Page:Sir Thomas Munro and the British Settlement of the Madras Presidency.djvu/13



No name, in any part of India, perhaps, is so familiar or held in such veneration as that of Munro is in the Madras Presidency, though two generations have passed away since his death. In the town of Madras the celebrated equestrian statue by Chantrey serves as a landmark, ever keeping the name of 'Munro' in the mouths of all; but in the Districts where the best years of his life were spent no monument is needed to perpetuate his name or memory.

Great changes have taken place in Southern India during the two-thirds of a century since Munro' s death. The country has been opened up by railways and telegraph wires, and the people have been modernized by schools and colleges. Almost every town which Munro visited as Collector, Colonel, and Governor has now a railway station or is within a few hours' drive of one, and each has its English school, its dispensary or hospital, its post and telegraph office, its magistrate's court and its police station.

But great as have been the changes since Munro's time, they are not so great as those which the