Ministry of that day held fast to Canning's rule, that the highest office in India should invariably be filled from England alone, and the Directors had to content themselves with a weighty protest against the new system of excluding their servants from an office which some of them had hitherto filled with great advantage to the common weal.
Early in 1835, during the short-lived Ministry of Sir Robert Peel, the choice of a permanent successor to Bentinck fell upon Lord Heytesbury, a diplomatist of fair repute. But a few months later Peel's nominee was set aside by the new Premier, Lord Melbourne, who reclaimed the post for one of his own colleagues, in the teeth of precedents set by his political opponents twice within thirty years. In September of that year, shortly after Bentinck's arrival, the vacant post was conferred upon Lord Auckland, an able and popular member of the Whig Cabinet[1].
George Eden, second son of Pitt's Lord Auckland, was born in August, 1784, at Eden Farm, near Beckenham in Kent. His father, William Eden, third son of a Durham baronet, had entered the House of Commons in 1774, had within two years become President of the new Board of Trade, and in 1778 was one of the five Commissioners sent to America by Lord North, to try and patch up a peace with the revolted colonies. As Chief Secretary for Ireland under Lord Carlisle, he sat by virtue of his office in the Irish Parliament. In 1783, Eden and
- ↑ Thornton's British Empire in India, vol. vi.
