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that the patronage once administered by the East India Company shall, with the exception of the portion reserved to public competition, be made over to the HorseGuards or the Secretary-at-War, it is easy to see how the power of the Crown and the influence of the aristocracy may be greatly enhanced by the change. This may be regarded as a very serious matter in itself, but it is far more serious when viewed in connection with other contemplated reforms of a kindred character. A few words of explanation will perhaps be necessary to make this clear to the general reader. The old system under which India was governed, however anomalous" and 66 inconsistent" it may have been, was somewhat cunningly devised. It at all events contained within itself certain constitutional checks, which it now appears to be the leading desire of our legislators wholly to destroy. The home government of India consisted of the Court of Directors of the East India Company and the Board of Control; the Indian governments, of governors and councils. These different agencies and authorities may not have been necessarily antagonistic, but they were diverse and heterogeneous, and, being such, there was no continual chain or conduit, as it were, between the ministerial or parliamentary fountain-head in England and the great field of Indian service. The Court of Directors stood between the Queen's Ministers and the Indian governor; and the Indian governor stood between the Court of Directors and the Indian service; and then there were the Indian councils, appointed by the Court of Directors to act as a check upon the Indian governors appointed by the Minister of the day. There was, indeed, every possible security for the right administration of patronage in India. The initial patronage was in the hands of the Court of Directors. The Directors sent out a certain number of young men every year to India. They may have been their own sons, nephews, grandsons, &c., but beyond giving the youths a fair start in life, they could do nothing for them.

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The son of a Director went out to India with no better prospect of obtaining the loaves and fishes of the service, than the son of a country parson from an obscure west-ofEngland village. The actual appointments" in India were in the gift of the local governments. There was one exception, however, to this, and one which it is necessary to bear in mind. The members of the several councils of India were appointed by the Court of Directors. Constitutionally they were held to be checks upon the local governors, and it was considered a preposterous notion that a great public functionary should select his own checks. The appointments, then, with this exception, being in the gift of the Governor-General, there was no likelihood of any improper administration of public patronage. The great mass of the candidates for office, sent out to India by the Directors, were youths of the middle classes, whom a Governor-General was not likely to have much personal interest in promoting. The Directors themselves had little or no personal connection with the Governor-General, and the Crown Minister had little or no interest in the success of the young men sent out to India. So it happened that very little pressure from England was brought to bear upon the heads of Government in India, who found themselves fettered by no pledges on their own account, and no solicitations from chiefs of their party, but free to put the right man in the right place, and thus to contribute to the general welfare of the State. There could hardly have been a system better contrived to secure a just and beneficial administration of Indian patronage; and no one, we believe, has ever alleged that, under that system, the best men have not come to the front.

The advantages of these checks were so patent, that when it was proposed to substitute a new form of government for that of the East India Company and the Board of Control, it was deemed to be essential by all who considered the question in its constitutional aspects,. that some similar contrivances should be introduced into the new system.

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The Council of India was intended to preserve the balance on this side, vice the Court of Directors, and the Indian councils were maintained unchanged. The Court of Directors, before their final extinction, had been shorn of their civil patronage. All their once-coveted writerships had been taken away from them, and given over to public competition. Whether under this system a better class of public functionaries was likely to arise for the administration of the affairs of India, was a fair open question. But, at all events, the change did not render any abuse of patronage in India a bit more likely. The competitors were not likely to be connections of the Governor-General, or of his parliamentary friends at home. No one could obtain entrance into the service except through the gate of public competition, and no appointments of high trust and responsibility were given to any who had not passed through that gate and regularly graduated in the service. There was still an exclusive covenanted service and a close system. But it is now proposed to abolish the exclusive privileges of this service. A bill has been prepared for the amendment of the law concerning the civil service of India, the intent of which is to throw open to competition in India-that is, to place at the disposal of the local governments, without restriction as to persons offices which have hitherto been held exclusively by men who have graduated in the covenanted civil service. A man desiring to hold a commissionership or a judgeship in India, will, after the passing of this bill, no longer be compelled to waste his youth in the solitudes of India; he may try his luck first of all in England; may enter a profession, and, failing at home, betake himself to India; or having spent his patrimony in genteel society at home, he may exchange the clubs of St James's for the Duftur-Khanas of Calcutta, and go out to recruit his fallen fortunes and his exhausted social energies in some comfortable berth at the Presidency. There will be no longer any necessity to climb the ladder of fortune step by step. A man may enter the service of the Indian Government at fifty, and pocket

at once his 5000 rupees a-month. It is not our wont to exaggerate possible evils, and therefore we willing ly admit that the Governor-General of India has too deep an interest in the good government of the country to be moved to any abuse of patronage on a large scale. Parliamentary corruption is not nowadays what it once was. In 1860 it cannot be said that every man has his price, if you only know the exact figure. Still, ministers will serve their friends or their partisans, or get rid of troublesome opponents. And we cannot help regarding with some alarm this extension to the civil service of the principle which will henceforth regulate the military patronage of India; the removal of the checks of which we have spoken, and the direct action of parliamentary influence upon the service of India. There will benceforth be nothing to prevent a man from following in the wake of a Governor-General to India, and after acquiring a slight smattering of the languages, dropping easily into an appointment which, under the old system, it would have taken twenty years of laborious service to obtain.

It may be said that appointments of this kind will be bestowable by the local governments only under certain conditions; that restrictions and reservations will be imposed; and that aristocratic incompetency will, after all, not have much chance in the open field. It is provided, we believe, that all appointments made by the local governments are to be confirmed by the Secretary of State for India in council, and that the "Secretary of State for India in Council" in this case is to mean the Secretary of State and a majority of his Council. Doubtless this is something, and might be more, if there were any security for the permanence of the Council. But still we have the direct action of parliamentary influence brought to bear upon the Indian services, and we can h again expect to see fitness regarded as the one neces tion of obtaining it. of different kinds. technical fitnes against whic there m ments

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face of which it would be impossible to lodge a protest; and yet there may be a something, and an essential something, wanting after all. It is easy to say what it is. It is a knowledge of native character and a regard for native feelings, not to be learnt from all the books that were ever written. A man may be learned in the laws and the languages of the country, and yet be wholly incompetent to transact public business with advantage to the people of that country. A good lawyer, fresh from the English courts, or even from practice at an Indian presidency, may be all abroad in the rough-and-ready work of Mofussil justice; the most expert diplomatist from Vienna or Berlin would be utterly stranded at the durbars of Scindiah or the Nizam. To do well, in such situations, men must be saturated with Orientalism. To understand things aright, whether in the line of justice or of diplomacy, you must look at them through a glass of Orientalism; and that is only obtainable by men who are content to purchase it by years of training on the scene of action, and of intercourse with the actors themselves. Therefore, whilst we have little reason to apprehend that under the proposed system any flagrantly bad appointments will be made that is to say, that men wanting in intelligence and integrity will be appointed to high office in India-we are by no means satisfied that arrangements will not be made, under cover of the highest respectability, very injurious to the public interests. A clever man may do more harm than a stupid one. Indeed, what is most to be dreaded is an incursion of very clever men, with European notions, proclaiming that Orientalism is, after all, a mere humbug, and that Blackey, if you only discipline him properly, will soon accommodate himself to our English ways. Against appointments of this respectable class, nothing, we repeat, can be said by councils in India or councils in England. Besides, to what are those councils coming? The Indian councils are generally believed to be on their last legs-that is to say, they have been left to die out by a process of exhaustion. We have said that, constitutionally, and to a cer

tain extent we might add practically, these councils, under the old system, were a check upon the local governors. Appointed by the Court of Directors, they were so far independent of the governor, and have sometimes been too strong for him. But now, instead of councillors appointed from England, there are to be executive councillors, or ministers of departments, appointed by the Governor-General and the governors of presidencies themselves. They will therefore be-we will not say "creatures" (as the word has an offensive import), but creations of the head of the Government, selected with reference either to his peculiar views or to his personal predilections. A veto, we presume, in such cases, will be reserved to the home Government; but, practically, this veto, as we have observed with reference to appointments generally out of the pale of the regular service, will seldom or never be exercised, and for the same reason. A Governor-General may select as his foreign minister, or his war minister, a very able and excellent man; but the man thus selected, and thus qualified, might be the very last whom, with reference to the dominant characteristic and prevailing opinions of other members of the Government, it is expedient to appoint. What often is most wanted in council is not a man of the Governor-General's school, but a man of an opposite school, to keep him from going too fast, or to urge him to go a little faster. This sort of check, under the new system, will at all events be lost. A Governor-General, it is true, on assuming office, will in most instances find an executive council ready made to his hand; but if these councillors are to be anything better than mere irresponsible assistants or clerks, they would feel themselves bound to resign, if they were unable conscientiously to support the policy of their chief, and to leave him free to select his own colleagues. We write in ignorance of the details of the scheme for the revision of the Indian councils; but as our object is merely to illustrate the subject of constitutional checks, these details are immaterial to our argument. It is obvious that a council, chosen by the Governor-General himself, can never

be in the independent position of one nominated by such a body as the Court of Directors of the East India Company.

And this brings us at once to the consideration of the position of the Council of India. We have already shown that, by the contemplated removal of one barrier after another, the whole field of Indian service is now being thrown open to the direct influences of the Court, the Parliament, and the Ministry of the day. Nothing is left of the old system but the Council of India, which was intended to take constitutionally the place of the Court of Directors, but which has obviously much more limited constitutional powers. In the first place, it is, to a great extent, a child of ministerial creation; and it is perfectly clear that its continued existence is dependent upon the will of the Minister of the day. A more honourable body of men than the Council of India is not connected with the Government of this or any other country. But it is hardly in the nature of things that they should preserve the stalwart and indomitable independence of the old Court of Directors. And it is plain that if Sir Charles Wood's interpretation of the law is correct (and we believe that it is correct), the constitutional powers of the Council, when pushed to the utmost limit of the law, are very small. If it were possible to conceive a case in which such a body of men, excluded as they are from Parliament, should have a right to be heard, it is when such a question as the future constitution of the Indian army is to be decided. But Sir Charles Wood concedes as a privilege what ought to be an inherent and inalienable right. We are not disposed to blame the Minister; he is entitled to exercise the powers which the law has given him. But we see now, for the first time, clearly and distinctly, what these powers are. We see the last remaining barrier between India and party knocked

down as easily as a rampart of playing-cards. The game now lies between the Minister in England and the Viceroy in India. The ball is thrown without let or hindrance from the hand of the one to the hand of the other. The dual number is now supreme in affairs of Indian government, and all precedents and traditions are cast remorselessly to the wind.

We have wished our readers to look upon the present India question as a whole. The army question, however important in itself, is, as we have shown, only a part of it. Whilst we are contemplating the probable results of a measure transferring the control of the whole European army of India to the hands of the Horse-Guards and the War Office, we learn that the Indian civil service is to be thrown open to Government protegés of all ages and all kinds; that the Indian councils are to be abolished; and that the Council of India is absolutely a delusion and a sham. The experiment which is now about to be inaugurated is a comprehensive and gigantic one. It has, at all events, the merit of boldness, and there is something that demands respectful admiration in the completeness and consistency of the scheme. If it succeed

if it, under Providence, be permitted that thereby our Indian empire is placed on a securer basis than before, and the people of India rendered more prosperous, more happy, and more enlightened, future generations may gratefully regard the scheme as one of the greatest efforts of statesmanship which the present century has seen. Assuredly, it has our best wishes-our heartiest prayers. We will not predict failure, but the experiment is so novel and so important, the interests at stake are so great, that it will be impossible, for some years to come, not to regard with feelings of anxiety the transition state of our Indian Empire.

Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh.

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A SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF SIR ROBERT PEEL.

THE family to which the late Sir Robert Peel belonged, lays no claim to ancestral dignity or knightly renown. It is one of those good old English stocks, a yeoman's household, the members of which have been well described as at once too high for the office of constable, and too low for that of sheriff. Originally settled at East Marten, in Craven parish, it transferred itself, about the year 1600, in the persons of William Peel and his three brothers, to a farmstead near Blackburn, in Lancashire, the name of which is ominous of miasmata and hypochondriacal humours, for the place is still called De Hole, or Hoyle House. This house in the hole William Peel rented, with a farm attached to it, under a renewable lease, from the Archbishop of Canterbury, and he left it at his demise as an inheritance to his children.

It was a grandson of this William Peel who may be truly said to have founded the family from which our great statesman derived his descent. His name was Robert. He became a manufacturer of woollen cloths at Blackburn, and succeeded so well in business that he was able, by his will, which was registered in the Arch

deaconry of Richmond, to bequeath to each of his several daughters "nine-score pounds." Sir Lawrence tells us that the cloth which he wove was stamped with patterns from wooden blocks, on which they were cut;" and that "some of these blocks were seen by my father, lying neglected in a lumber - room in his grandfather's house." We are not surprised that the late Chief-Justice of Madras should express regret that the blocks in question were suffered to disappear. Rude as they were, they would have doubtless attracted, and deservedly too, as much notice in the Hall of Drayton Manor as the gilded armour of the Earls of Pembroke attracts at Wilton, or the plain black suit of belted Will Howard at Naworth Castle. But we have not yet come to this state of feeling. The weapons which our forefathers wielded to take away life, and not unfrequently to overlay right by might, are still furbished up and kept clean that future generations may admire them; while the implements of their honest industry we cast aside, and sometimes ourselves endeavour to forget that to them we owe it that we are what we are. Besides settling on his daughters

A Sketch of the Life and Character of Sir Robert Peel. By Sir LAWRENCE PEEL London: Longman & Co.

VOL. LXXXVIII.-NO. DXXXIX,

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