MINTO, GILBERT JOHN MURRAY KYNYN MOND ELLIOT, 4TH EARL OF ( 1 84 5-1914 ) , was born in Lon don on July 9,1845. He was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, and joined the Scots Guards in 1867. In 187o he sent in his papers and went to live in Lincolnshire, where he acted as a gentleman rider for four years. He rode four times in the Grand National, and in the 1876 race he broke his neck. He survived, and turned newspaper correspondent. In this capacity he was in Spain with the Carlist army in 1874, and in Turkey in the Russo Turkish war. He was present in an unofficial way at the second Afghan war in 1879, and very nearly went to Kabul with Cavag nari's party who were murdered there next year. He went to the Egyptian war in 1882 in the same casual way, and f ought with the mounted infantry at Ismailia.
He married Mary Grey in 1883, and the haphazard part of his life came to an end. In 1883 he went to Canada as military secre tary to Lord Lansdowne; here he served in the Riel rebellion campaign and was offered the post of commandant of the North West Mounted Police. He returned to England in 1886, and spent twelve years at home, chiefly occupied with his volunteer corps, the Border Mounted Rifles, and studying the theory of warfare. In 1891 he succeeded his father as Lord Minto. In 1898 he was made Governor-General of Canada. Here his great problem was the difference in point of view between Chamberlain, with his vision of Imperial Federation, and Sir Wilfred Laurier, prime minister of Canada, whose vision, concentrated on Canada, in cluded no such thing. Minto's invariably constitutional behaviour and his soothing personal influence helped to surmount some un pleasant situations, notably the Alaskan question and that of the Canadian contingent in the Boer war. Laurier said of him, "He is the most constitutional governor we have had." Minto returned to England in November 1904, and in August 1905, he was appointed Viceroy of India in succession to Curzon.
Curzon left him a ticklish legacy ; he had changed many things in a very short time, and he had been an autocrat. Not the least of Minto's troubles was the tradition of centralisation he found; not the least of his assets were his great-grandfather's work a hundred years before, and India's long memory. Minto started at once to restore responsibility to the Viceroy's council. The rela tion between Minto and his secretary of State, Morley, was inter esting. They liked and trusted one another personally, but Morley,
as secretary of State, was a difficult man to handle. He tended for more than one reason, to be autocratic ; he started by overriding his own council, he went on to ignore the Viceroy's council and to attempt to reduce the Viceroy himself to a satellite of the secre tary of State. Minto handled the situation very cleverly; more than one of his suggestions, quietly thrown out in letters, came back to him in the majesty of Morley's somewhat Olympian despatches. But Morley's constant interference in the details of administration, raised a serious constitutional question, and very nearly provoked Minto's resignation. The breach with Kitchener that Curzon had left was immediately healed, and the two men worked together harmoniously in preparing India's case when the details of the Russian Convention were being arranged. Minto took a long step towards the solution of the frontier problem when he made a firm friend of the Amir of Afghanistan, who paid him a visit in Calcutta. But Morley was somewhat inclined to ignore views on the wider aspects of Imperial policy coming from India, and in the event of the Convention of 1907 nearly undid all Minto's work for the conciliation of the Amir.
But all other aspects of Minto's viceroyalty are of small mo ment compared with the supreme importance of the Reforms.
(See INDIA.) On this matter Minto and Morley saw eye to eye from the start. There were even times when the Tory Viceroy outran the prudence of the Radical secretary, and when the battle was won Morley said to Lady Minto, "I am swimming in a popular tide through victories which are not my own." In spite of strong opposition in India and at home the steps were gradually taken.
The first was the appointment of an Indian member to the Secre tary's Council; the second, much more hotly disputed, the pointment of Sinha to the Viceroy's council in March 1909. In May of the same year the Reform Bill was passed, the foundation of the new policy of gradual extension of self-government to Indiat Even Minto's enthusiasm for a progressive policy was perhaps not more to his credit than the determination with which, while he firmly suppressed sedition and violence, he refused to let them deter him from his chosen path. Lord Minto returned to England in Nov. 1910 and died at his home at Minto on March 1, See J. Buchan, Lord Minto, 1Q24.