Montgomery's official career was eminently successful. He was not a brilliant man, but he was an extremely useful public servant. As a very young man he was remarked for the carefulness and accuracy of his work. When he became the head of a district, he was regarded as one of the ablest district officers in the presidency to which he belonged. He certainly had the advantage of possessing influential friends. Lord Wellesley had formed a high opinion of him when he worked in Dublin in the lord-lieutenant's private office, and did not fail to exert his influence on his behalf. Sir John Malcolm was also a kind friend to him. But he fully justified their recommendations. By his report upon the Rájahmundry district, and by the recommendations which he made for improving its condition, he rendered a service to the state, the benefits of which still remain. In the higher posts which he subsequently filled in Madras, as secretary and chief secretary to government and member of council, he fully maintained his previous reputation. By the successive governors under whom he served in the secretariat and in council, the Marquis of Tweeddale, Sir Henry Pottinger, and Lord Harris, he was trusted as a wise and conscientious adviser. During his long service in the Indian council, extending over eighteen years, he was highly esteemed both by successive secretaries of state and by his colleagues in the council. His minutes, when he found himself called upon to dissent from the decisions of the secretary of state or of a majority of the council, were models of independent but courteous criticism. He retained to the last a keen interest in the presidency in which the whole of his Indian service had been passed. Indeed, it has been sometimes thought that he carried beyond due limits his advocacy of the claims of his old presidency, as in the case of the Madras harbour project, which was sanctioned by the India office, mainly at his instance, but has been a heavy burden upon the Indian revenues without compensating results. On political questions concerning the south of India he was a high authority. When the nawáb of the Carnatic died in 1858, Montgomery supported Lord Harris in advocating the extinction of the titular nawábship as a mischievous remnant of a state of things which, for political reasons, it was inexpedient to maintain. But he was not opposed in principle to the maintenance of native dynasties. In 1863 he wrote a cogent minute dissenting from the refusal of the secretary of state in council to restore to the rajah of Mysore the administrations of the territories of that state. The policy which on this occasion Montgomery opposed had been supported by two successive governors-general, the Marquis of Dalhousie and Earl Canning, but was subsequently reversed.
