the loss is not only a public one, but a private and
personal calamity likewise. Both of these distinguished men were my
contemporaries, both, I believe I may without presumption say, my
intimate friends. It is a singular coincidence that three successive
Governors-General of India should have stood towards each other in
this relationship of age and intimacy. One consequence is that the
burden of governing India has devolved upon us respectively at
different periods of our lives. Lord Dalhousie when named to the
Government of India was, I believe, the youngest man who had ever been
appointed to a situation of such high responsibility and trust; Lord
Canning was in the prime of life; and I, if I am not already on the
decline, am at least nearer to the verge of it than either of my
contemporaries who have preceded me. Indeed, when I was leaving
England for India, Lord Ellenborough, who is now, alas! the only
surviving ex-Governor-General of India, said to me, 'You are not a
very old man, but depend upon it, you will find yourself by far the
oldest man in India.'

Passing from these personal topics, after noticing the good fortune which
had placed the formation of the railway system of India in the hands of a
man who had in a special manner made that subject his own, he proceeded to
speak of the future of Indian Railways, insisting especially on a point
about which he felt very strongly, the necessity of their ceasing to depend
on a Government guarantee, and adding some practical hints for their
development and extension:

[Sidenote: Future of Indian railways.]

But, Gentlemen, however interesting it may be to refer to the past and
to dwell upon the present, the most important questions which we have
to answer relate to the future, and the most important of all in my
opinion is this--to what agency are we henceforward to look if we
would desire to extend as widely as possible, to all parts of India,
the benefit of this potent instrument of modern civilisation? I have
no hesitation in affirming at once, in answer to this question, that
we must not look to an indefinite extension of a system of Government
guarantees for the accomplishment of this object. In the first place,
it would be wholly unjustifiable for any one object, however
important, to place such a strain upon our finances as this policy
would involv