It cannot be denied that, whatever may have been the intentions of successive Secretaries of State, very little progress has been made in giving effect to it."1 As I have had occasion to express strong dissent from many acts of the present Viceroy, I more gladly take this opportunity of bearing testimony to the efforts which he is understood to have made during the whole time he has been in India to secure a larger employment of natives in the public service. In pursuing this course it will, I believe, be subsequently proved that Lord Lytton has acted with not less wisdom than justice. Indications, however, are not wanting that, in carrying out this policy, the Government will be attacked from two opposite quarters. No sooner was the announcement made that, in order to admit natives to some of the higher offices, the number of appointments in the covenanted service thrown open to competition in England would be diminished, than the course which the Government intended to adopt was severely criticised. All the old and well-known objections were brought forward.

It was alleged that the natives were defective in physique, and that they were morally unfit to have entrusted to them the higher offices of the State. It is only reasonable to suppose that such objections as these have been carefully considered both by the Viceroy and the Secretary of State before they came to their recent decision, and in arriving at it it is easy to show that they are supported by those whose intimate knowledge of India has qualified them to speak with- great authority on this subject. Selecting a few from many similar expressions of opinion that might be quoted, General Sir George Jacob, formerly Special Political Commissioner, Southern Mahratta country, said: "During the last thirty years that I have been at the head of a province or provinces, I have made it a rule to select men for employ under me from the different colleges and schools of the Presidency, both Mahometan and Hindu, and there are numbers who have been so selected who are now filling high and responsible appointments in the different parts of Western India. The accounts that have reached me of them since my return to England bear testimony to their usefulness and trustworthiness." After saying that only one had failed, he continued: "I certainly should not have expected so large a proportion of good men and true even from the educated classes of my own country." Sir Bartle Frere, writing in 1868, when he was Governor of Bombay, said: "We have at this moment in the educated youth of Western India, as far as intellectual and moral training can secure it, an excellent raw material for manning every branch of the public service." The present Governor of Bombay, Sir Richard Temple, who has also held important positions in Bengal, bears testimony to the capacity possessed by some of the natives for the highest administrative work.

He says that during our supremacy in India there have been in the native States "good ministers, really capital administrators, who have adorned the service to which they belong: such as Purnea of Mysore, the Tantia Jogh of Indore, in the past, and Sir Sala Jung of Hyderabad, Sir Dinker Rao of Gwalior, Sir T. Madhava Rao of Travancore, in the present." In a report which the Government of India published a few years since on Sir T. Madhava Rao's administration of Travancore, it is stated that "he found Travancore, when he went there in 1849, in the lowest stage of degradation; he has left it a model State." Everything was in a condition of the most utter disorder; the treasury was exhausted; the pay of the police and other public servants was so much in arrear that they compensated themselves by the most irregular exactions. Sir Madhava Rao, by the exercise of the greatest care and thrift, was able to place the finances of Travancore in a thoroughly sound position; a considerable surplus was secured, large sums were spent on education and in the construction of public works, the salaries of the officials were regularly paid, the people were not harassed by taxes unsuited to them, but his intimate knowledge of their tastes and their habits enabled him to effect all these great reforms with the minimum of inconvenience to the people.

If any other proof were wanted of the great advantage that would result from more largely employing natives who are capable of rendering important service to the Government, it would be afforded by the fact that almost all the public works in India have in recent years been constructed by English engineers, and yet, as previously shown, by far the most successful schemes of irrigation are those which were designed by natives, who possessed a knowledge of the climatic conditions of the country which can be very rarely acquired by a foreigner. This success of the native works is so remarkable that when Lord Salisbury was Secretary of State he went so far as to declare that the only schemes of irrigation which showed the desirable result of a clean balance-sheet were those of native origin.

1 See the Budget Speech of Mr. Stanhope, House of Commons, May 22, 1879.

As previously indicated, the extended employment of natives in the public service ought not to be simply considered as a measure of justice and of improved administration. The Government wisely consider that by the adoption of this policy, it will be possible to effect a very important reduction in expenditure. It is, however, evident that claims may be put forward by the people of India themselves, which, if conceded, would prevent any direct pecuniary gain being secured from the increased employment of natives in the public service. It is often contended by influential representatives of native opinion that there should be no difference in the remuneration of natives and Europeans respectively for the same work. The salary of a European official in India should, however, be considered as composed of two elements: one part of the pay which he receives remunerates him for the actual work which he does, and the other compensates him for leaving his country, and for various expenses to which he is subjected, such, for instance, as having to send his children to Europe to be educated. A native, therefore, not being subject to these disadvantages, would really receive much higher remuneration than a European if he were paid the same salary.