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232 recognized as Amír of Afghánistán, although in one sense the completion of what Lord Lawrence had begun, owed its brilliant success to Lord Mayo (1869). The visit of His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh in 1869-1870 gave deep pleasure to the natives of India, and introduced a tone of personal loyalty into our relations with the feudatory princes. Lord Mayo reformed several of the great branches of the administration, created an Agricultural Department, and introduced the system of Provincial Finance. The impulse to local self-government given by the last measure has done much, and will do more, to develope and husband the revenues of India, to quicken the sense of responsibility among the English administrators, and to awaken political life among the people. Lord Mayo also laid the foundation for the reform of the salt duties. He thus enabled his successors to abolish the old pernicious customs-lines which had for long walled off Province from Province, and strangled the trade between British India and the Feudatory States. He developed the material resources of the country by an immense extension of roads, railways, and canals. He carried out the beneficent system of public works which Lord Dalhousie had inaugurated. Lord Mayo's splendid vigour defied alike the climate and the vast tasks which he imposed on himself. He anxiously and laboriously studied with his own eyes the wants of the farthest Provinces of the empire. But his life of noble usefulness was cut short by the hand of an assassin, in the convict settlement of the Andaman Islands, in 1872.

Lord Northbrook, 1872-1876.—His successor was Lord Northbrook, whose ability found pre-eminent scope in the department of finance. During his viceroyalty, a famine which threatened Lower Bengal in 1874 was successfully averted by a vast organization of State relief. The Maráthá Gáekwár of Baroda was dethroned in 1875 for misgovernment, and for his attempt to poison the British Resident at his Court. But his dominions were continued to a child of his race. The Prince of Wales made a tour through the country in the cold weather of 1875-1876. The presence of His Royal Highness evoked a passionate burst of loyalty never before known in the annals of British India. The feudatory Chiefs and ruling houses of