e was raised, for instance, during the Viceroyalty of Lord
Northbrook, when Lord Salisbury was Secretary of State, Mr. Bernard
Mallett's memoir of Lord Northbrook contains the following noteworthy
remarks upon the subject by Lord Cramer, who, as Major Baring, was
Private Secretary to Lord Northbrook:--
There can be no doubt that Lord Salisbury's idea was to conduct the
government of India to a very large extent by private correspondence
between the Secretary of State and the Viceroy. He was disposed to
neglect and, I also think, to underrate the value of the views of the
Anglo-Indian officials ... This idea inevitably tended to bring the
Viceroy into the same relation to the Secretary of State for India as
that in which an Ambassador or Minister at a foreign Court stands to the
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs ... Lord Northbrook's general
view was the exact opposite of all this, and I am strongly convinced
that he was quite right ... He recognized the subordinate position of
the Viceroy, but he held that Parliament had conferred certain rights
not only on the Viceroy but on his Council which differentiated them in
a very notable degree from subordinate officials such as those in the
diplomatic service ... Lord Northbrook regarded the form of government
in India as a very wise combination which enabled both purely English
and Anglo-Indian experience to be brought to bear on the treatment of
Indian questions. He did not by any means always follow the Indian
official view; but he held strongly, in the first place, that to put
aside that view and not to accord to the two Councils in London and
Calcutta their full rights was unconstitutional in this sense that,
though the form might be preserved, the spirit of the Act of Parliament
regulating the government of India would be evaded. In the second place,
he held that for a Viceroy or a Secretary of State without Indian
experience to overrule those who possessed such experience was an
extremely unwise proceeding, and savoured of an undue exercise of that
autocratic power of which he himself was very unjustly accused.
NOTE 24
THE DIFFICULTIES OF LOYAL HINDUS.
A Hindu gentleman who has taken a considerable part in the struggle
against Brahmanical disloyalty and intolerance in the Deccan has sent me
a copy of a letter addressed to the _Times of India_ in which he
explains the peculiar difficulties with which loyal Hindus find
themselves confronted:--
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