Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/204

 Montgomery's report and recommendations on the condition of the Rajahmundry district elicited high commendation from the government of Madras, and two years later he was selected by the Marquis of Tweeddale [see, eighth ] to fill a vacancy in the government secretariat. He served as secretary to government in the revenue and public works departments until 1850, when he was promoted to the chief secretaryship. In 1855 he was appointed by the court of directors a member of the governor's council, which post he held until 1857, when, his health failing, he returned to England, and in the course of that year resigned his appointment and retired from the Indian civil service. In the following year, on the establishment of the council of India in London, Montgomery was appointed to be one of the first members of the new council, and this position he retained until 1876, when he finally retired from official life. On the occasion of his retirement he was appointed, at the recommendation of the Marquis of Salisbury, then secretary of state for India, to be a member of the privy council, an honour which is very rarely conferred upon Indian civil servants.

Montgomery's official career was eminently successful. He was not a brilliant man, but he was an extremely useful public servant. As a very young man he was remarked for the carefulness and accuracy of his work. When he became the head of a district, he was regarded as one of the ablest district officers in the presidency to which he belonged. He certainly had the advantage of possessing influential friends. Lord Wellesley had formed a high opinion of him when he worked in Dublin in the lord-lieutenant's private office, and did not fail to exert his influence on his behalf. Sir John Malcolm twas also akind friend to him. But he fully justified their recommendations. By his report upon the Rajahmundry district, and by the recommendations which he made for improving its condition, he rendered a service to the state, the benefits of which still remain. In the higher posts which he subsequently filled in Madras, as secretary and chief secretary to government and member of council, he fully maintained his previous reputation. By the successive governors under whom he served in the secretariat and in council, the Marquis of Tweeddale, Sir Henry Pottinger, and Lord Harris, he was trusted as a wise and conscientious adviser. During his long service in the Indian council, extending over eighteen years, he was highly esteemed

both by successive secretaries of state and by his colleagues in the council. His minutes, when lie found himself called upon to dissent from the decisions of the secretary of state or of a majority of the council, were models of independent but courteous criticism. He retained to the last a keen interest in the presidency in which the whole of his Indian service had been passed. Indeed, it has been sometimes thought that he carried beyond due limits his advocacy of the claims of his old presidency, as in the case of the Madras harbour project, which was sanctioned by the India office, mainly at his instance, but has been a heavy burden upon the Indian revenues without compensating results. On political questions concerning the south of India he was a high authority. When the nawab of the Carnatic died in 1858, Montgomery supported Lord Harris in advocating the extinction of the titular nawabship as a mischievous remnant of a state of things which, for political reasons, it was inexpedient to maintain. But he was not opposed in principle to the maintenance of native dynasties. In 1863 he wrote a cogent minute dissenting from the refusal of the secretary of state in council to restore to the rajah of Mysore the administrations of the territories of that state. The policy which on this occasion Montgomery opposed had been supported by two successive governors-general, the Marquis of Dalhousie and Earl Canning, but was subsequently reversed.

Montgomery died suddenly in London on 24 June 1878. In appearance he was singularly handsome, although small in stature. In manner he was invariably courteous, and his courtesy was the outcome of a kindly nature. He possessed in a conspicuous degree the rare virtue of readiness to admit error when he found that he had misjudged another. He married, on 3 March 1827, Leonora, daughter of General Richard Pigot, who survived him, dying on 16 June 1889. He left no children, and was succeeded as third baronet by his brother, Admiral Sir Alexander Leslie Montgomery (1807-1888)  MOON, WILLIAM (1818–1894), inventor of the embossed type known as Moon's type for the blind, was descended from an old Sussex family seated at Rother- 