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If every translator were aware beforehand of the difficulties that awaited him, if he knew that complete or final victory could never be his, the ranks of the translators would undergo a notable diminution. But, as it is, the majority rush in, all unmindful of their doom, with the temerity that is proverbially associated with beings of non-angelic origin. They must be forgiven, since they know not what they do. But, what shall we say of those who embark upon the enterprise with their eyes open, aware of the ultimate hopelessness of the task, and knowing in their hearts that, though winning near the goal," the crowning bliss of perfect achievement can never be theirs. To these devoted men who, like Cato, are enamoured of lost causes, I would assign for their motto the line: "Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito ! "

After all, the only things worth doing in this life are the things we cannot do. But I would add one word more--a word of practical advice from an old campaigner—I would advise them to saturate themselves with the thought of the original author, then, to forget his words, remembering only his music (his "chutes de phrases,❞—his "dying falls," as Flaubert called them); next to re-distil the thought in the alembic of their own brains; and then to compare the result with the original. After, when they have made from five to ten successive "brouillons," or rough drafts, they may begin to have something to work upon. And when, at length, they have, as they think, done all they can do, let them put their version away and look at it again after twelve months. Above all, they should not suffer themselves to be led astray by what Matthew Arnold calls “ the ignis fatuus of fidelity," or they may be like that person who, on receiving a present of a pound of tea for the first time, boiled it, ate the leaves, and threw away the liquor. Sometimes the shadow is of more importance than the substance.

J. LEWIS MAY

NEW LIGHT ON LORD ELLENBOROUGH

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India under Lord Ellenborough.

Edited with an introduction and

appendices by SIR ALGERNON LAW. John Murray. 1926.

THE

"HE influence of a man's political opinions upon his reputation is a subject that has often excited attention. The effects of political bias can be traced, if one cares to trace them, in the case of men of almost every calling poets, statesmen, historians, soldiers have all suffered or benefited. But truth will out, and in the end we do get to know the real facts. The whole story of the impeachment of Warren Hastings, and of all that led up to it, has yet to be told; but what a blow Sir James Fitzjames Stephen struck at the picturesque and romantic version of its antecedent circumstances, which holds the field, in his "Nuncomar and Impey"! Walpole did not say that every man had his price. Napier did not write "peccavi." Ellenborough's well-known, and under the circumstances quite justifiable, statement as to the "politicals " has been entirely misquoted. Yet these and similar anecdotes are what have passed for history until recently.

Lord Ellenborough stands in a very unfortunate position. He was a man of really first-rate ability. To this we have the emphatic testimony of Brougham, by no means disposed to be a partial critic; it is proved, too, by the offices that he held, and still more by the calibre of his friends. He was obviously also gifted with singular independence of mind. In India it is always said that it takes a very strong Governor-General to break away from the glue-pot," but Ellenborough did not allow any Macnaghten to run him. That he never rose to quite the highest position in the State in England, although qualified for it by both ability and character, can easily be understood. For though he seems to have been able to secure the devoted service of many of those under him, he lacked the power of appealing to the masses, which is so necessary in a successful statesman in this country.

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On the whole the world has hitherto been content to accept the verdict of his opponents, and it is but recently that any attempt has been made to consider his Indian career with even decent fairness. There is another and less obvious reason for this want

of candour. The term of office of his predecessor had been the most disastrous in the whole history of British rule in India. But Lord Auckland was a Whig, one who doubtingly and falteringly followed the lead of Lord Palmerston as to eastern politics. Peel had his faults, but he knew a man when he saw one, and it is safe to say that had Heytesbury, who was pushed aside by the incoming and triumphant Whigs, gone to India, we should never have had the first Afghan War. Be this as it may, Lord Auckland was to a very large extent responsible for the appalling tragedy that signalised his governor-generalship.

The history of the first part of that war, that is to say, its history during Lord Auckland's administration, was marked by shameful deceit and equally shameful disaster. All the world now knows the story of the garbled despatches by which the Whigs hoped to justify the sending of the army of the Indus. It is a sickening and disgusting business, but it is perhaps sufficient so far as Hobhouse (who was at the Board of Control from April, 1835, till September, 1841) is concerned, to quote the following words from his reply of May 31, 1842, to a searching question put by Disraeli: "Nothing however had been omitted which affected the spirit of the despatches."* The honour, as it was strangely conceived, of the party was, in fact, at stake. On February 6, 1840, in the debate as to the recognition of the services of the army of the Indus, when everything to the

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* If anyone wishes to realize how low the man to whom Byron said: 'Ah, Hobhouse, you should never have come; or, you should never go," had sunk, let him read the following letter to Fox Maule, dated February 16, 1852, in the Broughton papers at the British Museum : "My dear Maule,-If Kaye's book, which I have not seen, gives the Burnes dispatches in extenso, I cannot understand why Sir Henry Willoughby should wish to make you give him what he has already got. I am not aware of any department having consented to produce the whole of any dispatches of which they have previously given only extracts, and I would add that the rascality of the Burnes family and their [illegible] in publishing confidential official papers for the sake of calumniating those who heaped honours and emoluments on their kinsman would be rather rewarded than punished, if the Board of Control were compelled by this proceeding to do what it had refused to do before. However, pray look at this matter as a general rather than an individual question, and trust to your own judgment.— Sincerely yours, Broughton.'

careless observer seemed going well, Macaulay, a member of the Cabinet, made the following remark :--

He quite conceded to the Right Honourable Baronet (Sir Robert Peel) the right, and he fully admitted the propriety of reserving his opinion as to the general policy under which the expedition took place, till the results were known; but his own conviction was, that this great event would be found, in its results, highly conducive to the prosperous state of our finances in India, and that as a measure of economy it would be found not less deserving of praise than it was in a military point of view.

But the disaster had come, and some excuse had to be found, some explanation to be given. The events themselves were too awful, too patent for any palliation. The only thing to be done was to pour contempt and ridicule upon Lord Auckland's successor and so to raise a kind of smoke-screen which would to some extent at least prevent people from prying into what had gone before. Fortunately in our days everyone can judge for himself. We have the Burnes dispatches in full. The documents in the India Office have been wisely opened to public inspection. Lady Colchester has presented the very large and valuable collection known as the Ellenborough Papers to the Public Record Office. Substantial aid is to be found in the Hobhouse and Auckland MSS. at the British Museum. Testimony of other kinds from biographies and letters is gradually being sifted and used. And on the whole we may say that the tide is beginning to turn. In the Dictionary of National Biography, Lord Sumner, "no careless observer of the passages of those times," though by no means approving of all his ways and works, tells us that Ellenborough "has not yet had justice done him with regard to the Afghan Campaign." He also speaks of his having " restored the English military prestige in Afghanistan, enlarged the bounds of the empire, improved the condition of the army, and systematised the methods of the various civil departments of State." No small achievement, surely. And now Ellenborough's nephew, Sir Algernon Law, has published a collection of documents, many of which in whole or in part have not hitherto been printed, and has added much valuable comment of his own. In so doing he has laid historical students under very considerable obligations, for the papers, such for example as the dispatch of May 17, 1842, with the Duke of Wellington's pencilled comments, are of very

great interest. His book will certainly serve as a challenge; it will raise once more the whole question of Ellenborough's Indian policy.

When Lord Auckland heard that Ellenborough was to succeed him he wrote home very favourably about him; they had long been friends, and Emily Eden afterwards testified to his kind and considerate conduct to her brother. Greville, however, reports Lord Auckland as saying that " he had been convinced he (Ellenborough) was mad from the moment of his landing, for he seemed to have worked himself up during the voyage to a pitch of excitement which immediately broke forth." As we must regard Lord Auckland as an accessory after the fact in regard to the forged dispatches, we cannot receive his testimony with any very great enthusiasm, but this much we can say: had Lord Auckland himself been mad at the moment when Ellenborough landed, we should all have felt that some credit was due to one on whom the deaths of thousands of brave men pressed with intolerable force.

But there is abundant evidence that Ellenborough was far from mad. Those who have condemned his orders on first reaching India are singularly wanting in the historical faculty of putting themselves in the position of the man whose conduct they are considering. They forget, very conveniently, Lord Auckland's own plans for dealing with the situation. They forget that in Ellenborough's day the Punjab and Sind were not only not in our hands, but were held by men so hostile to us that we were obliged to go to war with both countries a short time later. They forget the enormous distance, unbridged by railways, that separated British India from Afghanistan. They ignore the difficulty of sparing troops, especially with the war in China on our hands, to undertake any expedition on a large scale; the question indeed, as Sir Algernon Law sees, was at first not that of saving Afghanistan, but of saving India. Lord Ellenborough's critics overlook, too, the fact that the measures taken by him secured the approval of those of his contemporaries most competent to judge of such matters, of Wellington and Hardinge as this volume conclusively shews. Greville was not disposed to be a partisan of Ellenborough; he was, indeed, a friend of Lady Emily Eden, though he once spoke of her as a very clever but wrong-headed woman." But possibly what

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