VI. The Twilight of the Whigs and the Reform of the Indian Councils, 1886–1892

Abstract

In 1855 Sir Francis Baring described the Whigs as ‘a body of men…[who] when the people are roused stand between the constitution and revolution and go with the people, but not to extremities’. The Great Reform Bill and Russell's further franchise proposals from 1852 to 1866 were characteristic attempts to conciliate ‘the people’ by extending timely reforms which would preserve the balance of the British constitution. The Whigs had learned the moral of the story of the Sibylline books and accepted its relevance to the process of constitutional reform. Gladstone's Irish Home Rule bill signalled the passing of their moderating influence in the councils of liberalism. However, during the following six years they influenced the Tory government's response to the demands of the newly emerged Indian National Congress. From 1886 Lord Dufferin, the Whig viceroy, pressed for concessions that would ‘take the wind out of the sails’ of the Congress, and from 1889 his successor, Lord Lansdowne, pursued a similar approach. The Tory Councils Act of 1892 was no large constitutional advance. However, it embodied the principle of representation and the germ of the idea of election. That it went so far is attributable to the exertions of the Whig peers, at Westminster no less than in India. The Unionist Lord Northbrook, son of Sir Francis Baring and a former viceroy, proposed a crucial amendment to the Councils bill, and it was carried with the authoritative support of the earl of Kimberley, thrice Gladstone's secretary of state for India and one whom Morley recalled as ‘at the top of the Whigs that I have known’.