Sir Charles) Bernard, and of his own brother, Charles Campbell. The influence of Sir John Strachey also stood him in good stead. The most important measure of Campbell's administration was the district road act, in which taxation was raised for local purposes on local property. The measure was very successful in spite of the opposition of the Bengal officials. A system of regular collection of statistics was also initiated, and the first properly conducted census of Bengal was taken in 1871. Campbell also gave great attention to education. He extended the village school system of Sir John Peter Grant and established competitive examinations for the admission of natives into the Bengal service. A medical school founded for them at Calcutta bears Campbell's name. Campbell believed in technical and physical training rather than in legal and literary.
During his term of office in Bengal a successful expedition was conducted against the Lushais, and the Garo Hills district (then unexplored) was annexed. Campbell deprecated in general prosecution for press offences, though he held an entirely free press to be inconsistent with oriental methods of government. After the assassination of Lord Mayo, the temporary viceroy, Francis, Lord Napier and Ettrick [q. v. Suppl.], continued his support to Campbell's reforms, but Lord Northbrook was not in harmony with his views, and vetoed a bill (which had passed unanimously the Bengal council) for re-establishing the rural communes. In dealing with the Bengal famine of 1873-4, however, there was no serious disagreement between the viceroy and the lieutenant-governor, with the notable exception of the refusal to sanction Campbell's proposed prohibition of the export of rice from Bengal. The system of relief by public works and of advances to cultivators was successfully carried out by Campbell, with the assistance of Sir Richard Temple, who succeeded him as lieutenant-governor. In the latter's opinion he knew more of the realities of famine than any officer then in India, and his views had great weight with the commission appointed after the Southern Indian famine of 1876-7.
Campbell finally left India in April 1874, partly on account of bad health, but partly also because he felt that he was not sufficiently in the confidence of the Indian government. In the preceding February he had been named a member of the council of India, but gave up the appointment in less than a year to enter parliament. He had been created K.C.S.I, in May 1873. Campbell presided over the economy and trade department at the Social Science Congress held at Glasgow in the autumn of 1874. In April 1875 he entered parliament as liberal member for Kirkcaldy, and sat for that constituency till his death. He took an active interest in foreign and colonial in addition to Indian questions. Unfortunately, through defects of voice and manner and a too frequent interposition in debate, Campbell soon wearied the house, and as a politician his failure was as complete as had been his success as an administrator in India.
In the welfare of native races Campbell always showed great interest. In the autumn of 1878 he went to the United States to make a study of the negro question. In 1879 he published his results in 'Black and White: the Outcome of a Visit to the United States.' Campbell also published 'A Handy Book on the Eastern Question,' 1876, 8vo, and a pamphlet, 'The Afghan Frontier,' 1879, 8vo. In 1887 he issued a volume entitled ' The British Empire.' He wrote on ethnological subjects in the 'Quarterly Ethnological Journal' and the 'Journal of the Bengal Asiatic Society,' and in 1874 he edited for the Bengal Secretarial Press 'Specimens of the Language of India, including those of the Aboriginal Tribes of Bengal, the Central Provinces, and the Eastern Frontier.' At the time of his death he was in Egypt, writing an account of his Indian career.
Campbell died at Cairo, from the effects of influenza, on 18 Feb. 1892, and was buried in the British Protestant cemetery there. He married in 1853 Lætitia, daughter of John Gowan Vibart, of the Bengal civil service, and left several children.
Campbell's 'Memoirs of my Indian Career' (2 vols. 1893, ed. Sir Charles Bernard) contains some severe criticism of Kaye's and Malleson's account of the mutiny from the point of view of a close spectator, as well as a valuable account of the progress of the tenant-right question in India, and the treatment of famines, with both of which Campbell's name will always be prominently associated.
[Memoirs of my Indian Career, ed. Bernard with portrait; Gent. Mag. 1854, ii. 75, 76; Sir R. Temple's Men and Events of my Time in India, chap, xviii.; Lucy's Diary of Two Parliaments and the Salisbury Parl.; Times, 19, 20 Feb. 1892; Men of the Time, 13th edit. Allibone's Dict. Engl. Lit. Suppl.]
CAMPBELL, GEORGE DOUGLAS, eighth Duke of Argyll (1823–1900), second son of John Douglas, seventh duke, and Joan, daughter of John Glassel of Long Niddry, East Lothian, was born on 30 April
