merits, and it was carried into effect under Montagu's superintendence. The condition of the colony showed immediate improvement, and the passage of time showed the amelioration to be permanent. He also realised the importance of encouraging immigration, and by a system of bounties nearly seventeen hundred settlers were brought into the colony in three years, During the government of Sir Peregrine Maitland [q. v.], Montagu distinguished himself by his able conduct of the financial arrangements necessitated by the Kaffir war. He also rendered the colony signal service by promoting the construction of good roads across the mountain passes into the interior. They were chiefly made by convict labour, and Montagu was successful in introducing a new system, by which the condition of the criminals was much improved. The road carried over Cradock's Kloof was named Montagu Pass, and is now part of the great trunk line between the western and eastern districts. The scene of another great engineering feat at Bain's Kloof, in the mountain range which separates Worcester and the districts beyond from the Cape division, was designated Montagu Rocks.
On the outbreak of the Kaffir war in December 1850 the governor, Sir Harry George Wakelyn Smith [q. v.], was besieged in Fort Cox. Montagu exerted himself to the utmost to raise levies, and rendered the governor assistance of the greatest importance. On 1 May 1851 he was compelled to leave Cape Colony owing to ill-health brought on by overwork. He died in London on 4 Nov. 1853, and was buried in Brompton cemetery on 8 Nov. In April 1823 he married Jessy, daughter of Major-general Edward Vaughan Worseley. Montagu's transfer from Tasmania to the Cape seriously injured his private fortune. He left his family impoverished, and on 23 Oct. 1854 his wife received a civil-list pension of 300l.
[Newman's Biogr. Memoir of John Montagu (with portrait), 1855; Fenton's Hist. of Tasmania, 1884, pp. 134, 139–40, 142, 158–9; Franklin's Narrative of some Passages in the History of Van Dieman's Land during the Last Three Years of Sir John Franklin's Administration, privately printed, 1845; West's Hist. of Tasmania, Launceston, 1852, i. 225–7; Theal's Hist. of South Africa.]
MONTGOMERY, Sir HENRY CONYNGHAM, second baronet (1803–1878), Madras civil servant, was the eldest son of Sir Henry Conyngham Montgomery (d. 1830). The father served in India for many years as a cavalry officer, commanding the governor-general's bodyguard during a part of the time when Richard Colley (Marquis Wellesley) [q. v.] was governor-general; he was created a baronet on 3 Oct. 1808, and married Sarah Mercer (d. 1854), daughter of Leslie Grove of Grove Hall, co. Donegal, The Montgomery family were a branch of the Scottish Montgomeries, of whom the Earl of Eglintoun is the head, and had settled in Ireland in co. Donegal.
The subject of this article was educated at Eton and at the East India College, Haileybury, to which institution he was nominated as a student on 1 Aug. 1821. He did not, however, go out to India until 1825, having been permitted to leave Haileybury early in 1822 for the purpose of serving as assistant private secretary on thestaffof Lord Wellesley, who was at that time lord-lieutenant of Ireland. There seems at one time to have been an intention that the young student should give up his Indian writership and remain on Lord Wellesley's staff, on the chance of the latter being able to provide for him in the public service in England; but on the advice of Sir John Malcolm [q. v.], a friend of his father, who went over to Dublin for the purpose of combating the idea, the intention was abandoned, and early in 1824 Montgomery returned to Haileybury, passing through college at the end of that year.
In 1825 he proceeded to India, reaching Madras on 3 Nov. In those days it was the custom for the young civil servants to remain for two years at the presidency town, prosecuting their studies in the native languages. Montgomery was therefore not appointed to the public service until 16 Jan. 1827, when he was gazetted assistant to the principal collector and magistrate of Nellore. On 31 Jan. 1830 he succeeded his father as second baronet. He subsequently served in various grades of the revenue department in the districts of Tanjore, Salem, Tinnevelly, and Bellary, completing his revenue service in the provinces as collector of Tanjore. In all these districts he had made his mark as an able and careful administrator, and the result was that in 1843 he was sent on a special commission to the Rajahmundry (now called the Godavery) district to inquire into the causes of its impoverished condition and to suggest a remedy. It was upon his recommendation, based upon his experience in Tanjore, that Captain (afterwards Sir Arthur) Cotton [q. v. Suppl.] was deputed to Rajahmundry to investigate the question of utilising the waters of the Godavery for the purpose of irrigating the delta of that river, as had been done in Tanjore ami Trichinopolyin the case of the Cavery and Coleroon rivers.
