cost of instruction elsewhere; but when, from mere idleness, the public finance is to bear this load for an indefinite period, although the time fixed by the rules of the college as sufficient for the acquisition of two languages is eight months, the abuse must be universally admitted to be intolerable. It will scarcely be credited that young men so paid, and so idle, have been permitted heretofore to remain in college a dead-weight upon the country four, five, six, and seven years before they chose to qualify themselves. This term has been since abridged; but even now there are many who have been in the college for one and two years without passing in any language.

Source.-(ii) Minute of Sir C. T. Metcalfe. Dated December 28, 1828.

In expressing my opinion that the college (at Calcutta) ought to be abolished, as being mischievous with respect to the extravagance which it encourages, and the consequent state of debt and embarrassment which it causes throughout the civil service, and as being unnecessary, and therefore useless for that purpose of instruction which it is professedly designed to accomplish, and consequently entailing a waste of the public resources, it is incumbent on me to state what arrangements I would propose to substitute, with a view to the beneficial reception and disposal of young men of the civil service on their arrival in India.

The young men immediately after their arrival should be subject to an examination, and those who might be found qualified, by knowledge acquired in Europe, or on their voyage to India, to enter on the public service, should at once be appointed to some employment, with the full allowance attached to it, and sent off by dawk, or by some other conveyance, according to the season, to join their respective stations, and commence their career of public duty. Those not qualified should nevertheless be sent away from Calcutta to quiet situations in the interior, to be strictly under the orders of public officers of approved character, who would take pleasure in instructing and advising young men under their charge, and would assign to them such employment as would most speedily justify them for the public service, and render them, in the meanwhile, not entirely useless. During this period of tutelage they should receive allowances merely sufficient for their subsistence, and inferior to those attached to any public office; when reported qualified for the public service by competent examiners, they should be appointed to offices, with the full allowances of servants in employment. The period of service as giving title to subsequent advancement in rank, station, or emolument, should invariably date from the period of qualification.

A more general criticism of the system was made by Lord William Bentinck, who spoke of the exclusiveness of the Company's servants and a tendency to regard with an excessive satisfaction the existing order of things.

The Efficiency of the Civil Service

Source.-Minute of Lord William Bentinck. Dated November 10, 1831. (Parliamentary Papers.)

While I am of opinion that it would be difficult to form any agency more efficient than that of the Civil Service; and while I deem it necessary that its integrity as a body, and the secure prospect of honour and reward, should be preserved to it; it is impossible, at the same time, to avoid referring to some of the disadvantages belonging to this, in common with all "exclusive orders." In all will be found the same disposition to view with satisfaction things as they are; the same indulgence towards the errors of members of the same community, and the want of that exertion which rivalry and competition alone can excite. But besides these, there is in the mode of recruiting the Civil Service by very young men, a cause operating very much to diminish what might otherwise be the greater usefulness of a European agency. These young men come out at too early an age to have acquired any practical experience in any branch of business, science, or knowledge; and therefore, instead of bringing out, as new-comers, the latest improvements of the European civilised world, to be engrafted upon the existing stock, they themselves retrograde, and fall into the opinions and feelings of an age gone by. I venture to think that it would be good policy to make furlough a compulsory measure. But this alone would not be sufficient to correct this exclusiveness. To introduce a feeling and counsel independent altogether of the service, and to add to it the benefit of European experience, combined with matured judgment and acknowledged talents and learning, it would be most useful in my judgment to associate with the judges of the Sudder Courts one or more judges appointed by His Majesty, for the purpose of better superintending and of improving the administration of justice and of the police. It is essential that this infusion of a different agency should not be so extensive as to interfere with the integrity of the service, and with its just and fair prospects.

The result of all my investigation into the system of our administration has been a conviction that its main defect

consists in the absence of all official subordination, in the equality existing between all ranks, and in the individuality, if I may so say, of every public functionary. The recommendation that I would most strongly urge on the Honourable Court is, that they would continue and persevere in the system long since recommended to them by the Madras Government, upon the authority of Sir Thomas Munro, of uniting the appointments of collector and magistrate, of destroying the independence of each other of every officer employed in the same district, of making the collector's a great office, consisting of deputy collectors and joint magistrates and assistants, subordinate to one head, and acting upon the same system. The public will then be saved from the evils of a continually recurring interregnum, from the succession of perfect strangers to all the concerns of the district, and from the undue advantages which all such occasions of the virtual suspension of authority give to a corrupt omlah. This arrangement gives also to the Government an opportunity of providing a counterbalance to the inefficiency of a chief, by aiding him with subordinates of superior qualifications, and by placing under the correction of a strong superior the idle and the weak. It is in a school of this kind that young men will best be trained. A profound knowledge of jurisprudence, or the high attainments which distinguish English lawyers and judges, are not to be looked for; nor, however desirable, are they indispensable; but what is necessary is that those both young and old, who have the decision of suits, whether for 10 or 1000 rupees, and who are vested with the power of fine, imprisonment, and corporal punishment, should have served their apprenticeship; should be conversant with the manners and business of the country; and that their opinions should be formed upon the practice and greater experience of their superiors in office.

For many years the system of nomination by the Directors had been considered unsound. The Select Committee of 1832 gave their opinion that "nomination by individual Directors was not the best mode of securing a high standard of ability and qualifications in the civil servants,” and that a system of competition was "deserving of serious consideration." Macaulay had introduced into the Act of 1833. "clauses which rearranged the system of appointment to the Civil Service on the basis of competition," but the influence of the Directors who jealously guarded their patronage was too strong for him. In 1853, however, Sir Charles Wood decided to introduce a system of competition

F

which was eloquently supported by Macaulay. The latter had two objects in view. In the first place, the service was to be preserved from nepotism and corruption, and this could only be assured by a close service. In the second place, the service should be recruited by the best men available, and this could best be done by a competitive examination.

The Competitive System for the Indian Civil Service Source.-(i) Speech and Memorandum, Lord Macaulay. Reproduced in "Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay." Sir G. O. Trevelyan. (Longmans Green & Co.)

There is something plausible in the proposition that you should allow him (the Governor-General) to take able men wherever he finds them. My firm opinion is that the day on which the Civil Service of India ceases to be a close service will be a beginning of an age of jobbing-the most monstrous, the most extensive, and the most perilous system of abuse in the distribution of patronage we have ever witnessed. Every Governor-General would take out with him, or would soon be followed by, a crowd of nephews, first and second cousins, friends, sons of friends and political hangers on; while every steamer arriving from the Red Sea would carry to India some adventurer bearing with him testimonials from people of influence in England. The Governor-General would have it in his power to distribute Residencies, seats at the Council Board, seats at the Revenue Board, places of from £4000 to £6000 a year upon men without the least acquaintance with the character and habits of the natives, and with only such knowledge of the language as would enable them to call for another bottle of pale ale or desire their attendant to pull the punkah faster. In what way could you put a check on such proceedings? Would you, the House of Commons, control them? Have you been so successful in extirpating nepotism at your own door, and in excluding abuses from Whitehall and Somerset House, that you should fancy that you could establish purity in countries the situation of which you do not know, and the names of which you cannot pronounce? I believe most fully that, instead of purity resulting from that arrangement to India, India itself would soon be tainted; and then before long, when a son or brother of some active Member of this House went out to Calcutta, carrying with him a letter of recommendation from the Prime Minister to the Governor-General, that letter really would

1 Speech by Lord Macaulay on the second reading of the India Bill introduced by Sir Charles Wood.

be a bill of exchange, drawn on the revenues of India for value received in Parliamentary support in this House.

We are not without experience on this point. We have only to look back to those shameful and lamentable years which followed the first establishment of our power in Bengal. If you turn to any poet, satirist, or essayist of those times, you may see in what manner that system of appointment operated. There was a tradition in Calcutta that, during Lord Clive's second administration, a man came out with a strong letter of recommendation from one of the ministers. Lord Clive said in his peculiar way, "Well, chap, how much do you want?" Not being accustomed to be spoken to so plainly, the man replied that he only hoped for some situation in which his services might be useful. "That is no answer, chap," said Lord Clive. How much do you want? Will a hundred thousand pounds1 do?" The person replied that he should be delighted if, by laborious service, he could obtain that competence. Lord Clive at once wrote out an order for that sum, and told the applicant to leave India by the ship he came in, and, once back in England, to remain there. I think that the story is very probable, and I also think that India ought to be grateful for the course which Lord Clive pursued; for, though he pillaged the people of Bengal to enrich this lucky adventurer, yet, if the man had received an appointment, they would have been pillaged and misgoverned as well. Against evils like these there is one security and, I believe, but one; and that is that the Civil Service should be kept close.

If I understand the opinions imputed to the noble lord (Lord Ellenborough), he thinks that the proficiency of a young man in those pursuits which constitute a liberal education is not only no indication that he is likely to make a figure in after life, but that it positively raises a presumption that he will be passed by those whom he overcame in those early contests. I understand that the noble lord holds that young men who gain distinction in such pursuits are likely to turn out dullards, utterly unfit for an active career; and I am not sure that the noble lord did not say that it would be wiser to make boxing and cricket a test of fitness than a liberal education. It seems to me that never was a fact proved by a larger mass of evidence, or a more unvaried experience than this: that men who dis

1 It was probably "rupees."

2 Macaulay is here discussing Sir Charles Wood's proposal that admission to the Indian Civil Service should be regulated by a com petitive examination,