Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎458v] (41/238)

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LORD CANNING AND LORD MILNER.
By Sir John Jardine, k.c.i.e.
“ Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and per
secute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you
falsely.” These divine words must have often comforted
the mind of Canning in the strain of the Indian Mutiny.
“No taunts or sarcasms, come from what quarter they
may,” he w T rote, “ will turn me from the path which I
believe to be that of my public duty.” If, says the late
Duke of Argyll, he had yielded to the outcries of anger
and fear which rose around him, the Mutiny must have
become that which it never was—a war between race and
race with wounds that could never be healed. “The com
plaints and accusations made against him at the time are an
immortal monument of his fame.” The quality of mercy
which he displayed in his exalted station is conspicuous
also among the great captains of that period—men like
Lord Clyde, Sir James Outram and some civilians more
obscure, whom it will be my privilege to name. I have
many reasons for proposing a study of Canning’s policy
as an alternative to that which has been adopted for
South Africa.
Few will deny that the war waged so long against the
two little Boer Republics will remain fixed in the nation’s
memory. The Jameson Raid, set to music by the Poet
Laureate, the treachery of Lord Rosmead’s official advisers,
the Hawkesley telegrams, the interference even of Miss
Flora Shaw, were among the strange and exciting episodes
which roused the people long before we heard the boom of
the guns. Whole classes held a stake in the vast pecuniary
prize, the gold mines already returning ^20,000,000 a year
in dividends, swelling the fortunes of the South African
millionaires. No wonder, then, that the baffling negotia
tions and all the terrible events of war have been watched
with a keenness, growing to the white heat of passion, when