Discipline,

services.

Particulars regarding the inferior native offices are connected with the detail of the different departments. I need here only refer generally to the dis&c., of native cipline and system of promotion of all the inferior grades, upon which more than anything else depends their efficiency. Judicial education we alone can give, but in the inferior executive we have a large supply of educated native talent, and it is on its selection, construction, and management, that the result of our work entirely depends. We are but the superior officers the soldiers of our civil force are exclusively native: the difficulty is to protect them on the one hand from the caprices, ignorances, and prejudices of individual superiors, continually changed from day to day, and to ensure due reward proportionate to merit; and on the other hand to avoid hampering the efficiency of the executive officers by depriving them of power, rendering their subordinates too independent, and taking into the hands of the superior departments of Government duties which they cannot properly perform. At present both these evils are felt. The European service is so continually changing, and so imperfectly disciplined, that it is not surprising that there is a want of discipline and system in the employment and promotion of the native subordinates, than which no evil can be greater or more damaging to our administration. Government had good reason to interfere; but in merely putting great checks on ejectment from office, without any provision for systematising employment and promotion, it perhaps only makes matters worse.

The subject is an extremely difficult one, and it is impossible to propound in few words any plan which will at once remedy the evil. But much will be effected by improving the discipline of the higher grades, and rendering them much more permanent, more responsible,

and more universally discreet and efficient. Government must gradually and carefully introduce a great system of regular discipline throughout all grades, and the soldier cannot be properly disciplined till the discipline of the officers is complete. Some standards of qualification and merit must be established; over-praise (in written characters, &c.) must be treated as an official fault, just as much as disregard of real merits; native servants must not be followers of individual Europeans, but the servants of the state, known and appreciated by all who may be set over them; and on the other hand, the European officers must have ample power of promptly recognising, recording, and promoting merit, and of punishing and ejecting demerit. Carefully and laboriously these objects may be in the end more or less fully effected, and in this will be found the great secret of executive efficiency.

The Government is now quite inclined to be liberal in the payment of its native servants, and, considering the cheapness of labour, I do not think that there is, generally speaking, much ground of complaint in this respect. There are, however, considerable discrepancies and inequalities which should be remedied, and in certain departments some increase of allowances may be ne

cessary.

Upon these principles, then, I would employ the natives, and would only, in so far as is absolutely indispensable, call in the expensive European agency. I hope that that necessity will every day diminish-that the proportion of natives holding important offices will every day increase.

It must be particularly impressed on all European servants that it is their duty to do nothing themselves which they can get any one else to do for them. Their duties are on far too large a scale to leave it possible that they should themselves do the work, and nothing

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is so destructive of efficiency as a jealousy of trusting to subordinates to a discreet and legitimate extent. The efficient superintending officer is not he who does most work himself, but he who gets most out of others; and many zealous Indian officers make a mistake in this respect. It is only by a good system of distribution and division of labour that our administration can be rendered efficient. It strikes me that the labour of the superior officers might be much abridged, and their efficiency increased, by delegating the responsible performance of many duties to ministerial or inferior officers. The latter do in fact perform such duties, but generally in the name and on the direct responsibility of the superior, who signs his name to everything, and who is distracted from more important matters by details. I should be inclined to give to native officers of each court or office larger powers of acting in their own name (subject, of course, to the control of the superior), so that there should be less room for the imputation of indirect and irresponsible influence. An English judge, who is entirely relieved of details, and comes into court with his mind free to grapple without reserve with essential arguments, has a great advantage.

We now come to that European service, which, although we have proposed to limit it as much as possible, must still be of considerable numbers and of vast importance.

European

parative cheapness and advantage of.

And here I may remark that it is a great mistake to suppose that our civil administration in service-com- general, or the European portion of it in particular, oppresses the country by its expense. Of course a perfectly pure and impartial native administration would be cheaper, but that the country has not known and may never know (few countries indeed have that fortune); and as we must esti

mate everything comparatively, I say that so far as the civil administration is concerned the country never was so cheaply governed. More especially the higher appointments were never so cheaply filled as by European officers. The fact is, that the system of native governments is totally different from ours. They have not the same moral ties and social hold over their servants, and to be well served they are constrained to have recourse to great rewards and great punishments. The successful and efficient superior servant of a native government receives directly or indirectly, but always at the expense of the country, immense rewards; the unsuccessful or disgraced servant is treated with unscrupulous severity and stripped of everything. Trust is placed neither on a man's honour, nor in an official system; but rewards are fully apportioned to the magnitude of the trust, and it is made worth a man's while efficiently to perform his duty. In this way native states may be sometimes exceedingly well served, but only in this way. No native government would ever think of intrusting a native servant with a province or a district, and attempting to prevent his enriching himself in a way which they consider in fact legitimate. They do not attempt to muzzle the oxen that tread out the corn; and I repeat that under no native government whatever have superior offices been so cheaply filled as under our present system. It would be for instance quite out of the question that any native under the best native government, holding an office of power and trust equal either to the governor of a presidency, or to the magistrate and collector of a district, should not make a vast deal more money than the European officer.

Our system then is quite different. We trust in a great measure to official discipline and personal honour, and our rewards are not so great. We cannot as

yet fully combine the incompatible advantages of cheap native labour and a cheap European official system. In proportion as you introduce your system among the natives and adapt them to it, by all means employ them; but so long as they are not sufficiently adapted to your new European system, and sufficiently bound by European sanctions, to be trusted with the highest offices, it is infinitely cheaper as well as infinitely better to give European prices for European labour than to revert to native system and native rewards. I say all this not to detract from the claim of the natives to employment. I would admit it to the utmost possible extent, and would give them the benefit of every doubt; but I argue that our European civil officers, judged by any standard which has been known in India, are by no means expensive, and that, in so far as they are actually required, there is no hardship to the country in their employment. In truth, the country can very well afford the expense of our civil system. When we come to military establishments and finance we shall see wherein lies the real expense of our government, which I fully admit to be very great. The European civil servants will be comparatively few, but it becomes every day more and more necessary that those few should be exceedingly good. Let us look then to the mode of securing good Europeans.

Question of profession or no profession.

It is in regard to this class of servants that the question of covenanted or uncovenanted really arises; and we must be careful to keep it separate from that of native or European. The real question is profession or no profession. The newspaper cry about the exclusion of uncovenanted servants is for the most part raised by the comparatively few uncovenanted Europeans who are or wish to be in the service of Government, but they put