match in the Bengal Civil Service. Such is the man whom the community propose to honour at the time of his departure."

At a public meeting of the inhabitants of Calcutta and the Suburbs held by the British Indian Association in honour of Sir J. P. Grant on the 16th April 1862, a Resolution was carried unanimously, acknowledging his eminent services during his administration of Bengal. The address which was presented may be quoted as summarizing the views of the native community.

"A momentous social revolution in the history of Bengal has been effected under the auspices of your rule, establishing the liberty of the subject beyond question to the full exercise of his rights of labour or property. In the prosecution of your just and enlightened policy on this vitally important question, Your Honor naturally met with much personal opposition, misrepresentation and obloquy, but the calm. courage and the lofty sense of duty and justice with which you nobly pursued your object, not only materially advanced the righteous cause in which you were embarked, but greatly enhanced the public respect for your administration.

Amidst the cares and anxieties of watching and directing this important social revolution, you were not unmindful of other pressing administrative reforms and improvements. By multiplying magisterial sub-divisions in some of the leading districts of the country, you have struck with awe the oppressive and the evil-disposed, and lent the weak and helpless an effective shield of protection. By the enforcement of strict discipline, you have impressed the subordinate authorities with a just sense of their duty, and carried out the objects of many hitherto neglected Acts of the Legislature. By a wise, thoughtful and ingenious distribution of the Local Public Works funds, you have given the country an earnest of improvement in the multiplication of roads and communications-as important to the cause of commerce and intercommunication as beneficial to the people. By earnest intercessions with the Supreme Government, you have opened a prospect of financial justice to Bengal hitherto unknown. By a liberal construction of the policy of the Government of India, regarding the sale of waste lands and the redemption of the land-tax, you have recommended arrangements which, if adopted, will secure important advantages to capitalists. By these and other similar measures, you have diffused over the country elements of progress and prosperity which, it is hoped, under the fostering care of your successors, will not fail to produce the desired fruits.

Opinions may differ regarding particular acts of Your Honor's Government, but we unhesitatingly declare that your general administra

tion has won the respect and the lasting gratitude of the people of this country. Nor have your claims to the approbation and support of Her Majesty's Government been the less fully recognised. More than once was that approbation expressed in the Imperial Parliament by Her Majesty's Indian Minister, and, just at the termination of your administration, we have had a solid proof of the estimation in which your services are held by Her Gracious Majesty in the bestowal on you of the high honours of the Bath.

We deeply regret, Hon'ble Sir, that ill health has compelled you to close prematurely your administration of Bengal."

While these were the sentiments of the native community it is not surprising that Sir J. P. Grant should have been unpopular among the planters and the non-official community. He had been compelled by circumstances to express himself as opposed to their interests. It was written of him that his lot was cast in the thorny times of the Bengal indigo troubles, and that, because he could not and would not struggle against what he saw to be inevitable, he passed the latter part of his Governorship under a ceaseless chorus of reproach and execration. The gravity of the crisis. in 1860 may be judged by the remark attributed to Lord Canning, "that it caused him more anxiety than he had felt since the fall of Delhi. Much of the best work done by Sir J. P. Grant had been performed by him as Member of Council. It was in that capacity that he introduced and carried the Hindu Widows' remarriage Bill, one of his best titles to fame-and other important legislative measures. But these were overlooked or ignored when the controversy arose about the cultivation of indigo.

Sir, J. P. Grant's name was much considered in connection with the vacancy in the Governorship of Bombay caused by Sir G. Clerk's retirement in 1862, and it was understood in some quarters that he was to be appointed: but the choice eventually fell upon Sir Bartle Frere, of the Bombay Civil Service, then a Member of the GovernorGeneral's Council.

Libel case.

Soon after Sir J. P. Grant's retirement, the Chief Justice of the (new) High Court, Sir Barnes Peacock, delivered judgment in the libel case, John MacArthur 7. Sir J. P. Grant. MacArthur had been tried and acquitted in the Supreme Court on a charge of being accessory to a murder committed in the factory in his charge. Papers relating to the

case were published by the Government of Bengal in a certain volume of "Selections No. III." Sir B. Peacock found that the defendant had published defamatory matter against Mr. MacArthur without any legal ground or cause, that there was an absence of "malice in fact" on the part of the defendant, and that no damage was proved to have been sustained by the plaintiff he was therefore awarded nominal damages of one rupee without costs.

Jamaica.

After resigning the Bengal Civil Service in 1862, Sir J. P. Grant was Governor of Jamaica from 1866 to 1874. A few words may be added concerning the work done by him there. He found the Colony in a most unprosperous condition, the result of years of mismanagement and of the recent outbreak among the negroes and its consequences. For many years the finances had shown an excess of expenditure over revenue, that of the year preceding his arrival there amounting to £85,656. In 2 years he was able to show a surplus of £5,599, and he was never without an annual surplus during the whole period of his government. This was not the result of increased taxation, but of improved administration, and was concurrent with a largely increased expenditure on public objects of every kind. The experience gained in Bengal was well utilized. A new Revenue system was established, a new Police organised, the Judicial establishment was re-constituted, District Courts were introduced; a Government Savings Bank was opened; elementary Education, the postal system, the supervision of roads, were all re-organised; a Medical Department was created; a Public Works Department was constituted, the Public Buildings repaired, and hospitals, police stations, and other necessary public buildings were constructed. Perhaps no more speedy improvement ever resulted in any community from the application of sound political and fiscal principles, than was the case in Jamaica under the administration of Sir John Peter Grant.

He died on the 6th January 1893 at the age of 85..

He married, in 1835, Henrietta, daughter of Trevor Chichele Plowden, B.C.S., and left 5 sons and 3 daughters. Two of the sons, John Peter and Trevor John Chichele were in the Bengal branch of the Civil Service; another son, George, belonged to the Bombay Civil Service. Of the daughters one married Sir James Colvile, the Chief Justice, and another married General Sir Richard Strachey, R.E, G.C.S.I.

APPENDIX. *

MINUTE BY THE LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR OF BENGAL ON THE REPORT OF THE INDIGO COMMISSION.

The system has been long unsound.

The records of Government show that the system of indigo manufacture in the Province of Bengal proper has been unsound from a very early time. Whilst in all other trades all parties concerned have been bound together by the usual commercial ties of mutual interest, in this one trade, in this one province, the indigo manufacture has always been a remarkable exception to this natural and healthy state of things. It would be doing injustice, both to the present race of planters and to the administration of later years, not to admit, at the outset of any discussion of the case between the indigo manufacturer and the producer of the raw plant, who are now at issue, that there has been in later years a gradual, but what is now a marked and great diminution of the gravest and most striking cases of abuse and oppression, as well as of the most serious sorts of affray, connected with this business. But, substantially, the system at the beginning of the present year was as false as ever it had been.

2.

Abuses in 1810.

In the year 1810, the licenses granted to 4 planters to reside in the interior of the country were withdrawn, on account of the severe ill-usage of the natives proved against them; and the Governor-General-in-Council found it necessary to issue a Circular in that year, of date the 13th. of July, from which the following is an extract :

"The attention of Government has recently been attracted in a particular manner, to abuses and oppressions committed by Europeans, who are established as indigo planters in different parts of the country. Numerous as those abuses and oppressions have latterly been, the Right Hon'ble the Governor-General-in-Council is still willing to hope that this imputation does not attach to the character of the indigo planters generally, considered as a body or class of people. The facts, however, which have recently been established against some individuals of that class before the Magistrates and the Supreme Court of Judicature are of so flagrant a nature, that the Governor-General-in-Council considers it an act of indispensable public duty to adopt such measures as appear to him, under existing circumstances, best calculated to prevent the repeti

* See page 191,

tion of offences equally injurious to the English character and to the peace and happiness of our native subjects.

The offences to which the following remarks refer, and which have been established beyond all doubt or dispute against individual indigo planters, may be reduced to the following heads :

Ist., -Acts of violence, which, although they amount not in the legal sense of the word to murder, have occasioned the death of natives. 2nd., -The illegal detention of natives in confinement, especially in stocks, with a view to the recovery of balances alleged to be due from them or for other causes.

3rd, Assembling, in a tumultuary manner, the people attached to their respective factories, and others, and engaging in violent affrays with other indigo planters.

4th, Illicit infliction of punishment, by means of a rattan or otherwise, on the cultivators or other natives."

3. The Magistrates were directed by the same Circular to cause stocks kept by planters to be destroyed; to report to Government cases of illegal corporal punishment, not sufficient to warrant a commitment to the Supreme Court; and to impress on all Europeans who wished to continue to reside in, the country the necessity of abstaining from illtreatment of the people.

4. In a subsequent Circular, of the 22nd. of July 1810, Magistrates were directed to report all proved instances of planters who were convicted of "obliging the raiyats who reside in the vicinity of their respective factories to receive advances, and of adopting other illicit and improper means to compel them to cultivate indigo"; the GovernorGeneral-in-Council observing that he had reason to believe that this was a "habit" of the planters.

5. In the following year, viz. on the 28th. of May 1811, the Government having received a proposal from the Magistrate of Jessore, to the effect that indigo factories should not be allowed to be established within 6 or 8 miles of each other, negatived the proposal for reasons expressed in the following terms :

"The natural tendency of a such a restriction as that recommended by you would be to give a single individual an absolute monopoly of the produce of all the lands appropriated to the cultivation of indigo over a tract of country comprising many thousand bighas round his factory, and, consequently, to place the whole body of raiyats within that tract in a state of complete subjection to that individual with respect to the price of the commodity.

Under these circumstances, the raiyat would be precluded from deriving that benefit from the cultivation of this valuable article which is