PRINCE OF WALES' TOUR.

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gave great pleasure to the natives of India , and introduced atone of personal loyalty into our relations with the feudatoryprinces.

Lord Mayo reformed several of the great branches of the Lordadministration, created an Agricultural Department, and intro- M ay°’sduced the system of Provincial Finance. The impulse to p rov ; nc 'j a ilocal self-government given by the last measure has done finance,much, and will do more, to develop and husband the revenuesof India ; to quicken the sense of responsibility among theEnglish administrators; and to awaken political life among thepeople. Lord Mayo also laid the foundation for the reformof the Salt Duties. He thus enabled his successors to abolish Customs-the old pernicious customs-lines which walled off Province ll , ne f. . ,

1 . . abolished.

from Province, and strangled the trade between British Indiaand the Feudatory States. He developed the materialresources of the country by an immense extension of roads,railways, and canals, thus carrying out the beneficent system ofPublic Works which Lord Dalhousie had inaugurated. Lord Mayo ’s splendid vigour defied alike the climate and the vasttasks which he imposed on himself. He .anxiously and labori-ously studied with his own eyes the wants of the farthestProvinces of the Empire. But his life of noble usefulness was Lordcut short by the hand of an assassin, in the convict settlement sof the Andaman Islands , in 1872. 1872.’

His successor was Lord Northbrook, whose ability found Lordpre-eminent scope in the department of finance. 1 During hisViceroyalty, a famine which threatened Lower Bengal in 1874 1872-76.was successfully obviated by a vast organization of State relief;the Maratha Gaekwdr of Baroda was dethroned in 1875for misgovernment and disloyalty, but his dominions werecontinued to a child selected from the family ; and the Prince Prince ofof Wales made a tour through the country in the cold weather ^ u a r lesof 1875-76. The presence of His Royal Highness evoked a 1875-76.passionate burst of loyalty never before known in the annals ofBritish India. The feudatory chiefs and ruling houses ofIndia felt for the first time that they were incorporated intothe Empire of an ancient and a splendid dynasty.

1 It would be unsuitable to attempt anything beyond the barest sum-mary of events in India since the death of Lord Mayo in 1872. Four ofthe five Viceroys who have ruled during the past twenty years are,happily, still living (1892); their policy forms the subject of keen con-temporary criticism; and the administrators, soldiers, and diplomatistswho gave effect to that policy still hold possession of the scene.