efficient as a moderating and unifying influence. Accompanied by his wife, he visited all parts of the Dominion. It was his lot in his public life to find himself the colleague—not always an enviable position—of men of great powers and striking individuality. His time in Canada coincided largely with Mr. Joseph Chamberlain’s tenure of the Colonial Office and entirely with Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s long liberal premiership. His relations with both these statesmen were of the happiest character. During his period of office the Dominion enjoyed an era of great commercial and material prosperity. The revenue and population of the country increased by nearly fifty per cent. The most important events were the sudden shifting of population to the extreme north-west, on the opening of the Klondyke gold-mines; the adoption by Canada of the economic policy of preference to the goods of the mother country in the hope, which proved unfulfilled, that Great Britain would grant a reciprocal preference to Canadian products; the raising and sending forth of Canadian forces to take part in the Boer War—a policy for which the governor-general was directly responsible; and the settlement of the Alaska boundary question with America. The last was the only problem during Minto’s time—apart from an indiscreet speech by Lord Dundonald, the commander-in-chief, on an army question —that strained the relations between the Dominion and Great Britain. It was finally settled in October 1903 by six jurists, three British and three American. The award was unfavourable to Canadian claims, and was only agreed upon by the concurrence of Lord Alverstone, one of the British representatives, with the American members of the commission against the two other British members, who were Canadians. The natural, though unwarranted, inference that Alverstone’s decision had been ‘diplomatic rather than judicial’, caused some soreness, but the award was loyally accepted.
Minto left Canada in November 1904. He arrived in India as viceroy 17 November 1905, having thus had less than twelve months’ rest between his two arduous offices. The task before him was no easy one. He succeeded a brilliant viceroy, Lord Curzon, whose reign, ending in storm and stress, left troubled waters for his successor to navigate. Appointed by a unionist government, Minto’s tenure of office was almost exactly conterminous with the secretaryship of state of Mr. John (afterwards Viscount) Morley, the lineal descendant of the philosophical radicals, and a member of the most powerful and advanced liberal cabinet that has ever held office in England. Few could have expected smooth co-operation between colleagues of such widely different antecedents, and many must have surmised that any co-operation at all would be impossible. ‘To speak quite frankly’, wrote the secretary of state, ‘all depends on you and me keeping in step.’ This the two men succeeded in doing, and though they differed on certain matters, such as the agreement with Russia, the deportation of seditious agitators, and the embarrassing interest displayed by ‘impatient idealists’ in the House of Commons (which Minto was inclined to resent), they worked in harmony to the end.
In the Kitchener-Curzon controversy the solution of the late government, which had practically accepted Lord Kitchener’s view, was ratified. The general result was that the purely military control over army matters was strengthened and centralized, and a system was introduced, which was afterwards condemned in unsparing terms by the commission that investigated the break-down of the transport and medical services in Mesopotamia during the European War of 1914-1918. The partition of Bengal was maintained. In 1907 a threefold convention with Russia was concluded affecting Persia, Afghanistan, and Tibet. Here Minto was mainly carrying out a policy imposed upon him by the liberal government at home, and the secretary of state made it quite clear that the policy of an entente with Russia was not an open question, however much the Indian government might be consulted as to the details. Minto’s personal part in carrying the famous reforms of 1909, which made his viceroyalty so notable, was much greater. In these he claimed that the initiative came from himself—a claim which Lord Morley in his Recollections hardly disputes. The reforms, said the viceroy, ‘had their genesis in a note of my own addressed to my colleagues in August 1906. . . . It was based entirely on the views I had myself formed of the position of affairs in India. It was due to no suggestions from home—whether it was good or bad, I am entirely responsible for it.’ It was Lord Minto who took the initiative in the appointment of an Indian to the viceroy’s executive council, and he was in favour of sweeping away the official majority even in the supreme legislative council—but this was too advanced a step for Lord Morley. The in-
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