tinguish themselves in their youth above their contemporaries almost always keep to the end of their lives the start which they have gained. Take down in any library the Cambridge Calendar. There you have the list of honours for a hundred years. Look at the list of wranglers and of junior optimes; and I will venture to say that, for one man who has in after life distinguished himself among the junior optimes, you will find twenty among the wranglers. Is not our history full of instances which prove this fact? Look at the Church, or the Bar. Look at Parliament, from the time that Parliamentary Government began in this country; from the days of Montagu and St. John to those of Canning and Peel. Look to India. The ablest man who ever governed India was Warren Hastings, and was he not in the first rank at Westminster? The ablest civil servant I ever knew in India was Sir Charles Metcalfe, and was he not of the first standing at Eton? The most eminent member of the aristocracy who ever governed India was Lord Wellesley. What was his Eton reputation? What was his Oxford reputation? I must also mention-I cannot refrain from mentioninganother noble and distinguished Governor-General. A few days ago, while the memory of the speech to which I have alluded was still fresh in my mind, I read in the Musae Cambridgienses a very eloquent and classical ode by a young poet of seventeen, which the University of Cambridge rewarded with a gold medal; and with pleasure, not altogether unmingled with pain, I read at the bottom of that composition the name of the Honourable Edward Law, of St. John's College. I saw with pleasure that the name of Lord Ellenborough may be added to the long list of men who, in early youth, have by success in academical studies given the augury of the part which they were to play in public life. It is no answer to say that you can point-as it is desirable that you should be able to pointto two or three men of great powers who, having idled when they were young, stung with remorse and generous shame have afterwards exerted themselves to retrieve lost time. Such exceptions should be noted, for they seem intended to encourage those who, after having thrown away their youth from levity or love of pleasure, may be inclined to throw their manhood after it from despair; but the general rule is, beyond all doubt, that the men who were first in the competition of the schools have been first in the competition of the world.

(Macaulay then proceeded to show that his opponents had very little real belief in their arguments.)

The noble lord is of opinion that by encouraging natives to study the arts and learning of Europe, we are preparing the

way for the destruction of our power in India. I am utterly at a loss to understand how, while contemning education when it is given to Europeans, he should regard it with dread when it is given to natives. This training, we are told, makes a European into a bookworm, a twaddler, a man unfit for the active duties of life; but give the same education to a Hindu, and it arms him with such an accession of intellectual strength, that an established government, with an army of 250,000 men, backed by the whole military and naval force of England, are to go down inevitably before its irresistible power.

(After the passing of the Act, Macaulay was appointed Chairman of a Committee1 for the purpose of making the necessary arrangements for introducing the competitive system.)

Source. (ii) Report of the Civil Service Committee. Reproduced in "Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay." Sir G. O. Trevelyan. (Longmans, Green & Co.)

Nothing can be further from our wish than to hold out premiums for knowledge of wide surface and of small depth. We are of opinion that a candidate ought to be allowed no credit at all for taking up a subject in which he is a mere smatterer. Profound and accurate acquaintance with a single language ought to tell more than bad translations and themes in six languages. A single paper which shows that the writer thoroughly understands the principles of the differential calculus ought to tell more than twenty superficial and incorrect answers to questions about chemistry, botany, mineralogy, metaphysics, logic, and English history.

The marks ought, we conceive, to be distributed among the subjects of examination in such a manner that no part of the kingdom, and no class of schools, shall exclusively furnish servants to the East India Company. It would be grossly unjust, for example, to the great academical institutions of England not to allow skill in Greek or Latin versification to have a considerable share in determining the issue of the competition. Skill in Greek and Latin versification has, indeed, no direct tendency to form a judge, a financier, or a diplomatist. But the youth who does best what all the ablest and most ambitious youths about him are trying to do well, will generally

1 The other members were Lord Ashburton, Mr. Henry Melvill, Principal of Haileybury, Mr. Jowets, Sir John Shaw Lefevre.

prove to be a superior man; nor can we doubt that an accomplishment by which Fox and Canning, Grenville and Wellesley, Mansfield and Tenterden first distinguished themselves above their fellows indicates powers of mind which, properly trained and directed, may do great service to the State. On the other hand, we must remember that in the north of this island the art of metrical composition in the ancient languages is very little cultivated, and that men so eminent as Dugald Stewart, Horner, Jeffrey, and Macintosh would probably have been quite unable to write a good copy of Latin alcaics, or to translate ten lines of Shakespeare into Greek iambics. We wish to see such a system of examination as shall not exclude from the service of the Company either a Macintosh or a Tenterden, either a Canning or a Horner.

We hope and believe, also, that it will very rarely be necessary to expel any probationer from the service on account of grossly profligate habits, or of any action unbecoming a man of honour. The probationers will be young men superior to their fellows in science and literature; and it is not among young men superior to their fellows in science and literature that scandalous immorality is generally found to prevail. It is notoriously but once in twenty years that a student who has attained high academical distinction is expelled from Oxford or Cambridge. Indeed, early superiority in science and literature generally indicates the existence of some qualities which are securities against vice-industry, self-denial, a taste for pleasures not sensual, a laudable desire of honourable distinction, a still more laudable desire to obtain the approbation of friends and relations. We therefore believe that the intellectual test which is about to be established will be found in practice to be also the best moral test that can be desired.

It has been pointed out that the reforms in the Civil Service which were carried out by Lord Cornwallis and by subsequent rulers increased very considerably the purity and efficiency of the administration. On the other hand, the removal of Indians from positions of trust and responsibility had been rendered necessary for a while by the acceptance of such a policy. "Warren Hastings," writes Colonel Kaye, "turned the merchants into revenuecollectors, Lord Cornwallis turned them into judges. The natives of India were thus stripped, little by little, of all the offices they had held under the Moguls. And as the character of the English gentlemen as administrators con

tinued to improve, the debasement of the natives of India became more complete."

In considering the foundations of an Indian policy the British rulers of this period saw clearly the necessity of associating as far as possible the people of the country in the work of the administration. Mountstuart Elphinstone was one of the first to recognise the obligation which lay upon the rulers "to raise the natives by education and public trust to a level with their present rulers." As Mr. Forrest has pointed out, he attached little value to schemes for improving the education of natives unless pari passu steps were taken for extending to them a greater share of the honours and emoluments of office. In regard to their employment Elphinstone wrote: "It seems desirable gradually to introduce them into offices of higher rank and emoluments, and afterwards of higher trust. I should see no objection to a native member of a board, and I should even wish to see one district committed experimentally to a native judge, and another to a native collector." But, though he held these opinions, he was in no way impetuous. He saw that very strict supervision was necessary lest corrupt practices might be introduced into the system, which might never be eradicated. Lord William Bentinck also took active steps in the same direction by admitting educated Indians to the higher appointments in the revenue and judicial departments. Sir Thomas Munro and Sir John Malcolm held similar views, which they expounded in the following letters :

Employment of Indians in the Public Services

Source.-(i) Letters from Sir Thomas Munro to the Right Hon. G. Canning. Dated June 30, 1821.

You judge right in thinking that your resignation of the office of President of the Board of Control is an event in which I must take some little interest," for no event could have happened in which I could have taken more. I lament it deeply, both on public and private grounds. I should, even if I had not seen your letter to your constituents, have concluded without hesitation that your motives were just, but I should not the less have regretted the loss to the nation.

I trust that we shall soon again see you filling some high office; but I confess I would rather see you in your former one than any other, for my own situation becomes doubly valuable, when it is held under a man whose name communicates some show of reputation to all his subordinates.

I always dread changes at the head of the India Board, for I fear some downright Englishman may at last get there who will insist on making Anglo-Saxons of the Hindus. I believe there are men in England who think that this desirable change has been already effected in some degree, and that it would long since have been completed had it not been opposed by the Company's servants. I have no faith in the modern doctrine of the rapid improvement of the Hindus, or of any other people. The character of the Hindus is probably much the same as when Vasco da Gama first visited India, and it is not likely that it will be much better a century hence. The strength of our Government will, no doubt, in that period, by preventing wars so frequent in former times, increase the wealth and population of the country. We shall also, by the establishment of schools, extend among the Hindus the knowledge of their own literature, and of the language and literature of England. But all this will not improve their character; we shall make them more pliant and servile, more industrious, and perhaps more skilful in the arts-and we shall have fewer banditti, but we shall not raise their moral character. Our present system of government, by excluding all natives from power, and trust, and emolument, is much more efficacious in depressing, than all our laws and school-books can do in elevating, their character. We are working against our own designs, and we can expect to make no progress while we work with a feeble instrument to improve and a powerful one to deteriorate. The improvement of the character of a people, and the keeping of them, at the same time, in the lowest state of dependence on foreign rulers to which they can be reduced by conquest, are matters quite incompatible with each other.

There can be no hope of any great zeal for improvement when the highest acquirements can lead to nothing beyond some petty office, and can confer neither wealth nor honour. While the prospects of the natives are so bounded, every project for bettering their characters must fail; and no such projects can have the smallest chance of success unless some of those objects are placed within their reach, for the sake of which men are urged to exertion in other countries. This work of improvement, in whatever way it may be attempted, must be very slow, but it will be in proportion to the degree of confidence which we repose in them, and in the share which we give them in the administration of public affairs. All that we can give