Allan Octavian Hume, C.B./Retirement from the Service
His Retirement in 1882.
In a recent issue of The Pioneer there has appeared a letter signed A. T. B., which are the initials of Captain Beynon, an esteemed friend of Mr. Hume, and a supporter of the Congress. In this letter it is stated, from personal knowledge, that Lord Lytton at one time during his viceroyalty, offered Mr. Hume the Lieutenant-Governorship of the Punjab, but Mr. Hume declined the appointment, saying that the Lieutenant-Governorship meant a great deal of entertaining, and for this neither his wife nor he himself cared: he would much rather be Home Member. Lord Lytton then recommended him for Home Member and a K.C.S.I., but this recommendation Lord Salisbury refused, on the ground that Mr. Hume was "stiffening Lord Northbrook" against the repeal of the cotton duties.
Had Mr. Hume accepted the Lieutenant-Governorship, we should have had a unique example of a one-man administration in full sympathy with the people. The people of his Province would have largely benefited. But it was well for the future of India that, at this critical time, he was set free from the absorbing labours of the supreme executive, and brought into the closest touch with the new forces which the world-spirit was generating among the Indian people.