Sir Charles Trevelyan, 1st Baronet

He entered the East India Company's Bengal civil service as a writer in 1826, having displayed from an early age a great proficiency in Asian languages and dialects. On 4 January 1827, Trevelyan was appointed assistant to Sir Charles Theophilus Metcalfe, the commissioner at Delhi, where, during a residence of four years, he was entrusted with the conduct of several important missions. For some time he acted as guardian to the youthful Madhu Singh, the Rajah of Bhurtpore. He also worked to improve the condition of the native population.[10] He abolished the transit duties by which the internal trade of India had long been fettered. For these and other services, he received the special thanks of the governor-general in council. Before leaving Delhi, he donated personal funds for construction of a broad street through a new suburb, then in course of erection, which thenceforth became known as Trevelyanpur.

In 1831, he moved to Calcutta, and became deputy secretary to the government in the political department. Trevelyan was especially zealous in the cause of education, and in 1835, largely owing to his persistence, government was led to decide in favour of the promulgation of European literature and science among the Indians. An account of the efforts of government, entitled On the Education of the People of India, was published by Trevelyan in 1838. In April 1836, he was nominated secretary to the Sudder board of revenue, an office he had held until his return in January 1838.

On 21 January 1840, he entered on the duties of assistant secretary to Her Majesty's Treasury in London, and discharged the functions of that office for nineteen years. In Ireland, he administered the relief works of 1845–47, when upwards of 734,000 men were employed by the government during the Great Famine. Altogether, about a million people in Ireland are reliably estimated to have died of starvation and epidemic disease between 1846 and 1851, and some two million emigrated in a period of a little more than a decade (1845–55). On 27 April 1848, Trevelyan was appointed as a KCB in reward of his services.

The Great Famine in Ireland began as a catastrophe of extraordinary magnitude, but its effects were severely worsened by the actions and inactions of the Whig government, headed by Lord John Russell in the crucial years from 1846 to 1852. Many members of the British upper and middle classes believed that the famine was a divine judgment—an act of Providence although these views also existed in the Irish Catholic Church. A leading exponent of the providentialist perspective was Trevelyan, who was chiefly responsible for administering Irish relief policy throughout the famine years. In his book The Irish Crisis, published in 1848, Trevelyan later described the famine as "a direct stroke of an all-wise and all-merciful Providence", one which laid bare "the deep and inveterate root of social evil", that evil being Ireland's rural economic system of exploitative landlords and peasants overly dependent on the potato. The famine, he declared, was "the sharp but effectual remedy by which the cure is likely to be effected… God grant that the generation to which this great opportunity has been offered may rightly perform its part and we may not relax our efforts until Ireland fully participates in the social health and physical prosperity of Great Britain." This mentality of Trevelyan's was influential in persuading the government to do nothing to restrain mass evictions..

During the Great Famine, specifically 1846, the Whig–Liberal Government held power in Britain, with Trevelyan acting as treasurer.[11] In this position Trevelyan had considerable influence over the parliament's decisions, especially the plans for the relief effort in Ireland.[11] Along with the Whig government, he believed Ireland needed to correct itself and that a laissez-faire attitude was the best solution. Though the efforts made by Trevelyan did not produce any permanent remedy to the situation, he believed that if the British Government gave Ireland all that was necessary to survive, the Irish people would come to rely on the British government instead of fixing their problems.[12]

In the summer of 1846, Trevelyan ordered the Peelite Relief Programmes, which had been operating since the early years of the famine, to be shut down. This was done on 21 July 1846 by Sir Charles Wood.[13] Trevelyan believed that if the relief continued while a new food crisis was unfolding, the poor would become permanently conditioned to having the state take care of them.[13]

After the end of the Peelite Relief Programs, the Whig–Liberal government instituted the Labour Rate Act, which provided aid only to the most severely affected areas of the famine.[12] This Labour Act took time to be implemented, as was Trevelyan's intention, allowing the British government to spend the bare minimum to feed those starving from the famine. He was nicknamed as "linchpin of relief operations".[11] Trevelyan believed that labourers should have seen this as a happy event to take advantage of what he called "breathing-time" to harvest their own crops and carry out wage-producing harvest work for large farmers.[12] But the return of the blight had deprived labourers of any crops to harvest and farmers of agricultural work to hire labourers for.[12]

Trevelyan expressed his views in letters that year to Lord Monteagle of Brandon and in an article in The Times. But in 1846, more than ninety percent of the potato crop had been destroyed.[14] It is important to note that the large crops of oats and grain were not affected, and if those crops had been distributed to the Irish people rather than exported, mass starvation could have been avoided.[15]

Trevelyan wrote to Lord Monteagle of Brandon, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, that the famine was an "effective mechanism for reducing surplus population", and was "the judgement of God". Further he wrote that "The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people".[2][16][17]

Trevelyan said in his 9 October 1846 letter to Lord Monteagle that "the government establishments are strained to the utmost to alleviate this great calamity and avert this danger" as was within their power so to do.[18] Trevelyan praised the government and denounced the Irish gentry in his letter, blaming them for the famine.[18] He believed that the landlords had a responsibility to feed the labourers and increase land productivity.[18] The Times agreed with Trevelyan, faulting the gentry for not instructing their proprietors to improve their estates and not planting crops other than the potato.[19] In his letter to Lord Monteagle, Trevelyan identified the gentry with the "defective part of the national character" and chastised them for expecting the government to fix everything, "as if they have themselves no part to perform in this great crisis."[18] By blaming the famine on the gentry, Trevelyan justified the actions—or inaction—of the British Government. These same gentry were of course raising the crops of oats and grains as well as meat that were exported under armed guard to England.

The potato blight eventually spread to the Western Highlands of Scotland, causing similar destitution and deaths. In 1851, in response to that crisis, Trevelyan and Sir John McNeill founded the Highland and Island Emigration Society. From 1851 until its termination in 1858, the society sponsored the emigration of around 5,000 Scots to Australia and thus increasing the devastation of the Clearances.[20] Trevelyan likewise supported Irish emigration, saying "We must not complain of what we really want to obtain".[21][22]

In 1853, Trevelyan proposed the organisation of a new system for hiring of people in the government civil service. The Northcote–Trevelyan Report, signed by himself and Sir Stafford Northcote in November 1853, entitled The Organisation of the Permanent Civil Service, laid the foundation for securing the admission of qualified and educated persons into positions that had been dominated by members of aristocratic and influential families who benefitted by personal networks. It was intended to be a merit system.

In 1858, Lord Harris resigned the governorship of the presidency of Madras, and Trevelyan was offered the appointment. Having maintained his knowledge of oriental affairs by close attention to all subjects affecting the interest of India, he entered upon his duties as governor of Madras in the spring of 1859. He soon became popular in the presidency. It is claimed that due to his conduct in office, the natives became reconciled to the government. An assessment was carried out, a police system organised in every part, and, contrary to the traditions of the East India Company, land was sold in fee simple to any one who wished to purchase. These and other reforms introduced or developed by Trevelyan won the gratitude and esteem of the Madras population.

All went well until February 1860. Towards the close of 1859, James Wilson had been appointed financial member of the legislative council of India. At the beginning of the new year, he proposed a plan of retrenchment and taxation by which he hoped to improve the financial position of the British administration: his plan was introduced at Calcutta, the seat of government, on 18 February, and transmitted to Madras. On 4 March, an open telegram was sent to Calcutta implying an adverse opinion of this proposal by the governor and council of Madras. On 9 March, a letter was sent to Madras stating the central government's objection to the transmission of such a message in an open telegram at a time when native feeling could not be considered stable. At the same time, the representative of the Madras government in the legislative council of India was prohibited from following the instructions of his superiors to lay their views upon the table and to advocate on their behalf. On 21 March, the government sent another telegram to Madras declaring the bill would be introduced and referred to a committee which was due to report in five weeks. On 26 March, opinions among Trevelyan and his council were recorded and, on his authority, the document found its way into the papers.

On arrival of this intelligence in Britain, the Governor of Madras was at once recalled. This decision occasioned much discussion both in and out of Parliament. Defending the recall of Trevelyan, Palmerston, in his place in Parliament, said:

Undoubtedly it conveys a strong censure on one act of Sir Charles Trevelyan's public conduct, yet Sir Charles Trevelyan has merits too inherent in his character, to be clouded and overshadowed by this simple act, and I trust in his future career he may be useful to the public service and do honour to himself.

Sir Charles Wood, the President of the Board of Control, said:

A more honest, zealous, upright, and independent servant could not be. He was a loss to India, but there would be danger if he were allowed to remain, after having adopted a course so subversive of all authority, so fearfully tending to endanger our rule, and so likely to provoke the people to insurrection against the central and responsible authority.[23]

In 1862, Trevelyan returned to India as finance minister. His tenure of office was marked by important administrative reforms and by extensive measures for the development of natural resources in India by means of public works. In 1862, Colonel Douglas Hamilton was given a roving commission by Trevelyan to conduct surveys and make drawings for the Government of all the hill plateaus in Southern India which were likely to suit as Sanitaria, or quarters for European troops.

On his return home in 1865, Trevelyan became engaged in discussions of the question of army purchase, on which he had given evidence before the royal commission in 1857. Later he was associated with a variety of social questions, such as charities, pauperism, and the like, and in the treatment of these. He was a staunch Liberal, and gave his support to the Liberal cause in Northumberland, while residing at Wallington Hall in that county. Trevelyan died at 67 Eaton Square, London, on 19 June 1886, aged 79.