Part 4 (1/2)

The new plan subsisted with little change till 1858, the last year of the East India Company. While the Governor-General retained the power of over-ruling his Council, as a matter of fact he wisely refrained, except in grave crises or emergencies, from exercising his supreme authority. Every order ran in the name of the President and the collective Cabinet, technically the Governor-General in Council. And under the Company every case actually pa.s.sed through the hands of each Member of Council, circulating at a snail's pace in little mahogany boxes from one Councillor's house to another. 'The system involved,' says a former Member of Council, 'an amount of elaborate minute writing which seems now hardly conceivable. The Governor-General and the Council used to perform work which would now be disposed of by an Under-Secretary.'

Lord Canning, the first Viceroy under the Crown, found that, if he was to raise the administration to a higher standard of prompt.i.tude and efficiency, he must put a stop to this. He remodelled the {82} Government 'into the semblance of a Cabinet, with himself as President.' Each Member of the Supreme Council practically became a Minister at the head of his own Department--or the 'Initiating Member' of the Department--responsible for its ordinary business, but bound to lay important cases before the Viceroy, whose will forms the final arbitrament in all great questions of policy in which he sees fit to exercise it.

'The ordinary current business of the Government,' writes Sir John Strachey, 'is divided among the Members of the Council, much in the same manner in which, in England, it is divided among the Cabinet Ministers, each member having a separate Department of his own.' The Governor-General himself keeps one Department specially in his own hands, generally the Foreign Office; and Lord Mayo, being insatiable of work, retained two, the Foreign Department and the great Department of Public Works. Various changes took place in the Supreme Government even during his short Viceroyalty, but the following table represents the _personnel_ of his Government as fairly as any single view can. It shows clearly of what the 'Government of India' was made up, apart from the immediate staff of the Viceroy. But it should be mentioned that Lord Mayo was fortunate in having in Major (now General Sir) Owen Tudor Burne, a Private Secretary of the highest capacity for smoothly and effectively transacting business. Major Burne did much to lighten the personal labour of the Viceroy, and became his most intimate confidante and friend.

{83}

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DEPARTMENT.

MEMBER OF COUNCIL.

CHIEF SECRETARY.

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I. Foreign

THE VICEROY.

Sir C. U. Aitchison,

Department

K.C.S.I.

II. Public Works

THE VICEROY.

Divided into

Department

branches.

III. Home

Hon. Sir Barrow

Sir E. Clive Bayley,

Department

Ellis, K.C.S.I.

K.C.S.I.

IV. Department of

Hon. Sir J.

Mr. A. O. Hume, C.B.

Revenue,

Strachey,

Agriculture,

K.C.S.I.

and Commerce

V. Financial

Hon. Sir R.

Mr. Barclay Chapman,

Department

Temple, K.C.S.I.

C.S.I.

VI. Military

Major-General the

General H. K. Burne,

Department

Hon. Sir H.

C.B.

Norman, K.C.S.I.

VII. Legislative

Hon. Sir Fitzjames

Mr. Whitley Stokes,

Department

Stephen, Q.C.,