Page:Viscount Hardinge and the Advance of the British Dominions into the Punjab.djvu/65

Rh Herbert Maddock officiated as Lieutenant-Governor. The sole survivors (1890) are W. Edwards and Sir Frederick Halliday; the latter recently retired from the India Council, after a long and distinguished service of more than sixty years.

It was the Governor-General's custom, after a short ride at daybreak, to transact the current business of the day with the different members of the Secretariat. He was recommended not to grant interviews. Had he done so, it would have been impossible, ruling as he then did Lower Bengal as well as the whole of India, to have got through his day's work. There was hardly an official at Government House who did not recognise the necessity of this principle.

Once installed in office, Sir H. Hardinge spared no opportunity of enquiring without delay into the military departments of the country. Having devoted so much of his time and energy during his English career to questions of military organisation and national defences, he felt, as he remarks in a letter written at this period, that, although he wished to maintain the Sikh Government in power and not to enlarge our overgrown empire, due precautions must be observed. Troops were moved up quietly towards the frontier, so that when the crisis came he was equal to the occasion.

While these precautionary measures were going on almost unobserved, the Governor-General by no means neglected such matters of civil administration as called for special attention.