THE BENGAL CIVIL SERVICE.
Lord Ellenborough, once Governor-General of India, and formerly
President of the Board of Control, records in his political diary how
the Duke of Wellington always mentioned in high terms the gallantry of
the Indian army and the purity of the Civil Service. We must leave it to
others to write of the Indian army. For the present we propose to devote
our attention to the Civil Service in its extensive social relations in
India. The purity of the Civil Service may well be said to be its
distinguishing characteristic; and for this quality it was specially
held in honour by the great Duke. The pure light of the Civil Service of
India still shines like a guiding star before the faces of the millions
of our Oriental subjects and allies.
And yet there are many people in England who have much to learn about
the Indian Civil Service. They have heard of the Civil Service Supply
Association in London, and they know that it is managed by the Civil
Servants of the Government public offices in London, who are fully
entitled to call themselves the Civil Servants of the Crown. In a single
year about 15,000 candidates compete for the Home Civil Service, and
about 5,000 are passed. Their name is legion, and they pervade the whole
country. But the Indian Civil Service is a much more select and
exclusive service. Only about forty new candidates are admitted to it by
competitive examination each year. These are the recruits who are sent
out annually to replenish the Civil Service throughout the whole of
India in the three Presidencies of Bengal, Bombay, and Madras, and their
dependencies. There are less than 1,000 members of the Civil Service in
the whole of India. In the lower provinces of Bengal, to which this
article is chiefly devoted, the Civil Service consisted recently of only
255 members. It is but a little leaven to leaven the whole mass of the
native population of Lower Bengal, which numbers more than sixty
millions according to the last census.
It is no easy task to attempt to describe the duties of the Indian Civil
Service. As to the Indian civilian himself, the pen might almost
hesitate to describe him. It reminds us of the epitaph on a good wife—
She was, but words are wanting to say what.
Think what a wife should be, and she was that.
It would perhaps be easier to say what an Indian civilian should be than
what he is. He should be not less capable and omniscient than the late
Lord John Russell, prepared to command the Channel fleet, or to perform
an operation in lithotomy. There is a story current of a distinguished
civilian in the mutinies of 1857–58 to whom Lord Clyde said, “Why, Mr.
P., you seem to wish to command the army.” “And a very laudable ambition
too, I think, my Lord,” replied Mr. P., unabashed. The government of a
province and its millions of inhabitants is avowedly the ultimate aim
and object of each civilian’s official life; but whilst he is serving
his apprenticeship for the higher offices of Government, he must be
prepared to adapt his mind to the most humble and unintellectual duties.
He must learn to obey, so that he may understand how to rule. He will
have to look after the scavengers who are occupied with the drainage and
sanitation of the town in which he lives. He will have to count and
deliver out postage-stamps with his own hands, and woe betide him if his
treasury accounts and cash balances do not agree to the uttermost
farthing. The capacity of a civilian’s mental power should be similar to
that of the elephant’s trunk, which can pick up a pin and pull down a
mighty forest tree. There is nothing too great, and hardly anything too
small, to which he may not in the course of his career be expected to
apply himself.
The civilian is not unfrequently described in the local newspapers as a
Celestial official. There is a linguistic basis for this epithet
Celestial. Where the Sanskrit and Bengali languages prevail, the
civilian is usually addressed by the title of Dhurmavatar, or
Incarnation of Justice. Where the Persian and Hindustani languages are
more in vogue, he is usually styled Khudawand, which may be translated
as “Lord” or “God.” The civilian from his official cradle being thus
addressed as a superhuman personage, not unnaturally sucks in the
high-sounding titles and mentally feeds upon them. What wonder, then, if
he unconsciously begins to think with thoughts that are not as those of
ordinary mortal men. And thus it comes to pass that the young members of
the Civil Service, nurtured on sweet words and addressed continually by
flattering and exaggerated titles, surrounded from day to day by
suppliant and subservient attendants, and frequently cut off from any
direct communication with English friends, do acquire a manner of
thought and speech which may strike the non-official observer as
savouring of the superhuman or Celestial type. It is unwholesome for the
human mind to live in an atmosphere of flattery and honeyed words. We
remember a native gentleman of high rank and position who asked for an
appointment in a Government office for one of his younger sons. “He is a
good lad,” he said, “but I want to get him placed where he will find
himself addressed by some title less than Maharajah, as he now hears
himself called by all the servants on my establishment.”
A member of the Civil Service was formerly bound by a covenant to serve
the East India Company for the best part of his life. He now enters into
a covenant to serve the Queen-Empress of India for a similar term of
years. There is a great gulf between the covenanted and uncovenanted
servants of the Queen, but at present we can only treat of the
covenanted man. In “vulgar parlance” he used to be described as an
individual worth £300 a year dead or alive, and this is still his
specific social valuation. If he dies and leaves a widow, she will
receive from the Civil Fund an annual sum of £300 a year. If whilst he
lives he falls into trouble or sickness, he is still entitled by his
covenant to a subsistence allowance of £300 a year. He may be, and
usually is, a much larger partaker in the pecuniary advantages of his
service. But the time was when in the matrimonial market of Calcutta the
solid advantages of the covenanted young civilian might thus be weighed
against the brilliant uniforms and ever-willing swords of his military
rivals; and if the young man owned a buggy, and a silver teapot, and had
subscribed to the Civil Fund, he was looked on as eligible for immediate
wedlock.
Under the competitive system of admission to the Civil Service, the
civilian is now such a very superior person in ability and acquirements,
that we will not attempt to describe him. But we will first refer to the
men of the old school, before the competitive system was invented and
applied to the Indian Civil Service. We will look back to the time when
the civilian in the earliest stage of his Indian career was a most
important factor in the fashionable world of Calcutta. Forty or fifty
years ago the young civilian, on landing in India, was entered as a
student in the College of Fort William. He had passed through the course
of instruction and examinations of the old college at Hertford and
Haileybury. Discipline at those institutions is said to have been
sufficiently lax and irregular. But it was required by the ruling
authorities of India that the young civilian, on arriving in India,
should again submit himself to some sort of college discipline whilst he
was studying the native languages of India in Calcutta. A fine range of
buildings called Writers’ Buildings represented the Calcutta College. A
young civilian was in those times styled a Writer. His appointment was
called a Writership. This was an inheritance of the mercantile
nomenclature of the East India Company. The Calcutta College owed its
constitution and existence in a great measure to the classical theories
of the great Marquis of Wellesley when Governor-General of India. But
classical theories combined with Oriental developments are calculated to
produce a somewhat hybrid progeny. The young civilians landed in India
with a not unjustifiable notion of their own personal and social
importance. On leaving their English college, the Chairman of the Court
of Directors had solemnly addressed them on the dignity and
responsibility of their position. They had been informed that they were
to be the future governors of India; they had been told that it was
their duty to demean themselves as Christian gentlemen, to become a
light to the heathen, and the leaders of Oriental civilisation. Is it
then a matter of wonder that these young men on arriving in Calcutta
found it somewhat difficult to submit themselves again to anything
having the name or the appearance of college or scholastic discipline?
Be it remembered that each young man on his arrival in India was
entitled to an income equivalent to nearly four hundred pounds a year. A
gentleman commoner at an English university with £400 a year and
confiding tradesmen to give him credit, is not usually found a good
subject for discipline. What, then, could be expected from the young men
in Calcutta, with a salary of £400 a year, and open access to the purses
of every wealthy money-lender in the country? Nor was this all. The
Government, aware of the danger of the native money-lender’s fatal
influence, endeavoured to anticipate and avert it. Each young civilian,
whilst in college in Calcutta, was authorised to borrow a sum of £400
from Government. The object of this benevolence was to prevent him from
getting into the clutches of the native money-lenders. What was the
result? The taste of blood is said to lead to the appetite for more. The
young man who had found a loan of £400 almost forced on him by a
paternal Government, experienced no difficulty in borrowing several
thousand pounds from the native money-lender, who, it may be said, felt
confident that the Government would eventually see that he was repaid.
The wildest extravagance naturally resulted from this system. The nabob
who in the plenitude of his acquired wealth ordered “more curricles,”
was practically outdone by the young civilian who, with a nominal income
of £400 a year, maintained an establishment in Calcutta in which he
would not allow the Arab horses in his stable to be counted. He seldom
had less than forty horses, but he considered it unlucky to count them.
This officer rose subsequently to the highest eminence in the service,
and not only paid all his debts, but acquired a respectable competency.
A cousin of this gentleman, who also achieved the highest official
honours, had a similar love for horses. He had a stud of English
race-horses and an English jockey in charge of them. It would be easy
but tedious to enumerate other splendid examples of youthful
extravagance. It was the fashion to get in debt to the amount of a lakh
of rupees, or £10,000, before leaving college. The cautious and canny
young man who did not condescend to borrow the £400 proffered to him by
Government, was looked upon with very little feeling of respect by
anyone, except perhaps his mother.
The time came in due course when the college of Fort William was
reformed. Writers’ Buildings were closed as a residential college. The
young writers on arriving in India were ordered to remain in Calcutta to
obtain a certain qualification in the native languages, but they were
expected to live with friends who would keep them under greater social
restraint; or to find their own habitations, where it is needless to say
that there was no social restraint. The result was that three or four
young men who had been friends at the college of Haileybury, in England,
joined one another in setting up a house or mess in Calcutta. The
Government no longer offered its loan of £400 to each young man. The
chief evidence of college discipline (the name of the college being
still maintained) consisted in the daily appearance of a venerable
native gentleman called a Moonshee or a Pundit; and in a monthly
examination in the College Hall, before the Principal and two paid
examiners. The venerable native gentlemen who came as instructors in the
languages were usually ignorant of English, and were therefore
unacceptable to their pupils. They had no personal interest in their
pupils, as they drew their Government salary without reference to the
progress of their pupils. They attended solemnly from day to day, and
were as solemnly requested to come again to-morrow. When a young writer
really wished to learn the languages, he invoked the help of one of the
two private teachers, Raj Chunder and Harry Mohun who were good English
scholars, and so made the path of learning a little more pleasant. Each
young writer was required to qualify in the languages in either one or
two years after his arrival in India, and so the time came at last when
he was obliged to call in the private tutors. Somehow or other these
private tutors had a great prophetic power of anticipating the
particular passages in the text-books, and the particular papers for
translation which would be used at any coming examination. Or if it
turned out that they had been mistaken when the day of examination came,
they were usually in attendance within reach of the examination hall,
and mysteriously entered into some electro-biological or theosophical
communication with their pupils, if any of these were nervous or
doubtful of their own powers. We would beg, however, emphatically to
record that most of the men passed their examinations by their own
knowledge and ability. There were always a certain number of men who
attained honours and pecuniary rewards and medals for their superior
proficiency in the languages; but there were sometimes a few whose
idleness and negligence compelled them at the last moment to have
recourse to electro-biological assistance.
But whilst the studious existence of the College was thus carried on,
its social existence was much more pleasant and influential. Three or
four young men living together kept up an establishment which seldom
cost any one of them less than £100 per month, his pay from Government
being £35. Almost every young civilian used to keep at least three
horses and a buggy. The number of their native servants was so large
that we hesitate to write it. The use of the hookah was fashionable, and
almost every young man kept a man and a boy to look after this elaborate
smoking apparatus. Each student had two or three table servants, arrayed
in gay liveries with silver crests. Every student belonged to the Bengal
Club, to the Racket Club, to the Cricket Club, to the Swimming Club, to
the Turf Club, and a few really good riders were admitted to the Tent
Club. Proficiency at billiards was a common accomplishment. Play rather
than proficiency at whist was the rule, and the stakes were not less
than four sovereigns on each rubber, whilst a little quiet betting
easily doubled and quadrupled these petty stakes. But there were many
other pleasant and necessary expenses. Private parties to ladies,
theatricals, and public balls were to be got up at the expense of the
young civilians in college, of course in return for the pleasant and
ample hospitality extended to them by the residents of Calcutta. Even
the expense of dress was not inconsiderable. The usual number of young
civilians belonging to the college was about thirty, and at least twenty
of this number would appear on the Course, or Rotten Row of Calcutta,
every evening, dressed in the highest light of fashion, as an example to
the rest of the fashionable world who had been longer exiled from
England. But in addition to the ordinary civil society of Calcutta, the
young civilian had to keep himself on good terms with the messes of the
regiments in Fort William and at Barrackpore, and at the famous old
Artillery mess at Dumdum which was then in its palmy days. It was
nothing unusual for a young civilian to entertain a large party of his
young friends at the Bengal Club, when champagne flowed like water;
sometimes, perhaps, it flowed too freely. There is an old but true story
of a young civilian who had been entertaining his friends at the Bengal
Club. After dinner, and, we may add, after midnight, he was driving home
to his house with his new buggy and his best horse and harness, all
purchased within the last week, when at an awkward turn of the road he
pulled the wrong rein, and his spirited horse plunged headlong into a
deep tank or reservoir of water. How the master and his groom saved
their lives is hardly known. The unfortunate horse was drowned, and the
buggy was fished out next day looking anything but gay. The young man
wrote home to his father, asking for funds to buy a new horse and buggy,
but he received a stern reply:—“I cannot understand, my dear son, how a
young man in your position can require to keep three horses, three
grooms, and a cabriolet.” But the good old man sent the money asked for.
At the present day the college of Fort William no longer exists as a
college for young civilians. They are so fully crammed and instructed
and examined under the competition system that they are supposed to
arrive in India fully acquainted with the native languages. They are,
therefore, at once sent off to join their official appointments as
subordinates in various districts. They have thus no longer any
opportunity of exercising or learning to exercise in the capital that
social influence which their predecessors enjoyed. Perhaps it is
fortunate for society that it is not subjected to the combined and
overwhelming galaxy of talent that would be found in a band of twenty or
thirty young men radiant with all the honour and glory of successful
competition in England, and having as yet had little or no opportunity
of finding their proper level with the rest of the working world. We
have heard of a story of a young competitive civilian who was asked to
dine at the Bengal Club, an institution of which the members are chiefly
barristers, merchants, and bankers, with a sprinkling of civilians and
military men, who all fancy that they live rather well and generously.
“I think,” said the young man to his host of the evening, “I could
venture to point out to you several solecisms in your club dinner; for
instance, the servants actually handed me two kinds of fish at the same
time.” The host kindly explained that the servants had _shown_ the two
dishes to the young stranger because he could not understand what they
tried to say to him in the native language. Presently, on adjourning to
the billiard-room, this young stranger observed an indifferent player
pocket his adversary’s ball. “Ah,” he said, “do you allow that play
here? The club to which I belonged in London considered it
ungentlemanly.” But, fortunately, competitive civilians of this highly
aristocratic breed and exquisite sweetness and light are rather
uncommon, and many of them are as fine specimens of manly and
well-educated Englishmen as it could be possible to find in any part of
the world.
When a young civilian enters upon the active duties of his profession he
is first styled an assistant. Under this description he is the assistant
to the magistrate and collector of a particular district. He is vested
with certain limited judicial and fiscal authority. He can inflict a
small amount of imprisonment, and impose moderate fines in the criminal
cases which he tries as assistant magistrate. He may be put in charge of
the treasury, and have to deal with sundry matters connected with the
land revenue in his capacity of assistant collector. The making or
marring of a young assistant sometimes depends not a little on the
character of the magistrate-collector under whom he is appointed to
serve. The assistant may know a great many things, but when he comes
face to face with his actual work in office he finds that he has still
very much to learn. He is probably stuffed full of English, Mahomedan,
and Hindoo law; he has doubtless passed his examinations in the Oriental
languages; but when he takes his seat in court he promptly finds that
there is something very wrong. The natives by whom he is surrounded
apparently do not understand their own language; they pronounce it so
strangely that what they say is not intelligible to him. They certainly
fail to understand what he says to them; and as to the legal knowledge
with which he expected to astonish them, he finds no opportunity for
displaying it. He hears something about an Act—and about duffers—and he
suspects that he is being rudely chaffed as a duffer. Now-a-days, relief
comes to him usually from one of the native officials in attendance on
him, who can speak English, and insinuatingly becomes his interpreter—in
fact, his guide, philosopher, and friend. But an assistant is often and
ought always to be saved from this abrupt and false position, in
entering on his duties, if he will take a little quiet instruction from
the magistrate and collector under whom he is to serve. When he joins
his district he should first practise anatomy on a few defunct bodies,
instead of beginning with vivisection on an actual case. If he will read
through the records of a few old decided cases, under the friendly
guidance of his magistrate, and in the privacy of his own room, he will
soon become master of all the leading technicalities and phraseology of
the cases, which he will ordinarily have to decide. He will soon become
used to the language of the native officers appointed to attend on him,
and will learn to practise his own tongue to the colloquial
abbreviations and expressions which differ so widely from the language
of the vernacular text-books. Above all things, let him not fear to ask
for an explanation of whatever he does not understand, and let him take
a note of the explanation given. In after days he will look back at his
notes with much satisfaction and amusement at his own quondam ignorance,
and he will be the more ready to give help and instruction to the young
men who come after him.
If the assistant will open his eyes and look round him thoughtfully, he
will soon come to observe the gravity and importance of the official
position which he now holds. The district contains more than a million
inhabitants. The assistant will be surprised to find that he holds the
fourth place in the official hierarchy of the district. There are the
judge, the collector-magistrate, and the joint-magistrate ranking above
him, but his official place is fourth on the list. What a difference
this is from his position in his native land, where he was probably next
to nobody, and certainly exercised no sort of authority. Now he has
become the fourth in rank amongst a million of people. Many young men
are rather slow to perceive this. Very probably a becoming sense of
modesty restrains them from attempting to assert the position. But the
fact remains, and the official responsibility positively exists. Many an
assistant, owing to the casual illness or temporary absence of his
official superiors, has suddenly found himself actually the first
official among a million of people. In no other part of the world, in no
other condition of society, does official responsibility so suddenly
thrust itself on a young man about twenty years of age.
In the ordinary routine of social life at a small civil station, the
assistant at first holds a comparatively humble position. A civil
station is the capital of a district. The society consists principally
of members of the Civil Service; there is the judge, who is usually
between thirty and forty years of age; the collector-magistrate is now
sometimes senior, sometimes junior, to the judge; next comes the
joint-magistrate and deputy-collector, a sort of second in command to
the collector-magistrate; and next comes the assistant. Outside this
nucleus of the Civil Service there come the police officers, the doctor,
the clergyman, and one or two other minor English officials, and perhaps
a few independent men employed in mercantile business or owning landed
estates. If there is a railway running through the district, it may
contribute an engineer to the little society, or there may be an officer
of the Public Works Department located there. In Bengal, military
detachments very seldom help to swell the numbers of a civil station. In
fact, with the ladies of the several families, a party of twenty can
seldom be assembled, except on the most important festive occasions.
In a very small world such as this, it is not surprising that the
assistant, to some extent, acquiesces in his native designation as the
“chota saheb,” or little saheb, of the community. He is treated as a
newcomer, willing to learn and to be pleased at acquiring experience
from the older folks around him. If he is a sensible man, he really
feels how very much of practical life he has yet to learn.
After an assistant has been about a year at a district station, and when
he has passed certain examinations with which the Government still
persists in unnecessarily tormenting its junior servants, he is usually
sent to what is called a sub-division of the district. The inventor of
sub-divisions was undoubtedly an enemy to his brethren. To be in charge
of a sub-division means, in most cases, that the assistant is cut off
from all communication with his fellow-Englishmen. He is undoubtedly
monarch of all he surveys, but his realms are rather pitiful. He has an
official dwelling, usually much out of repair; sometimes it is only a
mat and thatched building, but too frequently one part of the building
serves as a dwelling-house, and the other part serves as the public
office, so that privacy or quiet is almost unattainable. Within a few
yards of the dwelling-house the lock-up of the prisoners under trial or
under sentence presents itself, with a guard-house for the police
detachment. A small tank or pond, in which the prisoners and their guard
bathe, also serves to supply the assistant and his domestics with water.
There may be some half-cultivated scrap of garden, and sometimes there
is actually a bit of road along which a wheeled vehicle can be driven,
at least as far as the broken bridge, for the repair of which the
estimates have been several months under consideration before some
superior officer. The reader may imagine the feelings of the young
official on finding himself in charge of such a kingdom as this. There
is not another white face to be seen. If he falls ill, there is a
half-trained native doctor to attend to him. His nearest white neighbour
is probably an indigo-planter, with whom he may not be on good terms, as
he may have decided cases adversely to the planter’s interests.
Meanwhile his official duties are not only onerous but irksome. He is
expected to be a jack-of-all-trades. He has complicated criminal cases
before him in his magisterial capacity. The native lawyers who practise
in his court are usually men of inferior quality, who have not succeeded
in their business at the chief station of the district. The native
officers who belong to his court are ill-paid, and too often
inefficient. They have at the best a very limited experience, and are
not qualified to supply the assistant’s own want of experience. He has
to look after his treasury, and to send in all sorts of accounts to the
head-quarters of the district. There is hardly a sub-division in which
the accounts are kept correctly. In too many there are embezzlements or
some fraudulent practices which the assistant fails to detect until he
has become in a measure responsible for them, so that when he discovers
them he has practically to report evil of himself. His work is carried
on for many hours in a crowded room, in a hot and reeking atmosphere.
Just as he hopes that his daily labours are coming to an end, there
arrives from a remote police-station a corpse and a confessing murderer.
The corpse has to be sent to the native doctor for a post-mortem
examination, with such information as the assistant can obtain from the
police reports as to the nature of the injuries which caused death. This
must be done promptly—for corpses will not keep, in fact, they are often
very unpleasant when they reach the assistant’s office. Nor will the
murderer’s confession keep; it must be taken down at once, while the
criminal is still in a state of awe and repentance, and faint with
hunger. The police are careful not to let a confessing criminal have too
much to eat until he has repeated his confession voluntarily and
entirely of his own free will, before the assistant. So, however weary
the assistant may be, he must solemnly admonish the prisoner not to
confess unless he likes to do so, and then record what the unfortunate
creature has to state. When this is over, he hopes to get away, but
there is an emergent application for postage-stamps which he does not
dare postpone, and he has to count them out from the chest in his little
murky den of a treasury, and check all the entries in the account-books
before he can close them with a correct balance of the stamps still in
store. At last he may gain the privacy of his own rooms, and the company
of his sole and faithful companion, his dog. But even then his troubles
are not always at an end. Perhaps an alarm of fire is given from the
neighbouring village. The sky is red with flames, and dense clouds of
smoke fill the air. The assistant quickly mounts his horse, and dashes
off to the scene, to try and control the crowd, and to direct the
efforts of those few who seem to have their senses left, in attempting
to extinguish the flames, or prevent the conflagration from spreading.
He will be lucky if he succeeds in doing any good. He will be very lucky
if he escapes without some personal injury, and he will probably meet
with execrations instead of thanks from those people whose huts have had
to be pulled down in order to prevent the fire from spreading.
There is sometimes at a sub-division a great opportunity for getting
good sport if the assistant is fond of hunting or shooting. Near the
principal station of many districts the game is becoming exhausted; but
in a remote sub-division there are usually some natural game-preserves
which have not been so often invaded by the adventurous English
sportsman. As to snipe, he will probably find them in his own garden any
time between September and March; and the rice-swamps which come up to
the edge of his garden are sure to be full of snipe in different places
as the waters of the annual inundation begin to subside. Wild ducks of
infinite variety and in numbers innumerable are to be found in some of
the quiet inland backwaters branching from the nearest great river. The
wild hogs are seldom wanting. The villagers will gladly point out these
dangerous enemies to their crops; and if the ground is rideable, some
friends with their horses and spears may occasionally be brought
together for a good day’s sport. Leopards are to be heard of in many
villages, and when a particular leopard makes itself troublesome by
killing the goats of the villagers or perhaps scratching and wounding
some old woman, the assistant will be asked to go and shoot it. Tigers
are scarce animals now; but they roam over large distances, and a tiger
sometimes makes its appearance and establishes itself in a village, to
the utter dismay of the inhabitants, who see their cattle killed daily,
and live in constant apprehension for their own safety. But when a tiger
is thus heard of, let the assistant not trust too much to his own
prowess, or to the aid of any native companions who are willing to
accompany him to kill the tiger. Let him remember the fate of poor
Langdon, who went out a few years ago with a single-barrelled gun in his
hand and a revolver in his belt to slay a tiger that had taken up its
abode in a neighbouring village. He was attended by a crowd of natives
armed with matchlocks, swords, and clubs. They formed a sort of line and
advanced upon the tiger, who was sitting on his haunches in an open
rice-field, looking at them. Poor Langdon fired his single barrel when
he was about twenty yards from the tiger. He probably missed the beast,
who came down with a bound and seized him by the neck and killed him
like a terrier kills a rat. His native companions very naturally took to
their heels. They are hardly to be blamed. They had little chance of
killing the tiger, and their only safety was in flight. Not long
previous to poor Langdon’s death a stray tiger similarly visited another
district, and two or three of the young civilians, with a police officer
who had shot many tigers, made an expedition to slay it. They found the
tiger lying by a little hut in an open field. They approached
cautiously, and made certain of their prey. A crowd of gaping villagers
watched them from a high bank of earth, which seemed a safe place of
refuge. At a given signal the experienced police-officer fired the first
shot, and his companions each fired off both barrels. The tiger rose
unharmed and looked at them; but fortunately his wrath was directed to
the noisy native villagers on the high bank and he rushed off towards
them, scattering them like a flock of sheep. The young officials and
their police-mentor returned to their homes sadder and wiser men, not
likely to go out again on foot in quest of a tiger.
The life of an assistant civilian at a sub-division is a life of toil
and drudgery. But relief may come unexpectedly. One gloomy day, when his
misfortunes seem at their worst, he finds a letter informing him that he
has been appointed to act as under-secretary to the Government of the
province. He can hardly understand or believe, at first, the good
fortune that has come to him. He had begun to fancy that he was
forgotten by all the world and by his friends. But when he tells the
news to his native officials they are not slow to congratulate him. They
tell him how under-secretaries are the men who eventually become
lieutenant-governors. They almost worship him, and pray that their
humble services may not be forgotten when he comes into his kingdom. But
he must wait anxiously for a few days until his successor comes to
relieve him, and then he rushes off eagerly to the capital, with hardly
less change in his position and prospects than that of the butterfly who
has emerged from his previous humble form.
In the ordinary routine of the career of an Indian civilian in Bengal,
he rises from an assistant to be a joint-magistrate, and he then becomes
either a collector-magistrate or a judge of a district—and he never
emerges from this quiet and hard-working career. If he is a judge he
may, after twenty years or more, hope to obtain a seat in the High
Court. If he is a collector-magistrate he may similarly hope to become a
commissioner, and eventually to rise to be a member of the Board of
Revenue. But outside the ordinary routine of appointments there are a
certain number of offices which may be considered to be the special
prizes of the service. To get into the secretariat is the very laudable
desire of almost every young civilian. In the first place the pay of the
under-secretary is very much larger than that of most of his
contemporaries. But the pay is mere dross in comparison with the power
and change of position which a secretariat appointment confers. His
other brethren are the ordinary rank and file—but he has become an
officer in command, and he issues his orders accordingly. It is much
more pleasant to command than to obey, especially to those who have
themselves been disciplined in the school of obedience. It is true that
the under-secretary, in writing an official letter, informs his
correspondent that he is directed by his honour the lieutenant-governor
of the province to bid him do this or abstain from doing that; but the
personality of the under-secretary is not always concealed, or rather it
derives part of its glory and brilliancy from the association of his
name with that of the lieutenant-governor. But it is not merely to his
own friends and contemporaries that the young under-secretary stands
forth as the representative of the highest authority. When he was an
assistant he may have demeaned himself humbly before the
collector-magistrate who was his immediate master. He probably felt a
sort of mysterious awe as regards the officer styled a commissioner of
division, who is the superior master of several collector-magistrates
and their assistants. But as an under-secretary he finds himself issuing
orders to these commissioners, with instructions to them to communicate
his orders to the collector-magistrates. In fact, official etiquette in
the secretariat almost precludes him from direct communication with his
former superior, the collector-magistrate. There is yet another strong
point of contrast between the position of the under-secretary and that
of his unpromoted brethren, the sub-divisional officers whom we have
tried to describe. The latter have hardly anyone to help them in their
offices. Their work is usually carried on in a noisy, crowded room, with
many interruptions. They have to draft their own letters, and will do
wisely even to examine the despatch copies made by their clerks. But in
the secretariat everything is very different. The under-secretary has
his comfortable and quiet room, to which no one has access except on
business, and with his permission. His work is all neatly prepared for
him. The red-taped bundles are sorted in their proper boxes.
Office-notes are put up explaining the subject, or giving a convenient
clue to important papers. If anything appears obscure the
under-secretary touches his bell and summons an experienced office-clerk
to his aid. He can order further information to be supplied from the
office. But, above all, he finds a draft, put up from the office, of
almost every letter that is to issue. It is much less laborious work to
sign a well-prepared draft, or even to correct an ill-composed draft,
than to have to write each letter with his own hand. When the despatch
copies of the letters are brought for his signature he signs them by the
dozen bravely, and trusts to the office “examiner” for their
correctness. There are, of course, many important cases where the
under-secretary must compile notes, and prepare the papers for
submission to his superior, the secretary, and he must expect sometimes
to have them sent back to him from the secretary for further
elucidation. Sometimes the secretary or the lieutenant-governor himself
wants some orders issued very urgently, and the under-secretary may have
a few hours of hard work, or slavery, if he likes to call it so. But, as
a rule, he has a very pleasant time of it in his office; and if he keeps
his work well in hand, and does not allow any arrears of bundles to
accumulate against him, he will discover the value of the motto “_Mihi
res non me rebus_,” and will find little to interfere with his enjoyment
of the social pleasures of the capital. He may even find time for
hunting and shooting, if such are his tastes. He can ride and play polo,
or he can make his choice between rackets and lawn-tennis, or cricket
when cricket is in season. The doors of every fashionable house are open
to him if he chooses to leave his card. If he is a good musician he will
be all the more welcome. If he can dance well he will have no difficulty
in finding partners. At his club he becomes a sort of authority, and has
to practice the affectation of being mysterious about trifles, so as to
keep himself in training to baffle inconvenient questions on official
matters of importance. Whatever social pleasures and amenities life in
the capital of Bengal affords, these are all at the disposal of the
fortunate civilian under-secretary.
We have hitherto written of the junior officers in the Civil Service.
Promotion in the ordinary course is regulated principally by seniority.
The whole scheme of the Civil Service in Bengal and in the other
provinces of India is like the iron framework of a machine, in which all
the principal parts consist of members of the Civil Service. As the
older members are used up and worn out, the younger members are fitted
into their places. The Government sometimes removes a man who does not
seem strong enough for his share in the work, and transfers him to a
position where the strain on his power is less, and replaces him by a
stronger man. To most men the first direct object of their ambition is
to obtain charge of a district. After about ten years of subordinate
service, the civilian finds himself appointed as collector and
magistrate to the charge of a district, and he thus becomes the direct
representative of the executive government of the country. The title
“collector-magistrate” is somewhat vague and misleading, especially to
English readers unacquainted with India. The word “collector” has no
special dignity or authority about it. Our own juvenile reminiscence of
a collector in England was of the local collector of taxes, a man with a
white apron and a pen behind his ear, and a portable ink-bottle at his
waist. An Indian collector, at least in Bengal, is a collector almost
only in name. The revenues of the district are doubtless collected under
his superintendence, but he has almost as little connection personally
with the actual collection as the Governor of the Bank of England has
with the sovereigns and bank-notes which pass through his bank. The
title of “magistrate” is scarcely less misleading. It is true that he is
the chief magistrate of the district, but he has very little direct
concern with the actual trial of the criminal cases in his district. But
the title of “collector-magistrate” exists in Bengal, and therefore we
must deal with it. In reality he is the administrator of a small
province which contains a population from one to two million
inhabitants. For the details of his administration he has civilian and
non-civilian subordinates, each of whom is invested with certain fiscal
or magisterial powers. He distributes the work of the district amongst
these officers. To one he assigns the care of his treasury and accounts;
to another he delegates the management of the excise; to a third he
makes over the duty of measuring and assessing landed estates which
require a readjustment of the burden of their land revenue; to a fourth
he entrusts the special care of those properties belonging to minors and
others which come under him as the representative of the Court of Wards.
In his magisterial capacity he makes over certain classes of criminal
cases to certain subordinates, or assigns to them a limited local
jurisdiction for the criminal cases that may occur in it. He is the head
of the police of the district, although he has a special officer styled
the district superintendent of police by whom all the details of police
work are carried on. He is usually the chairman of municipal committees,
and of any local body of management connected with education, hospitals,
or charitable dispensaries. All schools, especially vernacular schools,
are supposed to be his peculiar care. The local jail and its prisoners
are under his control, though the doctor or some special officer is in
immediate charge of the jail. He is expected to keep himself
well-informed as to the trading and commercial interests of the
district, and is responsible for the care of the roads and bridges
throughout the country. He is expected to keep himself well-informed of
all that is going on in the sub-divisions of his district which are in
the immediate charge of the sub-divisional officers whom we have already
described. If cattle-disease breaks out in the interior, he is expected
to report on it and take measures to put an end to it. If fever or
cholera begin to devastate any part of his dominion, he must at once
take action to contend with the enemy. If troops are marching through
the district, he must see to the clearance of the encampment grounds,
and to the provision of rations for the soldiers and their
camp-followers. If there is no clergyman at the station, he may be
called on to baptise infant children, and much more certainly to bury
anyone who dies. He will have also to provide for the conduct of the
weekly church service. We have by no means exhausted the list of his
duties; but finally, if a prisoner in his jurisdiction is sentenced to
be hung, it will be his duty to superintend the execution. He is held
personally responsible by the Government that everything goes right in
the district. He has many hands to help him in the details of his
numerous duties, but still he is expected to put his own finger
occasionally into every man’s pie; and if he abstains as much as
possible from exercising any primary authority, there is hardly a matter
in which he is not referred to as the appellate authority by those who
are dissatisfied with the orders of his subordinates. To carry out all
his functions he should be an Argus and a Briareus. He is often a little
sickly-looking man in spectacles.