Despotic as an Indian Viceroy is, there are even in India certain Constitutional checks on his authority, as, for instance, the Members of Council, the Vernacular and the English press. How was it, the reader may ask, that these constitutional checks were evaded; for it cannot be that they all concurred in such a policy as I have described in the foregoing pages? The principal means of evasion was secrecy. The negotiations with Shere Ali were kept sedulously hidden from the public knowledge, and their nature was only to be dimly inferred from the devout and philanthropic orations of the Viceroy himself. The same course was adopted with respect to the North-West famine; and but for the accident of Mr. Knight's visit to Agra, the truth would have remained hidden to this day. But Lord Lytton did not trust to secrecy alone. The vernacular press was gagged by a Press Act, which was hurried through Council, and made a law in the course of a few hours. The English press could not be gagged precisely in this fashion, but it was very ingeniously drugged through the agency of a curious functionary, styled the Press Commissioner. When Mr. Stanhope was questioned in the House regarding the special duties of this nondescript official, he replied that he had been appointed to superintend the working of the Vernacular Press Act. Actually, he was in operation for several months before that Act had come into existence, and never has had any duties in connection with it. The Press Commissioner is attached to the personal staff of the Viceroy, and may be regarded as a kind of official bard, whose duty it is to chant the praises of his master, and advertise his political wares. The description of Lord Lytton as a "specially-gifted Viceroy" is believed in India to have proceeded from the affectionate imagination of the Press Commissioner. But, besides this, he is a channel of communication between the Government of India and the Indian press. When he was first called into existence, India was informed that a new era was about to begin, in the relations between the press and the Government. The Government, anxious that its policy should be fully discussed by an intelligent press, had appointed a Press Commissioner, whose duty it would be to keep editors supplied with accurate information, from the very fountain-head, of all that Government was doing, or intended to do. It is unnecessary to say that the Press Commissioner has done nothing of the kind. The greater part of the matter he communicates to the press is simply worthless, and wholly devoid of interest to any sane person. If anything of importance occurs which the Government desires to keep secret, but which it fears will leak out, the Press Commissioner communicates the matter to the editors "confidentially," and then it is understood that they are in honour bound not to allude to the subject in their papers. At distant intervals, however, the Press Commissioner, of necessity, allows some