Mr. George Curzon is

was still only Viceroy-designate. thus the 7th commoner who since 1805 has been selected to rule India. Elevation to the peerage followed in his, as in several of the other cases, as a natural appanage of the appointment. Sir Henry Norman when he declined a Viceroyalty undoubtedly also resigned a peerage. Whether he would have proved a successful Viceroy, need not now be discussed. As a young soldier he rendered good service before Delhi in 1857, and was nominated while yet a young man to be the Military Member of the Viceregal Council. In that capacity he had much to do with the organization of the Indian Staff Corps, and with the many changes which the transfer of India from the H. E. I. Company to the Crown entailed on the army of that dependency. A great many of those changes, as well as the manner of introducing them, were most unpopular, and that unpopularity Colonel Norman shared with the Secretary of State, Sir Charles Wood.

The withdrawal of Sir Henry Norman opened the way for the Earl of Elgin, at that time a nobleman practically unknown to the public beyond the limits of his own county of Fife. When his nomination to the Viceroyalty was notified, all that could be said of him was that he was the son of his father, who was a distinguished diplomatist and statesman and also a previous Viceroy of India. Thus in the out-going Viceroy we have the example of one who was drawn from comparative obscurity in order to assume the government of the greatest of British Dependencies.

The coming Viceroy has a very different record. His name has been prominent in the political and literary world for ten years or more. He is no stranger to the British public. The nation feels that it knows the man who is about to assume the government of India- knows him through his own acts, speeches and writings, through the familiar every-day comments and criticisms of the press and through the expressed opinions of men both of his own and the opposite party. His latest publication, "On

the Indian Frontier," is to appear shortly. It is based no doubt on the articles he contributed to the Times in 1894-5. Writing at the end of 1894 (see Times of 2nd Jan., 1895) Mr. Curzon gave it as his opinion that the Government of India made a serious mistake in not giving its N.W. Frontier officials a freer hand and freer range across the border. It will be interesting to note how far the Viceroy will endorse the views of the traveller. The hands that hold the reins of office find themselves tied by influences to which the "free lance" is a stranger. At the luncheon given to him by the Directors of the P. and O. Company on the 2nd December, Lord Curzon spoke of India as "the pivot of the British Empire," and enunciated the opinion that the loss of that dependency could only be coincident with the decadence of that Empire. Lord Curzon has wisely as a rule resisted all temptation to prophesy. The first few pages of Mr. Pearson's "National Life and Character," are a warning to all statesmen to forego that temptation. The Duke of Wellington in 1832 thought that the best days of England's prosperity were over. As we watch the events of to-day and the political, industrial and commercial progress of great rival Powers, we may be excused if at times we almost persuade ourselves that the day of Britain's decadence is dawning. Pace Lord Curzon, however, we hold that Great Britain, not India, is the pivot of the Empire, and we think that that is an axiom which needs no argument to prove it. At the same time it must be admitted that the loss of India would foil the plans of British statesmanship both in the Near and the Far East. Egypt would lose half its value to us, and the Grand Trunk Railway from Cairo to Shanghai would not be financed by British capital.

It is not with Lord Curzon however that we are now to deal, but with his predecessor, the man who five years ago was unknown and who has now for nearly five years sustained, with the help of a Council and Staff, the burden of the most onerous post that Her Majesty can confer on a

subject. Considering that Lord Elgin was, when he assumed office, an untried ruler and administrator, it must be admitted that the Fates have laid themselves out to test him to the utmost.

Let us at once place on record that on the whole he has borne that test fairly well, and that he leaves India with a well-earned reputation for industry, fairness, and sound sense. During his term of office the North-West Frontier of India has been practically demarcated afresh from the point "where three empires meet" to the Kuh-i-malikSiyah in Sistan. With this demarcation there is not very much fault to find. Sir Montagu Gerard's frontier secured to Great Britain as much territory north of the Hindu Kush as could reasonably be demanded. He managed to make things work smoothly with the Russian Commissioner, and won both official and public approval accordingly. Coming to the Indo-Afghan frontier, that was demarcated in pursuance of the Durand Agreement. Many thought at the time and many still think that Kafiristan should not have been ceded to the Amir Abdurrahman. From a philanthropic point of view we entirely concur with this opinion. From a political standpoint it is more difficult to form a decision. The men who are best entitled to speak on this point are Sir William Lockhart and Sir George Robertson. It is not probable that any position that we can secure will ultimately safeguard Badakhshan from Russia; and sooner or later, when the present Amir passes away, it will be perfectly easy for our Government in India to occupy Kafiristan. The Amir Abdurrahman Khan is only keeping the place warm for us-doing in fact what some consider the French are doing for us in West Africa and Indo-China. The same view may be taken of the frontier as settled from the district of Pishin and Quetta across the Baluch desert to Sistan. In settling this care has been taken to secure a good caravan route from Quetta to Eastern Persia. It is true that both banks of the Helmand have been left for the present to the Amir; but

it has been our policy since 1880 to conciliate the Amir and avoid any open rupture. We have the futile wars of 1838-42 and 1878-81 before us as a warning. So a belt of desert south of the Helmand has been left him, and-we bide our time. There are few who imagine that we can any longer prevent Russia from occupying Meshed and Herat, but things have not yet gone so far as to lead us to believe that the British Government intends to allow Russia to forestall us in Sistan and South Eastern Persia. For some years past Russia has had her agents in Sistan, and some months ago established a Vice-Consulate there. Our answer has been to transfer Captain Sykes from Kirman to Sistan, while Mr. Webb-Ware watches our interests on the Baluchistan side. Nasirabad, the chief town of Sistan, is only half the distance from Quetta that it is from Ashkabad. If it is a queston of placing troops in Sistan, we can certainly forestall the Russians. The Sind Frontier Cavalry Regiments are as mobile as Cossacks, or the much-vaunted but somewhat legendary Turcoman horse, and our mountain batteries and our frontier infantry will not be far behind the cavalry, if the transport and supplies are all ready, as they should be.

Turning to the other or Eastern and North-Eastern Frontier of the Indian Empire, we are unable to record satisfactory progress as regards either delimitation or exploration. It was in 1887 that our annexation of Burmah made a Burmo-Chinese frontier settlement imperative. It is still unsettled. Last winter our Commissioner was able to do nothing, thanks to Chinese obstruction, and this year the promise of attaining a better result is but small. For ten years our exploring and delimitating Commissions have been traversing the Trans-Salween Shan Provinces-for ten years the railway to Yunnan and the Yangtse Valley has been projected and widely discussed. Yet in 1898, when Russia and France have forced Great Britain to assert more definitely her rights in the Yangtse Valley, we find that nothing has been done east of the Salween. What

t

is the use to British interests commercially or strategetically, of a railway from Mandalay to Kunlon if it is not prolonged to Chungking, the highest point to which the Yangtse is navigable for steamers? Yet at this moment parties are starting from Kunlon and Chungking to explore and survey a route for a railroad between these two points. What should have been done some time in the last ten years has still to be done now when Russia is absorbing Manchuria, and France has sanctioned a grant of eight millions sterling for the extension of her Indo - Chinese railways.

The chief interest of Lord Elgin's Viceroyalty began with the Diamond Jubilee Year of Her Majesty's reign, and has centred largely in the last two years of his rule. Coming events cast their shadows before, as the coming storm is heralded by the rolling swell of the waves.

The

Already in 1896 the drought foreboded famine, and the plague was rife in the crowded bazaars of Bombay.* difficulty of dealing with it seemed to paralyze the Bombay. authorities. The Municipality and the Commissioner of Police, deterred by the opposition of the natives, Hindus and Mohammedans, to any intrusion on, or interference with, their houses, had adopted no decisive plan of action. The plague was spreading, and threatening to invade the European quarters of the City, when Brigadier-General W. F. Gatacre, essentially a man of action, arrived from Quetta to resume the military command at Bombay. He determined from the first that the troops should not suffer, and so moved the two native regiments out of the Marine Lines and placed them under canvas.

There were not wanting those ready to cavil at energetic measures; but the fact remains that no case of plague

Both India and Great Britain rose grandly to the occasion in the fight with the famine, and by the end of 1897 victory had been won. The burst of pity which swelled the Patriotic Fund in the Crimean War was equalled by the sympathy for the Queen's Indian subjects which poured hundreds of thousands into the Relief Fund of 1897.