Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/504

 (1852-3), and then secretary to the chief commissioner from July 1854. The historic reports on Punjab administration were penned by him, and Lord Dalhousie so appreciated his strenuous activities that, when it was proposed in 1853 to take Temple into the government of India's secretariat from Lahore, he remarked that 'it would be setting an elephant to draw a wheelbarrow,' So Temple worked on, until the death of his first wife in 1855 and the strain of public duties compelled him to take furlough in the following year. Everything seemed quiet, and there was 'not the faintest sound of warning, not the slightest breath of suspicion regarding the storm about to burst' ( Story of My Life, i. 78). When he returned at the end of 1857, it was the 'White mutiny,' and not the rebel Sepoys, with which he was confronted as commissioner.

Soon after his return to duty an unexpected opportunity of gaining a new experience presented itself. In November 1859, when James Wilson [q. v.], the finance minister, was sent out to inaugurate a new system of financial administration. Temple accepted Wilson's invitation to aid him, and remained with him until Wilson's untimely death, 11 Aug. 1860. The assistant not only profited by his master's experience, but by this appointment he became known to Lord Canning [q.v.], who deputed Temple to visit and confer with the authorities in Burma and Hyderabad. On 25 April 1862 he was promoted to act as chief commissioner of the central provinces, in which post with some brief interludes he remained until April 1867. This was Temple's first independent essay in the responsibilities of high administration. Everything was new to him in the province, but by persistent inquiry and verification he acquired local knowledge, and visited every part of his large charge. He poured out a stream of comprehensive reports, which attracted notice at Calcutta, and indulged to his heart's content his favourite relaxation of sketching and painting in water-colours. The district entrusted to him had only lately, 11 Dec. 1861, been constituted into a chief commissioner's province, and the foundation of its future administration had to be laid. The American civil war, fortunately for all parties, created a brisk demand for cotton and other agricultural produce, which benefited the rural population. An education department was organised. and more than a thousand schools brought under it. From 1863 the cadastral survey of village lands was pushed on, and long-term settlements of revenue for thirty years in thirteen of the districts were introduced. Lease-holding tenants were converted into freehold proprietors. A municipality was established in Nagpur in 1864, leading the way for smaller bodies elsewhere. District local boards were created, but in all cases under the fostering and necessary care of officials. Eighteen dispensaries broke the ground for the hospitals which his successors were to build. His Punjab experience had taught him the value of picked subordinates, and no chief commissioner was ever served by better assistants than Alfred Lyall, Charles Elliott, and Charles Bernard. The connection at length established with Bombay by the Great Indian Peninsula railway system in 1867 enabled Temple to leave Nagpur in full confidence to his successor, upon whom frowning times of famine were to fall. The belated honour of C.S.I, was conferred upon him in 1866, and he was made K.C.S.L next year.

A brief interval was filled up by short appointments as resident at Hyderabad, 5 April 1867, where the relations between the Nizam and his able minister, Sir Salar Jung, were strained, and then as foreign secretary to the government of India. In April 1868, on the resignation of William Nathaniel Massey [q. v.]. Temple became financial member of council and undertook the financial business of the supreme government. From 1868 to 1874 he thus served first as a colleague of his old chief, Sir John Lawrence, then throughout the administration of Lord Mayo, 1869-72, and for a time with Lord Northbrook. The shock given by the Mutiny to the credit of India had not been spent, and the needs of administrative progress were increasing. Naturally, therefore, the period was one of experiment, sometimes premature, and of recourse to unpopular measures to maintain solvency. In 1867 a tax on profits from professional trades and offices had been imposed, being followed in 1868 by the certificate tax, assessed at a lower rate but more productive. In 1869 came the income tax with a duty of one per cent, on companies and a sliding scale on private incomes. In November the rates were increased, and the zeal of collectors stimulated. Much indignation was expressed, and for the next two years