Rulers of India: The Earl of Mayo Part 9

s.p.a.ce precludes me from entering upon the legislative work of Lord Mayo. That work was voluminous, and of a most searching character.

But it was practically conducted by the two eminent jurists, Sir Henry Maine and Sir Fitzjames Stephen, who held in succession the office of Law Member of Council during Lord Mayo's Viceroyalty. It has, moreover, been narrated by Sir Fitzjames Stephen himself, in full detail, in my larger _Life of Lord Mayo_.

In the foregoing pages many will miss a familiar feature of the Earl of Mayo's Viceroyalty. In India, hospitality forms one of the public duties of the governing race--a duty which they discharge, some laboriously, all to the best of their ability. The splendid hospitalities of Lord Mayo to all ranks and all races, amounted to an additional source of strength to the British Rule. He regarded it a proud privilege that it fell to his lot to present, for the first time, a son of the English Sovereign to the people and Princes of India. His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh's progress touched chords in the oriental imagination which had lain mute since the overthrow of the Delhi throne, and called forth an outburst of loyalty such as had never before been awakened in the history of our rule. It was the seal of peace; an {186} act of oblivion for the struggle which placed India under the Crown, and for the painful memories which that struggle left behind.

In his ceremonial as in his official duties, the Earl of Mayo had the ease of conscious strength. His n.o.ble presence, the splendour of his hospitality, and his magnificence of life, seemed in him only a natural complement of rare administrative power. The most charming of Indian novels,[2] in portraying an ideal head of Indian society, unconsciously delineates Lord Mayo. But indeed it would be almost impossible to draw a great Indian Viceroy in his social aspects without the sketch insensibly growing into his portrait. Alike in the Cabinet and the drawing-room there was the same calm kindness and completeness. Sir Fitzjames Stephen, not given to hero-worship, has said: 'I never met one to whom I felt disposed to give such heartfelt affection and honour.'

[Footnote 2: _Dustypore_, by Sir Henry Cunningham.]

{187}

CHAPTER IX

THE END

One branch of the internal administration in which Lord Mayo took a deep interest was prison discipline. The subject had come prominently before him when Secretary for Ireland, and his Indian diaries contain valuable remarks and suggestions noted down after inspecting the local jails. He found a chronic battle going on between the District Magistrate, who was _ex officio_ the head of the District jail, and the Medical Officer who was responsible for the health of the prisoners. The District Magistrate was determined that prison should be a distinctly uncomfortable place for the criminal cla.s.ses within his jurisdiction. The Medical Officer was equally determined to bring down the terrible death-rate which obtained in Indian jails. Indeed, the more enthusiastic doctors would have liked to dismiss every convict at the end of his sentence, weighing several pounds heavier than when he entered the prison gates.

Lord Mayo had therefore to deal with the opposite extremes of severity and leniency. On the one hand, {188} he was resolved that the discipline of Indian jails should be a really punitive discipline. On the other hand, he wrote, 'You have no right to inflict a punishment of death upon a prisoner who has only been sentenced for a term of years or for life,' by keeping him in a disease-stricken jail. Among the most distressing and clamant cases which came before him was the great Convict Settlement in the Andaman Islands, in which the mortality amounted in 1867 to over 101 per thousand. The measures taken by Lord Lawrence and Lord Mayo, had by 1870 brought down the death-rate to 10 per thousand. But the inquiries made by Lord Mayo disclosed a laxity of discipline productive of scandalous results. In 1871 a cruel and mysterious murder committed in the Penal Settlement, and which had been somewhat slightly reported on by the responsible officers, forced on Lord Mayo's mind the necessity of a complete change in the system pursued.

He found that a few English officials with a handful of soldiers were holding down, in an isolated island group, 600 miles across the sea from Bengal, the 8000 worst criminals of Northern India. Many of them came from the fierce frontier races; most of them were life prisoners, reckless, with no future on this earth. The security of such a settlement depends on clear regulations, exact subordination among the officials, and strict discipline among the convicts. The inquiries conducted under Lord Mayo's orders in 1871, disclosed the absence of every one of these {189} essentials of safety. He found dissension and disobedience among the authorities; and a state of discipline that allowed a convict to acc.u.mulate a practically unlimited store of liquor, with which to madden himself and his comrades to further crime. It was a murder committed after a general debauch of this sort that led the Viceroy to reconsider the const.i.tution of the Settlement.

The work occupied Lord Mayo's thoughts at Simla during the early half of 1871. He found that he had to create a government for a Colony 'which, a.s.suming that only life-prisoners were sent, would ultimately contain 20,000 convicts.' In the first place, therefore, he had to put together an administrative framework of a texture that would withstand severe strain, and ensure the safety of the isolated handful of Englishmen in charge of the islands. In the second place, he desired that the new const.i.tution of the Settlement, while enforcing a stricter surveillance and discipline, and increasing the terrors of transportation, more especially to new arrivals, should eventually allow of a career to the industrious and well-behaved; and as it were open up a new citizenship, with local ambitions and interests, to the exiles whose crimes had cut them off alike from the future and the past in their native land.

He resolved, in the third place, to establish the financial arrangements of the Colony on a sounder basis; and he hoped that the measures which raised the convicts out of criminal animals into settlers {190} would also tend to render them self-supporting. A Code of Regulations was drawn up under his eye, and revised with his own pen; and true to his maxim, that for any piece of hard administrative work 'a _man_ is required,' he sought out the best officer he could find for the practical reorganisation of the Settlement. He chose a soldier of strong force of character and proved administrative skill, and in the summer of 1871 sent him off with the new Regulations to his task.

'The charge which Major-General ---- is about to a.s.sume,' wrote Lord Mayo in a Viceregal Note, 'is one of great responsibility. In fact, I scarcely know of any charge under the Government of India which will afford greater scope for ability and energy, or where a greater public service can be performed. I fully expect that under his management the Andamans, Nicobars, and their dependencies, instead of being a heavy drain upon the Government, may at no distant period become self-supporting. The charge of the Colony to the Indian Exchequer has averaged 150,000 pounds a year; each transported felon costs the country more than 1 pound 12_s._ a month' [the average monthly cost in Bengal jails being then 11_s._ 5_d._ per man].

Lord Mayo then points out in detail the means by which he hoped this change would be effected, 'by a proper system of rice and pulse cultivation'; by breeding goats, and a more economical meat supply; by the adoption of jail-manufactured clothing, and {191} the growth of cotton and flax; by using the 'timber grown on the islands instead of imported timber'; 'by subst.i.tuting Native troops for free police,'

and by 'more economical steam communication' with the mainland. The immediate saving from these measures was estimated by the proper authority at 30,000 pounds a year. The Viceroy next comments on the recent reports 'that there is no system of supervision or discipline.' He then sets forth, in a well-considered summary, the points to be attended to in this important branch of the ordering of a convict colony.

The new Superintendent set to work to reorganise the Penal Settlement with great vigour. But he found that the changes really amounted to introducing a new government. While, therefore, after six months he was able to report encouraging results, he desired that Lord Mayo should 'personally realise the magnitude and difficulty of the task.'

'Progress has been made,' the Superintendent wrote to the Viceroy's Private Secretary, 'but I am anxious that Lord Mayo should himself see what has been done, before we commence the clearing. No one can thoroughly understand this place until he has seen it.' 'I look to the Governor-General's visit,' he again wrote in the midst of his difficulties, 'to set all these matters straight.'

On the 24th January, 1872, the Earl of Mayo left Calcutta on his cold weather tour. His purpose was first to visit Burma, next to call at the Andamans {192} on the return pa.s.sage across the Bay of Bengal, and then to inspect the Province of Orissa. In each of these three places, weighty questions of internal policy demanded his presence.

After completing his work in Burma, he cast anchor off Hopetown in the Andamans at 8 A.M. on the 8th February, 1872. A brilliant party of officials and guests accompanied the Viceroy and the Countess of Mayo in H. M.'s frigate _Glasgow_, and on the attendant steamship _Dacca_.

Lord Mayo landed immediately after breakfast, and during a long day conducted a thorough inspection of Viper and Ross Islands, where the worst characters were quartered. Ample provisions had been made for his protection. A detachment of free police, armed with muskets, moved with the Governor-General's party in front, flank, and rear.

The prisoners were strictly kept at their ordinary work; and on Viper and Ross Islands, the only ones where any danger was apprehended, the whole troops were under arms. One or two convicts, who wished to present pet.i.tions, handed them to an officer in attendance, without approaching the Viceroy; and the general feeling among the prisoners was one of self-interested satisfaction, in the hope of indulgences and pardons in honour of the visit.

The official inspection was concluded about 5 o'clock. But Lord Mayo desired, if possible, to create a sanitarium, where the fever patients might shake off their clinging malady. He thought that Mount Harriet, a {193} hill rising to 1116 feet a mile and a half inland from the Hopetown jetty, might be suitable for this purpose. No criminals of a dangerous sort were quartered at Hopetown; the only convicts there being approved ticket-of-leave men of good conduct.

However, the Superintendent despatched a boat to convey the guards to the Hopetown jetty.

'We have still an hour of daylight,' said Lord Mayo, bent on the sanitarium project, 'let us do Mount Harriet.' On landing at the Hopetown jetty he found gay groups of his guests enjoying the cool of the day, and had a smile and a kind word for each as he pa.s.sed. 'Do come up,' he said to one lady, 'you'll have such a sunset.' But it was a stiff climb through the heavy jungle and only one recruit joined him. His own party were dead tired; they had been on their feet for six blazing hours, and Lord Mayo, as usual the freshest after a hard day, begged some of them to rest till he returned. Of course no one liked to give in, and the cortege dived into the jungle. When they came to the foot of the hill, the Viceroy turned round to one of his aide-de-camps, who was visibly fatigued now that the strain of the day's anxiety had relaxed, and almost ordered him to sit down.

The Superintendent had sent on the one available pony, but Lord Mayo at first objected to riding while the rest were on foot. When half way up, he stopped and said: 'It's my turn to walk now; one of you get on.' At the top he carefully surveyed the capabilities of the hill as a sanitarium. He thought he saw his {194} way to improve the health of the Settlement, and with the stern task of reorganisation to make a work of humanity go hand in hand. 'Plenty of room here,' he cried, looking round on the island group, 'to settle two millions of men.' Presently he sat down, and gazed silently across the sea to the sunset. Once or twice he said quietly, 'How beautiful.' Then he drank some water. After another long look to the westward, he exclaimed to his Private Secretary: 'It's the loveliest thing I think I ever saw:'

and came away.

The descent was made in close order, for it was now dark. About three-quarters of the way down, torch-bearers from Hopetown met the Viceroy and his attendant group of officials and guards. Two of his party who had hurried forward to the pier saw the intermittent gleam of the torches threading their way through the jungle; then the whole body of lights issued by the bridle-path from the woods, a minute's walk from the jetty. The _Glasgow_ frigate lay out on the left with her long line of lights low on the water; the _Scotia_ and _Dacca_, also lit up, beyond her; another steamer, the _Nemesis_, was coaling nearer to Hopetown, on the right. The ships' bells had just rung seven. The launch with steam up was whizzing at the jetty stairs; a group of her seamen were chatting on the pier-end. It was now quite dark, and the black line of the jungle seemed to touch the water's edge.

The Viceroy's party pa.s.sed some large loose stones {195} to the left at the head of the pier, and advanced along the jetty; two torch-bearers in front, the light shining strongly on the tall form of Lord Mayo, in a grey tussa-silk coat, close between his Private Secretary and the Superintendent; the Flag-Lieutenant of the _Glasgow_ and a Colonel of Engineers a few paces behind, on left and right; the armed police between them, but a little nearer the Viceroy. The Superintendent turned aside, with Lord Mayo's leave, to give an order about the morning's programme, and the Viceroy stepped quickly forward before the rest to descend the stairs to the launch.

The next moment the people in the rear heard a noise as of 'the rush of some animal' from behind the loose stones: one or two saw a hand and a knife suddenly descend in the torch-light. The Private Secretary heard a thud, and instantly turning round, found a man 'fastened like a tiger'[1] on the back of the Viceroy.

[Footnote 1: I use his own words.]

In a second twelve men were on the a.s.sa.s.sin; an English officer was pulling them off, and with his sword-hilt keeping back the Native guards, who would have killed the a.s.sailant on the spot. The torches had gone out; but the Viceroy, who had staggered over the pier side, was dimly seen rising up in the knee-deep water, and clearing the hair off his brow with his hand as if recovering himself. His Private Secretary was instantly at his side in the surf, helping him up the bank. 'Burne,' he said quietly, 'they've hit me.' Then, in a louder voice, which was {196} heard on the pier, 'It's all right, I don't think I'm much hurt,' or words to that effect. In another minute he was sitting under the smoky glare of the re-lit torches, on a rude native cart at the side of the jetty, his legs hanging loosely down.

Then they lifted him bodily on to the cart, and saw a great dark patch on the back of his light coat. The blood came streaming out, and men tried to stanch it with their handkerchiefs. For a moment or two he sat up on the cart, then he fell heavily backwards. 'Lift up my head,' he said faintly: and said no more.

They carried him down into the steam launch, some silently believing him dead. Others, angry with themselves for the bare surmise, cut open his coat and vest, and stopped the wound with hastily torn strips of cloth and the palms of their hands. Others kept rubbing his feet and legs. Three supported his head. The a.s.sa.s.sin lay tied and stunned a few yards from him. As the launch shot on in the darkness, eight bells rang across the water from the ships. When it came near the frigate, where the guests were waiting for dinner, and jesting about some fish which they had caught for the meal, the lights in the launch were suddenly put out, to hide what was going on in it. They lifted Lord Mayo gently to his cabin: when they laid him down in his cot, every one saw that he was dead.

To all on board, that night stands out from among all other nights in their lives. A silence, which seemed as if it would never again be broken, {197} suddenly fell on the holiday ship with its 600 souls.

The doctors held their interview with the dead--two stabs from the same knife on the shoulder had penetrated the cavity of the chest, either of them sufficient to cause death. On the guest steamer there were hysterics and weeping; but in the ship where the Viceroy lay, the grief was too deep for outward expression. Men moved about solitarily through the night, each saying bitterly to his own heart, 'Would that it had been one of us.' The anguish of her who received back her dead was not, and is not, for words.

At dawn the sight of the frigate in mourning, the flag at half-mast, the broad white stripe darkened to a leaden grey, all the ropes slackened, and the yards hanging topped in dismal disorder, announced the reality to those on the guest steamer who had persisted through the night in a hysterical disbelief. On the frigate a hushed and solemn industry was going on. The chief officers of the Government of India on board a.s.sembled[2] to adopt steps for the devolution of the Viceroyalty. In a few hours, while the doctors were still engaged on the embalming, one steamer had hurried north with the Member of Council to Bengal, another was ploughing its way with the Foreign Secretary to Madras, to bring up Lord Napier of Ettrick, to Calcutta, as acting Governor-General. UNO AVULSO, NON DEFICIT ALTER. The {198} frigate lay silent and alone. At half-past nine that night, the partially embalmed body was placed in its temporary coffin on the quarter-deck, and covered with the Union Jack.

[Footnote 2: Sir Barrow H. Ellis (Member of Council) presiding, with Mr. C. U. Aitchison, C.S.I., Foreign Secretary, and others.]

The a.s.sa.s.sin received the usual trial and the usual punishment for his crime. Shortly after he had been brought on board, in the launch which carried his victim, the Foreign Secretary asked him why he had done this thing. He only replied, 'By the order of G.o.d.'[3] To the question whether he had any a.s.sociates in his act, he answered, 'Among men I have no accomplice; G.o.d is my partner.'[4] Next morning, at the usual preliminary inquiry before the local magistrate, when called to plead, he said, 'Yes, I did it.'[5] The evidence of the eye-witnesses was recorded, and the prisoner committed for murder to the Sessions-Court. The Superintendent, sitting as chief judge in the Settlement, conducted the trial in the afternoon. The accused simply pleaded 'Not guilty.' Each fact was established by those present when the deed was done; the prisoner had been dragged off the back of the bleeding Viceroy with the reddened knife in his hand. The sentence was to suffer death by hanging. The proceedings were forwarded in the regular way to the High Court at Calcutta for review. On the 20th February this tribunal confirmed the sentence; and on the 11th March the a.s.sa.s.sin was {199} taken to the usual place of execution on Viper Island, and hanged.

[Footnote 3: _Khuda ne hukm diya._]

[Footnote 4: _Mera sharik koi admi nahin; mera sharik khuda hai._]

[Footnote 5: _Han, main ne kiya._]

The man was a highlander from beyond our North-Western Frontier, who had taken service in the Punjab Mounted Police, and had been condemned at Peshawar for slaying his blood-feud enemy on British soil. The Court took a merciful view of the case and sentenced him to transportation for life at the Andamans. In his dying confession, years afterwards, he stated that although he had not struck the blow, he had conspired to do the murder. But the slaying of a hereditary foe in cold blood was no crime in his eyes, and ever since his conviction in 1869, he said he had made up his mind to revenge himself by killing 'some European of high rank.' He therefore established his character as a silent, doggedly well-behaved man; and in due time was set at large as a barber among the ticket-of-leave convicts at Hopetown.

During three years he waited sullenly for some worthy prey. On the morning of the 8th February, when he heard the royal salute, he felt that his time had come, and sharpened a knife. He resolved to kill both the Superintendent and the Viceroy. All through the day the close surveillance gave him no chance of getting to the islands which Lord Mayo visited. Evening came, and his victim landed unexpectedly at his very door. He slipped into the woods, crept up Mount Harriet through the jungle side by side with the Viceroy; then dogged the party down {200} again in the dark: but still got no chance. At the foot he almost gave up hope, and resolved to wait for the morrow. But as the Viceroy stepped quickly forward on the jetty, his grey-suited shoulders towering conspicuous in the torch-light, an impulse of despair thrilled through the a.s.sa.s.sin. He gave up all idea of life, rushed round the guards, and in a moment was on his victim's back.

He was a hillman of great size and strength. When heavily fettered in the condemned cell, he overturned the lamp with his chained ankle, bore down the English sentry by brute strength of body, and wrenched away his bayonet with his manacled hands. He made no pretence of penitence, and was childishly vain of being photographed (for police inquiries in Northern India) as the murderer of a Viceroy. Indeed, some of the above details were only got out of him by a native officer who cunningly begged him for materials for an ode on his deed, to be sung by his countrymen. Neither his name, nor that of his village or tribe, will find record in this book.

The pa.s.sionate outburst of grief and wrath which then shook India, the slow military pomp of the slain Viceroy's re-entry into his capital, the uncontrollable fits of weeping in the chamber where he lay in state, the long voyage of the mourning ship, and the solemn ceremonial with which Ireland received home her dead son--all these were fitting at the time, and are past.

{201} 'Yesterday,' said one of the Dublin papers, 'we saw a State Solemnity vitalised by the subtle spell of national feeling. Seldom are the two things united in an Irish public funeral. When imperial pomp is displayed, the national heart is cold. When the people pay spontaneous homage to the dead, the trappings of the State are absent, its voice mute. Yesterday, for once, this ill-omened rule was broken. Government and the people united in doing honour to an ill.u.s.trious Irishman.' The Indian Press had given vent to the wild sorrow of many races in many languages; the English newspapers were full of n.o.bly expressed tributes; Parliamentary chiefs had their well-chosen utterances for the nation's loss. But Lord Mayo, as he sat on the top of the sea-girt hill and gazed towards the west, where his dear home lay beyond the sunset, would have prized that united mourning of his countrymen above any panegyric. They laid him at last in the secluded graveyard which he had chosen on his own land.