the first Canadian contingent was organized with such promptitude at Valcartier camp, and sent overseas. He was responsible for the arming of the Canadian forces with the Ross rifle, which, after his retirement, was replaced by the Lee-Enfield. His turbulence, however, brought him into frequent controversy with his colleagues, and in November 1916 the Canadian premier demanded his resignation. Hughes continued to give an independent support to the conservative administration, and afterwards to the union government, but hard work had sapped his strength, and he died of pernicious anæmia at Lindsay, Ontario, 24 August 1921.
Hughes was created K.C.B. in August 1915, while in England; in 1916 he was promoted lieutenant-general. He married twice: first, in 1872 Caroline (died 1874), daughter of Major Isaac Preston, of Vancouver, British Columbia; secondly, in 1875 Mary, second daughter of Harvey William Burk, M.P., of Bowmanville, Ontario. He was survived by her and by two daughters and one son, Major-General Garnet Hughes.
Hughes was well made and handsome; in his youth he had been a famous runner and lacrosse player. He was of splendid energy, and had much personal charm, but was too undisciplined and impetuous to be an easy colleague, either in political or military life.
[The Times, 25 August 1921; Toronto Mail and Globe, 24 August 1921; H. J. Morgan, Canadian Men and Women of the Time (second edition), 1912; Canadian Hansard.]
HUME, ALLAN OCTAVIAN (1829–1912), Indian civil servant and ornithologist, son of the radical politician, Joseph Hume [q.v.], was born 6 June 1829 and educated at Haileybury College and London University. At the age of twenty he joined the Bengal civil service, and was appointed in 1849 to the North-West Provinces. As district officer of Etawah during the Mutiny he showed the highest courage and resolution in circumstances of great peril, and, when forced to retire from his district, distinguished himself as a soldier in the field. For these services he was awarded the C.B. (1860). He was engaged in district work in the North-West Provinces for eighteen years, until, through the commissionership of customs in those provinces, he found his way to the notice of the viceroy, the Earl of Mayo, and in 1870 was appointed secretary in the revenue and agricultural department of the central government. In 1879, however, after some years of service at Simla and Calcutta, he was sent back to his own province under a cloud. His biographer, Sir William Wedderburn, who shared Hume's political views, declares that his friend's offence was over-boldness in expressing opinions unpalatable to the ruling powers. The official version of the rupture has not been published. Hume became a member of his provincial board of revenue, and retired from the civil service in 1882.
Toward the end of his official career Hume became convinced that India needed a parliamentary system, and that only thus could the economic condition of the masses be bettered and the discontent among the educated classes allayed. On 1 March 1883 he addressed a circular letter to the graduates of the Calcutta University, whom he termed ‘the salt of the land’. He asked them to ‘scorn personal ease and make a resolute struggle to secure greater freedom for themselves and their country, a more impartial administration, a larger share in the management of their own affairs’. The Marquess of Ripon [q.v.] was then viceroy and, in sympathy with the aspirations of educated India, was inaugurating the beginnings of popular control in the shape of municipal and district boards which were to contain a considerable elective element. But before his departure the political atmosphere had been embittered by the Ilbert Bill controversy. In December 1884 Lord Ripon was succeeded by the Earl of Dufferin, with whom, according to Wedderburn, Hume took counsel as to the desirability of organizing a representative body of educated men who would explain popular needs. The viceroy approved of the project, considering that good government would be promoted by the existence of a responsible organization which could claim to voice public opinion. The incident finds no place in the official Life of Lord Dufferin by Sir Alfred Lyall, although there is some support for Wedderburn's account of the viceroy's views [see Sir A. C. Lyall's Life of the Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, 1905, ii, 152]. Dufferin, however, never contemplated any relaxation of the British hold on the supreme administration of India.
When an association of prominent Hindus of the professional classes, under Hume's guidance, convoked the first session of the ‘Indian National Congress’ at Bombay in December 1885, the government adopted an attitude of
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