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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: ECG-EMS |
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ELLENBOROUGH, EDWARD LAW, EARL OF (1790-1871) , the eldest son of the 1st Lord Ellenborough, was born on the 8th of September 1790. He was educated at Eton and St John's College, Cambridge . He represented the subsequently disfranchised borough of St Michael's, Cornwall
In the Wellington administration of 1828 Ellenborough was made lord privy seal; he took a considerable share in the business of the foreign office, as an unofficial assistant to Welling-ton, who was a great admirer of his talents. He aimed at succeeding Lord Dudley at the foreign office, but was forced to content himself with the presidency of the .board of control, which he retained until the fall of the ministry in 183o. Ellen-borough was an active administrator, and took a lively interest
Ellenborough went to India in order " to restore peace to Asia," but the whole term of his office was occupied in war. On his arrival there the news that greeted him was that of the massacre of Kabul, and the sieges of Ghazni and Jalalabad, while the sepoys of Madras were on the verge of open mutiny. In his proclamation of the 15th of March 1842, as in his memorandum for the queen dated the 18th, he stated with characteristic clearness and eloquence the duty of first inflicting some signal and decisive blow on the Afghans, and then leaving them to govern themselves under the sovereign of their own choice. Unhappily, when he left his council for upper India, and learned the trifling failure of General England, he instructed Pollock and Nott, who were advancing triumphantly with their avenging columns to rescue the British captives, to fall back. The army proved true to the governor-general's earlier proclamation rather than to his later fears; the hostages were rescued, the scene of Sir Alexander Burnes's murder in the heart of Kabul was burned down. Dost Mahommed was quietly dismissed from a prison in Calcutta to the throne in the Bala
sandal -wood gates of the fane, and set them up in hisII capital of Ghazni. The Mahommedan puppet of the English, Shah Shuja, had been asked, when ruler of Afghanistan, to restore them to India; and what he had failed to do the Christian ruler of opposing Mahommedans and Hindus resolved to effect in the most solemn and public manner. In vain had Major (afterwards Sir Henry) Rawlinson proved that they were only reproductions of the original gates, to which the Ghazni moulvies clung merely as a source of offerings from the faithful who visited the old conqueror's tomb. In vain did the Hindu sepoys show the most chilling indifference to the belauded restoration. Ellenborough could not resist the temptation to copy Napoleon's magniloquent proclamation under the pyramids. The fraudulent folding doors were conveyed on a triumphal car to the fort of Agra, where they were found to be made not of sandalwood but of deal. That Somnath proclamation (immortalized in a speech by Macaulay) was the first step towards its author's recall.Hardly had Ellenborough issued his medal with the legend " Pax Asiae Restituta " when he was at war with the amirs of Sind. The tributary amirs had on the whole been faithful, for Major (afterwards Sir James) Outram controlled them. But he had reported the opposition of a few, and Ellenborough ordered an inquiry. His instructions were admirable, in equity as well as energy, and if Outram had been left to carry them out all would have been well. But the duty was entrusted to Sir Charles Napier, with full political as well as military powers. And to add to the evil, Mir Ali Morad intrigued with both sides so effectually that he betrayed the amirs on the one hand, while he deluded Sir Charles Napier to their destruction on the other. Ellenborough was led on till events were beyond his control, and his own just and merciful instructions were forgotten. Sir Charles Napier made more than one confession like this: " We have no right to seize Sind, yet we shall do so, and a very advantageous, useful and humane piece of rascality it will be." The battles of Meeanee and Hyderabad followed; and the Indus became a British river from Karachi to Multan.Sind had hardly been disposed of when troubles arose on both sides of the governor-general, who was then at Agra. On the north the disordered kingdom of the Sikhs was threatening the frontier. In Gwalior to the south, the feudatory Mahratta state, there were a large mutinous army, a Ranee only twelve years of age, an adopted chief of eight, and factions in the council of ministers. These conditions brought Gwalior to the verge of civil war. Ellenborough reviewed the danger in the minute of the 1st of November 1845, and told Sir Hugh Gough to advance. Further treachery and military licence rendered the battles of Maharajpur and Punniar, fought on the same day, inevitable though they were, a surprise to the combatants. The treaty that followed was as merciful as it was wise. The pacification of Gwalior also had its effect beyond the Sutlej, where anarchy was restrained for yet another year, and the work of civilization was left to Ellenborough's two successors. But by this time the patience of the directors was exhausted. They had no control over Ellenborough's policy; his despatches to them were haughty and disrespectful; and in June 1844 they exercised their power of recalling him. On his return to England Ellenborough was created an earl and received the thanks of parliament; but his administration speedily became the theme of hostile debates, though it was successfully vindicated by Peel and Wellington. When Peel's cabinet was reconstituted in 1846 Ellenborough became first lord of the admiralty. In 1858 he took office under Lord Derby as president of the board of control, for the fourth time. It was then his congenial task to draft the new scheme for the government of India which the mutiny had rendered necessary. But his old fault of impetuosity again proved his stumbling-block
But for this act of rashness he might have enjoyed the taskof carrying into effect the home constitution for the government of India which he sketched in his evidence before the select committee of the House of Commons on Indian territories on the 8th of June 1852. Paying off his old score against the East India Company, he then advocated the abolition of the court of directors as a governing body, the opening of the civil service to the army, the transference of the government to the crown, and the appointment of a council to advise the minister who should take the place of the president of the board of control. These suggestions of 1852 were carried out by his successor Lord Stanley, afterwards earl of Derby, in 1858, so closely even in details, that Lord Ellenborough must be pronounced the author, for good or evil, of the present home constitution of the government of India. Though acknowledged to be one of the foremost orators in the House of Lords, and taking a frequent part in debate, Ellen-borough never held office again. He died at his seat, Southam House, near Cheltenham, on the z2nd of December 1871, when the barony reverted to his nephew Charles Edmund Law (1820189o), the earldom becoming extinct. See History of the Indian Administration (Bentley, 1874), edited by Loid Colchester; Minutes of Evidence taken before the Select Committee on Indian Territories (June 1852) ; volume i. of the Calcutta Review; the Friend of India, during the years 18421845; and John Hope, The House of Scindea: A Sketch ( Longmans
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