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Updated: June 11, 2025
The Governor-General's Council during Lord Minto's tenure of office may have been exceptionally weak, and there will always be a serious element of weakness in it so long as membership of Council is not recognized to be the crowning stage of an Indian career.
The throne-room at Calcutta, under Lady Minto's skilful treatment, became gorgeous enough for the most exacting Asiatic, with its black marble floor, its rose-coloured silk walls where great silver sconces alternated with full-length portraits of British sovereigns, its white "chunam" columns and its gilt Italian furniture.
Binnie woke up briskly when the Colonel entered. "It is you, you gad-about, is it?" cried the civilian. "How has the beau monde of London treated the Indian Adonis? Have you made a sensation, Newcome? Gad, Tom, I remember you a buck of bucks when that coat first came out to Calcutta just a Barrackpore Brummell in Lord Minto's reign, was it, or when Lord Hastings was satrap over us?"
Lord Minto's friends can therefore very reasonably argue that his chief anxiety was, quite legitimately, to avoid any kind of friction with the new Secretary of State which might have led to the supersession of another Viceroy so soon after the unfortunate crisis that had ended in Lord Curzon's resignation.
In 1810 the French were expelled from Java by an expedition despatched under Minto's orders, though it was soon to be restored to Holland. In the same year the islands of Mauritius and Bourbon were captured from the French and the sea route to India was finally secured.
The grounds on which Government announced the release of these deportees last winter were even more unhappily chosen than the moment for the announcement, but the event seems so far to have justified Lord Minto's confidence, though one of the deported agitators, Pulin Bahari Das, of Dacca, has had to be rearrested and is now under trial at Dacca for conspiracy of a most serious character.
If it were on my own authority only, I might hesitate to take that step, because I am not very fond of innovations in dark and obscure ground, but here I have the absolute and the zealous approval and concurrence of Lord Minto himself. It was at Lord Minto's special instigation that I began to think seriously of this step.
There had been abortive plots against Lord Minto's life, but it had been deemed politic to minimise their importance.
For the social side, see Traill, V. Lecky's History of the Eighteenth Century is specially full. The Cambridge History of English Literature. Courthope's History of English Poetry, Vol. Seccombe's The Age of Johnson. Gosse's History of English Literature in the Eighteenth Century. Stephen's English Literature in the Eighteenth Century. Minto's Manual of English Prose Literature.
Lady Minto's nephew, Lord Fitzharris, the son of the Earl of Malmesbury, was then in Vienna, apparently as an attaché. He speaks in the same way of Nelson himself, but with less forbearance for Lady Hamilton; and he confirms the impression that Nelson at this time had lost interest in the service.
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