went from one to another of our military stations,—Cawnpore, no doubt, for one, whenever he passed between the seat of Government and the Upper Provinces,—he made the most penetrating inquiries into the state of mind and temper of the forces, native and European, and insisted with all his authority and influence on the vital importance of cultivating a frank and considerate intercourse with the native soldiery, of all races and persuasions. It was regarded as impossible to distribute the forces as he advised and desired. If his word had been taken for the probable consequences, the effort might have been found practicable; and, among other results, the lives of his two comrades would have been very different from what they have actually been.
After seven years of tremendous work, during which he passed through the labours of all his lieutenants, so far as that his mind was always accessible to them, and his interest engaged in their duty, Lord Dalhousie was worn out; and in another year he came home.
It must have been a remarkable day in his life, when he sat in Government House at Calcutta, hearing the salutes down the river, and the noise outside, which told of the arrival of his successor; and when he went to the door to meet and bring in that successor,—his old comrade Canning!
We know how they met. The worn-out man handed to the fresh man a telegram just arrived, which announced that all was well in Oude—newly annexed.
The consultations of the few following days must have been of the deepest interest,—far transcending anything they had imagined in their Christ Church days, though there are romantic dreams in college of political friendships more potent than rivalries. The freshman had not everything to learn; for he had been a member of the Government which had co-operated with and guided the Governor-General. Their intercourse was not that of guide and disciple so much as that of statesmen in partnership, one of whom was now retiring. When the worn-out one was carried on board ship, he left his successor impressed with the sense of the constant danger of the Europeans in India, till the old terms of confidence with the native troops could be restored, the forces better officered, and the whole more prudently distributed. The new territories were far less dangerous in themselves than as abstracting the securities of the oldest districts: and one of the warnings delivered to Lord Canning by Lord Dalhousie was, that there was more peril in the region about Calcutta than beyond the Sutlej.
We were disappointed of Lord Dalhousie’s accounts of Indian affairs in parliament. There was again much wonder that a Postmaster-General, as before a Vice-President of the Board of Trade, should be sent out to rule hundreds of millions of men: and there was no little vexation that Lord Dalhousie was neither seen nor heard. He was very ill; and soon, when bad news began to arrive from India, he was bitterly blamed, and wildly misjudged. His pride and his humility, his temperament and his judgment, co-operated to keep him silent. He would wait for justice. He would some day show that the mutiny was owing to other causes than any policy of his. He could not endure to thrust his own complaints on public attention at a time of national calamity: and so he sank in dumb submission to misconstruction and self-reliance as to the wisdom as well as the rectitude of his course. No doubt he was well aware that he would be justified by the faithful efforts of his friends, and especially of the successor who could best appreciate and explain his policy.
While he was lying ill, and deprived, as he thought, of the honour due to his rule, there was a time when his sympathies must have been strongly with his two old friends. Lord Elgin was on his voyage as ambassador to China in 1857, when the news of the Indian mutiny reached him. After an hour of anxious meditation, he resolved on a step worthy of a patriotic statesman, and singularly graceful under the circumstances. He decided to suspend his own mission in order to give India the benefit of the regiments he carried with him. Many as had been the pleasant meetings he and Lord Canning had had in the course of their lives, none could have compared in satisfaction with that on the steps of the Government House at Calcutta, when Lord Elgin followed in person the wonderful and welcome news that he was coming up the Ganges with reinforcements, which could not have astonished the natives on the banks more if they had come up from the river or down from the sky. During the weeks of Lord Elgin’s detention in India, before the new batch of forces for China reached Calcutta, his presence and his counsel were infinitely supporting to his old friend. Nothing could be finer than the calm bearing of Lord and Lady Canning from the beginning of the season of horror, when it seemed probable that the last European in India might be slaughtered before any adequate help could arrive. The natives gazed in the great man’s face day by day, and they saw no change. Every evening Lady Canning was seen going out for her airing as if nothing was happening: and when another great man came up from the sea with ships and soldiers, the audacity of rebellion was cowed in Calcutta, and far beyond it.
The horrors of the Cawnpore massacre were enough to have turned the brain of a woman of less calmness and devotedness than Lady Canning; and her husband and his friend must have felt more for her than she did for herself. The officers and their wives and children, whom the Cannings knew face to face, and some of whom they had visited in their cantonments at Cawnpore, were slaughtered like cattle; and the ladies and children cut to pieces and thrown into the well, which I need not describe. Here were realities of life, such as the young Bruce and Canning had little thought of encountering together, in the old college days. Lady Elgin was safe at home; but she was not much the happier for that; and from no friend at home had Lady Canning a more anxious and cordial sympathy.
Lord Elgin proceeded to his great work in China, thinking of anything rather than that he should again be welcomed by his friend Canning on those steps of Government House, and taken
