which had been taken, there occur these memorable passages:

"Every man, woman, and child who has perished in India in the present famine has been a burden upon my heart and upon that of the Government. Their sufferings have never been absent from our thoughts.

. . . There has never been a famine

when the general mortality has been less, when the distress has been more amply or swiftly relieved, or when Government and its officers have given themselves with a more wholehearted devotion to the saving of life and the service of the people. . . . It is with the object of demonstrating to the Indian public that, in the administration of the recent

famine, we have not been unworthy of our trust, and that the year of strain and suffering will not have passed by without our profiting by its lessons, that I have made this speech."

That these words contained no empty boast is proved by, the statistics of the famine. That their promise for the future was equally real has been shown in many ways during Lord Curzon's Viceroyalty. Immediately after the famine a commission of inquiry was appointed under Sir Antony MacDonnell, to examine the methods of famine prevention and relief, and to put forward proposals for future guidance. As a result

"There is no branch of the subject of famine relief, famine administra

tion, and still more famine prevention, which has not been diligently is no portion of the recommendations ransacked and explored; and there submitted to us by the able chairman

and his lieutenants which has not been discussed with the local governments, and been already made, or, if not, is about to be made, the subject of definite orders. . . . The value of the revised [famine] codes will only be seen when the next struggle comes. Then they will be found to provide the armament with which each local government in India will fight the battle."1

of famine prevention, and equalClosely allied to this problem ly important in the interests of the agricultural population, is the great question of the extension of irrigation—a question which involves not only the safety of millions of the people in years of drought, but also the extension of agricultural enterprise and the expansion of agricultural production in India by converting thousands of acres of hitherto barren waste into fertile fields. The extension of canal irrigation has been favoured by the Government of India for many years past. It was a subject in which Lord Elgin displayed special interest, but to which he was unable to devote as much pecuniary support as he would have liked, owing to the constant drain of military operations and of famine, which added so greatly to the difficulties of his administration. Lord Curzon, after the first terrible experience of 18991900, was fortunate in experiencing in India years of prosperity and plenty, and he

was not slow to take advantage of these favourable circumstances in the direction of extending irrigated areas and developing the railway system, as well as by considerably lightening the burdens of taxation on the labouring and industrial classes. But he went further than this. A commission to investigate the possibilities of irrigation and of water storage was appointed in 1901 under Sir Colin Scott Moncrieff. The report of that commission, submitted after an inquiry extending over eighteen months, has been exhaustively and carefully considered by Government, with the result that a scheme of widely extended operations has now been prepared and matured, to be put into execution in the near future.

Lord Curzon's further measures of agricultural reform, such as the Punjab Land Alienation Act, and his endeavours

to

secure throughout India greater elasticity in the collection of land revenue, are perhaps too local in their interest or too technical to appeal to readers at home, although to our great Indian empire they are of an importance commensurate with the immense interests involved in the prosperity of the agricultural classes. The first mentioned item of legislation has been so much criticised that we may pause for a moment to notice it. It is designed to prevent the alienation of the land, owing to the gradual increase of agricultural indebtedness, from the hands of its traditional owners, the yeomen and

peasant proprietors, who fill the ranks of our Indian army, and are in every respect, as has already been quoted, "the bone and sinew of our strength," and its acquisition by the money - lending and shop - keeping classes. This process of land alienation has become constantly more threatening during the last twentyfive years, until it endangered the prosperity and even the existence of the most vigorous and valuable class of the community. The Act passed by Lord Curzon's government limits the periods of mortgages on land, and restricts the alienation of land to others than bond-fide cultivators. The measure has been attacked as an instance of unnecessary and hasty legislation, interfering with the rights of property, and calculated to impair the credit and wealth of the landowning class. The latter prognostications can only be disproved by the lapse of time. So far, at least, the measure promises to be beneficial in its results. As to the necessity for some such legislation the balance of expert opinion is entirely on Lord Curzon's side; while in reply to any charge of rashness or want of consideration, the period over which the discussion of this difficult problem has extended, a period of twenty-five or thirty years, may be quoted as ample disproof of the justice of such assertions.

Space does not permit of more than a passing mention of other improvements connected with agriculture-the

establishment of a agricultural research institute (due to the munificence of an American visitor to India, Mr Phipps), the strengthening of the Veterinary Department, and the creation of a scientific Board of Advice. Nor is it necessary to do more than name the reform effected in railway administration, the immense increase in the productiveness of railways, the cheapening of telegraphic charges both on inland lines and between India and Europe, and the reform of the system of education in all its branches. Something more than such cursory notice might well be given to the question of police reform, a subject which so closely affects the welfare of every individual of the two hundred and thirty millions of people in British India. The subject is, however, too large to be dealt with here. It was examined as in the case of education, railways, irrigation, and famine by a special commission, whose report has formed the basis for extensive and far-reaching measures of improvement. In this connection Lord Curzon's remarks

regarding the reasons and objects of all these commissions may be quoted. "I can quite believe," he said in the budget discussion of March 1902, "that there will be people who will say that the present administration is earning a strange and abnormal repute, as one of Commissions, Committees, and inquiries. The charge is quite true. I

do not for one moment dispute

There remains one of the original twelve tasks set himself by Lord Curzon which should be noticed before we leave these questions of internal reform. This is the attention which he gave to the preservation of ancient monuments and historic buildings. Its principal manifestations were the appointment of a specialist as Director of Archæology, and the passing of an Act for the "Preservation of Ancient Monuments and objects of archæological, historical, and artistic interest." This measure, so characteristic of Lord Curzon's many - sidedness, so indicative of his love for the past history of India, aroused no controversy and attracted but little notice at the moment. But its importance must not be measured by such a criterion as this. No one will dispute the principle on which it is based, that the care of nation's historic buildings is closely bound up by ties of history, sentiment, and expediency with the people's interests, and that it is amongst the prominent obligations of a government. Moreover, the enactment of such a measure

in India is of more than indirect interest to the people of Great Britain. Year by year, in constantly increasing numbers, visitors from home make the voyage to India intent on exploring its wonders and viewing the treasures of archæology and art which it has to show. It will be well if some of these recognise a tithe of the debt which they owe to Lord Curzon in this matter. Who that has seen the incomparable beauty of the Taj, surrounded by acres of sandy waste ground and approached through a squalid bazar, but must be ever grateful to the hand that has cleared the entrance courts of all mean and unsightly features, and has turned the surroundings into a green and undulating park? Who that visited the exquisite little tomb of Itmad-ud-Dowlah, near Agra, any time up to half a dozen or so years ago, and beheld it smothered in a tangled maze of overgrown shrubs and

weeds, but must delight to find it now set in well-ordered and grassy lawns, whose greenness serves to emphasise the delicacy of the fabric? A similar work is in progress or about to be undertaken round the beautiful Mogul palace at Delhi, the tombs and mosques of Lahore, and the deserted city of Fatehpur Sikri; with equal care and reverence other relics of the past throughout India are being tended and cared for, and if this alone were Lord Curzon's claim to gratitude, both from Indians and from lovers of art all over

the world, it would be due to him in no small degree, in that he has been mainly instrumental in enabling our generation "to expiate the carelessness of the past and escape the reproaches of posterity."

It has been said that the debt which the empire owes to Lord Curzon for the work of his Indian Viceroyalty will not be fully known until the history of the foreign relations of India during that period is made public. This much is, however, already known to the world, that both in his speeches and by his deeds he never failed to maintain the integrity and the prestige of the great empire of which India is no longer merely an ornament, "the brightest jewel of the imperial crown," but the strategic frontier where lies, in Lord Curzon's words, "the true fulcrum of dominion, the real touchstone of our Imperial greatness." One of his earliest duties was to assert our rights and maintain our paramount position in the Persian Gulf, and his visit two years ago to the same great highway of Indian commerce the first visit ever paid to those waters by a Governor-General of India-was strikingly successful in securing the same object. The tour in question attracted far more attention throughout the world than is usually paid to the movements of the Viceroy through the territories of India. Its meaning was not difficult to find, and was as patent to the Arab chiefs who assembled at the seaports to do honour to the