Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/35

, and bad business years generally' (Times of India, 5 Sept. 1903). Famine did not completely disappear till 1902-3, and plague was still rife when Northcote left India. He faced the situation with self-denying energy. Immediately on arrival at Bombay he inspected the hospitals, including the plague hospitals, and within a month of his landing went to Gujarat, where the peasantry were in sore straits from the effects of the famine. The district of Gujarat depended largely upon its fine breed of cattle which was in danger of dying out from scarcity of fodder, and one great result of the governor's visit was the establishment, largely on his initiative, of the cattle farm at Charodi, known as the Northcote Gowshala, to preserve and improve the breed. His sympathy with and interest in the small cultivators of the Bombay Presidency were shown by what was perhaps the chief legislative measure of his government, the passing of the Bombay Land Revenue Code Amendment Act, which aroused much criticism on its introduction in 1901. The object of the act was to protect the cultivators in certain famine-stricken districts of the Presidency against the money-lenders, by wiping out the arrears of revenue due from the holder on condition of his holding being forfeited to the government, and then restored to him as occupier on an inalienable tenure. He took other steps in the direction of land revenue reform, doing much to bring the somewhat rigid traditional policy of the Bombay government into harmony with the views of the government of India. In municipal matters, too, he made improvements, though the most important municipal act passed in his time — the District Municipalities Act, by which local self-government in the Moffussil was much enlarged — was a legacy from his predecessor, Lord Sandhurst. Northcote travelled widely through the Bombay Presidency, and he paid a visit to Aden. He was a warm supporter of schools and hospitals, but his efforts were hampered by the impoverished state of the public finances. 'So far as he was able, Lord Northcote drew on his privy purse for money which the State should have furnished, and especially in the administration of relief and in the assistance of charitable undertakings was he able to take a more personally active part than any of his predecessors' (Bombay Gazette Budget, 29 Aug. 1903). He was present in 1903 at the Coronation Durbar which celebrated the accession of King Edward VII. When he left India on 5 Sept. 1903 the viceroy, Lord Curzon, expressed the general feeling, in the message 'Bombay and India are losing one of the most sympathetic and sagacious governors that they have known.' On 29 Aug. 1903 Northcote had been appointed Governor-General of the commonwealth of Australia. On 21 Jan. 1904, when he was made a G.C.M.G., he was sworn in at Sydney, and he remained in Australia for nearly four years and eight months. Northcote's task in Australia was no easy one. The Commonwealth came into existence on 1 Jan. 1901, and Northcote had had two predecessors (Lords Hopetoun and Tennyson) in three years. He was thus the first to hold his office for an appreciable length of time, and it fell to him largely to establish the position, and to create traditions. Federation was in its infancy. A national feeling as apart from state interests hardly existed, and the difficulties of the governor-general consisted at the outset in the relations of the states to the Commonwealth with resulting friction and jealousies, and in the absence of two clearly defined parties in Australian politics. Mr. Alfred Deakin was prime minister when Northcote reached Australia, but in April (1904) he was succeeded by the labour prime minister of Australia, Mr. John Christian Watson. In the following August Mr. (now Sir) George Reid became prime minister, and in July 1905 Mr. Deakin once more came into office and held it for the rest of Lord Northcote's term. In India Northcote had learnt the difficulty of harmonising the views of the government of a province with those of the central government, and his Indian experience therefore stood him in good stead when called upon to reconcile the claims of Commonwealth and states in Australia, while his earlier foreign office and political training qualified him to deal with political life. In Australia, as in India, he travelled widely. He was determined, as the head of a self-governing Commonwealth, to identify himself with the people in all parts of Australia. During his term of office he travelled through the greater part of every state, visited most county towns, every mining centre, the great pastoral and agricultural districts; and succeeded in obtaining a grasp of the industrial work and Hfe of the people. He averaged in travelling over 10,000 miles a year by land and sea. Especially he made a tour in the Northern Territory and called pubhc attention to this little known and somewhat neglected part of the continent. In Sydney and Melbourne he visited every factory of importance, while in social