LORD METCALFE AND THE PRESS OF INDIA.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 147, 23 November 1874, Page 3

LORD METCALFE AND THE PRESS OF INDIA.

We regret that in our issue of Thursday last, in our report of the market dinner on on the evening of the inauguration of the new cattle saleyaids, we stated that the chairman in proposing the toast of the " Press" said that " Lord Metcalfe had lost his life in upholding the liberty of the press in India." What the chairman did say was that Lord Metcalfe had lost his post as Go-■vernor-General in upholding the liberty of the press in India. Every one keows that Lord Metcalfe died as Governor-General of Canada from the effects of a cancer in the cheek. In March, 1835, Lorl Metcalfe, then Sir Charles Metcalfe, Baronet, was Governor of the Presidency of Agra, in the Noith-Western provinces of India, and on the departure of Lord William Benlinck for England, he, as Provisional Governor General, returned to Calcutta, and assumed the reins of Governm°nt, which he retained for nearly a year, During this period he liberated the Indian Press. Tuder the Government of his predecessor freedom of speech had been habitually allowed, but the sword of the law still remained in the hand of the Civil Government, and at any time it might have stretched forth to destroy the liberty which was thus 'exercised. In truth the Governor General had the pow«.r of deporting from the soil of India at a moment the editor of any paper, in which had appeared any article or letter displea-ing to the Government of the day, and this power had been exercised in the case of Buckingham. Metcalfe was not content with this state of things. He passed a law assimilating the Press Law of India to that of England. The Com t of Directors were very much anuoyed at this, and not only was he not made permanently Governor-General of India, which post was given to Lord Auckland, but the Governorship of Madras was not even offered to him, Lord Elphinstone being appointed to that office. Letters from England reported the fact that Metcalfe had lost caste in Leadenhall street by liberating the Press, and he wrote to the Court of Directors begging to be informed whether he had really forfeited their confidence, gained during a period of thirty-five years'honorable service, and, having done this, he returned to his post at Agra. When the answer arrived it contained no assurance that he had not forfeited the confidence of the Court, but it clid contain a sort of laconic reprimand that bis letter was unnecessary. Metcalfe at once se.nt in his resignation and returned to England. He was subsequently by Her Majesty's Ministers raised to the peerage, and his career in Jamaica and Canada proved to the world how much good there was in the old member of the Bengal Civil Service.