§ MR. TORRENSsaid, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for India, When it is intended that the new Rule for open competitive examinations for the Civil Service in India, fixing the maximum limit of age at twenty-one years, is to have effect; and whether there will be any objection to postpone its operation until such a time that it cannot injuriously affect persons who have studied for the examinations under the belief that the old Rule, making the maximum limit twenty-two years, would not be altered; and to ask what publicity has been given to the new Rule; whether its publication by the Civil Service Commissioners or the Secretary of State has been confined to the note at the foot of the printed "Regulations for the Open Competition of 1865," or has it been published in the English, Irish, Scotch, Colonial, or Indian Official Gazettes, as well as in some of the London and provincial newspapers?
§ SIR CHARLES WOOD, in reply, said, 296 the alterations would not come into effect until next year, and it would be impossible to postpone them beyond that period. The same course had been followed that had been adopted upon a former occasion, when a period of a year and a half had been allowed as adequate notice. The intended alteration had been published in The Times and other newspapers before Christmas, and had been extensively circulated in India.