CHAPTER V.

THE CIVIL SERVICE.

Present state and defects; necessity of enhanced standard; nature of proposed remedies; question of limit to numbers; tests, positive or relative; objections to relative test; positive test by a single examination; by a series of tests combined with education; Haileybury, its state and defects; proposed remedy by transfer of education and tests to an Indian College at Cambridge; Cambridge University Commission Report, and argument derived therefrom; education of executive students; separation and training of judicial students; selection of a college; alternative of amendments at Haileybury; appointments; distribution of service in India; farther training of judicial servants; abolition of "college" system; training of executive servants; promotion; tenure of office; salaries; leave of absence; pensions; proposed rules.

I HOLD that the civil service, as a body, is exceedingly efficient; that it is a wonderful instance of the effects of systematic official education acting on a

Present state. material naturally little above par. But I also hold that there are important exceptions to that efficiency; that we want a still higher general standard; and that the favourable result of an official training, acting on an average material and a moderate education, far from being an argument in favour of letting things alone, is a proof that a higher education, acting on a superior material, would lead to higher results,-that we are in the right path, and need only follow it with greater vigour to attain all that has been hitherto wanting.

A member of the Committee of the late House of Commons on Indian affairs has pointed out, in a recent pamphlet,* the fact that very considerable imperfections

* A Letter to T. Baring, Esq., M.P., on the Indian Civil Service, by Sir E. Colebrooke, Bart. London, 1852.

do exist in the civil service. Those imperfections call very urgently for attention. They are much more felt now than they were thirty years ago. This is not because the service has retrograded-by no means; but I say advisedly that the general standard of qualification for admission to the service has not been raised one whit during the last thirty years; and, on the other hand, the scale of the duties required of the service in India has been very much raised-the large class of comparatively unintellectual appointments formerly existing has been swept away; our machine of government has been vastly enlarged and complicated, and the work to be done by it has become much more onerous. The duties of the same or a smaller number of European officers have been extended over a much larger surface, and consequently the general importance and difficulty of the duties falling to each individual have been much enhanced, and will be more so every day. I therefore say that the same class of men, the same service which well performed the duties assigned to it twenty years ago, will be quite unequal to those which will fall to it twenty years hence; and that it is altogether wrong that the standard of qualification is not much enhanced. I altogether deny that there has been any such enhancement of late years, as will be seen when I come to particulars; and I say that there is very little selection in appointments to the civil service. The question very seriously affects the value of patronage, but it should not be slurred over.

Necessity of enhanced standard of qualification.

With regard to the exceptions to the general efficiency, I maintain that, notwithstanding the general respectability of the material, a few men, whose intellects and qualifications are very much below par, always have been, and now are, sent out in the civil service-the Company's bad bargains, as they are called. I farther say that

these men were known and ascertained to be fools before they left England-before they were appointed to the service; that they might and ought to have been stopped. The injury to India was comparatively small when such men could be shelved in comfortable sinecures; but now-a-days hardly a single sinecure is held by the civil service (always excepting the seats in Council), and an inefficient man not only draws a salary for which he does not return competent labour, but he does inconceivable. injury by mismanaging important offices, and perhaps deranges not only his own duties but those of others. The official chain is so connected, that if a single link be rotten and bad the whole becomes useless. one man be inefficient, he completely neutralizes the efficiency of all under him and of all over him, so far as his sphere extends. Hence it is in the highest degree necessary that no man who is not tolerably capable should be employed.

If

Not only we must get rid of the exceptions, but the general standard must be also raised. It may seem inconsistent to admit great general efficiency, and yet to say that more is required. It must, however, be remembered that the duties exacted are no common duties; but, on the contrary, such as demand and give

Nature of duties to be performed.

scope to the very highest intellect, energy, and accomplishment: the more so as they are performed in a foreign country, and under very great disadvantages. They are not such as any man with a moderate education can perform. It requires great qualifications to keep right when surrounded on every side by manners which are altogether strange to us, and by persons over whom we have no social control. I may particularly instance the judicial branch of the service, in which especially the duties which ought to be performed have been much raised of

late years. If our Indian judges have failed, it is not that any common men would have succeeded. I believe that a more arduous task than to perform well the duties of an Indian judge does not exist in this world: without law, without lawyers, without an established system, and yet bound to be guided by law; in a foreign country; without juries to relieve the judge of the facts; without separate officers to relieve him of details; to create order out of chaos, is a feat of which any man or body of men might well be proud. The duty of a judge, sitting in a regular court, under an established system, aided in points of law by numerous colleagues, and altogether relieved by juries of the responsibility of facts, is mere child's play compared to such an undertaking. Yet you pitchfork a middle-aged gentleman, without a regular judicial education, into these duties, and you are surprised that he does not succeed. The duties of the executive are quite as important, and require a union of qualities such that those who sufficiently fill great posts must be very rare and first-rate men indeed.

Remedies for

encies.

I am of opinion, therefore, that the civil service now requires an enhancement both of talent and of education. I by no means argue that present deficiyou should have a service exclusively composed of geniuses-such a body would probably in practice work far from efficiently-but all should be men of superior qualifications. You should commence at a point of natural capability considerably above the average as a minimum, and go from that point upwards; in short, you must, to a certain extent, select. You should admit of no single exception to this rule, so far as can be insured by the strictest and most honestlyadministered tests. You should educate the men selected to the highest possible point.

All my arguments have tended to show that the pro

S

fessional civil service is already, for the regular duties of the civil administration, infinitely preferable to anything which we are likely to get elsewhere, and, in its improved condition, I would not only not contract but would extend its sphere: not to enhance the privileges of a privileged class, but to put the profession on a broader basis, to give a wider field for selection. I would so arrange that all should not draw prizes; and as, in spite of every test, there will be in the end very various degrees of efficiency, I would provide employment for each individual only in proportion to the qualifications which he ultimately exhibits. It is with this view that (while the natives must fill all the appointments for which they are fitted) I would retain, for the employment of the inferior* members of the European professional service, some of the less arduous appointments now held by uncovenanted Europeans: such as require little talent, but involve considerable trust and responsibility.

A good system of promotion and reward must be established concurrently with the enhancement of the standard of qualification. While some men undoubtedly get on much better than others; while the service is by no means a dead level; it is clearly the fact that the inequalities are not so great as they would be in what I may call a natural state of things. I mean that, while men of average, or below average, qualifications get on better than in any other profession, the best men, for a much more severe and less agreeable life, are not (taking climate, &c., into consideration) so well rewarded

*

I do not allude to exceptions to the general high efficiency as in future likely to arise from the first exercise of patronage, but to such as may—and, to a certain extent, will-afterwards occur, in spite of every precaution. Flaws will eventually be found in the use of a few of the very best selected articles; and subsequent changes, especially the effect of ill health in such a climate, cannot be altogether averted in any body of men.