In his ceremonial as in his official duties, the Earl of Mayo had the ease of conscious strength. His noble presence, the splendour of his hospitality, and his magnificence of life, seemed in him only a natural complement of rare administrative power. The most charming of Indian novels,[2] in portraying an ideal head of Indian society, unconsciously delineates Lord Mayo. But indeed it would be almost impossible to draw a great Indian Viceroy in his social aspects without the sketch insensibly growing into his portrait. Alike in the Cabinet and the drawing-room there was the same calm kindness and completeness. Sir Fitzjames Stephen, not given to hero-worship, has said: 'I never met one to whom I felt disposed to give such heartfelt affection and honour.' [Footnote 2: _Dustypore_, by Sir Henry Cunningham.] {187} CHAPTER IX THE END One branch of the internal administration in which Lord Mayo took a deep interest was prison discipline. The subject had come prominently before him when Secretary for Ireland, and his Indian diaries contain valuable remarks and suggestions noted down after inspecting the local jails. He found a chronic battle going on between the District Magistrate, who was _ex officio_ the head of the District jail, and the Medical Officer who was responsible for the health of the prisoners. The District Magistrate was determined that prison should be a distinctly uncomfortable place for the criminal classes within his jurisdiction. The Medical Officer was equally determined to bring down the terrible death-rate which obtained in Indian jails. Indeed, the more enthusiastic doctors would have liked to dismiss every convict at the end of his sentence, weighing several pounds heavier than when he entered the prison gates. Lord Mayo had therefore to deal with the opposite extremes of severity and leniency. On the one hand, {188} he was resolved that the discipline of Indian jails should be a really punitive discipline. On the other hand, he wrote, 'You have no right to inflict a punishment of death upon a prisoner who has only been sentenced for a term of years or for life,' by keeping him in a disease-stricken jail. Among the most distressing and clamant cases which came before him was the great Convict Settlement in the Andaman Islands, in which the mortality amounted in 1867 to over 101 per thousand. The measures taken by Lord Lawrence and Lord Mayo, had by 1870 brought down the death-rate to 10 per thousand. But the inquiries made by Lord Mayo disclosed a laxity of discipline productive of scandalous results. In 1871 a cruel and mysterious murder committed in the Penal Settlement, and which had been somewhat slightly reported on by the responsible officers, forced on Lord Mayo's mind the necessity of a complete change in the system pursued.