usually chose young men, as being less encumbered and more manageable than their seniors, and less likely to be imbued with prejudices derived from the dark ages of our earlier administration. With these young officers he kept up constant private intercourse, and thus instilled into them his own views, and animated them by his own hearty temperament. Where he reposed his confidence, he did so without reserve. He received the opinions of those employed under him with respect; looked after their interests, defended their proceedings, and fought their battles as if they had been his own. The result was that in eight years after the enactment of Regulation IX. of 1833, he was able to report to the Government that the Settlement, with some immaterial exceptions, was completed; and that he was at liberty to return to that native land, from which he had been thirty-three years separated.'

There is something pathetic in the closing paragraph of his final report in the beginning of 1842. After stating the contrast between that date and 1830 in the administration of the land revenue-the condition of the agricultural population-the feeling of the people—the toil, effort, and anxious care with which this change has been effected; '-he concludes thus, 'I am now about to quit the service, and my only desire is that the good which has been effected may be maintained.' He is evidently apprehensive, but his forebodings would have vanished could he have foreseen that in Thomason's hands the work would be even more than maintained, till it reached its complete fulfilment.

In this Settlement, while the tax-payers were to

have the full benefit of all improvement within the term, it was felt that in the event of severe drought or calamity of season, or other extraordinary misfortune, the Government must share the loss with the people, and that remissions of revenue in such cases must be allowed. Hardly had Merttins Bird completed the Settlement in the Provinces, when this principle was put to an extreme test. The summer rainfall of 1836 almost totally failed in the central and western tracts of these territories. Thereby the harvest of that autumn was ruined, and the sowings for the ensuing spring harvest rendered impossible. The horror of the situation can be realized only by those who know what the earth in that region is after the glaring sun and scorching winds of spring and early summer, and what it becomes if the normal rains of midsummer fail to descend. Some ten to fifteen millions of the population were more or less grievously affected ; dreadful distress and widespread mortality ensued; many grain riots and agrarian disturbances occurred. Extensive relief was undertaken by the Government and by charitable agencies. About one million persons were employed in relief works. The total cost of these humane operations amounted to nearly half a million sterling. The effect on the land tax which had just been fixed by the Settlement was still more grave, for about a million sterling of revenue was remitted that year. The rainfall of the following year restored plenty, but the effects of the famine on the people were felt for some time. Out of this evil

some notable good was educed, namely this, that the attention of the Government was forcibly drawn to the necessity of providing artificial irrigation with canal works on a commensurate scale. This became one of the cardinal points in the policy which Thomason pursued as Lieutenant-Governor.

CHAPTER VII

THE LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR

THE Honourable James Thomason, as LieutenantGovernor, assumed charge of the government of the North-Western Provinces from Mr. (afterwards Sir George) Clerk, in December, 1843. The constitution of these Provinces as a Lieutenant-Governorship in 1835, was the first instance of the kind that had occurred in British India. The territories, being in the Bengal Presidency, were technically under the government of the Governor-General in Council, whose deputy for actual administration was the LieutenantGovernor. The Governors of the two Presidencies, Madras and Bombay, being appointed by the East India Directors with the assent of the Crown, were indeed under the supreme authority of the GovernorGeneral, but they were not subordinate to him quite in the same way as the Lieutenant-Governor who had been appointed by him. Nevertheless, the position of the Lieutenant-Governor was sufficiently secure to sustain that independence of thought and of opinion which is essential to the conduct of large affairs. In the first place, almost the entire patronage of the civil government was entrusted to him. But

for nearly all the important offices, the choice must be made from among the Covenanted Civil Servants. The function here was not so much that of patronage as of jealously watched selection. There was indeed a goodly number of appointments open to military officers, to Europeans belonging to what was then styled the Uncovenanted Service, and to Natives of India-in all which cases the power of appointing did in some degree resemble patronage. Below these, in the lesser appointments, which were very numerous and which were open to the Natives, the patronage was vested in the local officers, generally Covenanted Civil Servants-subject always to the control of the Lieutenant-Governor.

His government was almost entirely civil; it had nothing to do with the troops stationed within its territory, or with cantonments, or with forts. The public works, comprising the trunk roads, canals and other large works of irrigation, were not under him, but were managed by a body styled the Military Board. Such were the primitive arrangements of that day for the department of public works, which was indeed in its infancy. Railways and electric telegraphs had not as yet been thought of practically. There was no local legislature in these Provinces. Indeed, the idea of legislative councils had not been formed for any part of India. Legislation had been conceived only as a branch of the executive government of India, and was conducted not at all in public, but in camerâ or inside the cabinet. Nevertheless, there were laws thus framed