hority and prestige of the Viceregal office in India. Within a
few weeks of Lord Minto's arrival in India the Unionist Government who
had appointed him fell, and a Liberal Government came into power who
could not be expected to display any special consideration for their
predecessors nominee unless he showed himself to be in sympathy with
their policy. Lord Minto's friends can therefore very reasonably argue
that his chief anxiety was, quite legitimately, to avoid any kind of
friction with the new Secretary of State which might have led to the
supersession of another Viceroy so soon after the unfortunate crisis
that had ended in Lord Curzon's resignation. If this was the object that
Lord Minto had in view, his attitude has certainly been most successful,
for Lord Morley has repeatedly testified to the loyalty and cordiality
with which the Viceroy has constantly co-operated with him. That the
Secretary of State and the Viceroy have, nevertheless, not always seen
eye to eye with regard to the interference of the India Office in the
details of Indian administration appears clearly from a telegram read
out by Lord Morley himself in the House of Lords on February 23, 1909.
In the course of this telegram, which acknowledged in the most generous
terms the strong support of the Secretary of State in all dealings with
sedition, the Viceroy made the following curious admission:--"The
question of the control of Indian administration by the Secretary of
State, mixed up as it is with the old difficulties of centralization, we
may very possibly look at from different points of view." The curtain
fell upon this restrained attempt to assert what Lord Minto evidently
regarded eighteen months ago as his legitimate position, and to the
public eye it has not been raised again since then. But in India
certainly the fear is often expressed in responsible quarters that,
notwithstanding the courageous support which Lord Morley has given to
legislative measures for dealing with the worst forms of seditious
agitation, their effect has been occasionally weakened by that
interference from home in the details of Indian administration of which
Lord Minto's telegram contains the only admission known to the public.

It is difficult to believe that Lord Minto's position would not have
been stronger had he not allowed the Governor-General in Council to
suffer such frequent eclipses. The Governor-General's Council during
Lord Minto's tenure of office may