in for their shameless disregard of
their solemn engagements. The manner in which the British ambassador
discharged the onerous duties of his mission, met with the warm
approval of Her Majesty's government and when he was once more in
England he was offered by the prime minister the governor-generalship
of India.

He accepted this great office with a full sense of the arduous
responsibilities which it entailed upon him, and said good-bye to his
friends with words which showed that he had a foreboding that he might
never see them again--words which proved unhappily to be too true. He
went to the discharge of his duties in India in that spirit of modesty
which was always characteristic of him. "I succeeded," he said, "to a
great man (Lord Canning) and a great war, with a humble task to be
humbly discharged." His task was indeed humble compared with that
which had to be performed by his eminent predecessors, notably by Earl
Canning, who had established important reforms in the land tenure, won
the confidence of the feudatories of the Crown, and reorganized the
whole administration of India after the tremendous upheaval caused by
the mutiny. Lord Elgin, on the other hand, was the first
governor-general appointed directly by the Queen, and was now subject
to the authority of the secretary of state for India. He could
consequently exercise relatively little of the powers and
responsibilities which made previous imperial representatives so
potent in the conduct of Indian affairs. Indeed he had not been long
in India before he was forced by the Indian secretary to reverse Lord
Canning's wise measure for the sale of a fee-simple tenure with all
its political as well as economic advantages. He was able, however, to
carry out loyally the wise and equitable policy of his predecessor
towards the feudatories of England with firmness and dignity and with
good effect for the British government.[24]

In 1863 he decided on making a tour of the northern parts of India
with the object of making himself personally acquainted with the
people and affairs of the empire under his government. It was during
this tour that he held a Durbar or Royal Court at Agra, which was
remarkable even in India for the display of barbaric wealth and the
assemblage of princes of royal descent. After reaching Simla his
peaceful administration of Indian affairs was at last disturbed by the
necessity--one quite clear to him--of repressing an outburst of
certain