scarred with wounds enough in the front to have done credit to any hero. Sir Hugh Rose paid her the well-deserved tribute which a generous conqueror is always glad to be able to offer. He said, in his general order, that the best man upon the side of the enemy was the woman found dead, the Ranee of Jhansi.'

It is not necessary to describe, with any minuteness of detail, the final spasms of the rebellion. Tantia Topee, the lieutenant of Nana Sahib, was taken prisoner in April 1859, was tried for his share in the Cawnpore massacre, and was hanged like any vulgar criminal. The old King of Delhi was also put on trial, and being found guilty, was sentenced to transportation. He was sent to the Cape of Good Hope, but the colonists there refused to receive him, and this last of the line of the Grand Moguls had to go begging for a prison. He was finally carried to Rangoon, in British Burmah. On December 20, 1858, Lord Clyde, who had been Sir Colin Campbell, announced to the Governor-General that the rebellion was at an end, and on May 1, 1859, there was a public thanksgiving in England for the pacification of India.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE END OF 'JOHN COMPANY

WHILE these things were passing in India, it is needless to say that the public opinion of England was distracted by agitation and by opposing counsels. For a long time the condition of Indian affairs had been regarded in England with something like absolute indifference. In the House of Commons a debate on any question connected with India was as strictly an affair of experts as a discussion on some local gas or water bill. The House in general did not even affect to have any interest in it. The officials who had to do with Indian affairs; the men on the Opposition benches who had held the same offices while their party was in power; these, and two or three men who had been in India, and were set down as crotchety because they professed any concern in its mode of government-such were the politicians who carried on an Indian debate, and who had the House all to themselves while the discussion lasted. The Indian Mutiny startled the public feeling of England out of this state of unhealthy

languor. First came the passion and panic, the cry for blood, the wholesale executions, the blowing of rebels from guns; then came a certain degree of reaction, and some eminent Englishmen were found to express alarm at the very sanguinary methods of repression and of punishment that were in favour among most of our fellow-countrymen in India.

It was during this season of reaction that the famous discussions took place on Lord Canning's proclamation. On March 3, 1858, the proclamation was issued from Allahabad to the chiefs of Oudh, and it announced that, with the exception of the lands then held by six loyal proprietors of the province, the proprietary right in the whole of the soil of Oudh was transferred to the British Government, which would dispose of it in such manner as might seem fitting. The disposal, however, was indicated by the terms of the proclamation. To all chiefs and landholders who should at once surrender to the Chief Commissioner of Oudh it was promised that their lives should be spared, 'provided that their hands are unstained by English blood murderously shed;' but it was stated that, as regards any further indulgence which may be extended to them, and the conditions in which they may hereafter be placed, they must throw themselves upon the justice and mercy of the British Government.' Read by the light of literalness, this proclamation unquestionably seemed to amount to an absolute confiscation of the whole soil of Oudh; for even the favoured landowners who were to retain their properties were given to understand that they retained them by the favour of the Crown and as a reward for their loyalty. Sir James Outram wrote at once to Lord Canning, pointing out that there were not a dozen landholders in Oudh who had not either themselves borne arms against us or assisted the rebels with men or money, and that, therefore, the effect of the proclamation would be to confiscate the entire proprietary right in the province and to make the chiefs and landlords desperate, and that the result would be a 'guerilla war for the extirpation, root and branch, of this class of men, which will involve the loss of thousands of Europeans by battle, disease, and exposure.' Lord Canning consented to insert in the proclamation a clause announcing that a liberal indulgence would be granted to those who should promptly come forward to aid in the restoration of order, and that the Governor-General will be ready to view liberally the claims which they may thus acquire to a restitution of their former rights.'

In truth, it was never the intention of Lord Canning to put in force any cruel and sweeping policy of confiscation. Lord Canning had come to the conclusion that the English Government must start afresh in their dealings with Oudh. He came to the conclusion that the necessary policy for all parties concerned was to make of the mutiny, and the consequent reorganisation, an opportunity not for a wholesale confiscation of the land, but for a measure which should declare that the land was held under the power and right of the English Government. The principle of his policy was somewhat like that adopted by Lord Durham in Canada. It seized the power of a dictator over life and property, that the dictator might be able to restore peace and order at the least cost in loss and suffering to the province and the population whose affairs it was his task to administer. But it may be freely admitted that on the face of it the proclamation of Lord Canning looked strangely despotic. Some of the most independent and liberal Englishmen took this view of it. Men who had supported Lord Canning through all the hours of clamour against him felt compelled to express disapproval of what they understood to be his new policy. It so happened that Lord Ellenborough was then President of the Board of Control, and Lord Ellenborough was a man who always acted on impulse, and had a passion for fine phrases. He had a sincere love of justice, according to his lights; but he had a still stronger love for antithesis. Lord Ellenborough therefore had no sooner received a copy of Lord Canning's proclamation than he despatched upon his own responsibility a rattling condemnation of the whole proceeding. The question was taken up immediately in both Houses of Parliament. Lord Shaftesbury in the House of Lords moved a resolution declaring that the House regarded with regret and serious apprehension the sending of such a despatch, as such a course must prejudice our rule in India by weakening the authority of the Governor-General and encouraging the resistance of rebels still in arms. A similar motion was introduced by Mr. Cardwell in the House of Commons. In both Houses the arraignment of the Ministry proved a failure. Lord Ellenborough at once took upon himself the whole responsibility of an act which was undoubtedly all his own, and he resigned his office. The resolution was therefore defeated in the House of Lords on a division, and had to be withdrawn in a rather ignominious manner in the House of Commons.

Lord Canning continued his policy, the policy which he had marked out for himself, with signal success. Within a few weeks after the capture of Lucknow, almost all the large landowners had tendered their allegiance. Lord Canning impressed upon his officers the duty of making their rule as considerate and conciliatory as possible. The new system established in Oudh was based upon the principle of recognising the Talookdars as responsible landholders, while so limiting their power by the authority of the Government as to get rid of old abuses, and protect the occupiers and cultivators of the soil. Canning, like Durham, only lived long enough to hear the general acknowledgment that he had done well for the country he was sent to govern, and for the country in whose name and with whose authority he went forth.

6

The rebellion pulled down with it a famous old institution, the government of the East India Company. Before the mutiny had been entirely crushed, the rule of John Company' came to an end. The administration of India had, indeed, long ceased to be under the control of the Company as it was in the days of Warren Hastings. A Board of Directors, nominated partly by the Crown and partly by the Company, sat in Leadenhall Street, and gave general directions for the government of India. But the Parliamentary department, called the Board of Control, had the right of reviewing and revising the decisions of the Company. The Crown had the power of nominating the Governor-General, and the Company had only the power of recalling him. This odd and perhaps unparalleled system of double government had not much to defend it on strictly logical grounds; and the moment a great crisis came it was natural that all the blame of difficulty and disaster should be laid upon its head. With the beginning of the mutiny the impression began to grow up in the public mind here that something of a sweeping nature must be done for the reorganisation of India; and before long this vague impression crystallised into a conviction that England must take Indian administration into her own hands, and that the time had come for the fiction of rule by a trading company to be absolutely given up. In the beginning of 1858 Lord Palmerston introduced a bill to transfer the authority of the Company formally and absolutely to the Crown. The plan of the scheme was that there were to be a president and a council of eight members, to be nominated by the Government. There was a large majority in the House of Commons in favour

of the bill; but the agitation caused by the attempt to assassinate the Emperor of the French, and Palmerston's ill-judged and ill-timed Conspiracy Bill, led to the sudden overthrow of his Government. When Lord Derby succeeded to power, he brought in a bill for the better government of India at once; but the measure was a failure. Then Lord John Russell proposed that the House should proceed by way of resolutionsthat is, that the lines of a scheme of legislation should be laid down by a series of resolutions in committee of the whole House, and that upon those lines the Government should construct a measure. The suggestion was eagerly welcomed, and after many nights of discussion a basis of legislation was at last agreed upon. This bill passed into law in the autumn of 1858; and for the remainder of Lord Derby's tenure of power, his son, Lord Stanley, was Secretary of State for India. The bill, which was called 'An Act for the better Government of India,' provided that all the territories previously under the government of the East India Company were to be vested in her Majesty, and all the Company's powers to be exercised in her name. One of her Majesty's principal Secretaries of State was to have all the power previously exercised by the Company, or by the Board of Control. The Secretary was to be assisted by a Council of India, to consist of fifteen members, of whom seven were to be elected by the Court of Directors from their own body, and eight nominated by the Crown. The vacancies among the nominated were to be filled up by the Crown; those among the elected by the remaining members of the Council for a certain time, but afterwards by the Secretary of State for India. The competitive principle for the Civil Service was extended in its application and made thoroughly practical. The military and naval forces of the Company were to be deemed the forces of her Majesty. A clause was introduced declaring that, except for the purpose of preventing or repelling actual invasion of India, the Indian revenues should not without the consent of both Houses of Parliament, be applicable to defray the expenses of any military operation carried on beyond the external frontiers of her Majesty's Indian possessions. Another clause enacted that whenever an order was sent to India directing the commencement of hostilities by her Majesty's forces there, the fact should be communicated to Parliament within three months, if Parliament were then sitting, or if not, within one month after its next meeting. The Viceroy and Governor-General was to be supreme in