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India is of far greater moment than the Government at home , and Very much depends on the personal character of the Governor-General for the time being , to whom such vasfe powers are entrusted ; more still , however , he says > depends on the members of the civil ser"vice , each . of whom is necessarily almost despotic in his district , and may have the happiness of a million of per ? sons tinder his control .
To the proposition for throwing open the Civil Service , so that the Governor-General should be able to appoint whom he pleased , Mr . Macaulay objects that it would occasion a revival of the monstrous corruptions of seventy or eighty years ago , when men utterly unfit for office were sent out through favour , and returned in a few years with enormous fortunes . Against the abuse of this patronage by the Governor-General , he
thinks experience proves that Parliamentary supervision would be powerless ^ The only security he can see against the recurrence of the former state of things , is to place at the disposal of the Governor-General , as now , only a selected and limited body of public servants .. .. . . . ¦ ¦ ; ¦ , ¦ ' . ' ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦' ¦ ' ... ' . ' ¦ . .. " But , if so , then he urges we are bound to take so much , the more care that none but highly qualified persons are admitted into this limited but unspeakably important service ; and having thus cleared the way , the rest of his speech , more than half of it , is taken up in defending that educational test which the Bill proposes to establish .
Before we address ourselves to the main topic of the speech , we have to remark on some of the preliminary arguments . If the Government in India be so independent of the-authorities at home , as Mr . Macaulay says it is , we are left to discover why the latter should be retained at all , or in any form ; and the expressions used by this old Indian official and celebrated orator do not lead us to infer that he places on them much more than a complimentary valuation . ' To sweep away the whole machinery of the Home Government would little affect Mr . Macaulay ' s view of the subject , Provided only enougffc was left to secure due appointments to the Governorships and the Civil Service . •*
We take this , however , to be only an extreme and false deduction from the current phrase , "India , can only be governed in India "—a phrase which has been hackneyed until it has become very much abused . In almost all Indian affairs a fallacy of no ordinary virulence commonly lies concealed in the word " government , " and in this case , while it is true in one sense that India can only be governed in India , it is quite as true in another that India can only be governed from England . Mr . Macaulay ' s own speech may be quoted full to this purpose ; only he did not apply what was true in one sense to the necessary completion of what was true in tho other . Most people treat India as Mr . t
Macaulay does , not only as despotic at present , buas destined for ever to bo so . If this be a true view of tho case , why send out more Englishmen to govern India than are necessary merely to receive the plunder j 3 The natives never wore inefficient instruments of a despotism ; and if we arc content to rule India on a system whoso fundamental principle is the proprietorship of the ruler , and whoso main object is his profit , wo iniffht save ourselves the trouble of nearly all our European services , and extract as much from India in excess of our present draf t as would pay an equal number of persons at home—that is , if we could keep tho country together for six weeks on . such a system .
But we all know wo could not hold the country together on such a system . Qur strength lies m tho rhanges we have made and arc making on the whole , although some of those changes may have been ill-conr iderod and injurious . Wo hold India by virtue , of l ; b (> ir ironoral effect . ., Tho general nature of the change is this-wlnlo India remains despotic in its form of adrmmstratzon , , t has become , and ia becoming constituent in spirit . Bnfc tho accountability instead of being , m m regularly tor waul
constitutional states , to tho people » here , of a people in this samo , to another mid a foiogn body which for a time artificially supplies its place . Mr . Macaulay , fixing hin view chiefly on the despotic character of the siii B lo . gents of tho Government nets l ' iKhfc by the general auperviaion and responsibility to which they aVo all subject . It is , true ; ho hardly o ^ leru tos tlie immense importance ol the personal f utov and ability of .. tho Collector to Inn district ; v I ; ' o , eo to Lav . considered , or at least on hh eca to lu appears to have overlooked , the nccc * tv Ho nothing above all tho Collectors , mid placed ndo v ry " lineitnt iniluenees , to the keeping np the "S ^ L th of themselves and of their measure , im
„ ,., „ ipavoa Kncland to umlertaice - ^ T ?" nst i Ii 1 Ho carries out with him only STBritS q ^ rcluts and impression ^ to curly the UntiBh u . q ^ ^^ B 0 C 10 ogv > ol fftT of K begh , inspnaibly to affect hnn , and
by the time when he attains to the possession of practically despotic power , he comes to every act filled with assumptions at least as much Indian as English . If this mingling related only to matters municipally peculiar to India , nothing but good could come of it ; but its tendency is quite as much to Other and less harmless matters , to the despotism and immorality iu which most men will gradually and almost unconsciously proceed to indulge themselves when , as here , there is little or no effective public opinion to restrain them . .
Here , then , is a clear necessity , not only for great caution in the original selection of the civil servants , but also for a careful watching of the acts , progress , and character of each of them . If every one is despotic on his own ground , it is imperative that his conduct should be supervised j that the supervision should be to a great extent in detail , and that it should be made from an English point of view—from an English point of view , not for the sake of English interests , but for the keeping up of a constant mental reference to that advanced standard of law , administration , freedom , and morals , towards which it is our function and our only safe line of policy ever to be leading India , and which is necessarily lowered in most minds , which are subjected to purely Indian influences .
We now only stay to remark , that such a function as this it seems impossible Parliament can ever discharge . To some extent , and however imperfectly , it is discharged by the existing authorities . Parliament could never be modified so as to fulfil this duty ; but the separate bodies now existing maybe amended to that effect . We might as reasonably have destroyed our unreformed House of Commons , and thrown onrselves into the arms of a despotism ( as' many European nations did in the middle ages , when disgusted with their representative bodies ) as destroy the India House instead of reforming it . '
We abate , however , nothing of Mr . Macaulay ' s estimate of the importance which attaches to a right original selection of the members of . the civil service , when we maintain the necessity of a close continued supervision of them ; but we do dissent from his sanction of the standard of selection proposed—a standard purely of educational requirements . This distinguished scholar adduces , in support of his views , the success in the learned professions of men who had been eminent at college . But he overlooks the fact , that many of the discoveries which have much influenced the general course of human thought and
action , were made while the discoverers were yet new to the subject , and more still by those who had not undergone school-teaching in relation to it . Generally speaking , it is the highly-taught old mind which carries to still greater elaboration and still wider use the principles already established , while it is the competent but unencumbered new mind which falls on new principles , and sees their application and value . Watt was a young engineer whe he applied to the steam engine the discoveries of Black , himself to a great extent a self-taught
chemist . Newton was a young mathematician when he invented his great method of fluxions . George Stophenson never was taug ht theoretical mechanics at all . The learned mind , long engaged in its p ursuits , is essentially conservative , whether in p olitics or science ; and reform , if admitted at all , must with it take place on tho existing basis : the new mind is adventurous and p rogressive , and is ready to accept anything which looks like truth , with little occasion to regard its conformity to what is already believed .
* The importance of this remark here arises from tho condition of India . In many parts that is not yet a condition which can bo served by the conservative tendencies of learning ; although in others it is tiino that learning and stability entered ontlieir sphere . Neither tho work of Cleveland in tho Kajmnhal Hills , nor that of various British officers at tho closo of tho Mahratta war , nor more recently that of Major Kdwards amongst the ' tribes west of tho Indus , nor , later still , that of Colonel Outram at Bnroda , could luivo been accomplished by men of eminent learning . For what are our political sciences but catalogues of tho motives of men .. h wo ourselves hco them in action , together with tho
consequences resulting from the usual force and activity of thoHO motives with usP Let , thon , a man thoroughly imbued with theso sciences , as deduced from our own particular sot of postulate , bo transported to another scene , where the whole accidental Hot of human motives i « diHbront , and it will depend on qualities which no scholastic exa mination can detect , whether bo will bo found enfeebled and overburdened by tho technicality of his knowledge , or can riso to tho general principles which may bo in some kcuho obscurely applicable in every Btnto of things . What if ho find political economy thwarted by HiipoiHtition ; tho very basis of his theory of evidence clean cut away by the want of a popular moral eoHmation of truthfulness j ov the whole
system of motives bent and moulded to ancient and stubborn usages , of which he can discern neither the origin nor the object , or perverted by hereditary antipathies of race ? Clearly he must be much more than a senior wrangler to be able to shape for himself a new course where his books fail him so thoroughly as here . Nay , some men in such a case may be the worse for their books , although libt all ; for . the preoccupation of mirid , fhe formation of habits of thought , and the uncontrollable effect of the associations set up , may not leave the hi an in the same condition to grapple with new circumstances as he would have been had he been less elaborately educated .
Let it not bo said we arc advocating ignorance . We are only asserting' the insufficiency , for some important-purposes , of those particular forms of knowledge and habits of thought . ' which are imparted by the schools . Nor are we denying that there are many positions in Indian official life , in which sound and appropriate learning ought to be possessed , and its possession amply certified before a candidate is permitted to fill one of them . We object not to learning as a test , but to 'it . as an exclusive test for the whole service ; and we believe that the adoption of it in that sense so as to exclude the more active and practical but less reflective kind of minds , will be followed either by great evils , if the civil service be alone resorted to for civil appointments , or by increased dependence on the army for a most important class of civil officers .
Our meaning may be elucidated by the following contrast of facts , within our own knowledge . Some thirty years jago there went out to India , in the service of a small missionary society , a young man , who was pronounced by his tutor a very ho ]) eless student . Declensions and conjugations were so much an abomination , to him as to vex and grieve his worthy preceptor , and to lead him to fearful apprehensions-of his failure ; in more active religious efforts , however , the young man showed unusual energy , courage , and address , and it was resolved' to send him out . Twelve months afterwards , another followed him , much more studious and
methodical , and therefore much nearer to the condition of-those intended to be selected by the proposed test . The first of those soon became thoroughly familiarised with the language of the people , by means of constant intercourse witli them , insomuch as that it ^ has been said that no other European ever acquired so complete an identification with the natives , in modes of expression , discrimination of shades of moaning , and copiousness of choice of words . Moreover , he carried into tho detail of daily affairs with , the natives who became Christians , so much of industry , order , and European skill , as to give to their private life unwonted comfort and enjoyment . For twenty years his ready and constant oral communications with tho people , gave tone
and character to " tho great preaching mission of tho Bengal presidency . " The other betook himself to books , not , however , without viva voce practice in the language . He takes honourable rank with the philologists , who , chiefly with religious views , arc endeavouring to raise the rude and imperfect vernaculars of India to the utility and dignity ol' cultivated languages . But he has not the free and ready verbal flow of his colleague , and bis usefulness is of a very different kind . Our remark on this is , that if a test on tho principle of that now proposed for tho entire civil service , had been applied to theso cases , tho mission must huvo lost , out of two valuable men , him who , under tho circumstances of that time , was , undoubtedly , tho most valuable of tho . twn .
But what is still moro remarkable , as showing tho importance of tho faculty of self-adaptation to now circumstances , tho diiici'cnco of these men was . in relation to tho very same matter , —viz ., languago ; ono went on tho long-worn w : iy ho had learned , that of grammars , lexicons , and tho rest : and no doubt to very good ultimate effect ; tho other , by inero conformity to tho use of facts , as they occurred , dovelopod , in a high degree , a faculty ibr language he was fully believed not to possess at all , to tho attainment of present objects vital to nil futuro progress .
If , bowover , wo dissent , for theno reasons , from Mr . Macaulay ' s views , as to the value of a purely educational test , to bo employed in every case , we do not mean to suy that no Mich test should be oinployod for any part of tho civil service . Law is essentially a mutter of learning and stability ; nnd lot tho candidates for judicial employment mako good their pretensions , by moans of examination . It in a course eminently fitted for that kind of public service , whoro society in sufficiently advanced to admit of permanent ; and uniform law , and Mr . Macaulay ' s splendid array of examples may bo fairly adduced in support of it , however inconsequential it may ho when applied boyond that limit . But , for the rest , such u criterion is , ut best , a fallacy , not , indeed , ncceHsurily admitting only the worst irion , but very often excluding the very beafc If it bo
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JtfcY ; 2 , 18 S 3 ] THE LEADER . 641 ¦ - '•¦ - : --w - ^ - ¦¦¦ ¦ ¦ - ¦ - ¦ _ ¦¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ - : - ' ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ . ¦ - : _^_— ¦ - ¦ ¦ ¦
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Leader (1850-1860), July 2, 1853, page 641, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1993/page/17/
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