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ward. The hon. Member concluded by of extinguishing those feelings of dislike moving his Resolution.

MR. M.LAREN seconded the Motion. Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House, whilst cordially approving of the system of open competition for appointments in the East India Civil Service, is of opinion that the people of India have not a fair chance of competing for these appointments as long as the examinations are held nowhere but in London; this House would therefore deem it desirable that, simultaneously with the examination in London, the same examination should be held in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras."-(Mr. Fawcett.)

MR. TREVELYAN: Sir, I gather from the speech of my hon. Friend, with the spirit of which I cordially agree, that he has two principal objects in bringing for ward this Resolution. First, he wishes, by placing the Natives of India in intellectual competition with our own countrymen, to vindicate their claims to mental superiority, and thereby to diminish the tone of disparagement and contempt which is too often adopted with regard to them; and, secondly, he aims at giving them a fair share in the administration of their own country. Now, Sir, if the House will lend me its attention, and I promise not to detain it long, I hope to be able to show that the first of these objects, so far from being furthered by the course which my hon. Friend calls on you to adopt, will, on the contrary, suffer from it a great and, what is more, an irremediable check; and that the second will be attained in a much more sure and satisfactory manner, by the course indicated in the Amendment which I have placed upon the Paper, and which the Government has since embodied in a Bill: a Bill to which, as a humble but sincere well-wisher to India, I beg to give my cordial approval. Sir, I deplore equally with my hon. Friend, the manner in which European settlers and planters, and, in too many cases, the younger officers of our army allow themselves to speak of their Indian fellow-subjects. As a proof of sincerity on this point, hon. Gentlemen will perhaps not think it impertinent in me to state that I once wrote a book, whose only merit consisted in its being a protest against the high-handed, overbearing, and unjust way in which many Englishmen spoke of and dealt with the population whom it was their special national mission to govern and to elevate; a protest which called down on me the vigorous denunciations of the Anglo-Indian_Press. But, Sir, the policy of my hon. Friend, instead

and depreciation would only serve to embitter and perpetuate them; and the process by which this unfortunate result would come about is obvious and certain. What is this Covenanted Civil Service? What is its special object, and what is the public reason for its existence? It is the appointed channel through which the knowledge, the ability, the higher morality of the United Kingdom is applied to the administration of India, and not of the United Kingdom only, but of Canada, Australia, and the other British colonies. In order to ascertain who are the best and ablest among our young men, we hold yearly a searching competitive examination; and, in order to attract the greatest possible number of such young men, we hold out to the successful candidates the certainty of a highly paid and most influential, and interesting public career. To bring to bear upon India the highest governing powers of the United Kingdom and the whole British Empire, is, therefore, the object of the Covenanted Civil Service, and the justification for its existence. And hon. Gentlemen must remember that it needs such a justification, for this Civil Service is guarded by monopoly, and fenced round with privileges. It is exclusive to such a degree, that the Government are bound to continue in their service, and to promote according to the ordinary routine, every civil servant who is sent out under covenant, unless he commits some act of gross misconduct; and they are also restrained from looking abroad for persons of experience and ability, and are bound to confine themselves to members of this privileged class, unless circumstances should occur of such a special and exceptional character, that practically they never have occurred, and the monopoly of the Covenanted Civil Service remains to this day uninfringed and absolute. The civil servants sent out to India are untried young men, and, owing to moral and physical defects which cannot be absolutely tested in an examination, a proportion of them are certain to turn out unfit for the highly difficult and important administrative career to which they have been designated; and yet the conditions on which they entered the service must be observed. The Government must fulfill its side of the contract. Good or bad they must be promoted in their turn, or in something like their turn. Posts worth their acceptance have to be found for them. Men are made Judges

who are notoriously deficient in discrimina- And, Sir, if 5 per cent of the English tion, and are appointed to govern provinces competition wallahs are found wanting in as large as an English county, though the vigorous and manly virtues, indispenthey have never learned to govern them- sable to the members of a ruling caste, selves. And yet, for the honour of our what will be the percentage among the nation, it must be said that the number of Hindoo competition wallahs? Why, many bad bargains is surprisingly small; and times as great, Sir; and everyone, who the reason is evident. Success in the thinks for a moment, will see that it must competitive examination is a guarantee be so, and no one more clearly than the that an English civil servant possesses in- hon. Gentleman, who, in discussions of this dustry, and intellectual ability, and an nature, has the immense, and almost Englishman who is industrious and clever unique advantage of being equally versed is very seldom deficient in the moral quali- in practical education and practical politics. ties of force, energy, honesty, and courage; Of course, where you find one young Engqualities which are absolutely essential to lish civil servant unequal to the duties and all who aspire to be enrolled among the responsibilities of his career, you will find governing caste of an Oriental people. ten or twenty Natives; for the very plain But it is far otherwise with Hindoos. The reason that we, as a race, are far superior Natives of Bengal are remarkable for ex- to them in force of character. We know treme quickness and cleverness; but, as that it is so by observation; by their own compared with Europeans, are singularly confession; by the overwhelming testimony deficient in the bolder and hardier virtues of fact. If it be not the case-if the -in pluck, self-reliance, and veracity average of what I may call the governing the three great national attributes by which qualities is as high among the Hindoos as we gained, and by which we retain our among the English, how did we ever get hold upon British India. In such a compe- to India, and how do we contrive to stay tition as is proposed by my hon. Friend, there? We are there because nine Engthey would be eminently successful; for lishmen out of ten are born to rule, and remarkable as is their capacity, it is not ninety-nine out of 100 Hindoos are born so peculiar as the premature ripeness of to be governed; because we are manly, and their intellect. Their turn for mathematics they are effeminate; because-but instead is extraordinary. A Cambridge contem- of giving reasons to ourselves why we are porary of my own, who was professor at in India an Imperial race, ask the first the Calcutta University, a distinguished Native, and what is he sure to tell you? wrangler, assured me that the young men He is sure to say-and I appeal for conwhom he was engaged in instructing, rushed firmation to every old civil servant in the through his course of subjects at such House-that the secret of our power in headlong speed that he began to be afraid India is not so much our valour, not so lest, at the end of six months, he should much our enterprize, as that we, as a nahave nothing left to teach them. There is tion, speak the truth, and never take bribes. no doubt that if you adopt my hon. Friend's And, therefore, Sir, if, in an evil day for Resolution; if you open these doors at our rule in India, you listen to the advice of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, the Na- my hon. Friend, you will fill the service with tives would come in by shoals, and just men who will succeed in the examination, reflect a moment on what you will be do- and altogether break down in practical life. ing. The Hindoos are strong in intellect, The Indian career is of such a nature that and confessedly weak in morale. You the youngest civilian has constant demands submit them to an intellectual test, which upon his stock of determination and selfthe great number are pretty sure to pass. reliance. Contingencies are frequently ocYou dispense with the moral test, by which curring when he is looked to to put down the great number are pretty sure to fail. a dangerous outbreak; to coerce or cajole You will have the service full of bad bar- a refractory potentate; to arbitrate begains. And why? Why, Sir, because in tween religious sects inflamed against each old Haileybury days, when the service was other by mutual injuries. On such an close, and there was no competitive test, a occasion the great majority of these unbad bargain meant a man who was a fool. happy Hindoo competitition wallahs would In these days, when there is a competitive succumb to the difficulties of their situation, test, when every successful candidate must and then what would become of the philanhave, at the least, some book learning, a thropic motives of my hon. Friend? Would bad bargain means a man who is a muff. this be a state of the case likely to in

duce English planters and subalterns to moderate their tone towards the Natives of India? No, Sir! On the contrary, they would imagine that everything harsh and unkind which they were accustomed to say and believe had received an additional justification. Their taunts and sarcasm would acquire fresh point, and they would believe that they had now good ground to upbraid the Hindoos for inferiority of character, whereas, up to that time, they had only abused them on speculation.

But, Sir, if we reject the proposition of my hon. Friend we are bound in honour as a nation to substitute for it some machinery by which Native Indian talent may be brought to bear upon the administration of India. I say, in honour as a nation, because in the 87th section of the Charter Act of 1833 we solemnly pledged ourselves to open all employments to Natives, without distinction of caste, sect, or religion. And how have we redeemed this pledge? We have extended the line somewhat as regards the subordinate class of employments to which Natives are eligible. If this had not been done the business of the country could not have been carried on, and public affairs must have fallen into utter confusion; and, at the same time, we have appointed Natives to the honorary unpaid situation of Legislative Councillor, and to a very small number of Judgeships of the High Courts-two or three for the whole of India. But as regards the great bulk of judicial revenue and other offices the monopoly of the Covenanted Service has not only been practically maintained, but has been confirmed, and has had a new legal sanction given to it by the Civil Service Act of 1861, whereby all the situations previously held by the Civil Service have been scheduled and declared to be tenable only by members of that Service, as well as all similar offices which may be created hereafter. That is the manner in which we fulfil our solemn national engagements. We ordain that the entire people of a great country, who from time immemorial had governed themselves, and managed their own affairs, should be entirely excluded from their own administration, except as regards those subordinate offices which could not be filled by members of the Covenanted Civil Service, without involving intolerable expense and certain inefficiency, and a very small number of high situations most of which were unpaid. And hon. Members must observe that, by declaring

the Natives eligible for the high situations of Legislative Councillor and Judge of the High Court, we have admitted their fitness for the large class of situations which lie between the Judgeships of the High Court and the principal Sudder Ameenships and other subordinate posts which they are permitted to fill; and yet we take no steps to give practical effect to this inevitable inference. We ignore this fact; and give another proof, if another proof were wanted, that injustice always involves inconsistency. This injustice must be redressed; and the means of redressing it are fortunately at hand. In every Presidency there are two, three, or four Natives of tried character, ability, and official experience. These men are well known to the authorities of the district in which they reside, and the authorities would gladly employ them in the most elevated and responsible situations if the law did not place an obstacle in the way. In the Regulation Provinces-that is to say, speaking roughly, in three-fourths of British India, all the Governor General can do for Natives who have earned their promotion is to refer them back to the competitive entrance examination. What mockery this is! I appeal to those hon. Gentleman opposite, who do not love the modern system of competition, to put off men who have earned an honourable public reputation, by twenty or thirty years' practical service, by directing their attention to a competitive examination in English poetry and pure mathematics, held in a class room 6,000 miles across the sea. There are plenty of Natives, Sir, fit for any public employment, however weighty and dignified. I need not remind the House of the names of those great ministers of Native Powers -Sarlar Jung, Madhava Rao, Dinker Rao, and Jung Bahadoor, the famous Mayor of the Palace of Nepaul. And just as all the Indian world knows the fame of these eminent men, so the public opinion of every province can point to Natives intellectually and morally not one whit inferior to the best among our own countrymen. Madras, for instance, when there was a question of a complicated operation connected with the annual assessment, it was universally allowed that, throughout the whole Covenanted and Uncovenanted Service, there was no one so fitted for the job as a Native employée called Ramiah. And how was this man rewarded? The Government gave him the best post they legally could: that is to say, they made him a sort of subordinate adviser to the

In

Amendment proposed,

To leave out from the words "open competition" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "as regards the appointment of untried young men to the East India Civil Service, is of opinion that natives of India who have proved in the Uncovenanted Service or otherwise their su perior fitness for situations at present held exclusively by Members in the Covenanted Service should be appointed to them without undergoing a competing examination,"-(Mr. Trevelyan,) instead thereof.

Revenue authorities of the Presidency. nor to such a distance from the country Now, would the position of such a man be whose future we are discussing. There bettered by my hon. Friend's proposition? are examples nearer India. Akbar, the When you have such a man ready to hand greatest of the great Mahomedan Empeit is a farce to examine him in geology, rors, opened the field of employment and and to ask him what play the quotation distinction, in the most liberal manner to "When Greek meets Greek" comes from. Hindoos-the conquered and subject race; The evils which the system of competition and his fame and power were equally brilis intended to remedy are two. First, liant and durable. Aurengzebe pursued a the ignorance of those who are possessed different course. He sent orders to all of patronage, as to the merits of the can- governors and persons in authority to emdidates for that patronage; and next, the ploy no more Hindoos, but to confer the tendency in all human beings to nepotism higher offices on Mahomedans only and and favouritism. But in the case before from that day the Mogul Empire began to us neither of these dangers exists. The go to pieces, as must be the fate of all resident authorities who have the patron- empires which rest on force, not on affecage are well informed as to the merits and tion; on national monopoly of rule and services of their Native subordinates; and honour, not on open and entire confidence there is no temptation to jobbery, for in between the governors and the governed. the eyes of an Englishman, as far as fa- He would beg leave to move the Amendvouritism is concerned, one Native is much ment of which he had given Notice. the same as another. And therefore, Sir, the House might safely adopt my Amendment, which could be carried into practical effect by the least possible degree of change in the law. The 3rd and 4th clauses of the Civil Service Act allow the Authority in India to appoint any person to any office whatsoever, under special circumstances; provided he has resided at least seven years in India. Now, all that is really required is, that the provisions of these sections should be relieved from their exceptional character; and that it should be declared, on the authority of this House, that the selection for vacant appointments of qualified persons on the spot is to be considered as regular and normal a mode of recruiting the Civil Service, as nominating young men to it from this country according to the result of a competitive examination. Thus we should have two permanent sources of supply for the India Civil Service: one would be derived, as at present, from the competition at home of the youth of the whole Empire; the other, from a careful selection made in India itself of persons distinguished in the Uncovenanted Service and at the Native Bar. We should take a signal step towards raising the character and educating the intellect of the Natives, and so gradually rendering them fit to govern themselves. And for what other purpose are we in India at all? No purpose, at any rate, which we can confess before Europe and before the tribunal of history. We should imitate what was wisest in the policy of old Rome, as expressed by Gibbon in a most eloquent passage. But we need not go so far back,

Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."

COLONEL SYKES said, that annually a number of Native young men of the highest intellectual and mental calibre took degrees in India by passing similar examinations to those which were necessary to the conferring of the same degrees in this country. And yet men who exhibited such capacity and attained those degrees were excluded from the Civil Service of India unless they passed examinations in this country which were by no means so hard as those they had already gone through. This was the practice, in spite of the fact that the Vote for the Education of the Natives of India amounted to £904,190, or more than was at present expended in the same direction on the people of this country. He certainly thought that those Natives who obtained such degrees as those of B.A., M.A., and M.D. ought to be permitted at once to enter the Civil Service and not be compelled to come to England for the purpose of undergoing a fresh examination. Certainly it would be advantageous to Indian aspirants

to pass some time in England, as it would by the Motion of the hon. Member for enlarge their views and give an improved Brighton (Mr. Fawcett), and he was obliged tone to their minds, and young Indians to confess that his experience led him to might be induced to come to Europe if doubt very much the efficiency of that scholarships should be established in this system, and to doubt whether it was better country for those who looked to rise in the than the old system of patronage. It was service of the Government. These scholar- far from a good method of providing for ships would enable young Indians to ob- the Civil Service of India. He had had tain advantages which they could not pro- a good deal to do with the people of India; cure in their native country. The support and the feeling among them undoubtedly which we received from the Nepaulese was that the class of men now sent out to troops in the suppression of the mutiny in represent this country were inferior to the 1857, we owed to the visit which Jung men sent out under the old system, and Bahadoor had paid to England. He (Colonel could not acquire in the same degree the Sykes) was enabled to learn from his respect of the Natives. The civil servants friendship with Jung Bahadoor, that when were now degenerating into a lower class the Bengal mutiny broke out, delegates of society, and there was rising up in the were sent by the mutineers to the Nepaul different Presidencies a new class of indeCourt inviting co-operation against the pendent Englishmen, especially at the Bar, English. A great meeting of the Court who looked down on the Civil Service. His nobles and chiefs of the army was held, hon. Friend the Member for Brighton had and the general sentiment was in favour of said that he intended by his Motion to joining the mutineers; but Jung Bahadoor provide that those who were appointed to rose and said he too would have concurred the Civil Service by the competition by in the opinions expressed, had he not paid examination in Calcutta should reside two a visit to England; but he saw there such years in England. If the Motion exindustry, such energy, and such indomi- pressed that, he should view it in a diftable perseverance in conquering diffi- ferent light-not on the ground put for culties, that although the mutineers might ward by his hon. Friend who sat near him at first succeed and drive the English to (Mr. Trevelyan), that the candidates would the coast, they would be involved in the be more impressed with the irresistible end in defeat and ruin. Happily his ad- power of this country, but because they vice prevailed, and the Nepaulese army would have learnt the principles and mojoined the English, and Jung Bahadoor's rality of this country. As to the mere prediction was verified. On the whole, question of learning, however, it might therefore, he (Colonel Sykes) would en- happen that the English competitors would courage Natives to finish their studies in be placed at a disadvantage as compared England. with young Indians of the same age, who, though less fit to discharge the responsible duties imposed upon them, would have greater facilities for preparing themselves for an examination. If he were to chose between the Motion and the Amendment, he should prefer the latter; because it was based on the principle that our great object was not so much to secure men who were able to pass a good examination in languages and mathematics as men imbued with the spirit and tone of this country.

MR. FAWCETT explained that it was part of his scheme that successful competitors should reside two years in England.

COLONEL SYKES said, he was also opposed to the Amendment, believing that it would be worse than of no service to the Natives; but he believed the time was arriving, and educated people were accumulating so fast in India, and the self-respect and importance of the Native population were extending so rapidly, that some suitable and dignified positions must be obtained for them in our service, in order to ensure their attachment, instead of exciting their jealousy and resentment.

MR. NEATE said, that having for two years been brought, in his capacity of Examiner, into contact with the candidates for the Indian Civil Service, he wished to make some brief remarks on the subject before the House. The question of competitive examinations was indirectly raised

SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE said, it was not without some regret that he felt himself obliged to oppose the Motion of his hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, for in the object aimed at he was disposed to agree very much with the hon. Gentleman, as he naturally desired to promote, as far as possible, the employment of Natives of India in the Civil Service and government of that country. He was con

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