Dalhousie, JAMES ANDREW BROWN-RAMSAY, MARQUIS OF

Dalhousie, JAMES ANDREW BROWN-RAMSAY, MARQUIS OF, Governor-general of India, and 'greatest of Indian proconsuls,' was the third son of the ninth Earl of Dalhousie, and was born April 22, 1812, at Dalhousie Castle, Midlothian. He was educated at Harrow, and graduated at Christ Church, Oxford. In 1832, by the death of his only remaining brother, he succeeded to the courtesy title of Lord Ramsay. In 1835 he stood unsuccessfully for Edinburgh in the Conservative interest; in 1837 was elected for Haddingtonshire. On the death of his father in 1838 he entered the House of Peers as Earl of Dalhousie. In 1843 Sir Robert Peel appointed him Vice-president of the Board of Trade, and in 1845 he succeeded Mr Gladstone as President of the Board. The 'railway mania' threw an immense amount of labour and responsibility upon his department; but the energy, industry, and administrative ability he displayed in his office, no less than his readiness and fluency in parliament, marked him out for the highest offices in the state. When Peel resigned office in 1846, Lord John Russell paid the Earl of Dalhousie the rare compliment of asking him to remain at the Board of Trade, in order to carry out the regulations he had framed for the railway system. In 1847 he was appointed Governor-general of India, as successor to Lord Hardinge, and arrived in Calcutta, January 12, 1848—the youngest governor-general ever sent to that country. His Indian administration was not less splendid and successful in regard to the acquisition of territory than in the means he adopted for developing the resources of the country, and improving the administration of the East Indian government. Pegu and the Punjab were conquered; Nagpur, Oudh, Sattara, Jhansi, and Berar were annexed—together, four great kingdoms, besides a number of minor principalities, were added to the dominions of the Queen. Railways on a colossal scale were planned, and partly commenced; 4000 miles of electric telegraph were spread over India; 2000 miles of road between Calcutta and Peshawur were bridged and metalled; the Ganges Canal, the largest of the kind in the country, was opened; important works of irrigation all over India were planned and executed; and the department of public works was reorganised. Among other incidents of his beneficent administration may be mentioned his energetic action against suttee, thuggee, female infanticide, and the slave-trade; the organisation of the Legislative Council; the improved training of the civil service, which was opened to all natural-born subjects of the British crown, black or white; the successful development of trade, agriculture, forestry, mining; and a great reform in the postal service of India. In a minute which he drew up on resigning office, he reviewed with pardonable pride the events of his eight years' governor-generalship. His constitution had never been strong, and it gave way under the incessant labour and responsibility imposed upon him by his noble ambition. Meanwhile, honours had been showered upon him by his Queen and country with no sparing hand: in 1848 he was made a Knight of the Thistle; in 1849 he received the marquisate, the thanks of both Houses of Parliament and of the East India Company for the 'zeal and ability' displayed in administering the resources of British India in the contest with the Sikhs; in 1852, on the death of Wellington, he was nominated by the then prime-minister, the Earl of Derby, to the office of Constable of Her Majesty's Castle of Dover and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. Dalhousie sailed from Calcutta in March 1856. On his arrival in England he was unable to take his seat in the House of Lords; and the remainder of his days was spent in much physical suffering and prostration of strength. On 19th December 1860 he died at Dalhousie Castle in his 48th year, leaving behind him a name that ranks among the highest in the roll of Indian viceroys for statesmanship, administrative vigour, and the faculty of inspiring confidence among the millions subjected to his sway. As he died without male issue, his title of marquis became extinct, the earldom of Dalhousie and other Scottish honours reverting to his cousin, Baron Panmure. His policy of annexation has been blamed for the mutiny which broke out ere his death; but though, in Justin McCarthy's words, 'he was a man of commanding energy and indomitable courage, with the intellect of a ruler of men and the spirit of a conqueror,' he was also of a most sensitive conscience, and entered on the Sikh and Burmese wars and embarked on a policy of annexation against his will. See the articles INDIA, OUDH, PEGU, PUNJAB, SIKHS; the Duke of Argyll's India under Dalhousie and Canning (1865); and Captain Lionel Trotter's Dalhousie in the 'Statesmen' series (1889).