THE INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE. THE Government of India is now in a transition state, and it must be impossible for any impartial and reflecting mind not to regard the situation without the feelings of deepest interest and anxiety. A comprehensive experiment, whose results will affect the welfare and peace of a continent, is about to be made. No benefit can now arise in recalling grave objections to the scheme. It must be the wish of all men who have at heart the honour of the English nation that the scheme about to be inaugurated will render the peoples of India-the toiling millions -more prosperous and more happy, and place the British Empire in India on a firmer basis. But the success of the experiment, so novel, so important, will depend on the tact, courage, and ability of that Service which has for more than a century with firmness and equity administered that Empire. England may well be proud of a body of public servants who, from being the agents of a commercial concern, became the Ministers and Officers of a powerful sovereignty, and evolved out of the chaos of devastation, plunder, and massacre, a wondrous fabric of order, justice, and power. The story of the rise of the Indian Civil Service is like that of the East India Company, a tale of small begin nings. Soon after the Company planted factories on the coast they sent out apprentices, "good Penmen to bee imployed by you upon all occasions as our businesse shall require." When their transactions became more extensive and warehouses grew into established settlements, the Company found it necessary to form their servants into a graded body, and to frame rules for their promotion. "For the advancement of our apprentices," the Court of Directors wrote, "we direct that after they have served the first five years, they shall have £10 per annum for the two last years; and having served these two years to be entertayned one yeare longer as writers, and have writers sallary; and having served that yeare, to enter into the degree of factors which otherwise would have been ten years. And knowing that a distinction of titles is in many respects necessary, we do order that, when the apprentices have served their times, they be stiled writers; and when the writers have served their times they be called factors; and factors having served their times to be stiled merchants; and merchants having served their times to be stiled senior merchants." After a time the style and rank of apprentices ceased. The selection of the Writers rested entirely with the Court of Directors. A candidate, after receiving a nomination from a Director, coloured calicoes, indigo, and submitted a petition that he drugs brought from the inwas desirous "of serving your land. The salaries of their honours," and forwarded & servants were very small, and certificate that he had been the Company recognised this educated in writing and ac- by allowing them "to imcounts. On the 14th of Nov- prove their fortunes by ember 1749 Warren Hastings trading on their own account. submitted his "humble peti- The privilege was confined to tion" in which he stated that the inland or coast trade, the he was "aged 16 and upwards," trade with Europe being left and "had been bred up to to their masters. The policy Writing and Accounts"; that of small salaries supplemented "being very desirous of Serving by private gains was a fatal your Honours as a Writer in policy. It led to corruption, India He therefore humbly attended with robbery and prays your Honours will please oppression of the natives, and to entertain him in that Station has left the false impression, which he promises to discharge which influences public opinion with the greatest Diligence and in the present day, that Fidelity." The petitions of the "India has been acquired by candidates were referred to a enormous crimes." The facts committee who reported on are not sufficiently known or their qualifications, and then forgotten that it was in Benan election by ballot took place. gal that corruption was most At a Court of Directors, holden rampant; that it was during on Wednesday the 15th of the short period between the December 1742 (seven years conquest of Bengal and Clive's before Warren Hastings pre- return to Bengal in 1765; and sented his petition), "the Court it was chiefly done not by proceeded to the choice of the regular servants of the Writers for Fort St George, Company, but by adventurers Bombay and Bengal, and the who were sent out from following persons being ballot- England through political inted for were chosen accordingly fluence to make their fortunes. -Viz., Robert Clive For Fort It is also useful to bear in St George." It was necessary mind that the most corrupt that the Writers should be edu- period was the transition period cated in writing and accounts, between native despotism and because they were the clerks British government. In 1765 and book-keepers, while the Clive acquired for the Company Factors received and despatched the Diwani of Bengal, Behar, and the goods. The Senior and Orissa, including the right to Junior Merchants dealt with the collect the revenues and to adnative merchants who bought minister the principal branches their broadcloths, kersies, of the department of civil lead, vermilion, sword - blades, justice, and responsibility was and looking glasses; whilst coupled with power. It was they purchased silks, muslins, Warren Hastings who told the Company that they must The Court refused to sanction accept that responsibility to the remedy which Clive and its fullest extent. Four years Hastings strenuously urgedafter the acquisition of the and it was the only remedy, Diwani, British Supervisors an augmentation of salaries, were entrusted " with the accompanied by an absolute superintendence and charge of prohibition of private trade. a province whose rise and On the 14th of September 1786 fall must considerably affect Lord Cornwallis, the first Engthe whole." The Company lish statesman appointed to the stated in their instructions to high office, became Governorthe Supervisors: "Great share General. He went out armed of integrity, disinterestedness, with greater powers than Clive assiduity and watchfulness is or Hastings ever possessed, and necessary, not only for your sure of the support of a strong own guidance, but as an ex- Ministry. ample to all others, for your activity and advice will be in vain unless confirmed by example." When the first attempt was made at direct collection of the revenue, the Supervisors became known by the present title of Collectors. The famous Act of 1773, which named Warren Hastings Governor-General of Bengal, also declared "that from and after the first day of August 1774 no person holding or exercising any civil or military office under the Crown or the Company in the East Indies shall accept, receive, or take directly or indirectly by himself or any other person or persons on his behalf, or for his use or benefit, of and from any of the Indian princes or powers or their ministers or agents (or any of the natives of Asia) any present, gift, donation, gratuity or reward." Any one guilty of the offence was to forfeit double the value of the present, and to be amenable to deportation from the country. But the penalty had not a sufficient deterring effect. effect. He determined to use his well-defined authority and his political influence to apply the remedy which Clive and Hastings had not been allowed to adopt. He did not wait for the sanction of the Court of Directors. "I hope you will approve of the additional allowances that we have given," he wrote to the Court, "for without them it was absolutely impossible that an honest man could acquire the most moderate competence. After this liberality I made no scruple of issuing the revenue regulations against embarking in trade, and will make an example of the first offender." On the 26th of August 1787 he wrote to Dundas, then the chief member of the Board of Control, protesting against "the false economy" contained in a letter he had received from the Court of Directors, and the theory that however well men were paid in India they could not refrain from corruption. "If the essence of the spirit of economy of the whole Court of Directors could be collected, I am sure it would fall very short of my earnest anxiety on that subject. But I never can or shall think that it is good economy to put men into places of the greatest confidence, where they have it in their power to make their fortune in a few months, without giving them any salaries. sooner "If it is a maxim that no Government can command honest services, and that pay our servants as we please they will equally cheat, the we leave this country the better. I am sure under that supposition I can be of no use, and my salary is so much thrown away: nothing will be so easy as to find a Governor-General of Bengal who will serve without a salary. "I have saved since I came, upon the salt, upon the various contracts, upon remittances, balances, and jobs of different kinds, ten times, I may say fifty times, the amount of the salaries that are retrenched. I am doing everything I can to reform the Company's servants, to teach them to be more economical in their mode of living, and to look forward to a moderate competency; and I flatter myself I have not hitherto laboured in vain. But if all chance of saving any money and returning to England, without acting dishonestly, is removed, there will be an end of my reformation." The Directors clung to the opinion that Collectors should be paid, partly by commission and partly by fixed salaries, but the vigorous arguments of the Governor-General had their effect on his Majesty's Ministers, and, by a clause in the new Charter Act of 1793, it was decreed that it shall not be lawful for any Governor-General, Governor, or any Member of Council, or any servant of the Company "to be concerned in any trade or traffic whatever except on account of the Company." A section of the same Act laid down that "all vacancies happening in any of the offices, places, or employments in the civil line of the Company's service in India (being under the degree of Counsellor) shall be from time to time filled up and supplied from amongst the Civil Servants of the said Company belonging to the said Presidency wherein such vacancies shall respectively happen, subject only to the restrictions in this Act contained, and no otherwise." From this time the Indian Covenanted Civil Service became a group administering the affairs of a of public servants engaged in vast population under perfectly definite and intelligibly stated rules. Cornwallis remodelled the rules first drafted by Warren Hastings, and placed on a clear and permanent basis the direct administration of all branches of the public service by European officers. The arrangements he made have been severely criticised because they excluded natives from the administration of the land. But at the time they were made the decay of authority had produced a race of native officials entirely corrupt. One of the greatest works that England has done in India has been to create an official conscience in an Oriental. Cornwallis was succeeded by Sir John Shore, a member of the Civil Service, not a great statesman but a good servant of his country, who "made justice, moderation, and an inflexible integrity the invariable guides of his conduct." The Marquess Wellesley, who became Governor-General after Sir John Shore, ad dressed himself to the great work of improving the administrative machinery which Cornwallis had established. He realised that the introduction of a systematic administration was to impose on the Civil Service duties of greater magnitude and importance. His account of the Imperial task imposed upon them applies with equal fidelity to the work done by the Indian Civil Service in the present day. "To dispense justice to millions of people of various languages, manners, usages, and religions; to administer a vast and complicated system of revenue through districts equal in extent to some of the most considerable kingdoms in Europe; to maintain order in one of the most populous and litigious regions in the world,-these are now the duties of the larger proportion of the Civil Servants of the Company." There still existed a department exclusively commercial, but with regard to the duties of the larger proportion he added "They are required to discharge the functions of Magistrates, Judges, Ambassadors, and Governors of provinces, in all the complicated and extensive relations of those sacred trusts and exalted stations, and under peculiar circumstances, which greatly enhance the solemnity of every public obligation, and aggravate the difficulty of every public charge. Their duties are those of statesmen in every other part of the world, with no other characteristic differences than the obstacles opposed by an unfavourable climate, by a foreign language, by the peculiar usages and laws of India, and by the manners of its inhabitants. Their studies, the discipline of their education, their habits of life, their manners and morals should, therefore, be so ordered and regulatbetween their personal consideration ed as to establish a just conformity and the dignity and importance of their public stations, and to maintain a sufficient correspondence between their qualifications and their duties.” On the 10th of July 1800 the Governor-General in Council, in a letter to the Court of Directors, intimated that they had "determined to found an establishment at this Presidency, of the nature of a collegiate institution, for the purpose of enabling the servants of the Company to perfect themselves in those acquirements which form the necessary qualifications for the different lines of the service in which they may choose to engage." With the letter was enclosed "The Governor-General's Notes with respect to the foundation of a college at Fort William." They still have interest and use as the work of a powerful mind dealing with matters of the highest concern. On the same day, the 10th July 1800, the most noble Richard Marquess Wellesley, Knight of the illustrious Order of Saint Patrick, &c., &c., Governor-General in Council, enacted that "A College is hereby_founded at Fort William in Bengal," but he directed that the foundation of the College should be as the date of the 4th of May 1800, "the first anniversary of the decisive and glorious victory obtained by the British arms at Seringapatam." On the banks of the Hughley at Garden Reach, then a beautiful and well-wooded suburb of |