explained in remarkably clear language the circumstances which made his own appointment to the India Board so strange an anomaly -namely, the diametrically opposite social and political conditions of India and the Colonies. The point arose in connection with the proposal that the Crown should nominate six of the Directors of the East India Company.

Upon this question of nominees a great deal has been said about India and the Colonies, and I have myself been taunted with inconsistency, inasmuch as, not being friendly to nominees in the Colonies, I stand up for them in respect to the present measure. Now, I apprehend that there is no easier way of confusing a plain matter than by any attempt to compare India and the Colonies. The circumstances are not merely dissimilar, but diametrically

contrary. The essence of a Colonial Government is a representative Government resident on the spot; but the principle of the Government of India is a quasi-representative principle resident in a remote country. The essence of colonial government is responsibility to the people on the spot; that of the Indian Government, responsibility to people in England. In a colony the governor is looked on as the image of Her Majesty, and as discharging a limited duty, whereas in India the endeavour is to put the Governor-General forward as a person combining in himself great powers, and to place in the background all that machinery by which his power is controlled.

It would be difficult to state the case more clearly, and it shows, I think, considering that Robert Lowe had only been in office a matter of two or three months, that the ex-member for Sydney displayed at this time no little acumen and flexibility of mind. He went on to draw a yet more vital distinction between the Colonies and India, in the fact that whereas out of the former great nations might arise, English in race, laws, language, and traditions, and equal to the mothercountry in might and power, India could only remain a garrison, and could never become a home for men and women of our blood.

The India Bill passed triumphantly; but after the Mutiny it was felt that the delays and disadvantages of the dual control' must be abolished, and, as John Stuart Mill laments, the old East India House became a thing of the past. Apart from its great and romantic history, the literary associations of Leadenhall Street are many and attractive; for almost up to the last there were among its chiefs the two Mills and Peacock, and among its clerks the author of Elia. Those who wish to see how very human a philosopher can be when his own prerogatives are interfered with, should turn to the indignant pages in Mill's Autobiography in which he denounced the policy that converted the administration of India into a thing to be scrambled for by the second and third class of English parliamentary politicians.'

VOL. II.

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It is strange that the philosophic author of Considerations on Representative Government should not have recognised that his remarks on this head imply an attack on all our free institutions. We have placed, not only India, but, what is of much more importance to us, our own country, its fate and fortune, as a thing to be scrambled for in the House of Commons by the handful of men who, for the time being, can command a majority. These considerations, however, are taking us rather far afield.

The Government of India Bill was passed on July 28. In Greville's Journal there is a curious entry: 'Lowe is very much dissatisfied with Charles Wood and with the intentions of Government, and even talks of resigning; and the Times is going into furious opposition on the Indian Question, and is already attacking the Government for their supposed intentions.'

This was jotted down a month or so before the passing of the measure, but, judging by the hearty manner in which Lowe worked for the Bill, this statement had probably no foundation.

At the close of the following year, when our unfortunate army was before Sebastopol, and the people of England could give little thought to mere legislation, whether for England or India, the Commissioners appointed under the India Act of 1853 in reference to the admission of candidates to writerships in the East India Company brought in their Report. Among these commissioners were Macaulay and the Rev. Benjamin Jowett; and it is from this time and circumstance that the intimate and enduring friendship between Lord Sherbrooke and the Master of Balliol dates.

I have dwelt thus at length on the part Robert Lowe played in assisting to frame and pass the India Act of the Aberdeen Ministry, not merely because it is one of the very few successes achieved by that unfortunate coalition, but rather because it marks the date of that deep interest which

from this hour he continued to display in Indian affairs. It has not been generally admitted, but it may be proved, that only a very few men who have ever sat in the House of Commons and those, for the most part, ex-Indian officials like Macaulay-could compare with Lord Sherbrooke in his thorough and intimate knowledge of the social and political problems of our vast Asiatic empire.

By a strange stroke of fate Robert Lowe's connection with the Board of Control brought him into close personal relations with the Bayard of the Indian Empire,' Sir James Outram. The circumstances have never before been related, but they are so eminently characteristic, and reflect so much credit on Outram as well as on himself, that it is a pleasure to be able to record them in this work. Sir Thomas Farrer, who first brought the matter under my notice, and who, it is hardly necessary to say, had for years the most ample means of forming a judgment on Lord Sherbrooke's personal character, writes: 'Lowe was an intense hater of oppression and iniquity, and would take any trouble when he thought a man was wronged. His correspondence with and action on behalf of Outram at the India Office was an instance; and I remember others at the Board of Trade.'

The case of Outram was with reference to certain unfounded charges which had led to his removal from the office of Resident at the Court of the Guicowar of Baroda. The fine old Scottish soldier, who was a man of frank and simple nature, seems to have been involved for the time in a series of accusations of corruption levelled at certain members of the Bombay Government. The matter was brought before the House of Commons, and an enormous amount of newspaperwriting and pamphleteering followed, in which a Mr. Lestock Robert Reid, a prominent Indian functionary, in endeavouring to extricate himself, seems to have done his best, or worst, to besmirch Outram.