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as my successor. I had a principal hand in selecting the present site of the Leper Asylum.
Though the Maharaja and myself were great personal friends, in politics we did not always worship in the same temple. Sometimes we agreed to differ, and on one particular occasion the difference was acute. The Maharaja and Sir Charles Elliott, late Lieutenant- Governor of Bengal, were great friends. Sir Charles Elliott was about to retire, and the Maharaja proposed to raise a public memorial in his honour. He wanted me to be associated with it, and, somewhat diplomatically (for there was considerable shrewd- ness and sagacity behind his frank and cordial manner) suggested to me that one of the purposes to which the memorial fund would be applied would be the endowment of a professorship in the Ripon College. Notwithstanding this somewhat seductive allurement, I flatly declined to be associated with the movement. I said, 'Maharaja, Sir Charles Elliott has wrecked his reputation by the Jury Notification. The public cannot honour such a ruler. To join such a movement would be for me to commit political suicide.' For me the matter ended there. I heard no more about it. But this difference did not in the smallest degree interrupt the cordiality of our relations or chill the warmth of our friendship.
The Madras session of the Congress of 1887 deserves to be recalled to mind for an animated discussion about the Arms Act, which is not wholly without a bearing upon that question as it now stands. A resolution was moved that the Arms Act be repealed. The Arms Act and the Vernacular Press Act were twin measures that were passed by Lord Lytton's Government. They were part and parcel of that policy of mistrust which was so conspicuously in evidence during Lord Lytton's administration, and which his great successor, Lord Ripon, did so much to undo. As I have already observed, Mr. Gladstone in his Midlothian campaign vigor- ously denounced both these measures. When he came into power as the result of the general election, the Vernacular Press Act was repealed, but the Arms Act was allowed to remain a part of the law of the land. It was always a source of irritation. There was always a sore feeling in connexion with the Act, which found repeated expression in the resolutions of the Indian National Congress. At the Madras Congress, an amendment was moved by the late Dr. Trailakyanath Mitter, an eminent lawyer, who, if he had not been cut off by an early death, would possibly have been a Judge of the Calcutta High Court. The amendment did not seek