CIVIL SERVICE OF INDIA (EXAMINATION)—RESOLUTION

HC Deb 02 June 1893 vol 13 cc102-40

* MR. PAUL (Edinburgh, S.)

said, that in rising to move the Amendment which he had placed on the Paper he must at once disclaim originality both for the substance of the proposal and for the terms in which it was expressed. The proposal which he had now to bring before the House was brought forward in 1868 by the late Mr. Fawcett. The terms of his Amendment were derived from the Report of a Committee, appointed in the year 1858 by the Secretary of State for India, of which Sir John Willoughby was Chairman, and Mr. Mangles, Mr. Arbuthuot, Mr. Macnaghten, and Sir Erskine Perry were members. In the course of the Debate in 1868 Mr. Fawcett met with what he might call a sympathetic refusal of his request from Sir Stafford Northcote, who was then Secretary for India. He was opposed with very great vigour, in a speech of immense eloquence and power, expressed in the most picturesque and racy vernacular, by his right hon. Friend the Secretary for Scotland (Sir G. Trevelyan), who, if he might judge from the right hon. Gentleman's remarks on that occasion assumed, and perhaps with justice, that having written the Com- petition Wallah, he had done as much for the natives of India as could be reasonably expected. He (Mr. Paul) felt that they stood at a great disadvantage in discussing subjects which had a bearing on the interests and welfare of India, because of the fact that the Secretary of State did not sit amongst them. Where Lord Kimberley was they did not know; at this hour of the night he was not even in another place; he was beyond their control, they could not even curtail his salary. He was sure that his hon. Friend the Under Secretary for India (Mr. G. Russell) would not think that he meant, by these remarks, to show any disrespect for him; he only wished his hon. Friend were Secretary of State himself, as he felt sure that the India Office would be most ably represented by him. What was the state of things existing at present, which his Amendment was intended to modify? On the 1st of August next, according to a notice that had been given by the Civil Service Commissioners, there would be held in Loudon an open competitive examination for the Civil Service of India, for which all subjects of Her Majesty, now between the ages of 21 and 23, were at liberty to enter. As a matter of fact, the only subjects of the Queen, not resident in the United Kingdom, who desired to submit themselves to this examination were the natives of India, and they were expected, in order to have a chance of succeeding in that examination to come over to London, to remain such time as they might think necessary for the purpose of preparation, and, if they were successful to remain for another two years to undergo a period of probation. It would be observed that his Amendment only related to the preliminary competitive examination for the Civil Service of India. If it were carried, if the Government were to act upon it as they might without any change in the law, any natives of India who were successful in the preliminary examinations would be compelled to come over here and undergo the two years' preparation, and to improve themselves by associating with us, and acquainting themselves with our manners and customs as much as they did now; but they would not be obliged to submit to an expense which he (Mr. Paul) believed he might put at the figure of £1,000 to come over here and reside here on the mere chance of being declared by the Examiners qualified for places in the Indian Civil Service. He hoped the House would clearly bear in mind that he did not seek by his Amendment to exempt any native of India from the duty of coming to this country and qualifying himself by residence and study here if he were successful in the preliminary competitive examination. Perhaps he might be allowed, as it was really the foundation of his whole case, to read an extract from the Report of that Committee, which was presented to Parliament on January 20, I860. The Committee said, in the second paragraph of their Report— We are, in the first place, unanimously of opinion that it is not only just, but expedient, that the natives of India shall be employed in the administration of India to as large an extent as possible consistently with the maintenance of British supremacy, and have considered whether any increased facilities can be given in this direction. And then they made a quotation from an Act of Parliament, which showed that before the government of India was taken over by the Crown, even in the old days of the East India Company, the natives of India had a statutory right to an equal chance of employment in the administration of their own country with British subjects of the Queen. They said— It is true that, even at present, no positive disqualification exists. By Act 3 & 4, Will. IV., c. 85, s. 87, it is enacted 'That no native of the said territories nor any natural-born subject of His Majesty resident therein shall, by reason only of his religion, place of birth, descent, colour, or any of them, be disabled from holding any place, office, or employment under the said Company.' It is obvious, therefore, that when the competitive system was adopted, it could not have been intended to exclude natives of India from the Civil Service of India. Hon. Members might say they were not, and he, therefore, invited their attention to this paragraph— Practically, however, they are excluded. The law declares them eligible, but the difficulties opposed to a native leaving India and residing in England for a time are so great that, as a general rule, it is almost impossible for a native successfully to compete at the periodical examinations held in England. Were this inequality removed we should no longer he exposed to the charge of keeping the promise to the ear and breaking it to the hope. Now he came to the precise terms of the Amendment which he had the honour to move— Two modes have been suggested by which the object in view might be attained. The first is, by allotting a certain portion of the total number of appointments declared in each year to be competed for in India by natives and by all other natural-born subjects of Her Majesty resident in India. The second is, to hold simultaneously two examinations, one in England and one in India, both being, as far as practicable, identical in their nature, and those who compete in both countries being finally classified in one list according to merit, by the Civil Service Commissioners. The Committee have no hesitation in giving the preference to the second scheme, as being the fairest and the most in accordance with the principles of a general competition for a common object. He need not argue in that House that natives of India had the same right as ourselves to take part in the government of India; by law they had the same right. He need hardly quote the words of the Queen's Proclamation in which Her Majesty declared her will that her subjects, of whatever class or creed, should be freely and fully admitted to any offices for the duties of which they might be qualified by their education, abilities, and integrity duly to discharge. That Royal Proclamation was, in fact, a Statute, because the principle of it was embodied in the Act of 1858, by which India was transferred from the Colonies to the Crown, and it had been the declared intention of successive Governments to give the natives of India the same terms as the inhabitants of the United Kingdom. It might be said that there were great difficulties in holding the same examination in two places at the same time. When the Committee of 1860 sat the Civil Service Commissioners, under whom these examinations were held, were consulted on this point; and they replied to the Committee that, so far as they were concerned there would be no difficulty whatever; it would be merely necessary to amend the Order in Council by including, after "London," the words "Calcutta, Madras, or Bombay." The University of London at this moment held an exami- nation, not only in many distant parts of Her Majesty's Dominions, but in the City of Calcutta. In the speech delivered by Mr. Fawcett in 1868 he, who knew as much about examinations and the mode of conducting them as any man who ever sat in that House, used these words— There would be no difficulty in carrying out this plan; for the examination papers might be sent under seal to India; and, the examination being fixed for the same day as in London, the candidate's papers might be sent home under seal and inspected by the same Examiners, the names of the successful candidates at all four examinations being arranged in order of merit. He was aware that there might be some practical difficulty as to that part of the examination which was conducted viva voce. Although it gave some advantage to people who spoke more quickly than they thought over people who thought more quickly than they spoke, he was aware that it was a convenient mode of testing the real knowledge of a man who might be able to write a paper on a subject he did not properly understand; but he could not think that a great question of policy, as he hoped to show this was, would be decided on that narrow ground, and from his own experience of competitive examinations he did not think that vivâ voce played a very large part in determining the ultimate selection of a candidate by the Examiners. He had said he did not, in the least, wish to interfere with the duty of natives of India to obtain some experience in this country before they undertook the task of governing their own. He had here—and he could promise the House this was the last extract he should trouble them with—the opinion of a man whose name was highly respected, who was the first Secretary of State for India, the late Lord Derby. Lord Derby, speaking as Lord Stanley in that House in the year 1853 about the proposal to establish a sort of Indian Hailey bury, used these words— He could not refrain from expressing his conviction that, in refusing to carry on examinations in India as well as in England—a thing that was easily practicable—the Government were, in fact, negativing that which they declared to be one of the principal objects of their Bill, and confining the Civil Service, as heretofore, to Englishmen. That result was unjust, and he believed it would be most pernicious. And then he went on with that independence and courage that so distinguished him— Let them suppose, for instance, that instead of holding those examinations here in London, that they were to be held in Calcutta. Well, how many Englishmen would go out there—or how many would send out their sons, perhaps, to spend two or three years in the country on the chance of obtaining an appointment! Nevertheless, that was exactly the course proposed to be adopted towards the natives of India. He was not aware that our Secretaries of State, the distinguished gentlemen who in this country were responsible for the affairs of India, were always subjected to the preliminary test of visiting that country. Lord Kimberley had been in many places in a more or less official capacity, but he did not know that he had ever been in India; he did not know that the natives of India had ever enjoyed the opportunity of seeing Lord Cross, so that they had the most competent Secretaries of State and most competent Under Secretaries who had had no personal knowledge of the country the affairs of which they were responsible for. At the same time, he should be the last to underrate the advantage native candidates obtained from seeing something of our institutions. He knew very well that they were required to make practical acquaintance with the inside of our Courts of Law; they were required to attend that august tribunal, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. There was no Court in the world that had such an ample and important jurisdiction; but he had no doubt the reports of the judgments could be read in India as well as here, and would form a necessary part of the training of every Indian administrator. But when it came to what strikes the eye— Segnius irritant animos demissa per aures, Quam quæ sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus. After the native of India had seen these elderly gentlemen sitting round a table at what used to be called the cock-pit, he would take him to the Guildhall, to see, as a more impressive spectacle, an Alderman in all his glory, dealing with drunks and disorderlies. He did not wish to deprive the natives of India of the great privilege of residing at our Universities. They might go to Oxford and see the Indian Institute standing in the place where it ought not; they might teach Sanscrit to Sir Monier Williams, learn Christianity from the Master of Balliol, and there were a number of other advantages of which his Amendment would not deprive them. What he wished to impress upon the House was that by the scheme which he proposed in his Amendment no native of India would be relieved from any part of the duties incumbent upon him now of submitting himself to a residence and training in this country before he could fill the humblest post in the Service of the Crown in India. But he ought, in can-dour, to say that since the Committee of 1860 an independent Commission sat on the same subject in Calcutta, and arrived at a somewhat different conclusion. It was a Commission over which Sir Charles Aitchison presided, and which reported in 1887. Amongst other subjects considered was that of holding simultaneous examinations in England and India. The Commissioners reported against the scheme. Their reasons were, as it seemed to him, extremely simple; in number they were two, in character they were mutually destructive. The first reason they gave was that the system of education in India was not sufficiently advanced to afford the requisite training. Well, he should have thought that was an evil that could be provided for, because if these candidates were not well prepared they would not pass. The second reason was that the stimulus given to the system of education in India would lead to a danger of cramming. But it was the duty of the Examiner to defeat the crammer, and he was not worth his salt if he could not detect the difference between a candidate who really knew and one who only pretended to know. He knew there had been of late years a dead set made against competitive examinations, which had been instituted for the Civil Service by one of the most distinguished Members of the Conservative Party (Sir Stafford Northcote) and a distinguished Member of the Liberal Party (Sir Charles Trevelyan). He also knew that the enemies of this system of competitive examination were incompetent teachers, incapable examiners, prigs, pedants and professors, impudent jobbers, and the parents and guardians of idle boys. But this system of competitive examination, in all its horrors, was applied to the natives of India, and was only barred by a test which an infinitesimal number were able to surmount. There were two main arguments against his proposition, and he should be sorry to say that either of them was dishonest; but one was, undoubtedly, honest, and, if he might, he would begin with the other. The other argument was that it was a positive stimulus to the natives of India—that it really encouraged them to enter our service and take part in the government of their own country if they were compelled, on the mere chance of obtaining an appointment, to expatriate themselves for several years, and subject themselves to considerable expense in the hope of obtaining ultimate success. He did not think that argument could be maintained in that House. The other argument—the honest argument—was that we did not want the natives of India in the Civil Service at all. That argument could not be reasonably maintained, as it was contrary to the law of the land, and the Queen's Proclamation; contrary to the promises given to the natives, to the policy that had always been laid down by every Governor General and every Secretary of State. It might be said they had no objection to a few men being admitted under certain conditions, but they objected to the Civil Service being flooded. He did not think it showed a very great reliance upon the vigour and powers of our own countrymen to assume that they would be defeated in this wholesale manner by the natives of India. But if that were an objection it ought to be met in a straightforward manner by saying there were posts which they could not confer upon natives, or that there were limits beyond which they could not permit the natives of India to go; they should not say that the Civil Service was just as much open to them as to Englishmen, and then impose upon the natives of India conditions which we would not for a moment submit to ourselves. It had been said that the characters of the natives of India who were most successful in passing examinations were not such as to fit them for high administrative posts; but a certain number of them had attained to positions of responsibility, and the Commission of 1887 said that they had discharged their duties with satisfaction to their superiors and to those with whom they had had to deal. In the prospectus it was said that candidates must be men of good moral character and able to perform journeys on horseback, which meant that they must be able to ride and to speak the truth—a version of the whole duty of man which was a good deal more ancient than their rule in India, and which was of Eastern, and not of Western, origin. What he wanted to impress upon his Indian fellow-subjects—what they ought to impress—was that the system which they adopted was one which, in accordance with British declarations, gave them fair play. But, unfortunately, the policy was one of professing to give places and opportunities to the natives, which were, in fact, given to others and not to them. As far as he had been able to ascertain, out of nearly 1,000 members of the Coveuanted Civil Service there were not 20 natives—11 in Bengal, two in Madras, one in Bombay, and two or more elsewhere. If this were the result of competition with equal treatment for all, no one could complain; but it was the result of holding examinations only in London, where, of course, the majority of the Indian candidates were unable to appear. There was a portion of the Civil Service not open to competition, not fenced round with any safeguard against abuse, but left to the selection of the Governor General and his advisers; and the Commission of 1887 unanimously condemned the results of this method of selection, whereas they reported favourably upon those natives who had been admitted to the Service under the system of open competition. If the system of selection was unsuccessful in 1887, the state of matters must be worse now. He knew there were objections—strong objections—to employing natives of one part of India in another part of it. But those objections could be met by necessary regulations; and were no argument against the main proposition. He did not want to occupy the time of the House unnecessarily. He hoped that other hon. Gentlemen would take part in the Debate after his hon. Friend the Member for Finsbury (Mr. Naoroji) had seconded the Motion—a gentleman, he might say, who was better acquainted with the subject than he was. He hoped to hear the views of the hon. Gentleman the Under Secretary of State for India. He was anxious to learn the line of action he would pursue—whether he would regard the present system as the best or whether he would say that there might be a better system. But he looked with special interest to the words of his hon. Friend the Member for Finsbury, who, as a native of India, with special knowledge of Indian requirements in this as in other respects, would deal with the question of policy and its effects. His hon. Friend could tell them much that would be valuable with regard to the National Congress which had met in India for seven years past, and at every meeting of which a resolution had been passed in favour of the views embodied in this Amendment. His hon. Friend would address them as one of the Indian subjects of the Queen—the first who had ever taken his seat in the House of Commons. It was, so doubt, very desirable that members of the Indian Civil Service should come here to associate with the best classes of Englishmen, Scotchmen, and Irishmen; but if they required instruction and training in the art of government, they could not derive it from a better source than from the members of that great administrative system in India, of which they were so justly proud, and which, by the splendour of its services, but above all by the spirit of justice which animated it from top to bottom, had enhanced the name, and the fame, and the honour of Great Britain in every portion of the Empire and every nation of the world. He concluded by moving the Resolution.

* MR. NAOROJI (Finsbury, Central)

said, he had to speak to a specific Resolution, and, if he did not dwell on the great good India had received from England, it was not because he ignored it. He only wished he had the pleasant task of describing all the blessings England had conferred upon India; but, at present, he must confine himself to this acknowledgment and proceed to the subject in hand. The present appeal was not made to one Party or the other, but it was made to the whole House; it was not a question of Party, for he felt that the natives of India had as much reason to be grateful to Conservatives on the other side as to Liberals on his own side of the House. It was to the Conservatives they owed the Proclamation of the Queen in 1858 and as Empress of India in 1877, and to them they owed other services. He appealed to the whole House upon the merits of the case. The question simply was, as his hon. Friend the Mover of the Resolution had told them, one as to promises given by Parliament and the British people to the people of India. Sixty years ago it was distinctly laid down by Act of Parliament—and in the interval the pledge and promise had been repeated several times—that in India there should be no distinction of race, class, or creed, but that all should be admitted equally, according to their qualifications, to the Service of the Crown. The pledge had been repeated on the renewal of the Company's Charter, on the transference of India to the Crown, or the assumption by the Queen of the title of Empress; and, again, on the celebration of the Queen's Jubilee. These pledges and promises had been intentionally broken over and over again. The Committee of 1860 acknowledged the failures, and they had been emphatically acknowledged by the Duke of Argyll when, in proposing the clause in the Act of 1870, he said— We have not fulfilled our duty or the promises and engagements which we have made. What was the reason for the breaking of these pledges? He (Mr. Naoroji) was the last person in the world to impute motives. He had the greatest respect and admiration for the character of the English people; he had lived among them for a long time, and he was proud of being a British subject. Still, he must say that the natives of India had not been fairly treated in this matter. At the first National Congress one of the speakers read an extract from a confidential Minute of Lord Lytton which explained why the promises given to the people of India had not been fulfilled. Lord Lytton said that a native once ad- mitted to Government employment was entitled to expect and claim appointments in the fair course of promotion to the highest post, in the Service. He said— The Act of Parliament is so undefined, and indefinite obligations on the part of the Government of India towards its native subjects are so obviously dangerous, that no sooner was the Act passed than the Government began to devise means for practically evading the fulfilment of it. Under the terms of the Act, which are studied and laid to heart by that increasing class of educated natives, whose development the Government encourages without being able to satisfy the aspirations of its existing members, every such native, if once admitted to Government employment in posts previously reserved to the Covenanted Service, is entitled to expect and claim appointment in the fair course of promotion to the highest post in that Service. We all know that these claims and expectations never can or will be fulfilled. We have had to choose between prohibiting them and cheating them, and we have chosen the least straight forward course. The application to natives of the competitive examination system as conducted in England, and the recent reduction in the age at which candidates can compete, are all so many deliberate and transparent subterfuges for stultifying the Act and reducing it to a dead letter. Since I am writing confidentially, I do not hesitate to say that both the Governments of England and of India appeal to me up to the present moment unable to answer satisfactorily the charge of having taken every means in their power of breaking to the heart the words of promise they had uttered to the ear. He (Mr. Naoroji) did not and would not believe that the people, the Parliament, and the Sovereign had played this ignoble part. He was sure they were sincere in their desire for a policy of justice and in their pledges. It was the Executive Indian Governments who were guilty of those subterfuges and unworthy and un-English means. Now, he could not admit that the Parliament of England passed Acts with hypocrisy and did not mean what they said. But it was an unfortunate fact that no sooner were Acts passed favouring the Indian population than means were devised to prevent them from deriving benefit from them. Under the Act of 1833 Indians were entitled to claim appointments, with chance of promotion to the highest grade in the Service. Every means in the power of the authorities had been used to break this word of promise and make Act a dead letter. He did not want to quote Lord Macaulay; but he would remind the House that, in his speech in 1833, that great man had fully commented on the objects and English policy of the system of the treatment of India from every point of view, and he said the path of duty was the path of honour and prosperity. He called the clause in the Act of 1833— That wise, that benevolent, that noble clause. And said— That to the last day of my life I shall be proud of having been one of those who assisted in the framing of the Bill which contains that clause. There were Proclamations by the Queen declaring over and over again what the policy of this country to the natives of India should be; but when the gross corruption and oppression of the last century were swept away, its spirit unfortunately survived. The Anglo-Indian system had made use of every subterfuge to defeat those Acts. He would give another instance. When the Act of 1870 was passed it was ignored, and allowed to remain a dead letter till 1878, which was very discreditable, because the decisions of Parliament ought to be obeyed and enforced. At that time they had the good fortune to have as Secretary of State Lord Cranbrook, who put pressure on the Indian Government to have the Act of 1870 carried out, and they were obliged to make certain rules; but those rules were so constructed and interpreted that, instead of carrying out the intentions of the Act, they brought discredit upon it. The appointments were then begun, and went on. But the Anglo-Indians could not bear this, and an opposition burst out against the Ilbert Bill. Then they had Lord Hartington (now Duke of Devonshire), who had the sagacity to understand the secret of the agitation against the Ilbert Bill, and who did not hesitate to declare that it arose from the jealousy of the non-official class of Europeans, who thought that all the appointments ought to be reserved for them. He said— I could quote passages in letters in the Indian papers in which it is admitted that, the agitation was directed against the policy of the Home Government in providing appointments for native civilians while there are many Europeans without appointments. Here they had the whole idea. It was one of selfishness, without regard to the name or fame or honour of the British people. Indians must be excluded from fair representation and share in the administration of their country, and English men must fill all posts. They could form some idea of what the policy meant if they referred to the statement of the present Commissioner for Burmah, who said that Englishmen wanted employment for their boys. That was the entire policy of the system now in operation. The Viceroy, at the time when the Queen assumed the title of Empress of India, speaking in the name of the British people and the British Sovereign from the Throne of the Mogul, assured India before the whole world— But you, the natives of India, whatever your race, and whatever your creed, have a recognised claim to share largely with your English fellow-subjects, according to your capacity for the task, in the administration of the country you inhabit. This claim is founded on the highest justice. It has been repeatedly affirmed by British and Indian statesmen, and by the legislation of the Imperial Parliament. It is recognised by the Government of India as binding on its honour, and consistent with all the aims of its policy. Yet a year afterwards the same Viceroy told us what the real policy and spirit of the Indian Government was in the Minute which he had already read—to use every subterfuge to thwart and defeat Acts of Parliament and Proclamations of the Sovereign and the people. The Indian Government adopted a policy exactly the reverse of that thus declared from the Throne of the Moguls. The policy of the people and the Parliament of England was undoubtedly, "Be just and fear not;" the policy of the Anglo-Indian system was, "Fear and be unjust." The House had now to determine whether the declarations made in the name of God and before the world were, by means of every deliberate subterfuge, to be made dead letters, or whether the Parliament and people of this country meant what they said? He appealed to the House to take the matter into their serious consideration; he asked them once for all to be honest; and, if they really meant that the declarations they had made were to be so many shams and delusions, let it be distinctly proclaimed to the world that they had been acting hypocritically. For the good name of the British people, and in order that their power might rest upon the strongest foundation of the contentment of the people, he asked the House to act honestly and justly. In doing so they would lay a foundation which would be unshakable for ever. If the feeling that they had been intentionally and deliberately cheated was once introduced into the hearts of the people of India, he would only weep for them as well as be sorry for the British power. The British people had a great mission to perform, and the prosperity and progress of India would be to them as beneficial as it would be glorious. The idea that Indians were not capable of taking a due and proper share in the government of the country had been refuted by his hon. Friend. He was himself as anxious as anybody else could be that those who occupied posts in the higher administration of India should have the opportunity of spending at least a year or two in this country and becoming familiar with the spirit and pluck of the English nation before they went out there and worked with English colleagues. What he suggested was that which was recommended by the Committee of 1860—namely, that the first competitive examination by which candidates were selected should take place both in India and England, and that those selected at the examination should pass the subsequent examinations in this country. The excuse could not then be made that the candidates would not have a sufficiently good training in this country. Besides the Covenanted Civil Service there were the other Civil Services—the Engineering, the Telegraph, and the Forest Services—for which also examinations were held in England alone. The first competitive examinations for these Services were only of a general character—and these examinations should be held simultaneously both in India and England. And after the successful candidates are selected they would come to be educated in this country in their respective subjects for two or three years. Thus the object of the training in this country would be completely attained. If the Indian Government would only once for all cast away that timidity and selfishness which had been inherited from past centuries, and would make up their minds to fulfil honestly and honourably the pledges which had been given to the people of India for 60 years continuously, and to faithfully give effect to the Act of 1833, both India and England would be blessed and benefited. He appealed to the good faith, to the sense of honour, and to the sense of fairness and justice which the British Government had always proclaimed as being the only principle by which they were guided in their relations with the natives of India, and he asked the House to assent to the Amendment.

Amendment proposed, To leave out from the word "That," to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "all open competitive Examinations heretofore held in England alone for appointments to the Civil Services of India shall henceforth be hell simultaneously both in India and England, such Examinations in both countries being identical in their nature, and all who compete being finally classified in one list according to merit."—(Mr. Paul.)

Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."

* GENERAL SIR G. CHESNEY (Oxford)

said, the hon. Member who had moved the Amendment commenced his speech somewhat unfortunately by quoting from some State Paper of the year 1860. For all practical purposes, as regarded the Administration of India, he might just as well have quoted from a State Paper of the Reign of Queen Anne, because during the last 30 years a complete and thoroughly drastic administrative change had taken place in India. The hon. Gentleman had, of course unwittingly, misled the House by one statement be made. He had said something to the effect that at present the natives of India were excluded from almost every appointment. As a matter of fact, at the present time, practically the whole Civil Service of the country was occupied by the natives of India. The natives had almost all the judicial appointments, and a very large share of the Executive appointments of the country.

* MR. PAUL

said, that what he had meant to make clear was that the immense majority of the natives were practically excluded from the competitive examination for appointments to the Civil Services.

GENERAL SIR G. CHESNEY

said, that if he had had no Indian experience he should certainly have gone away with the impression, after what the hon. Member had said, that the whole of the civil offices in India were held by Englishmen, and that natives were excluded. As a matter of fact, the whole of the Judicial Service, with the exception of a very few reserved appointments, were held by the natives of India; all the subordinate Executive appointments were held by them, and all the clerical appointments in the different public Departments to which we in this country attached the title of "Civil Service" were held by them. But what the House had to deal with on the present occasion was the higher and more important administrative Service, which, in fact, conducted the Government of India. The officers composing this were altogether, he believed, less than 700 in number. When the hon. Member spoke of the Queen's Proclamation of 1858 as being the Charter by which the natives of India were justly entitled to share in the higher and reserved offices, he seemed to give the House to understand that the pledge given in the Queen's Proclamation had been violated. But the hon. Member did not state the most important condition, which was that no person should, by reason of his race or religion, be excluded from any office whatever for which he was fit. That was the real question at issue. It was not a question between Englishmen and Indians, but between fitness and unfitness.

MR. PAUL

I quoted the very words.

GENERAL SIR G. CHESNEY

said, he did not gather that the hon. Member laid any stress on the question of fitness, on which the whole matter turned. The question at issue was whether the number of Englishmen now serving in India was in excess of the necessities of the country, and whether proper facilities in pursuance of the pledge that had been given were offered to the people of India for entering the Service? As to the question of competitive examination, he might be allowed to say that he had been from his first entrance into the Public Service a strong advocate of the principle of unlimited competition. He had the honour to belong to a branch of the Service, the Royal Engineers, which was, he believed, the very first into which the competitive system was introduced, and he had seen the greatest possible advantage resulting to that Service from its introduction. During the last 10 years, in which he had been employed partly under the Government of India and partly as a Member of that Government, he had occupied himself very largely in introducing the principle of competition into all the clerical Departments of the Indian Public Service. He might claim the merit of having introduced and carried through a system of unlimited competition in all the clerical offices under the Government of India. As regarded the higher Civil Service in India, to his mind the greatest possible benefit had been derived from the application of the competitive system to that Service. He might be allowed to allude particularly to the case of the members of the Civil Service who came from Ireland. He had in that Service many personal friends, to some of whom he was opposed in politics, but to whose great abilities and capacity for administration he desired to testify. They had entered the Service through channels which in former years were closed to men from Ireland, and he gladly recognised what a very large field in the future India offered for Irishmen of ability. Holding this opinion as to the merits of the competitive system, ho, nevertheless, was not prepared to admit that for the purpose of choosing Indian administrators from the people of India it was necessarily the best or even a suitable system. In this country the assumption might fairly be made that while any number of young men brought up in the same may might be intellectually different physically and morally they would be very much on a par. If, therefore, we applied the competitive system of examination to them we lost nothing of the physical and moral capacity, but we gained much in the superior mental capacity which was obtained for our services. But that notion, as applied to India, would be absolutely delusory. In India there was no similarity between the moral and intellectual conditions such as was to be found in England. In India we had, on the one hand, a class who crowded into the Government Colleges, and who were intellectually very acute, and who had extraordinary powers of assimilation of book-work, but whose capacity for governing their fellow-men had yet to be proved. The great Province of Bengal, the richest, most populous, and most important Province in India, contained 70,000,000 of people, and yet amongst them he believed not one single soldier was to be found. He did not wish to say anything against his Bengalee friends; but he thought that when it was found that in a great country as large as France, and more densely populated, there was not to be found one single man who gave any evidence of a desire for a military career the presumption was that the people were, at any rate, wanting in some of the peculiar attributes which had made the English nation what it was. He would go further. Amongst those 70,000,000 of people not one successful administrator had been produced. ["Oh!"] He made the statement without the slightest hesitation. We had a great number of highly respectable officials, mostly in subordinate positions; but if we went back to the history of India before the English came on the scene we did not find a single instance of a Bengalee having risen to any position of eminence. The men who conquered and governed India before we came there were men of a class who were still highly respected by the people of India, and to whom the people of India looked upon as their natural rulers, but who would not have a chance in a competitive examination. The people of India, as a whole, would regard with the greatest horror and indignation a system by which they would have imposed upon them administrators who were chosen by open competition alone. Some people talked of the people of India as if they were a nation. They were a congeries of nations, separated from each other by race, by blood, by language, by physical position, in some cases by religion, and, more than all, by political feeling. Nothing would be more distasteful to the most important of these peoples than to have placed over them administrators belonging to a race which they regarded as inferior to their own. A very hostile feeling between them still existed even at this moment, although kept down by the Pax Britannica. He did not mean to say that we must necessarily accept those prejudices and act upon them entirely; but the did say that we must take reasonable precautions that the men we chose to govern the country had the moral qualities required in rulers of men. One of the very first of these qualities was to be found in the readiness of a man to give up his caste prejudices and to take a voyage to England. This opinion was shared by everybody who had been connected with the Government of India. Too great a value could hardly be set on the moral and mental education imparted to the native of India who came to England and spent three or four years at one of our Universities. He had had the pleasure of meeting at Oxford at different times young men who had been sent there from India for educational purposes, and he recognised that they had gone back fit to take a position in the Civil Service which they had not been fit to occupy before. The hon. Member had said that, whilst the candidates ought to be required to come to England, the preliminary examination should take place in India. The term "preliminary examination" had a somewhat delusive aspect in this connection, because it was applied in the case of the Army competitions to what was really not an examination, but only a small eliminating test. The "preliminary examination" referred to by the hon. Member opposite was practically the final examination, and included a vivâ voce examination to which the Government of India attached a very high value. They said it was quite impossible to hold simultaneous vivâ voce examinations in different places which should be of equal value as tests. He would read a short extract from an opinion which had been expressed on the point by the Government of India. He might observe that the Government of India, which was responsible for the good administration of the country, had, perhaps, as strong an interest in the efficiency of the Public Service as any hon. Member of the House. By going to India a man did not lose his sense of public duty or his sense of patriotism. He gained additional knowledge of the enormous responsibility attaching to the Civil Service, and it was to be hoped that there was no hon. Member who considered that experience and the good judgment derived from it were disqualifications for forming an opinion. Well, what was said by the Government of India on the point to which he had just referred? He would quote from the Despatch sending home the Report of the Public Service Commission of 1887—a Commission presided over by a former Governor of the Punjaub, Sir Charles Aitchison—and a more appropriate appointment could not have been made. The hon. Member opposite had spoken of the Commission as though it were composed of Anglo-Indians, but such was not the case. It was composed of some members of the Public Service, of some natives, and others. As to whether the examinations should be held simultaneously in England and India or only in England the Commission reported— The Commission decides that it is inexpedient to hold an examination in India simultaneously with the examination in London. The Commission points out that while the Covenanted Civil Service is only large enough to man 765 appointments all told, the duties which the officers composing that Service are called on to discharge involve wide and serious responsibilities, and require very high qualifications and special training in the agency employed. It recognises that as the Covenanted Civil Service represents the only permanent English official element in India, the importance of recruiting that Service with reference to the maintenance of English principles and methods of government cannot be over-rated. Having regard to the general considerations set forth with great force in paragraph 60 of the Report, the Commission concludes that recruitment in India for the Civil Service is undesirable.

* MR. PAUL

Did the native members of the Commission concur in that?

GENERAL SIR G. CHESNEY

said, the native members had not confirmed it. The Government of India said— We are unanimously of the opinion that this conclusion is correct. The true principle on which the Commission has very strongly insisted is, that the conditions of the open competitive examination should be framed with the object of securing candidates trained in the highest and best form of English education. If under such conditions native candidates succeed, they will then, as Lord Macaulay said, 'enter the Service in the best and most, honourable way.' The establishment of simultaneous competitive examinations in India and in England would sacrifice the principle we have stated. It would be entirely foreign to the intentions of the framers of the competitive system, and be open to grave practical objections. But the Government of India, and naturally, in their position, did not lay stress on the gravest objection, which was that under a system of competitive examination held in Calcutta there would not be a fair representation of the people of India. They would, no doubt, have a large representation of the educated people, but the Government of India held that it would be in the highest degree undesirable to flood India with Bengalee Civil servants. It would be resented in the strongest manner by the people of India themselves. It must be remembered that they were not legislating for the particular benefit of the 300 or 400 young men who wanted employment, but for the peace, prosperity, and good government of the whole of the people of India. Sir James Lyall, Governor of the Punjaub, had reported that even if there were a system of open competition for the Punjaubees alone, for the Civil Service of that Province alone, the result would be to give the Government the wrong set of men. Sir James Lyall said that it was the governing classes in India whom the people looked up to, who were just those who could not pass competitive examinations. And though no one held a higher opinion of the value of competitive examinations for England than himself, in his opinion it would be madness to apply a system of competitive examination for selecting Administrators in India. He would further point out that administrative change had just been entered upon of a most important kind in the Civil Service. It was proposed by the Government of India that the Covenanted Civil Service in that country should undergo a large reduction, and that the numbers should be made up by the appointment of natives who had given evidence of their qualification by good service already rendered to the State, but who had not undergone competitive examination. He and other members of the Council would have gone even further than they had done already in this respect, but, being in a minority in the Council, they had been over-ruled. He mentioned that to show that, though he was opposing the Resolution, he had for many years identified himself very closely in these reforms. The proposed reduction in the Covenanted Civil Service was one-sixth, and in future those appointments would be filled up by natives of the country who were already in the service of the State. Everyone who was acquainted with the condition of India would, he believed, affirm that no better mode of appointment could be made. When a man had been 10, or 12, or 15 years in the Service in India his character was known, and public opinion approved of the appointment of such men to important positions. Moreover, it was not to be supposed that the Government of India were under the impression that they had reached anything like finality in this matter; but they believed that, having reduced the Covenanted Civil Service by one-sixth under the present circumstances of India, they had gone as far as they could safely go at the present time. Any person who thought otherwise, and voted for an opposite view, must be prepared to take great responsibility on his shoulders. The question was not whether competitive examinations should take place here or in India, but whether Englishmen were required at all in the Indian Civil Service. If none were required were they going to have a Civil Service consisting entirely of natives; and if they were, were they going to recall the 70,000 British troops? That was the question they had to answer. Disguise the matter how they might, there was no hiding the fact that India was held at present by the sword, and he did not believe anyone in this country was prepared to do away with the English Agency in the government of India. The point to be considered, therefore, was whether the reduction which had taken place in the Covenanted Service during the past five years was not, as times went, a reasonable one. No doubt, if the belief were generally entertained in this country that the Indian Government were moving too slowly in the matter, hon. Members could vote for the Motion, the rate of progress would be accelerated, and in a short time the English element would have disappeared from the Indian Civil Service. But even so they would not have the Indian people properly represented. They would have a few of the educated natives of Bombay in the Service, but the great bulk would be educated Bengalees, who up to the present had never taken an effective part in the government of the country.

* THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (Mr. GEORGE RUSSEL,) North Beds.

I think the time has arrived when I ought to intervene in this Debate on the part of Her Majesty's Government; but in view of the many hon. Members of great experience in relation to this subject who, I presume, are desirous of speaking, I promise that my remarks shall be kept within reasonable limits. Whatever may be the views of hon. Members as to the merits of this matter, we must all feel gratified at the signs we see around us of reviving interest in Indian affairs. In days gone by it was scarcely less than a scandal that the Service of our enormous Indian Empire excited so little interest in the House of Commons. But to-night we have been able to make a House and keep a House, and that is a great achievement. Thus there are signs that the present House of Commons, at all events, is more alive than its predecessors to its responsibilities in the matter. My thanks are due to the hon. Member for South Edinburgh and the hon. Member for Finsbury for the courteous manner in which they have brought forward the Motion. The hon. Member for Finsbury suggested, I think, that India is administered by us in the interests of selfishness alone; but I hope, before I have done, I shall succeed in convincing him that whatever our errors may be they are not founded in selfishness. The hon. Member for South Edinburgh expressed regret that I and others have not spent some portion of our lives in India. I admit that this is to be regretted; but, still, I must say I consider that our state is more gracious than that of those who have spent three, four, or five months on a tour through India, who are hurried from one official residence to another, and come back crammed with undigested knowledge. The hon. Member for South Edinburgh has limited his Motion more narrowly than I thought he intended. He proposes that those who pass their first examination in India should come to England to pass the second. If his view were carried into effect it would limit the disabilities under which the natives of India labour, and would very largely increase the number of natives occupying appointments in the Covenanted Service. The hon. Member referred to the Minute of 1860. References have been made to that before, and I have had occasion before now to say that that was not an official or an authoritative document. It was merely an expression of opinion on the part of three eminent men of that time, and was never adopted by the responsible Government. But, above all, it is now absolutely out of date owing to the changes which, since that time—30 years ago—have taken place, and especially to the institution of the Provincial Service in India. From 1860 we come to 1868, when certain inhabitants of India addressed themselves to the English Government in the sense of the Motion of my hon. Friend, and although Mr. Fawcett favoured the proposition, it was strongly opposed by Lord Lawrence, whose view was sustained by Sir Stafford Northcote. In 1887 there was a strongly-supported proposal which was somewhat germane to the proposal of my hon. Friend, and yet, in a certain sense, contrary to it. I think he said that the inhabitants of India are the only persons concerned in the proposed change. But that was not the case in regard to the proposal of 1887, which was for simultaneous examinations to be held in some of the Australian Colonies. But if this was carried out, why should Canada and the other Colonies be excluded? and if they had been included, the result would not have been to the advantage of the natives of India. In 1886–7 the Public Service Commission, which was referred to by the last speaker, sat, and, although three native members who took part in that Commission did not see the objections to the simultaneous examinations or the mischiefs that were likely to occur which the others saw, yet they were unanimous with the other members of the Commission in rejecting the proposal and approving the Provincial system which the Commission recommended. The grounds of the majority's opposition were, first, that it was necessary to bring up the natives to the standard of modern notions of government; secondly, that Indian education was no sufficient preparation; thirdly, that inequalities would be created between race and race and between class and class, in India, which would be fraught with danger; fourthly, that such an alteration would give an impetus to the principle of cramming; and, fifthly, that the altered arrangement would be incompatible with the vivâ voce examination to which the Civil Service Commissioners attach great weight, as showing the moral equipment of a man more than any paper examination. I confess that, in my view, these objections are but as dust in the balance when compared with the great, fundamental, racial difficulty. People speak glibly of India as one whole entity. If we approach the subject practically, we have to bear in mind that India is not composed of one race but of many, and that we there rule over a community of men composed of different races, holding different religious beliefs, and having differences and diversities of gifts. To a certain section of the inhabitants of India—the Bengalese—there has been conceded in a most abundant measure that valuable quality which is essential for success in competitive examinations. We must consider these marked diversities of gifts. The gift of passing competitive examinations and the gift of governing men are not always committed by Providence to the same person. As a matter of fact, Sir, it has been held by those who are experts in this business, who have a practical knowledge, and sometimes a lifelong knowledge of India and the working of laws and institutions in India, that the gift of rule has not been vouchsafed to the particular class of the population of India who best succeed in these examinations. It is held by those best qualified to form an opinion that the fierce, turbulent races, though they submit contentedly to our rule, would resent, and very strongly resent, any attempt on the part of the Bengalese natives to exercise administrative control over them. Now, Sir, if time and circumstances were favourable, I might enlarge at some length upon the enormous magnitude of the problem involved in the Government of India. In that Government we have to deal with a population which, all told, is not much less than 300,000,000. Of this number some 57,000,000 are Mahom-medans, 2,000,000 Sikhs, 208,000,000 Hindoos, and 90,000 Parsees; and to rule all these, in the sense of the Civil Service rule, what is our force? We have 1,000 men in the Covenanted Service, and of these 1,000, 20 are natives. Besides these, there are in the Statutory Service, introduced a few years ago as an experiment, some 58 natives. But now I come to what is more important, the new Uncovenanted Provincial Service created as the result of the Commission to which allusion has been made. The Provincial Indian Service cannot properly be regarded as a subordinate Service, for the members of this Provincial Service are eligible for the very highest posts under the Crown in India. [Cheers.] I am glad to be confirmed in that by the cheers of the hon. Gentleman opposite. There are no posts, however important and influential, which are withheld from members of that Service. It consists at present of some 3,000 men, and of these 50 are Englishmen; therefore, if we compare the Covenanted Service with this Service, it would not seem that we have disregarded the claims of the native races. This Service we regard, as I have said, in no sense subordinate or subject; we regard it as being a complement and an extension of the Covenanted Service, carried on under slightly different conditions, and we consider it as the proper and natural door through which the native population of India should pass into the Service of the Crown. But I am quite aware that we may be charged with inconsistency, and that it may be said—"Is it not almost contradictory in terms to say that the large mass of the native population are not well qualified for the business of ruling and governing, and yet to permit them to compete with Englishmen in examinations in England and to be eligible for the Provincial Service in India?" Both of these are questions which may fairly be put; but my hon. Friend, in moving his Resolution, did us the credit of saying that he did not attribute to the Department at home any endeavour to put forward fallacious or misleading views as to the principle on which these examination; are conducted, and I will try to deserve his praise by meeting this point fairly. We are not inconsistent for this reason. In the first place, we do not lay down an absolute and all-inclusive law. We do not say that these native races are altogether, man to man, incapable; we only generalise and say that, as a race, they are less richly endowed with the gifts of government than with other gifts. But we say, when a young Indian gentleman is willing to come over to England, when he is willing to make this change in his life and habits, when he is willing to leave his home, his friends, and the society of his own people, when he is willing to submit himself to instruction in this country and take his chance in free and open competition with Englishmen, he gives unmistakable proof that he is a picked and marked man—that he has qualifications and self-reliance which will make him a valuable public servant—a man whose admission into the Indian Service we can regard with satisfaction and hope. So we are not inconsistent in saying that if a young man chooses to come over here and enter into a free and open competition under the conditions laid down he is to have equal chances with Englishmen. And with regard to the Provincial Service again, we hold that we are entirely free from the charge of inconsistency, because there the admissions are not by competitive literary examination. The admission into this Service is by selection, and selection by tried merit. Here, of course, there is no means of trying merit except in a literary way; but in the Provincial Service it is not so. He can only be appointed by selection on a trial of merit, by having shown himself a man capable of fulfilling the duties of the position he aspires to hold. He is appointed to the local service, and therefore the difficulty and danger of placing men who are incapable of ruling over warlike and turbulent races in other parts of India is avoided in the Provincial Service. Now, Sir, on the whole, and in the main, in the spirit of the explanation I have made, the Government are prepared to adhere to the great principle which has governed its operations from the first—that the best possible education which a man can have, be he a native of India or not, to fit him for a share in the administration of that country is the education and training conferred by the schools and colleges of England. I am quite aware that some hon. Members may look upon this as an old-fashioned system, but they are thinking of the days when Universities and great colleges were, so to speak, close corporations; but one of the most satisfactory and whole some features of the present day is that the University movement has extended all over the Empire, and that first-rate colleges and schools are seen in their fullest perfection growing up on all hands. They are increasing year by year, I may almost say quarter by quarter; and we shall not be considered exclusive or pedantic in saying that we consider, on the whole, the most serviceable and hopeful plan that those who are to carry on the Government of India should, as a rule, receive their training under English influences. I am not speaking of the mere acquisition of knowledge. I draw a distinction between that and the formation of character, for both are involved in the idea of education. It is, perhaps, the formation of character more than the acquisition of accomplishment that we look to for the purpose of the government of India, and habits which we believe that English education is pre-eminently qualified to instil, and which we hold to be pre-eminently valuable in the case of the natives of India, self-control, self-reliance, and the remembrance of the obligations of esprit de corps. These are the qualifications which we believe English education imparts, and which we think should be possessed by those who are to carry on the government of India. It may be said that we are inconsistent in that we only examine them, and do not of necessity submit them to a thorough training. Perfectly true; but when it was decided that the examinations should be in England a sum of money was offered to those Indian candidates who choose to reside in the intervening period at one of the Universities, thus providing a strong inducement that they should do so. That was not required in so many words, but tour plan must conduce in the long run to bringing a large number of young men in India under the influences of public school and University discipline who would not otherwise be subject to their training. I am so anxious to hear a few words from other speakers that I will not further labour my point. I hope I have said enough to make it perfectly clear that the so ground on which we resist the proposition of my hon. Friend is that it seems to us to invite disaster in India. The Indian races which are most likely to fill the Civil Service, though they have many gifts and accomplishments, are yet deficient in those particular gifts which excite the admiration and respect of the warlike tribes. The Government of India is a vast, a sacred, and, in some respects, a perilous charge. In administering it we must be equally on our guard against allowing ourselves to be carried away by theories, however specious; by appeals to sentiment, however just; or even by the mistaken application of principles in themselves sound. The one supreme subject which, in dealing with India, every Government, to whichever political Party it belongs, must set before itself, is the maintenance there of a firm, harmonious, and progressive rule. The one supreme danger which we must avoid, as we avoid the worst possible perils to our own country, is any departure in policy which may kindle in India jealousies, hostilities, and rivalries between race and race and between creed and creed. It is because we fear if my hon. Friend's proposition were carried out that these jealousies, rivalries, and hostilities between race and race and between creed and creed would be kindled that we oppose the Motion, and only on that ground; and I hope the House of Commons will hesitate before, by a rash and inconsiderate vote, it dislocates and destroys a system of Government which has been built up by so much anxious care and thought, so much long and varied experience, and under which the Indian Empire has enjoyed so large a measure of order and peaceful progress.

* SIR W. WEDDERBURN (Banffshire)

said, he should like to say a few words in support of the Amendment. The hon. Member for Finsbury had spoken with unrivalled knowledge of the subject, but it might be said that he belonged to a class interested in this question. Being himself an Indian, and not belonging to the official class, he might, therefore, be said to have an interest in the matter. Under these circumstances, he might himself be permitted to express an opinion as belonging to a class which might be said to be interested in the matter as British officials, and therefore opposed to the interests of his hon. Friend. He had no hesitation in saying that he entirely concurred in the view his hon. Friend had taken, and he considered that the refusal to hold simultaneous examinations and so put the Indian and the Englishman upon an equal footing was a breach of faith; it was also disobedience of the clear instruction of that House, and a policy tending to inefficiency and want of economy. He listened with much interest to what was said by his hon. Friend the Under Secretary of State for India. He spoke somewhat slightingly of those independent Members who had visited India in order to obtain an unprejudiced view of Indian questions. Well, for himself, he would say he was very grateful to those gentlemen who, even in the short period of a few months in India, often gained a better knowledge and more unprejudiced understanding of Indian questions than men who had passed many years in that country if they had professional interests to serve. He agreed with his hon. Friend that the independent Member was a very good judge of Indian questions, and he asked for no better judge; but he would rather that that judge had not lived in the atmosphere of the India Office, as the Under Secretary of State for India was obliged to do. From what he had said he appeared to come before the House saturated with the official opinions of the India Office. Now, the views that he had placed before the House—the objections he had taken—were twofold. He stated a few days ago, in answer to his hon. Friend the Member for Finsbury, that there were two principal objections to simultaneous examinations. The first was that they would sacrifice the principle of obtaining the best and highest form of English education. On behalf of his Scotch and Irish friends, he would say he thought they might object to English education only being referred to; but, apart from that, he held it quite unworthy of the Government to call such a mere detail a matter of principle. The real principle that was being sacrificed now was the principle of absolute impartiality among all Her Majesty's subjects. That was a principle worthy of preservation. The other reason his hon. Friend had given was that by recent arrangements ample provision had been made for the employment of the natives of India in the higher offices. He offered to that allegation a most absolute and complete denial. Now, this question might be thought to be only one of employment in the Public Service, and that it was not a very extensive one; but hon. Members would remember that in India a despotic Government absorbed all the independent professions, and admission to the Public Service was really admission to the liberal professions in India. Upon our giving the natives a fair share of the higher offices depended the composition of the Governing Body—whether the people were to be under an autocracy alien in race, language, and sentiment, or whether they were to be at least not worse off than the Russian people, who if they are oppressed, are only oppressed by their own countrymen. This was a most important question, for it constituted an example of the habitual disobedience by the Anglo-Indian Government of the principles laid down by Parliament and the Crown. The Under Secretary had said there might be circumstances under which the principle of absolute impartiality could not be carried out. Was he prepared to repeal the Act of 1833, and to issue a new Queen's Proclamation stating that impartiality should be carried out only when it suited the purposes of the Indian bureaucracy? Lord Kimberley had admitted not long ago that, by the present arrangement as to examinations in London, the Covenanted Service was barred to natives. It was true that in 1870 an Act was passed to enable the Government of India to appoint natives to any office whatever; but unfortunately the Act was permissive. It placed the power of making rules for the admission of natives in the hands of those who were the rivals of the educated natives, and that made the Act no concession at all, for it only gave the Simla clique additional means of putting their friends into good appointments. It was like giving to Dublin Castle the power to appoint Nationalists. The Indian bureaucracy waited nine years before making any Rules at all, and then they made Rules which perverted the purposes of the Act, and which enabled them to give away to their favourites and protégés the good things of the Covenanted Service. It was the re-establishment of jobbery; he had seen it with his own eyes. He was not speaking against individuals, but against the system. It was the interest of the men to behave in this way, and to reward their own supporters, their own favourites, by giving them these appointments. It used to be said that appointments in the Civil Service were worth £10,000 in the old days, and the posts were conferred on the sons and relatives of the bureaucracy. The system was also used for corrupting and undermining the independence of the native community, and, besides, it had the bad effect of discrediting the natives of India, because the Government put in incapable friends of their own, and then they pointed to their failure as evidence of the incapacity of Indians for higher office. As time went on, some further steps were found to be necessary. The best and wisest of all our Viceroys, the Marquess of Ripon, appointed a Public Service Commission, having for its object, not to restrict, but to increase, the advantages of the natives. The object of the Commission was— To do full justice to the claims of the natives of India to higher and more extensive employment in the Public Service. What was the result? This Provincial Service to which reference had been made was established; but, instead of extending or elevating the position of the natives, it was restricted and depressed. Under the Statutory Service, as it was called, the natives of India had access to 220 higher appoint- ments. By this Provincial Service the natives were restricted to about 180, excluding the highest. They claimed that the Indians should have a fair equal chance of entering the service of their country by the main entrance, that is, by open competition. The Statutory Service opened a sort of mean backdoor to let a few natives into a share of the Government of their country; but the Provincial Service closed even that door. Anyone, therefore, who considered those points would be aware that the principle laid down by Parliament and the Crown had not been carried out with impartiality, and that the recent arrangement, instead of giving ample facilities, had, in point of fact, reduced even the petty advantages which the natives had before in the share of the Government of their own country. It had been said that a certain number of Europeans—Englishmen, Irishmen, and Scotchmen—were necessary in the Government of India. No one denied it, but the natives said—"Do not exclude the people of the country entirely." If a certain number were required let arrangements be made accordingly. Perhaps it would be a good arrangement if a maximum annual grant for European agency were fixed, and that all other salaries should be given to natives. He appealed to the House and the Government to enforce these great principles which had been laid down distinctly in Acts of Parliament and declarations of the Crown, and not to trust to the Government of India, which was really a clique of officials whose interests were directly adverse to the interests of the Indians who claimed to be admitted fairly and impartially to the service of their country. He objected to permissive legislation in regard to such matters in India. The Government of India said to the Imperial Parliament—"Do not order us to cary out anything, but leave it permissive with us." The great object of the bureaucracy of India was not to carry out the orders of the Imperial Parliament. At present the officials in India were practically uncontrolled. After being in the official clique at Simla, the heads of that great bureaucracy came to Westminster and formed an Indian Council, which gave the whole tone and colour to the politics of the Indian Office. Those, therefore, who ought to control the Government of India became merely the mouthpieces of the official classes and of official interests.

* MR. EGERTON ALLEN (Pembroke)

said, that as he had resided some years in India, had a knowledge of the natives, and had had considerable experience of examinations of natives, he desired to say a few words on the subject of the Motion. Two opinions had been quoted in the course of the Debate. First there was the opinion of some gentlemen of large experience in India, given in 1860, and which had been described as the Report of a Committee presented to Parliament. He had the authority of the Under Secretary for India in saying that that opinion given in 1860 was not a Report presented to Parliament; that it was not an opinion to be considered and deflated in Parliament, but was a mere confidential document presented to the India Office, and devoid of any authority whatever. ["No, no!"] The hon. Member for Finsbury said, "No." The Under Secretary for India had clearly stated, in answer to a question in the House, that the document was never recorded or discussed officially; it was merely an expression of opinion upon a state of things which existed 33 years ago, but had since been materially changed in accordance with subsequent legislation. But the opinion of the Public Service Commission of 1886–7 was of a totally different character. The Commission consisted of a large body of gentlemen appointed to investigate the question as to the desirability of having simultaneous examinations in India and England, and they reported directly against the setting-up of such examinations. The hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Oxford quoted that opinion, and the hon. Member who moved the Motion asked—"Did the Indian Members agree?" and the hon. and gallant Gentleman replied that they disagreed. As a matter of fact there were six Indians on the Commission—three Hindoos and three Mahommedans; the three Hindoos disagreed with the apprehension expressed in a part of the Report; but the three Mahommedans did not disagree. The Authorities were entirely against the Motion before the Committee, and the only argument left was what was called "the justice of the case." That was an important point, and he hoped the House would give it its consideration. The hon. Gentleman who had last spoken said that those who opposed the Motion were sacrificing the principle of impartiality between Her Majesty's subjects. The burden of the speech of the hon. Member for Finsbury also was that in not allowing those competitive examinations to take place in India they were doing an injustice to the natives of India. He would ask one question—Who were the natives of India? Who, he would add, were Her Majesty's subjects? Why, the natives of India were as diverse as the natives of Europe. They must consider them from the north to the south and from the east to the west, and they would find that if they were to test the natives of India by this competitive examination, they would let in a small section of them and exclude the majority. In fact, that supposed test of impartiality would really be most cruelly partial against the majority of the natives of India. Those who would pass the examination would be almost all Hindoos, and beyond the Hindoos, Parsees; and these were just the class in which it would be most unfair to the rest of the races of India that the power of administration in the country should lie. The whole question of justice and impartiality would take a different complexion if they considered that the natives of India were not homogeneous but extremely heterogeneous. It was not a case of native and European; it was a question of race amongst the natives themselves. Let them consider the nations of Europe, and see how the intellectual test would tell. The successful races would be the more southern, the Maltese, Neapolitans, and Levantines for instance, and were those the races they would put in power ruling over the Northerns, such as the Norwegians and Prussians? He was leaving those islands out of the question altogether. Would they select the effeminate southern or the stronger fighting races of the North of India? If the House con- sidered that the principles of justice would be violated by allowing the intellectual natives to carry off all the prizes, the effect of the arguments of the supporters of the Motion would be nullified. They were not doing an injustice to the natives of India as a whole by preventing some of them from getting the prizes of the Indian Civil Service. They were not sacrificing the principle of impartiality by ordering that candidates for the Civil Service should be examined in England, because the examination in England did a great deal to retain the standard of real efficiency in the Civil Service of India. He begged the House to believe that he had the strongest sympathy with the native races. He did not believe there was a Member of the House who had as many friends amongst the natives of India as himself. He had not met them in any high official position. He had met them on the ground of his profession, and they had beaten him more often than he had beaten them. No one had a higher admiration for the good qualities of the native races of India than he had, but they were not qualities which fitted them to rule their fellow-men.

* MR. CURZON (Lancashire, Southport)

said, that hon. Members on his side of the House had listened with much satisfaction to the statement of the Under Secretary of State for India, which was characterised by the great ability which the hon. Gentleman always displayed on every subject on which he addressed the House. He took a great interest in this question, owing to the fact that during the short term he had hold Office he had served under a Secretary of State for India who was responsible for the reorganisation of the Indian Civil Service, which was now being carried into effect. He wished to say that it was undoubtedly the object of Lord Cross to throw open as wide as possible the doors of official employment to natives in India, and to restrict to Europeans those offices only which must be filled by men of wide culture and experience. It might be inferred, from the speeches of hon. Members opposite, that there was a sinister design to keep out the natives of India from public employment. But he thought the speech of the lion, and gallant Gentleman behind him showed conclusively that the bulk of Civil and administrative posts were filled by natives. The Motion before the House only affected 950 posts. Who were the men who filled those 950 posts? They were the fine flower of the Administration of India; men of ability, training, and knowledge; men who were the guardians of British interests in India; men who were every day—he might almost say every hour—confronted with serious and grave responsibilities. They were not Englishmen alone. It was perfectly competent for any Indian of the requisite training and ability to join their ranks, and, as a matter of fact, there were several Indians amongst them; but it was obvious that the work performed by the men who filled those posts must be work based upon a knowledge of English institutions, of English history, and English principles of Government. It was not men of educational aptitudes alone that they wanted in India. They wanted persons of high moral character; men with a knowledge of the world; men with self-reliance, and able to grapple with emergencies when they arose; and experience had shown that this ruling type of man was more likely to be obtained by having the examinations conducted in England than in India. Another point was that at the present moment there was ample opportunity for any native of India to obtain any post, however distinguished, seeing that under the Act of 1870 it was competent to the Government of India to appoint any native to any post, however exalted, in the Indian Service.

MR. NAOROJI

That is a dead letter. It is not acted on.

MR. CURZON

said, that might be true of the past, but there was no reason to believe that it would not be carried out in the future. The result of holding the examinations in England was that we were able to rule India successfully, and he therefore intended to oppose any change in the present system.

Question put.

The House divided:—Ayes 76; Noes 84.—(Division List, No. 111.)

MR. PAUL

I claim to move that the substantive Question be now put.

Several MEMBERS

I object.

MR. SPEAKER

It is consequential that the words be there added.

Words added.

Main Question, as amended, put, and agreed to. Resolved, That all open competitive Examinations heretofore held in England alone for appointments to the Civil Services of India shall henceforth be held simultaneously both in India and England, such Examinations in both Countries being identical in their nature, and all who compete being finally classified in one list according to merit.

Supply—Committee upon Monday next.