affording a signal instance of success perfected in a sphere of beneficence.

His own notions of administrative result are thus recorded in a private letter, written after a visit to Ajmere, a detached British district of his, down south amidst the Native States of Rájputána.

'Merwárá is one of our proudest triumphs. The Mers were a wild, ferocious race of plunderers inhabiting that part of the Aravalli Range which stretches from Ajmere to Ûdipur. No neighbouring State could conquer them, they lived on the plunder of the adjacent plains. In the course of about twentyfive years these people have been changed into a race of wellbehaved, peaceful and industrious cultivators, themselves the conservators instead of the disturbers of the public peace. Their hills were covered with impenetrable jungle, but now every valley is full of the richest cultivation. The means by which this has been accomplished were simply these. We first thrashed them soundly, then raised a battalion amongst them (to afford employment); and then by a conciliating, just and moderate rule, secured their confidence. industry has been stimulated by the construction of numerous solid masonry embankments, which hold up large supplies of water, and afford them the certain means of irrigation and cultivation.'

Their

The inland Customs were protected by a cordon of several hundred miles between the southern border of these Provinces and the main group of Native States. The tariff had comprised scores of articles; and the reduction of this number had been pressed by Mr. (afterwards Sir Charles) Trevelyan. The matter was taken up by Lord Ellenborough in 1843, when

་

Thomason as his Secretary drafted the Regulation XIV of that year, which was a complete customs reform, striking off shackles from trade and limiting the dutiable articles to a very small number, the chief article being the salt made in the Native States. Thomason himself, as Lieutenant-Governor, tended the measure with fatherly care. The year after his death, 1854, Mr. M. Hickie, the best witness, thus testified :

'The lamented Lieutenant-Governor evinced for the Customs Department a solicitude which had never been equally shown before, and gave it his support to the last.'

As a coping stone to all his proceedings, Thomason established a Statistical Department, and periodically published state papers of general interest, in the hope of informing public opinion in respect to his measures. Indeed, he gave an impulse to statistical science in northern India, stronger than anything previously known.

The impression which his personality and policy together might make upon some critical observers from the outside, may be illustrated by two quotations from the diaries of Sir Charles Napier in 1849 and in 1850. On November 4th, Sir Charles, then Commander-inChief, writes at Agra :

'Received here by the Lieutenant-Governor Thomason with a kindness of manner which marks this very distinguished member of the Civil Service. Of him I have heard and seen enough to convince me that he is one of the very few I have

met who take really great views for this noble empire, and who has a head to execute great conceptions.'

The following August Sir Charles writes thus:

'About the military police the Lieutenant-Governor told me that he was against their formation, because he saw that they would be done away with again: for the same reason, namely the mischief of change, he opposed Lord Hardinge in abolishing them. He is an able and good man, but wants to polish and clean without change.'

As the apex of a pyramid and the pinnacle to a political structure, Thomason regarded loyalty to the Sovereign. In 1851 he seems to have cast a poetic glance towards 1858, when the Empire passed from the East India Company to the Crown direct. In the former year he wrote thus to a young daughter :—

'The Queen. Loyalty in any form is delightful. I am sure it is the safeguard of our country. It is natural that you should wish to see her august person. We expect the people of India to be attached to the Government, that is, the East India Company. But the thing is impossible. No Oriental people ever yet loved an abstract idea. One must have a personal embodiment of the ruling power. That it is which called forth the enthusiasm of you and your brother, and which acts with extraordinary power on the minds of your fellow-subjects.'

CHAPTER XII

THE END

THE narrative has now reached the year 1853, the year fateful to Thomason. It might at first sight be thought that the shadow of his death, looming near us, hangs as a dark cloud on the horizon. But the premature close of such a life as his should rather be likened to a sunset when the orb of light, having run the appointed course here, seems to dip below our horizon towards a brighter existence beyond.

In the North-Western Provinces he had reached, in 1853, his culminating point of authority and influence after just ten years of government since 1843, and had succeeded in carrying out his policy.

The property of the people in their lands had been securely established. The Record of Rights, with the registration of tenures and interests in the soil, of all kinds and degrees, whether pertaining to owners or cultivators, to landlords or tenants, had, he might fairly believe, been at length completed; and all its multifarious details had been deposited in the public record-offices of the various districts with provision

for yearly rectification according to personal changes. The constitution of those Village Communities, which he loved so well, had been vindicated and upheld. The spectacle of extending cultivation, of expanding trade, of growing population, of increasing domestic comfort in town and country, greeted his observation. The system of irrigation, by canals and other means, which he had persistently recommended to the Governor-General in Council, had been sanctioned, and was far advanced. The development of trunkroads, the arrangements for the safety, convenience, and accommodation of the internal traffic, both of passengers and goods, had been carried out to his satisfaction. The countless works of provincial and local improvement, by which no locality in these broad regions was left untouched, had amazingly prospered under his immediate eye; and a potent impetus had been given to municipal life everywhere. Though fairly well pleased with the progress of superior and intermediate education, he felt that elementary education was still in its infancy; but a substantial foundation on broad lines had been laid, with a certainty of the super-structure being reared.

The opening of the Ganges Canal had been fixed for an early date in 1854, and he was to preside at that historic ceremony, as being the man who of all others had most ably advocated the principle of irrigation, had been the guiding genius of the scheme and the sustaining fulcrum to Sir Proby Cautley, the engineer and author of the project. Men naturally