Secretary in the India Office, Last Months in England and Unfinished Work

On 10 March 1910, five days after arriving in England, Risley took up his appointment as secretary of the Judicial and Public department in the India Office. Morley told Minto he was ‘enormously impressed by [Risley’s] qualities’ and his new secretary ‘cannot be far from being the very cleverest man in the whole world’. ¹ Morley obviously had great confidence in Risley, but his extravagant praise of him is strange. Because Morley had sat in the House of Lords since 1908, Edwin Montagu, the parliamentary under-secretary of state, took responsibility for Indian affairs in the Commons; Montagu, like Morley, was a Liberal. Richmond Ritchie, the permanent under-secretary in the India Office, had been appointed the previous year when Arthur Godley, his long-serving predecessor, had retired. ² Ritchie’s annual salary was £2000, the civil service maximum; Risley’s was £1,200, a substantial fall from his final salary in India, though it was supplemented by his ICS annual pension of £1,000.