Outram's grave report in 1854, it was left to Lord Dalhousie to carry into execution in 1856, the threat made by Lord Hardinge in 1847.

One of the most beneficent measures of Lord Hardinge's administration was the impetus given to the construction of irrigation canals. It had surely been the irony of fate that had made of Lord Ellenborough, who was the immediate predecessor in office of Lord Hardinge, a man of war instead of that man of peace he had professed to be, and therefore unable to attend to the internal development of the country. He had been pressed to continue the work of construction of the great Ganges Canal; but he had done nothing, as, apart from the financial difficulties his war policy had entailed, he had not been fully impressed with the practicability of the scheme, and had been rather inclined moreover to treat it as chimerical. Lord Hardinge, however, fully realized its importance and promoted its construction by every means within his power. Those who have been privileged to travel by the side of this great canal from Hurdwar, where its waters are first diverted from the mighty Ganges, to Rurki, where it begins to flow on a more level surface, and to see the magnificent engineering work that has been achieved, can appreciate the difficulties that had to be overcome. In a recent number of Blackwood, Colonel G. R. Scott Moncrieff, a name distinguished in the engineering world, has thus written: The mightiest work of all is the Solani Aqueduct, where the canal crosses a valley about three miles in width, and there, not only in the rainy season, but at all times, one may see the swift stream of the canal above and the Solani river below. All these great works were carried out between 1846 and 1854, at a time when there were no railways in the country, and when the devices of modern machinery and other adjuncts to engineering works were unattainable. The chief engineer was Sir Proby Cautley, an artillery officer. He and his lieutenants had to devise their great works entirely from local resources, and they certainly succeeded in producing a monumental work, which has aroused the admiration of all who have seen it. A young civil officer who has since risen to be the Lieutenant-Governor of a Province, said to me years ago, 'I would sooner have been the man

6

who engineered the Ganges Canal than the greatest Governor-General that ever ruled India: the work of the Civil Governor passes away, the work of the other benefits every generation that comes after him.' The amount expended by the State on irrigation works in India, which represents as it were its insurance premium against famine, has been no less than £32,000,000. But the Irrigation Commission that was formed under the Government of Lord Curzon, and of which Sir C. Scott Moncrieff was the president, recommended the further enormous sum to be spent on the same beneficent work, of £30,000,000. An impetus has thus been given to important irrigation works all over the country. The result will be an eternal monument to the beneficence of British rule.

There were other matters also that called for the attention and care of the Governor-General during these concluding years of his administration. He did all in his power to put down the crime of infanticide in the Native States. His first procedure was to endeavour to persuade the princes to declare these inhuman sacrifices illegal: he then instructed the British Residents to see that the edicts issued by the Rulers were carried out, under pain, in case of their refusal to do so, of his extreme displeasure. That there was need for action may be shown from a story which the Maharaja Dhulip Singh is recorded to have told Lord Hardinge's biographer; that he had actually seen, when he was a child at Lahore, his sisters put into a sack and thrown into the river. Lord Hardinge also tried to improve the sanitation of Calcutta in order to make it a more habitable place for Europeans than it had long had the reputation of being. He had the transit duties between the Native States in Central India and on the Sutlej abolished. He also encouraged the cultivation of tea in Assam, an industry which has done more than anything else to develop that great region, now an integral part of the Province of Eastern Bengal. The preservation of ancient monuments was also a matter that engaged Lord Hardinge's attention. Thus repairs were undertaken of the exquisite and historic Taj Mahal at Agra, and the graceful tower in the neighbourhood of Delhi known as the Kutb-Minar. It has been left to a later Viceroy, Lord Curzon, to do still more for the

preservation of India's ancient monuments, and for the beautifying of their surroundings. Thus what was formerly a waste in the immediate neighbourhood of the Taj has been created into a beautiful park, not unworthy to take rank among the earlier creations of the Mogul Emperors. In the matter of Military Reform, Lord Hardinge was called on to reduce the Native Army by some 50,000 men. He also took measures to place the artillery in an efficient state. Certain boons in the direction of increased wound pensions, hutting money and free rations in hospital for wounded men, that he was able to secure for the ranks of the Indian Army, gave him as great a claim to be called The Sepoy's Friend' in India, as his reforms in England had given him to be styled 'The Soldier's Friend'.

The words which Lord Hardinge wrote to his wife on the eve of his retirement from office, reveal the spirit which animated him in all he undertook: 'I must shrink from no duty to a public which has rewarded me so largely, and must maintain to the last, the principle which I exact from my subordinates that public interests ought not to be neglected. Whilst war and bankruptcy threatened the State, I remained in India: now that peace is established and prosperity reviving, I return to my own country with the consciousness that I have done my duty.' Shortly before his departure from India, the European and Native inhabitants of Calcutta presented him with an address which was thus worded: The inhabitants of Calcutta declare their sense of the distinguished services rendered by your Lordship to the country, and they express their wish to have some personal memorial of one who has received the highest honours from the Sovereign, and the thanks of his countrymen while ruling this vast Empire.' The outcome of this wish was a statue of Lord Hardinge erected on the great Calcutta Maidan. Lord Hardinge remained long enough in Calcutta to welcome his distinguished successor, Lord Dalhousie. It is recorded that the latter's slim figure and handsome countenance were narrowly scanned by the crowd assembled round the steps of Government House to welcome the new Ruler and they asked themselves, 'What manner of man is this?' It was not to be long before he had given an answer to these silent

questionings. Lord Hardinge finally left India in January, 1848. He died in 1856, at the age of seventy-two.

The General Order which was signed by the Queen herself, and issued to the Army in October of the same year, may fittingly conclude this sketch of a great and good man: 'The Queen has a high and grateful sense of Lord Hardinge's valuable and unremitting services, and in his death deplores the loss of a true and devoted friend. No Sovereign ever possessed a more honest and faithful Counsellor, or a more loyal, fearless, and devoted servant.'

OSWELL III

CHAPTER VIII

THE STRUGGLE FOR INDIA BY THE EUROPEAN

NATIONS

DUPLEIX AND THE FRENCH, 1741-1809

BEFORE coming to the great struggle between England and France, which, having originally been for commercial supremacy alone, developed into one for political ascendancy in Asia, under the initiative of that_great French patriot, Dupleix, Director-General of French Possessions in India, it will be necessary to say something about early European enterprise in the East, and the rivalry between the maritime nations of Europe to secure the commerce of the East. The earliest visit of a European to India that history has recorded was that made by the great world-conqueror, Alexander the Great, who, in his ambition to find more worlds to conquer, arrived in India in the year 327 B.C. Though eager to carry his conquests up to the Ganges, he was unable to get further than the Punjab, which he wrested out of the hands of its Hindu Rulers. The importance of his visit lies in the fact that with it commences the external history of India. It marks that first contact of Europe with India which was destined to play such an important part in the after-history of that great country. Then came an interval of nearly 1,800 years, before any fresh intercourse took place between India and Europe. There is a tradition, but it does not appear to be more than a tradition, of King Alfred having sent a messenger to India in the year 883 A.D. to visit the shrine of a Christian Saint in Southern India. Some adventurous travellers also occasionally visited the country during this long interval, and brought back with them stories of powerful Indian kingdoms and of untold wealth. But for all practical purposes India was an unknown land, and there was no intercourse between that country and any European nation. It was the discovery by the great Portuguese explorer, Vasco di Gama, in the year 1498 A.D.