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Whatever the merits of the great controversy between Lord Curzon and Lord Kitchener, the overruling of the Government of India by the Home Government on a question of such magnitude and the circumstances in which Lord Curzon was compelled to resign had dealt a very heavy blow to the authority and prestige of the Viceregal office in India.
The seigneurs were delighted. They still hoped for commissions as regulars, which too few of them ever received; and they were charmed with the little viceregal court over which Lady Maria Carleton, despite her youthful two-and-twenty summers, presided with a dignity inherited from the premier ducal family of England and brought to the acme of conventional perfection by her intimate experience of Versailles.
The members of the deputation open the interview at the Viceregal Lodge by enunciating the good and sound principle, "that it is the clear and imperative duty of the possessors of property in Ireland, to avert from their poor fellow-countrymen the miseries of famine; and that they, therefore, willingly acquiesce in the imposition upon them of any amount of taxation necessary for that purpose."
Such committees need not be elected by the Poor Law Guardians, as recommended by the Viceregal Commission, or by the Statutory Committee of the County Council, as recommended by the Royal Commission. The Association desires, and it has a large volume of Irish opinion behind it in this, to minimise the existing powers, and reduce the numbers, of the Poor Law Guardians.
The entry of the new Lord-lieutenant, Earl Spencer, on the 6th of May, into the Irish capital, promised well; but the assassin had bargained with the fates for the day, and before the sun had ceased to shed his bright beams on the green grass and budding trees of Phoenix Park, a scion of the noble house of Devonshire and his companion in office had been immolated on the altar of Irish vengeance before the eyes of the new viceroy as he stood in the window of the viceregal lodge.
Even this is assuming, as in the case of Barbary, an enormous postulate success. Neither India, then, nor Western Africa can reasonably be expected to supply that substitute for the House of Othman which we need. A more apparent and in the opinion of some a likely candidate for the Caliphate succession may be looked for in the Viceregal family of Egypt.
The Viceregal Commission also complained of inequality of expenditure, and advised a reapportionment of the grants in aid of local taxation, on the basis of the recommendations of the minority of the Royal Commission on Local Taxation . That Commission was unanimous in recommending increased grants for Poor Law service in Ireland.
The mutiny developed fast; and a table of charges against Columbus, which was to be produced in Spain as a justification for it, had actually been drawn up when the Admiral, recovering from his illness, discovered what was on foot. He dealt promptly and firmly with it in his quarterdeck manner, which was always far more effective than his viceregal manner.
His Excellency Lord Clarendon's Letter to the Lord Mayor of London, on the "Plantation Scheme," dated Viceregal Lodge, June 26, 1849. Freeman's Journal, 23rd June, 1847.
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