MR. HERBERT ROBERTS (Denbighshire, W.)To ask the Secretary of State for India whether he will reconsider the Circular of November, 1904, regarding the appointment of assistant engineers in the Public Works Department of the Government of India; and whether, looking to the race equality enjoined in the Regulating Act of 1833, and in the Queen's Proclamation of 1858, he will modify the condition contained in Section 4, which 1332 requires that all candidates shall be of European descent.
(Answered by Mr. Secretary Brodrick.) The Circular relates to appointments which have to be made in order to supplement the supply of European engineers passing out from the Royal Indian Engineering College this summer, on the completion of the usual course of three years. It was open to natives of India to enter the college in 1904, under certain conditions, with a view to competing for two appointments annually in the Public Works and Telegraph Departments; and they have, moreover, the exclusive right of entering those Departments through the Indian Engineering Colleges. I see no reason, therefore, for modifying the Circular in the way pro posed, but I propose that, when the college ceases to supply engineers for Indian service, the privilege which, within certain limits, natives of India have enjoyed under the college prospectus of entering the Public Works Department from this country, shall be continued.