On the first of these points, Miss Nightingale was doomed to some disappointment. Neither at the time with which we are here concerned, nor in her later years, nor yet to the present day, has any supreme and executive sanitary machinery been established in India. "It was true," said the Secretary of State during a debate in the House of Lords on Indian sanitation in 1913 (June 9), "that the present system fell very far short of a great independent Sanitary Department supreme over the Provincial Governments and forming one of the main departments of the Government of India." That was Miss Nightingale's ideal at this time, though in later years, as we shall learn,[90] she recognized that sanitary progress in India could not be turned out by clockwork; but at the opposite pole stood the scheme by which she was threatened in 1867 for consigning sanitary administration in the Local Governments to a sub-head of the prison department. She had the satisfaction before Sir John Lawrence left India of seeing another scheme adopted, which was at any rate as far removed from the Prison as from her Ideal. On the other two points, stated above, she was at the time completely successful. She had in all this a valuable ally; and it was her way to see something like special providence in fortunate circumstances. The most logical mind sometimes admits exceptions; yet there was in fact no exception. Providence, according to her belief, is Law; and it had become a law that men interested in her interests should go to her. Hence it was that she made at this time a friendship with one whose disinterested devotion to the cause of sanitary reform in India equalled her own, and whose co-operation was to prove of the greatest value. The new friend was Sir Bartle Frere. [90] See below, p. 405. II