ABSTRACT
Lord Pentland was equally interested in public health and economic development. Madras was governed at the top by a council of four, the Governor himself and three members of his Council, who divided between them the supervision of the various departments. Pentland chose Education as his special province. The great difficulty in securing the sadly needed increase of school and college equipment was finance, in which Madras was cruelly hampered, being allowed to retain for local purposes only an exceptionally small proportion of the revenue raised in the province. Pentland was, on principle, very opposed to interference with the liberty of the Press; and he was also very tolerant of attacks on the Government in vernacular papers, which he attributed to ignorance and misunderstanding rather than to malice. Accordingly Mrs. Annie Besant came to Madras, and begged Madame Blavatsky to accept her as a disciple.
