COLONIAL CIVIL SERVICE JNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO 3 1822017102187 3 1822017102187 Central University Library University of California, San Diego Please Note: This item is subject to recall. Date Due OCT 2 6 1993 SEP281QQ3 Cl 39 (7/93) UCSD Lto. COLONIAL CIVIL' SERVICE COLONIAL CIVIL SERVICE THE SELECTION AND TRAINING OF COLONIAL OFFICIALS IN ENG- LAND, HOLLAND, AND FRANCE BY A. LAWRENCE LOWELL WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE EAST INDIA COLLEGE AT HAILEYBURY (1806-1857) BY H. MORSE STEPHENS fforfe THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. IQOO All rights jrtstrvtd COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Nortaoofi $reas J. 8. Cushing & Co. - Berwick & Smith Norwood Maa. U.S.A. PREFACE ALL thinking men are united in the opinion that the United States ought to establish in the Philip- pines a civil service which shall be thoroughly effi- cient and free from political pressure of every kind, and hence it appears worth while to see what light can be derived from the experience of other nations. A radical change in the British system has been made since the excellent work of the late Dorman B. Eaton on the English civil service was published; and there is no book in our own language, and none containing the latest information in any other, upon the methods of recruiting officials for the colonies of Holland and France. For this reason the fol- lowing pages on the Selection and Training of Colo- nial Officials in those three countries were originally prepared at the request of the American Historical Association, and a summary of the results was pre- sented at the meeting of the Association at Boston on December 27, last. In writing a report of this kind it is important to include, as far as possible, everything that a student of the subject might desire to find, and hence the following chapters must comprise a great deal of detail that is unnecessary for the general reader. vi PREFACE In order, therefore, to save the latter from wasting his time on what does not interest him, the chapters have been subdivided into short sections with sepa- rate titles. This, it is hoped, will enable any one to find rapidly any special points in which he may be interested. The writer is very grateful for the assistance given him, in the preparation of this work, by gentlemen in the colonial offices, by colonial officials on leave of absence, and by instructors of candidates for the service, in each of the three countries which he visited, and he would like to insert their names here ; but the list is so long that it seems better to omit names altogether, and merely express his appre- ciation of the great courtesy and kindness with which he was treated. Among the persons who took part in the discus- sion of this paper at the meeting of the Ameri- can Historical Association was Professor H. Morse Stephens of Cornell University, who spoke of the work of the East India College at Haileybury, where a number of his forbears had been trained for the Indian Civil Service. He received his own early education there after the college had been given up and the institution changed into a school for boys, on the model of Marlborough and other modern English public schools. Professor Stephens has had, in fact, a singular chance for comparing the old system with the new, for he was an undergraduate at Balliol College, Oxford, from 1877 to 1880, when PREFACE vii the efforts of Jowett attracted thither a majority of the selected candidates for the Indian Civil Service while the age of admission was under nineteen ; and he afterward taught the history of India for two years, 1892-1894, at the University of Cambridge, to the selected candidates for the Indian Civil Ser- vice after the age of admission had been raised. He has kindly contributed the account of the old college at Haileybury published in this volume. The history of Haileybury is, indeed, too little known. The account in the " Memorials of Old Haileybury College" published in 1894, the only work on the subject, has mainly the character of a collection of personal reminiscences, and is inade- quate for this purpose. A description, therefore, of the real work of the institution, based upon the views of men trained at Haileybury, such as John Law- rence, Bartle Frere, and George Campbell, which Professor Stephens has collected, is very much needed; and it seemed especially appropriate as a sequel to the examination of existing methods of recruiting colonial officials, because the writer has been irresistibly led by his study of those methods to the conclusion that the only practicable plan for the United States to adopt is that of a college not altogether unlike Haileybury. A. LAWRENCE LOWELL, BOSTON, January 29, 1900. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION PACK NECESSITY FOR A SPECIAL SERVICE .... 3 CHAPTER I. ENGLAND HISTORY OF THE RECRUITING OF THE INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE 7 Early regulation by statute 8 The college at Fort William 9 The college at Haileybury II Merits and faults of Haileybury . . . . -13 Introduction of competitive examinations . . -15 The report of Macaulay's Commission . . 15 Gradual reduction of the age of the candidates . . 20 Inquiry into the system in 1876 . - . . .21 Reduction of the age to nineteen .... 24 Effect of the change 26 The age again raised to twenty-three .... 27 PRESENT REGULATION OF THE EXAMINATION . 28 Method of conducting the examination . . 31 Nature of the examination 32 The method of marking 34 The nature of the subjects 36 Severity of the examination 37 Previous preparation of the candidates ... 38 Cramming 39 Quality of the candidates 41 Their physical condition 41 X TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE Natives of India at the competition .... 42 Subsequent training of the candidates ... 43 Summary of the history - . 47 Results of the system 48 OFFICES INCLUDED IN THE INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE . 50 History of the Covenanted Civil Service . . -Si Efforts to employ more natives in the Service . . 54 Number of Europeans in the several services . . 56 METHOD OF RECRUITING NATIVE OFFICIALS ... 58 SPECIAL SERVICES IN INDIA 61 The college at Cooper's Hill 62 OTHER BRITISH COLONIES IN THE EAST ... 65 Examination for the Eastern Cadets .... 66 Subsequent training of /the Eastern Cadets . . . 70 Positions reserved for Eastern Cadets .... 72 BRITISH COLONIES ELSEWHERE 74 APPENDIX A REPORT OF MACAULAY'S COMMISSION .... 77 APPENDIX B EXAMINATIONS FOR THE CIVIL SERVICE OF INDIA . . 99 Regulations 99 Syllabus of the requirements in certain subjects . .108 CHAPTER II. HOLLAND HISTORY OF THE SUBJECT 113 The Royal Academy at Delft 114 The Ordinance of 1864 and the Grand Examination for Officials 116 The state school at Leyden 117 The municipal school at Delft 118 TABLE OF CONTENTS xi PAGE The municipal school at Leyden 119 Changes in the Ordinance of 1864 . . . .120 The Law of 1876, and the Examination by the Fac- ulties 120 The Ordinances of 1883 and 1893 . . . .121 SUMMARY OF EXISTING RULES 123 The Judicial Service 123 The Administrative Service 126 THE GRAND EXAMINATION FOR OFFICIALS . . . 127 The examining commission ..... 127 Qualifications for the examination . . . .128 Absence of a limit of age 130 The programme of the examination .... 132 The first part 132 The second part 133 The proportion of failures 135 POSITIONS RESERVED FOR MEMBERS OF THE SERVICE . 137 THE INDISCHE INSTELLING TE DELFT . . . .138 The course of study at the school . . . .140 THE GRAND EXAMINATION AT B ATA VIA, NATIVES AND HALF-CASTES 142 CRITICISMS MADE UPON THE PRESENT SYSTEM . . 144 The recent special commission and its report . . 145 The plan proposed by the commission . . -149 Comments made upon the report . . . -IS 1 THE PHYSICAL EXAMINATION 154 THE NATIVE OFFICIALS 155 SPECIAL SERVICES . . 155 THE OTHER DUTCH COLONIES 157 xii TABLE OF CONTENTS APPENDIX PAGE RULES RELATING TO THE GRAND EXAMINATION FOR OFFICIALS. (Annexed to the Ordinance of July 20, 1893, with the subsequent modifications.) . 158 REGULATION AND PROGRAMME FOR THE SAME . .164 Regulation 164 Programme 169 First part 169 Second part 170 CHAPTER III. FRANCE COCHIN-CHINA, 1861-1881 172 THE COLONIAL SCHOOL 175 Foundation of the school 175 The government of the school 178 The qualifications for admission to the school . .180 The competitive examination for admission . . 181 Preparation for the examination . . . . .183 The sections or courses at the school . . . .185 The studies in the different sections . . . .187 Rank at the school and appointment to the service . 190 Cramming and method of marking .... 192 Estimate of the school 192 Criticisms by M. Boutmy 194 REDUCTION IN THE POSITIONS RESERVED FOR GRADUATES OF THE SCHOOL 197 The African Service 197 The Service of Indo-China 200 Change in the object of the school .... 202 OTHER METHODS OF ENTERING THE SERVICE . . 202 Open competition 203 Appointments from the Army and Navy . . . 205 Promotions from the subordinate service . . . 206 TABLE OF CONTENTS xiii PAGE THE JUDICIAL SERVICE 208 FRENCH EXPERIENCE OF LITTLE VALUE 208 APPENDIX COURSES OF STUDY IN THE ADMINISTRATIVE SECTIONS OF THE COLONIAL SCHOOL 210 CHAPTER IV. THE UNITED STATES THE PRINCIPLES TO BE APPLIED 214 THE ENGLISH SYSTEM CANNOT BE ADOPTED HERE . 216 Because contrary to our habits of thought . . .216 Because a standard cannot be maintained . . . 220 POSSIBILITY OF A SPECIAL COLLEGE . . . .221 Advantages of such a college 223 Regulations of such a college ..... 226 Size of the college 227 CONCLUDING REMARKS 229 THE EAST INDIA COLLEGE AT HAILEYBURY Introduction 233 Good Men obtained under the Different Systems . . 236 History of the Patronage System 238 Appointments under the Patronage System . . . 246 Scandals under the Patronage System . . . . 251 Lack of Suitable Training for Indian Officials prior to the Foundation of the College of Fort William . . . 256 xiv TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE The College of Fort William . . . . . . ' 262 The Foundation of Haileybury 267 History of Haileybury 271 Qualifications for Entrance into Haileybury . . . 284 The Course of Studies at Haileybury 289 Discipline at Haileybury 296 Haileybury Students who did not enter the Civil Service in India 303 The Intellectual Side of Life at Haileybury . . . 306 Social Side of Life at Haileybury 308 The Number of Students at Haileybury . . . .312 Reminiscences and Opinions of Haileybury, by Men who were trained there 313 The Court of Directors and the College . . . -314 Direct Appointments to the Indian Civil Service, 1827-1831 319 Addiscombe . . 323 The Abolition of the East India College at Haileybury . 328 The New Haileybury .... ... 331 The Effect of Haileybury on the Indian Civil Service . 333 Haileyburians versus Competition Wallahs . . . 338 Conclusion 345 The Selection and Training of Colonial Officials in England, Holland, and France INTRODUCTION NECESSITY FOR A SPECIAL SERVICE THE requirements for a civil service in tropical or Asiatic colonies are quite different from those for the home civil service. At home, except for special branches of administration requiring a high degree of technical knowledge, such as the Army or the Navy, an intelligent man can easily learn in a comparatively short time to do the government work fairly well. In the Post Office, for example, every one knows in a general way, or can readily understand, what is wanted, and the work can be done after a fashion by new men of good capacity. In most branches of the home administration, therefore, a constant change of employees produces inferior service, but does not stop the wheels of government altogether, and does not involve a danger of national ruin. In an Asiatic colony, on the other hand, where the duty of the official consists, for the most part, in ruling over districts containing many thousands of natives, an untrained man, suddenly appointed, would be perfectly helpless however great his natural capac- ity. He knows neither the language nor the cus- toms of the people, nor does he comprehend their 3 4 INTRODUCTION thoughts ; and the consequences of his ignorance may be disastrous. Well meaning but inexperi- enced officials could easily provoke an insurrection like the Indian Mutiny without being in the least conscious that they were drifting into danger. Hence the administration of the colony can be en- trusted only to men who have mastered the language and all the conditions under which the government must be carried on. But Oriental and Western civilizations are so different that years must pass before an official becomes thoroughly efficient ; and no man of parts will undertake those years of prep- aration if he is liable to be thrown back on the world to start life all over again after he has proved himself a valuable public servant. The colonial civil service must therefore be a lifelong career. The career must be begun young, and that for two reasons. First, because it is only in youth that new languages, and a comprehension of strange civiliza- tions, can be acquired rapidly and well ; and second, because if the selection of colonial officials is made after men have begun to be established in life, those who have already shown an ability to succeed will not abandon an assured career for another in which, though the reward is great, success is problematical. The men who apply will be those whose previous ventures in life have not been the most fortunate ; and the colonial service cannot afford to accept the failures in other vocations. Hence colonial officials must be recruited at the time when young men are NECESSITY FOR A SPECIAL SERVICE 5 choosing their occupations in life, and as the service means leaving home for a tropical climate, and what are to most persons uncongenial surroundings, men of strong qualities, moral, intellectual, and physical, must be tempted into it by large pay, security of tenure, and liberal pensions. On these principles all the progressive nations of the world are agreed, and the completeness with which they act upon them in practice is proportion- ate to the length of their experience. France has tried recruiting her colonial officials from her home civil service, but she has given it up ; and in fact Leroy-Beaulieu, the great French writer on colonies, ascribed a capital importance to the mistakes of his country in this matter. 1 In passing it must be remarked that it is unneces- sary, and frequently it is inexpedient after the organ- ization has been completed, to select the executive head of the colony from the permanent civil service. In the great English dependencies in the East the Governor is, as a rule, an eminent English statesman appointed for five years only. His duty is to bring to bear on colonial problems large political views, and a world- wide experience of life ; while his rela- tion to the colonial officials is like that of an English Minister to the permanent staff of his department. He relies upon them for technical information and a knowledge of the native life, and he acts as a link 1 " De la Colonisation chez les Peuples Modernes," 4 Ed., pp. 450-451, 832. 6 INTRODUCTION between them and the Government at home. All this is true of the Dutch colonies also. Assuming that a colonial service must be a career, to begin in youth, and is to continue for life, the question naturally presents itself how the selection of young men is to be made. There are two methods of doing this : on the one hand, an arbitrary choice by the authorities, limited, more or less, by the re- quirement of certain qualifications, a method which has certainly its advantages, but entails unavoidably, to some extent at least, the evils of patronage and favoritism ; and on the other hand, a free competition of some kind among voluntary candidates. Either one or the other of these systems, or some com- bination of the two, must be adopted. During the last half century the progressive nations of Europe have been coming to use the competitive system to a greater and greater extent, although the forms in which it has been introduced differ very mate- rially from one another. A second question that presents itself is how the young men who have been selected shall be prepared for their work ; how far their training shall take the form of academic studies, and how far of an appren- ticeship in the colony itself. The object of the following pages is to show the way these problems have been worked out by the three progressive nations of Western Europe that have been called upon to face them for a consider- able length of time. CHAPTER I ENGLAND HISTORY OF THE RECRUITING OF THE INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE The East India Company WHILE the East India Company was still in the main a body of merchant adventurers, its servants were appointed like those of other trading compa- nies. The same practice was followed after it became the arbiter over vast territories, and its politi- cal importance overshadowed its commerce, and even after it began, in 1772, to assume the direct collec- tion of the revenue and the administration of civil justice in Bengal, Behar, and Orissa. Its agents, although really public officials ruling over great mul- titudes of subjects, were still known by the commer- cial titles of Writers, Factors, and Junior and Senior Merchants, and they were still selected by the gov- erning body of the Company. A candidate for a writership was first nominated by one of the Directors ; the Chairman, Dep- uty Chairman, and Members of the Committee of Correspondence having the privilege of nominating 7 8 ENGLAND a larger number than the other Directors. After securing his nomination, the candidate addressed to the court of Directors a petition, which was referred to the Committee on Accounts. This body examined the qualifications of the various petitioners, and when its report had been presented the candidates were voted upon by ballot. Early Regulation by Statute The first regulation by the English Government of the appointment of Indian officials was made by Pitt's India Act of 1784 (24 Geo. III., c. 25, sees. 42, 43 63), which provided that, with certain exceptions, writers and cadets were to be between the ages of fifteen and eighteen when sent out, and that ser- vants of the Company who had been five years in England were not to be capable of appointment to an Indian post unless they could show that their residence in England was due to ill health. It provided also that, except for the members of the Governor's Council, promotion was to be made as a rule by seniority, a practice which had, indeed, been usual with the Company, the officials rising from one grade to another after a certain number of years of service. Charges of jobbing in Indian ap- pointments on the part of the authorities of the Company were, however, still heard, and to prevent them the act of 1793 (33 Geo. III., c. 52, sec. 56, 57) further provided that all vacancies under the rank of Members of Council should be filled only CIVIL SERVICE OF INDIA 9 from among the civil servants of the Company by seniority, a provision which, though never strictly enforced, remained on the statute book until 1861. The Company was, however, left perfectly free in the original selection of its civil servants, save for the provisions : that writers on their first appoint- ment must not be less than fifteen nor more than twenty-two years of age ; and that the Directors must take an oath that they would not accept or take any fee, present, or reward for the nomination of any person to any place in the gift of the Company. The College at Fort William In the days of its commercial greatness a servant of the Company acquired a considerable education in Eastern affairs as an underling before he became entrusted with public duties, but after the trade of the Company became less important, many of its servants never had any connection with commerce. As a Governor General stated publicly at the beginning of the present century, " Not only is mercantile knowledge unnecessary, but Indian civil servants invested with the powers of magistracy are bound by an oath to abstain from every commercial pursuit." Under these circumstances it became evident that some training must be provided for the Company's civil servants to fit them for their public duties. Moreover, the men appointed, although of a higher type than formerly, were distinctly lacking in general 10 ENGLAND education. The question was taken up by Lord Wellesley, the Governor General of India, and he founded the College at Fort William, Calcutta, writ- ing on August 1 8, 1800, a Minute in Council, giving at length his reasons for doing so. The plan he proposed was that of a college where all the writers intended for any one of the three Presidencies should, before being assigned to active duties, pursue a course including both liberal and Oriental studies. The plan was thought by the authorities of the Com- pany in England to involve too much expense and to cover too wide a field. It was therefore modified by being limited to the writers intended for the Presidency of Bengal, and by a considerable reduc- tion in the scope of the education provided, which was confined to the study of law and Oriental lan- guages. In this restricted form the College of Fort William was maintained for many years. It took the writers after they had finished their preparatory studies in England and gave them a fuller instruction in Orien- tal subjects. The length of time that students re- mained at the college depended upon the rapidity with which they could acquire the necessary knowl- edge. The period varied, in fact, from six months to two, three, or four years, and sometimes men were eliminated altogether whom the excessive leniency of Haileybury had spared before. In 1854, when competitive examinations for the Civil Service of India were introduced, the College at Fort William was CIVIL SERVICE OF INDIA II abolished ; but examinations in Oriental subjects, though without any collegiate life, continued to be held in India until the establishment, in 1866, of a two-years course of special training in England. The College at Haileybury Partly as a substitute for Lord Wellesley's plan of a college in India, partly as ancillary to that college, and partly on account of a suggestion from the factory at Canton that it would be an advantage to have the writers go to the East at a later age and with a better education, the Company decided to establish a college for the training of its civil servants in England. This institution, officially called the East India College, but commonly known from the name of the place as Haileybury, was established in 1806, in Hertfordshire, about twelve miles from London. It became the regular door of entrance into the East India Civil Service. In fact, a statute provided in 1813 (53 Geo. III., c. 155, sec. 46) that no writer should be sent to India unless he had been duly entered at Haileybury, had resided there four terms, and had conformed to the rules and regulations of the col- lege. 1 The scholars were still nominated, as of old, by the Directors of the East India Company, but instead of an inquiry by a committee into the 1 Owing to lack of a sufficient number of graduates, this act was suspended for three years in 1826, by 7 Geo. IV., c. 56. In 1837 twenty-one years was fixed as the maximum age for admission to Haileybury and twenty-three for appointment to India. (1 Vic., c. 70, sees. 4, 5.) 12 ENGLAND qualifications of the nominees there was an examina- tion, which in later years, at least, covered Greek, Latin, Mathematics, English History, Geography, and Paley's " Evidences " and Moral Philosophy. The examination seems to have been a real test in the later days, if not in the earlier; for in 1839 we find that thirty candidates passed it while about ten were rejected. 1 The college was intended to give a general edu- cation, as well as a training in the special subjects needed by the Indian civil servants, and, in fact, nearly two-thirds of the time was devoted to liberal studies, which were modelled mainly upon the course in the University of Cambridge. The curriculum included Classics, Mathematics, Law, Political Econ- omy, and History, among the liberal studies, and of the Oriental studies, which were confined entirely to languages, Sanskrit, Persian, and Hindustani were required, while the other native languages were op- tional. 2 At first the standard was not very high, and a clever, hard-working boy could get through the course in a year, but afterward the students were 1 See " Memorials of Old Haileybury College," by Frederick Charles Danvers, Sir M. Monier- Williams, etc., Westminster, 1894. pp. 40-42. When the Company's charter was renewed in 1833 it was provided (3 and 4. Wil. IV. c. 85, sees. 103, 105) that four times as many can- didates should be nominated as there were vacancies, and that the men to be admitted to the college should be selected among them by competi- tive examination ; but the suspension of this provision was authorized four years later (I. Vic. c. 70, sec. i). 2 The most difficult subject was law, and the great prize was the medal in law, the next object of ambition being the English essay. CIVIL SERVICE OF INDIA 13 obliged to reside four terms, or two years, at the college, and to pass an examination in both Euro- pean and Oriental subjects at the end of each term. The introduction of examinations was the result of a hard struggle of the professors with the Directors of the Company, who were inclined to make the pas- sage through Haileybury as easy as possible for their nominees. Gradually the professors succeeded, and little by little they established an effective series of examinations. Merits and Faults of Haileybury During the whole course of its existence Hailey- bury was subjected to severe criticism, and there can be no doubt that the tone of the institution was not as high as it would have been under more favorable conditions. It was hard to maintain proper dis- cipline, or to get rid of the black sheep, " the Com- pany's bad bargains," as they were commonly called, because the Directors persisted in protecting their nominees from punishment. In fact, the college suffered from the irremediable defect of having the same persons the Directors of the East India Company govern an institution which was the gateway to a lucrative career and nominate the stu- dents who were to be admitted to it. On the other hand, the teaching at Haileybury seems to have been of a high order. Among the original professors was Malthus, while Sir James Mackintosh and Sir James Stephen were added later. Sir M. Monier- 14 ENGLAND Williams, indeed, goes so far as to say of the teach- ing l : "Furthermore, I may say that, according to my own individual experience as a student, the mental training which I gained at old Haileybury was so varied and ex- cellent that nothing at all equal to it at any rate in the diversity of subjects which it embraced was to be had either at the Universities or elsewhere." Moreover, the college produced an esprit de corps which was afterward acknowledged to have been of great value ; for although a spirit of this kind has the defect of fostering a certain cliquishness among the members, their knowledge of each other's capa- bilities promotes, on the other hand, the efficiency of the service as a whole, and their mutual confidence in- creases their moral force. It must be borne in mind also, in estimating the usefulness of the institution, that from its quadrangle have come forth the bulk of the men who have ruled India during half a century. The defects of Haileybury might have been cured by abolishing the Directors' right of nomination, and taking away from them the control of the college. The spirit of the age and Macaulay were, in fact, opposed to the privileges of nomination ; but the college itself was so thoroughly associated in the public mind with the Company's method of select- ing its officials that they fell together, and the bill to abolish Haileybury was passed by Parliament in 1855 without debate. 1 " Memorials of Old Haileybury," p. 75. CIVIL SERVICE OF INDIA IS Introduction of Competitive Examinations The nomination of the students by the Directors of the East India Company continued until the last renewal of the Company's charter in 1853. It was the habit on each of these occasions, which came every twenty years, to pare down the Company's privileges, and in this case it was provided (16-17 Vic., c. 95, sees. 36 and 37) 1 that : " All Powers, Rights, or Privileges of the Court of Direc- tors of the said Company to nominate Persons to be admitted as Students " should cease ; and that " Subject to Such Regu- lations as may be made by the Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of India, any Person being a natural born Subject of Her Majesty who may be desirous of being ad- mitted into the said college at Haileybury, shall be admitted to be examined as a Candidate for such admission." The Report of Macaulay s Commission The principle of competitive examination was thus introduced, and in order to form a plan to carry it into effect a commission was appointed, consisting of Macaulay, Lord Ashburton, Dr. Melvill 2 (principal of Haileybury College), Jowett (afterward master of Balliol College, Oxford), and John George Shaw Le- fevre. The report, which bears on its face unmistak- able traces both of the opinions and the craftsmanship of Macaulay, remains at the present day at the foun- 1 See also 21-22 Vic., c. 106, sec. 32. a Melvill was constantly outvoted by the other members of the commission, but signed the report. 16 ENGLAND dation of the system of recruiting Indian Officials. It is, in fact, a remarkable document, and is printed in full as an appendix to this chapter. It laid down three main principles, the first of which is contained in the following paragraph : " It seems to us that it would be a great improvement to allow students to be admitted to the college up to the age of twenty-three, and to fix twenty-five as the latest age at which they can go out to India in the Civil Service. It is undoubtedly desirable that the Civil Servant of the Com- pany should enter on his duties while still young ; but it is also desirable that he should have received the best, the most liberal, the most finished education that his native country affords. Such an education has been proved by experience to be the best preparation for every calling which requires the exercise of the higher powers of the mind ; nor will it be easy to show that such preparation is less desirable in the case of a Civil Servant of the East India Company than in the case of a professional man who remains in England. Indeed, in the case of the Civil Ser- vant of the Company a good general education is even more desirable than in the case of the English professional man ; for the duties even of a very young servant of the Company are more important than those which ordinarily fall to the lot of a professional man in England. In England, too, a professional man may, while engaged in active business, con- tinue to improve his mind by means of reading and of con- versation. But the servant of the Company is often stationed, during a large part of his life, at a great distance from libraries and from European society, and will therefore find it pecul- iarly difficult to supply by study in his mature years the deficiencies of his early training. "The change which we propose will have one practical CIVIL SERVICE OF INDIA 17 effect to which we attach much importance. We think it desirable that a considerable number of the Civil Servants of the Company should be men who have taken the first degree in arts at Oxford or Cambridge." The second principle was that the examination should be of such a nature that no man should be deterred from going into it by the necessity of spend- ing time in preparation which would be thrown away in case he were unsuccessful. The language of the committee is as follows : " The great majority, and among them many young men of excellent abilities and laudable industry, must be unsuc- cessful. If, therefore, branches of knowledge specially Oriental should be among the subjects of examination, it is probable that a considerable number of the most hopeful youths in the country will be induced to waste much time, at that period of life at which time is most precious, in studies which will never, in any conceivable case, be of the smallest use to them. We think it most desirable that the examination should be of such a nature that no candidate who may fail shall, to whatever calling he may betake him- self, have any reason to regret the time and labour which he spent in preparing himself to be examined. " Nor do we think that we should render any service to India by inducing her future rulers to neglect, in their earlier years, European literature and science, for studies specially Indian. We believe that men who have been en- gaged, up to one or two and twenty, in studies which have no immediate connexion with the business of any profession, and of which the effect is merely to open, to invigorate, and to enrich the mind, will generally be found, in the business of every profession, superior to men who have, at eighteen c 1 8 ENGLAND or nineteen, devoted themselves to the special studies 01 their calling. The most illustrious English jurists have been men who have never opened a law book till after the close of a distinguished academical career ; nor is there any rea- son to believe that they would have been greater lawyers if they had passed in drawing pleas and conveyances the time which they gave to Thucydides, to Cicero, and to Newton. The duties of a Civil Servant of the East India Company are of so high a nature that in his case it is peculiarly desirable that an excellent general education, such as may enlarge and strengthen his understanding, should precede the special education which must qualify him to despatch the business of his cutcherry." The first two principles laid down by the commis- sion were, therefore, that the competitive examination should be such as to require a very high degree of general education, but that it should not be such as to require any special or technical study of India. In order to carry out these two principles the report recommended that the examination should not extend to those branches of knowledge which are useful to a servant of the East India Company, but useless, or almost useless, to a person whose life is to be passed in Europe ; but should be confined to those branches of knowledge to which it is desirable that English gentlemen who mean to remain at home should pay some attention. With this object they recommended that the examination should cover all those subjects, and those alone, which were habitually studied at the Universities in the United Kingdom ; and in order not to give preference to any one University, CIVIL SERVICE OF INDIA 19 or to one part of the kingdom over another, the com- mission suggested that the examination should cover a large list of subjects from which the candidate might select those in which he preferred to be exam- ined, each subject to be assigned a maximum mark in proportion to the amount of work required to ob- tain an acquaintance with it. In order at the same time not to make the examination a premium on knowledge of wide surface and small depth, but to require really profound and accurate acquaintance with a certain number of subjects, they recommended that a candidate should not be credited for taking up a subject in which he was a mere smatterer. The third principle laid down by the commission was a corollary from the other two. It was that the successful candidates should be considered to have finished their general education, and that from this time, for a period of not less than one year, nor more than two years, they should give their whole minds to the study in England of their special duties in India. The report then goes on to describe what these last studies should be, and mentions the history of India, the general principles of jurisprudence, finan- cial and commercial science, and the vernacular languages of India. While the commission did not recommend the abolition of Haileybury, they pointed out that the change in the age and education of the students would involve a radical change in the system of disci- 20 ENGLAND pline and instruction there ; and they recommended an attendance at the courts of law for the purpose of observing the actual administration of justice, which was really incompatible with residence at Haileybury. Gradual Reduction of the Age of Candidates The report of the commission, so far as it related to the examination of candidates, was put into effect at once. Haileybury was abolished, and the competi- tive system of examination, on the lines laid down by the report, was established. But owing to the dis- turbed condition of India, and the mutiny which fol- lowed, the successful candidates for the first few years were despatched to India without further training in England. In the year 1859 a probational year of study in England was finally instituted, but in order not to increase the age at which the recruits for the civil service went to India an important change was made in Lord Macaulay's plan. It has been pointed out that with a view of enabling the candi- dates to complete a University education the report of the commission recommended a minimum age of eighteen and a maximum of twenty-three at the ex- amination. This with one or two years' special study in England would bring the maximum age of going to India up to twenty-four or twenty-five, which was an advance of a year or two over the age at which they had been in the habit of going out from Hailey- bury. The absence, however, of any actual period of probation in England during the first few years of CIVIL SERVICE OF INDIA 21 the new system left the age of going to India about the same as it had been before ; but when the proba- tion of one year was established it was felt that the age of departure for the East would be too great, and therefore the maximum age for candidates at the examination was reduced from twenty-three to twenty- two. The same motive induced Lord Lawrence to say in 1864 that men came out too old, and to urge strongly that the age should not be increased. The result was that when in 1866 a second year of proba- tion was introduced in England, the maximum age for candidates at the examination was still further re- duced from twenty-two to twenty-one, the minimum being reduced to seventeen ; and this although at the same time the residence of the young civil servants at the Presidency towns in India for the study of the languages was abolished, and they were assigned to definite duties immediately upon their arrival Inquiry into the System in 1876 This system did not prove altogether satisfactory, and after it had been in operation for ten years, Lord Salisbury, then the Secretary of State for India, opened an investigation with a view of determining the nature of possible changes. The correspondence on the subject, including the opinions of a large number of members of the Indian Civil Service, was printed in a blue-book. 1 One of 1 Parl. Papers, 1876, c. 1446. 22 ENGLAND the chief objections to the system was that the age was such as to make it very difficult for young men to take the examination either before or after going to a University. It came in what would naturally be the middle of a University career, and the result had been a decided falling off in the proportion of candi- dates from the Universities, until only a small frac- tion of the men appointed had University degrees. 1 Connected with this was the increasing habit of cramming for the examination under special teachers. There was some difference of opinion on the question whether this practice was in itself an evil or not, whether the students did or did not get a sound edu- cation by the process ; but that the habit had in- creased very much is shown by the fact that in 1865 only 32-5*5 per cent of the successful candidates were crammed by special teachers, and that the average time spent in such preparation was six or seven months, while in 1874 the percentage of successful candidates who crammed had risen to 84^, and the average time spent in such preparation was fifteen or sixteen months. 2 Another objection to the existing system related to the subsequent preparation of the candidates for the service. After they had succeeded in the competitive examination, the Gov- 1 Parl. Papers, 1876, c. 1446, pp. 120-121, 242. There seems to have been a general belief that the quality of the successful candidates had fallen off, although there was not a general agreement about the cause. Cf. Id., pp. 265, 266, 271-273. 8 Id., p. 40. CIVIL SERVICE OF INDIA 23 ernment encouraged them to spend their time in London ; and in fact the Civil Service Commissioners advised them to do so, on the ground that they could there, much more readily than elsewhere, observe the trials in the law courts, which the Commissioners considered a very important part of their prepara- tion, an opinion, by the way, not shared by the authorities in India. 1 The defect -of this method of training was that, the Civil Service Commissioners being unable to pay any real attention to the selected candidates, they were under no supervision. 2 They were left to themselves in lodgings in London, where they got none of the esprit de corps that pre- vailed at Haileybury, and none of the benefit of inti- mate association with a large number of young men such as is found at the Universities. These evils were very generally recognized, al- though there was great diversity of opinion in regard to the method of curing them. It was suggested by the University of Oxford that, if the age were reduced, boys could take the examination immediately after leaving school, and that after passing it they could go to a University, and stay long enough to obtain a degree, devoting only a part of their time to the special studies relating to India, and a part of it to the ordinary studies of the University. On the other hand, Jowett urged that, for University men, at least, 1 / is paid to the candidate only after he has successfully passed his final exami- nation ; but, in fact, a failure to do so is rare. As the examination is not competitive, the successful candi- date has little selfish incentive to hard work, the strongest motive being that of outranking some Hindu who has also been selected. He has indeed been studying fiercely for the last two or three years, and is apt to take life somewhat easier than before. Still, these are men who have been in the habit of reading hard, and they do, on the whole, faithful work. The young Civilian is not, of course, ready for active duties on his arrival in India. He has still his apprenticeship to serve. He must have some experi- ence of the people and the traditions of adminis- tration before he can hold even one of the minor 1 The Indian Institute at Oxford is a separate affair. It is merely a Library and Museum. CIVIL SERVICE OF INDIA 47 posts, and it is generally assumed that he is merely in training for the first two years after his arrival. 1 Summary of the History The English system of selecting and training offi- cials for the Indian Civil Service is the result of a long experience and many experiments. It started with the arbitrary nomination, by the Directors of the East India Company, of writers, who were trained first in the practical affairs of a great commercial company, and later in a college specially established at Haileybury for the purpose. The time came when this privilege of the Directors of the Company was an anachronism, and could last no longer. Its fall was followed by the report of Macaulay's Commis- sion, which is the basis of the present system, and rests upon the principle of taking by competitive examination men of high general education, who have, as a rule, had the advantage not only of the training of the mind, but also of the formation of the character, that results from English University life. Successful competitors are then given a special train- ing in Oriental matters for the brief period of one year before being sent to India to learn their duties upon the spot. Had this system remained unchanged since the time of Macaulay's report, it might be sup- posed that its retention was due to habit, and not to any convincing evidence of its value; but this has 1 Cf. Memorandum in a letter from the Government of India, ParL Papers, 1894, c. 7378, p. 72. 48 ENGLAND not been the case. Owing to a desire to give the selected candidates a greater amount of special train- ing in England, and at the same time to get them out to India younger, the limits of age for the exami- nation were reduced until few of the men had any considerable University life. Ten years later the whole plan was essentially modified by Lord Salis- bury, who reduced the age still further to the time when men go to the University instead of the age when they leave it, and provided that the candidates, after their selection, should have, in addition to their special training, a certain amount of opportunity, at least, for completing their general education. Thus a plan in many respects precisely the reverse of that urged by Macaulay was tried ; but it was not a success, and the Government returned again to the system he had originally proposed. English experience in India seems, therefore, to have resulted in two conclusions : first, that a high general education, and best of all a University education, is very important ; and second, that a great amount of special training before departure is neither necessary nor advisable. Results of the System The present method of recruiting members of the Indian Civil Service has certainly produced a corps of administrators whose education, ability, and char- acter stand high. The number of men who have proved deficient in the required intellectual and moral CIVIL SERVICE OF INDIA 49 qualities appears to be very small. It is commonly said, indeed, that the competitive system has resulted in less failures, but that it has produced less giants than the old system of arbitrary selection by the East India Company. This is, no doubt, true, but it must be remembered that giants are no longer as much needed in the Indian Civil Service as they were in the last century. In those days the ruler of a prov- ince might be unable to communicate with Calcutta for weeks together, even at a time of profound peace, whereas he is now in constant telegraphic connection with the Viceroy. Hence there is more demand for good administrators, and less need of bold rulers, than formerly. It must be remembered also that the service to which the competitive system leads does not, and ought not, to include the heads of the State, and it is in them rather than in their subordinates that gigantic qualities are required. As an illustra- tion of this objection to the competitive system it is sometimes said that Clive, or some other great Indian hero, could not have entered the service in that way. But criticism of this kind is really of little value. To say that Clive in the eighteenth century could not have passed a nineteenth century competitive exami- nation means nothing. Whether, if he had been born in the second half of the nineteenth century, he would have been unable to pass the examination is an entirely different question. He followed what was in his day the path to success, and it is by no means improbable that a man of genius like Clive 50 ENGLAND would find and follow the path to success, whatever that path in his day might be. There is a vast deal of truth in the remark of one of the Indian Officials : "By a not uncommon error, people who object to the competitive system, and who are not aware of the neces- sity for it and of the mode in which it really works, attach to it disadvantages which might have been expected, but which experience shows do not really attend it." * OFFICES INCLUDED IN THE INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE Any description of the method of selecting colo- nial civil servants would be incomplete without a knowledge of the class of offices to which that selection leads. The system already described is the means of entrance to the general administrative and judicial service of India; for although the func- tions of administrator and judge are separated after the lower grades are passed, and a Civilian must then elect which career he will follow, the two classes of officials, are recruited together, and never cease to belong to the same civil service. Besides this there are also special services for engineering, forestry, police, education, etc., which are organized and re- cruited quite separately, and which will be referred to again hereafter. Even in the case of the general administrative and judicial service, only a small part of the actual work 1 A. H. Haggard, in the Report on Selection and Training of Can- didates, Parl. Papers, 1876, c. 1446, pp. 61-62. CIVIL SERVICE OF INDIA 51 is done by the English officials selected by the com- petitive examination in London, for it is the impor- tant posts alone, those which require the exercise of discretion in a high degree, which are filled by the men appointed in this way. The great mass of details are carried on, and the vast majority of the subordinate positions under the Government are held, by native officials recruited directly in India. In short, only the superior executive and judicial ser- vice is now in the hands of English officials, while the intermediate and lower branches of that service are manned almost exclusively by natives of India. In order to understand this fully it is necessary to review the history of the subject. History of the Covenanted Civil Service The regular officials of the East India Company, appointed in England, were required on joining the service to enter into a covenant with the Company binding them to perform their duties and observe the regulations. Hence these officers were called Covenanted Civilians, to distinguish them, both from subordinate servants appointed in India, and from agents for special purposes, neither of whom signed any such covenants, and who were collectively known as the uncovenanted service. A sharp contrast was made between the two services, by the act of 1793 (33 Geo. III., c. 52, sec. 57), which provided that all vacancies in the offices in the civil line of the 52 ENGLAND Company's service in India, under the degree of Counsellor, should be filled up from amongst the civil servants of the Company. This act was, of course, intended to apply only to the covenanted positions, but it did not draw the line between the two classes of positions, or specify in which class every office fell. Moreover, it was impossible to obey it strictly, and uncovenanted persons were appointed from time to time to what were univer- sally regarded as covenanted posts. This state of things lasted until 1861, when a statute (24-25 Vic., c. 54) confirmed all such appointments previously made, and fixed by a schedule annexed to the act the offices which should be exclusively reserved in future for Covenanted Civilians. Except for certain positions in the customs, salt and opium departments, all the offices in the schedule were connected with the general administration, or with the judiciary, and they extended from the Secretaries of the Civil Gov- ernments of India, to Assistant Collectors and Assis- tant Magistrates in the districts. 1 All these offices were thereafter to be strictly reserved for the Cove- 1 By various special acts, one-third, at least, of the judges of the High Courts must be members of the Civil Service of India, while the Lieutenant Governors, three of the ordinary members of the Governor General's Council, and all the ordinary members of the councils of the Governors of Madras and Bombay, must have been for a certain num- ber of years in the service of the Crown in India, which means, of course, that in most cases they must be Covenanted Civilians. Cf. Ilbert, "The Government of India," pp. 180, 192, 193, 241. The officer corresponding to the Collector Magistrate is styled in non- Regulation Provinces "Assistant Commissioner." CIVIL SERVICE OF INDIA 53 nanted Civilians, save that a person who had resided at least seven years in India might, under exceptional circumstances, be provisionally appointed to one of them, subject to the approval of the Secretary of State, a power which has, in fact, scarcely been used at all. 1 The schedule annexed to the Act was limited almost entirely to offices in the so-called Regulation Provinces; that is, Bengal, Madras, Bom- bay, and the Northwest Provinces with Oudh. But although the provisions of the Act in regard to the scheduled offices have never been extended by statute to the non-Regulation Provinces they have been vir- tually so extended by Lord Salisbury's despatch of July 13, 1876. They are now applied there nearly as strictly as in the Regulation Provinces; except that in certain districts of the frontier one-quarter of the posts are in accordance with the despatch given to Military Officers, and that in Burma it has been impossible as yet to obtain a sufficient quantity of Covenanted Civilians who are familiar with the country, and hence a large number of uncovenanted Englishmen, from the army, from other services and from private life, have been appointed. With these exceptions the distinction between the Regulation and non-Regulation Provinces, so far as it affects the civil service, has disappeared. 1 Report of Public Service Com., 1886-1887, Parl - Papers, 1888, c. 5327, p. 18. 54 ENGLAND Efforts to employ more Natives in the Service There had been for some time a desire to employ natives in the higher and more responsible offices of the country, instead of, as heretofore, solely in the lower and less responsible ones. 1 With this object an act was passed in 1870 (33 Vic., c. 3, sec. 6), pro- viding that, subject to such rules as might be made from time to time by the Indian Government with the sanction of the Secretary of State, the authorities in India should be at liberty to appoint a native of India to any office although he had not been ad- mitted to the covenanted civil service. Several at- tempts to devise rules to carry the statute into effect were made, but none of the earlier experiments were successful. 2 Under the rules made in 1879, on the other hand, nearly one-sixth of the officers recruited to fill covenanted posts were Statutory Civilians, as the officials appointed under this statute were called. But the men selected did not prove satisfactory a result attributed to their lack of previous administra- tive experience, and to the fact that they were mere 1 As early as 1833, the Statute 3 and 4 Will. IV., c. 85, sec. 87, pro- vided that no Native "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"; and the Queen's Proclamation of November I, 1858, made at the time when the government of India passed from the Company to the Crown, declared that, so far as may be, Her subjects, of whatever race or creed, should be freely and impartially admitted to Her service. 2 Papers relating to Indian Civil Service, 1894, c. 7378, pp. 14 et seq., 78 et seq. CIVIL SERVICE OF INDIA 55 isolated officials in a service recruited on quite a different basis. 1 Finally the Public Service Commis- sion of 1886 was appointed to investigate and to report upon the matter. After collecting a vast amount of evidence the Commission reported a plan for the formation of a new Provincial Service to be filled in the main by natives of India. It was to comprise a number of the higher posts in the un- covenanted service, and in addition to them about one-sixth of the posts reserved by the schedule for Covenanted Civilians. The Provincial Service was to be recruited separately in each of the provinces, and below it was to stand a Subordinate Service con- taining the minor uncovenanted offices. The plan was adopted with some modifications in detail and was put into operation by resolutions of the Govern- ment of India in 1 892-1 893. 2 At the same time the name of Covenanted Service was dropped altogether, and replaced by that of Civil Service of India. While the higher offices were thus thrown open to natives to some extent, the lower offices in the general administrative and the judicial service were reserved for them more completely than before. In 1 Report of the Public Service Com. 1886-1887, Parl. Papers 1888, c. 5327, pp. 50, 51, 53. 2 For a description of the Provincial Service as actually established, see Papers relating to the Indian Civil Service, 1894, c. 7378, pp. 82- 87; and for copies of the resolutions of April 22, 1892, and January 7, 1893, by which it was established, see Id., pp. 96-101. The plan has not yet been put into operation in Burma, owing to the scarcity of competitant natives, nor fully in Assam, owing to the large number of European residents there. 56 ENGLAND 1879 orders were issued by the Government of India, and by the Secretary of State, forbidding, with a few exceptions, the appointment to such offices of any one but a native of India, without the previous sanc- tion of the Governor General in the case of Bengal, and of the Secretary of State in the case of Madras and Bombay. 1 These orders have been so effectual that, apart from Burma, where the backward condi- tion of education has made it difficult to find natives properly qualified even for the lower offices, the total number of European appointments sanctioned by the Governor General from 1871 to 1893 was only fourteen. 2 Number of Europeans in the Several Services For the general administrative and judicial work of India there are, therefore, three separate services. The Civil Service of India, the successor of the old Covenanted Service, is essentially a service of Eng- lishmen, in spite of the Statutory Civilians ap- pointed in former times, and of a few natives who have been successful at the competitive examination in England. But its numbers are small. In the lan- guage of the Commission of 1896 it has been reduced to a corps d'e"lite by taking from it, and putting into the new Provincial Service, nearly 100 posts. The total number of Englishmen on the lists of the 1 For copies of these orders, see Papers relating to the Indian Civil Service, 1894, c. 7378, pp. 102-104. 2 Id., pp. 88-89. This does not include Madras and Bombay, where the sanction of the Secretary of State is required. CIVIL SERVICE OF INDIA 57 Indian Civil Service on July I, 1893, was 1096, of whom 898 were Covenanted Civilians, 104 Military Officers, and 62 Uncovenanted Civilians ; of the 898, moreover, 102 were merely men in training, not yet fit to be given responsible positions, and there are always a considerable number absent on leave. The general government of India is therefore carried on by about 1000 Englishmen, and of these more than four-fifths are engaged in administrative and judicial work in the districts, each of them having charge on the average of an area of 1290 square miles, with a population of 297, 50 1. 1 The Provincial and Subordinate Services are not only much larger than the Civil Service of India, but are increasing in numbers much more rapidly. On July i, 1893, there were 1827 officials in the Provin- cial Civil Service, and 1908 in the Subordinate Civil Service, so that the two services together outnum- bered the Civil Service of India nearly four to one. 2 These services are composed almost exclusively of natives, and in fact a table prepared by the Public Service Commission of 1886 shows that out of the 2588 officials then on the rolls only 104 were Euro- peans or Eurasians domiciled in India at the time of their appointment, and only. 35 were Europeans or Eurasians not so domiciled. 3 On account of the 1 Papers relating to the Indian Civil Service, 1894, c. 7378; tables at pp. 95-9- 2 Id., pp. 72-73. 8 Parl. Papers, 1888, c. 5327, pp. 28-30. This table does not in- clude Burma, 58 ENGLAND operation of the orders of 1879, even this small pro- portion of Europeans must dimmish rapidly. As compared with the Continental nations the English have adopted the principle of having few European colonial officials, but striving by the nature of the competitive examination at entrance, and by the payment of very high salaries and large pensions, to recruit them from men of the best calibre available. This has been especially the case in India, where the high native civilization has rendered it possible to make an even larger use of native officials than in the other British colonies in Asia. METHOD OF RECRUITING NATIVE OFFICIALS It has frequently been urged that the holding of the Civil Service examination in England alone is a hardship upon the natives of India, and makes it unnecessarily difficult for them to compete. So strong did this feeling become that on June 2, 1893, the House of Commons a body better fitted to represent the wants of Englishmen at home than to deal wisely with the colonial problems passed a resolution in favor of simultaneous competitive exam- inations in England and in India. The proposition had already been considered and rejected by the Pub- lic Service Commission of 1886, even three of its six native members concurring. The resolution of the House of Commons gave rise to a great deal of cor- respondence with the Indian authorities, central and CIVIL SERVICE OF INDIA 59 provincial. 1 All the governments in India, except that of Madras, were of opinion that the English element in the public service could not safely be reduced further; that the natives were not equal to Englishmen as administrators ; and that their substi- tution would not be popular with the mass of people in India. In view of the fact that the excellence of England's rule in India, and her hold upon the natives of the country, depends on the administrative work in the districts, rather than upon military force, these opinions were adopted by the Secretary of State. But another reason for adopting them was also given, which applies to the use of competitive examinations for recruiting natives for the Provincial and Subor- dinate Services as well. It is that the system of competitive examinations is not applicable, or only partially applicable, to natives. In the first place, the chief danger against which it is intended to guard, that of selection by patronage, does not exist in the appointment of natives. In the second place, it is said that such an examination is not a test of admin- istrative capacity in India as it is in England, because the life in English public schools and Universities gives a training of the character as well as of the mind, which the native who comes up for a competi- tive examination in India does not get. This would appear to be merely a circuitous way of stating a 1 Papers relating to the Question of Holding Simultaneous Exami- nations in India and England for the Indian Civil Sendee, 1894, c. 7378. 60 ENGLAND truth which lies at the foundation of English rule in India. The capacity for government is common among Englishmen, and may almost be assumed to be present in men of education. Among natives of India, on the other hand, it is very rare ; while the capacity for absorbing information, so as to make a good show, without any strengthening of the mind or will, is exceedingly common. A third reason and a very conclusive one for not making native appoint- ments by competitive examination is the fact that the system gives a great advantage to one race over another. This was shown in Bengal, where competi- tive examinations were held for the Provincial Service from 1884 to 1893, and out of sixty-six candidates who entered in that way, not a single one was a Moham- medan, although the Mohammedans form one-half of the population. The examination resulted in fact almost entirely in the success of the Bengalis, who are by no means possessed of the capacity for govern- ment The system was therefore changed so that only a portion of the vacancies were filled by compe- tition. 1 The methods of selecting members of the Provincial Service vary from one Province to another. A part of the places must be filled everywhere by promotion from the Subordinate Service, and for the rest literary tests are used everywhere as a means of excluding persons without a sufficient degree of education. But up to 1893, at least, competitive examinations as a 1 Papers relating, etc., op. cit. 1894, c. 7378, pp. 93-94. CIVIL SERVICE OF INDIA 6l means of selection were considered inapplicable ex- cept in Bengal and Madras, where a part of the places were filled in that way. SPECIAL SERVICES IN INDIA 1 Although this work is concerned only with the selection of colonial officers for general administra- tion, and does not deal with technical services in colonies, yet a few words about the special services of India may not be out of place, as they throw light upon the general system of selection. These ser- vices depend, of course, for their efficiency on men recruited in England, but whenever possible they have also a force of natives in subordinate positions. The method of selection varies in the different ser- vices. In the Ecclesiastical and Educational Depart- ments, for example, appointments are made by the Secretary of State without restriction ; but in most of the other services an examination of a competitive nature plays a part. In many of them there is more than one method of admission. Thus, the Engineers of the Public Works Department are recruited from officers of the Indian Army, from graduates of the government civil engineering colleges in England and in India, and occasionally from other persons. The Traffic Department, which has charge of the Indian State Railways, is recruited partly by transfers from the Engineers, partly by the promotion of subordi- 1 A description of the methods of recruiting the different services may be found yearly in the India List. 62 ENGLAND nates, partly by direct competition, and partly from the graduates of the College at Cooper's Hill. The College at Cooper's Hill This institution, the Royal Engineering College at Cooper's Hill, 1 which was opened in 1872, supplies the recruits for the Forestry Department, most of those for the Telegraph Department, many of the Engineers, and some of the officers of the Rail- ways and Accounts branch of the Public Works. About fifty persons, between the ages of seventeen and twenty-one, are admitted to the engineering course of the college each year by a pass examination, in English composition, elementary mathematics, some classical or modern language, and history or geog- raphy. 2 This examination, which may be dispensed with in whole or in part in the case of a student who presents an appropriate diploma is not unlike the entrance examinations to our colleges. It is fol- lowed by a three-years course similar to that pursued in other institutions for teaching engineering ; and it is noteworthy that no subject is taught which relates specially to India, 3 so that a student who goes through the college, and does not obtain an appointment there, is well equipped to practise engineering in England. He has wasted no time in preparing him- 1 The annnal Calendar of the college. 2 In case more men apply for admission than the college can hold, preference is given according to priority of application. 8 Certain departmental and language examinations have to be passed in India as a condition for subsequent promotion. CIVIL SERVICE OF INDIA 63 self for the Indian service, and in fact, the regulations of the college contemplate the presence of students who are not candidates for government appointments at all. There are periodical examinations through- out the course which are completed by a final exami- nation at graduation. The number of engineers required for Indian service are appointed from among the graduates, in the order of their rank, and the examinations are, therefore, in reality, competitive tests for the selection of Indian Engineers. 1 The appointments from Cooper's Hill to the Tele- graph Department are arranged in a slightly differ- ent manner. They are offered to the students at the end of the first year's course in engineering, in the order of their rank ; the men selected being required to go through a second year of special training at the college, and pass an examination upon it. For the Forestry Department, on the other hand, the competitive examination comes at the time of ad- mission, and the successful candidates are then ex- pected to go through a course of three years' study at the college with credit. The reason for fixing a dif- ferent point in the college course for making the selections in the various departments is doubtless to be found in the fact that the education of the Foresters might be of little use to them in case they failed to get an Indian appointment, so that if the competitive examination came at the end of the 1 The men selected are usually required to spend a year in practical training under an engineer in England 64 ENGLAND course, the unsuccessful candidates would have thrown away three years' work. The same is prob- ably true, to some extent, of the Telegraph Depart- ment ; while with the Engineers the case is different, and hence it is an advantage to postpone the competi- tion until the men are as mature as possible. The com- petitive examination for the admission of the students in Forestry to Cooper's Hill is, of course, much more elementary than the examination for the Indian Civil Service. It consists of obligatory, optional, and addi- tional subjects. The obligatory subjects are element- ary mathematics, English composition, and German; the optional subjects, any two of which may be taken, are higher mathematics, French, Latin, Greek, Eng- lish history, botany, chemistry, physics, and physi- cal geography ; the additional subjects, which count for little, are free-hand and geometrical drawing. There appear to be a sufficient number of candidates at these examinations to make the test really compet- itive. At the examination in 1898, for example, there were sixteen competitors for six places. The same examination that admits students to the course in Forestry at Cooper's Hill is also used as a competitive test for the appointment of members of the Indian Police Force; the only difference being that the candidates for the Police Force may offer French, instead of German, as an obligatory subject, and that the limit of age for the candidates is slightly different. Success, which depends also upon ability to ride on horseback, leads, however, at once to pro- EASTERN CADETS 6$ bational appointment in India instead of to Cooper's Hill. The number of candidates for the Indian Police Force is greater than for the Forestry Department. Thus, in 1898, there were sixty-one candidates for thirteen vacancies. 1 In the course of the month pre- ceding the examination the candidates for both ser- vices are required to appear before a medical board at the India Office, and no one is permitted to enter the competition without a certificate from that board that he is fit for active duty in India. This is clearly as it should be. The subject of India has been dwelt upon at this length, because the method of selecting and training the officials has been more carefully tried there, and has reached a higher point of development than in any other dependency in the world. t OTHER BRITISH COLONIES IN THE EAST The same general methods of recruiting officials that prevail in India have been adopted in the other British Colonies in the East, but owing to the fact that these colonies are much smaller than India, and their staff of officials much less numerous, the method of select- ing and training officials is not quite so systematic, and, in fact, the services themselves are not so highly organized. Competitive examination, as a method of 1 Two of the candidates offered themselves both for the Forestry and Police. The examination papers for the Forestry Service and Police Force are published every year by the Civil Service Commis- sioners. F 66 ENGLAND selection, has been used in each of these colonies for a considerable length of time. In Ceylon it dates from a Minute of March 3, 1863 ; in the Straits Set- tlements the responsibilities of which have been increased of late years by the addition of the Feder- ated Malay States it has been employed ever since they were separated from India in 1868; and finally for Hong Kong it has been long in use. Examination for the Eastern Cadets Although the civil service for each of these colonies is entirely distinct, the selected candidates for all of them are collectively known as the Eastern Cadets, and it has been the habit for many years to hold a single examination in London annually for all of the cadetships, so far as there are vacancies to be filled, and then to allow the successful candidates, in the order of their rank at the examination, to choose the colony they prefer. Candidates for this examination are required to be between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-four, which is not much older than the present limits of age for the Indian Civil Service; but the exam- ination formerly differed from the Indian one in some respects which deserve notice. In the first place, there was a preliminary examina- tion which every candidate must pass before he could be admitted to take part in the competitive test, and for which a fee of i was required. It consisted of copying, writing from dictation, and elementary arith- EASTERN CADETS 67 metic, and was, of course, intended to eliminate hope- less candidates ; but as a matter of fact it is hardly conceivable that any one would present himself for the competitive examination who would not have been absolutely certain to have passed the prelimi- nary one. The competitive examination, for which a fee ot $ was required, was divided into obliga- tory and optional subjects, and was set forth in the regulations as follows : A. Obligatory (a) Latin. () One of the following languages: Greek, French, Ger- man, Italian. The qualifying test for a and b will be translation from the language, but marks will be given for translation into it. and, in the case of the modern languages, for colloquial proficiency. (c) English Composition, including Precis Writing. B. Optional. (d) Pure Mathematics, viz., Euclid, I.-IV., and VI. ; Algebra, including the Binomial Theorem ; Trigonometry, including the Solution of Triangles ; Analytical Geometry (elementary) and Mixed Mathematics, including Statics and Dynamics treated without the Differential Calculus. (e) (i) Modern Geography and (2) Ancient and Modern History. The Examination in History will be confined to certain periods, to be prescribed for each examination. (/") The Elements of Constitutional and International Law, and Political Economy. (g) Geology, Civil Engineering, and Surveying. (ft) Any two languages included under head b which have not been taken up as obligatory. Every candidate must show a competent knowledge of the obli- gatory subjects, and may select any two of the optional subjects. 68 ENGLAND At first sight this examination appears to differ radically in principle from the examination for the Indian Civil Service. The existence of obligatory subjects, and of technical studies like civil engineer- ing and surveying, seems to make it less adapted for University men and more exposed to the danger of encouraging cramming ; but in fact these differences are more apparent than real. The required subjects were such as every University man would be familiar with ; while the only optional subjects which would not fall into the regular curriculum of a University were civil engineering and surveying, and the reports of the examinations published by the Civil Service Commissioners show that as a matter of fact these were almost never offered by a candidate. The precis writing, which appears to be a very technical matter, is really a thing that every intelligent young man must have been able to do creditably without much coaching. In 1895, for example, the last year in which this kind of examination was used, the candidates were required to make a short abstract, schedule, or docket of the several letters and other papers in a correspondence respecting the revision of the treaty arrangements between Great Britain and Japan, which occupied about sixteen pages in a parliamentary paper. They were also required to draw up a memorandum or precis, i.e. a brief and clear statement of what passed, not letter by letter, but in the form of a narrative. This is a very good test of general intelligence, and ought to have pre- EASTERN CADETS 69 sented no difficulties to University men. Although the examination did not differ much in principle from that for admission to the Indian Civil Service, it was far more restricted in scope. The number of subjects among which the candidates could choose was much more limited. Neither literature ancient or modern, English or foreign was in- cluded, nor science, except in the form of geology, which could be taken only in connection with civil engineering. Moreover, the examination did not require so thorough a knowledge, and was therefore not so good a test. The examination in mathematics, for example, did not cover the calculus ; and a com- parison of the examination papers on other subjects shows that the questions were more elementary than for the Indian competition. The number of vacancies was small : two being the smallest, and eight the largest, that I have seen. The number of competitors was usually very large in proportion, sometimes more than ten times the places to be filled. Thus in 1886, there were thirty-one for three places; in 1890, fifty-nine for six places; in 1891, forty-nine for seven places; in 1892, thirty-three for two places. The last year, 1895, saw a falling off, there being only twenty-two for eight vacancies. No doubt the small number of places offered was a disadvantage, because the quan- tity of prizes to be won is an important element in attracting the best men to the competition ; and on the suggestion of the Civil Service Commissioners 70 ENGLAND the Secretary of State for the Colonies decided at the end of 1895 to amalgamate the examination for the Eastern Cadets with that for the Civil Service of India and the First Class Clerkships in the Home Civil Service. This change came into effect in August, 1896. The same examination, therefore, now leads to all three careers, and subject to the paramount interests of the public service the suc- cessful candidates are given their choice in the order of their rank at the examination. In the same way the Eastern Cadets are allowed to indicate the colony or dependency in the East to which they would prefer to be assigned. Subsequent Training of the Eastern Cadets At one time it was the habit for the Eastern Cadets who were destined for Hong Kong to remain for a year of probation in England, studying Chinese and acquiring some knowledge of affairs in the Colonial Office. But this has been given up, and all the Eastern Cadets are now sent out at once. In short, the Eastern Cadets are selected on a competition based upon general education alone, and are de- spatched to the East without receiving in England any special training or instruction in their duties whatever. One reason given for this is that the chief languages they need, such as Singhalese and Tamil for Ceylon, and the various Malay tongues for the Straits Settlements and the Malay Penin- EASTERN CADETS 7 1 sula, are not taught in England. Another is that even if a Cadet could study these languages advan- tageously in England, he would not have the benefit of learning, at the same time, the ways of the people he has to govern. Moreover, the other subject which a Cadet residing in England would chiefly be set to study, that is law, is less important for him than for the Indian Civilian, because India is not only much larger than the Eastern colonies, but its civilization and political organization are far more complex. When the Cadet arrives in the East, he is sent to China for two years to study Chinese, if he is des- tined for Hong Kong, or for work in the Straits Settlements or the Malay Peninsula which will bring him into close contact with Chinamen. If not, he is sent to learn the prevalent native tongue in the dis- trict to which he is assigned; thus in the Straits Settlements he often spends six months in the office of the Colonial Secretary at Singapore, and eighteen months with a district officer in the country. He is then ready to be set to work. In Ceylon, moreover, a Cadet cannot receive a substantive appointment until he has passed, in the colony, an examination in law, in the system of accounts employed in the gov- ernment offices, and in one native language ; nor can he be promoted before he passes another examina- tion in law, accounts, and two native languages. 1 1 See Ceylon Civil Service List, 1896, pp. 190-192. 72 ENGLAND Positions reserved for Eastern Cadets In Ceylon the organization of the administration, and the places reserved for the members of the civil service, are modelled upon the same lines as those in India. There has also been the same effort to give to natives a share of the higher positions, by transferring a certain number of them to a Lower Division of the service, organized for the purpose. 1 As in the case of the Provincial Service in Bengal, competition has been tried as a means of recruiting the Lower Division in Ceylon ; but although that division was created in 1891, the examinations had not, up to 1897, resulted in the success of a single full-blooded native. 2 In the Straits Settlements there is no list of posts reserved exclusively for members of the service, yet in practice all the higher offices belong to it, except those of Governor, Colonial Secretary, Attorney General, and, owing to want of a service large enough to draw upon for such places, Judges of the High Court. In the Federated Malay States, on the other hand, the recent date at which the protectorate was established has made it impossible to develop as yet a completely self-sufficient civil service, for it takes some time to create a service of this kind, and the first officials must in the nature of things be taken 1 See Ceylon Civil Service List, 1896, pp. 192-194. 2 Papers relating to the Reclassification of the Ceylon Civil Service, 1897, printed by Order of His Excellency the Governor, p. 24. ^ EASTERN CADETS 73 from outside. As a matter of fact, two of the five Residents at the Native Courts have been appointed from the service, and in the future vacancies will undoubtedly be filled in that way. Throughout the Malay Peninsula the lack of a high indigenous civilization makes it necessary for white officers to occupy the lesser posts which in India would be held by natives. Thus a district officer is a member of the civil service recruited in Eng- land, and his immediate subordinates are the native Headmen of the villages, who are nominally elected by the villagers and confirmed by the Government, although of course it is not difficult in practice to guide the choice of the people. In the Federated Malay States the result is much the same, but the form is different. Here the white officials in each state consist of the Resident, with a staff of three or four white assistants, and below him a District Officer with one or two assistants in each district. Neither the Residents nor the District Officers are nominally direct rulers, but in each case they are guides, philosophers, and friends to the cor- responding native chief, and in practice they control his actions. It is a great disadvantage to the civil service of these colonies that each of them is too small by itself to furnish sufficient opportunities for a great career. The condition is, indeed, rendered somewhat better by the practice of occasionally transferring a man from the service of one colony to that of another, 74 ENGLAND and it has been proposed to render this more system- atic, and to improve the chance of promotion of able men, by making the services of the Straits Settle- ments, the Federated Malay States, and Hong Kong into one great colonial service for the East Such a change would render the career more attractive to young men of talent, and this is, after all, the essential point. The result of the system of competitive examina- tion is much the same for the Eastern colonies as for India. It occasionally produces a mere student who has no administrative power, but such cases appear to be rare, and no one to-day would seriously propose to give it up. On the other hand, the fact that the English feel obliged to open their examina- tions to all British subjects sometimes involves star- tling consequences. Among the men, for example, who of late years have obtained Eastern Cadetships by means of competition have been a Sikh from India and a Mulatto from Barbadoes. Neither of these men can have the same influence over the Malays as an Englishman, and neither of them would, of course, have been deliberately selected for the service. BRITISH COLONIES ELSEWHERE While the competitive system, either open or limited, is used in a subsidiary way for the appoint- ment to clerkships, etc., in some of the other colo- nies, there is no colonial civil service recruited by OTHER BRITISH COLONIES 75 competition except in India and the Eastern depend- encies. The reasons for this are easy to discover. The Self-Governing Colonies, Canada, the Cape of Good Hope, and Australasia, are of course out of the question. Except for the Governor, they ap- point all their own public servants, and with these the English Government has no concern. In the Crown Colonies of the West Indies, Africa, the Mediterranean, and the numerous islands scattered over the globe, this is not true; and no doubt the system of competitive examination would be adopted in their case were it not that no one of them alone is large enough to support a regularly recruited civil service, and for one reason or another it is impossi- ble to group them together for the purpose. In the West Indies, for example, the inhabitants of the islands are quite capable of holding the offices. It would not be right, or possible, to fill these places by competitions held in London, and open to all British subjects. But at the same time the West Indians have not enough breadth of view to be useful outside their own colony. In Africa, on the other hand, the largest part of the territories under English control have either been, like Egypt, military protectorates, or like Rhodesia and the country about the Niger, under the management of chartered companies. The rest of the Crown Colo- nies are too small and too widely separated to support a service. The positions of Governor and Colonial Secretary in the Crown Colonies form, indeed, 76 ENGLAND a career, and a career in which a man who shows capacity is promoted from one colony to another. But it is also a career in which the variety of prob- lems involved and the tact required are infinite, and hence it could hardly be made into a regular profes- sion, with a rigid method of admission and promotion. APPENDIX A REPORT ON THE INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE To the Right Honourable Sir Charles Wood, Bart., M.P., etc., etc., etc. SIR, We have attentively considered the subject about which you have done us the honour to consult us ; and we now venture to submit to you the result of our deliberations. We do not think that we can more conveniently arrange the suggestions which we wish to offer, than by following the order which is observed in the 3pth and 4oth clauses of the India Act of 1853. The first matter concerning which the Board of Control is empowered by the 39th clause to make regulations is the age of the persons who are to be admitted into the college at Haileybury. The present rule is, that no person can be admitted under seventeen, and that no person can go out to India after twenty-three. Every student must pass four terms, that is to say, two years at the college. Consequently, none can be admitted after twenty-one. It seems to us that it would be a great improvement to allow students to be admitted to the college up to the age of twenty- three, and to fix twenty-five as the latest age at which they can go out to India in the Civil Service. It is undoubtedly desirable that the Civil Servant of the Com- pany should enter on his duties while still young ; but it is also desirable that he should have received the best, the most liberal, the most finished education that his native 77 ?8 APPENDIX A country affords. Such an education has been proved by experience to be the best preparation for every calling which requires the exercise of the higher powers of the mind ; nor will it be easy to show that such preparation is less desirable in the case of a Civil Servant of the East India Company than in the case of a professional man who remains in England. Indeed, in the case of the Civil Ser- vant of the Company a good general education is even more desirable than in the case of the English professional man ; for the duties even of a very young servant of the Company are more important than those which ordinarily fall to the lot of a professional man in England. In Eng- land, too, a professional man may, while engaged in active business, continue to improve his mind by means of read- ing and of conversation. But the servant of the Company is often stationed, during a large part of his life, at a great distance from libraries and from European society, and will therefore find it peculiarly difficult to supply by study in his mature years the deficiencies of his early training. The change which we propose will have one practical effect, to which we attach much importance. We think it desirable that a considerable number of the Civil Servants of the Company should be men who have taken the first degree in arts at Oxford or Cambridge. At present the line is drawn as if it had been expressly meant to exclude bachelors of those Universities. It will, we believe, be found that the great majority of our academic youth gradu- ate too late by a few months, and only by a few months, for admission into Haileybury. We propose to fix eighteen as the lowest age at which a candidate can be admitted into the college. We are indeed of opinion that, except in very rare and extraordinary cases, it is not desirable that a lad should be admitted so early as eighteen. But we are convinced that, except in very rare and extraordinary cases, no lad of eighteen will have any REPORT ON THE INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE 79 chance of being admitted. Hitherto the admissions have been given by favour. They are henceforward to be gained by superiority in an intellectual competition. While they were given by favour, they were frequently, indeed generally, given to persons whose age was not much above the minimum. A director would naturally wish his son or nephew to be handsomely provided for at nineteen rather than at twenty-three, and to be able to return to England with a competence at forty-four rather than at forty-eight. A majority of the students have, therefore, been admitted before they were nineteen, and have gone out before they were twenty-one. But it is plain that, in any intellectual competition, boys of eight- een must be borne down by men of twenty-one and twenty- two. We may, therefore, we believe, safely predict that nine-tenths of those who are admitted to the college under the new system will be older than nine-tenths of those who quit it under the present system. We hope and believe that among the successful competitors will frequently be young men who have obtained the highest honours of Ox- ford and Cambridge. To many such young men a fellow- ship, or a tutorship, which must be held on condition of celibacy, will appear less attractive than a situation which enables the person who holds it to marry at an early age. The India Act next empowers the Board of Control to determine the qualifications of the candidates for admission to Haileybury. It seems to us to be proper that every per- son who intends to be a candidate should, at least six weeks before the examination, notify his intention to the Board of Control, and should at the same time transmit a list of the subjects in which he proposes to be examined, in order that there may be time to provide a sufficient number of examiners in each department. He should, at the same time, lay before the Board testimonials certifying that his moral character is good. Whether the testimonials be or 80 APPENDIX A be not satisfactory is a point which we conceive may safely be left to the determination of the Board. The Board is then authorized by the Act to make regula- tions prescribing the branches of knowledge in which the candidates for admission to Haileybury shall be examined. Here arises at once a question of the gravest importance. Ought the examination to be confined to those branches of knowledge to which it is desirable that English gentlemen who mean to remain at home should pay some attention? or ought it to extend to branches of knowledge which are useful to a servant of the East India Company, but useless, or almost useless, to a person whose life is to be passed in Europe? Our opinion is, that the examination ought to be confined to those branches of knowledge to which it is desirable that English gentlemen who mean to remain at home should pay some attention. It is with much diffidence that we venture to predict the effect of the new system ; but we think we can hardly be mistaken in believing that the introduction of that system will be an event scarcely less important to this country than to India. The educated youth of the United Kingdom are henceforth to be invited to engage in a competition in which about forty prizes will, on an average, be gained every year. Every one of these prizes is nothing less than an honourable social position, and a comfortable indepen- dence for life. It is difficult to estimate the effect which the prospect of prizes so numerous and so attractive will produce. We are, however, familiar with some facts which may assist our conjectures. At Trinity College, the largest and wealthiest of the colleges of Cambridge, about four fellowships are given annually by competition. These fel- lowships can be held only on condition of celibacy, and the income derived from them is a very moderate one for a single man. It is notorious that the examinations for REPORT ON THE INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE 8 1 Trinity fellowships have, directly and indirectly, done much to give a direction to the studies of Cambridge and of all the numerous schools which are the feeders of Cambridge. What, then, is likely to be the effect of a competition for prizes which will be ten times as numerous as the Trinity fellowships, and of which each will be more valuable than a Trinity fellowship? We are inclined to think that the examinations for situations in the Civil Service of the East India Company will produce an effect which will be felt in every seat of learning throughout the realm, at Oxford and Cambridge, at the University of London and the Uni- versity of Durham, at Edinburgh and Glasgow, at Dublin, at Cork, and at Belfast. The number of candidates will doubtless be much greater than the number of vacancies. It will not surprise us if the ordinary number examined should be three or four hundred. The great majority, and among them many young men of excellent abilities and laudable industry, must be unsuccessful. If, therefore, branches of knowledge specially Oriental should be among the subjects of examination, it is probable that a considerable number of the most hopeful youths in the country will be induced to waste much time, at that period of life at which time is most precious, in studies which will never, in any conceiv- able case, be of the smallest use to them. We think it most desirable that the examination should be of such a nature that no candidate who may fail shall, to whatever calling he may betake himself, have any reason to regret the time and labour which he spent in preparing himself to be examined. Nor do we think that we should render any service to India by inducing her future rulers to neglect, in their earlier years, European literature and science, for studies specially Indian. We believe that men who have been engaged, up to one or two and twenty, in studies which have no immediate connexion with the business of any pro- 82 APPENDIX A fession, and of which the effect is merely to open, to in- vigorate, and to enrich the mind, will generally be found, in the business of every profession, superior to men who have, at eighteen or nineteen, devoted themselves to the special studies of their calling. The most illustrious Eng- lish jurists have been men who have never opened a law book till after the close of a distinguished academical career; nor is there any reason to believe that they would have been greater lawyers if they had passed in drawing pleas and conveyances the time which they gave to Thu- cydides, to Cicero, and to Newton. The duties of a Civil Servant of the East India Company are of so high a nature that in his case it is peculiarly desirable that an excellent general education, such as may enlarge and strengthen his understanding, should precede the special education which must qualify him to despatch the business of his cutcherry. It therefore seems to us quite clear that those vernacular Indian languages which are of no value except for the purpose of communicating with natives of India, ought not to be subjects of examination. But we are inclined, though with much distrust of our own judgment, to think that a distinction may properly be made between the vernacular languages and two languages which may be called the clas- sical languages of India, the Sanscrit and the Arabic. These classical languages are by no means without intrinsic value in the eyes both of philologists and of men of taste. The Sanscrit is the great parent stock from which most of the vernacular languages of India are derived, and stands to them in a relation similar to that in which the Latin stands to the French, the Italian, the Spanish, and the Portuguese. The Arabic has contributed, though not in the same degree with the Sanscrit, to the formation of the vocabularies of India; and it is the source from which all the Mahometan nations draw their religion, their jurisprudence, and their science. These two languages are already studied by a few REPORT ON THE INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE 83 young men at the great English seats of learning. They can be learned as well here as in the East; and they are not likely to be studied in the East unless some attention has been paid to them here. It will, we apprehend, very seldom happen that a candidate will offer himself for examination in Sanscrit or in Arabic; but, as such instances may occur, we think it expedient to include those languages in the list of subjects. As to the other subjects we speak with more confidence. Foremost among these subjects we place our own language and literature. One or more themes for English compo- sition ought to be proposed. Two papers of questions ought to be set. One of those papers should be so framed as to enable the candidates to show their knowledge of the history and constitution of our country : the other ought to be so framed as to enable them to show the extent of their knowledge of our poets, wits, and philosophers. In the two great ancient languages there ought to be an examination not less severe than those examinations by which the highest classical distinctions are awarded at Oxford and Cambridge. At least three passages from Latin writers ought to be set, to be translated into English. Subjects should be proposed for original composition, both in Latin verse and in Latin prose; and passages of English verse and prose should be set, to be turned into Latin. At least six passages from Greek writers should be set, to be translated into English. Of these passages, one should be taken from the Homeric poems, one from some historian of the best age, one from some philosopher of the best age, one from some Attic orator, and at least one from the Attic drama. The candidates ought to have a full opportunity of exhibiting their skill in translating both Eng- lish prose and English verse into Greek; and there should be a paper of questions which would enable them to show their knowledge of ancient history, both political and literary. 84 APPENDIX A We think that three of the modern languages of the Con- tinent, the French, the Italian, and the German ought to be among the subjects of examination. Several passages in every one of those languages should be set, to be turned into English; passages taken from English writers should be set, to be turned into French, Italian, and German; and papers of questions should be framed which would enable a candidate to show his knowledge of the civil and literary history of France, Italy, and Germany. The examination in pure and mixed mathematics ought to be of such a nature as to enable the judges to place in proper order all the candidates, from those who have never gone beyond Euclid's Elements and the first part of algebra up to those who possess the highest acquirements. We think it important, however, that not only the acquirements, but also the mental powers and resources of the competitors should be brought to the test. With this view the examina- tion papers should contain a due proportion of original problems, and of questions calculated to ascertain whether the principles of mathematical science are thoroughly understood. The details will probably be best arranged by some of those eminent men who have lately been mod- erators in the University of Cambridge, and who know by experience how to conduct the examinations of large num- bers of persons simultaneously. It must, however, be borne in mind that the extent and direction of mathemati- cal reading, especially in the higher branches, differ greatly at the different Universities of the United Kingdom. The mathematical examination for the Indian service must, therefore, in order to do justice to all candidates, embrace a wider range of questions than is usual at Cambridge, Oxford, or Dublin. Of late years some natural sciences which do not fall under the head of mixed mathematics, and especially chemistry, geology, mineralogy, botany, and zoology, have REPORT ON THE INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE 85 been introduced as a part of general education into several of our Universities and colleges. There may be some prac- tical difficulty in arranging the details of an examination in these sciences; but it is a difficulty which has, we believe, been at some seats of learning already overcome. We have no hesitation in recommending that there should be at least one paper of questions relating to these branches of knowledge. We propose to include the moral sciences in the scheme of examination. Those sciences are, it is well known, much studied both at Oxford and at the Scottish Universi- ties. Whether this study shall have to do with mere words or with things, whether it shall degenerate into a formal and scholastic pedantry, or shall train the mind for the highest purposes of active life, will depend, to great extent, on the way in which the examination is conducted. We are of opinion that the examination should be con- ducted in the freest manner, that mere technicalities should be avoided, and that the candidate should not be confined to any particular system. The subjects which fall under this head are the elements of moral and political philoso- phy, the history of the ancient and modern schools of moral and political philosophy, the science of logic, and the inductive method of which the Novum Organum is the great text-book. The object of the examiners should be rather to put to the test the candidate's powers of mind than to ascertain the extent of his metaphysical reading. The whole examination ought, we think, to be carried on by means of written papers. The candidates ought not to be allowed the help of any book; nor ought they, after once a subject for composition has been proposed to them, or a paper of questions placed before them, to leave the place of examination till they have finished their work. It is, of course, not to be expected, that any man of twenty-two will have made considerable proficiency in all 86 APPENDIX A the subjects of examination. An excellent mathematician will often have little Greek, and an excellent Greek scholar will be entirely ignorant of French and Italian. Nothing can be further from our wish than to hold out premiums for knowledge of wide surface and of small depth. We are of opinion that a candidate ought to be allowed no credit at all for taking up a subject in which he is a mere smatterer. Profound and accurate acquaintance with a single language ought to tell more than bad translations and themes in six languages. A single paper which shows that the writer thoroughly understands the principles of the differential calculus ought to tell more than twenty superficial and incorrect answers to questions about chemistry, botany, mineralogy, metaphysics, logic, and English history. It will be necessary that a certain number of marks should be assigned to each subject, and that the place of a candidate should be determined by the sum total of the marks which he has gained. The marks ought, we con- ceive, to be distributed among the subjects of examina- tion, in such a manner that no part of the kingdom, and no class of schools, shall exclusively furnish servants to the East India Company. It would be grossly unjust, for example, to the great academical institutions of England, not to allow skill in Greek and Latin versification to have a considerable share in determining the issue of the compe- tition. Skill in Greek and Latin versification has indeed no direct tendency to form a judge, a financier, or a diplo- matist. But the youth who does best what all the ablest and most ambitious youths about him are trying to do well will generally prove a superior man; nor can we doubt that an accomplishment by which Fox and Canning, Grenville and Wellesley, Mansfield and Tenterden, first distinguished themselves above their fellows, indicates powers of mind, which, properly trained and directed, may do great service to the State. On the other hand, we must remember that REPORT ON THE INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE 87 in the north of this island the art of metrical composition in the ancient languages is very little cultivated, and that men so eminent as Dugald Stewart, Homer, Jeffrey, and Mackintosh, would probably have been quite unable to write a good copy of Latin alcaics, or to translate ten lines of Shakespeare into Greek iambics. We wish to see such a system of examination established as shall not exclude from the service of the East India Company either a Mack- intosh or a Tenterden, either a Canning or a Horner. We have, with an anxious desire to deal fairly by all parts of the United Kingdom, and by all places of liberal edu- cation, framed the following scale, which we venture to submit for your consideration : English Language and Literature : Composition 500 History 500 General literature 500 1500 Greek 750 Latin 750 French 375 German 375 Italian 375 Mathematics, pure and mixed 1000 Natural sciences 500 Moral sciences 500 Sanskrit 375 Arabic 375 "6875 It seems to us probable, that of the 6875 marks, which are the maximum, no candidate will ever obtain half. A can- didate who is at once a distinguished classical scholar and a distinguished mathematician will be, as he ought to be, 88 APPENDIX A certain of success. A classical scholar who is no mathema- tician, or a mathematician who is no classical scholar, will be certain of success, if he is well read in the history and literature of his own country. A young man who has scarcely any knowledge of mathematics, little Latin, and no Greek, may pass such an examination in English, French, Italian, German, geology, and chemistry, that he may stand at the head of the list. It can scarcely be necessary for us to add, that no expense ought to be grudged which may be necessary to secure the services of the ablest examiners in every branch of learning. Experience justifies us in pronouncing with entire confi- dence that, if the examiners be well chosen, it is utterly impossible that the delusive show of knowledge which is the effect of the process popularly called cramming can ever be successful against real learning and ability. Whether the examinations ought to be held half-yearly or annually is a question which cannot, we think, be satis- factorily determined until after the first experiment has been made. When the result of the examination has been declared, the successful candidates will not yet be Civil Servants of the East India Company, but only Civil Servants elect. It appears from the fortieth clause of the Act to be the inten- tion of the Legislature that, before they proceed to the East, there should be a period of probation and a second examination. In what studies, then, ought the period of probation to be passed ? And what ought to be the nature of the second examination? It seems to us that, from the moment at which the suc- cessful candidates, whom we will now call probationers, have been set apart as persons who will, in all probability, have to bear a part in the government of India, they should give their whole minds to the duties of their nevr position. REPORT ON THE INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE 89 They must now be considered as having finished their gen- eral education, and as having finished it with honour. Their serious studies must henceforth be such as have a special tendency to fit them for their calling. Of the special knowledge which a Civil Servant of the Company ought to possess, much can be acquired only in India, and much may be acquired far more easily in India than in England. It would evidently be a mere waste of time to employ a month here in learning what may be better learned in a week at Calcutta or Madras. But there are some kinds of knowledge which are not considered as essential parts of the liberal education of our youth, but which it is most important that a Civil Servant of the Com- pany should possess, and which he may acquire in England not less easily, indeed more easily, than in India. We conceive that every probationer ought, during the interval between his first and his second examination, to apply him- self vigorously to the acquiring of these kinds of knowledge. The subjects of his new studies will, we apprehend, be found to range themselves under four heads. He should, in the first place, make himself well ac- quainted with the history of India, in the largest sense of the word history. He should study that history, not merely in the works of Orme, of Wilks, and of Mill, but also in the travels of Bernier, in the odes of Sir William Jones, and in the journals of Heber. He should be well informed about the geography of the country, about its natural productions, about its manufactures, about the phys- ical and moral qualities of the different races which inhabit it, and about the doctrines and rites of those religions which have so powerful an influence on the population. He should trace with peculiar care the progress of the British power. He should understand the constitution of our Government, and the nature of the relations between that Government and its vassals, Mussulman, Mahratta, and 90 APPENDIX A Rajpoot. He should consult the most important parlia- mentary reports and debates on Indian affairs. All this may be done with very much greater facility in England than in any part of India, except at the three seats of Government, if indeed the three seats of Government ought to be excepted. Secondly, it seems to us to be desirable that every pro- bationer should bestow some attention on the general prin- ciples of jurisprudence. The great majority of the Civil Servants of the East India Company are employed in the administration of justice. A large proportion of them are judges ; and some of the most important functions of the collectors are strictly judicial. That the general principles of jurisprudence may be studied here with more advantage than in India will be universally acknowledged. Thirdly, we think that every probationer ought to prepare himself for the discharge of his duties by paying jome at- tention to financial and commercial science. He should understand the mode of keeping and checking accounts, the principles of banking, the laws which regulate the ex- changes, the nature of public debts, funded and unfunded, and the effect produced by different systems of taxation on the prosperity of nations. We would by no means require him to subscribe any article of faith touching any contro- verted point in the science of political economy; but it is not too much to expect that he will make himself acquainted with those treatises on political economy which have become standard works. These studies can undoubtedly be prose- cuted with more advantage in England than in India. Fourthly, we think that the study of the vernacular lan- guages of India may, with great advantage, be begun in England. It is, indeed, only by intercourse with the native population that an Englishman can acquire the power of talking Bengalee or Telugu with fluency. But familiarity with the Bengalee or Telugu alphabet, skill in REPORT ON THE INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE 91 tracing the Bengalee or Telugu character, and knowledge of the Bengalee or Telugu grammar, may be acquired as quickly in this country as in the East. Nay, we are inclined to believe that an English student will, at his first introduction to an Indian language, make more rapid progress under good English teachers than under pundits, to whom he is often unable to explain his diffi- culties. We are, therefore, of opinion that every proba- tioner should acquire in this country an elementary knowledge of at least one Indian language. If this recommendation be adopted, it will be desirable that the probationers should, immediately after the first examination, be distributed among the Presidencies. It will indeed be desirable that the division of the Bengal Civil Service into two parts, one destined for the upper and the other for the lower provinces, should be made here at the earliest possible moment, instead of being made, as it now is, at Calcutta. In what manner the distribution of Civil Servants among the Presidencies ought henceforth to be made is a question which, though it has not been referred to us, is yet so closely connected with the questions which have been referred to us, that we have been forced to take it into consideration. We are disposed to think that it might be advisable to allow the probationers, according to the order in which they stand at the first examination, to choose their Presidencies. The only objection to this arrangement is, that, as the Presi- dency of Bengal is generally supposed to be the theatre on which the abilities of a Civil Servant may be most advan- tageously displayed, all the most distinguished young men would choose Bengal, and would leave Madras and Bombay to those who stood at the bottom of the list. We admit that this would be an evil; but it would be an evil which must, we conceive, speedily cure itself; for as soon as it becomes notorious that the ablest men in the Civil Service 92 APPENDIX A are all collected in one part of India, and are there stop- ping each other's way, a probationer who is free to make his choice will prefer some other part of India, where, though the prizes may be a little less attractive, the com- petition will be less formidable. If, however, it should be thought inexpedient to allow the probationers to choose their own Presidencies in the manner which we have sug- gested, it seems to us that the best course would be to make the distribution by lot. We are satisfied that, if the dis- tribution be made arbitrarily, either by the Directors or by Her Majesty's Minister for Indian Affairs, it will be viewed with much suspicion, and will excite much mur- muring. At present nobody complains of the distribution. A gentleman who has obtained a Bombay writership for his son is delighted and thankful. It may not be quite so acceptable as a Bengal writership would have been, but it is a free gift, it is a most valuable favour, and it would be the most odious ingratitude to repine because it is not more valuable still. Henceforth an appointment to the Civil Ser- vice of the Company will be not matter of favour, but mat- ter of right. He who obtains such an appointment will owe it solely to his own abilities and industry. If, therefore, the Court of Directors or the Board of Control should send him to Bombay when he wishes to be sent to Bengal, and should send to Bengal young men who in the examination stood far below him, he will naturally think himself injured. His family and friends will espouse his quarrel. A cry will be raised, that one man is favoured because he is related to the Chairman, and another because he is befriended by a Member of Parliament who votes with the Government. It seems to us, therefore, advisable that the distribution of the Civil Servants among the Presidencies, if it cannot be made the means of rewarding merit, should be left to chance. After the allotment, of course, any two probationers should be at liberty to make an exchange by consent. REPORT ON THE INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE 93 But, in whatever manner the distribution may be made, it ought to be made as soon as the issue of the first exam- ination is decided; for, till the distribution is made, it will be impossible for any probationer to know what ver- nacular language of India it would be most expedient for him to study. The Hindostanee, indeed, will be valuable to him, wherever he may be stationed; but no other living language is spoken over one-third of India. Tamul would be as useless in Bengal and Bengalee would be as useless at Agra, as Welsh in Portugal. We should recommend that every probationer, for what- ever Presidency he may be destined, should be permitted to choose Hindostanee as the language in which he will pass. A probationer who is to reside in the lower prov- inces of the Bengal Presidency should be allowed to choose either Hindostanee or Bengalee. A probationer who is to go to the upper provinces should be allowed to choose among Hindostanee, Hindee, and Persian. A probationer who is to go to Madras should be allowed to choose among Hin- dostanee, Telugu, and Tamul. A probationer who is to go to Bombay should be allowed to choose among Hindo- stanee, Mahrattee, and Guzeratee. It is probable that some probationers who have a peculiar talent for learning languages will study more than one of the dialects among which they are allowed to make their choice. Indeed it is not improbable that some who take an interest in philology will apply themselves voluntarily to the Sanscrit and the Arabic. It will hereafter be seen that, though we require as the indispensable condition of pass- ing only an elementary knowledge of one of the vernacular tongues of India, we propose to give encouragement to those students who aspire to be eminent orientalists. The four studies, then, to which, in our opinion, the probationers ought to devote themselves during the period of probation, are, first, Indian history; secondly, the science 94 APPENDIX A of jurisprudence; thirdly, commercial and financial science; and fourthly, the oriental tongues. The time of probation ought not, we think, to be less than one year, nor more than two years. There should be periodical examinations, at which a probationer of a year's standing may pass, if he can, and at which every probationer of two years' standing must pass, on pain of forfeiting his appointment. This exam- ination should, of course, be in the four branches of know- ledge already mentioned as those to which the attention of the probationers ought to be especially directed. Marks should be assigned to the different subjects, as at the first examination; and it seems to us reasonable that an equal number of marks should be assigned to all the four subjects, on the supposition that each probationer is examined in only one of the vernacular languages of India. Sometimes, however, as we have said, a probationer may study more than one of these vernacular languages of India among which he is at liberty to make his choice, or may, in addi- tion to one or more of the vernacular languages of India, learn Sanscrit or Arabic. We think it reasonable that to every language in which he offers himself for examination an equal number of marks should be assigned. When the marks have been cast up, the probationers who have been examined should be arranged in order of merit. All those who have been two years probationers, and who have, in the opinion of the examiners, used their time well, and made a respectable proficiency, should be declared Civil Servants of the Company. Every proba- tioner who, having been a probationer only one year, has obtained a higher place than some of the two-year men who have passed, should also be declared a Civil Servant of the Company. All the Civil Servants who pass in one year should take rank in the service according to their places in the final examination. Thus a salutary emulation REPORT ON THE INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE 95 will be kept up to the last moment. It ought to be ob- served, that the precedency which we propose to give to merit will not be merely honorary, but will be attended by very solid advantages. It is in order of seniority that the members of the Civil Service succeed to those annui- ties to which they are all looking forward, and it may depend on the manner in which a young man acquits him- self at his final examination, whether he shall remain in India till he is past fifty, or shall be able to return to Eng- land at forty-seven or forty-eight. The instances in which persons who have been successful in the first examination will fail in the final examination, will, we hope and believe, be very few. We hope and believe, also, that it will very rarely be necessary to expel any probationer from the service on account of grossly profligate habits, or of any action unbecoming a man of honour. The probationers will be young men superior to their fellows in science and literature; and it is not among young men superior to their fellows in science and literature that scandalous immorality is generally found to prevail. It is notoriously not once in twenty years that a student who has attained high academical distinction is expelled from Oxford or Cambridge. Indeed, early superiority in science and literature generally indicates the existence of some qualities which are securities against vice, indus- try, self-denial, a taste for pleasures not sensual, a laudable desire of honourable distinction, a still more laudable desire to obtain the approbation of friends and relations. We therefore believe that the intellectual test which is about to be established will be found in practice to be also the best moral test that can be devised. One important question still remains to be considered. Where are the probationers to study? Are they all to study at Haileybury? Is it to be left to themselves to decide whether they will study at Haileybury or else- 96 APPENDIX A where ? Or will the Board of Control reserve to itself the power of determining which of them shall study at Hailey- bury, and which of them shall be at liberty to study else- where ? That the college at Haileybury is to be kept up is clearly implied in the terms of the 37th and 39th clauses of the India Act. That the Board of Control may make regula- tions which would admit into the Civil Service persons who have not studied at Haileybury is as clearly implied in the terms of the 4oth and 4ist clauses. Whether the law ought to be altered is a question on which we do not presume to give any opinion. On the supposition that the law is to remain unaltered, we venture to offer some suggestions which appear to us to be important. There must be, we apprehend, a complete change in the discipline of the college. Almost all the present students are under twenty; almost all the new students will be above twenty-one. The present students have gone to Haileybury from schools where they have been treated as boys. The new students will generally go thither from Universities, where they have been accustomed to enjoy the liberty of men. It will therefore be absolutely necessary that the regulations of the college should be altered, and that the probationers should be subject to no more severe restraint than is imposed on a bachelor of arts at Cambridge or Oxford. There must be an extensive change even in the buildings of the college. At present, each student has a single small chamber, which is at once his parlour and bedroom. It will be impossible to expect men of two or three and twenty, who have long been accustomed to be lodged in a very different manner, to be content with such accommo- dation. There must be a great change in the system of study. At present, the students generally go to Haileybury before REPORT ON THE INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE 97 they have completed their general education. Their gen- eral education and their special education, therefore, go on together. Henceforth, the students must be considered as men whose general education has been finished, and fin- ished with great success. Greek, Latin, and mathematics will no longer be parts of the course of study. The whole education will be special, and ought, in some departments, to be of a different kind from that which has hitherto been given. We are far, indeed, from wishing to detract from the merit of those professors, all of them highly respectable and some of them most eminent, who have taught law and political economy at Haileybury. But it is evident that a course of .lectures on law or political economy given to boys of eighteen, who have been selected merely by favour, must be a very different thing from a course of lectures on law or political economy given to men of twenty-three, who have been selected on account of their superior abilities and attainments. As respects law, indeed, we doubt whether the most skilful instructor will be able at Hailey- bury to impart to his pupils that kind of knowledge which it is most desirable that they should acquire. Some at least of the probationers ought, we conceive, not merely to attend lectures, and to read well chosen books on juris- prudence, but to see the actual working of the machinery by which justice is administered. They ought to hear legal questions, in which great principles are involved, argued by the ablest counsel, and decided by the highest courts in the realm. They ought to draw up reports of the argu- ments both of the advocates and of the judges. They ought to attend both civil and criminal trials, and to take notes of the evidence, and of the discussions and decisions respecting the evidence. It might be particularly desirable that they should attend the sittings of the Judicial Com- mittee of the Privy Council when important appeals from 98 APPENDIX A India are under the consideration of that tribunal. A pro- bationer, while thus employed, should regularly submit his notes of arguments and of evidence to his legal instructor for correction. Such a training as this would, we are inclined to think, be an excellent preparation for official life in India; and we must leave it to the Board of Con- trol to consider whether any plan can be devised by which such a training can be made compatible with residence at Haileybury. We have, etc. (Signed) T. B. MACAULAY. ASHBURTON. HENRY MELVILL. BENJAMIN JOWETT. JOHN GEORGE SHAW LEFEVRE. November, 1854. APPENDIX B EXAMINATIONS FOR THE CIVIL SERVICE OF INDIA An open Competitive Examination for admission to the Civil Service of India will be held in London, under the subjoined Regulations, commencing on the ist August, 1899. The number of persons to be selected at this Examination will be announced hereafter. No person will be admitted to compete from whom the Secretary, Civil Service Commission, has not received on or before the 3isx MAY, 1889, an application on the prescribed form, accompanied by a list of the subjects in which the Candidate desires to be examined. The Order for admission to the Examination will be posted on the \^>th July 1899, t the address given on the Form of Application. It will contain instructions as to the time and place at which candidates will be required to attend, and as to the manner in which the fee (^6) is to be paid. CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION, July, 1898. REGULATIONS %* The following Regulations, made by the Secretary of State for India in Council, are liable to alteration from year to year. i. An Examination for admission to the Civil Service of India, open to all qualified persons, will be held in Lon- don in August of each year. The date of the Examination 99 100 APPENDIX B and the number of appointments to be made for each Province will be announced beforehand by the Civil Ser- vice Commissioners. 2. No person will be deemed qualified who shall not satisfy the Civil Service Commissioners : (*'.) That he is a natural-born subject of Her Majesty. ('.) That he had attained the age of twenty-one, and had not attained the age of twenty-three, on the first day of the year in which the Examination is held. (N. B. In the case of Natives of India it will be necessary for a Candidate to obtain a certificate of age and nation- ality signed, should he be a resident in British India, by the Secretary to Government of the Province, or the Com- missioner of the Division within which his family resides, or should he reside in a Native State, by the highest Politi- cal Officer accredited to the State in which his family resides. (m.) That he has no disease, constitutional affection, or bodily infirmity unfitting him, or likely to unfit him, for the Civil Service of India. (iv. ) That he is of good moral character. 3. Should the evidence upon the above points be prima facie satisfactory to the Civil 'Service Commissioners, the Candidate, on payment of the prescribed fee will be ad- mitted to the Examination. The Commissioners may however in their discretion at any time prior to the grant of the Certificate of Qualification hereinafter referred to, institute such further inquiries as they may deem necessary; and if the result of such inquiries, in the case of any Can- didate, should be unsatisfactory to them in any of the above respects, he will be ineligible for admission to the Civil Service of India, and if already selected, will be removed from the position of a Probationer. 4. The Open Competitive Examination will take place only in the following branches of knowledge : EXAMINATIONS FOR CIVIL SERVICE OF INDIA IOI Marks English Composition ...... 500 Sanskrit Language and Literature . . . 500 Arabic Language and Literature . . . . 500 Greek Language and Literature . . . . 750 Latin Language and Literature .... 750 English Language and Literature (including special period named by the Commissioners l ) . 500 French Language and Literature .... 500 German Language and Literature . . . 500 Mathematics (pure and applied) .... 900 Advanced Mathematical subjects (pure and applied) ....... 900 Natural Science, i.e. any number not exceeding three of the following subjects: Elementary Chemistry and Elementary Physics ...... 600 (N.B. This subject may not be taken up by those who offer either Higher Chemistry or Higher Physics.) Higher Chemistry 600 Higher Physics ..... 600 Geology ....... 600 Botany ....... 600 Zoology ....... 600 Animal Physiology ..... 600 Greek History (Ancient, including Constitution) . 400 Roman History (Ancient, including Constitution) 400 English History ....... 500 General Modern History (one of the periods speci- fied in the syllabus issued by the Commis- sioners 1 ) 500 1 A Syllabus, defining the character of the Examination in the vari- ous subjects, may be obtained on application to the Secretary, Civil Service Commission. 1800 102 APPENDIX B Marks Logic and Mental Philosophy (Ancient and Modern) 400 Moral Philosophy (Ancient and Modern) . . 400 Political Economy and Economic History . . 500 Political Science (including Analytical Jurispru- dence, the early History of Institutions, and Theory of Legislation) 500 Roman Law ....... 500 English Law. Under the head of " English Law " shall be included the following subjects, viz. : (i) Law of Contract; (2) Law of Evidence; (3) Law of the Constitution; (4) Criminal Law; (5) Law of Real Property; and of these five subjects Candidates shall be at liberty to offer any four, but not more than four . . 500 Candidates are at liberty to name any or all of these branches of knowledge. None is obligatory. 5. The merit of the persons examined will be estimated by marks; and the number set opposite to each branch in the preceding regulation denotes the greatest number of marks that can be obtained in respect of it. 6. The marks assigned to Candidates in each branch will be subject to such deduction as the Civil Service Commis- sioners may deem necessary 1 in order to secure that no credit be allowed for merely superficial knowledge. 7. The Examination will be conducted on paper and viva voce, as may be deemed necessary. 8. The marks obtained by each Candidate, in respect of each of the branches in which he shall have been examined, will be added up and the names of the several Candidates who shall have obtained, after the deduction above men- tioned, a greater aggregate number of marks than any of the 1 No deduction will be made from the marks assigned to Candidates in Mathematics or English Composition. EXAMINATIONS FOR CIVIL SERVICE OF INDIA 103 remaining Candidates, will be set forth in order of merit, and such Candidates shall be deemed to be selected Candidates for the Civil Service of India, provided they appear to be in other respects duly qualified. Should any of the selected Candidates become disqualified, the Secretary of State for India will determine whether the vacancy thus created shall be filled up or not. In the former case, the Candidate next in order of merit, and in other respects duly qualified, shall be deemed to be a selected Candidate. A Candidate en- titled to be deemed a selected Candidate, but declining to accept the nomination as such, which may be offered to him, will be disqualified for any subsequent competition. 9. Selected Candidates before proceeding to India will be on probation for one year, at the end of which time they will be examined, with a view of testing their progress in the following subjects : l Compulsory Marks 1. Indian Penal Code and Criminal Procedure Code ....... 500 2. The principal Vernacular Language of the Province to which the Candidate is assigned ...... 400 3. The Indian Evidence Act and the Indian Contract Act ..... 500 Optional. (Not more than two of the following subjects, of which one must be either the Code of Civil Procedure or Hindu and Muhammadan Law. Candidates offering one subject only are restricted to a choice between the two Law subjects specified.) 1 Instructions, showing the extent of the Examination, will be issued to the successful Candidates as soon as possible after the result of the Open Competition is declared. 104 APPENDIX B Marks 1. The Code of Civil Procedure . . . 400 2. Hindu and Muhammadan Law . . . 450 3. Sanskrit 1 400 4. Arabic ....... 400 5. Persian ....... 400 6. History of British India .... 350 7. Chinese (for Candidates assigned to the Province of Burma only) . . . 400 In this Examination, as in the open competition, the merit of the Candidates examined will be estimated by marks (which will be subject to deductions in the same way as the marks assigned at the open competition), and the number set opposite to each subject denotes the greatest number of marks that can be obtained in respect of it. The Examination will be conducted on paper and viva voce, as may be deemed necessary. This Examination will be held at the close of the year of probation, and will be called the "Final Examination." 10. The selected Candidates will also be tested during their probation as to their proficiency in Riding. The Examination will be held as follows : (1) Shortly after the result of the Open Competitive Examination ha been declared, or at such time or times as the Commissioners may appoint during the course of the probationary year. (2) Again, at the time of the Final Examination, Candi- dates who may fully satisfy the Commissioners of their ability to ride well and to perform journeys on horseback, shall receive a Certificate which shall entitle them to be credited with 200 or 100 marks, according to the degree of proficiency displayed, to be added to their marks in the Final Examination. 2 These subjects may not be offered by any Candidate who has offered them at the open competition. EXAMINATIONS FOR CIVIL SERVICE OF INDIA 10$ (3) Candidates who fail to obtain this Certificate, but who gain a Certificate of minimum proficiency in riding, will be allowed to proceed to India, but will be subjected on their arrival to such further tests in riding as may be pre- scribed by their Government, and shall receive no increase to their initial salary until they have passed such tests to the satisfaction of that Government. A Candidate who fails at the end of the year of probation to gain at least the Cer- tificate of minimum proficiency in riding, will be liable to have his name removed from the list of selected Candidates. 11. The selected Candidates who, at the Final Examina- tion, shall be found to have a competent knowledge of the subjects specified in Regulation 9, and who shall have sat- isfied the Civil Service Commissioners of their eligibility in respect of nationality, age, health, character, and ability to ride, shall be certified by the said Commissioners to be entitled to be appointed to the Civil Service of India, pro- vided they shall comply with the regulations in force, at the time, for that Service. 12. Persons desirous to be admitted as Candidates, must apply on Forms, which maybe obtained from "The Sec- retary, Civil Service Commission, London, S.W.," at any time after the ist December, in the year previous to that in which the Examination is to be held. The Forms must be returned so as to be received at the office of the Civil Service Commissioners on or before the 3ist May (or, if that date should fall upon a Sunday or public holiday, then, on or before the first day thereafter on which their office is open), in the year in which the Examination is to be held. The Civil Service Commissioners are authorized by the Secretary of State for India in Council to make the follow- ing announcements : (i.) Selected Candidates will be allotted to the various provinces upon a consideration of all the circumstances.. 106 APPENDIX B including their own wishes; but the requirements of the Public Service will rank before every other consideration. (ii.) An allowance amounting to 100 will be given to all Candidates who pass their probation at one of the Universities or Colleges which have been approved by the Secretary of State, viz., the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Dublin, Glasgow, Edinburgh, St. Andrews, and Aberdeen ; Victoria University, Manchester; University College, London; and King's College, London ; provided such Candidates shall have passed the Final Examination to the satisfaction of the Civil Service Commissioners, and shall have conducted themselves well and complied with such rules as may be laid down for the guidance of Selected Candidates. The whole probation must ordinarily be passed at the same Institution. Migration will not be permitted except for special reasons approved by the Secretary of State. (iii.) The allowance of ;ioo will not be paid to any Selected Candidate until he has been certified by the Civil Service Commissioners to be entitled to be appointed to the Civil Service of India ; and every Certificated Candidate must, before receiving his allowance, give a written undertak- ing to refund the amount in the event of his failing to pro- ceed to India. (iv.) All Candidates obtaining Certificates will be also required to enter into covenants, by which, amongst other things, they will bind themselves to make such payments as under the rules and regulations for the time being in force, they may be required to make towards their own pensions or for the pensions of their families. The stamps payable on these covenants amount to \. (v.) The seniority in the Civil Service of India of the Selected Candidates will be determined according to the order in which they stand on the list resulting from the combined marks of the Open Competitive and Final Examinations. EXAMINATIONS FOR CIVIL SERVICE OF INDIA IO/ (vi.) Selected Candidates will be required to report their arrival in India within such period after the grant of their Certificate of Qualification as the Secretary of State may in each case direct. (vii.) Candidates rejected at the Final Examination held in any year will in no case be allowed to present themselves for re-examination. N.B. A Manual of Rules and Regulations applicable to members of the covenanted Civil Service of India has been compiled by permission of the Government of India and may now be procured either from Messrs. A. Constable & Co., 2, Whitehall Gardens, S.W., or from Mr. E. A. Arnold, 37, Bedford Street, Covent Garden. Price 2s. 6d. The Commissioners have been requested by the Secretary of State for India to draw the attention of selected Candi- dates to the prefatory note attached to this manual, as it is considered important that it should be clearly understood that this compilation is not to be regarded in any other light than that of a collection, made for facility of reference, of certain information and rules, that it is by no means exhaustive, and that it is liable to such modifications as may from time to time be sanctioned by competent authority. APPENDIX C CIVIL SERVICE OF INDIA; CLERKSHIPS (CLASS i) IN THE HOME CIVIL SERVICE ; AND EASTERN CADETSHIPS SYLLABUS showing the extent of the Examination in certain subjects. ENGLISH COMPOSITION. An Essay to be written on one of several subjects specified by the Civil Service Commis- sioners on their Examination Paper. ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. The Examina- tion will be in two parts. In the one the Candidates will be expected to show a general acquaintance with the course of English Literature, as represented (mainly) by the fol- lowing writers in verse and prose, between the reign of Edward III. and the accession of Queen Victoria: VERSE. Chaucer, Langland, Spenser, Shakespeare, Mil- ton, Dryden, Pope, Gray, Collins, Johnson, Goldsmith, Crabbe, Cowper, Campbell, Wordsworth, Scott, Byron, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats. PROSE. Bacon, Sir Thomas Browne, Milton, Cowley, Bunyan, Dryden, Swift, Defoe, Addison, Johnson, Burke, Scott, Macaulay (Essays and Biographies). A minute knowledge of the works of these authors will not be looked for in this part of the Examination, which will, however, test how far the Candidates have studied the chief productions of the greatest English writers in them- selves, and are acquainted with the leading characteristics of their thought and style, and with the place which each 108 SYLLABUS OF THE EXAMINATION 109 of them occupies in the history of the English Literature. Candidates will also be expected to show that they have studied in these authors the history of the English Lan- guage in respect of its vocabulary, syntax, and prosody. The other part of the Examination will relate to one of the periods named below, which will follow each other year by year in the order indicated. 1. A.D. 1800 to A.D. 1832. (1899) (Nineteenth Century writers to the death of Scott.) 2. A.D. 1360 tO A.D. l6oo. (1900) (Chaucer to Spenser.) 3. A.D. I6OO tO A.D. I7OO. (1901) (Shakespeare to Dryden.) 4. A.D. 1700 to A.D. 1800. (1902) (Pope to Cowper.) The Examination in this part will require from Candi- dates a more minute acquaintance with the history of the English Language and Literature, as illustrated in the chief works produced in each period, and will be based to a considerable extent, but by no means exclusively, on cer- tain books specified each year by the Commissioners. 1 The names placed under the dates are intended to suggest the general character of the literary development of the period, and, consequently, the natural limits of the Exam- 1 The books for 1899 are : Moore: Lalla Rookh. Shelley : Prometheus Unbound. Byron : Manfred, Corsair, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. Scott : Marmion, Lady of the Lake. Sydney Smith : Works. Landor: Imaginary Conversations. Coleridge : Table Talk, Aids to Reflection. Austen : Emma, Pride and Prejudice. IIO APPENDIX C ination. All the works of Shakespeare, for example, will be regarded as falling within the period 1600 to 1700; all the works of Swift within the period 1700 to 1800; all the works of Scott and Wordsworth, and all the works of Macaulay within the period 1800 to 1832. FRENCH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. Translation from French into English, and from English into French. Critical questions on the French Language and Literature. GERMAN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. Translation from German into English, and from English into German. Critical questions on the German Language and Literature. LATIN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. Translation from Latin into English, Composition in Prose and Verse, or (as an alternative for Verse-Composition) a Latin Essay or Letter. Critical questions on the Latin Language (in- cluding questions on Philology) and Literature. GREEK LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. Translation from Greek into English, Composition in Prose and Verse, or (as an alternative for Verse-Composition) a Greek Dia- logue or Oration. Critical questions on Greek Language (including questions on Philology) and Literature. SANSKRIT LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. Translation from Sanskrit into English, and from English into Sanskrit. History of Sanskrit Literature (including knowledge of such Indian history as bears upon the subject) : Sanskrit Grammar; Vedic Philology. ARABIC LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. Translations as in Sanskrit; History of Arabic Literature (including know- ledge of such Arabic History as bears upon the subject); Arabic Grammar; Arabic Prosody. ENGLISH HISTORY. General questions on English His- tory from A.D. 800 to A.D. 1848; questions on the Consti- tutional History of England from A.D. 800 to A.D. 1848. GENERAL MODERN HISTORY. Candidates may, at their choice, be examined in any one of the following periods : SYLLABUS OF THE EXAMINATION III 1. From the accession of Charlemagne to the Third Crusade. (A.D. 800 to A. D. 1193.) 2. From the Third Crusade to the Diet of Worms. (A.D. 1193 to A.D. 1521.) 3. From the Diet of Worms to the Death of Louis XIV. (A.D. 1521 to A.D. 1715.) 4. From the accession of Louis XV. to the French Revolution of 1848. (A.D. 1715 to A.D. 1848.) Periods 3 and 4 will include Indian History. GREEK HISTORY. Questions on the General History of Greece to the death of Alexander; questions on the Consti- tutional History of Greece during the same period. ROMAN HISTORY. Questions on the General History of Rome to the death of Vespasian; questions on the Con- stitutional History of Rome during the same period. In Greek and Roman History candidates will be expected to show a knowledge of the original authorities. MATHEMATICS. Pure Mathematics : Algebra, Geometry (Euclid and Geometrical Conic Sections), Plane Trigo- nometry, Plane Analytical Geometry (less advanced por- tions), Differential Calculus (Elementary), Integral Cal- culus (Elementary). Applied Mathematics : Statics, Dynamics of a Particle, Hydrostatics, Geometrical Optics; all treated without the aid of the Differential or Integral Calculus. ADVANCED MATHEMATICS. Pure Mathematics: Higher Algebra, including Theory of Equations, Plane and Spher- ical Trigonometry, Differential Calculus, Integral Calculus, Differential Equations, Analytical Geometry, Plane and Solid. Applied Mathematics: Statics including Attractions, Dynamics of a Particle, Rigid Dynamics, Hydrodynamics, 112 APPENDIX C the Mathematical Theory of Electricity and Magnet- ism. POLITICAL ECONOMY AND ECONOMIC HISTORY. Candi- dates will be expected to possess a knowledge of economic theory as treated in the larger textbooks, also a knowledge of the existing economic conditions, and of statistical methods as applied to economic inquiries, together with a general knowledge of the history of industry, land tenure and economic legislation in the United Kingdom. LOGIC AND MENTAL PHILOSOPHY (Ancient and Modern). Logic will include both Deductive and Inductive Logic. Mental Philosophy will include Psychology and Meta- physics. POLITICAL SCIENCE. The Examination will not be con- fined to Analytical Jurisprudence, Early Institutions, and Theory of Legislation, but may embrace Comparative Poli- tics, the History pf Political Theories, etc. Candidates will be expected to show a knowledge of original authorities. CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION, August, 1898. CHAPTER II HOLLAND 1 HISTORY OF THE SUBJECT THE early history of the method of selecting offi- cials for service in the Dutch Indies is not unlike that of British India. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the colonies were under the con- trol of the Dutch East India Company, whose ser- vants, like those of its English rival, were appointed primarily with a view to commerce, and were selected arbitrarily by the management of the Company, the only exceptions being in the case of a few judicial officers who were both educated and appointed in Holland. Partly, no doubt, on account of the confu- sion into which their whole colonial empire was thrown by the wars of Napoleon, the efforts to introduce a better method of choosing and training civil servants 1 M. Chailley-Bert has given an excellent description of the method of recruiting Dutch colonial officials in his Report to the Institut Co- lonial International at their meeting at the Hague in September, 1895, printed in the Compte Rendu of that meeting. He is also the author of a small work entitled " La Hollande et les Fonctionnaires Coloniaux " ; but it is out of print, and I have been unable to find it. The statutes and ordinances bearing upon the matter, printed in French and Dutch, and preceded by a brief historical description and summary of the law by Dr. J. Spanjaard, the director of the Indische Instilling te Delft, were published by the same society in 1895, " ^ s Fonctionnaires Coloniaux," Vol. II. I 113 1 14 HOLLAND for the East came somewhat later with the Dutch than with the English. The movement for reform came, however, at last, although, as is often the case, its first manifestations were feeble and uncertain. In 1811 a few young men were set to study the native languages and institutions in Java, a practice which was renewed in 1819 after the termination of the English occupation. Efforts to improve the service were soon made by the home government also. In order to keep out men who did not possess the necessary qualifications, a Royal Ordinance provided in 1825 that no one should be appointed to the civil service in the East Indies who had not obtained from the Crown a diploma, to be issued only upon certain conditions designed to secure a good standard of capacity and morality. These provisions were not, however, strictly carried out, and failed to accomplish their object. A few years later another attempt was made in the Indies to better the special training of the future officials. An institution for teaching them Javanese was established at Soerakartain 1832 (Nederlandsche Staatsblad, No. 26) ; but it did not prove satisfactory in its results, and after ten years of life it was sup- pressed in 1843. (Ned. Staatsblad, No. I.) The Royal Academy at Delft The Government had, in fact, determined to trans- fer the training of the East Indian officials to Hoi- ROYAL ACADEMY AT DELFT 115 land, and it made use for that purpose of the Royal Academy at Delft, a school recently created to edu- cate engineers and students of commercial science for the benefit of the whole empire. In 1842 an ordinance provided that the diploma required for admission to the civil service of the Indies should be given only to men who had passed at this school an examination in the geography and ethnology of the Islands, the Javanese and Malay languages, Moham- medan law, etc. But the plan was not altogether a success, for the school was unable to supply the number of officials required, and hence the Govern- ment was constantly obliged to appoint to the service men who had not passed the examination. Moreover, the institution fell into many difficulties of a political, personal, and general nature. The Liberals com- plained that it was a nursery of Conservatives ; there was a quarrel over it between members of the Cabinet ; the professor of Javanese was accused of subordinat- ing everything else to his own subject ; objections were raised against educating engineers and Eastern civil servants in the same school ; and finally the Dutch in the East Indies complained bitterly of a system which did not permit any preparation for the service except in Holland. These causes forced a change, and in 1864 the institution at Delft was trans- formed into a purely polytechnic school, while an entirely new system of selecting the officials was introduced. 1 1 6 HOLLAND The Ordinance of 1864, and the Grand Examination for Officials The Royal Ordinance of September 10, I864 1 re- mains, subject to a number of subsequent modifica- tions in detail, the basis for the selection and training of officials for the civil service of the Indies at the present day. It provided that no one should be appointed to an administrative post in that service unless he had passed a satisfactory examination, 2 first, in certain general subjects, 3 for which, how- ever, an academic degree, or a diploma from a high school, an agricultural or a polytechnic school, was held to be an equivalent; 4 and second, (i) in the history, geography, and ethnology of the Dutch Indies; (2) the public institutions of the Dutch Indies; (3) the elements of Javanese or Malay; and (4) in one or more of the following subjects : the ele- ments of another native language ; the religious laws, institutions, and customs of the Dutch Indies ; survey- ing ; or accounting. For the judicial service (and it may be noted here that the separation of judicial and administrative work is carried lower down by the Dutch than by the English in the East, and that un- 1 Ned. Staatsblad, No. 93. 2 Posts with a salary of less than 150 florins a month form a sort of subordinate or clerical service, for which there is an examination, at first held both in Holland and the Indies, but afterwards only in the latter, upon arithmetic, the elements of the Dutch language, and handwriting. Ordinance, September 10, 1864, Art. 6. 8 Id., Art. 4. * Id., Art. 5. EXAMINATION FOR THE SERVICE like India there are in the Dutch Indies entirely sepa- rate judicial and administrative services), for the judicial service a candidate was required to have a degree of Doctor of Law, 1 and to have passed the second part of the examination already described, that containing the subjects relating to the East 2 The commission which held the examination was in- structed to report the marks of the candidates at the examination, 3 and as these determined the order of their selection, the examination was really competitive. This examination, or rather that part of it which relates to Eastern subjects, and for which no diploma was an equivalent, came to be known as the Grand Examination for Officials. To appease the Dutch residents in the East it was to be held both in Hol- land and in the Indies, 4 a provision that has remained in force ever since, and will be referred to again when the actual results of the system are discussed. The State School at Ley den Now it is evident that the subjects covered by the Grand Examination are not taught everywhere. In fact, they are of such an unusual nature that they could be studied only in some school especially equipped for the purpose; and, as the school at Delft was to be given up, some other institution must be founded for preparing the candidates for 1 Corresponding, of course, to our Bachelor of Laws. 2 Ord. September 10, 1864, Art. 3. Id., Art. 8. * Id., Art. 8. 118 HOLLAND the examination. The Government established there- fore at Leyden, already the seat of the most famous of the Dutch Universities, a State institution for instruc- tion in the geography, ethnology, and languages of the Indies ; 1 and a few years later it founded a similar school at Batavia in Java. But instead of giving to these institutions a monopoly of the educa- tion of Eastern officials, as had been done in the case of the Royal Academy at Delft, the Grand Examination was thrown open to all candidates who fulfilled the required conditions in regard to citizen- ship, etc. No doubt the Government expected that while candidates were at liberty to prepare for the examination in any way they pleased, in practice almost all of them would study at Leyden. Any such expectation was, however, frustrated by the old Dutch civic pride. The Municipal School at Delft The city of Delft had seen the officials for the Indies trained within its walls for a score of years, and did not want to have the privilege pass to another place. Accordingly in the same year, 1864, it founded a municipal school of its own (the Indische Instelling te Delft), to prepare candidates for the Grand Exami- nation ; and, strange to say, its pupils were, from the start, more successful than their rivals from Leyden. 1 Act of June IO, 1864 (Ned. Staatsblad, No. 71). The Regula- tions of the Institute were fixed by Ordinance of July 17, 1864 (Ned. Staatsblad, No. 86). EXAMINATION FOR THE SERVICE 1 19 One reason for this was that the school at Leyden was not equipped to teach all the subjects in the list. Another and more enduring cause was that, owing perhaps to their proximity to the University, the teach- ing of the professors was somewhat theoretical, and tended to make scholars of the pupils, rather than to fit them to win high marks in the competition ; whereas the aim of the School at Delft was the prac- tical one of getting as many of its students as pos- sible into the service. Its object, in short, was to fit its pupils effectively for the examination ; and this it succeeded in doing so well that in a dozen years it drove the School at Leyden out of business. That school was, in fact, abolished by statute in I876, 1 and its professors were transferred to the University. The Municipal School at Leyden Again the civic pride of Old Holland asserted itself ; for Leyden, disliking, as Delft had done at an earlier time, to lose a privilege once possessed, estab- lished another municipal school to prepare young men for the Grand Examination. But the effort was made in vain ; for the school at Delft had established its rep- utation as the best place to fit for the examination so firmly, and its professors had learned the art so well, that any attempt to compete with it was hopeless ; and after maintaining the struggle for a number of years, the school at Leyden finally closed its doors in 1891. The Indische Instelling te Delft was thus left Act of April 28, 1876, Art. 125 (Ned. Staatsblad, No. 102). 120 HOLLAND alone in the field ; and although there appears to have been a single case of a candidate who was suc- cessful at the examination and obtained an appoint- ment without being prepared either there or at Ley- den, yet it may be laid down as a rule that success at the examination can be attained only by a training at the School, and in what follows it will be assumed that the institution at Delft is the only means of preparation for the Grand Examination. Changes in the Ordinance of 1864. The Law of 1876, and the Examination by the Faculties The first important change in the provisions of the Ordinance of 1864 was made by the Law of April 28, 1876, for regulating higher education (Ned. Staats- blad, No. 102). Article 92 of this act provided that Doctors of Law who passed before the appropriate Faculties of a University an examination on colonial public law, the Mohammedan laws and customs, and the language, geography, and ethnology of the East Indies, should be qualified for appointment either to the judicial or the administrative service of the Indies. The object of this change was to permit Doctors of Law to study Eastern subjects, and pass their examination upon them, at the University of Leyden, instead of being obliged to take the Grand Examination for Officials, and it may be observed that the provision was contained in the same statute which abolished the State School at Leyden. In fact, without the provision in question that statute EXAMINATION FOR THE SERVICE 121 would have had the effect of forcing all candidates for the service to attend the School at Delft. Until 1883, however, no ordinance appears to have been passed to make the Examination by the Faculties, 1 as the new examination at the University was called, an effectual means of obtaining an appointment. 2 More- over, in 1892 it was again rendered nugatory, so far as the administrative service is concerned ; for while the provision of law was left unrepealed, an ordinance required the Minister for the Colonies to announce every year how many of the men who had passed the Grand Examination, and how many of those who had passed the Examination by the Faculties, were to be appointed, the former to administrative, and the latter to judicial positions. 3 This ordinance went into effect in 1894, and since that time the Examination by the Faculties has been a means of entrance to the judicial service alone. The Ordinances of 1883 and 1893 The qualifications for appointment to the service in the East Indies have been changed from time to time by various ordinances. The first of them to claim attention is that of August 29, 1883,* already 1 The details of this examination are regulated by the Ordinance of July 28, 1894 (Ned. Staatsblad, No. 140). 2 Ordinance of August 29, 1883, Arts. 7, 10, 12, 14 (Ned. Staatsblad, No. 133). Chailley-Bert discusses the motives for and against this examination, Compte Rendu, op. cit., pp. 396-399. 8 Ordinance of December 23, 1892 (Ned. Staatsblad, No. 286). 4 (Ned. Staatsblad, No. 133.) Subsequently modified in detail by the Ordinances of October 24, 1888 (Ned. Staatsblad, No. 156), Oc- 122 HOLLAND referred to in connection with the Examination of the Faculties. This ordinance made some changes in the subjects of the Grand Examination ; 1 abolished the portion of that examination bearing upon general studies, requiring in its place a school diploma from all candidates ; z drew a distinction between posts in the central government at Batavia and the other administrative offices in the Indies, and made slightly different requirements for these two classes of positions. 3 The only other ordinance that needs to be particu- larly mentioned is that of July 20, 1893 (Ned. Staats- blad, No. 1 1 7), by which the provisions relating to the Grand Examination were altered and codified. The examination itself was divided into two parts, the earlier or preliminary part being supposed to involve a general view of the subject and requiring a year of preparation, while the second or final part is more searching, and requires a couple of additional years of study. This fell in well enough with the course in the School at Delft, which had already been length- ened in 1891 from two years to three. The ordi- nance was followed on July 3 1 by a Resolution of the Minister of the Colonies establishing the Regulations and Programme for the Grand Examination. A translation of these, together with the codified Pro- visions annexed to the ordinance, and incorporating tober 24, 1889 (Ned. Staatsblad, No. 131), and December 23, 1892 (Ned. Staatsblad, No. 286). 1 Art. I. a Art. 2. 8 Arts. 7, 8. EXAMINATION FOR THE SERVICE 123 in each case the subsequent minor alterations, are printed as an appendix to this chapter. SUMMARY OF EXISTING RULES So much for the history of the subject. In con- sidering the existing conditions the simplest course is to take up separately the different branches of the service, only prefacing the subject with three general remarks. The first of these is that the Government has reserved to itself the right, in special cases when the public interest demands it, to dispense with the qualifications required by the various ordinances, 1 a power which is very rarely exercised in practice, and then only in connection with some new office requiring peculiar information. The second is that no one is sent to the Indies unless his physical condi- tion has been passed upon by a medical officer of the Army ; and unless he also produces a certifi- cate of good morals and good conduct from the authorities of his place of residence, 2 a guarantee which means in fact nothing, except that he has never been sent to jail. The third is that the can- didate must be a Dutch citizen, or a native of the Dutch Indies, or have been born in the Dutch Indies of parents domiciled there. 3 " The Judicial Service To be admitted to this service 4 a candidate must have obtained a degree of Doctor of Law and have 1 Ordinance of August 29, 1883, Art. 19. 2 / SERVICE 12$ the service. 1 There is a provision that when sent to the East they may be granted an allowance for their equipment; 2 but as a matter of fact there are only five or six vacancies in the service annually, and the Government has not found it nec- essary during the last few years to send any aspirants for judicial office to the East at all. It has become the habit for the men who pass the Examination of the Faculties and there are only about half a dozen of them a year to go at their own expense to the Indies, where they obtain before long a situa- tion as clerk of court, and ultimately an appointment as judge. There has been a complaint that the system pro- duces few men of sufficient capacity for the highest courts in the Indies; and it is sometimes said that the Doctors of Law who prepare themselves for ser- vice in the East are not equal to those who prefer a career at the bar at home. But this last statement is disputed by other people, who maintain that the men that go to the Indies are a good average of the Doc- tors of Law. However this may be, the system appears to produce on the whole satisfactory results, and no serious efforts are being made to change it. 1 Article 12 of the Ordinance of August 29, 1883, provides that the candidates shall be ranked by the Minister of the Colonies according to the information that he can obtain of their proficiency, and that this rank shall determine the order of their selection for the service. 2 Ordinance of August 29, 1883, Art. 13. 126 HOLLAND The Administrative Service Leaving out of account the inferior clerical posi- tions, the requirements for which have already been described, the administrative service in the Indies, while not separated into strictly distinct services, is divided for the purpose of recruitment into two branches. The qualifications for these are legally different, but in practice they are really the same. The General Administration of the Interior To be admitted to this branch of the service a candidate must have passed either 1 I. The Grand Examination for Officials, or II. The Examination of the Faculties. As a matter of fact, appointments are given only to men who have passed the Grand Examination. The Central Administrative Offices at Batavia To be admitted to this branch of the service a candidate must either 2 (a) Have passed the Grand Examination for Offi- cials or the Examination of the Faculties, or () Be a Doctor of Law, or (c) Be a Doctor of Political Science. But the ordinance provides that a preference shall be given to (a) over () and (c), and in practice the only men appointed are those who have passed the Grand Examination. 1 Ordinance of August 29, 1883, Art. 7. 2 Id., Art. 8. EXAMINATION FOR THE SERVICE 1 27 THE GRAND EXAMINATION FOR OFFICIALS The Grand Examination is, therefore, in fact the only gateway to the administrative service, and hence it merits careful study. It may be passed either in Hol- land or in the Indies ; but as the two are supposed to be equivalent, the remarks made here will be limited to the examination in Holland, reserving for a later period a comment upon the results obtained on the other side of the world. It may be noticed, however, in passing that while the proportion of new members admitted to the service in each place varies some- what with circumstances, as a rule about two-thirds are recruited in Holland and about one-third in the East. The Examining Commission This body is composed of about a score of mem- bers, appointed each year by the Minister of the Colonies, and among them are always named the instructors in the school at Delft. In fact, Dr. Spanjaard, who has long been the Director of the school, is regularly appointed Secretary of the Com- mission. At their first meeting the examiners form from their own number as many sub-committees as there are subjects of examination, each of them con- sisting, as a rule, of the instructor in the subject at the school, of a professor from one of the Universi- ties, and of a former member of the civil service of the Indies. The examinations, which are held at The Hague near the end of June, are actually con- 128 HOLLAND ducted by the sub-committees, but when their work is ended the whole Commission meets once more to approve their conclusions and prepare its report. This is published every year, and contains the marks of each of the candidates, their final rank, the exami- nation papers, so far as the examination is in writing, some comments on the results in each subject, and any suggestion the Commission desires to make. Qualifications for the Examination By the Ordinance of July 20, 1893, the examination was divided into two parts, and save for some tempo- rary exceptions, made to prevent hardships from a change of system, 1 no candidate who has not passed the first part is allowed to offer himself for the sec- ond. Nor can a candidate offer himself for the first part unless he has graduated from a secondary school in Holland or the Indies or from the State Agricultural, Polytechnic, or Military School, or has passed the preliminary examination at the State Agricultural School, or is qualified to enter a Uni- versity, or has passed one of the examinations there. The list of these qualifications is large, 2 and one might expect as a result that there would be among the young men a considerable variety of train- ing, but such is not in fact the case. The Military 1 Ordinance of August 29, 1895. (Ned. Staatsblad, No. 153.) 2 See Art. 2 of the Rules annexed to the Ordinance of July 20, 1893, i n th e appendix to this chapter. EXAMINATION FOR THE SERVICE 129 and Agricultural Schools furnish few candidates ; the Universities almost none ; and as the course in the gymnasia or classical schools is six years, while that of the high schools is only five, the vast majority of candidates come from the latter. The following table taken from the Reports of the Examining Commission shows the educational qualifications of the candidates during the three years 1895-1! High Schools Holland. High Schools in the Indies. Gym- nasium. Full Course in Agric. School. Prep. Course in Agric. School. Total. 1896 . 88 3 I I 92 1897 . 52 ii I I I 66 1898 . 25 4 I I 31 In considering these figures it must be remembered that they represent all the general education that the candidates receive, because from the moment they enter the School at Delft their whole time is devoted to the study of subjects relating solely to the East Indies. The extent of the previous education required has no doubt some effect on the quality of the men who offer themselves as candidates. In fact, they come mainly from the middle class, 1 though a few aristo- cratic names appear among them ; and in calibre they are said not to be equal on the average to the 1 A large part of them are the sons of Indian and other officials. K 130 HOLLAND men who prepare themselves at the Universities for the law or for medicine. Absence of a Limit of Age Curiously enough, there are no limits of age either for passing the examination or for entering the ser- vice ; and hence although most of the candidates are between nineteen and twenty-three, they are some- times as young as seventeen, and occasionally, on the other hand, very old, in one case it seems no less than forty-eight. 1 The absence of a limit of age has one strange result. It gives a candidate the oppor- tunity to try the examination more than once ; 2 and since in the appointments to the service in any year a preference is given to the men who have passed the examination in that year over those who took it in a previous year, 8 it is not uncommon even for candi- dates who have succeeded in passing the examination once to try it again the next year, if they have not obtained a rank high enough to be among the few to receive appointments. Chailley-Bert gives some striking examples of this, and among them is one of a man who passed successfully four times before he obtained an appointment, 4 the reason for such persist- 1 Chailley-Bert, Compte Rendu, op. cit., pp. 369-370. 2 The Ordinance of December 15, 1897 (Ned. Staatsblad, No. 261), forbade any one to offer himself for the first part of the examination more than twice, but there is no such restriction for the second part. 8 Ordinance of August 29, 1883, Art. II. * Op. cit., pp. 381-382. EXAMINATION FOR THE SERVICE 131 ence being, of course, the fact that the instruction at the school leads to no other career, and if a man fails of appointment he has not only thrown away several years, but is very old to take up anything else. The recent Reports of the Examining Com- mission show that in 1897 twenty-seven men suc- ceeded in passing the examination, of whom only ten were appointed, while of the other seventeen no less than eight tried again the next year. Of these last five were among the ten who secured appointments in 1898. Such facts must be taken into account in speaking of the length of time actually consumed in preparation for the civil service of the East. Thus, of the ten men sent to the Indies in 1898 five had devoted three years to technical Oriental studies, four had devoted four years, and one (who had taken the examination twice before) had devoted five years. No doubt this proportion is unusually large, but there are always a certain number of candidates waiting at Delft from year to year, like the impotent folk at the pool of Bethesda. The only other qualification that needs to be men- tioned here is the fee of twenty-five gulden, or about ten dollars, which every candidate is obliged to pay for each part of the examination. This was required by the Ordinance of October 19, 1896, in order to dis- courage men from offering themselves who had no serious intention of passing the examination. 132 HOLLAND The Programme of the Examination The examination itself, whether taken all at one time, as it was before 1893, or divided, as it has been since that time into a preliminary and a final part, has retained one essential characteristic. It has always been entirely technical; that is, it has related exclusively to matters directly connected with the East Indies. The First Part The Preliminary, or, as it is officially called, the First Part of the examination is supposed to be taken after one year of study. It covers, (i) the geog- raphy, (2) the general principles of legislation, and (3) an introduction to the religious laws, institutions, and customs, of the Dutch Indies, and the elements of the (4) Malay and (5) Javanese languages. 1 It is oral for all the subjects except the two languages, and for these it is confined to a written translation into Dutch of an easy piece of prose. This examina- tion is in no sense competitive. A candidate must pass it before he can offer himself for the Second Part, but the rank with which he passes it has no effect upon his subsequent prospects. To pass it, he must obtain a total of twenty-two marks out of a possible maximum of fifty. This does not seem a very high requirement, but the difficulty of an examination really depends upon the severity of the 1 See the Programme in the appendix to this chapter. EXAMINATION FOR THE SERVICE 133 marking, and the actual proportion of the candidates at this examination who succeed in getting through is not on the average much above one-half. 1 The First Part of the examination was mainly intended to insure, on the part of candidates for ser- vice in the Indies, a general knowledge of the sub- jects in which they were afterward to prepare them- selves in greater detail. It has been found, however, that what they have learned before the first examina- tion is often largely forgotten by the time the final one takes place ; and in fact, the opinion appears to be nearly universal that the creation of the prelimi- nary examination, together with the lengthening of the course of study at the School to three years, which was done at about the same time, was a mistake. The Second Part The Final or Second Part of the examination is supposed to be taken after two more years of study. It covers, 2 (i) the history, (2) the geography and eth- nology, (3) the religious laws, institutions, and cus- toms, and (4) the political institutions of the Dutch Indies, and (5) the Malay and (6) Javanese languages. These subjects are required. Examinations are, more- over, held in other native languages, but they are op- tional, and their effect is solely to increase the total marks of the candidate, and thus raise his rank for 1 During the five years from the time this examination was estab- lished through 1898, 164 men passed out of 295 who tried. 2 See the Programme in the appendix to this chapter. 134 HOLLAND the purpose of competition. The examination is both oral and in writing for each subject, and, except in the languages, the paper for each written examination consists of two alternative questions of a broad char- acter, one or the other of which the candidate must answer elaborately. The Second Part is nominally, like the first, merely a pass examination, and every man who does sufficiently well in it receives a certificate which quali- fies him for appointment to the civil service in the Indies ; but as the number of vacancies in the ser- vice is always smaller than the number of candidates who succeed at the examination, and the ordinance provides that those candidates shall be selected in the order of their rank, 1 the examination is virtually com- petitive. The system of marking is, therefore, of prime importance. The maximum mark in each sub- ject is 10, and the Regulations prescribe that o shall indicate total ignorance, i and 2 bad; 3 and 4 unsatis- factory, 5 and 6 satisfactory, 7 and 8 good, and 9 and 10 excellent. On the question of passing the exam- ination the required subjects are alone considered. Of these there are six, and hence the maximum total of marks in them is 60. Now if a candidate fails to obtain a total of 27, or (in order to insure some knowledge of every branch), if he gets o, i, or 2, in any subject, or 3 or 4 in more than one subject, he is rejected. 2 If, on the other hand, he gets 5 in every 1 Ordinance of August 29, 1883, Art. II. 2 This seems tautologous; for if a candidate gets no o, I, 2, and EXAMINATION FOR THE SERVICE 135 subject, he is passed as a matter of course; and if his mark neither passes nor rejects him under these two rules, the Commission decides by vote whether he shall pass or not. It is only in case he succeeds in passing that the optional subjects can be counted in deter- mining his rank. Formerly he could offer as many native languages for this purpose as he pleased, and count any marks, not lower than 5, which he received in them. But it was felt by the Commis- sion that this gave a disproportionate credit, and in 1897 it was provided that the privilege should be limited to substituting the mark in an optional lan- guage (if not less than 5) for a lower mark in Javanese, a change which has naturally resulted in diminishing the extent to which the optional languages are offered. The Proportion of Faihires In discussing the proportion of men who succeed, one must distinguish between success in passing the examination, and, what is a very different thing, suc- cess in getting a position on the rank list high enough to win an appointment. The proportion of candidates at the examination who succeed in pass- ing it naturally varies a good deal from year to year, but on the average it runs from two-thirds to three- quarters. One might suppose that the institution of the preliminary examination would have had the not more than one 3 or 4, his mark in the six subjects must add up to more than 27. 136 HOLLAND effect of cutting off at an early period a number of the least competent men, and would thus have in- creased the proportion of successes among those who offered themselves for the final examination ; but this has not been the case, probably because the final examination has been made correspondingly more severe. The proportion of candidates at the examination who actually obtain appointments is very much smaller, and varies in even a greater degree. Dur- ing the years from 1879 to 1881 the number of men sent to the East averaged about thirty a year, but a little later, from 1885 to 1888, it fell to only four a year ; and thus in the years of plenty nearly two- thirds of the men who passed the examination got places, and in 1895 as many as twenty-eight out of thirty-one ; while in the years of famine less than one-seventh of those who passed were appointed. What is worse, the Colonial Office was not formerly in the habit of announcing beforehand the number of vacancies to be filled, and the result was that prepa- ration for the service was a lottery with many blanks, even for students who had passed very good exam- inations. All this is better now, for the number of men selected each year is less variable than formerly, ten, that is, about one-third of the men who pass the examination, having been appointed annually for the last few years. Moreover, after many appeals from the Director of the School the Minister of the Colo- nies has taken up the practice of announcing well in EXAMINATION FOR THE SERVICE 137 advance the number of vacancies that will occur. Thus, in April, 1899, the government organ declared not only that ten appointments would be made in the current year, but also that ten would be made in 1900, and that none would be made in 1901. POSITIONS RESERVED FOR MEMBERS OF THE SERVICE The administrative offices to which the Grand Examination leads, and which are reserved exclu- sively for persons recruited in this way, 1 are pre- scribed in Arts. 7 and 8 of the Ordinance of August 29, 1883. They include all the superior offices held by the white men in the general admin- istration except those of the Governor General and his Council, and almost all those in the central office at Batavia, except the Heads of Departments. 2 Moreover, even the excepted places, while not re- served for members of the regular civil service, are often conferred upon them. The selected candidates are allowed 400 florins for their equipment, and are immediately despatched 1 Save for the exceptional right of the Government to make out- side appointments in special cases, a right almost never used. Ordinance of August 29, 1883, Art. 19. * The offices recited in the Ordinance are : Art. 7, " Controller in the Interior Administration, Assistant Resident, Provincial Secretary, Resident, and Governor in the Dutch Indies" ; Art. 8, "Referendar and Secretary, in the Department of General Civil Administration of the Dutch Indies, in the General Secretariat and in the Council of the Indies, including the posts of Secretary General and Government Secretary." From this last list, the position of Referendar in the Department of Accounts was excepted by the Ordinance of December 15, 1897. 138 HOLLAND to the Indies at the expense of the State. Nomi- nally the Minister of the Colonies does not ap- point them to the service, but merely places them at the disposition of the Governor General ; and although this amounts in fact to the same thing, their connection with the home authorities ceases on their departure, and henceforth they are dependent only on the government of the Indies. On their arrival they are placed under the charge of a local administrative official to learn their business, and are kept there until they are competent to hold a post and begin their career. THE INDISCHE INSTELLING TE DELFT This School was founded, as we have seen, in 1864 as a city enterprise to prepare candidates for the Grand Examination, and it remained a purely munic- ipal institution until 1893, when the State granted it a subsidy and assumed in return a certain control over its management. Under the present arrange- ments the Minister of the Colonies not only appoints a college of six curators who act as visitors on the part of the State, but all the most important acts in the government of the School require his approval. The institution, therefore, is now under an anomalous dual control by the City and the State. According to the practice actually followed the Director makes a report every year to the authorities of the city, who appoint the professors and arrange the programme of the course, on the recommendation of the Director COLONIAL SCHOOL AT DELFT 139 and Faculty ; * subject, however, in each case to the approval of the Minister of the Colonies. The School has a Faculty of seven professors (including the Director), one lecturer, and one privaat decent. It occupies a well-equipped building in the town, and is furnished with a library and a fine East Indian ethnological collection, parts of which are admirably displayed over the walls of the lecture rooms, so that the students have the benefit of a constant Eastern environment. The institution is, of course, intended primarily for candidates for the civil service of the Indies ; and although provision is made for admitting future missionaries and others to the study of special subjects, their number has been small. At present there are on the average about two such special students a year, usually officials from the Indies on leave of absence, who want to perfect themselves in some particular branch of study. The total number of students at the School has varied a great deal, mainly in accordance with the prospect of vacancies in the service. Thus in the year 1896-1897, shortly after twenty-eight men had been sent to the East, the total number in the School was 177; while in 1898, the entering class for the full course was reduced to seven by the announcement that no appointments would be made in 1901, the year when the men in that class would naturally graduate. Of late years the average number in a class has been not far from fifty. It may be added that an annual fee of 200 1 Reglement voor de Indische Installing, Arts. 3, 5* 140 HOLLAND florins, or about $80, must be paid by each student in advance, except in the rare instances where it is re- mitted by the municipal authorities. At first the School had courses of both two and four years, the latter being intended for those who were pursuing at the same time their studies at a high school; but although this arrangement was popular for a couple of years, the four years' course was soon deserted, and was abolished altogether in 1872. From that time the two years' course was maintained until 1891, when it was lengthened to three years. The course of study is adapted entirely to the requirements of the Grand Examination, and no sub- ject is taught which does not find a place among them. Hence the teaching at the School, like the examination itself, has a purely technical character, and the subjects, which are not, perhaps, such as to have in themselves a high educational value, are studied not for the sake of training the mind, but rather with a view of getting the highest possible mark in a competition. Since the examination has been divided into two parts, the first year at the school has been devoted solely to a preparation for the First Part. More than one-third of the whole time is given to the codes, 1 the rest of the course 1 The programme of studies for the year 1898-1899 was as follows : COLONIAL SCHOOL AT DELFT 141 being of an introductory nature, and leading up to the studies of the later years. In fact, the only sub- jects, except the codes, to which much time is allotted are the elements of the Malay and Javanese lan- guages. The second and third years are devoted in the same way exclusively to preparing for the Second Part of the examination. But here the instruction goes very fully into the details of the various topics, as may be seen from the description of the different courses. 1 From these descriptions, and from the Tabular View of the School, it appears that in the languages there are separate courses for the second and third years, but that in each of the other subjects there are alternating courses, so that the second and third year men always take the same course together. Such a system pursued in comparatively limited fields Hours Per Week. istYear. 2dYear. 3 d Year. Codes of the Dutch Indies .... 6 Geography and Ethnology of the Dutch Indies I 3 3 Religious Laws, Institutions, and Customs of the Dutch Indies 2* 3 3 Political Institutions of the Dutch Indies 5 5 History of the Dutch Indies 3 3 Malay Language ...... 3 3 3 Javanese Language 5 3 4 Four other native languages each 2 3 * Only one hour a week in September, October, and May. 1 Almanak van bet Indologische Studentencorps, 1899, pp. 67-79. 142 HOLLAND is likely to mean a good deal of repetition, or a minute study of details, in this case apparently the latter. The professors have been blamed for reducing their instruction too much to a mere cramming for the examination ; but this is the well-nigh inevitable result of a system which prepares many candidates for a highly technical examination with few prizes. Under such circumstances it is always hard to interest the students in anything that does not bear directly upon the end in view. Their inclination is to grind upon the details given them, rather than to extend the scope of their knowledge by outside reading, a tendency which is revealed in a complaint by an Examining Commission that the ignorance of the spelling of historic names showed that students had obtained their knowledge of the Dutch Indies exclu- sively from lectures. 1 THE GRAND EXAMINATION AT BATAVIA, NATIVES AND HALF-CASTES Before proceeding to the criticisms that have been made upon the system of selecting and training colonial officials in Holland, it may be worth while to consider the closely related subject of the exami- nation and school in the Indies. The examinations in the two places are as nearly as possible identical, but the conditions under which they are taken are entirely different. Above all, there is the great ques- tion of race. The natives of the Indies are nominally 1 Report of the Commission, 1896, p. 3. NATIVES AND HALF-CASTES 143 admitted to the civil service on the same terms as the Dutch, 1 but an incident which occurred some years ago shows that in the opinion of the Govern- ment the principle cannot really be carried out. There has been only one case where a native has succeeded in going through the school at Delft, and attaining in the Grand Examination a rank high enough to entitle him to be selected. He wanted to receive the regular appointment to the post of Aspirant Controller in the Administration of the Interior, where he could rule over other natives ; but to 'his chagrin he was made instead an Inspector of Education. This case is universally believed to indi- cate that no native will ever be appointed to the administrative service. The school in the Indies which prepares for the Grand Examination there, a special department of the "William III." Gymnasium at Batavia, 2 though included among the educational institutions reserved for Europeans, is, I am told, specially opened to natives. However this may be, it is certain that the natives do not attempt to enter it, or to pass the Grand Examination at Batavia. The men who do so are partly Dutch, but chiefly Half-Castes. Now the Half- Castes do very well in the lower positions, because they have no difficulty in understanding the native temperament, but they are hardly fit for the higher 1 Ordinance of September 10, 1864, Art. I. 8 " De Burgerlijke Gouveruementsbetrekkingen in Ned. Oost-Indie," G. A. De Koning, p. 154. 144 HOLLAND ones. It has been said, indeed, that they combine the faults of both races, and while that is, no doubt, an unfair statement, it is certainly true that they do not possess the force of the Europeans. There is a prevalent feeling, therefore, that the existence of a separate examination in the Indies, which enables these men to enter the service, without even the invigorating effect of an education amid European surroundings, is unfortunate. But the question is complicated by a consideration of the probable polit- ical effect of depriving the Half-Castes and the Dutch in the East of a highly prized privilege. CRITICISM MADE UPON THE PRESENT SYSTEM It may be observed that the system of selecting and training colonial officials in Holland is in many important respects the very reverse of that adopted in England. Two of the cardinal principles of the English system are, that the competitive examination should be such as to require a high degree of gen- eral education, and that it should not involve special technical preparation which would be wasted if the candidate is unsuccessful. 1 In the Dutch system, on the other hand, the only guarantee of general educa- tion is a high school diploma, and the examination bears exclusively upon technical subjects, for which 1 The third English principle that after selection the attention of the candidate should be devoted entirely to his special training has clearly no application in Holland, because by the time the can- didate is selected, his special training at home is finished and he is despatched immediately to the East. REPORT OF THE COMMISSION 14$ there is needed a long course of special study lead- ing to no other career. It is upon these two points, and the inevitable topic of cramming, that com- plaints are mainly heard in Holland. The Recent Special Commission and its Report There has been a good deal of criticism, both by the Governor General and in the Dutch Parliament, of the unsatisfactory education of the members of the civil service of the Indies, and on December 28, 1898, the Minister of the Colonies appointed a special Com- mission of five members to inquire into the need of a revision of the method of selecting them. He ap- pointed as chairman a former Vice-President of the Council of the Indies who had long been a member of the service, and as his four colleagues, another former member of the service, two professors from Leyden and Utrecht, and the head of the Bureau for the Per- sonnel in the Colonial Office, a composition which insured both experience and a difference in the point of view. The Commission made its Report on May 27, 1 899, and the document is worthy of caref uLconsidera- tion. After reciting the laws by which the selection of candidates is regulated the Commission says : " The offices that belong to the service of the Dutch Indies are of very diverse natures, and are scattered over a number of regions which are very different in language and custom. Now with many of the offices which belong to this service there are connected multifarious occupations. The result of this is, that it is impossible so to direct the education of L 146 HOLLAND those who are destined for this service, as to give them, even in a measure, a complete theoretical summary of the things that will be demanded of them in practice. " In the first place, the administrative service in the Dutch Indies requires officials with a great diversity of knowledge among themselves ; in the second place, persons of such an amount of education as shall put them in a position to study and resolve for themselves the problems which each of them may meet in his service ; in the third place, there are needed for a great many posts men of character, initiative, and high education." The Report then points out that although Doctors of Law can legally be appointed to the administrative service, this is almost never done ; and it proceeds : " The complaints, which have been made in recent times against the training of the Indian officials, relate wholly to the appointments as regulated in the Royal decree of August 19, 1883, with the subsequent modifications thereof. " To the commission, indeed, this regulation appears very defective. " It does not give the slightest guarantee, either of a diver- sity of information, or of a high degree cf education or of character. " Its first defect is that it lays exclusive stress upon Indian studies. It leaves out of sight the fact that, as pointed out above, it is impossible to fit out the future Indian officials with such an amount of knowledge of the Indies as will be even in a measure sufficient for the duties that await them. " By striving after that unattainable goal, it leaves out of account, diversity of training, general education, and char- acter. " The three years' course which is now the rule, gives a knowledge of detail which is not enough for practice, and REPORT OF THE COMMISSION 147 yet might be learned in practice with a great deal less labor and more certainty. Since it goes too much into detail, it degenerates into memorizing, and the examination pro- gramme, at least in the way in which it is applied, helps that result. " For broad conceptions, which master the materials, and prepare the way for, and provoke, subsequent independent investigation, there is no place. Memorizing in studies kills with many the love of the subject, and thus diminishes all later striving after further progress by personal research. " It can certainly cause no surprise that such a three years' course frightens off young men who have acquired that gen- eral education on which the highest value ought to be set. Nearly all the candidates come in fact from the high schools, and have no trace of high education or of diversity of train- ing among themselves. There is no need of further argu- ment to prove that such a three years' course, which is so arranged that its only result is the production of young men with overladen brains, can hardly have a formative effect on the character of those who pursue it. " A great part of the time now devoted to the study of details, which has no other use than that of giving the power to obtain a higher mark at the examination than some one else, would certainly be much better spent if it served to give some knowledge and experience of life. "In the opinion of the Commission the Indian studies ought to be reduced to a minimum, sufficient as a founda- tion to build upon in active life. Their character might be such as to give a general familiarity, that would work in with any subject of which each man might in his service learn more by study and observation. "If this should happen, there might, indeed, be attracted to these studies persons whose previous education had been broader and higher than the high school alone gives. " The mistaken tendency, which, according to the opinion 148 HOLLAND of the Commission the studies have more and more taken on, is certainly to be attributed in a great measure to the sharp competition between those who wish to fit themselves for the Indian service. The competitive examination has screwed up the studies more and more. From the neces- sity of weighing the knowledge of the students against one another the question has become who has the greatest knowledge of details, a matter of very secondary importance for the Indian service, which has need of quite different men, men of broad views and education, qualities which are not acquired only on the benches of schools. " In connection with this the following objections to the existing system are palpable and universally recognized : " First, that a satisfactory completion of the studies for the post of Indian official affords no certainty of obtaining the desired appointment in the service of the country ; while on account of their highly specialized character these sub- jects lead to no other career, and thus at least three years of life have been lost which might have served as a prepara- tion for obtaining some commercial position. "Second, that the Government, partly apparently in order to reduce as low as possible the number of disap- pointments and more or less complete failures in life, and partly with the object of preserving the means of livelihood for the institutions of learning which are specially devoted to Indian studies, has often appointed more officials than the needs of the service demanded ; and this has produced among the younger officials in the Indies, who must wait long before they can obtain an appointment as Aspirant Controller, a spirit of discouragement and dissatisfaction that has a bad effect on their fitness for the service, when at last the time comes for an appointment to that office. " From this standpoint also a revision of the conditions is urgently required. " The Commission is of the opinion that, in order to reach REPORT OF THE COMMISSION 149 a sound basis, the selection of officials for the civil service of the Indies ought to be transferred from the end of the course of study to the beginning, so that all those who have completed the course shall be certain of appointment. The competitive examination with its train of undesirable conse- quences thereby disappears. Likewise the talk about the appointment of more officials than the need of the service requires. " A special institution of education, which could pay its own expenses, could not stand with such a system ; but it follows from the considerations explained above that it is not needed." The rest of the Report deals with the methods of selecting and training East Indian officials which the Commission propose as a substitute for the exist- ing system, and it is followed by a draft of an ordi- nance embodying the plan ; but this part of the Report contains too many references to the tech- nicalities of Dutch law to be inserted in full. The Plan proposed by the Commission In its general outlines the plan proposed by the Commission consists of a free selection of candidates by the Minister of the Colonies, upon the recom- mendation of a permanent commission ; the only limitation being that the men selected must be phys- ically sound, and must be the holders of certain degrees or diplomas, or of certain offices, civil or military. First among the degrees are mentioned the Doctorates of Universities. But fearing that, if they insisted upon these as the only qualification, 1 5O HOLLAND there would be a lack of applicants, the Commission enumerated sundry diplomas of a slightly lower grade, with the intention, however, that the Doctors should always have the preference. The plan provides that after the selection the candidates chosen shall spend one year in special preparation for their duties in the East, and shall then pass an examination which, except for the Javanese language and the codes, covers the same subjects as the present Grand Examination for Offi- cials, but in a much more elementary way. 1 This examination is not to be competitive, and, in fact, the Commission say that it ought to be regarded rather as a test whether the candidates have spent their year of preparation well, than as a searching inquiry into the amount of their information. The Commis- sion were strongly of opinion that each candidate ought to be free to spend his year of study where he pleased, although they felt that residence at a University was preferable to anything else, and would undoubtedly be the general rule. But wher- ever the year is passed the Report expressly provides that the candidates shall be under the supervision of the permanent commission, which may call them before it, question them, and give them information and advice. Strange as it may seem, this provision 1 One member of the Commission who had been in the Civil Ser- vice of the Indies wanted to retain the Codes, and thought a single year too short a time to acquire the necessary familiarity with the native tongues. REPORT OF THE COMMISSION 15 1 was probably an attempt to follow the English prac- tice. The fact is that the Commission were very deeply influenced by Macaulay's Report and by the experience of England, and in this particular point they were, no doubt, misled by an impression which had become prevalent, 1 that the English Civil Ser- vice Commissioners have exercised, at least at times, a real supervision over the selected candidates for the Indian service. Finally the Report recommended that the Grand Examination should be abolished, not only in Hol- land, but in the Indies also ; and, in fact, it was not proposed to have any members of the service recruited in the East, for none of the degrees or offices required as a qualification for candidates were such as could be obtained without a European education. Comments made upon the Report This Report has not yet been acted upon by the Government, but it has naturally given rise to a great deal of discussion ; and, judging from what the writer was enabled to gather in Holland both from the Press and from conversation with men whose official positions had led them to consider the matter, there was a very general agreement with much of the Commission's criticism of the existing system, but far less approval of the plan it proposed. The feeling, for example, 1 Chailley-Bert, Compte Rendu, op. cit., pp. 329, 334; "La Colo- nisation de 1'Indo-Chine," pp. 240, 247 ; Boutmy, " Le Recrutement des Adininistrateurs Coloniaux," pp. 78, 79, 81. 152 HOLLAND that a competitive examination coming at the end of a long course of special training is an evil, was almost universal, 1 and the opinion was very prevalent that too large a proportion of the young men who suc- ceeded in winning appointment were bookworms, lacking in the elasticity of mind, the breadth of view, and the knowledge of the world, required for ruling large bodies of natives. 2 Dr. Spanjaard him- self, the Director of the School at Delft, has taken occasion to say publicly that the Grand Examination alone does not furnish a sufficient test of character, and that the English system is better in this respect. 3 It is, in fact, commonly believed that passing the examination has become altogether too much an effort of committing to memory a large mass of unnecessary details, and that the lengthening of the course to three years has intensified the tendency. From reading the description of the courses in the Almanac of the Society of Students (Indologisch Studentencorps\ one certainly gets the impression that they go very elabo- rately into the details of the subjects treated. In regard to the plan proposed, the Commission is thought by many people to have gone from one ex- treme to the other ; and there has been a chorus of objection to reducing the course of special prepara- tion to a single year. A fear has also been ex- 1 Cf. Vragen des Tijds, August, 1899; Algemccn Handelsblad July 22, 1899; Arnhemsche Courant, July 31, 1899. z Cf. two letters by former members of the service to the Algemeen Handelsblad, July 22 and 27, 1899. 8 Comptc Rendu, op, fit., pp. 407-408. REPORT OF THE COMMISSION 153 pressed that the Report is over-sanguine, and that the best men would never be tempted to give up a fair prospect of some other career to enter the service. 1 It may be noted in passing that an attempt is being made to remedy this last difficulty in another way, by raising salaries and making the service more attrac- tive. The most assailable point in the plan is, of course, the arbitrary selection of the candidates with- out an open competition of any kind, and this has naturally been violently attacked. It certainly seems strange that the commissioners, who were deeply influenced by the English methods, should have accepted the plot and left the part of Hamlet out, for the competitive examination is the very basis of the whole system in England. But the fact is that the Commission was trying to get University men into the service, and it is hardly possible to hold competi- tive examinations among such men in Holland, for there is nothing in the Dutch Universities that corre- sponds to the undergraduate work at Oxford or Cam- bridge, where the courses are taken mainly for their educational value. The Dutch University men are studying for some professional doctorate, and it would be clearly impracticable to hold a real competitive examination between the men who were studying to be Doctors of Law and those who were studying to be Doctors of Medicine or Philosophy. There is not enough in common to form the basis for a compari- 1 Indische Gids, August, 1899; Het Nieuws van den Dag t August 1 6 and 17, 1899; H** Vaterland, July 16-17, 1899. 1 54 HOLLAND son. It was, therefore, necessary to confine the com- petition to the students in a single Faculty, or to give it up altogether. In view of the professional character of University studies, a criticism has, in fact, been made upon the plan in the Report, which, if not just, has in it at least elements of truth. Under the plea, it is said, of liberal education the Commission is in reality simply trying to make men half learn one pro- fession before they take up another. 1 That the plan proposed or any other system of pure arbitrary selection will be adopted in Holland, or will endure if adopted, does not seem likely ; but that some considerable change will be made in the present system is altogether probable. THE PHYSICAL EXAMINATION After all the talk in England about the importance to the Eastern official of a vigorous physique, it is surprising that one hears so little about it in Holland. The medical inspection there takes place after the Grand Examination, 2 and it is needless to repeat that it is an invidious thing to reject a man after he has labored for three years and won the coveted prize at the competition. Under such circumstances the phys- ical standard is not likely to be very high, and that this is the case in Holland would appear from the fact stated by Chailley-Bert, 3 that for the last twenty- 1 Indische Gids, August, 1899, p. 902. 2 Ordinance of August 29, 1883, Art. 14. 8 CompU Rendu, op. tit., p. 372. SPECIAL SERVICES 155 five years no candidate has been refused his medical certificate. Yet one certainly hears no complaint of a lack of physical stamina in the officials. THE NATIVE OFFICIALS As in other Asiatic Colonies there is a native ad- ministrative service through which most of the imme- diate relations with the people are conducted ; and this is true even where the Government is direct. But the method of appointment calls for no comment here. Except for what may be called the subordinate clerical positions the native officials are not selected by means of an examination. The most important ones, known as Regents, are recruited by an heredi- tary succession, tempered by fitness ; while the lesser officials are selected freely, a good deal of attention being paid to social influence over the other natives as well as to intellectual capacity. SPECIAL SERVICES There are in the Dutch Indies a dozen special ser- vices in which Europeans are employed, and each of them is subject to peculiar provisions of its own in the matter of recruiting. 1 The qualifications for the most of them are similar to those in force for corre- sponding occupations in Holland. This is true of En- gineers, School Teachers, Veterinary Surgeons, and 1 See Maathuis, " Maatschappelijke Betrekkingen in Nederland en, Ned. Oost-Indie' " ; Koning, " Die Burgerlijke Gouvernementsbetrek- kingen in Ned. Oost-Indig." 156 HOLLAND the like. In general there is required also a medical certificate that the applicant is fit for work in the tropics ; but as a rule a study of what the Dutch call Indology is not necessary. There are, however, a few exceptions. The post and telegraph officials, for example, must pass an examination which, for the higher grades, includes the political institutions of the Dutch Indies and the elements of the Malay lan- guage. Preachers must be familiar with that language and with the ethnology and religion of the people. And Surveyors must either have passed the first part of the Grand Examination for Officials or a special examination which includes the Javanese and Malay tongues. Usually a diploma or certificate is a sufficient qual- ification. Sometimes there is a special examination, and for two or three services there is a special course of training. Thus the Foresters go through the Indian Department of the Royal Agricultural School, which includes among its studies the elements of the Malay language. They are then selected by means of a competitive examination, and afterward spend a couple of years more at the Academy of Forestry in Saxony and the Herbarium at Ley den, before going to the East. The so-called Officials for Chi- nese affairs, on the other hand, are first selected by a competitive examination on general subjects, and then spend in the study of Chinese and other spe- cial subjects six years, two of them being passed in China, a procedure which might well be extended SPECIAL SERVICES 157 to other services where the competitive examina- tion now comes at the end of the special training. In short, the Dutch, like the English, have recog- nized the advantage of requiring some guarantee that the men who are to be despatched to the other side of the world at the expense of the Government shall be fit for the work they are sent there to perform. But, also like the English, they have not felt it necessary to insist in every technical service that a man should be familiar, before his departure, with the people, the institutions, or the languages of the East. THE OTHER DUTCH COLONIES The administrative civil service and the method of selecting and training its members, which have been described, apply only to the East Indies; for the Dutch, like all other colonial powers, have not found it possible to extend the system over their West Indian possessions. In fact, it cannot be repeated too often that, since slavery came to an end, the West Indies have presented a political problem which no nation has been able to solve to its own complete satisfaction. APPENDIX (Annexed to the Ordinance of July 20, 1893, with the subsequent modifica- tions.) ARTICLE i The grand examination for officials shall be divided into two parts, of which the second is competitive. An opportunity shall be given both in Holland and the Dutch Indies to pass the first part, on and after the year 1894, and to pass the second part on and after the year 1896. ARTICLE 2 The first part of the grand examination for officials shall cover the following subjects: 1. The geography of the Dutch Indies; 2. The Dutch Indian codes of law; 3. The introduction to the religious laws, institutions, and customs of the Dutch Indies; 4. The elements of the Malay language; 5. The elements of the Javanese language. Only those persons shall be admitted to this part of the grand examination for officials who have passed one of the following examinations : (a) One of the examinations for obtaining a certificate of fitness to pursue the studies of a university, or one of 158 GRAND EXAMINATION FOR OFFICIALS 1 59 the examinations held by the faculties of a Dutch uni- versity; () The final examination of one of the high schools with a five years' course, or of the State Agricultural School, or of the Polytechnic School, as provided in the law on secondary education; (c) The examination taken by persons who have fol- lowed the preparatory course at the State Agricultural School, as provided by the Royal Ordinance of January 9, 1891, No. 10 (Indisch Staatsblad, No. 104); (d) The final examination of a high school, with a five years' course in the Dutch Indies; (i) The final examination of the Royal Institute for the Navy, or a final examination at the Royal Military Academy. Whoever shall have already offered himself twice for this part of the examination and has been rejected, or for any reason except grounds deemed legitimate by the Govern- ment has failed to appear or has withdrawn himself, shall not be admitted to it again. Those who have already offered themselves for the first part of the grand examination for officials more than once without obtaining a diploma, before this ordinance goes into effect, shall be admitted once more to this part of the examination. 1 (The last two paragraphs of this ordinance were added by the ordinance of December 15, 1897 (Nederlandsch Staatsblad, No. 261), in accordance with the recommenda- tions of the commission that conducts the examinations. See their report for 1897, pp. 5, 6.) ARTICLE 3 The second part of the grand examination for officials shall cover, in every case, the following six subjects, which are therefore termed "required subjects": 160 APPENDIX 1. The history of the Dutch Indies; 2. The geography and ethnology of the Dutch Indies; 3. The religious laws, institutions, and customs of the Dutch Indies; 4. The public institutions of the Dutch Indies; 5. The Malay language; 6. The Javanese language. Those who wish to do so can, at the second part of the grand examination for officials, also pass an examination in any other native language of the Dutch Indies, in which an examination can, in the opinion of the Minister of the Colonies or the Governor General , be given with security. Each language shall be marked at the examination as a separate subject. Only those persons shall be admitted to the second part of the grand examination for officials who have passed the first part. Those persons who have passed one of the examinations mentioned in the second paragraph of Article 2, and can prove to the satisfaction of the Minister of the Colonies in Holland, and of the Governor General in the Dutch Indies, that they prepared themselves for the grand examination for officials for service in the Indies, without having an opportunity to pass it in 1893, shall be admitted to the second half of the said examination. (The last paragraph was added by the Ordinance of August 29, 1895.) (Those persons who are still under obligation to serve in the navy or in the army in the Netherlands or in the East or West Indies, and those who, on account of their nation- ality, cannot be appointed to the civil service of the Dutch Indies shall not be admitted to the second part of the grand examination for officials.) (This paragraph was repealed by the Ordinance of Febru- ary 3, 1899.) GRAND EXAMINATION FOR OFFICIALS l6l ARTICLE 4 Whoever has passed either of the two parts of the grand examination for officials shall receive a certificate to that effect, which shall state the mark he has obtained in each subject in which he has been examined. ARTICLE 5 In the years 1894 and 1895 the first part of the grand examination for officials shall be held by the same com- mission which holds the grand examination for officials on the old plan, in accordance with the first chapter of the Royal Ordinance of August 29, 1883 (Ned. Staatsblad, No. 133; Ind. Staatsblad, No. 249), and it shall be held at the same time or immediately after that examination. ARTICLE 6 Beginning with the year 1896 the first and second parts of the grand examination for officials shall be held by the same commission, at the same time or immediately after one another. The grand examination for officials shall begin every year, in Holland on the third Monday of the month of June, in the Dutch Indies at a time to be appointed by the Governor General. It shall be announced twice in the official newspaper about two months beforehand. Within one month after the first announcement all per- sons who wish to enter the examination must give written notice thereof, in Holland to the Department of the Colo- nies, in the Dutch Indies to the Secretary General. They must state therein which part of the examination they wish to enter, and if it is the second part of the examination whether they wish to be examined in any native languages beside Malay and Javanese. 1 62 APPENDIX At the same time they must deposit the evidence that they are qualified, in accordance with the provision of Articles 2 and 3, to enter that part of the examination for which they offer themselves. (Those persons who are under any obligation to serve in the navy or in the army in the Netherlands or in the East or West Indies must, in order to be admitted to the sec- ond part of the examination, show that they have completed the service, or deposit the evidence of an honorable dis- charge. If they fail to do so, their request to be admitted to the second part of the examination will receive no atten- tion, and will not be delivered to the examining Com- mission.) (The same action will be taken in the case of requests to be admitted to the second part of the examination on the part of persons who on account of their nationality cannot be appointed to the civil service in the Dutch Indies.) (These last two paragraphs were repealed by the Ordi- nance of February 3, 1899.) ARTICLE 7 Both parts of the grand examination for officials shall be held in public, in accordance with a regulation and pro- gramme to be made by the Minister of the Colonies. Each candidate shall be given a mark for every subject in which he is examined. The question whether a candidate has or has not passed the second part of the examination shall be determined according to the marks obtained in the required subjects, in the manner provided in the regulation, without taking into account the examination in the subjects not required. ARTICLE 8 The Commission which holds the grand examination for officials shall consist of at least seven members. They shall GRAND EXAMINATION FOR OFFICIALS 163 be appointed each year, in the Netherlands by the Minister of the Colonies, in the Dutch Indies by the Governor General. At the time of their appointment one of the members shall be designated as president and another as secretary. The members shall be allowed compensation for travel, residence, and time, in accordance with regulations to be made, in the Netherlands by Royal Ordinance, and in the Dutch Indies by the Governor General. The Commission shall make, in the Netherlands to the Minister of the Colonies, in the Dutch Indies to the Gov- ernor General, a full report of both parts of the examina- tion, and shall state therein, in the case of each of the persons examined, the results of the examination in every subject in which he has been examined, together with its opinion of the technical proficiency of those who have passed the second part of the examination. The report of the first part of the Examination shall be made in 1894 and 1895 by the Commission which is charged with holding it in Article 5. ARTICLE 9 Whenever special circumstances in any year make it necessary, the opportunity to pass the second part of the grand examination for officials can be given more than once. This shall be decided by the Minister of the Colo- nies, after consultation with the Governor General. The rules established for the yearly examination shall, as far as possible, be applied to any such subsequent examination. Each time that a candidate offers himself for either part of the grand examination for officials for the Indian ser- vice, he must pay into the Treasury a fee of twenty-five gulden. The evidence of payment must be handed in with the request to be admitted to the examination. 164 APPENDIX This examination fee shall be the property of the State unless the candidate is refused admission to the examina- tion, in accordance with the provisions relating thereto, in which case the money shall be repaid. (The last three paragraphs were added by the ordinance of October 19, 1896 [Nederlandsch Staatsblad, No. 164], upon the suggestion of the examining Commissioners, who wished to prevent men insufficiently prepared from offering themselves and withdrawing at the last moment. See report of the Commission in 1896, p. 6.) REGULATION AND PROGRAMME Established by a Resolution of the Minister of the Colonies on July j i, 1893, letter D., No. j"j, for the grand ex- amination for officials for service in the Indies, when it is passed as a whole, in accordance with the Rules annexed to the Royal Ordinance of July 20, 1893, No. 29. REGULATION ARTICLE i The commission for holding the grand examination for officials shall pay careful attention to the provisions made in the Rules, concerning the said examination, annexed to the Royal ordinance of July 20, 1893, No. 29. ARTICLE 2 In a preliminary session the commission shall enquire whether the candidates have furnished the evidence that, having satisfied the requirements of Articles 2 and 3 of the Rules annexed to the Royal ordinance of July 20, 1893, No. 29, they can be admitted to the part of the examina- tion for which they have offered themselves. GRAND EXAMINATION FOR OFFICIALS 165 For this purpose the commission shall receive in due season the documents which have been sent by the candi- dates to the Department of the Colonies or to the Secre- tary General. In doubtful cases they shall request the decision of the Minister of the Colonies or of the Governor General. The commission shall give notice to those who cannot be admitted to the part of the grand examination for officials for which they have offered themselves. ARTICLE 3 In the preliminary session there shall be formed for each part of the examination, from among the members of the commission, as many sub-committees, of at least two members, as there are subjects to be examined; and to each sub-committee shall be assigned a subject in which it shall examine. The president and secretary may be excused from taking part in these sub-committees. ARTICLE 4 The president in consultation with the secretary shall determine the order of business of the whole commission and of the sub-committees, and, as far as possible, in such a way that the examination of each candidate shall be fin- ished, in two days in the case of the first part, and in three days in the case of the second part of the examination. ARTICLE 5 The candidates shall be informed by the secretary in due time of the time and place of their examinations. ARTICLE 6 The first part of the examination shall be oral in every subject, with the exception of the elements of the Malay 1 66 APPENDIX language and the elements of the Javanese language, in which written examinations shall be given. The oral examination in every subject lasts at most three-quarters of an hour, the written examination two hours. The second part of the examination shall be oral and written in every subject. The oral examination in every subject lasts at the most half an hour, the written examina- tion two hours. In each of the subjects "History of the Dutch Indies," "Geography and Ethnology of the Dutch Indies," "Re- ligious Laws, Institutions, and Customs of the Dutch Indies," and "Political Institutions of the Dutch Indies," the candidates shall be given, in the written examination, a choice between two questions. ARTICLE 7 Written work handed in to a sub-committee shall be examined by each of its members. As far as possible, all the members of a sub-committee shall be present at the oral examination. In case of tem- porary hindrance the president shall appoint another member of the commission to take the place of the absent member of the sub-committee. ARTICLE 8 To each candidate shall be given in every subject in which he is examined a mark from o to 10. The mark o means entire ignorance; the marks i and 2 betoken bad; 3 and 4 unsatisfactory; 5 and 6 satisfactory; 7 and 8 good; 9 and 10 excellent; always with the understanding that the higher mark indicates a higher degree of knowledge than the lower. ARTICLE 9 The members of each sub-committee shall try to agree about the marks to be given to the persons examined by GRAND EXAMINATION FOR OFFICIALS 1 67 them. Objections to the mark given can, however, be offered by other members of the commission who have been present at the examination, or have looked over the written work. If the members of a sub-committee cannot agree upon a mark to be given, or if a difference of opinion about it exists between them and another member of the commis- sion, the president, after hearing the opinion of the mem- bers of the commission who may be supposed to have the best knowledge of the subject, shall endeavor to bring about an agreement of opinion; and if he does not succeed in this, he shall decide upon the mark to be given on his own judgment formed upon the opinions given to him. ARTICLE 10 A candidate who has received at the first part of the examination in every subject, or at the second part of the examination in each of the required subjects, the mark 5 or a higher mark shall be declared, without further discus- sion, to have passed the examination. A candidate who has not received at the first part of the examination more than twenty-two points for all the sub- jects added together, or a candidate who has not received at the second part more than twenty-seven points for all the required subjects added together, shall be declared not to have passed the examination. A candidate shall also be rejected who has received in one or more subjects (at the second half required subjects) one of the marks o, i, or 2, or in two or more subjects (at the second half required subjects) one of the marks 3 or 4. (By the original Resolution of July 20, 1893, the require- ments were, for the first part a total of twenty points, for the second a total of twenty- four, and the absence of any marks of o. The existing requirements were made by a 1 68 APPENDIX Resolution of the Minister of the Colonies on December 27, 1897.) In all cases not provided for by the first three paragraphs of this article, the commission shall discuss the question whether the candidate can be considered to have passed a satisfactory examination, taking account therein, in the second half of the examination, only of the required sub- jects. The question shall be decided by vote. In case of a tie the examination shall be considered satisfactory. ARTICLE n The rank list of those who have passed the second half of the examination shall be made up from the result of the examination in the six required subjects, with the under- standing that a candidate who has received in one or more voluntary subjects a higher mark than he obtained in the Javanese language shall be credited with the highest of these marks, provided the mark in the voluntary subject is not less than 5. In case of an equality of marks, the commission shall determine the order in which the candidates affected shall stand upon the rank list. (The article was given this form above by a Resolution of December 27, 1897. In the original regulations of July 20, 1893, it read as follows: (For the purpose of making up the rank list of those who have passed the second half of the examination, the marks, which are not lower than 5, received in the voluntary sub- jects shall be added to the candidates' marks in the six required subjects.) (In case of an equality of marks the order of the rank list shall be regulated by the total of the marks obtained in the required subjects. If these total marks are also the same, the commission shall determine the order in which these candidates shall stand upon the rank list.) GRAND EXAMINATION FOR OFFICIALS 169 ARTICLE 12 To the report which it makes to the Minister of the Colonies, or to the Governor General, the commission shall append : 1. For each of the parts of the examination a list whereon shall be stated the names of all the persons examined, the marks given to them in the several subjects, and the total of these marks for each candidate; 2. A rank list of those who have passed the second part of the examination, made up in accordance with the fore- going article. ARTICLE 13 The commission shall present to the Minister of the Colonies, or to the Governor General, the certificates of those who have passed the examination, in order that they may be inspected and delivered by him. All persons examined, even those who have not passed, shall receive from the secretary of the commission as speedily as possible information of the result of their examination in each subject. PROGRAMME FIRST PART 1. The Geography of the Dutch Indies. Knowledge of the situation, the natural features and the climate of the chief islands and groups of islands of the Indian Archi- pelago, of the situation of the chief mountains and streams, and of the general lines of the administration subdivisions. 2. The Knowledge of the Codes of the Dutch Indies. Knowledge of the chief contents of the General Principles of Legislation and of the Civil Code; a grasp of the most 170 APPENDIX important institutions governed by the Commercial Code, and of the forms of European Civil and Criminal Proced- ure; knowledge of the chief contents of the Internal Regulations and of the two Penal Codes of the Indies. 3. The Introduction to the Religious Laws, Institutions, and Customs of the Dutch Indies. A brief survey of the origin and extension of Islam, especially with regard to the Dutch Indies; a knowledge of the chief sects of Islam; a little knowledge of the dogmas of the present orthodox Mohammedans; a little knowledge of the character and historical growth of the Mohammedan Law; a little knowl- edge of the religious and other laws of the Mohammedans in the Dutch Indies. 4. The Elements of the Malay Language. The written translation, with the help of a dictionary, of a selection, not difficult, printed in Malay characters. 5. The Elements of the Javanese Language. The writ- ten translation, with the help of a dictionary, of an easy selection printed in Javanese characters. SECOND PART 1. The History of the Dutch Indies. Knowledge in broad traits of the fortunes of the chief races that dwell in the Indian Archipelago, and the chief facts which relate to the establishment and extension of the Dutch power in the Archipelago, and more especially of the fortunes of the Dutch Indies since the administration of Marshall Daen- dels. 2. The Geography and Ethnology of the Dutch Indies. Knowledge of the chief products of the Dutch Indies; knowledge of the principle traits, customs, the social and economic condition, and the degree of civilization, of the chief peoples of the Dutch Indies; some knowledge of the GRAND EXAMINATION FOR OFFICIALS 1 7 1 religion and institutions of the non-Mohammedan peoples of the Dutch Indies. 3. The Religious Laws, Institutions, and Customs of the Dutch Indies. Knowledge of the chief institutions of the followers of Islam in the Dutch Indies, studied in con- nection with the Mohammedan Law. 4. The Political Institutions of the Dutch Indies. Ac- quaintance with the chief provisions of the Regulations of Government and of the other organic laws and general ordinances derived from the Constitution and the Regula- tions of Government; knowledge of the chief provisions relating to administration, justice, accounts, taxes, and the various other branches of the administration; all these, as far as possible, in their origin and development. 5. The Malay Language. Readiness in the written translation of a composition from Dutch into Malay, and in oral translation of a piece of prose from Malay into Dutch; knowledge of the fundamental principles of the language, coupled with a good pronunciation and facility at reading without special preparation selections of Malay or letters in different hands; some readiness at expressing oneself also in the common vernacular. 6. The Javanese Language. Readiness in the transla- tion of a piece of prose, not difficult, from Javanese into Dutch; some facility in expressing oneself in the Javanese language, shown by the written translation of some easy phrases from Dutch into Javanese; knowledge of the funda- mental principles of the language, coupled with a good pronunciation; readiness in reading, without special prep- aration, written Javanese selections or letters in different hands. 7. Other Native Languages of the Dutch Indies. The same requirements as those prescribed for Javanese under No. 6. CHAPTER III FRANCE AMONG the nations France is peculiar in having a gap in her colonial history. She is one of the oldest and one of the youngest of colonizing powers; for within the last few years she has attempted to return to the policy of expansion which marked the most brilliant period of the monarchy. But between the two epochs the breach is so complete that no tradi- tions survived, and hence in describing her present condition it is not necessary to look back into the past. Even in recent times, indeed, her policy in regard to the matter now under consideration, the selection and training of colonial officials, has been by no means continuous ; and the system now employed has been in existence only a few years. COCHIN-CHINA, 1861-1881 As Algeria is treated rather as an outlying part of France than as a true colonial dependency, and as the West Indies are a sort of political Topsy that no- body can do anything with, the modern colonial history of France begins with the occupation of Cochin-China in I86I. 1 At first the government 1 Chailley-Bert describes the method of recruiting officials in Cochin- China from 1861 to 1881 in the Compte Rendu, op. tit., pp. 278-312. 172 COCHIN-CHINA, 1861-1881 there was purely a military one under the charge of an Admiral of the Navy. As early as 1863, how- ever, a regular system of recruiting the Inspectors, as the French officials in the country were called, was adopted; and although they were all military or naval officers, they were selected for the service by means of an examination which was in theory, at least, competitive. This involved some preparatory study, which bore upon the history and geography of the country, and the native languages, laws, and polit- ical institutions. After ten years of trial this sys- tem broke down, because the expectations which the officers had been led to form of the treatment of the colonial civil servants were not fulfilled, and hence it became hard to obtain recruits ; and also because the accumulation in the same hands of judicial, admin- istrative, and financial powers, offended the national sense of political propriety. In 1873, therefore, the service was reorganized, and placed this time on a civil instead of a military basis. It was provided that the provincial adminis- trators of any grade should be chosen from those of the grade below by a system in which a competitive examination played a large part, 1 and that the lowest grade should be recruited as follows : 2 the Governor was to designate at his discretion among young men 1 Decree of February 10, 1873, Art. 6; ArrSte of the Governor, January 25, 1875, Arts. 9-21. 2 Decree of February 10, 1873, Arts. 4, 5; ArrSte of August 29, 1873. 174 FRANCE possessing any one of a list of educational diplomas, a number of probationers, who were thereupon to enter a college established for the purpose at Saigon, and after finishing the course of study there were to be selected for the service by means of a competitive ex- amination. The course at the college was a single year, and besides subjects dealing directly with the colony it included the general principles of political econ- omy. M. Chailley-Bert, while praising this system as a whole, points out that the principle of competi- tion was applied at the wrong point; that it ought to have been used as a test for entrance to the col- lege, and ought not to have been used as a condition of promotion in the service. 1 The fact is that a com- petitive examination as applied to a colonial service is chiefly a means of elimination, and its real useful- ness is in selecting candidates of good promise. It is not a test of administrative capacity. These prin- ciples should be borne in mind in framing any system of appointing colonial officials, and it was partly the failure to recognize them in 1873 that brought about the overthrow of the organization then established in Cochin-China. The system of 1873 was, however, also attacked on other grounds. It had not fully carried out the doctrine of the separation of powers, and the argument was made that, after the progress which had been accomplished, it was proper to bring the institutions of the colony more nearly into accord 1 Compte Rendu, op. cit., pp. 291-292, 294. COCHIN-CHINA, 1861-1881 1/5 with those of the parent State, 1 an insidious fallacy to which democracies are particularly prone. More- over, besides the provincial administrators, to whom the Decree of 1873 applied, there were a large num- ber of officials, mainly clerical, in the central bureaus of the colony, and the Government wanted to consoli- date them all into a single service. The result was that the attempt to maintain a picked corps of admin- istrators was given up, competitive examination and the college at Saigon were abolished, and it was pro- vided that the service should be recruited by free selection, subject only to the condition that the candi- date must have a "baccalaure"at." 2 At the same time the retiring pensions were diminished, and in conse- quence of all these changes there was a falling off in the calibre of the men who entered the service. THE FOUNDATION OF THE COLONIAL SCHOOL It was several years before another genuine effort was made to improve the quality of the colonial offi- cials. But in 1887 the services of both the African and Asiatic colonies were reorganized, and a couple of years later the Minister of the Colonies said in a 1 " Le moment est venu . . . de remplacer, en un mot, le regime de domination par un regime d'administration directe, se rapprochant autant que possible du droit comtnun. . . . Ainsi se trouvera defini- tivement accomplie la separation des pouvoirs . . . qu'exige 1'appli- cation des principes d'une saine administration." Report preceding the Decree of May 4, 1881. 2 This does not correspond exactly to anything in this country. Its nearest equivalent, though somewhat lower, is the diploma of a Latin or High School. 1/6 FRANCE report to the President that " sending to the colonies administrators insufficiently prepared for the task to be entrusted to them presented the gravest inconven- iences ; no doubt the choice had fallen, almost always at least, upon honorable men, full of activity, anxious to succeed. But when they were made to start in subordinate positions, recruiting became difficult, and they began, moreover, to render services only when they were already wearied by the climate ; when, on the other hand, they were immediately called to higher positions, their insufficiency resulted in failures, some- times deplorable for the work of colonization." 1 He proposed, therefore, an entirely new departure by the foundation in Paris of a special college for train- ing the future civil servants of the dependencies. Now there had existed at Paris since 1885 an insti- tution known at first as the Cambodian, and since 1888 as the Colonial, School, but it was merely a place where natives, sent to France to be educated, could live and be taken care of while they were pur- suing their studies. This feature of the institution, it may be remarked, has continued ever since, al- though it has nothing in common with the training of the officials, and the connection of the two under the same roof is merely fortuitous. The whole num- ber of persons in what is called the Native Section is only about a score, and they take no part in the work of the other students. In fact, only two instructors are maintained at the School for their benefit, one in 1 Report preceding the Decrees of November 23, 1889. THE COLONIAL SCHOOL mathematics and the other in French. The School is still in the main a place where they can reside while they pursue their studies elsewhere, while the French students are taught at the school, but live outside. Of this institution the Government proposed to make use, by adding to it a department for giving to Frenchmen the training required to fit them for the civil service of the colonies. As originally organ- ized, 1 candidates holding a " baccalaureat " were, after an inquiry into their merits, admitted to this depart- ment by the Minister, at his discretion ; and the course was three years, except for bachelors of law, 2 for whom it was two years. But, owing to criticisms that arose, a commission which was appointed in 1 896 reported ; that while the School ought to be main- tained as the basis of recruiting colonial officials, it ought not to be given a monopoly ; that the course ought to be reduced to two years ; and that admission ought to be by competitive examination. 3 These rec- ommendations were put into effect by a decree of April 2, 1896. Since that time, however, a number of other changes in detail have been made, relating to the government of the School, the requisites for admission, and the courses for the various colonial careers. The French maintain that one advantage 1 Decret relatif au fonctionnement de 1'ecole coloniale, November 23, 1889. Arts. 10, 12. 2 Licencies en droit. 8 Report of the Minister preceding the Decree of April 2, 1896. N 178 FRANCE of legislation by executive ordinance is the greater ease with which changes can be made to meet the requirements of experience or of changing conditions ; and whether such a result is good or bad it has cer- tainly been attained in this case. The School, in fact, has neither been founded nor regulated by any statute, and hence a rapid succession of new de- crees, which is certainly a source of no little difficulty to the investigator, if it does not damage the stability of the instruction or the prospects of the students. No less than three decrees directly affecting the School, or the careers open to its graduates, have been passed between the ist of January and the 1 6th of September of the present year (1899), and therefore in describing the present conditions of the institution one can speak only of things as they are at the moment of writing. The Government of the School The governing boards of the School are a Council of Administration comprised of nine members ap- pointed for three years by the Minister of the Colo- nies ; and a Council of Improvement, composed of these nine, of the Director of the School, of five heads of departments in the Colonial Office, and of twenty-five other persons selected by the Minister of the Colonies, partly at large and partly from certain categories of officials and professors. 1 The Council of Improvement, which makes an annual report, 1 Decree of January 26, 1899, Arts. I, 2. THE COLONIAL SCHOOL 179 must be consulted about all ordinances affecting the organization and working of the School, about the general programme of the courses, and about the selection of the Director and Instructors. 1 The Council of Administration, most of whose members are, in fact, Government officials, has much larger powers. 2 It inspects the School, prepares the budget, arranges the courses of study, determines the number of professors, nominates them together with the Director, 8 and fixes their salaries ; subject, however, in all cases to the approval of the Minister of the Colonies. The School is supported mainly by its revenues from three sources : the income of a fund given to it a number of years ago ; the payments made by the colonies on account of the students in the native section ; and the fees of the other students, for each student pays a fee of 150 francs a year. This does not, however, cover all his charges, for he pays, in addition, 120 francs for special instruction in fencing, riding etc., and 300 francs to the Faculty of Law for courses he is obliged to follow there. The teaching force of the School seems quite out of proportion to the number of students. There are at present nearly thirty professors and other instructors; but in fact 1 Id., Art. 3. 2 Cf. Arr&te of January 30, 1899. 8 In the case of nominations, the procedure seems needlessly elabo- rate. The Council of Administration proposes in alphabetical order three names. The Council of Improvement arranges these in the order of its preference, and submits them to the Minister, who makes the appointment. Id., Art. 7. 180 FRANCE almost all of them are professors at some other insti- tution also, or officials of the Council of State or the Colonial Office. Qualifications for Admission to the School To be admissible, an applicant must be a French- man, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two, of good physical strength. He must also be the holder of a bachelor's diploma or one of a higher order, or must hold a certificate of studies from one of the superior commercial schools, or the Agri- cultural Institute, or a certificate that he has been admitted to the Naval School among the first hun- dred and fifty students. 1 As a matter of fact, almost all the men who enter the School have taken at a lycte the bachelor's diploma in the classical or the modern course, and some of them have also received one of the other diplomas or certificates. The per- sons so qualified have a right to compete for admis- sion ; for the number of students admitted to each section in the School is fixed annually by the Minis- ter at a number exceeding by one-third the probable vacancies in the service to which that section leads, 2 and the men to be admitted are selected by a com- petitive examination. One evil of the Dutch system is thus avoided. The competition comes at the begin- ning, instead of at the end, of the period of special training, and a man who has gone through that train- ing with industry and character is almost certain of 1 Decree of July 21, 1898. 2 Decree of April 2, 1896, Art. 3. THE COLONIAL SCHOOL l8l employment, the margin of one-third being only about enough to cover the natural elimination from sickness, indolence, and misconduct. The Competitive Examination for Admission Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the competition comes near the beginning of the special training, for the entrance examination, in accordance with French tradition, itself requires a certain amount of special preparation upon the very subjects that are studied in the School. The examination, which takes place every year in October, 1 consists of two parts. 2 The first, which must be passed, but does not count toward the competition, covers the subjects taught in the first year of study for a diploma in law. 3 The second, which is the competitive part of the examina- tion, consists of 4 A written composition, lasting four hours, upon the history of French and foreign colonization up to 1815 ; A written composition lasting three hours, upon the history of European colonization in America to the present day, except the existing French colo- nies there ; 1 ArrSte of July 21, 1896. Art. I. 2 Decree of July 21, 1898, Art. 5. "Art. 3." * From this the men who have already passed an examination in the studies of that year are excused. 4 See also Arrite of July 25, 1898. Political Economy was formerly among the subjects of the composition, but it was dropped by the Decree of July 21, 1898. 1 82 FRANCE A dictation and a translation (each lasting an hour and a half) from English, German, or Spanish, the English counting twice as much as either of the others, and the candidate being at liberty to offer more than one language ; An oral examination in physical geography, with especial attention to the French colonies. An oral examination in topography. An oral examination in practical construction in the colonies, including the construction and mainte- nance of roads ; materials of construction ; rivers and canals ; and water supply and sanitation. The programme of the examination is prescribed in greater detail by orders of the Minister, 1 and that part of it relating to the history of European coloni- zation in America will show the extent of the infor- mation required. It is as follows : America toward the end of the eighteenth cen- tury. English and Spanish colonization. North America. The English domination in Canada. Formation of the Dominion. Con- temporary Canada. Independence of the United States. The Constitu- tion. The Territorial formation. The Monroe Doctrine. Development of the American Union in the nineteenth century. The Antilles, Cuba and Porto Rico. Revolt of the Spanish Colonies on the mainland. Their Independence ; their constitutions. 1 ArrStes of January 12, 1897 and March 16, 1899. THE COLONIAL SCHOOL 183 Mexico and Central America. Contemporary South America. This is certainly a broad field, though doubtless the knowledge of details required is not very great, for it is stated that a clever young man finds no difficulty in preparing himself, even without assistance. The examination being competitive, one would ex- pect the marks to be awarded strictly according to the merit of the candidates' answers, but this is not exactly the case. In order to recruit men of superior education, candidates who have taken their degree in law, or who have studied at the Polytechnic School, or who hold diplomas from any one of a list of other institutions, are given an additional credit equal to one-sixth of the marks they have obtained at the examination. 1 Such an exception to the prin- ciple of equal competition strikes a foreigner as somewhat strange. Preparation for the Examination The candidates may prepare for the competitive examination in any way they please. Some of them, and occasionally the most successful, study by them- selves, without any instruction at all. But the great majority of them attend the Preparatory Section at the School itself. This was established in 1897 by the same decree which shortened the course to two years and provided for admission by competitive 1 Decree of July 21, 1898, last clause of Art. 5. 1 84 FRANCE examination. 1 Its length is one year, and it covers precisely the subjects of the examination save that a course of physical training, consisting of riding and fencing, must also be taken. Subject to the conditions of being French citizens between the ages of seventeen and twenty-one, and of producing a certificate of good moral character, etc., students are admitted to the Preparatory Section at the pleasure of the Council of Administration, and their number is naturally considerably larger than that of the candidates to be admitted by the examina- tion to the School proper. In fact, the career seems to be attracting more and more competitors; for in 1897 there were about 140 candidates for the thirty- three or thirty-four places in the School ; while in 1 898 they increased to about 180, and in 1899 there were expected to be about 200. This indicates, of course, a large proportion of men disappointed ; but in com- paring this system with that of the Dutch it must be observed, first, that the men are much younger, nine- teen being about the average age of entrance to the School ; second, that the study preceding the compe- tition is only one year ; and third, that the list of subjects, although all chosen with a view to their usefulness to a colonial official, are by no means so purely technical as those taught at Delft, and are more useful for the purpose of a general mental cul- ture. The unsuccessful candidate wastes, therefore, far less time in France than in Holland. 1 Decree of April 2, 1896. THE COLONIAL SCHOOL 1 8$ The Sections or Courses at the School The instruction at the School proper is divided into sections, two of which, the Native and the Prepara- tory Sections, we have already considered. Besides these there is a Commercial Section intended to fit young men for commerce or agriculture in the colo- nies. The number of students in it is not limited, but it does not interest us here; nor has it, indeed, developed much importance, as the number of its members is trifling. In 1899, for example, it gradu- ated only two men, and this is hardly surprising in view of the fact that it has a rival in the Ecole des Hatctes Etudes Commerciales, and especially when we consider the slow progress of industrial intercourse between France and her colonies. The School ad- mits also special students, known as auditeurs libres * for the pursuit of special branches of instruction ; but the matters that concern this inquiry are the four Administrative Sections, so called because they lead to the various branches of the colonial civil service. They are the Commissary Section, for the com- missariat of the Army and Navy in the colonies has an anomalous position, half military and half civil, and is recruited entirely from civilians, the major part of whom are furnished by the Colonial School the Indo-Chinese Section, which prepares officials for the colonies indicated by its name ; the African Section, which educates civil servants for the African 1 Decree of April 2, 1896, Art. 15. 1 86 FRANCE colonies, including Madagascai, but not including Algeria or Tunis ; and finally the Penitentiary Sec- tion, which provides administrators for the penal colonies. The number of students to be admitted to each of these four sections is fixed by the Minister on the ist of February of each year, and exceeds by one- third the number of probable vacancies in the service reserved for graduates of the School. 1 The candi- dates are of course admitted in the order of their rank at the competitive examination, and the suc- cessful ones are allowed in the same order to choose the section they will enter. The Indo-Chinese is generally the favorite, and the African conies next ; although a man with high rank sometimes chooses the Penitentiary Section, not that any one wants to go to the penal colonies, but because one or two positions in the Colonial Office at Paris are given each year to the graduates with the highest general average of marks, and as the Penitentiary Section has few courses, the men in it have a good chance to rank high. The number of students admitted each year is about thirty-three or thirty-four, and of these a couple fail to pass the annual examinations, and a couple more leave for other reasons, so that there graduate annually about twenty-five men. Thus in 1899 nine men obtained a degree in the Commissary Section, ten in the Indo-Chinese Section, five in the African 1 Decree of April 2, 1896, Art. 3. THE COLONIAL SCHOOL 187 Section, and one in the Penitentiary Section. These numbers are not great, and, as we shall see, they fur- nish in the largest service of all, the African, only a small proportion of the total number of recruits. The numbers are indeed about as small as they could be without seriously impairing the value of the School. The Studies in the Different Sections Each of the four administrative sections is designed to train officials for a different colonial career, and hence each of them contains special courses adapted to that career ; but there are also a number of studies, known as the general courses, which are common to all the sections alike. 1 Such are the comparative study of the methods of colonization in the various French colonies, and of the colonies of other nations in the East; the general organization, the administra- tive law, and the public accounts, of the French col- onies ; their economic institutions ; colonial products ; and colonial hygiene. The study of one modern lan- guage is also required, and the students are obliged to attend and pass an examination each year upon the course of law taught at the Faculty of Law. This last provision, which was added in 1898, amounts practically to an obligation to qualify for the diploma of Licentiate in Law, corresponding to our degree of Bachelor of Laws, and the reason the diploma itself is not required is that it is given only to men who have taken at a lycte a baccalaureate in the classical course, 1 See the appendix to this chapter. I 88 FRANCE whereas the Colonial School admits candidates who have taken their baccalaureate in the modern course, and even men from other institutions who have taken no baccalaureate at all. The School could not there- fore require the Licentiate itself, but requires the passing of the examinations whereby it is conferred. The course for the Licentiate is three years, and the students have time to follow it during the preparatory year and the two years at the School, the lecture hours being so arranged as to make this possible. An excellent provision, which can hardly fail to have an influence for good upon the general training of the students, is that which requires each of them to pre- sent every year a summary or translation of some work dealing with colonies, and published in a for- eign language. They are also expected to give an abstract of the lectures given at the School from time to time by explorers and by colonial officials. For these exercises they are credited with marks which seem, however, too small in proportion to the attention they ought to receive. 1 The students are, moreover, obliged to take fenc- ing lessons at the School, and to learn to ride at a riding school ; and in order to sharpen their interest in these exercises a small mark is given for them, which, like the marks in the studies, counts toward 1 The maximum mark for each of the summaries or translations is 20, and for all the abstracts of the lectures together, it is also 20, out of a total for all the required general work (excluding the physi- cal training) of 700. THE COLONIAL SCHOOL 189 the final rank of the student at graduation. It may be added that military drill is compulsory for all stu- dents who have not yet performed their military ser- vice, and is encouraged in the case of others by means of marks set to the student's credit. 1 It may be observed that the preparatory course is complementary to the curriculum of the School itself, and the two taken together constitute a systematic three years' course of study. In fact, the term of the School was formerly three years, and when it was reduced to two years, and the system of admission by competitive examination was introduced, in 1896, what was really done was to cut off the first year, transfer it to a preparatory course, and hold a com- petitive examination on the work of that year. The special studies of the four Administrative Sec- tions are, of course, adapted exclusively to the col- onies which those sections are intended to supply with officials. Thus, in the Indo-Chinese Section are taught the geography and laws of that colony, and the Chinese and Annamite languages ; the Cambo- dian tongue also for those who wish to take it for the sake of additional marks. The special subjects of the African Section are similar, the languages being Arabic and Malagassy, while Mohammedan law is 1 The Colonial School was not in existence at the time the law was passed exempting from more than one year of military service the students at certain specified institutions; and to get the benefit of this exemption, the students at the School go through the form of enrolling themselves at the School of Eastern Languages, where many of the same studies are pursued. 190 FRANCE also required. In the Penitentiary Section penal legislation and penitentiary systems are studied; and in the Commissary Section matters relating to that industry. Curiously enough the amount of special studies in the different sections is by no means the same, if the maximum of marks assigned to them may be taken as a standard. In the African Section the maximum for special work is 960, and in the Indo-Chinese Section it is 900, while in the Peni- tentiary it is 480, and in the Commissariat it is only 360 ; but this difference does not prevent candidates from preferring the two former careers. Rank at the School and Appointment to the Service The examinations at the Faculty of Law are strictly pass examinations for the students of the Colonial School. The students must pass them in order to get through the School, but the marks they obtain do not affect their rank at graduation. The examina- tions held at the end of every year at the School are also primarily pass examinations, but they have a competitive element in them as well ; for although, with the object of giving employment to every gradu- ate, the number of men admitted to the School is fixed at only one-third more than the probable number of vacancies in the different services, it may happen that there are less vacancies in the service than were anticipated, or that less than one-quarter of the stu- dents fall out by the way. Now the State does not, THE COLONIAL SCHOOL IQI like our government in the case of West Point and Annapolis, take into the service every man who obtains a degree, but merely distributes the existing vacancies among the graduates of the respective sections of the School in the order of their rank. An effort is indeed made to find places of some sort for the others, in the administrative service of Algiers or Tunis, for example, or in the colonial positions outside of the regular service ; but such posts are, of course, less desirable than those to which the School is designed to lead, and hence rank at the School is a matter of real importance to the student. Mere graduation is not competitive. It is con- ditioned upon obtaining an average of 65 per cent upon the whole course ; but in order to be eligible for a position in the colonial service it is also necessary to get an average of 65 per cent on the special courses in one of the sections, and further a mark of 50 per cent on every one of the special courses in that section. 1 For the purpose of appointment two separate rank lists are made : one of all the graduates of the year, which determines the order of preference for appointment to any vacancies in the Colonial Office in Paris ; the other, of the graduates by sections, and this fixes the order of appointment to the colonial careers to which the sections respec- tively lead. 2 1 Arrlte of March 24, 1897, Art. 8. 2 /^., and the Arretes of July 25, 1898, "Art. 6"; and October II, 1898, Art. 3. 192 FRANCE Cramming and the Method of Marking It has been suggested that the competitive element tends to promote cramming for the examinations, instead of the thorough grasp of principles ; but this does not appear to be any more true of this institu- tion than of any other French school, and the com- petition is said to be no sharper than is necessary to incite the students to industry. Wherever, as in this case, the examination is held by persons other than the instructors, 1 there is always a danger of fostering knowledge of wide surface and small depth, but the method of marking at the School is elaborately de- vised to eliminate chance and discourage cramming. It is provided, for example, that the students shall be questioned at least once every ten lessons, or in other words, that a part of the lessons shall be in the form of recitations ; 2 and the mark of the instructor based upon these counts for one-third of the total mark on the course for the year, the other two-thirds depend- ing upon the examination. 3 Estimate of the School In comparing the training at the French Colonial School with the education required for entrance to the Indian Civil Service and the Eastern Cadets, and on the other hand, with the instruction given at the 1 The examining jury in each course consists of the instructor and two other persons. ArrSte of March 24, 1897, Art. 5- 2 Id., Art. 4. See the tables in the Arr8t6 of July 25, 1898. THE COLONIAL SCHOOL 1 93 Indies Institute at Delft, it is evident that the French official has decidedly less general education than the English civil servant ; but that, while all his teaching at the School has a bearing on his colonial duties, it is much less exclusively technical than the teaching at Delft. The French student takes most of the legal courses prescribed for admission to the bar, and learns at least one modern language, in addition to his strictly colonial studies ; and to this extent, at least, his education is broader than that at Delft. The only true test, however, of any system lies in its results, and it is still too early to apply that to the French School. None of its graduates have yet reached positions of great responsibility. The oldest of them have left the School only about eight years ; and those who entered under the present system of competitive examination have just begun to graduate. In the absence of experience we must rely upon the opinions of the men most competent to judge. The permanent officials in the Colonial Office, and the Gov- ernors of the Colonies, seem to be on the whole very well satisfied with the young men sent out from the School ; although there is, of course, some difference of opinion about the proper amount of general education, and the length of the theoretical training that a colo- nial official ought to receive. Some of the Governors, indeed, ask for graduates of the School for supernu- merary posts even where there are no vacancies reserved for them by law. It is admitted by every one that the quality of the French colonial officials 194 FRANCE has improved very much of late years, and of the credit for this state of things the School may well claim its share. The men it turns out are, indeed, said to be superior in calibre to the average of those who go into the home civil service in France. On the other hand, I have heard a critic, most unquestion- ably competent, say that the School suffers, like the whole French system of education, from too much specialization, that its tendency is too bureaucratic, and that it is likely to produce good functionaries, but poor administrators, men who will not find for themselves the solution of new problems. Criticisms by M. Boutmy The most elaborate criticism of the School that I have seen is that of M. Boutmy, the eminent Director of the Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques, in a little book entitled " Le recrutement des administrateurs coloniaux." This was published in 1895, and some of the things he complained of have since been changed in accordance with his views; but he ob- jected also to the whole principle of the School, and proposed a plan for the selection and training of colonial officials, which resembled in many points the scheme drawn up by the recent Commission in Holland. No part of this has of course been adopted. M. Boutmy's criticisms may be summed up in two main objections to the nature of the School ; namely, to its bureaucratic tendency, and to its monopoly, or approximate monopoly, of the supply of colonial offi- THE COLONIAL SCHOOL 195 cials. Under the' first head comes his complaint that an excessive proportion of time is allotted to studies supposed to be of use to all colonial officials, without regard to the particular colony in which they are to serve, and too small a part of the time to studies relat- ing directly to that colony. This was more true at first than it is to-day, for he tells us that by the Arret6 of December 14, 1889, the maximum marks in the studies taken by all the students aggregated 1070, and those in the special studies, relating to Indo-China, for example, added up to only 330; while in the Arrete of July 25, 1898, the former are reduced to 700, and the latter increased to 900. He contended that such a system fostered a belief in the possibility of a "colonial functionary," not especially adapted for any one place, but useful everywhere, a belief which was certain to result in a hostility to liberty of commerce and industry, and an impatience of all opposition to administrative red tape. He pointed out that the existence of this belief was shown by the provision of the Arrete" of December 14, 1889, whereby the graduates of the School were allowed to select the colony in which they would serve, in the order of their rank in the common studies, regardless of their knowledge of that particular colony, save only that no man could be sent to Indo-China unless he had obtained a respectable mark in the studies specially relating thereto. 1 The provision had, indeed, been 1 This was also true of the Commissariat. Decree of November 23, 1889, arts. 14, 1 6. 196 FRANCE. changed before he wrote, by the decree of November 10, 1 892, which divided the School more thoroughly into separate sections, and permitted appointments to any branch of the colonial service (except the central office in Paris) only from the men who had graduated in the appropriate section. This obviated a part, but only a part, of his criticism, for he objected entirely to training men for the different colonies together; and there can be no doubt that the danger of cultivat- ing too much the bureaucratic spirit is one that is ever present in any governmental school in France. M. Boutmy's second criticism, that is, his objection to the monopoly of the School in furnishing recruits to the colonial civil service, is even more important, because it is connected with a gradual change which has taken place in the object the institution is intended to subserve. Friends of the Colonial School attributed his objection to the fact that he was at the head of a rival institution which had at one time prepared men for the colonial service. He attributed it himself to his experience in doing that very work. 1 His objec- tion was based chiefly upon the ground that the quali- ties required for a good colonial administrator are not book learning, but character and capacity, and that any monopoly granted to a school raises an artificial barrier against men with the qualities needed. This is undoubtedly true, and if the selection could be intrusted to an all- wise and unprejudiced autocrat, free from political influences, arbitrary selection 1 " Le recrutement des administrateurs coloniaux," p. 9, Note. THE COLONIAL SCHOOL 1 97 would, no doubt, be the best method of recruiting. But the real question, is whether any other system would actually yield better results than the Colonial School. However this may be, the monopoly of the School has, in fact, been destroyed. REDUCTION IN THE POSITIONS RESERVED FOR GRADU- ATES OF THE SCHOOL As originally projected the Colonial School was intended to supply eventually all the colonial offi- cials, save a small number of appointments set apart for the promotion of deserving men in subordinate positions. This is clearly stated in the report of the Minister preceding the Decree of November 23, 1889 ; and in the decree itself three-quarters of the vacancies after January I, 1892, were reserved for the graduates, 1 the remaining quarter being left for promotions from the lower service. The provision had, however, hardly gone into effect when it began to be modified. The African Service It is unnecessary to consider the commissariat and the penal colonies. It will be enough for our pur- pose to deal with the African and Indo-Chinese ser- vices. In i892 2 the proportion of places reserved in the different services was readjusted, but without making any great change in the total. In fact, the post of administrator of the fourth class in Africa was reserved exclusively for graduates of the School. 1 Art. 19. 2 Decree of November 10, 1892. 198 FRANCE Later in the same year, however, the opening wedge of a new system was introduced. 1 After reciting that it would be some time before the increase of students in the School was enough to supply the needs of the service, it was provided that two-thirds of the admin- istrators of the third class should be taken by promo- tion from the fourth class, and one-third from local agents or officials in the colonies or from military or naval officers; and a similar process was to be fol- lowed in the case of the next grade above. In i894 2 the proportion of promotions from the fourth class was increased to three-quarters ; but it was also pro- vided that sundry officials in the various colonies and military officers might be appointed to the fourth class if there were not enough graduates from the School, and in the meanwhile the number of students in the School itself had been restricted. 3 The course was then two years, and while the first year was left untouched, the number of students in the second year was limited for all the sections together to sixty, fifty by promotion from the first year and ten by competitive examination. In 1896* these changes were made more systematic, and another element was introduced by the new Minister of the Colonies, M. Andr^ Lebon, who had himself been a professor in the Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques. The pro- bational administrators, as the fourth class were then 1 Decree of December 16, 1892, and the Report preceding the same. a Decree of July 24, 1894. 8 By the Decree of February 2, 1894. * Decree of July 4, 1896. THE COLONIAL SCHOOL 199 called, were to be recruited, one-half by the promo- tion of subordinate colonial officials, one-third by an open competition among the graduates of certain institutions of learning, and only one-sixth from the graduates of the Colonial School. The first regular grade in the service was to be filled, three-fifths by promotion of the probationers, one-fifth from explor- ers, special agents, and military and naval officers, and the other fifth either from explorers of exceptional merit, or by promotion. This principle of reserving a fraction, three-fifths, and in the higher grades four-fifths, for promotion, and the rest for explorers and military officers, was modified and extended in its details a couple of years later, 1 and is now carried throughout the hierarchy, the rank required of the military men rising with the grade. It ceases only for the highest grade in the permanent service, which is filled entirely by promotion. Thus the graduates of the School are not only restricted to one-sixth of the places at the lowest step of the ladder, but their prospects are cut down by an influx of outsiders at each successive grade. At about the same time it was provided that the number of students to be admitted to each section of the Colonial School should be fixed annually by the Minister, in accordance with the probable vacan- cies open to its graduates. 2 It is evident, therefore, that the School, instead of being, as was originally intended, the main source of supply for colonial offi- 1 Decree of March 23, 1898. a Decree of April 2, 1896, Art. 3. 200 FRANCE cials, has been reduced to furnishing a comparatively small part of them. The Service of Indo-China The case of the Indo-Chinese Section, though less striking, tells the same story. This section also was affected by the Decree of 1894, limiting the number of students in the School ; and here also was estab- lished the principle of appointments from outside, for the Decree of July i, 1893, provided that the first grade of regular officials in Cochin-China above the probationers should be recruited, two-thirds from the probationers (who were all graduates of the School) and the subordinate officials, and one-third among Doctors of Law and persons in the Colonial Office in Paris. The higher grades were to be recruited partly by promotion and partly from the Colonial Office in Paris. The services of the various prov- inces composing the Indo-Chinese colonies were not then consolidated, and were regulated by separate enactments. But the same spirit pervaded them all. Thus the Decree of September 14, 1896, as modified by that of June 13, 1897, provided that three-fifths only, instead of three-quarters, of the probational positions in Annam, Tonquin, and Cambodia should be reserved for graduates of the School, 1 while an- other fifth was to be filled by promotion from the subordinate service, and the remaining fifth by a 1 Under the Decree of November 10, 1892, at least six places were reserved annually for the graduates of the School. THE COLONIAL SCHOOL 2OI competitive examination among candidates holding certain diplomas of high rank. 1 Elaborate arrange- ments were also made for promotion through the various grades of the service. But it is unnecessary to try to follow the intricate maze of provisions for these services. It will suffice to glance at a decree issued last autumn consolidat- ing into one body the services of all the provinces of Indo-China, and revising the rules of appointment in a reactionary sense. This decree, which bears the date of September 16, 1899, after dealing with some subordinate positions, declares that graduates of the School shall be appointed to the post of probationary administrator so far as there are vacancies; and then provides that appointments to the lowest grade in the regular service shall be made partly from these probationers, partly by the promotion of subordinate officials, partly from officials in the Colonial Office in Paris, partly from military and naval officers, and partly from members of the Prefectoral Councils in France. , The same rule with slight modifications is applied to the next two grades in the service, but the two highest grades can be filled only by promotion, and the third only by promotion and from military men. The proportion of places to be given to each of the categories is not specified, so that the number of graduates of the School admitted to the service would 1 The diploma of the Colonial School was included. See Erratum published in the Journal Officiel of June 20, 1897, p. 3426. 202 FRANCE appear to be discretionary. But an even more im- portant indication of the spirit of the law is found in the inclusion of the last category in the list. This is a return to the unfortunate system of transferring men from the home to the colonial service, a system which has been held accountable for much of the French lack of success in colonization in the past, and which was discarded many years ago. The re- lapse into the old ways is emphasized by a general provision at the end of the decree to the effect that transfers between the civil services of France and Indo-China can be authorized by the Government. Change in the Object of the School It is clear that the Colonial School, instead of ex- panding as was originally intended, until it became the chief means of training colonial officials, has been curtailed and crowded out until it has become only one of the many sources, and one of rather secondary importance at that. The fact is that the French system of recruiting the colonial service is not framed on any consistent plan. It has been modified from time to time, not so much to accord with the results of experience, as in consequence of pressure, and its present form is the effect of trying to please everybody. OTHER METHODS OF ENTERING THE SERVICE At the same time it is only fair to add that some officials of experience are of opinion that there are OTHER MODES OF SELECTION 203 great advantages in having several different methods of admission to the colonial service, because one of them supplies elements which the rest would exclude. It is worth while, therefore, to consider how the other modes of selection are put into operation ; and for this purpose we may leave out of account the new decree regulating the service in Indo-China, which is too recent to have produced any effect, and confine our attention to the African service. This is recruited by three dis- tinct methods, apart from the School. They are open competition, appointment of officers from the Army and Navy, and promotion of subordinate officials. Open Competition This method of selection was introduced by the Decree of July 4, 1896, and consists of a competitive examination confined to the graduates of the great French educational institutions of high grade, among which the Colonial School and the Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques are included. The examination, regulated in detail by the Arrete" of October 17, 1896,! is divided into two parts. The first part, which is all in writing, comprises: (i) the history or the physical and economic geography of Africa; 2 1 The subject of colonial products was added to the examination after that date. Another Arrete of the same date prescribed simi- lar conditions for the competitive examination for the service in Annam, Tonquin, and Cambodia; but that competition has been abandoned altogether by the Decree of September 16, 1899. 8 In this subject and that of colonial products, there is published, with the notice of the examination, a programme showing the extent of the knowledge required. 204 FRANCE (2) a report on some question relating to administra- tion, finance, or customs ; (3) colonial products ; and (4) English or German. A candidate must obtain a mark of 40 per cent in each of these subjects, and a total average of 54 per cent, in order to be admitted to the second part of the examination. This takes place a week later, and comprises: (i) a writ- ten summary of the results of a mission to Africa, a copy of the report being given to the candidates for the purpose ; (2) a practical test in surveying ; and (3) an oral examination on the same language that was offered at the first part of the examination. But a candidate can offer the other language, also or Arabic or Mala- gassy, and thereby get additional marks. The candi- dates who have obtained 40 per cent in each subject in both parts of the examination, and an average of about 50 per cent on the whole, are then ranked according to their marks ; and so many of the highest on the list are appointed as there were vacancies previously advertised. This examination does not appear on its face to be very difficult, but the questions asked are said to require a really profound knowledge of the subject. The system has not, however, proved a success, be- cause the number of competitors is very small, and this may be ascribed to various causes. In the first place, the examination involves special preparation, a disadvantage which has been sufficiently discussed already in these pages ; and in the second place, the number of places offered for competition is too small OTHER MODES OF SELECTION 2O5 to attract any considerable quantity of candidates. The number to be competed for in January, 1900, for example, is only three, and the number of candidates appears not to be more than four, 1 although as a rule every competition for public office in France is crowded. The small number of applicants is gener- ally felt to interfere seriously with the success of the plan, and it is, indeed, hard to see how any competi- tive examination, which is after all only a means of elimination, can produce good results unless there is a fair number of candidates to choose from. If the examination could be so devised as to require no special preparation, as in England, or if a larger number of places were thrown open to competition, the quantity of candidates would, no doubt, increase heavily, but under the present arrangements that can hardly be expected. Appointments from the Army and Navy The selection of military officers for colonial posi- tions is made by a commission composed of the Sec- retary of the Colonial Office, of the Chief of the Bureau of the Personnel, and of the three Directors of the Bureaux that have charge of the different colonies. The officers must have a good report, and have seen service in the colony. They are obliged to resign their commissions absolutely at the date of their appointment, but as they do not enter the em- ploy of the colony at the lowest grade of the official 1 Journal Officiel, November 18, 1899. 206 FRANCE ladder, their previous military service is counted toward the time required for earning a colonial pension. In their case the danger of political press- ure on the Ministers to procure appointments is peculiarly great, and it is for that reason that the commission was established to select them. It seems to be agreed on all sides, however, that they have furnished excellent material, and that among them are to be found many of the best administrators in the colonies. Yet the opinion seems to be equally general that they tend too much to be disciplinarians, and rely too much on the use of force, to form the sole element in the colonial service. Promotion from the Subordinate Service The subordinate service, from which promotions are made, contains few natives, and is composed almost entirely of Frenchmen. 1 Unlike the regular civil service, which forms a single corps for all the African colonies, it constitutes a distinct and sepa- rate service for each colony, and its members are 1 It is hardly necessary to enter here upon the subject of the native subordinate services. As in other Asiatic colonies, there are native officials in Indo-China. In Cochin-China, which is under direct French rule, the local native chiefs are selected by the villagers, although the choice is practically directed by the French authorities. Annam, on the other hand, which is a true protectorate, has the Chinese system of government by Mandarins selected by competitive literary examinations, which offers a sufficient parody of the English methods to be the classical example of the meeting of the extremes of stagnant and progressive civilization. OTHER MODES OF SELECTION 2O/ recruited and dismissed at the discretion of the Gov- ernor. Some of them are taken from Frenchmen engaged in business in the colony. Others are brought directly from France, and these are com- monly young men who are known to the Governor, his relatives, or the relatives of his friends. They are promoted to the regular Civil Service by the Minister on the recommendation of the Governor, which is almost always followed; but before this can be done they must have served in the colony two years, and it is the practice of the Colonial Office, when a promo- tion of this sort is made, to keep the official in the colony of the Governor who is responsible for his selection. This method of recruiting the officials is not unnaturally, on the whole, the one that the colonial Governors like the best, because they prefer the appointment of men they have known and can select themselves. The men selected appear to have been satisfactory, although as yet the system has not been working long enough to show what capabilities these men will show in places of considerable responsibility. But while promotion from a subordinate service, like promotion from the ranks in the Army, has great advantages, it may be suggested that it ought to be reserved for cases of exceptional merit, and that the proportion of places filled in this way in the African service, fixed as it is by law at one-half, is excessive. 208 FRANCE THE JUDICIAL SERVICE The judicial is quite separate from the administra- tive service in the French colonies, but the positions in it are few, and there is no systematic mode of recruiting its members. Judicial posts were among the careers at first enumerated as reserved for gradu- ates of the Colonial School. 1 But this was one of the matters criticised by M. Boutmy, 2 and, whether for that reason or not, the provision was subsequently dropped. The Colonial Office is, therefore, free to make the selections as it pleases. It was formerly in the habit, when a vacancy occurred, of applying to the Ministry of Justice for a candidate, but that de- partment not unnaturally furnished a magistrate who was not wanted at home, and hence the Colonial Office decided to select its own candidates, outside of the magistracy in France. In so doing it often takes a graduate of the Colonial School, who has also taken his degree of Licentiate in Law, but this does not happen with sufficient frequency to make the colonial bench a regular career for the members of the School. FRENCH EXPERIENCE OF LITTLE VALUE As in other political fields, so in the selection and training of her colonial officials, France has been a laboratory for political experiments. But none of 1 Decree of November 23, 1889, Arts. 16-19. 8 " Recrutement," p. 32. THE JUDICIAL SERVICE 2OQ them have yet lasted long enough, or been pursued with enough constancy, to furnish any definite conclu- sions. The calibre of the colonial officials has im- proved notably, but it is hard to ascribe this to any particular feature of the system. What the School might have accomplished if it had been suffered to supply the bulk of the service, it is impossible to say. And the same thing is true of each of the other methods of recruiting. The French experiments, therefore, while interesting to the student, are of little value to other colonial powers. APPENDIX COURSES OF STUDY IN THE FOUR ADMINISTRATIVE SECTIONS OF THE COLONIAL SCHOOL The Decree of July 21, 1898, "Art. 7," provides as follows : The students must, at the end of the first year of study, undergo an examination upon the subjects taught at the Faculty of law in the second year for the baccalaureate, with the exception of Roman law. If they fail at this examination, they can present themselves again in the month of November. In case of a second failure, they are not allowed to enter upon the second year. Students who present the diploma of bachelor of law are excused from this examination. At the end of the second year of study, an examination is held under the same conditions, upon the subjects re- quired for the licentiate in law. Students who fail in the supplementary examination in the month of November cannot obtain a degree from the Colonial School. The courses in law referred to above are not given in the Colonial School. Those given in the School itself are described by the Arret of July 25, 1898 (amending the Arret of March 24, 1897), as follows: ARTICLE i. The general studies taught at the Colonial School are divided between the two years of study in the following manner : 210 STUDIES AT THE COLONIAL SCHOOL 211 First Year Comparative study of the systems of colo- nization (Africa, Oceanica, French Colonies in America); economic sys- tem of the French Colonies (Tariffs, Banks, Mortgages, Money, Control of sugar) 55 lessons Colonial hygiene, and principles of prac- tical medicine . . . . . 12 " Colonial products 30 " Second Year Comparative study of the systems of colo- nization (Indo-China, British Indies, Dutch Indies, Philippines) . . 45 lessons General organization of Colonies . . 30 " Colonial administrative law . . . 10 " Course in administrative accounting . . 10 " The students receive each week a lesson in living lan- guages. Only one foreign language (English, German, or Spanish, at the option of the student) is required. The students are given practice in writing administrative documents. A certain number of conferences are held with them for this purpose. The optional knowledge of another living language, besides the one required, gives the student the advantage of additional marks at his graduation from the School. The languages which can give this advantage are English, German, Spanish, Italian, and Dutch. The summary or translation which the students must present each year is given out to them in December. A period of five months is allowed them to do the work. 1 1 By the Decree of July 21, 1898, " Art. 7," " the students are required each year to present a summary or translation of a work on colonies, published in a foreign language and not yet translated into French." 212 APPENDIX Conferences are given at the School by explorers, colo- nial officials, etc. ; after each conference the students are called upon to write abstracts which are examined by the Council of Administration, and are the subject of a mark given by the Council at graduation from the School. 1 ARTICLE 3. The special courses for each section are divided in the following manner : Section of the Commissariat* Course of theoretical and practical preparation for the colonial commissariat. Both years. Indo-Chinese Section* Geography in detail, history and institutions of Indo- China. Both years. Legislation and administration of Indo-China. Both years. Annamite language. Both years. Reading and explanation of ordinary pieces of Chinese and Annamite. Second year. Voluntary Course, giving a chance for a credit of addi- tional marks, Cambodian language. (Course given every other year.) 1 Physical training is also required, and the mark, of which the maximum is 40, is credited to the student like his mark in any other required subject. Military drill is only compulsory for those who are liable to military service, and it appears to give them no credit in marks. For the others it is optional and gives a credit in marks. Arretes, March 24, 1897, Art. 2; July 25, 1898, "Arts" 6, j. 2 The maximum marks for the special courses in this section are 360, against a maximum of 70x3 for the required general work. 8 The maximum marks for the special courses in this section are 900, against the 700 for the required general work. STUDIES AT THE COLONIAL SCHOOL 213 African Section l Detailed geography of Africa (including Madagascar). First year. Organization, legislation, and administration of our African possessions (including Madagascar). Algeria. First year. Tunis. First year. West Coast of Africa. First year. Madagascar. First year. Mussulman Law, comparison with Hindu Law. Second year. Arabic language. Both years. Malagassy language. Second year. Penitentiary Section * Penal legislation. First year. Penal systems in use in France and foreign countries. Second year. The Arret6 then proceeds to give elaborate tables for computing the marks in the different required subjects, and, finally, directions for computing those in the voluntary ones. 8 1 The maximum marks for the special courses in this section are 960, of which Arabic counts for 360, against the 700 for the required work. 2 The maximum mark for the special courses in this section are 480, against the 700 for the required general work. 8 A voluntary European language gives a maximum of 20 marks, a native colonial one a maximum of 60 marks. CHAPTER IV THE UNITED STATES THE PRINCIPLES TO BE APPLIED WE are already familiar, in the United States, with competitive examination as a means of recruit- ing the civil servants, but this system has quite a different character from that which would be required for the selection of colonial officials. The competi- tive examinations that are now employed here are intended to test the fitness of men for immediate service, and in using them we assume that there are in the community persons whose ordinary occupa- tions are such as to enable them to perform the gov- ernment work. Now this cannot be the case in the colonial service. The community is full of compe- tent men doing every kind of work that is needed in the public service of the nation ; and even where, as in the case of postmen, there is no occupation in the community at large that is exactly the same, the business of the Government can be learned so rapidly that this is not of much consequence. But there are no men in the United States whose ordinary vocation is ruling Asiatics, or whose normal occupation involves 214 PRINCIPLES TO BE APPLIED 215 the art of administering dependencies. For this work men must be especially trained, either before or after selection ; and unless we are to adopt the unfortunate Dutch system of having an examination which requires an elaborate special training before- hand, the object of any competitive examination must be simply to select the most promising men to be subsequently trained for the service. It is clear, therefore, that none of the existing methods of com- petitive examination in this country can furnish us with examples, and that we have before us in the recruiting of the colonial officials an entirely new problem, in which we must seek for light in other directions. It is unsafe to copy the political forms of a foreign country, and an attempt to do so is apt to lead to disappointment; but it is always wise to learn their principles, and so far as they are good, to apply them, under forms adapted to one's own conditions. Now the experiments of England and Holland, the only two countries which have had a systematic method of recruiting their colonial officials for a sufficiently great length of time to be of value, seem on the whole to establish the same principles. These are in the main the principles laid down in the report of Macaulay's Commission, which were in turn based upon the earlier and long experience of the East India Company. They are: first, that the men se- lected for the service should have a high general education, in fact as high a general education as it 2l6 THE UNITED STATES is possible to give ; second, that the selection should not be based in any way upon the special preparation of the candidates for the colonial work, but should be made before that special preparation takes place ; and third, that a great deal of special preparation is not needed before the selected candidates are sent to the East to begin their active apprenticeship upon the spot. THE ENGLISH SYSTEM CANNOT BE ADOPTED HERE These principles are applied in England by means of a competitive examination based upon the subjects of University education, but it is not very difficult to see objections to this practice here, arising both from the habits of thought of our people, and from the practical difficulty of setting up a standard. Because Contrary to our Habits of Thought In England there is a strong feeling against mak- ing appointments to public office on grounds of per- sonal favoritism, and, on the other hand, there is no serious opposition to basing appointments on a stand- ard of scholarship which practically confines them to a small educated class. In America the popular feel- ing is very nearly the reverse on both these points. An attempt to reserve any class of offices, whether colonial or domestic, for college graduates would provoke widespread jealousy. It would be looked upon as class legislation for the benefit of a privi- ENGLISH SYSTEM INAPPLICABLE 2I/ leged few ; 1 for the public could hardly be made to appreciate the necessity, or even the value, of a high general education for the colonial service. They would point to illustrious examples of men who had succeeded without it to Clive and to others. . They would argue that it is certainly no more difficult to manage the Philippines in time of peace than it was to direct the United States during the Civil War, and they would point out the folly of any system that would have excluded Abraham Lincoln from the Presidency on account of his lack of a college educa- tion. They would name successful men in every career in life, public and private, and show that col- lege men do not possess a monopoly of the capacity for public affairs. It would be impossible to demon- strate to the people at large the fallacy of such rea- soning ; to convince them that if their arguments prove anything they prove that general education is useless ; and to make them see that the proportion of successes in positions of responsibility are greater among educated than among uneducated men. Any test is, in fact, a very rough measure of capacity, and cannot have the effect of selecting precisely the per- 1 The Boston Herald, discussing this subject on December 29, 1899, remarked : " If it was proposed to establish a colonial civil service system which ruled out almost every one who was not capable of passing an examination for university honors, a protest would go up, particularly from the demagogic politicians, that this was a species of class control, and that in a free democratic government every citi- zen should be given a chance to receive an official appointment. This is one of our weaknesses." These remarks may be taken as expressing a very widespread sentiment. 218 THE UNITED STATES sons in the community who are best fitted for the work to be done. Its object is merely to get as good an average, with as few failures, as possible, and the selection of colonial officials exclusively from men of high education conduces to that result. But it would be hard to make the public feel that this is either true or just. After saying that the Americans would have a strong jealousy of any limitation of the colonial ser- vice to college graduates, it may seem strange to say that they would have little jealousy of a system of favoritism, which virtually confines appointments to the men who have influence with politicians; but such is unfortunately the case. The fact is, that the Ameri- can, while believing passionately in equality in certain ways, does not care for it in others. He has a strong tendency to think that while all men ought to have an equal chance in life, they have a right to enjoy for themselves that chance, and that one of the things that a man may acquire by his exer- tions, and the fruits of which he has a right to enjoy, is his position in the community and his influence over others. We see this continually throughout the business world. The directors of railroads, for exam- ple, have privileges which shock an Englishman. The fact is, that the American is really far more of an individualist than his kinsman across the sea. Moreover, the right to enjoy the influence one pos- sesses applies to politics as well as to business, for deep down in American sentiment one is constantly com- ENGLISH SYSTEM INAPPLICABLE 219 ing across manifestations of the feeling that a public office is not solely a public trust, but also to some extent a private privilege as well. One may see this at every turn. To take a single example, the laws requiring the Federal offices in Washington to be divided among the States in proportion to population has no other foundation. Such a rule is absurd if public office is purely a public trust ; because Provi- dence does not distribute men of capacity for the public service in exact proportion to population, and the system involves a refusal to appoint the most competent man for a place, simply on the ground that the quota of his State is already full. But if, on the other hand, we assume that the holding of public office is a private privilege, the distribution of offices among the States in proportion to population is not only entirely fair, but is the only just distribution that can be made. Whether we approve of these popular sentiments or not, we must recognize them, and it is unwise to plan a colonial service without taking them into account. Now, whatever system for recruiting that service is adopted, it must not only be permanent, but it must be believed to be perfectly secure, or the best men, those who have reason to hope for a suc- cessful career at home, will not go into it. In other words, it is not enough to enact a good method of recruiting colonial officials, but that method must be such as to be safe against serious attacks, and what is more important still, against the more insidious pro- cess of undermining. But unless the system be based 220 THE UNITED STATES upon a widespread belief in its utility, it will not be secure. A system of competitive examination would be much more open to assault in the colonial than in the home civil service, both because the violations of the law cannot awake so much public attention, and because an examination which merely tested the gen- eral qualifications of the candidate would have far less popular, support than our home examination which tests his fitness for immediate service. It would probably be impossible, therefore, to es- tablish a systen of competitive examination similar to that for the Indian Civil Service, or to shield it effectually from attack if established. Because a Standard cannot be Maintained There is another difficulty in adopting the English system of competitive examination, arising from the absence of a recognized University standard. There are, here, no Universities which, like Oxford and Cambridge in the United Kingdom, occupy the posi- tion of models to whose standard other institutions must conform on pain of forfeiting their claim to be considered of the first rank. If the competitive ex- amination were to be based upon the requirements for a University degree the question would instantly arise, a degree at what University ? All the smaller colleges, and particularly all the State Universities, would insist on being considered, and they would complain if the standard were adapted to the curric- ulum of the half a dozen largest colleges in the coun- ENGLISH SYSTEM INAPPLICABLE 221 try. They would say, and say rightly too, that this would be giving a privilege to the graduates of those institutions. But if, on the other hand, the smaller colleges with a lower standard were to be considered, it would become impossible to draw the line, for there is no standard in this country of what constitutes a University or a college, and the institutions using those names run by insensible gradations down to academies with about the level of a good high school. The place where the line would naturally be drawn would be such as to include at least one University in every State, but in that case the standard and the age of competition would be entirely different from that of the Indian Civil Service. In other words, the examination would not be a test of really high gen- eral education. But wherever the line were drawn there would be a constant pressure to lower it, so as to enable other institutions to compete. In short, it would be impossible to fix a standard that would be either high or permanent. Moreover, unless the standard were closely fitted to the curricula of a very small number of the best Universities, it would soon be found that the candidates could be far more success- fully prepared by a crammer than by any institution, and hence we should get all the evils of the cramming system, and this ought by all means to be avoided. POSSIBILITY OF A SPECIAL COLLEGE I have said that the country is full of men doing every kind of work that is needed in the public ser- 222 THE UNITED STATES vice of the nation. But that is not strictly true ; for the officers of the Army and the Navy are not to be found already prepared in civil life. They must be specially trained for their duties, and the method by which it is done in their case might, perhaps, be adopted for the colonial service. In short, it is by no means impossible that the principles which ought to regulate the selection and training of colonial offi- cials can be applied in this country by means of a special training school or college. It will of course be objected that the system has been abandoned, or has not succeeded, in other coun- tries, but the objection is more specious than sound. The college at Haileybury was not given up because it was incapable of doing good work, or even because it had not done good work in the past, but because it was intimately associated with a system 'which had been outlived, and with the abuses to which that sys- tem had given rise. Haileybury cannot by any means be said to have been a failure, and it was a common subject of discussion some years ago among English- men connected with the Indian administration whether the Haileybury men or the Competition Wallahs had furnished the best materials for the service. The fact that the Dutch School has aroused a great deal of hostile criticism has no bearing upon this question, because that is an institution of quite a different kind, and any defects it may have shown are due to its being based upon wrong principles, and have no tendency to prove that a school man- POSSIBILITY OF A COLLEGE 223 aged upon different principles would not be com- pletely successful. The French School cannot be said to have proved unsuccessful, for, as has been pointed out already, it is still too soon to estimate the measure of its useful- ness. It has no doubt been unable to maintain its position as the main source of supply for colonial officials, but that is no reason for supposing that a similar school could not maintain its position here, because the French and American conditions are by no means alike. Annapolis has kept its hold very well on the supply of Naval officers ; and West Point has done the same for the Army, except for the case of the inevitable expansion of the service in time of war. The history of other countries ought not, therefore, to discourage the idea of a special college, while our own experience in another field is decidedly favorable to it ; for it is hardly too much to say that of all the methods we have ever tried for recruiting a public service, the military and naval academies have been distinctly the most successful. Advantages of Such a College A college could easily satisfy the three principles already laid down. The selection would be made as in the case of West Point and Annapolis, and hence would, of course, be made before any special training was begun. In fact, the amount of special training given before the departure for the Philippines could 224 THE UNITED STATES be regulated in any way that experience proved tfest. On the other hand, the young men selected could be given as high a general education as they could get anywhere else in the country. West Point and Annapolis give much more than a technical training in the art of war, for their courses include many studies whose real object is the development and dis- cipline of the mind. In fact, appointments to those institutions are sought every year by young men who have no desire to enter the military service, and who want the nomination solely for the sake of the educa- tion it affords. A government college of this sort is, indeed, a great deal better position than any other technical school, because in the latter the students are apt to neglect those courses which do not seem to them to have a direct bearing on their success in their pro- fession, while in a government school the career in the profession is assured, and it is easy for the authorities to direct the studies of the pupils into any channel that they please. A school of this sort is capable, therefore, of furnishing as high a general education as any University. Like old Haileybury, a government school has one decided advantage over a system of open competition. It fosters an esprit de corps, which is sometimes not very attractive to outsiders, but without which no profession can do its best work; and although this will undoubtedly grow up, to some extent, in any case, it receives a forcible impulse from early associa- tion in college days. In such a school, moreover, the POSSIBILITY OF A COLLEGE 22$ men know one another and learn the reputation of many of their predecessors in former classes. This also is a point of great importance where men are destined to work in the same colony, almost alone amid a large native population, and where in times of peril a man's action may be guided, and his efficiency affected, by his confidence in the character of a col- league in a neighboring province. These advantages were talked of a great deal in India at the time of the discussion of the method of preparation for the Indian Civil Service in 1876. Moreover, an institution of this kind does not con- flict with popular prejudices. The appointments to it are not limited to one class in the community, but are open to all sorts and conditions of men ; and the plan yields something to the desire for patronage in appointments and to their equal distribution through- out the different States. Such a concession may violate one's ideal of what things ought to be in a model republic, but we live in a world of facts, and the problem before us is to find a practicable scheme which will bring the colonial service to the highest possible standard of character and efficiency. Now, a system of patronage does not produce exclusively bad appointments ; it produces both good and bad, and if a competitive process can be adopted for elim- inating the bad, the remainder will be good, and if a sufficient proportion are discarded, the quality of those who are left will be high. Q 226 THE UNITED STATES Regulations of Stick a College It is clear, therefore, that a large fraction, say one- half, of the men appointed to such a college ought to be eliminated ; and to make this effectual, and to pre- vent the evils that did so much harm to Haileybury, it is important to provide by statute that no man who has been dismissed on account of misconduct, or dropped for lack of scholarship, shall ever be rein- stated. In order to prevent unnecessary expense on the part of the Government, and do as little injury as possible to the unsuccessful students, the elimination ought to take place in the first year. In fact, the number might then be reduced to a point not very far from the quantity probably needed in the ser- vice; a sufficient allowance being made for occa- sional losses by sickness, misconduct, and lack of diligence. With a four-years course of study, about three- quarters of the time might, perhaps, be given to general studies; that is, to subjects whose aim is mainly educational rather than giving information that may be supposed to be of practical value in the student's subsequent career. The other quarter, which would not necessarily occupy the whole of the last year, might be assigned to the technical studies of the profession, including, of course, the history, customs, institutions, and languages of the Islands. The plan followed at West Point and Annapolis, POSSIBILITY OF A COLLEGE 227 where all the men who graduate are taken into the government service, is by far the best. In fact, it is difficult to see, in a government school, which leads to no career but the service of the State, what is the meaning or object of a degree which does not entitle the holder to enter that service. There ought to be no difficulty in keeping up a sufficient emulation in scholarship by the prospect of seniority of rank, and by other devices, and, indeed, the obtaining of a degree is unavoidably in itself to some extent competitive. Size of the College A really serious difficulty is likely to arise from the small number of men required ; for there can be no doubt that the English principle of managing Asiatic colonies is the right one, that of having few officials, but insisting that they shall be of very high grade, and paying them well. It is not easy to say just how many officials it would be necessary to recruit annually for the Philippines, but an estimate can be made by a comparison, on the one hand, with the Straits Settlements and the Federated Malay States, in which, owing to the small number of inhabi- tants, the number of officials would be greater in pro- portion to the population than in the Philippines, and, on the other, with Java and the other Dutch Indies, where, owing to the density of the population, the number of officials would be less in proportion to the inhabitants. An estimate obtained in this way is far 228 THE UNITED STATES from accurate, but taking it for what it is worth, it indicates that after the system had got fairly at work, only about a dozen or fifteen new officials would be wanted a year. Assuming that number as a basis, it follows that the entering class at the school would contain not over forty members, to be reduced to a little less than twenty at the end of the year, and that the three upper classes would contain from a dozen or twenty men apiece. Now this is distinctly too small a number of students to get what is, after all, the great advantage of any college ; that is, the companionship with a large number of other young men in an intellectual atmosphere. In order, there- fore, to make such a college produce its best results it would be necessary either to connect it with some other institution such as West Point or Annapolis, for example ; or else to educate men in it for some other career besides the civil service of the Philippines. There would appear to be an appropriate service for this purpose. If, as is very generally believed, the United States is likely in the near future to increase her commerce with the East, we ought to have a numerous and thoroughly efficient consular service in China and the neighboring countries, and it does not seem altogether Utopian to suggest that our Asiatic consuls might be trained in the same college as the colonial civil servants. There are many points in their education which would be the same ; and, in fact, whether we exclude the Chinese from the Philip- pines or not, some of the colonial officials there ought POSSIBILITY OF A COLLEGE 229 in any case to learn their language. Such an Asiatic custom service would probably require five or six recruits a year, which would raise the total number of men in the three upper classes in the college from a little over fifty to somewhere near seventy-five. CONCLUDING REMARKS It is clearly impossible to select all the members of a colonial civil service on any system at once. If a college were created immediately, or if a competi- tive system of examinations were established this year, it would be a long time before the young men could be trained for their duties, and after they were trained they would still be too young for some years to fill positions of great responsibility. For the moment, therefore, and while we are training a corps of future administrators, we must select the officials in the best way we can; largely, no doubt, but, it is to be hoped, not exclusively, from the Army and Navy. In fact, it would probably be unwise to make any system of appointment too rigid until it has received the modifications that experience always brings. The experience of other countries, notably that of England, shows that it is better not to have the head of the administration, the Governor General, or what- ever he may be called, a member of the civil service. If he were to be regularly selected from that service and to hold his place permanently, there would be great danger that the whole administration would 230 THE UNITED STATES become bureaucratic. The best system appears to be to select for Governor General a man who has not necessarily had any previous connection with the colony, but who is a man of the world, with broad views, and to make a change every few years. In such a case, the permanent civil service supplies him with the necessary technical information, and by its esprit de corps and its knowledge of details it holds him strongly in check, while he, on the other hand, gives elasticity to the system, and tends to prevent the growth of bureaucratic red tape and routine. As these pages deal only with the selection and training of officials, it would be out of place to dis- cuss the necessity of giving them high salaries and liberal pensions. This matter has already been referred to in the introduction, and its importance is recognized by all thinking men. It is only nec- essary here to point out once more that no system of recruiting officials can possibly be a success unless such inducements to enter the service are offered that men of the best calibre will care to choose it as their career. The East India College at Haileybury The East India College at Haileybury Introduction THE only educational experiment tried in England for the training together of public officers, appointed to serve in a civil capacity in Asia, was made in the establishment and maintenance, by the East India Company, of the East India College at Haileybury, in Hertfordshire. For fifty years this College lasted. It educated the men who governed India during the last forty years of the Company's rule, when the empire, created by Lord Clive, saved by Warren Hastings, expanded and placed on a secure footing by Lord Wellesley and Lord Hastings, assumed a character of permanency, and presented problems of administration rather than of conquest; it trained the civilians who met the shock of the Sepoy Mutiny and reestablished order in upper India after that terrible crisis ; and its alumni superintended the organization of the new Indian Empire of the Queen-Empress, which, after the crash of the Mu- tiny, took the place of the old Indian Empire of the Company. Famous men taught in the College : Henry Melvill, the greatest pulpit orator of the Church of England during his time; Malthus, the celebrated writer on political economy; Sir James 233 234 INTRODUCTION Mackintosh, eloquent lawyer and distinguished his- torian ; and Empson, who edited the Edinburgh Review in its palmiest days. Pleasant recollec- tions of young days spent together by men whose esprit de corps as members of a great service dated from Haileybury associations, and whose friendships made there not only sweetened their lives in Indian exile, but made them a band of brothers, knowing each other's weak and strong points, stud the biogra- phies, autobiographies, and reminiscences of distin- guished Indian governors and judges. Yet no adequate history of the College has ever been written. There was published, indeed, in 1894, a volume entitled " Memorials of Old Haileybury Col- lege," containing a " List of the names of all Students educated at Old Haileybury, with notes of their sub- sequent Career," a " Record of Active Services of old Haileyburians during the Mutiny," an essay on Haileybury " College Literature," and a brief account of the " Origin of the East India's Company's Civil Service and of Haileybury College " by various au- thors, with two hundred pages of " Reminiscences " of his connection with the College as student and pro- fessor, by Sir M. Monier- Williams, the late Boden Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford. The historical por- tion of this volume is jejune, and the anecdotic remi- niscences of the aged Sanskrit professor, who never accompanied his fellow-students to India or shared their work there, are, on account of his personal limi- tations, unsatisfactory testimony to the value of the INTRODUCTION 235 College and its training, and leave an unfair impres- sion on the mind of the reader. It is the aim of the following pages, written at the request of Mr. A. Lawrence Lowell, as the result of some remarks upon his paper on the " Selection and Training of Colonial Officials," read before the Ameri- can Historical Association at Boston, to show the working and history of the East India Company's system of patronage, how and why the East India College was founded, what Haileybury really accom- plished, its history, the circumstances under which it worked, its good and its bad points, its importance as supplementing the system of patronage in appoint- ments to the Indian Civil Service, and the fashion of its abolition as part of the East India Company's sys- tem, rather than on account of any fault of its own. The story of the East India College, it has been thought, may be of interest to those Americans who are taking thought as to the new responsibilities open- ing before the United States in Asia ; and the writer can claim some right to tell it, since his grandfather, and his grandfather's five brothers were all educated there, together with numerous relatives in the next generation ; since he has been familiar from his child- hood with discussions concerning the respective merits of the old Haileybury civilians, and of the Competi- tion Wallahs who succeeded them ; since his constant study as a journalist has been devoted to the history of Indian administration ; since it has been his good fortune to devote much time both at Cambridge Uni- 236 GOOD MEN UNDER ALL SYSTEMS versity and in America to the teaching of Indian his- tory ; and since he himself was educated at the great English school which has since sprung up in the buildings of the old East India College, and can claim to be, in a different sense than his relatives, a Haileyburian. Good Men obtained under the Different Systems No one who has studied the history of Indian administration can fail to see that good men and able statesmen came to the front under every system of appointment to the Indian Civil Service. From the ranks of the commercial clerks sent out by the East India Company, after their handwriting and knowledge of accounts had been approved, when it was only a trading corporation, came not only War- ren Hastings the statesman, but Robert Clive the sol- dier. Among the relatives and friends of Directors of the East India Company, appointed on grounds of kinship or other connection without previous training, when trade had become of minor importance to admin- istration, arose the first Anglo-Indian statesmen, who made and ruled Lord Wellesley's empire, Josiah Webbe, Neil Benjamin Edmonstone, John Adam, Charles Metcalfe, Mountstuart Elphinstone, and their companions. Prominent among the Directors' nom- inees, who were trained at Haileybury, were the administrators of the Company's latter period, like James Thomason and George Russell Clerk ; the sav- iours of the Company's empire in India during the GOOD MEN UNDER ALL SYSTEMS 237 Mutiny, like John Lawrence and Bartle Frere; and the governors of the first twenty years of India under the Crown, like George Campbell, Richard Temple and Alfred Lyall ; while the Competition Wallahs, as the men chosen by open, competitive examination have been termed, have good reason to boast of the excellent public servants who now govern India, and of such administrators, thinkers, and writers as T. H. Thornton, D. Ibbetson, C. U. Aitchison and W. W. Hunter. Under all systems the good men have come to the front. The rank and file under all the systems have been satisfactory, since the reforms of Lord Cornwallis, in giving adequate pay to the Indian civilians and in regulating their status, put an end to the practice of private trade, and raised the standard of official morality by treating as criminal all attempts to get money from the natives. Earlier corruption in office was the result of the sudden change of com- mercial clerks into sovereign rulers; and it was not to be expected that the Indian officials of the last century, when making money out of official position was the rule in England, should resist the tempta- tions which beset them in their badly paid posts. As against the higher intellectual attainments of the rank and file of the Competition Wallahs of the new generation, must be set the camaraderie of the Com- pany's Haileybury nominees a camaraderie the more important when communication with Europe was more difficult and expensive than it is to-day 238 THE PATRONAGE SYSTEM and the greater familiarity with Indian habits necessa- rily possessed by men whose families had hereditary connection with India and who had been from their youth accustomed to the idea of an Indian career. There is no absolutely perfect way in which young men can be caught in youth and the experience of India has shown that men must go to Asia young, to resist the climate and to do their best work. Under both the patronage system and the competitive exam- ination system good men can be obtained, and bad men must be weeded out ; and the history of Eng- lish administration in India cannot be used to prove the superiority of the one system over the other. History of the Patronage System At any rate, in the last century, in England, there could be no question of any means of appointment to the public service, except by patronage. Since the London East India Company was mainly a trad- ing corporation, it naturally chose the fittest commer- cial agents it could find, and although it occasionally sent out men of birth and education, like Gerald Aungier and George Oxenden to Bombay, and Elihu Yale, Nathaniel Higginson, and Thomas Pitt to Madras, to fill responsible posts, the rank and file of its bookkeepers and clerks were drawn from the usual class of such business agents, and, since Asiatic exile was not attractive, largely from the great Lon- don charity school of Christ's Hospital, commonly known as the Bluecoat School. Its rival, the Eng- THE PATRONAGE SYSTEM 239 lish East India Company, followed its example and largely employed the service of discharged servants of the London Company. After the two were united in 1708, so purely commercial were the qualifications of the United Company's agents in the first half of the last century that they were not equal to dealing with the more statesmanlike policy of the famous French Governor-General, Dupleix. When, however, the conquest of Bengal by Clive in 1/57 was followed by the return of the Company's clerks, enriched beyond the wealth of avarice, to England, where they pushed up the price of seats in the House of Commons by their rivalry for the purchase of rotten boroughs, English politicians began to covet the rich patronage of the Directors of the East India Company and to cast greedy eyes at the lucrative places which it fell to them to fill. Lord North's Regulating Act of 1773 commenced the assault on the Company's patronage by estab- lishing a Supreme Court of Judicature at Calcutta, composed of a chief justice and three judges to be appointed by the Crown, and by naming in the Act the first Governor-General, Warren Hastings, and the first four members of a council to advise him, of whom three, Monson, Clavering, and Francis, had no Indian experience and were appointed for purely political reasons. This invasion of the Company's patronage was soon followed by a bolder effort. Charles James Fox, on behalf of the Coalition Min- istry of the Duke of Portland, brought in on Novem- 240 THE PATRONAGE SYSTEM her 1 8, 1783, what is known in history as Fox's India Bill. It has been customary to criticise this proposed measure upon the lines of its condemnation by its political opponents at the time, as a scheme to obtain the whole patronage of India for the supporters of the ministry then in power. Yet upon the face of it, the Bill had for its wise aim the placing of the government of the Company's territories in India under the charge of a board of seven persons ap- pointed for a term of years by the Crown, to be aided for commercial business by a board elected by the stockholders of the East India Company. Nothing could be more expedient. The work of administration, carried on by a commercial corpora- tion, was anomalous and absurd. Clive had clearly demonstrated this in a remarkable letter l to William Pitt, afterwards Lord Chatham, in which he sug- gested that the control of the Province of Bengal, which had been won by him for the East India Com- pany, should be assumed by the English Govern- ment. Had this proposition been accepted, the Company's commercial agents would never have had the opportunity to show their cupidity and ineffi- ciency as administrators during the dark period between the battle of Plassey and the commence- ment of the government of Warren Hastings. But Pitt declined Clive's suggestion. He feared that the unrestricted possession of the revenues of Bengal by the Crown would endanger English liberties. 2 1 Dated Jan. 7, 1759. Malcolm, "Life of Clive," Vol. II., pp. 119-125. *Id., Vol. II., p. 126. THE PATRONAGE SYSTEM 241 And not without reason,- as the efforts of George III. to establish personal government in the succeeding reign clearly showed. But under the conditions of English party government, after the overthrow of Lord North, the Crown meant the political party which happened to be in power. It was dangerous, shouted the opponents of Fox, to leave such an immense amount of patronage, as the administration of India implied, to the existing Government. " As my popularity is on the wane," Mr. Powys, a leader of the Opposition, imagined Fox saying : 1 " I will make good use of my time : the whole Indies shall, for this reason, contribute to the splendour and per- manence of my power. I will take advantage of the zenith of my power to build me a golden fortress in the midst of the land of promise. That fortress I will not only render impregnable, but garrison with a select number of picked friends and chosen adherents, on whose zeal and attachment I can safely rely a fortress which no contingency shall be able to assail with success which will neither yield to the call of the people nor the inclination of the Sovereign." The question of the disadvantage of leaving the administration of Indian territory to a trading cor- poration was lost in the question of leaving much pat- ronage at the mercy of a political party. Fox's India Bill was rejected in the House of Lords through the exercise of the personal influence of George III., and in the following year Pitt's India Act provided the clumsy machinery, which established the dual gov- 1 Thornton, "History of the British Empire in India," ed. 1859, p. 1 80. 242 THE PATRONAGE SYSTEM ernment of India by the Court of Directors of the East India Company and by the Board of Control, represented in the Cabinet by its President, that lasted until the Company was abolished in 1858. This complicated system owed its continuance to the fear of existing political parties that the patron- age of Indian places would be a party danger. Indian political questions were from 1784 in a stead- ily increasing degree settled by the English Cabinet, but the appointment to all administrative positions, except the Governor-Generalship and the governor- ships of Madras and Bombay, which had to be submit- ted for the approval of the Crown, which meant of the President of the Board of Control, and to the civil and military and other Indian services was left to the Directors of the East India Company. While the East India Company was still a com- mercial as well as a governing corporation, the absurdity of its maintenance did not become so manifest as later, for it might be argued that it would be inexpedient to have two bodies of officials, the one employed in the work of administration, the other in the regulation of commerce, in India. But in 1813 the Company was deprived of its commercial monopoly of the trade of India, and its functions in India became purely administrative. One of the ablest supporters of Pitt's India Act, Lord Gren- ville, now saw the weakness of his former position, and he proposed, when the renewal of the Company's charter came up in the House of Lords in that year, THE PATRONAGE SYSTEM 243 that appointments to the Indian Military Service should be given to sons of deceased officers, and to the Indian Civil Service to the successful candidates in a competition open to the boys educated at the great English public schools. 1 This proposition, which is interesting as the first public advocacy of the system of selection of Indian civilians by com- petitive examination, though restricted to certain schools, met with but little support in Parliament or in the public press. George Canning, among others, opposed the proposition, and declared that " there could not be anything radically wrong in the system which had produced all the able Company's servants, who had given their evidence before the Parliamentary Committees." 2 The character of the East India Company had greatly changed by 1813. Its stockholders were no longer mainly London mer- chants and seekers after good investments, but largely consisted of retired Indian officials and members of great Indian agency houses, like the Palmers, Arbuth- nots, Lyalls, and Colvins. These stockholders were not so desirous of receiving large or even good inter- est on their stock, as appointments for their relatives in the Indian services, civil, military, medical, and ecclesiastical. In voting for Directors of the Com- pany, they thought more of being repaid with the crumbs of the Directors' patronage than with an increase of interest, and business experience in Indian 1 Thornton, op. tit., p. 385. 2 Kaye, " The Administration of the East India Company," p. 4301 244 THE PATRONAGE SYSTEM commerce was less likely to lead to election to the Board of Directors than a large kinship among the holders of East India stock, and a knowledge of how to use patronage to the best advantage. This tendency naturally increased after the loss of the East India Company's trade monopoly with India in 1813, and an analysis of the list of stockholders printed in any of the volumes of the " East India Register" between 1813 and 1833 shows a surpris- ingly large number of famous Anglo-Indian names. It was quite natural that a man who had spent the best years of his life in India, and knew conditions there, should like his sons to follow in his footsteps, and he would be ready to give more than the market price for East India stock in order to get places for them. Under these circumstances it was no wonder that Lord Grenville's motion failed. The East India Company was tending to become a corporation of place-seekers, and since patronage was the aim of the stockholders and the distribution of it the raison d'etre of the Court of Directors, the loss of the Com- pany's monopoly of the trade of India was less fiercely fought than the loss of its patronage. A study of the names of the appointees to the East India Col- lege at Haileybury and to the East India Company's Military Seminary at Addiscombe shows, however, that the distributors of the Company's patronage were wise in their generation. Since it fell to Par- liament to decide whether that patronage should be continued to the Court of Directors or not, the Direc- THE PATRONAGE SYSTEM 245 tors gave plenty of appointments to families of politi- cal influence, and beside the Lyalls, and the Plowdens, and the Stracheys, and the Colvins, and the Lush- ingtons, and the Arbuthnots, appear the names of numerous younger sons of peers and of influential members of the House of Commons, who were not expected to be ungrateful for such kindness when the battle of patronage was fought out in the legis- lature. In 1833 they showed their gratitude. The Com- pany's charter again came up in that year for revision. The monopoly of English trade with China, which had been left to the East India Company in 1813, was now taken from it, but appointments to the Indian services were for the last time entrusted to the Court of Directors. Macaulay, to whom, as Secre- tary to the Board of Control, it fell to get the Reform Ministry's bill revising the charter through the House of Commons, had, according to Sir G. O. Trevelyan, 1 "imported into the Act of 1833 clauses which rear- ranged the system of appointment to the Civil Service on a basis of competition. But the Directors of the East India Company had been too strong for him. They were not going to resign without a struggle the most valuable patronage which had existed in the world since the days when the Roman Senate sent proconsuls and propraetors to Syria, Sicily, and Egypt. Backstairs influence in Leadenhall Street (i.e. at the 1 "Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay," ed. New York, 1877, Vol. II., pp. 283-285. 246 THE PATRONAGE SYSTEM India House in Leadenhall Street, the London head- quarters of the East India Company) contrived that the clauses embodying Macaulay's plan lay dormant in a pigeon-hole at the Board of Control, until back- stairs influence in Parliament at length found an opportunity to procure their repeal." All that could be secured was a government proposal that four times more nominations for Haileybury should be given than were needed, and that a competitive examination should take place between these nom- inees of the Directors for admission to the College. But this proposal was lost, and for twenty more years the patronage of the Court of Directors was contin- ued on the old lines. The East India Company after 1833 became solely a patronage bureau. The tendency observed since 1813 was accelerated. Since all the commercial privileges of the Company were abolished by the Act of 1833, and interest on stock was paid thereafter out of the government funds, the only advantage of purchasing East India stock over consols was that the possession of the former con- ferred one, two, three, or four votes on the holder of such stock, according as he held it to the value of ;iooo, ^3000, ;6ooo, or ; 10,000, in the election of Directors. Appointments under the Patronage System It appears from this sketch of the history of pat- ronage to appointments in the various Indian services that its existence was inevitable and of historic growth. THE PATRONAGE SYSTEM 247 Four distinct eras may be distinguished. During the days in which the East India Company was a purely commercial corporation, it was natural that it should choose its clerks and agents as other commer- cial corporations then did and still do. The qualifica- tions needed were those for a commercial life, but more important posts of superintendence and respon- sibility were filled from the first by men of a different class and with a different training. After the conquest of Bengal, when the Company's servants became rulers, with great opportunities for acquiring wealth, posts in its service became eagerly sought after. The Directors of the East India Com- pany found themselves besieged with applications for appointments, and many persons, sometimes men of mature age, who had held high office in England, among them William Burke, a cousin of Edmund Burke, made their way at their own expense to India in the hope of getting places from the Company's officials on the spot. The hope of " shaking the pagoda tree," as the acquisition of wealth in India was called in the last century, brought out a new type of men as candidates for the Company's services. The Directors of the East India Company did not at first understand, any more than the rest of their fellow-countrymen, the new conditions, and many persons were sent to India who were utterly unfit for Indian life, because the alteration in the Company's situation had not been truly appreciated. Some of the Directors naturally sent out relatives or others 248 THE PATRONAGE SYSTEM having claims upon them ; the more politic, who de- sired to be reflected to the Court, gratified important stockholders with appointments ; some, who had politi- cal ambitions at home, made use of their patronage to win the support of prominent politicians, or of important voters in rotten boroughs ; and some few sold the nominations in their gift for what they would fetch. What prevented the class of men sent out to rule Bengal from being more unfit than they were, was that Clive and others like him, who had made fortunes in India, purchased East India stock after their return to England and to a considerable extent ousted from the Court of Directors the bankers and merchants who had hitherto controlled it. The Directors with Indian experience, in their appoint- ments, looked more sharply for the qualifications necessary for an Indian life, since they knew how much the Company's power in India depended upon the character of its servants there. This second or transition era ended in 1784 and 1793. By Pitt's India Act in the former year, it was enacted that writers and cadets should be between the ages of fifteen and eighteen when sent to India ; and by Dundas's Act in the latter year, the age was fixed at from fifteen to twenty-two and the Directors were required to " take an oath that they would not accept nor take any fee, present, or reward for the nomination of any person to any place in the gift of the Company." From 1793 until the Company finally lost its com- mercial monopoly in 1833, the Directors in making THE PATRONAGE SYSTEM 249 their appointments were still largely swayed by con- siderations of kinship, and by the desire to make friends for themselves among the stockholders, or to win political support for the Company among politi- cians. But the grosser forms of favouritism were checked by the foundation of Haileybury and Addis- combe and by a fuller knowledge of Indian conditions. During this period the tendency, already noted, towards the purchase of India stock by members of the Indian services or by members of mercantile and banking firms doing business in India, steadily in- creased, and a study of the names of persons admitted to the Company's services shows an increasing pro- portion of those whose fathers or relatives had had Indian experience. Often during this period nomina- tions were given to sons of needy Anglo-Indians, who held no East India stock and were without political influence. Take for instance the case of the Law- rences, perhaps the most famous family among the East India Company's servants. The three elder brothers, of whom the most famous in after life was Sir Henry Lawrence, received their appointments to Addiscombe through the influence of Mr. Hudleston, who had been a member of the Madras Civil Service, and was a Director of the East India Company from 1803 to 1826. This gentleman's wife's cousin was married to Colonel Alexander Lawrence, who had distin- guished himself, though in a subordinate capacity, in India. To the two elder sons of this gallant vet- eran he gave nominations to the East India Com- 25O THE PATRONAGE SYSTEM pany's Military Seminary at Addiscombe, and for the third brother, Henry, he obtained a similar nomi- nation from his friend and fellow Director, Mr. John Morris, formerly of the Bombay Civil Service. 1 When the turn came for the fourth son to be provided for, Mr. Hudleston, who had then ceased to be a Director, obtained for him a nomination to Haileybury from the same friend in 1827, and thus the future saviour of India, John Lawrence, obtained his admission to the Indian Civil Service. In after years, when the names of the Lawrence brothers were on the lips of every one during the Sepoy Mutiny, the daughter of Mr. John Morris used to claim that she was the real saviour of India, since she had made out and signed in her father's name the nominations of both Henry and John Lawrence. During the period from 1833 to 1853, after the last fragment of the commercial idea of the East India Company had disappeared, and the stockholders held East India stock as they would hold any other gov- ernment security, the Court of Directors became en- tirely Anglo-Indian, and their nominations were almost entirely confined to members of Anglo-Indian fami- lies. The evolution of the patronage of Indian ap- pointments ran therefore in natural order from the commercial clerks, from whose ranks sprang Clive and Warren Hastings, through the intervening period of mixed political and commercial interests, to the final 1 Edwardes and Merivale, " Life of Sir Henry Lawrence," Vol. I., p. 21. THE PATRONAGE SYSTEM 25 1 establishment of an Anglo-Indian oligarchy, which regarded the government of India as its prerogative and provided it with efficient rulers, whose families had been long connected with India and who were closely related with each other by kinship or mar- riage. Scandals under the Patronage System The method of distributing the patronage to Ind- ian civil appointments among the Directors of the East India Company did not become stereotyped until 1806. During the early commercial days, when places in India were not greatly sought after, it may well be believed that nominations to clerkships were made mainly by those Directors who held the larg- est interests in the stock of the Company, and paid most attention to the work of the India House. Dur- ing the transition period much confusion and irregu- larity existed. Many of the most lucrative places in Bengal, were filled by the officials on the spot from the rank and file of the adventurers who had gone thither " to shake the pagoda tree," and many are the complaints of the Directors at this interfer- ence with their special prerogative. It is on record 1 that the distribution of patronage to the writerships awarded in England in 1778, was on the following scale : eight appointments were allowed to both the Chairman and the Deputy Chairman of the Court, 1 " Memorials of Old Haileybury College," p. 10. 252 THE PATRONAGE SYSTEM two to each member of the Committee of Correspond- ence, and one to each of the other Directors. In February, 1806, the scale of distribution was fixed as it remained until the abolition of the Company, giv- ing two appointments to the Chairman and Deputy Chairman of the Court, and to the President of the Board of Control, for every appointment allowed to each of the other Directors. The salary of the Direc- tors was fixed at a very modest rate, considering the great expense involved in canvassing for votes among the stockholders, for while they had to hold 2000 of East India stock for qualification, they only received ^150 in yearly salary up to 1794, and ^300 from 1 794 to 1854. This low salary, however, was com- pensated by the extent of their patronage. Sir J. W. Kaye, in his " Life of Henry St. George Tucker," who was a director from 1826 to 1851, and Chairman of the Court in 1834 and in 1847, says outright : " It may be assumed, in the first place, that it was the in- tent of the Legislature, which fixed the salary of an East India Director at an amount below the sum apportioned "to a junior clerk in the India House, that the patronage of the Company should, in some sort, be considered as the per- quisites of office. . . . Mr. Tucker, for example, held his place at the India House for a quarter of a century. Dur- ing that period he sent out five sons to India in the Company's service; and he provided for some collateral relatives." 1 1 Kaye, " Life and Correspondence of Henry St. George Tucker," PP- 553-554- THE PATRONAGE SYSTEM 253 Sir John Kaye goes on to declare that Mr. Tucker and the other Directors of his time, after providing for their relatives, distributed the remainder of their patronage on public grounds, and he defends nepo- tism on this large scale by the assertion of their gen- erosity in the distribution of the residuum of their nominations. It may be admitted that in the latter days of the Company's existence, when the Court of Directors was simply a great patronage bureau, nominations to the Indian Civil Service were honestly given and not sold. But it was not so in the transition period. The Directors, prior to 1794, looked in some instances upon the sale of their patronage as a legitimate sup- plement to their small official salaries. If some of their colleagues chose to make their nominations on personal or political grounds, why should not they sell theirs for money down ? This practice caused so much open scandal that by Dundas's Act, 33 Geo. III., c. 52, sec. 160, it was enacted that every Di- rector, within ten days after his election, should take an oath that he would not " directly or indirectly accept or take any perquisite, emolument, fee, present, or reward, upon any account whatever, or any prom- ise or any engagement for any perquisite, emolument, fee, present, or reward whatsoever, for or in respect of the appointment or nomination of any person or persons to any place or office in the gift or appoint- ment of the said Company." In spite of this strin- gent provision, scandals continually arose and adver- 254 THE PATRONAGE SYSTEM tisements constantly appeared in the newspapers offering to obtain, for money, nominations to the Company's service. As a result of these scandals, a Committee of the Directors was appointed in 1798, and upon its report it was resolved that, for the future, whenever a nomination was made, it had to be endorsed with the signed declaration " upon his honour " of the nominating Director, that he had not received himself, nor had any other person, to the best of his knowledge and belief, received any pecuniary consideration, while the nominee and his parent or guardian had also to swear that they were equally free from all complicity in the forbidden traffic. Yet the advertisements continued to appear in the news- papers, and in 1809 a Select Committee was ap- pointed by the House of Commons to inquire into the existence of corrupt practices in regard to nomi- nations to the Civil and Military Services of the East India Company. This Committee investigated a long list of cases and reported that, while no Director had been proved guilty of any corrupt or improper con- duct, yet many of them had given nominations to relatives and other persons who had sold these nomi- nations for large sums of money. 1 The result of this report and of the proofs given of such transactions was that, after 1809, every nominee to a writership in the Civil Service had to enter into a bond, with good security, in the sum of 3000, to be forfeited a The report is printed in the Asiatic Annual Register for 1809, pp. 405-411. THE PATRONAGE SYSTEM 255 to the Company if it should ever appear that his nomination had been in any way bought, sold, or ex- changed for anything convertible into a pecuniary benefit. This vigorous condemnation and the public atten- tion drawn to these open scandals, together with the various measures taken for preventing their repeti- tion, closed the worst chapter in the history of the Company's system of patronage. After the renewal of the Charter in 1813, followed as it was by the greater infusion of retired Anglo-Indian officers into the Court of Directors, rumors of sale of appoint- ments became less frequent. Occasionally such a rumor would be raised, but the Directors were too anxious to retain their lucrative prerogative to risk losing it by hushing up scandalous proceedings. The best-known later case occurred in 1827, when the Directors got on the track of the sale of a cadet- ship to the Indian army. Immediate and public investigation took place ; the Director involved, to- gether with the stockholder who had obtained the nomination from him, and the persons who had adver- tised and sold it, were tried in the Court of King's Bench in I828; 1 and although the principal parties were acquitted, the condemnation of one of the sub- ordinate agents in the business gave a wholesome 1 " Proceedings of the Court of Directors ... to investigate Trans- actions connected with an Abuse of Patronage; together with a Report of the Trial ... on the 6th March, 1828, the King on the Prosecu- tion of the East India Company, against Samuel Sutton and Others." London, 1828. 256 EARLY LACK OF TRAINING warning to those who attempted to engage in such transactions. So thoroughly indeed was the evil stamped out, that, when the Directors' privilege of nominating to the Indian Civil Service was removed in 1853, this was done upon the declared ground of nepotism and not of corruption on the part of the Court of Directors. Lack of suitable Training for Indian Officials prior to the Foundation of the College of Fort William During the first hundred and fifty years of the Eng- lish connection with India, commercial considerations were paramount in the appointment of agents, whose main duty it was to check accounts and to sell im- ported goods in the best market, at the highest price, while collecting cargoes for exportation which should be most profitable in the London trade. For such work as this, boys educated in the great London charity school of Christ's Hospital were well fitted, but the distance of India from England and the need for grasping Asiatic political conditions made it nec- essary to have men of another stamp and of higher training for responsible posts. No one understood this better than the most famous chairman of the London East India Company, Sir Josiah Child. That far-seeing statesman, toward the close of the seven- teenth century, in explaining the appointment of Mr. Nathaniel Higginson to be Second Member of Coun- cil at Madras, shows in the following passage from a EARLY LACK OF TRAINING 257 letter to the Madras Council his understanding of the situation : " Let none of you think much or grudge at the speedy advancement of Mr. Higginson. We do not do it out of any partiality to him, for he has no relation here to speak for him, nor ever had the ambition to think of such a thing himself; neither have we done it out of any ill feeling or disrespect to any others now being of our Council, but sin- cerely as we apprehend for the public good ; knowing him to be a man of learning, and competently well read in an- cient histories of the Greeks and Latins, which with a good stock of natural parts, only can render a man fit for Govern- ment and Political Science, martial prudence, and other requisites for ruling over a great city. This, we say, with some experience of the world and knowledge of the laws and customs of nations, can alone qualify men for such a Government, and for treaties of peace or war, or commerce with foreign Princes. It is not being bred a boy in India, or studying long there and speaking the language, under- standing critically the trade of the place, that is sufficient to fit a man for such a command as the Second of Fort St. George is, or may be in time ; though all these qualifica- tions are very good in their kind, and essentially necessary to the well carrying on of the trade." 1 Men like this Mr. Higginson, who, in 1692, became governor of Fort St. George or Madras, his prede- cessor, Elihu Yale, and his successor, Thomas Pitt, were a great deal more than mere commercial agents; and the Directors of the East India Com- pany in their case, as in that of the most distin- guished governors of Bombay and of Fort William in Bengal, showed their appreciation of the difference 1 Talboys Wheeler, "Early Records of British India," p. 91. 2$8 EARLY LACK OF TRAINING between their responsible directors of policy and their ordinary commercial clerks. The ranks of the lat- ter were no longer, in the first half of the eighteenth century, filled by Bluecoat boys from Christ's Hospi- tal, but no great amount of learning was required to qualify for a position among them, and no great amount of interest to obtain an appointment. None of the biographers of Robert Clive seem to have found out how the son of a respectable country law- yer received his appointment to the Madras Civil Ser- vice in 1743. The record of his schoolboy days is one of pranks rather than of study ; and there is no evidence that he received any special training for his position in India. However, the details of the train- ing and qualifications of Clive's most famous compeer, Warren Hastings, have been worked out by Sir Charles Lawson. 1 Hastings was the most brilliant scholar of his time at Westminster School, and the head master was so indignant at the shutting off of his classical education, that he himself offered to defray the expenses of Hastings at the University. But it so happened that Hastings' guardian, a Lon- don merchant named Chiswick, was a Director of the East India Company, and considered that India afforded a better career to his ward than Oxford. Accordingly, at the age of sixteen, Warren Hastings was taken from Westminster and sent to the writing master of Christ's Hospital for private instruction in accounts and caligraphy. These were the only sub- 1 " The Private Life of Warren Hastings," pp. 30-33. EARLY LACK OF TRAINING 259 jects in which the Directors of the East India Com- pany at that time expected their servants to be proficient, and a fac-simile of the petition upon which Warren Hastings was admitted into the Company's service in 1 749 simply states that " he has been bred up to writing and accounts," a statement which care- fully ignores his classical education, and emphasizes his brief training for a commercial life. During the latter half of the eighteenth century, when the East India Company had become a ruling and a governing power, its servants were still sent to India without any special training for their future functions. For some years, at least, a demand seems to have been made for a knowledge of bookkeeping and merchant's accounts, showing that the Directors still fondly regarded themselves as the chiefs of a commercial corporation. This appears clearly from the biography of Sir John Shore, afterwards Lord Teignmouth, who was one of the Company's most distinguished civil servants, and who filled the place of Governor-General between Lord Cornwallis and Lord Wellesley. Although Shore had shown himself a good classical scholar at Harrow School, he was obliged to abandon his literary studies when ap- pointed to the Bengal Civil Service by an old family friend, and to spend nine months in a commercial school at Hoxton, studying " Bookkeeping and Mer- chants' Accounts." 1 It is specifically stated that the 1 Teignmouth, " Memoir of the Life and Correspondence of John, Lord Teignmouth," Vol. I. pp. 9-11. 260 EARLY LACK OF TRAINING Directors of the East India Company, in 1768, when Shore obtained his appointment, required that their civil servants should be versed in these subjects, and by implication in nothing else. Five and twenty years later, however, not even this simple equipment seems to have been required. Mountstuart Elphinstone, one of the ablest of Lord Wellesley's pupils, and the greatest statesman who ever governed the Bombay Presidency, seems to have undergone no educational test whatever. He writes to his mother in March, 1/95: " I am extremely happy to inform you that my uncle [the Hon. William F. Elphinstone, formerly captain of a Com- pany's ship; Director, 1791-1824] has got me appointed to Bengal, and on Saturday last he sent for me home, and told me that I was to go with this fleet, which sails in six weeks. He also desired me to apply to writing and cipher- ing, and to leave off Greek." l Charles Metcalfe, whose career compares in useful- ness and success with that of Elphinstone, was the son of a Director, Sir T. T. Metcalfe (Director, 1789-1812), who had made his fortune in Bengal as Agent for Military Stores. He was destined from the first for India, and his father evidently considered a classical training of value for an Indian civilian, for he sent the boy to Eton. But when Charles Met- calfe left Eton in 1800 to take up his appointment in 1 Sir T. E. Colebrooke, " Life of the Honourable Mountstuart Elphin- stone," Vol. I., p. 9. EARLY LACK OF TRAINING 261 Bengal, he seems to have been subjected to no exami- nation of any sort. 1 It may be said that Elphinstone and Metcalfe were men whose superior abilities would have brought them to the front under any circumstances, and it would be more just to the haphazard fashion in which patronage worked during the later half of the eighteenth century to cite Lord Wellesley's complaint of the intellectual unripeness of the major- ity of young men who were sent to India in his time. In his celebrated " Minute containing his Reasons for the Establishment of a College at Calcutta," the great Governor-General stated that the young men arriving in Bengal to fill situations in the Company's Civil Service fell into two classes, those whose educa- tion had been originally erroneous and defective, because limited to commercial knowledge and not extended to liberal studies, and those the early promise of whose studies had been unseasonably broken. In neither case was any opportunity afforded to make up early deficiencies. This it was which led to the first systematic attempt to provide for the professional education of Indian civil servants. The cases that have been cited of Hastings and Shore and Elphinstone and Metcalfe prove that even under the most unpromising circum- stances good men were procured for service in India, but it may well be believed that the majority of their 1 Sir J. W. Kaye, " The Life and Correspondence of Charles, Lord Metcalfe," 2d ed., Vol. I., pp. 7-15. 262 THE COLLEGE OF FORT WILLIAM contemporaries suffered from the entire absence of any thorough professional training after the per- functory idea of qualifying in bookkeeping and com- mercial accounts had been abandoned. The College of Fort William Although it was Lord Cornwallis who placed the Indian Civil Service upon an honourable footing, and recognized by the award of sufficient pay, and by the stringent prohibition of private trade, that the East India Company's servants had passed from commercial clerks to rulers and judges, it was Lord Wellesley who first perceived that this change implied a difference of education. One of the most celebrated of educational documents in connection with the sub- ject treated by Mr. Lawrence Lowell is the Minute of Lord Wellesley, of which the title has already been given. It was first printed in full in the Asi- atic Annual Register for I8O2, 1 and has since been reprinted in the collection of Lord Wellesley 's despatches by Montgomery Martin, and in the Selection edited by Mr. Sidney James Owen. Its fame rests upon the fact that it recognized for the first time in an official document the need of a liberal education for men appointed to official positions in Asia, upon which should be superadded instruction in Oriental languages, and other special studies. In 1 The Minute was dated August 18, 1800, and appears in the vol- ume of the Register for 1802 with a distinct pagination. THE COLLEGE OF FORT WILLIAM 263 the first part of the Minute, Lord Wellesley described in grandiose language the duties of Indian civilians under the new order of things, and pointed out that these duties are "to dispense justice to millions of people of various languages, manners, usages, and religions ; to administer a vast and complicated sys- tem of revenue throughout districts equal in extent to some of the most considerable kingdoms in Europe; to maintain civil order in one of the most populous and litigious regions of the world." He then dwelt upon the necessary training for the effective fulfil- ment of these duties, and upon the necessity for a knowledge, not only of the " history, languages, cus- toms, and manners of the people of India, with the Muhammadan and Hindu codes of law and religion," but also of the general principles "of ethics, civil jurisprudence, the laws of nations, and general his- tory." But knowledge, he went on, was not the only requirement for a European official in Asia. Moral training was necessary to maintain the standard of uprightness, industry, and self-discipline, upon which alone the respect of Asiatics for European authority is based. In the second part of his Minute, Lord Wellesley criticised the defective and haphazard fashion of selecting and training Indian officials hitherto pursued. Brought out from England before good habits were formed, the boys who joined the Indian Civil Service were apt to plunge into extravagance and debauchery through the absence of any provision for guiding their steps on 264 THE COLLEGE OF FORT WILLIAM their arrival. They were supposed to learn their duties, and incidentally to pick up the native lan- guages and a knowledge of native customs, as junior assistants to high-placed officials. Sometimes they might get good training, but if their chief was indo- lent or busy they were left pretty much to their own devices, and when they came by seniority to fill impor- tant appointments, they were often entirely ignorant of their duties and of how to perform them. In the third part of his Minute, Lord Wellesley declared that these disadvantages could best be removed by the establishment of a great college at Calcutta, in which all young civilians arriving in India should pursue a regular course of studies, both liberal and Oriental, for two years. Regular collegiate life on the model of an Oxford college, with a common table and college discipline, was to be observed, and no civilian was to receive a post until his character had been tested and his duties learned. The college was to be under the direct supervision of the Governor- General as Visitor, and the young men were to learn to know each other and their future work under the eye of the supreme government. Lord Wellesley went ahead in characteristic fash- ion, and founded, on the lines he had indicated in his Minute, a great establishment, which was termed the College of Fort William. The regulation * establish- ing it was passed on July 18, 1800, but its foundation was antedated to May 4, as the first anniversary of 1 Asiatic Annual Register for 1801, pp. 104-108. THE COLLEGE OF FORT WILLIAM 265 the capture of Seringapatam. The College was established with a Provost and a Vice-provost, and a large staff of professors of all sorts of subjects, and elaborate arrangements were made for the instruction and discipline of the young and recently arrived civilians. This magnificent foundation was based upon the approval given by the Court of Direc- tors of the East India Company to Lord Wellesley's encouragement of a so-called Oriental Seminary, started by Dr. John Gilchrist upon his own initiative in Calcutta. Lord Wellesley had taken much inter- est in Gilchrist's scheme, and had awarded prizes out of the government funds to certain young civil- ians who had voluntarily taken lessons in Hindustani and Persian from Gilchrist. When, however, the Directors learned that their impetuous and uncon- trollable Governor-General had gone ahead and built up on Gilchrist's modest foundation the expensive structure of a great college for the instruction of the few young men sent out to India every year, they promptly proceeded to disavow the new creation. Students of Lord Wellesley's magnificent policy, misled by his grandiloquent language, are apt to think that the great proconsul was always in the right and was unjustly checked in all things by his niggardly employers. There was, however, a good deal of truth in the arguments alleged by the Direc- tors of the East india Company in their despatch of January 27, 1802, ordering the dissolution of the College of Fort William and the reestablishment of 266 THE COLLEGE OF FORT WILLIAM Dr. Gilchrist's Seminary. 1 They pointed out that the instruction in native languages contemplated by Gilchrist met with their entire approval, but that they did not consider it necessary to go any further in the direction of giving in India a general edu- cation to their servants. The idea of providing an improved general education in England, which was to eventuate in the creation of Haileybury, was already germinating, and it was rightly believed that such general education could be more cheaply and healthfully given in the mother country. The Direc- tors might further have argued on the absurdity of having a single college at Fort William in Bengal to instruct their servants in the languages used upon the Madras, Bombay, and China establishments, when these latter languages could be much better learned on the spot. Lord Wellesley replied to the strictures of the Court of Directors in a long letter of August 5, 1802, in which he reiterated the advan- tages of his College of Fort William, and tried to prove that the revenues of India could well bear the great expense. He concluded with the remark that he closed his letter "with a perfect confidence that the Honourable Court will issue, without delay, a positive command for the continuance of the College of Fort William until further orders." a Lord Wellesley was wrong. The College of Fort William, as he had originally designed it, ceased to 1 Asiatic Annual Register for 1805, State Papers, pp. 1-4. 2 Asiatic Annual Register for 1805, State Papers, pp. 4-29. FOUNDATION OF HAILEYBURY 267 exist, but his ideas for the training of Indian civilians were adopted. The general education in liberal stud- ies and the moral discipline of superintendence and companionship which he advocated were provided, after his time, at Haileybury, while his College of Fort William took up the functions of Dr. Gilchrist's Seminary and became a sort of graduate school in Oriental languages, through which young Bengal civilians had to pass before being gazetted to regular posts in the service, while similar schools were cre- ated at Madras and Bombay. With these functions the College of Fort William continued to exist until 1854, when the new regulations for entering by com- petition into the Indian Civil Service were promul- gated. The College of Fort William, as designed by the great Governor-General, did not become a lasting force for the training of Indian civil servants, but, as a result of his famous Minute, the Directors of the East India Company were forced to take cognizance of the need of providing their nominees with professional training, and thus the foundation of Haileybury was indirectly the outcome of Lord Wellesley's wisdom. The Foundation of Haileybury The foundation of the East India College at Haileybury was the direct outgrowth of the plan proposed in the letter of the Court of Directors to Lord Wellesley, limiting the scope of studies at the 268 FOUNDATION OF HAILEYBURY College of Fort William. The Directors had an- nounced their intention of meeting the strictures of Lord Wellesley on the need for general education and for moral discipline in this letter, and in 1804 a committee was appointed to report upon the foun- dation of an educational establishment in England. This committee reported that civil servants should not be sent to India under the age of eighteen, and that, before proceeding to take up their appoint- ments, they should be given some systematic training together, in liberal studies as well as in the elements of the Oriental languages. The question at once arose as to whether the proposed establishment should be a school or a college. Many of the criti- cisms directed against Haileybury in the early days arose from a difference of opinion in this respect. The original committee, while speaking of a college, seem to have had in mind a school, for they requested permission to engage a head-master and teachers. School instruction and school discipline might have been what was most needed, had ail students pro- ceeded to India at the age of eighteen. But eighteen was the minimum, not the specified, age, and it was ridiculous to enforce school regulations on young men from nineteen to twenty-one, which was the maximum age. Malthus, the celebrated writer on political economy, who was one of the original professors at Haileybury, pointed out the difficulties, which arose from the persistence of some Directors in treating the East India College as a school, in a FOUNDATION OF HAILEYBURY 269 well-reasoned pamphlet, published in 1817.* From the very first, as Malthus points out, Haileybury had to run the gauntlet of criticism from those who wanted a school, and throughout the whole of its existence the East India College suffered from the fact that it was regarded as half school and half college, educating young men of college age under many of the restrictions of school discipline. This was just what was not wanted. Lord Wellesley had emphasized the need of some such discipline as a college affords, so as to prevent, by a stage of tran- sition, the plunging of raw schoolboys at once on their arrival in India into a life of absolute freedom, set about with strange temptations. It was then, with an aim excellent in itself, but ill defined and differently understood by rival parties among the stockholders of the East India Company, that the East India College came into existence. The buildings of Hertford Castle, which were after- ward the Hertfordshire County Jail, were leased from the Government, a staff of teachers was chosen, and the East India College was opened for the instruction of its first class in February, 1806. But even before the college was organized, it had been resolved to build a suitable home for the new institution ; and in October, 1805, the estate of Haileybury in Hertford- shire, about two miles from Hertford and twelve from 1 " Statements respecting the East India College, with an Appeal to Facts in Refutation of the Charges lately brought against it in the Court of Proprietors," by the Rev. T. R. Malthus, London, 1817. 2/0 FOUNDATION OF HAILEYBURY London, was purchased. In May, 1806, the first stone of the new building was laid, and in 1809 the students and professors moved into the completed quadrangle from their temporary quarters in Hert- ford Castle. The style of architecture adopted by Mr. Wilkins, the architect, involved a grand fagade with many columns, like the same architect's design for the National Gallery in London. Behind this fagade was a large quadrangle about a quarter of a mile square, which is in size the largest of any quad- rangle in any educational building in England, except the Great Quad at Trinity College, Cambridge. The three most imposing features of the buildings were the College Chapel ; the College Hall, where the stu- dents dined together after the fashion of college life in other English colleges ; and the College Library, which stood between the Chapel and the Hall. These three buildings filled the side of the quadran- gle which presented its classic fagade to the traveller, along the high road from Hertford to London. Two sides of the quadrangle were mainly occupied with the students' rooms arranged in four blocks, one room being allotted to each student; the professors' houses occupied the corners ; and the side of the quadrangle which contained the great college gate was flanked with lecture-rooms and quarters for bachelor professors. The distance of the college buildings from the nearest town gave Haileybury certain peculiar advan- tages over educational foundations in towns and FOUNDATION OF HAILEYBURY 2JI cities. It was near enough to London for easy recourse to the capital, even in the old coaching days ; while it was enough in the country to promote healthy country life and the possibility of healthy exercise. Full opportunity was given for athletics, although fox-hunting with packs of hounds that met in the neighbourhood was sternly discouraged by the authorities ; rowing on the river Lea was popular ; an athletic field was laid out for cricket and other ath- letic sports ; while the beautiful country around gave plenty of opportunity for long country rambles. In favor of the healthiness of the College, it may be stated that out of the 1985 students who spent more or less time at Haileybury during the fifty years of its existence, only two deaths there are reported, and one of these was the result of a bathing accident. The East India Company was wise enough to pro- vide a healthy home for the physical well-being and development of its future civil servants, and in the record of Haileybury, although many criticisms were directed against its educational and disciplinary policy ^ no complaint was ever raised as to the material and physical surroundings of the students. History of Haileybury The history of Haileybury can best be noted under the names and careers of its four Principals. The first Principal, who took charge of the infant institu- tion in Hertford Castle, superintended its removal to Haileybury, and remained in charge until 1815, 2/2 HISTORY OF HAILEYBURY was the Rev. Samuel Henley. Of this gentleman little is known except that he was sixty-six years old when he was appointed to the principalship of the East India College, that he commenced his career as a teacher as Professor of Mental and Moral Philoso- phy at William and Mary College, Virginia, in 1770; that he returned to England at the outbreak of the American Revolution and became an assistant master in Harrow School ; that he was afterward a beneficed clergyman of the Church of England ; and that he was a fairly prominent man of letters and contributor to literary periodicals. How he obtained his appoint- ment is nowhere stated. His name is not to be found among those of prominent Anglo-Indian families and it must be assumed that he was in some way suffi- ciently well known to Directors of importance to obtain the situation. There are no printed records of his administration, but it may be asserted with confidence that he was not the right man for the place and that the severe criticisms on the College during its early days were due to his lack of appre- ciation of the difficulties of his position. Although Malthus nowhere in his pamphlet upon these criti- cisms mentions Dr. Henley by name, it is easy to see, not only from the omission of such mention, but by reading between the lines, that Dr. Henley did not realize these difficulties and did not feel the impor- tance of his opportunity. It is worthy of note that the criticisms to which Malthus replied were levelled at the College at about the time when Dr. Henley HISTORY OF HAILEYBURY 273 resigned ; the three most serious outbreaks in the history of the College, including the riot of 1811, occurred during the nine years of his administration ; and proofs can be given in dealing with the beginning of Dr. Batten's administration that a more vigorous hand was needed than that of the poor old clergyman, who retired in 1815 at the age of seventy-five and died immediately afterwards. Applying our modern ideas, or indeed applying the simplest common sense, it should have been obvious that an old clergyman of sixty-six, whose college ex- perience had ended thirty years before, and whose work since then had been teaching schoolboys, was not the right man to start upon true lines a unique institution. The Court of Directors presumably knew and cared little about educational qualifications and the idea in the minds of some of them that they wanted a school, not a college, doubtless led them into the sad mistake of appointing a schoolmaster to be the first Principal of their college. From an educational point of view, then, Haileybury had a bad start. All students of the history of education know how any new foundation may be handicapped for years by an unwise selection of its first faculty. The responsibility for this bad start and for the want of perception of definite aim or the grasp of definite policy rests not so much upon the poor old gentle- man, whose name alone lives from his having been the first Principal of Haileybury, as upon the men who appointed him. It will be seen that throughout 274 HISTORY OF HAILEYBURY its history Haileybury was hampered by the perpetual interference in its internal affairs of the Directors, by their refusal for many years to intrust ultimate authority to their Principal and his faculty, by their overriding of measures taken for the preservation of college discipline, and by their discordant views on the functions of the institution ; but their most serious mistake of all was in failing to select a vigor- ous and able man to set the college firmly upon its feet, for had such a man been chosen, he would have set the standard and avoided or defied interference by his success. It is, further, not fair to throw the blame for treat- ing the East India College as a school and its stu- dents as schoolboys solely upon Dr. Henley, in the light of the original prospectus of the College, issued in I8O6. 1 In that prospectus it is distinctly stated that, since no institution had been started by private enterprise for the training of their servants, the Com- pany had "judged it to be a duty incumbent upon themselves to devise and institute a Plan that might not only fill up the time of those Young Persons designed for the Civil Service of India ; but should also afford the best means of qualifying them to discharge the duties of their station there ; and to send them thither early enough to engage in all the con- cerns of active life. This Plan consists of a College, for the 1 " A Preliminary View of the Establishment of the Honourable East India Company in Hertfordshire for the Education of Young Persons appointed to the Civil Service in India," East India College, 1806 re- printed in " Memorials of Old Haileybury College," pp. 243-252. HISTORY OF HAILEYBURY 275 reception of Students at the age of fifteen, to remain till they are eighteen ; or till they are sent by the Court of Direc- tors to their respective destinations. The Students will be instructed, by Courses of Lectures, upon a plan similar to that adopted in the Universities." This shows that the founders of the College contem- plated a much younger class of students than those who, in after years, were trained there, and had no clearly defined ideas as to its functions. So dis- tinguished a Director as Mr. Charles Grant, who was Deputy Chairman of the Court of Directors in 1807 and 1808, and Chairman in 1809, spoke of the institu- tion indifferently as a college and as a school, in a debate at the India House, on July 5, iSoQ; 1 and if the Chairman of the Court was himself uncertain, it could hardly be expected that Dr. Henley should solve the question. A further proof that the school idea was paramount in the minds of those responsible for the conduct of the institution in its early days may be found from a consideration of the fact that, out of the 353 students admitted during the nine years of Dr. Henley's principalship, a considerable number, at least seven per cent, remained at the College for more than two years. Such a length of training and many other considerations implied a large entrance class of boys of fifteen, and it was natural that both the curriculum and the discipline of these early days should differ from that of the latter days, when the minimum entrance age was seventeen, and the course 1 " The Asiatic Annual Register " for 1809, p. 231. 2^6 HISTORY OF HAILEYBURY was fixed at two years. The complaints made by the neighbours of the College in these early days were, as appears from Malthus' pamphlet, of schoolboy pranks, and it is unfair to saddle the later Haileybury of Bat- ten and of Melvill with the charges made against the school of earlier date over which Henley presided. The most flourishing period in the history of Hailey- bury was covered by the principalship of the second Principal of the College, the Rev. Joseph Hallett Batten. It was during this period that the most fam- ous graduates of Haileybury, among them the great administrators John Lawrence and James Thomason and Charles Trevelyan, spent their period of training at the College upon Hertford Heath, and that Hailey- bury definitely took its status as a college of higher education instead of a mere preparatory school. By the Act of Parliament renewing the charter of the East India Company, passed in 1813, it was enacted that no person should be sent to India to join the Civil Service, without having spent four full terms, or two years, at the East India College, and having received at the end of his residence there a certifi- cate that he had duly obeyed all the rules and regu- lations of the College. This provision of the act was a little too strict, for the growth of the Com- pany's territories in India made greater demands for trained officials than the East India College was able to meet. Therefore, in 1 826, an act was passed mak- ing it lawful, for the next three years, to send out to India a certain number of qualified persons who HISTORY OF HAILEYBURY 277 showed themselves able to pass a satisfactory exam- ination without having been through the Haileybury course. At the end of this three years, by an act passed in 1829, students at the College were allowed to count for pension all time spent there above the age of seventeen as service in India, and under this act it was made possible for diligent students of the proper age, among whom it may be noted John Law- rence was one, to complete their college course in a single year. The College curriculum received more of a university character under Dr. Batten ; the age of the students at entrance gradually rose until they received and deserved the treatment due to men rather than to boys; student publications began to appear ; a better class of nominees, mainly from the great English schools, were sent to the College, as the character of the Directors altered ; and the Haileybury traditions, and especially the camaraderie, which was to do so much for the Indian Civil Service, came into existence. Some of the most interesting reminiscences of Haileybury, written by famous grad- uates of the College, which will be noted later, refer to the Haileybury of this period. There can be no doubt that this happy change was due in large part to the superior fitness for the office of Principal of Dr. Batten over Dr. Henley. The one book hitherto published upon Haileybury fails to do justice to Dr. Batten's administration. Sir M. Monier- Williams, who was responsible for the greater part of the book, entered the College as a student 278 HISTORY OF HAILEYBURY during the principalship of Dr. Batten's successor, Mr. Le Bas, and was a professor under the last Prin- cipal, Dr. Melvill. His account of the College deals therefore with it as it existed in its latter days, and for its efficiency under Dr. Batten testimony must be looked for elsewhere, in the reminiscences of its grad- uates of that time. Dr. Batten had advantages over Dr. Henley in that he was a graduate of an English University, and that at the time of his appointment he was a man in the prime of life. Joseph Hallett Batten was born in 1 778 ; he graduated at Cambridge as Third Wrangler in 1799; and was elected a Fel- low of Trinity College in 1801. When the East In- dia College was opened in 1806, he joined its staff as a professor of classics, or, as it was somewhat gran- diloquently termed, Professor of Humanity and Phi- lology. He seems to have had no Anglo-Indian connections, and to have owed his appointment as Principal, in 1815, to the fact that he had shown him- self a better teacher and disciplinarian than his asso- ciates. He was only thirty-six at the time of his appointment, and the general opinion held of his ability was shown by the facts that he was a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Select Preacher before the University of Cambridge. While he held the office of Principal, he delivered lectures on Divinity and Classics, and according to Sir M. Monier-Will- iams, he was highly esteemed as a lecturer. 1 Dr. Batten's principalship lasted for twenty-three years 1 " Memorials of Old Haileybury College," p. 145. HISTORY OF HAILEYBURY 279 or for nearly half the life of the East India College, and 863 students out of the total of 1985 who entered, and 743 out of the 1 754 who passed through the Col- lege at Haileybury into the Indian Civil Service belonged to this period. Despite one or two disturb- ances, discipline seems to have been much better maintained under him than under either his prede- cessor or his successor, and both the intellectual and the moral tone of the College were raised and main- tained by him. The same thing cannot be said with regard to Dr. Batten's successor, the Rev. Charles Webb Le Bas. This learned clergyman, whose name is chiefly remembered for his somewhat verbose biographies of Cranmer, Jewel, and other worthies of the Church of England, which are more remarkable for their piety than for their historical value, would appear to have been unfitted for the successorship to Dr. Batten by his age, his deafness, and his personal peculiarities. He was born in 1779, and was there- fore fifty-eight years old when he became Principal of Haileybury ; he was a distinguished scholar at Cambridge, and had been, like Dr. Batten, a Fellow of Trinity College ; he had joined the staff of Hailey- bury as Professor of Mathematics and Dean in 1813; and he seems to have been selected for the principal- ship on the ground of long service rather than of fitness. Sir M. Monier- Williams, who speaks of Le Bas with great affection, nevertheless gives the key- notes for his failure as Principal of the East India 280 HISTORY OF HAILEYBURY College. To begin with, Mr. Le Bas was very deaf, and had on this account abandoned the bar for teach- ing. His admirer, without seeming to realize how this affliction must have diminished the Principal's fitness for his office, gives more than one illustration of its awkward results. But, even more than his deafness, Mr. Le Bas's tendency to use inflated and absurd diction must have made him seem ludicrous to the students, and have destroyed the influence he ought to have had over them. " It was often his habit," writes Sir M. Monier- Williams, 1 " to coin some word derived from Greek or Latin as more forcible in its effect, especially on a youthful ear, than any Anglo-Saxon equivalent. For instance, stone-throwing in the quadrangle was forbidden, and if he happened to detect anyone in the act he would send for the culprit, and bewilder him by saying, ' Sir, I perceive that you are a lithobolizer. Are you not aware that lithobolizing is prohibited ? Go, sir, and never lithobolize any more, or punishment will over- take you ! ' " A man who would talk like this, after the fashion of Dr. Samuel Johnson, to an average English college boy, could not be expected to retain his respect. Several somewhat querulous letters from Mr. Le Bas, complaining of the College buildings, of the Court of Directors, and of his own situation, are printed by Sir M. Monier- Williams, and the impression left on the mind of the reader is one of wonder that such a man should ever have been selected for the headship 1 " Memorials of Old Haileybury College," p. 149. HISTORY OF HAILEYBURY 281 of Haileybury College. One thing is certain, that his incapacity caused the College to pass through troublous times during the years of his principalship, and it was resolved upon his retirement, after a stu- dent riot in the autumn of 1843^ to choose a new Principal from the outside, who should be intrusted with absolute and ultimate authority over both stu- dents and professors. Such a measure was obviously necessary, for some, at least, of the professors of Haileybury, notably the Dean, Mr. Jeremie, seem to have been as unfit to deal with high-spirited young men as Mr. Le Bas himself. The Principal selected to repair the damage done by the weak administration of Mr. Le Bas was the most celebrated preacher in the Church of England of his time, the Rev. Henry Melvill. He had had some experience as a college tutor at Cambridge, where he had graduated as Second Wrangler in 1821, but he doubtless owed his appointment rather to the fact that his brother, J. C. Melvill, was Secre- tary to the Court of Directors. His fame as ,a preacher was very great, and his common sobriquet was " golden-mouthed Melvill." His position as Principal was made very difficult by the dislike of the Dean, Mr. Jeremie, to recognize his authority, a dislike heightened by the fact that, under the new constitution, Melvill's authority extended over all the professors. Mr. Jeremie, further, had been a candi- date for the principalship, and considered that as senior professor he had acquired a right to succeed 282 HISTORY OF HAILEYBURY Mr. Le Bas, as Le Bas had succeeded Batten, and Batten Henley. But from all accounts Mr. Jeremie would have made as weak a Principal as his friend Le Bas, for he had neither the capacity for main- taining discipline nor any executive ability. This friction, which was, of course, well known to the students and taken advantage of by them, made Melvill's position exceedingly difficult up to 1850, when Mr. Jeremie left Haileybury, on being ap- pointed Regius Professor of Divinity at the Univer- sity of Cambridge. Several of the other professors during the first years of Melvill's principalship would have been trials to any vigorous head of a great edu- cational institution. The eccentricities of Professor Richard Jones, the successor of Malthus, and of Pro- fessor Francis Johnson, the ill-health and indistinct- ness of speech of Professor Empson, during their latter days, after years of faithful service, were enough to damage that respect for authority which alone can make such an institution as Haileybury successful, while by his own showing Professor Monier-Williams, among the younger men, was unduly concerned over the cut of coat preferred by the students in his lecture-room. 1 When he had got the College well in hand, the prospect of its abolition loomed up before its last Principal. It was generally known that when the Company's charter came up for revision in 1853 a vigorous attempt would be made to destroy the patron- 1 ' Memorials of Old Haileybury College," pp. 113-115. HISTORY OF HAILEYBURY 283 age system. Although the overthrow of the patron- age system did not necessarily imply the abolition of Haileybury, Melvill did not see his way to separate the cause of the College from the cause of the Direc- tors. He was to some extent compensated for the coming loss of his position by being made a Canon of St. Paul's Cathedral, and he seems to have witnessed the latter days of the old East India College without any very keen feeling of regret. During his princi- palship Melvill seems to have retained his authority over the students largely by his national reputation as a preacher, which made them proud of him, and partly by his open-handed hospitality and social qualities. The intellectual standard of the College stiffened in his day, for the improved previous educa- tion of the students allowed for the raising of the standard of the term and of the final examinations. Yet, in spite of this, a larger proportion of students entering the College passed out of it successfully than in the days of his three predecessors. The possibility of getting through the two years' course in a single year had been stopped in 1839, and the higher and more systematic training given had its effect upon the character of the Indian Civil Service. The men who built up the new India of the Queen-Empress were largely men of Melvill's training. Alfred Lyall and Richard Temple and Theodore Hope and Auck- land Colvin all belonged to this era, and some idea of the Haileybury of Melvill's time might be learned from their reminiscences. 284 HISTORY OF HAILEYBURY In all 457 Indian civilians graduated during the fourteen years of Melvill's principalship, out of the 496 who entered, and many of them continued in active work in India until recently. Discipline was much better maintained than under Le Bas, and although Melvill's principalship suffered in compari- son with Batten's, at first from the intefnal troubles that have been noted, and later from the knowledge of impending doom, yet it will bear comparison for intellectual and moral education with the period of Batten's administration. The last year of Melvill's principalship, the last year of the existence of old Haileybur.y, during which the College held only the survivors of the patronage system, was the terrible year of the Sepoy Mutiny, 1857, when Haileybury men proved their mettle, and justified, in circum- stances of terrible difficulty, the training they had received in the old East India College on Hertford Heath. Qualifications for Entrance into Haileybury It has already been stated that the foundation of the East India College was in large part due to Lord Wellesley's criticism on the unfitness for the Civil Service of many of the young men sent out to India. Those Directors of the Company who possessed Indian experience were very solicitous of improving the social standard of their nominees. It was made therefore one of the conditions for entrance to the East India College from the very first that the ENTRANCE EXAMINATIONS 285 nominee should bring with him a testimonial from the school he had last attended covering the two years before his nomination, and should pass an examination in the subjects generally taught in the English public schools. In the early days of the East India College the youth of those entering caused the standard to be low, and it was frankly intended to shut out boys who had not been educated upon the lines of the great English public schools. Malthus admits this in his pamphlet already cited, for he says, writing in 1817: " Every candidate for admission into the College is required to produce a testimonial from his schoolmaster, and to pass an examination in Greek, Latin, and Arithmetic before the Principal and Professors. This previous examination at once prevents persons from offering themselves who have not re- ceived the usual school education of the higher classes of society ; and those who offer themselves and are found defi- cient are remanded till another period of admission. 1 " This very slight educational qualification was all that was demanded for entrance to Haileybury until the latter part of Batten's administration. A slight raising and specification of the standard may be seen in the regulations which appear in the " East India Register and Directory " for 1826, in which it is stated that : " Candidates will be examined in the classics and arithmetic, and if they be not found to possess a competent knowledge of at least two of the Latin classics, the easier parts of the 1 Malthus, p. 47. 286 ENTRANCE EXAMINATIONS Greek Testament, and the principles of grammar, as well as the common rules of arithmetic, together with vulgar and decimal fractions, they will be remanded until the com- mencement of the next term." Such a test was not likely to throw out many of the Directors' nominees, and merely demanded that they should have received the elements of a classical education, which at that time practically implied that they should have been educated at one of the great English schools. The examination during Batten's principalship, as during the earlier period of which Malthus wrote, seems always to have been conducted by the Haileybury faculty at the College itself ; and it was there, at any rate, that John Lawrence, at the age of sixteen, qualified himself for entrance in I82/. 1 When the College became definitely a place of higher education, and abandoned its school features with the increasing age of its students, the character of the entrance examination was raised so as to be a test of higher qualifications. It may be safely as- serted that this raising of the test was the result of the system of examination introduced under the Act of 1826, which permitted the Directors to send a few nominees to India direct, without passing through Haileybury, to meet the great demand at that time for additional civil servants. It is at any rate signifi- cant that the subjects fixed for the examination for direct appointments were the very subjects chosen for the entrance examination to Haileybury in and 1 Bosworth Smith, " Life of Lord Lawrence," Vol. I., p. 27. ENTRANCE EXAMINATIONS 287 after 1838. These subjects are stated as follows in the " East India Register and Directory " : " Each candidate shall be examined in the Four Gospels of the Greek Testament, and shall not be deemed duly quali- fied for admission to Haileybury College, unless he be found to possess a competent knowledge thereof; nor unless he be able to render into English some portion of the works of one of the following Greek authors : Homer, Herodotus, Xeno- phon, Thucydides, Sophocles, and Euripides ; nor unless he can render into English some portion of the works of one of the following Latin authors : Livy, Terence, Cicero, Tacitus, Virgil, and Horace ; and this part of the examina- tion will include questions in ancient history, geography, and philosophy. Each candidate shall also be examined in modern history and geography, and in the elements of mathematical science, including the common rules of arith- metic, vulgar and decimal fractions, and the first four books of Euclid. He shall also be examined in moral philosophy, and in the evidences of the Christian religion as set forth in the works of Paley." The entrance examination to Haileybury was con- ducted in these subjects and upon these lines until the abolition of the College. It was, however, held at the Indi,a House in London by an independent board of examiners, selected, two from Oxford and two from Cambridge. Though not a severe test for an Oxford undergraduate of a year's standing, as described in Sir M. Monier-Williams's reminiscences, it yet lasted for three days, and included subjects not generally included in the university studies of those times. Sir M. Monier- Williams himself notes his 288 ENTRANCE EXAMINATIONS failure in geography, and describes how he had to get up Paley's works. 1 The examination was quite hard enough to need special preparation for a man attempting to enter very young, and Sir George Campbell narrates in his' " Memoirs" that he was sent to a special tutor for a year to prepare for Haileybury. 2 Mr. Edward Lockwood 3 gives an amusing account of his special preparation and of his examination in the early fifties. His school days at Marlborough had not taught him much, and he describes in ludicrous fashion how he managed to translate the passages from St. Luke's Gospel, Vir- gil's " First Georgic," and Homer's " Odyssey," which were set to him. The examination must always have been child's play to the more mature students, coming straight, as most of them did, from the sixth form of a great English public school, but in the words of Sir George Campbell : " The qualifying examination not only threw out a few of the worst, but frightened away a good many more. Directors did not like to send up a boy likely to fail." 4 In addition to the educational test for entrance, all nominees for the East India Company's Civil Ser- vice had to appear, after 1809, before a committee cf the Directors, known as the College Committee, 1 " Memorials of Old Haileybury College," pp. 40, 41. 2 Campbell, " Memoirs," p. 7. 8 Edward Lockwood, " The Early Days of Marlborough College," pp. 126-131. 4 Campbell, " Memoirs," p. 8. COURSE OF STUDIES AT HAILEYBURY 289 when they were questioned as to their " character, connections, and qualifications." This inspection of candidates was to enable opinion to be formed from the appearance of the nominee as to whether he was suited for Indian life, and, above all, to find out, if personally unknown to members of the committee, how he had obtained his appointment, and whether he would do credit to the service. It was only after having passed through both these ordeals of inspec- tion and of literary examination that a student was admitted to the East India College at Haileybury. The Course of Studies at Haileybury Lord Wellesley, in his Minute with regard to the establishment of the College of Fort William, laid it down that Indian civil servants needed a thorough knowledge of the general principles of law and gov- ernment, and a good grounding in liberal studies, as much as a training in specifically Oriental subjects, such as the languages and the laws of India. The Court of Directors, when they founded the East India College, accepted this idea, and intended that the preliminary training of their servants in England should be mainly in the liberal studies, with only enough of Oriental subjects to form an elementary basis for more thorough work in India. In the Prospectus issued upon the foundation of the Col- lege, this idea was clearly enunciated. The greater part of the education to be given was to be in the 2QO COURSE OF STUDIES AT HAILEYBURY liberal studies, and the Prospectus 1 goes on to state : " After having thus provided for the acquisition of Learn- ing in general, it is further intended to furnish them with the means of instruction in the Elements of Oriental Litera- ture. For this purpose they will not only be taught the Rudiments of the Asiatic Languages, more especially the Arabic and Persian; but be made acquainted with the His- tory, Customs, and Manners of the different Nations of the East : and as the study of Law and Political CEconomy is to form an essential part in the general system of education, it will be required that, in the Lectures upon these subjects, particular attention be given to the explanation of the Politi- cal and Commercial relations subsisting between INDIA and GREAT BRITAIN. Among the variety of studies which may be pursued with peculiar advantage in this Country, it is not to be expected that any very great portion of their time can be allotted to the acquiring a knowledge of the SEVERAL Languages of the East ; but it is presumed that the main object of the Institution will be attained if the Students be well grounded in the Rudiments of the TWO Languages already specified ; and that, on their leaving the College, such instruction be given them as may enable them to prosecute their Oriental studies during their pas- sage to India." In pursuance of this idea, the professors upon the original faculty were chosen mainly to teach the gen- eral subjects, and only two of the staff were attached to the Oriental Department, namely, a Professor of the Hindu Literature and the History of Asia, and a 1 Reprinted in " Memorials of Old Haileybury College," pp. 243- 252. COURSE OF STUDIES AT HAILEYBURY 29 1 Professor of Arabic, Persian, and Hindustani. It is carefully explained in the Prospectus that the teach- ing of mathematics was to be made subservient to the teaching of "the four branches of Natural Philoso- phy, Mechanics, Hydrostatics, Optics and Astron- omy," and that some elementary instruction was to be given "in Chemistry, Mineralogy, and Natural History." The two courses of lectures on classical and general literature were " to explain the Ancient Writers of Rome and Greece, more particularly the Historians and Orators," and "on the Arts of Rea- soning and Composition." "Peculiar care will be taken," it is stated, " to make the Students well ac- quainted with the English Language and with the merits of its most approved Writers ; they will be exercised also in every species of Composition appro- priate to their future occupations." Finally, courses were to be given on general history, on political econ- omy, and on " General Polity, the Laws of England and the Principles of the British Constitution." 1 Malthus reveals at some length, in his pamphlet, the actual working of this system of instruction in the early days of the East India College. He describes the system of half-yearly examinations, which were conducted upon the plan of the public examinations at Cambridge, and he asserts that "four or five of the professors, thoroughly conversant with univer- sity examinations, can take upon themselves to affirm that they have never witnessed a greater proportion 1 " Memorials of Old Haileybury College," p. 248. COURSE OF STUDIES AT HAILEYBURY of various and successful exertion in the course of their academical experience than has appeared at some of the examinations at the East India College." 1 Malthus, who is a primary authority upon the early course of studies and its results, for he was a member of the original faculty, points out that as early as 1817, in which year his pamphlet appeared, the good effect of the instruction given at Haileybury appeared in the annual reports of the College of Fort William. He gives statistics which prove that the elementary training in the Oriental languages given in the Ori- ental Department enabled the students from Hert- ford and Haileybury to pass through the course at Fort William in a few months instead of in three or four years. He quotes further from public declara- tions of Lord Minto and of Lord Hastings, successive Governors-General of India, evidence of the better intellectual promise of the students who joined the Civil Service from the East India College. Perhaps the most significant of these declarations is the pas- sage quoted from a speech delivered by Lord Minto in 1813, in which the Governor-General, after speak- ing of the very slight knowledge of the Oriental lan- guages acquired at Haileybury, observed: "It is not to be concluded from thence that the time allotted to attendance on that institution has been unprofit- ably spent, because, most wisely, in my opinion, the prelim- inary education of the Company's young servants is not confined to studies merely Oriental ; but, together with the * 1 Malthus, p. 50. COURSE OF STUDIES AT HAILEYBURY 2Q3 classical instruction of the West (without which no English gentleman is on a level with his fellows), I understand that a foundation of polite literature is laid, and that the door is opened at least, and the pupil's mind attracted, to the ele- ments of useful science, the seeds of which being sown, a taste for intellectual exercise and enjoyment is implanted which seldom fails to develop and mature these first germs of knowledge at the appointed season." 1 During Dr. Batten's long administration, the gen- eral education given at Haileybury seems to have been along the same lines as had been indicated upon the foundation of the College. The same number of professors gave instruction in classics and general literature, mathematics and natural philosophy, his- tory and political economy, and general polity and the laws of England. But the work done certainly became more advanced, as the students became more mature in age of entrance and better qualified by earlier education. In the Oriental Department, however, considerable changes took place. Separate professors were appointed between 1825 and 1827 in Arabic and Persian ; in Sanskrit, Bengali, and Tel- ugu; and in Hindi, Hindustani, and Marathi. This change indicated a recognition of the advantage of giving elementary instruction at Haileybury in the vernacular languages of India. The classical lan- guages, Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit were not for- gotten, but the introduction into the course of studies of Bengali, Hindi, Telugu, and Marathi showed a 1 Malthus, pp. 61, 62. 294 COURSE OF STUDIES AT HAILEYBURY sense of the practical value of giving a preliminary acquaintance with the leading spoken languages of Bengal, the North-western Provinces, Madras, and Bombay. After this increase of attention to Oriental languages, the professorship of Hindu literature and the history of Asia was allowed to lapse in 1837. Dr. Batten himself after his election to the principal- ship used to deliver lectures on Divinity to the senior students, and to take some part in the instruction in classics. There is no account extant of the actual fashion of instruction during Dr. Batten's administration, but Sir M. Monier-Williams has written a most inter- esting description, not only of the methods of teach- ing and the lecture-room habits of the individual professors, but also of the way in which work was done by the students under Le Bas, in I839. 1 Daily lectures were delivered by the professors from 10 A.M. to i P.M. ; Mondays and Tuesdays were set apart for classics and mathematics ; Wednesdays and Thursdays, for law, political economy, and history ; Fridays and Saturdays, for Oriental languages. "The mental training," says Sir M. Monier-Williams, "which I gained at old Haileybury was so varied and excellent that nothing at all equal to it at any rate in the diversity of subjects which it embraced was to be had either at the Universities or elsewhere. ... I soon discovered that if I wished to rise above the level of the average student, I should have a 1 " Memorials of Old Haileybury College," pp. 66-76. COURSE OF STUDIES AT HAILEYBURY 295 task before me compared with which my previous work at Oxford could only be regarded as child's play." J This can well be believed when it is remem- bered that the better-understood advantages of a career in the Indian Civil Service diverted from the Universities, by the middle of the nineteenth century, many of the best students from the great English public schools. Sir George Campbell notes that in his term there were at Haileybury two men, who had been head boys at Eton and Rugby respectively, R. N. Cust and W. S. Seton-Karr. Furthermore, the familiarity, both with the classics and with Eng- lish literature, shown in the pages of the student periodical at this time, The Haileybury Observer, is remarkable. With such material as this, no wonder need be expressed at Sir M. Monier-Williams's high opinion of the Haileybury course of studies, and of the excellence of the work done there. It should be added that the standard of examina- tion became steadily higher as the College grew, and that the final test became, by all accounts, a really serious matter in the latter years of Melvill's admin- istration. It must be borne in mind, however, that all the students in the College did not possess the intellectual caliber of the men whose names have been mentioned. There was plenty of incentive for clever and industrious students in the valuable prizes offered for proficiency in the term and at the final examinations. But the rank and file did not, at 1 " Memorials of Old Haileybury College," pp. 75, 76. 296 DISCIPLINE AT HAILEYBURY Haileybury more that at any other college before or since, hurt their health by hard work. The knowl- edge that their appointments to India were secure, as long as they just managed to pass their examina- tions, prevented the majority of Haileybury students from exerting any great energy in their studies. The fact that Indian civilians were ranked in the Service in the order in which they passed out of College at their final examinations only affected those few who realized the advantage of subsequent senior- ity in obtaining furlough from India. The penalty of losing a term, or a few places in rank, did not seem great to the average young man ; and it was well known that the professors and, in Melvill's time, that the Principal, would hesitate before finally rejecting the nominee of an influential Director, or, to put the matter in a kindlier way, before actually depriving a young man, who might have been merely careless or idle, of a valuable appointment and a comfortable provision for life. Discipline at Haileybury Whatever may have been the excellences of Hai- leybury as an educational institution, and it has been shown that it improved steadily from the time when- it took rank as a college instead of as a school, there can be no doubt that it was, throughout its existence, severely criticised for the failure of the authorities to maintain good discipline. The rare use of the pun- ishment of expulsion not only allowed men to pass DISCIPLINE AT HAILEYBURY 297 out of the College with a minimum of intellectual exertion, but also prevented the enforcement of strict discipline. The Court of Directors, through its Col- lege Committee, reserved to itself, up to the time of Melvill's appointment, the right to supervise and some- times to modify the decisions of the College faculty. This was well known to the students, and relatives of influential Directors occasionally took unfair advan- tage of their position. The root of the evil, however, lay even more in the fact that the tradition of early dis- turbances had fixed in the public mind a firmly rooted idea of the disorderliness of Haileybury students. These early disturbances occurred during the weak administration of Dr. Henley, and seem to have been due in no small degree to the disparity of age among the student body, and to the mistaken attempt to treat all the students according to school methods. Malthus 1 describes at length in his pamphlet the inherent difficulties in maintaining order during the first period of the East India College. He points out that, since some students were admitted at eighteen or nineteen and others at fifteen or sixteen, for a two years' course of residence, it was not possible to sepa- rate the senior from the junior class, and to make effective use of the former for the maintenance of good order. He next remarks that some of the stu- dents did not want to go to India, but had been sent to the College against their own will, so that they felt that their only chance of avoiding the hated exile was 1 Malthus, pp. 65-81. 298 DISCIPLINE AT HAILEYBURY to get themselves expelled. He dwells at greatest length on the third difficulty, the unwillingness of the Directors to confirm sentences of expulsion, and insists upon the bad effect of the restoration to the Civil Service, by the Court of Directors, of five stu- dents who had been expelled for taking part in the riot of 181 1. However serious these difficulties may have been, the ultimate blame must rest upon the ineffi- ciency of the first Principal and the permission of the growth of a tradition of disorder. "When," says Malthus, " a spirit of insubordination and resistance to discipline has once deeply infected any collected body of persons, it is well known how strong a ten- dency it has to keep itself up ; how easy, and almost certainly, the contagion spreads to fresh comers ; and how extremely difficult it is effectually to eradicate it." 1 Public animadversion was no less than three times drawn to the lack of discipline at the East India Col- lege during the nine years of Dr. Henley's administra- tion, and an opinion was created in the public mind, which has never been wholly dissipated, that Hailey- bury was a regular hotbed of riot and disorder. Of the three disturbances, the one which made the most impression was the riot of 1811. This disturbance seems to have been in itself no worse than a noisy demonstration on the part of the students lasting some two or three hours of a November night. The young men, or perhaps, considering the date at which 1 Malthus, p. 73. DISCIPLINE AT HAILEYBURY 299 it occurred, the boys, made a demonstration in the Quadrangle, blowing horns, firing off pistols, and breaking windows. " Not a single professor came forward to express disapprobation ; no attempt was made to reestablish authority. The disorder remained entirely unopposed, and the promoters of it unde- tected, till at length tired nature effected that which the reigning powers did not attempt, and the students retired to rest soon after midnight." 1 The conduct of the Directors, first, in making a great parade of severity by expelling the ringleaders, and then in reinstating them in the Service, attracted a good deal of attention and criticism ; and it was this affair which drew forth the pamphlet by Malthus, which has been so often cited. One of the students expelled was John Hadley D'Oyly, a ward of the famous Warren Hastings, and Hastings' influence was invoked on his behalf. The young man, who was only just seven- teen, was restored to the Civil Service, and Hastings' letters upon the subject and his advice to his ward upon the matter have been printed by Sir Charles Lawson. 2 What perhaps brings out most clearly the boyishness of the whole escapade is the fact that Malthus had, in his pamphlet, to oppose the introduc- tion of corporal punishment into the College, which had been suggested as a result of it in an open meeting of the stockholders by a Mr. Jackson. 1 Extract from a contemporary pamphlet, reprinted in " Memorials of Old Haileybury College," p. 233. 2 Lawson, " Private Life of Warren Hastings," pp. 211-214. 300 DISCIPLINE AT HAILEYBURY After the time of Dr. Henley, disturbances in the College became less frequent, and in both the in- stances recorded there is exhibited rather the noisy behaviour of college students than anything deserving of more serious notice. The so-called riot of 1822 seems to have been due to the objection of the stu- dents to the closing of the great gate of the College Quadrangle at too early an hour. The gate was blown open with gunpowder, and, at about midnight, the students sallied forth and broke the windows of the houses of a certain unpopular professor and of the Dean, Mr. Le Bas. 1 This disturbance led to a motion at a meeting of the stockholders "that Haileybury College should be abolished." The motion was lost, and Mr. Robert Grant, afterwards Governor of Bom- bay, in opposing it, contended that the discipline enforced at Haileybury was far too strict and much more severe than that in vogue at the Universities. It seems like a long way from the advocacy of flog- ging ten years before, and it shows how thoroughly Haileybury in Batten's time had become of college instead of school grade, that Mr. Grant should com- pare the restrictions at Haileybury with those at Oxford. He pointed out that at Haileybury the students had to attend chapel every morning and evening, to dine in hall every day, to be within gates every evening soon after dusk, while the use of wine, riding on horseback, driving, hunting, and shooting were all forbidden. And these restrictions were 1 " Memorials of Old Haileybury College," p. 234. DISCIPLINE AT HAILEYBURY 301 imposed in the days when both Oxford and Cam- bridge undergraduates revelled in town and gown rows, and were notoriously given to hard drinking. The last disturbance, which is mainly remarkable in the history of Haileybury because it led to the resignation of Principal Le Bas, took place in 1843. The students went down to Ware, two miles from the College, to present an address to the young Queen Victoria, who had consented to receive it, while upon a royal progress to Cambridge. The ceremony only lasted a few moments, and the young men celebrated the occasion with a big dinner at Ware. On returning to the College, they indulged in a little horse-play and broke the windows of the Dean, Mr. Jeremie. 1 The Dean was foolish enough to make a personal matter of this, and insisted on punishment. The Directors, however, intervened, and stopped all further proceedings. Mr. Le Bas resigned, and, as has already been stated, Melvill was given the appointment of Principal, to the great chagrin of Mr. Jeremie. The actual administration of discipline was in the early years intrusted to the College Council, which consisted of the Principal and the whole body of professors, under the supervision, and constant inter- ference up to 1833, of the College Committee of the 1 This is Professor Heaviside's account of the affair ("Memorials of Old Haileybury College," p. 106) ; but Sir Steuart Bayley (p. 286) says the disturbance was caused by the Queen's driving by without taking any notice of the students, who blamed her neglect on the college authorities. 302 DISCIPLINE AT HAILEYBURY Court of Directors. In 1838 the College Council was limited to the Principal, the Dean, and two senior professors. This restricted body was much less efficient than the earlier College Council in which Batten exercised an increasing and controlling in- fluence. The friction between the College Council and the students in the time of Le Bas led to a radical change in 1843, when Melvill was appointed Principal with full power in all matters of discipline, without sharing it with the professors and without interference from the Court of Directors. The pun- ishments inflicted for breaches of discipline were the same as those in use at the English Universities. Fines, and "gating," as confinement to the Quad- rangle was called, were employed as lesser penalties ; more serious was "rustication," or suspension from the College for one or two terms; most serious of all was expulsion. The last of these punishments was, for reasons already explained, rarely imposed. Rustication, however, was more common, and its effect was to lower the student's rank in the Civil Service, deferring his taking up his appointment in India, and thus ranking him below his former class- mates in obtaining furlough to England and his retiring pension. Sir M. Monier- Williams concludes his treatment of this subject by saying: "I emphati- cally repeat that, to the best of my knowledge and experience, the discipline of the East India College was in my time carried out by the authorities, through good report and evil report, and often in the teeth DISCIPLINE AT HAILEYBURY 303 of unusual hindrances and difficulties, with an amount of wisdom, tact, and success which still excites my wonder, whenever I look back upon it." 1 It has been thought worth while to go into this question of discipline at Haileybury at some length, because it has so often gone on record that the old East India College was a place notorious for insubor- dination and misconduct. As a matter of fact, it did not deserve this bad reputation ; the pranks of stu- dents there were very like the pranks of students elsewhere, before and since; the bad name it got in its early days stuck to it ; discussions at the meet- ings of the stockholders and in the newspapers made mountains out of mole-hills ; and when once the students began to be treated as men instead of boys, and certain tactless officers of the College went out of office, things ran as smoothly as in other efficient places of higher education. Haileybury Students who did not enter the Civil Service in India It has already been said, and the authority of Sir George Campbell has been quoted in support of the statement, that the existence of the qualifying exami- nation for entrance to Haileybury did much to check the nomination or admission to the College of backward and unsuitable students. It remains to be noted how such students were treated when luck l " Memorials of Old Haileybury College," p. 88. 304 HAILEYBURIANS IN THE ARMY or laxity let them into Haileybury. " A considerable number," says Sir George Campbell, "were sifted out at Haileybury. It would have been difficult to turn them adrift, but there was the alternative of the Company's Cavalry, a coveted service. The fashion was to send into the Cavalry a young man too idle or too stupid to go through Haileybury, and the Director put another in his place in the Civil Service." 1 It is interesting, in the light of this statement, to note the number of students who failed to get through Haileybury, but received commissions in the Com- pany's army. The number of admissions to Hailey- bury in the fifty-two years of its existence was 1985. Of these, 1754, or slightly over 88 per cent, entered the Civil Service in India. Eighty, or nearly 4 per cent, entered the Company's army. Some of these Haileybury failures attained distinction in the military profession. Two, General Sir Hugh Henry Gough, G.C.B., and Major-General Arthur Thomas Moore, C.B., attained the supreme distinction of an English soldier's career in winning the Victoria Cross. Several of them rose to high rank and showed that their failure at Haileybury was due rather to a mistaken choice of profession than to lack of parts. Over 7 per cent of the students, that is, 151, admitted to Haileybury, neither proceeded to join the Civil Service in India nor accepted commissions in the Indian army. Five of these died before joining the Service, one entered the English army, 1 Campbell, " Memoirs," p. 8. HAILEYBURIANS IN OTHER CAREERS 305 and many of the remainder, of whom there is no further record, were undoubtedly dropped for failure in their studies or were expelled for other reasons. Some of this residue, however, abandoned their Indian prospects for other professions in which they made a distinct success. Among these may be noted the Right Honourable Charles Pelham Villiers, the great free-trade statesman and friend of Cobden, who was at Haileybury from 1818 to 1820, and gave up his Indian appointment to enter the House of Com- mons ; Charles Merivale, the historian of the Romans under the Empire, who was at Haileybury in 1825 and 1826, and afterward took orders in the Church of England and became Dean of Ely Cathedral ; W. D. Christie, the biographer of the first Lord Shaftesbury, who was at Haileybury in 1835, and, after a short period in the House of Commons, entered the diplomatic service; Sir Monier Monier- Williams, who returned to Oxford after passing through Haileybury in 1840 and 1841, and, after acting as the last Professor of Sanskrit at Hailey- bury, was for nearly forty years the Boden Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford ; Vernon Lushington, who was at Haileybury in 1850 and 1851, and became a suc- cessful lawyer, Secretary to the Admiralty, and a county court judge; and finally Mr. Val Prinsep, R.A., who was at Haileybury in 1855 and 1856, and after- ward became a distinguished painter and author. 306 LIFE AT HAILEYBURY The Intellectual Side of Life at Haileybury Every one who has gone through college is aware that the most abiding influences are not always those resulting from the course of studies. Intellectual growth is not alone fostered in the class-room, and the leading men in the intellectual life of the college are often not the most successful students in passing examinations. This was certainly the case at Hailey- bury. Some idea has been given of the methods of instruction, and undoubtedly an intellectual stimulus was given to certain students by some of the pro- fessors. Men with a turn for language, like Monier- Williams, John Muir, and Robert Needham Cust, were started at Haileybury on the lines of philological research which have given them permanent fame. But graceful writers, like Alfred Lyall, the poet and essayist, and H. G. Keene, the historian, did not shine as winners of college prizes, and showed their talents more naturally as contributors to The Haileybtiry Observer, No portion of the " Memorials of Old Haileybury College " is more interesting than the section by Sir Steuart Bayley on the college literature. The students of Haileybury published various college periodicals from 1820 to 1822, but their most representative pub- lication was the The Haileybury Observer, which ran from 1839 to the dissolution of the College in 1857. It must be remembered that periodical literature, during the lifetime of Haileybury, was more literature and less LIFE AT HAILEYBURY 307 newspaper than it has since become, and The Hailey- bury Observer abounds not only in typical college poetry, the wit of which lies in happy local allusions, but also in essays of considerable merit on literary and mainly on classical subjects. It is interesting to note how many of the men, who, since their Haileybury days, have made reputations as writers, appear among the editors of The Haileybury Observer and among its contributors. The list contains not only Cust and Monier- Williams, Lyall and Keene, but also E. C. Bayley, the historian of Gujarat; J. W. Sherer, the novelist ; W. S. Seton-Karr, the editor of " Selections from the Calcutta Gazettes," and the author of a " Life of Cornwallis " ; and Val Prinsep, the author of " Imperial India." Perhaps the cleverest of all the contributions to The Haileybury Observer was a parody on Goldsmith's " Deserted Village," with the title of " The Deserted College," which appeared in one of the latest numbers and was written by that well-known Indian statesman. Auckland Colvin. But its college literature was not the only evidence of intellectual life among the students at Haileybury. From 1815 there existed, with occasional lapses, a Haileybury College Debating Society in which many prominent speakers of after time made their d6but. It was probably neither better nor worse than the average college debating society, which it resembled in its rules, practices, and subjects' for debate. There was also the Wellesley Club, which later became the Wellesley Whist Club, and which seems to have been 308 LIFE AT HAILEYBURY rather convivial than intellectual, and to have boasted of its " chartered toast " and of its own special song in honor of the great Governor-General of India. The intellectual side of Haileybury life can, how- ever, best be judged from the letters, reminiscences, and memoirs of famous Haileybury men referred to in a later paragraph. It may be that the Competi- tion Wallahs, who succeeded them, have, as a body, more literary aptitude, but they certainly have not yet produced a poet or an essayist who can rank with the most distinguished Haileybury man of letters, Sir Alfred Lyall. Social Side of Life at Haileybury But even more space is filled in the recollection and memory of all graduates of Haileybury by the social advantages afforded by their college life. The one thing in which the Haileybury system had an indisputable advantage over that which followed it was in the spirit of camaraderie which it fostered. It was true that many of the young men there were, as scions of great Anglo-Indian families, already related to, or acquainted with, each other. But they seem to have admitted readily into their friendship the men of slighter connections, who were being edu- cated with them. Having common prospects and a career to be passed together in a distant land, still unconnected with the mother country by telegraph, and many months' journey away, it was natural that they should seek to know each other well. The iso- LIFE AT HAILEYBURY 309 lation of H alley bury, standing by itself on Hertford Heath, afforded the opportunity, and many lifelong friendships were formed there. For social life the students had to depend upon themselves and upon the families of the faculty. The distinction, in the world, of some of the latter brought many visitors of national renown to Haileybury, and interesting oppor- tunities for meeting famous persons were thus afforded to the students. After all, as was natural with young men and with young Englishmen, the greatest opportunities for personal acquaintance and personal rivalry arose in connection with athletics. The Haileybury Cricket Club had a long and prosperous history. 1 Rowing on the river Lea was another favorite sport, and class races were instituted between the different "terms." Class contests at football were vigorously fought out. 2 Mr. Lockwood has written an amusing account of an athletic meet. 3 Driving, though not permitted by the early rules of the College, and driving tandem, at all times prohibited, were practised ; and it is on record that John Lawrence's favorite sport, as a college stu- dent, was playing skittles at the neighbouring tavern, the College Arms. Since most of the Haileybury stu- dents in its most prosperous days came from the great English public schools, they had already attained to some degree of proficiency in athletics, and it was less 1 " Memorials of Old Haileybury College," pp. 77, 78. 2 Sir Charles Trevelyan in " Life of Lord Lawrence," Vol. I., p. 31. 8 Lockwood, " Early Days of Marlborough College," pp. 87-89. 310 LIFE AT HAILEYBURY difficult to get up a good crew or athletic team of any sort than might have been expected in a college where only two years' residence was required. It is curious to observe that the periodicals published by the students of the College contained but little notice of athletic contests, and in this Haileybury publications differed from those produced in modern schools and colleges. Of course, there was the reverse side to the healthy social life of daily intercourse and athletic rivalry. There are always black sheep in every educational institution, and Haileybury was no exception to the rule. Sir M. Monier- Williams dwells on the ten- dency to the use of profane language, which, he declares, was far more prevalent at Haileybury than at Oxford in his time ; and, despite the strict- ness of the College rules forbidding wine, there was, at certain periods, in certain sets, a good deal of hard drinking. Glimpses of a conviviality which sometimes degenerated into drunkenness can be seen in the College publications, and traditions of occa- sional fast men and fast sets have continued for years in the neighbourhood of Haileybury, and can occasionally be heard from the lips of surviving Haileybury men, but anything like the open prac- tice of vice was unknown. The Directors of the East India Company did their best to provide the students with the best reli- gious instruction : morning and evening services were held in the College chapel ; Batten and Jeremie and LIFE AT HAILEYBURY 311 Melvill were often heard in the College pulpit ; every possible encouragement was given to the formation of good habits, and the interest taken, by some of the professors at least, in the moral life of the stu- dents was real and sincere. The organization of Haileybury life was on the plan of English college life as it existed at Oxford and Cambridge. The students wore caps and gowns to lecture and on public occasions. They breakfasted in their own rooms, but dined together in the College Hall in the evening. The professors dined with them at the high table on a raised dais, and afterward retired to take their wine in the Common Room. Although the great gate was closed at an earlier hour than in the Universities, and an attempt was made to see that the students were alone and in bed by midnight,- these seem to have been the only points in which, in its latter days, Haileybury was more strict than an Oxford or Cambridge college. The way in which the various staircases communicating with the men's rooms opened on the great.. Quadrangle made occa- sional midnight frolics inevitable, and some of these frolics, as has already been noted, were elevated by injudicious treatment into the dignity of riots. As usual, with so many young men quartered together, one of the great amusements was the play- ing of practical jokes upon the professors and upon each other. Some of these are described in Sir M. Monier- Williams' s reminiscences and in The Hailey- bury Observer, but one that has not yet appeared in 312 NUMBER OF STUDENTS AT HAILEYBURY print may be recorded here. A certain student, who afterward had a successful career in India, and rose to be Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, was con- sidered by his fellows to be unduly vain of his per- sonal appearance, and it was asserted that he was in the habit of putting his hair, which was of an unpopular shade, into curl papers when he retired at night. The students resolved to test the truth of this assertion. In silence a crowd collected in front of the suspect's window. At the given moment he was aroused by a sudden cry of fire, and when he thrust his head out of the window it was perceived to bear, either as its ordinary custom was, or, as the victim asserted, forcibly so decorated, the despised adornments. The Number of Students at Haileybury The number of students at the East India College varied at different times. It would not be fair to strike an average for the whole existence of the Col- lege on account of the -greatness of this variation, even if the data were available. But the follow- ing figures may be of some interest. During Dr. Henley's administration, the first nine years of the College, the average number of students according to the statistics of the entering classes, in residence during any one term, seems to have been about seventy- five. During the twenty-two years of Dr. Batten's administration, from 1815 to 1837, the average num- ber in residence, calculated on the same basis, the NUMBER OF STUDENTS AT HAILEYBURY 313 size of the entering classes, was about eighty. For the latter part of this period, however, more accurate figures can be given from an examination of "The East India Registers" from 1826 to 1837, which contain lists of the students at the College. From these lists it appears that the high-water mark, in point of numbers, was reached in the first term of 1830, when 107 students were in residence, while 101 names appear in 1829, and 99 in 1826 and in the second term of 1830. On the other hand, a great falling off in numbers appears toward the end of this period, probably owing to the large number of direct appointments to India, so that the year 1832 shows only 48, and the year 1837 only 27, students in resi- dence. Under Le Bas, from 183710 1843, the number again rises from 32 in 1837 an d 45 in 1838, to over 80 in the latter years. During the last period of the life of the College, under Melvill, an average of 80 stu- dents was well maintained, the variations running from 62 in 1851 and 66 in 1852, to 91 in both 1853 and 1855, and 92 in 1845. Reminiscences and Opinions of Haileybury, by Men who were trained there The best idea of life at Haileybury, of the benefits of Haileybury education, and of the influence of Haileybury in forming the traditions of the Indian Civil Service, can be found in the reminiscences and opinions of men who were trained there. Space does not permit the citation at length of either the descrip- 314 THE DIRECTORS AND HAILEYBURY tive passages or of the matured opinions, which can be collected from the writings of civilians trained at Haileybury. But reference should be made to the descriptions written by Sir Charles Trevelyan and Mr. James Hallett Batten, in Bosworth Smith's "Life of Lord Lawrence"; 1 to Sir Bartle Frere's reminis- cences, printed in his " Life and Correspondence " by Mr. John Martineau ; 2 to the appreciative description written by Sir George Campbell in his " Memoirs " ; 3 to the remarks of Sir Richard Temple in his " Men and Events of my Time in India"; 4 to the particu- larly vivid reminiscences of Mr. H. G. Keene, who was not only educated but born at Haileybury, in a review of the " Memorials of Old Haileybury Col- lege " in the Calcutta Review? and in his " Recollec- tions of an Indian Civilian," also published in the Calcutta Review ; 6 while Mr. Edward Lockwood gives a picture of Haileybury from the point of view of the somewhat fast student in a chapter entitled "A Glimpse of Old Haileybury," which forms part of his volume called "The Early Days of Marl- borough College." 7 The Court of Directors and the College The interest taken by the Court of Directors in the East India College was from the first very great. There had been considerable opposition among the 1 Vol. I., pp. 30-31. 6 Vol. XCIX., pp. xxxv.-xxxix., October, 1894. 8 Vol. I., pp. 8-10. 6 Vol. CI., pp. 60-63, J ul y l8 95- Vol. I., pp. 8-10. 7 pp. 151, 152. 4 pp. 18-19. THE DIRECTORS AND HAILEYBURY 315 stockholders to its establishment, which found vent in severe criticisms and in resolutions for its abolition ; there was always a considerable minority of supporters of the College among the stockholders who wanted it to be run as a school ; and there were a certain number of strong supporters of Lord Wellesley, who had resented the cutting down of his magnificent scheme of a great college at Fort William. The most usual lines of criticism were on the grounds of expense, disorderly conduct of the students, underlaxity or overlaxity in its management, and a wrong system of instruction. These attacks by some of the stockholders occurred at many of the quar- terly meetings, and were largely responsible for the false impressions about the College which got abroad among the public at large. More than once, notably in 1824, motions for the abolition of the College were hotly debated, but they were always lost owing to the vigorous opposition of the Directors themselves. A careful study of these various criticisms and of the debates in the India House shows that, underlying most of the opposition, was a feeling among the stockholders that the Directors supported the College in their own interests, and that its continuance was in some way advantageous to them. This, however, becomes less obvious after the renewal of the Com- pany's Charter in 1833, when the composition of the stockholders underwent the change that has been noted earlier. A remnant of this spirit may be seen, however, even up to the last days of the Company's 3l6 THE DIRECTORS AND HAILEYBURY existence, and Haileybury was too generally regarded by them as a pet institution of the Directors, in no way vital to the prosperity of the Company's Civil Ser- vice and the Company's government of India. When, therefore, the Directors' patronage to the Indian Civil Service was taken away in 1853, no voice was raised in the House of Commons, or among the public, to save the College, which was regarded as bound up in some way with the Directors' right of nomination. The more the College was attacked by the stock- holders, the more vigorous was the support given to it by the Directors themselves. They watched over it with paternal solicitude, in fact, with too much solicitude for its own good. Until the appoint- ment of Melvill with full powers they insisted upon acting as a court of appeal in all things, and in inter- fering overmuch in details of administration. From the very foundation of the College, membership on the College Committee of the Court of Directors was regarded as one of the chief distinctions. In 1813 a standing College Committee was one of the twelve created, and, until the renewal of the charter in 1833, it was always composed of the nine senior Directors in point of service, with the chairman and deputy- chairman of the Court. This committee had entire supervision of all matters connected with the Col- lege ; it investigated all appeals and complaints ; it appointed the professors and assistants; and it attended in a body at the College itself on the occa- sion of the semi-annual visitations. Its clerk through- THE DIRECTORS AND HAILEYBURY 317 out its existence was Mr. John Conyers Hudson. In 1833 there was a rearrangement of the committees of the Court of Directors, and a reduction of their number from twelve to three. Of these three the Finance and Home Committee took charge of the affairs of Haileybury. Their representative in this branch of their work was Mr. William T. Hooper, whose official title was Clerk of the College Depart- ment. He transacted all business and correspond- ence concerning the College, and always accompanied the Directors upon their semi-annual visitations. His somewhat peculiar personality was well known to all the Haileybury students of the later period, 1 and he continued to transact the business of the College until its dissolution. Enough has been said of the baneful effect of the interference of the Directors in the affairs of the College ; the good side of their interest in it deserves a few words of comment. The company was always a liberal paymaster. The salaries paid to the prin- cipals and professors at Haileybury were large ; they were provided with good houses and spacious grounds; their expenses were light, and their work not excessive. As the sketch of the course of studies shows, no professor lectured on more than two days a week, and in the nature of things their classes were not large. As a result of this, very few pro- fessors ever resigned, and, when retirement became necessary from increasing age or ill-health, liberal 1 " Memorials of Old Haileybury College," pp. 40, 42, 54, 55, 132. 318 THE DIRECTORS AND HAILEYBURY pensions were always granted. It was this generous treatment which enabled the Directors to obtain such distinguished men as Sir James Mackintosh and Sir James Stephen and Malthus and Henry Melvill to fill offices at Haileybury. Constant association with the Directors made it easy for the principals and professors to obtain nominations to the Indian Civil Service for their sons. Three sons of Batten, two of Le Bas, and three of Melvill passed out of Hailey- bury into the Civil Service, and sons of Professors Christian, Schalch, and Keene all had opened to them the same career, in which they won distinc- tion. The chief manifestation of the interest taken by the Directors in the welfare of the East India Col- lege was shown on the occasion of the semi-annual visitations. Twice a year, at the end of the College terms, in June and December, the chairman of the Court of Directors, accompanied, up to 1833, by the members of the College Committee, and after that year by as many Directors as chose to attend, came down in state from London. An imposing ceremony was held in the College Library or Hall ; medals and prizes, with which the Directors were most liberal, were distributed ; prize compositions were read by the students, of which the English essay, being in the only language intelligible to most of the guests, was most applauded ; the names of the students who had successfully passed through the College course, in the order fixed by the final examinations, were DIRECT APPOINTMENTS TO INDIA 319 read aloud in sonorous tones by the Clerk of the College, Mr. Hooper; their appointment to the Indian Civil Service was solemnly announced ; and an appropriate discourse was generally delivered by the chairman of the Court of Directors. This cere- mony was followed by a great dinner to the Direc- tors and their guests in the College Hall, at which speeches were made in praise of the Company and of the College. Many accounts of these ceremonial occasions, which were known among the students as " Di's Days," are still extant. Among those described in the " Memorials of Old Haileybury College " 1 the most interesting seem to have been the last two, which took place in 1857, the year of the Indian Mutiny. The account of another, which took place in December, 1847, is quoted at length from The Hertford Mercury in the " Autobiography and Reminiscences of Sir Douglas Forsyth." a Direct Appointments to the Indian Civil Service, 1827-1831 By the Act renewing the charter in 1813, it was enacted that no nominee of the Directors of the East India Company should enter the Indian Civil Service, without passing through the course at Haileybury. But unforeseen circumstances, especially the growth of the Company's territories and the increase of the duties of its civil servants, caused a dearth of quali- fied civilians in 1826, and in that year an Act was 1 Pp. 129-139. * Pp. 5-8. 32O DIRECT APPOINTMENTS TO INDIA passed, 7 Geo. IV., c. 56, relaxing the stringency of the Act of 1813, and permitting the Directors, for the space of three years, to nominate and to send to India "any person who shall produce such testi- monials of his character and conduct and pass such an examination as shall be required." Under the provisions of this Act, the Directors framed a scheme of examination, which is of interest on two grounds, as being the first scheme of examinations for entrance into the Indian Civil Service, and as being the model for the later examinations for entrance to Hailey- bury. The regulations for direct appointments were, that the nominees to the service should be between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two, that they should present testimonials of good moral conduct during the two years prior to their nomination, and that they should pass a qualifying examination. The exami- nation was conducted by four examiners, two from Oxford and two from Cambridge, and was in classics, mathematics, and history. The amount of classics required included portions of some of the chief authors studied in the English schools and univer- sities; while the mathematics included geometry, algebra, trigonometry, and mechanics; and the modern history was to be taken from Russell's " Modern Europe." It was particularly stated that superiority in one department should compensate for deficiency in another. The Directors did not demand a knowledge of Oriental languages, but announced that nominees to direct appointments DIRECT APPOINTMENTS TO INDIA 32! would " promote their own interests by commencing in England the study of those languages, so as to pass an examination there, and prosecuting it during the voyage, and thereby qualifying themselves to pass in India the test required of all Writers, pre- viously to their being reported qualified for the public service." The order of those passing the examina- tion each half-year was to be fixed by the examiners, and the successful candidates were to be ranked immediately after those who had last passed out of the East India College. Mr. William Tayler, whose conduct as Commis- sioner of Patna during the Sepoy Mutiny has been the subject of much controversy, has left on record an account of the manner in which the examinations for direct appointments were conducted in 1829. He had been educated at Charterhouse, and had just kept his first term at Christ Church, Oxford. " The ceremony took place at the old ' India House,' in Leadenhall Street. Two examiners, an Oxonian and a Cantab, were deputed for the occasion; there was a test- paper distributed, but the examinees were allowed to send in a list of extra books in which they were willing, for dis- tinction's sake, to be examined. Having reached a some- what advanced stage in Greek and Latin, my list of Classics was alarming, and it was hinted that, to some extent, I was humbugging the examiners. The consequence was, that I was subjected to an extra ordeal, to prove the reality of my professed acquirements. This was, perhaps, fortunate, as the result, being favorable, helped to save me from a dilemma. In the test list was a paper in algebra. Now I Y 322 DIRECT APPOINTMENTS TO INDIA had been educated at the Charterhouse, and had never learned either mathematics or algebra, and some thought that on this account I might be spun. There was no help for it, however, algebra could not be learned in a day, so, when the paper came before me, I wrote, with many misgivings, on a separate piece, ' I have never learned algebra ' ; then, underneath, I drew some absurd carica- tures, and left the papers all together. Shortly afterwards we retired to a sideboard in the room to eat some sand- wiches, and while there, I saw one of the examiners approach my table ; it was a nervous moment ; he raised my paper and read the fatal words ; but immediately after- wards he took up my artistic performances, then quietly beckoned his fellow-examiner, and, to my great delight, I saw them both in fits of laughter ! To this auspicious interlude of the comic, combined with my successful exami- nation in the Classics, I attribute the happy issue. Not only was I not plucked, but passed second on the list, the first place being taken by Mr. (now Sir Thomas) Pycroft, who, like a ' good boy,' did know algebra, and who was up in all the subjects." l In all about one hundred direct appointments to the Indian Civil Service were given between 1827 and 1831. The Act permitting direct appointments for a period of three years was interpreted to cover nom- inations made in 1829 of persons whose examinations were held two years later. During this period alone was the Haileybury training for Indian civil servants omitted ; the need for additional qualified men did not again arise ; and the expedient of direct appoint- ments, which had been introduced upon the analogy of 1 Tayler, " Thirty-eight Years in India," Vol. I., pp. 4-6. ADDISCOMBE 323 direct appointments to the Company's cavalry, while the other branches of the military service were filled from Addiscombe, was never repeated. The number of direct appointments filled at any single half-yearly examination never exceeded fourteen, and averaged about ten. The Haileybury men frankly accepted as their compeers the men who went to India with direct appointments, and no distinction was made between the two classes in promotion or considera- tion. Among the distinguished Indian civil servants who came from the rank's of the direct appointees may be noted, in addition to Mr. Tayler, Sir Robert Montgomery, who succeeded John Lawrence as Lieu- tenant-Governor of the Punjab, Sir Henry Byng Har- ington, Sir John Cracroft Wilson, and Sir Thomas Pycroft. The appointment of the last named has an especial interest in that his nomination was ob- tained after public competition among the undergrad- uates of Oxford, to the authorities of which University it had been given for this purpose, in 1827, by Mr. Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, at that time Presi- dent of the Board of Control. Addiscombe Some mention should here be made of the only other educational institution maintained by the East India Company in England in addition to the East India College at Haileybury, namely, the Company's Military Seminary at Addiscombe. This institution came into existence at about the same time as the 324 ADDISCOMBE East India College, but it was always essentially a school, and many critics, because as a school and a military school discipline was easy to maintain at Addiscombe, desired to reduce Haileybury to the same grade of standing. The East India Company's army became a large and important force after the conquest of Bengal. It consisted mainly of native soldiers or Sepoys, strengthened by the presence of a large contingent of English troops of the regular army and of three regiments of infantry and a few batteries of artillery recruited in England for the Company's service. The officers for the Company's army, both native and European, were originally mainly drawn from the English regular regiments serving in India ; but during the transition period from the time of Warren Hastings to the time of Lord Wellesley this source of supply gradually ceased, and cadets for commis- sions were appointed by the Directors of the East India Company in England and by officers com- manding in India. This want of system brought about a want of cohesion in the Company's army and a want of loyalty to the Company's interests. Further, it did not provide qualified officers for the scientific branches of the service, the artillery and engineers. The Court of Directors tried to meet this latter difficulty by paying for the education of ten cadets a year at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich from 1798 ; but this number proved insuffi- cient, and, in 1809, Addiscombe Place, near Croydon, ADDISCOMBE 325 in Surrey, was opened as a Military Seminary for the instruction of cadets who had received nominations to the Company's artillery and engineers. The insti- tution was found to be useful, and it was greatly enlarged after 1816, when cadets for the Company's infantry were likewise required to receive their edu- cation there. Nominations to Addiscombe were in the gift of the individual Directors of the East India Company, in the same proportion as nominations to Haileybury, and the remarks that have been made with regard to Haileybury patronage apply equally to Addiscombe patronage. The Company's cavalry was filled solely by direct appointments to India, and when there was need for additional infantry officers it was supplied by the granting of direct appointments to supplement the graduates from Addiscombe. The two scientific branches of the Company's army, how- ever, the artillery and the engineers, were entirely officered from Addiscombe. Nominations to Addis- combe were not so eagerly sought as nominations to Haileybury, and there was a saying in vogue that the Directors of the East India Company put their clever sons into the Indian Civil Service, their stupid sons into the Company's cavalry, and sent their poor rela- tions to Addiscombe. The Military Seminary at Addiscombe was essen- tially a school. Cadets were admitted throughout its history between the ages of fourteen and eighteen ; the instruction given was school instruction, with a little Hindustani and a good deal of fortification, gun- 326 ADDISCOMBE nery, and military drawing added ; the discipline was military discipline, the cadets wearing uniforms at all times, and the seniors doing their share in training the freshmen, who were bullied and ordered about under the name of "greens" or "probos," and the supervision by the Lieutenant-Governor, who was always a military officer of distinction, and his staff and orderly officers, was much more strict than that exercised at Haileybury. Twice a year cadets were passed out of Addiscombe after two years' residence, when those at the head of the class received commis- sions in the Company's engineers, the next in order to the Company's artillery, and the remainder to the Company's infantry. The chief advantages of Addis- combe lay in the way in which it revised the Directors' power of nomination, by dropping or expelling unfit persons, and the opportunity it gave for the future officers in the Company's army to form social rela- tions with each other, through a common training together, which produced a most excellent esprit de corps. Addiscombe outlived Haileybury, for though the Directors lost their privilege of nominating to the Civil Service in 1853, they retained the power of nominating to commissions in the Company's army. Addiscombe even outlived the Company itself, and continued to exist as a training school for the Indian army until the final amalgamation of the Queen's and the Indian army in 1861. An interesting volume entitled, "Addiscombe: its Heroes and Men of Note," by Colonel H. M. Vibart, ADDISCOMBE 327 was published in 1894 as a companion volume to the " Memorials of Old Haileybury College." Being the work of a single author, it is much better put together than the book on Haileybury, and it con- tains a very readable history of the Addiscombe Seminary, abounding in anecdote and embodying much valuable information. The graduates of Ad- discombe formed a splendid body of officials ; many of them, notably Sir Henry Lawrence, Sir Henry Durand, and Sir James Browne, obtained distinction in civil capacities as governors of provinces and administrators ; others, like Sir Proby Cautley and Sir Arthur Cotton, as engineers constructed great public works for the people of India ; others again, also from the engineers, completed the great trigo- nometrical survey of India under the supervision of Sir Andrew Waugh ; while some of them attained eminence in other fields of activity, like Sir Alex- ander Cunningham, the archaeologist; his brother, Joseph Cunningham, the historian of the Sikhs ; Sir George Chesney, the novelist and man of letters ; and Sir John Kaye, the historian of the Sepoy Mutiny and the most voluminous writer on the his- tory of the English in India. But, after all, the most famous graduates of Addiscombe distinguished themselves as soldiers in the profession for which they were trained there. Colonel Vibart in his book gives a long list of famous Addiscombe soldiers, including most of the military heroes of the Indian Mutiny, but the most famous of them all were Field 328 THE ABOLITION OF HAILEYBURY Marshal Lord Napier of Magdala, who commanded the expedition to Abyssinia, in 1867, and Field Mar- shal Lord Roberts of Kandahar, who contributed a brief introduction, full of appreciation for his old school, to Colonel Vibart's book. The Abolition of the East India College at Haileybyry By the Act renewing the Company's charter in 1853, 1 6 & 17 Vic., c. 95, the right of the Directors of the East India Company to nominate to Hailey- bury and to the Indian Civil Service was declared to be withdrawn, as regards all vacancies which should occur on or after April 30, 1854. The prac- tice of revising the conditions under which India was governed every twenty years, since 1793, had been most beneficial. Committees of both Houses of Parliament, before the Acts of renewal in 1813, 1833, and 1853, thoroughly investigated the methods of Indian government by examining a large number of witnesses, both favourable and unfavourable to the existing system, and it was upon the basis of the reports of these committees that changes were intro- duced into the Acts renewing the dual government of India by the East India Company and the Board of Control. Each of these renewing Acts introduced important changes. Under the Act of 1813, the East India Company lost its monopoly of the Indian trade; under the Act of 1833, it lost its monopoly of the Chinese trade; and by the Act of 1853, the Directors of the East India Company lost their privi- THE ABOLITION OF HAILEYBURY 329 lege of nominating to the Indian Civil Service. This was the chief point of discussion in the India debates of 1853. Sir Charles Wood, afterward Lord Hali- fax, who was President of the Board of Control, was particularly resolved on this change, but the states- man who was mainly responsible for the triumphant majority in the House of Commons for Wood's prop- osition was Macaulay. The famous historian had twenty years before tried to overthrow the patronage system ; l he was a fanatical believer in the system of competitive examination ; and his convictions made him eloquent and caused the triumph of his argu- ment. 2 But the Act of 1853 did not abolish Hailey- bury ; indeed, it clearly implied, in certain clauses, the continuance of Haileybury, and elsewhere only enacted that men might be admitted to the Indian Civil Service without fulfilling the obligation imposed in 1813 of passing through the East India College. The whole matter of establishing competitive exam- inations in the place of the Directors' patronage was referred to the Royal Commission, whose Report is reprinted in full in this volume. 3 The last paragraphs of this Report dealt with the question of the retention of Haileybury, and upon the grounds of the more mature age of successful candi- dates for the Indian Civil Service under the system 1 Su^ra, p. 245. 2 Trevelyan : "Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay," New York, 1877, Vol. II., pp. 285-293. This speech is not printed in the collected edi- tion of Macaulay's works for reasons given in his Life. * Supra, pp. 77-98. 330 THE ABOLITION OF HAILEYBURY recommended of open competition, and of the neces- sary changes in discipline and in the course of studies required for them, the Commission concluded by leav- ing it to the Board of Control " to consider whether any plan can be devised by which such a training can be made compatible with residence at Hailey- bury." Sir Charles Wood evidently thought, and without much consideration, that the competitive system and Haileybury were incompatible, for on November 30, 1854, in the very month in which the Report of the Commission was presented, he in- formed the Court of Directors that he did not think the continued maintenance of Haileybury desirable, and that a bill would be introduced for its abolition. Three months later Sir Charles Wood left office, but his successor at the Board of Control, Mr. Vernon Smith, afterward Lord Lyveden, indorsed his opin- ion and by an Act passed in July, 1855, 18 & 19 Vic., c. 53, entitled "An Act to relieve the East India Company from the obligation to maintain the College at Haileybury," it was enacted that on and after January 31, 1858, the College should be closed and that no person should be admitted to the Col- lege after January, 1856. In July, 1855, the first open competitive examination for entrance into the Indian Civil Service was held, and for the next two years and a half the Civil Service was recruited in almost equal proportions by the last of the Haileyburians and the first of the Competition Wallahs. The last class, or, to use the college name, the last " term," THE NEW HAILEYBURY 331 was graduated from Haileybury in December, 1857; the ceremonies of " Di's Day " were held for the last time ; and the East India College as a training place for the Indian Civil Service ceased to exist. Its founders, the Directors and stockholders of the East India Company, did not long survive the College ; the events of the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 resulted in a wild outburst of indignation against the dual system of governing India; the methods devised in 1853 for perpetuating the system were abrogated ; and in Jan- uary, 1859, the East India Company expired and the government of India was taken over by the Crown. The New Haileybury The English government, which came into the pos- session of the estate and buildings of Haileybury as part of the assets of the East India Company, tried for a time to use them for military purposes. But when they were found to be badly adapted for bar- racks they were put up for sale by auction. In 1861, they passed under the control of a corporation of gentlemen and clergymen of the neighbourhood, and a school upon the lines of the great English public schools was opened in the buildings of Haileybury in September, 1862. The new Haileybury which thus came into existence in the buildings of old Hailey- bury had nothing whatever to do with India, any more than Eton or Rugby or Marlborough ; and it is necessary to bear in mind that the Haileyburians of the last forty years are to be carefully distinguished 332 THE NEW HAILEYBURY from the graduates of the East India College. The Quadrangle remains practically unaltered, except for the construction of a larger chapel on the site of the old College Library and the turning of three of the former blocks of students' rooms into six large boys' dormitories. Other buildings, however, have been added outside of the Quadrangle and the school now accommodates over five hundred boys. The tradi- tions of the former residents in the buildings of Haileybury are carefully cherished in the new Hailey- bury; particularly is the name of John Lawrence revered, and an inscription has been put up in his old room to commemorate his use of it ; a generous gift of the books, not in Oriental languages, from the old College Library, partly fills the shelves of its suc- cessor; and the names of the nine dormitories or " houses " as they are called, of the six in the Quad- rangle, and of the three that have been added, are those of famous graduates and Principals of the old Haileybury. In this way the names of Lawrence, Trevelyan, Thomason, Colvin, Bartle Frere, Edmon- stone, Batten, Le Bas, and Melvill are kept alive at new Haileybury. The name of the school and its occupation of the old buildings have caused it to be much favoured by Anglo-Indian families, and it is in- teresting to note Battens and Melvills and Lushing- tons and Moneys and Ravenshaws in the list of names of boys educated at the new Haileybury. 1 1 A brief history of new Haileybury can be found in the Haileybury Register, edited by the Rev. L. S. Milford, 2d. ed., Hertford, 1891. HAILEYBURY AND THE CIVIL SERVICE 333 There is no advantage in dwelling at greater length here upon the new Haileybury; it is enough to note that it now ranks among the foremost of the great English public schools ; and it may be of inter- est to students of modern literature to state that Mr. Cormell Price, the sagacious " Head " of Mr. Kip- ling's schoolboy stories, " Stalky and Co.," was house master of Colvin House at the new Haileybury from 1863 to 1874, before he took charge of the preparatory school for the army, which is known as The United Services College at Westward Ho ! The Effect of Haileybury on the Indian Civil Service The unique character of Haileybury lies in its being the only special school that has ever existed in Eng- land for the training of Asiatic administrators. It must be borne in mind that the Indian civilians trained there were essentially administrators, rising to be judges of the High Courts, but never Chief Justices, and to be Collectors of Districts, Commissioners of Divisions, and Lieutenant-Governors of Provinces, but never, except during the brief viceroyalty of John Lawrence, Governors-General or Viceroys. In other words, Haileybury men, for about seventy years, did most of the work of governing India, but did not direct Indian policy. In this their position was simi- lar to that of their patrons, the Directors of the India Company, who had to find ways and means of carry- ing out general lines of policy dictated to them by the 334 HAILEYBURY AND THE CIVIL SERVICE English government through the President of the Board of Control. The attitude of the Haileybury Indian Civil Ser- vants towards their work was not entirely the result of their Haileybury training. Members of the great Anglo-Indian families looked to service in India as their natural and inevitable career. Many of them had been born in India and had always looked forward to returning to the land of their birth, with pleasur- able recollections of childish days ; others had rela- tives in India ready and willing to initiate them into the conditions of Indian life ; a knowledge of the natives was inborn in them from one, two, or three generations of Indian experience, and they were able to take to their duties without the inversion of pre- conceived ideas, which is unavoidable for most Euro- peans brought into sudden contact with Asiatic ideas and customs. India to them was home, and the work of ruling the natives of India for their own good and slowly introducing them to the methods of European civilization, a noble life work. They started, there- fore, with a better appreciation of what lay before them than either their predecessors, to whom India was the " land of the pagoda tree," or their successors, who are often utterly ignorant of things Indian until they pass into the Indian Civil Service. During the Haileybury period, further, India was more out of touch with England than is the case in these days of electric cables and the Suez Canal, and the Anglo- Indian community was an isolated oligarchy of admin- HAILEYBURY AND THE CIVIL SERVICE 335 istrators and army officers. It was the patronage system which produced this oligarchy, and the chief value of Haileybury lay in its binding the civilian members of this oligarchy together by a training in common, and inspiring those admitted within the circle, by the nomination of the Directors, with the same attitude towards their future work and the same pride in the traditions of the service. The nature of the intellectual training given at Haileybury can best be seen in the pages referred to from the writings of distinguished graduates of the College. The amount of the elements of the Oriental languages learnt formed only a slight basis for subse- quent study in India; the teaching in history, law, and political economy was more stimulating than thorough ; and the additional knowledge acquired of classics and mathematics was not very extensive. It was the social side of College life that was of permanent value to the Haileybury civilians in their future work. They got to know not only the men of their own "term " but the men of the three previous and the three succeeding " terms " in the thorough way that is only possible among young men at college. They learned the strength and weakness of each other, a knowl- edge of immense importance at critical times, and each man's peculiar fitness and unfitness were so thoroughly recognized throughout the service as to regulate, to some extent, the nature of his employ- ment. More than this, there grew up at Haileybury that genuine esprit de corps which made the Indian 336 HAILEYBURY AND THE CIVIL SERVICE Civil Service more than a band of officials and almost a band of brothers. The traditions of the service were handed on from college generation to college generation and were common to all the Civil Servants from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin. The Anglo- Indian hospitality which maintained the governing caste in close bonds of brotherhood had its origin in the common associations of Haileybury and Addis- combe. But esprit de corps is apt to degenerate into cliquishness, and the supercilious arrogance of some of the old Haileybury civilians, and the air of super- iority, which brought down on them the mocking epi- thet of "the heaven-born," originated likewise in Haileybury exclusiveness. Opposition to reform was a natural outcome of pride in the traditions of the service, and even sympathy with native ideas and customs had its bad side in its condonation of native vices. Further, the training together of the whole body of administrators made their force almost too strong at certain critical periods of Indian history, as, for instance, in the case of the recall of Lord Ellen- borough in 1844, which was largely due to the oppo- sition excited among the civilians by his favour to the army. It must be remembered that during the latter part of the Company's government in India the growth of its territory caused the employment of large num- bers of officers of the Indian army in civil capacities. Lord Dalhousie's great annexations were treated as non-regulation provinces and the first rulers of the HAILEYBURIANS IN THE MUTINY 337 Punjab, the Central Provinces, and Lower Burma were mostly taken from the commissioned ranks of the Company's army. If John Lawrence is regarded as the most famous of the Haileybury civilians, it must not be forgotten that his brother, Henry Law- rence, was once an Addiscombe cadet. The test of both classes of administrators, the men from Hailey- bury and the men from Addiscombe, came in North- ern India in 1857 w *th the Sepoy Mutiny. Both groups nobly stood the test. If it was the Punjab, mainly manned with army officers, that, under the guidance of John Lawrence, a Haileybury civilian, saved the English power and stemmed the progress of the revolt, it was the Northwestern Provinces which met the brunt of the outbreak. There were there and in Oudh, when the Mutiny commenced, 153 civilians, all of whom were Haileybury men, except the few direct appointees who had joined between 1827 and 1831. Of these twenty-nine were mur- dered or killed in action, at least three died of chol- era as the result of exposure on service, 1 while there is no record of the number wounded, since the wounds of civilians received no official notice in the Gazettes. The proud record of the gallantry and efficiency of the Haileybury civilians during the Mutiny can be seen in the pages of Kaye and Malleson's " History," and they are succinctly put together in the alphabeti- cal order of the names of the most distinguished of 1 R. H. W. Dunlop, " Service and Adventure with the Khakee Ressalah," pp. 150, 151 338 HAILEYBURY VERSUS OPEN COMPETITION them in the " Memorials of Old Haileybury Col- lege." * But even more striking than the individual gallantry of civilians who held their Districts together during the flame of revolt, and who served as soldiers and as police officers in the course of its suppression, was the solidarity of the Haileyburians in this time of crisis. Each man knew exactly how far he could depend upon his neighbour, and the intimate knowl- edge of each other gained at^Haileybury, and the esprit de corps there fostered, stood the civilians in good stead, when the whole structure of the Com- pany's government was threatened by the mutiny of the Company's native troops. It may fairly be said that the patronage of the East India Directors, modi- fied by Haileybury training, gloriously justified itself in 1857. Haileyburians -versus Competition Wallahs Good men have been obtained for the Indian Civil Service under all systems. And the question of the superiority or the inferiority of the general body of Indian civilians obtained under the Haileybury sys- tem and the open competition system cannot be mathematically demonstrated. Yet undoubtedly a difference exists between the two classes. How far that difference may be due to the cessation of the isolation of the Indian career and the diminution of the number of representatives of the great Anglo- 1 Pp- 585-632. HAILEYBURY VERSUS OPEN COMPETITION 339 Indian families, and how far to the difference of selection and training, cannot be stated positively. The traditions of the Haileyburians have been handed on, after a fashion, to the Competition Wal- lahs; the old social intimacy, the result of a com- mon training, and the old sympathy with the natives, the result of hereditary associations, may have given way to more liberal ideas and less social arrogance ; more intellectual civilians may have been brought into the service than would have come in had Hailey- bury been retained ; and the loss of old Haileybury intimacy may be well compensated by the abolition of patronage. It is impossible to make a comparison between the Haileyburians and the Competition Wal- lahs which shall not be arbitrary, and it is, therefore, better to take the recorded judgment of those who have seen the men produced by both systems at work, as to the results of the two systems of selec- tion and training. Mr. John Martineau, basing his remarks upon the papers and the opinions of Sir Bartle Frere, writes in his life of that statesman : "The sense of comradeship in a common service and the knowledge of each other's character, which the Hailey- bury life fostered, was of great value afterwards in India. It enabled each to have a better knowledge of the special qualities of those with whom they had to work, and to reckon beforehand on whom, in time of stress, they would be able to rely. It may well be doubted whether the Indian Civil Service did not suffer a great loss by the aboli- tion of the Haileybury training, for which a course at a 340 HAILEYBURY VERSUS OPEN COMPETITION university, with its bewildering choice of studies and its manifold distractions, is but an indifferent substitute." J Sir Richard Temple, dealing with the same subject writes : " The friendships and associations formed at College con- stituted one of the several bonds of comradeship among all the Civil Servants during their administrative careers, and helped to maintain an elevated standard of thought and feeling in the service as a corps d'elite. Every Civil Ser- vant on first landing in India imagined himself to be a member of the most highly organized body of functionaries that the world had ever seen. . . . Many circumstances conduced to send us forth from our homes, on a strange and distant service, in that frame of mind which England should desire for those who are to represent her before the nations of the East." 2 Sir George Campbell writes : "The young men, caught young and taught to believe themselves especially fortunate, took a pride in the service ; they had a wonderfully effective training in India, and almost all became zealous. I think they took more to the natives than more mature men, and they more readily accepted the view that they were given body and soul to the Government, must look to no other emoluments whatever, and scrupulously abstain from all other enterprises. I say all this, not deny- ing that the present mode of selection is better, but as showing that there was something to be said on the other side too, and to explain why, in my opinion, the difference in efficiency between the old and the new service is not so 1 Martineau, " Life and Correspondence of Sir Bartle Frere," Vol. I., p. 9. 2 Temple, " Men and Events of my Time in India," p. 19. HAILEYBURY VERSUS OPEN COMPETITION 341 very wide as might be supposed, considering the difference in the manner of selection. ... I confess I am very much inclined to regret the abolition of Haileybury. Some years later I had a plan for a special Indian college at one of the universities, and had a good deal of talk with Whewell about it. The main difficulty seemed to be that no govern- ment would dare to plant such an institution at one univer- sity to the exclusion of the other. I suspect that, at the present day, that would be very much the difficulty in find- ing any substitute for Haileybury." 1 These opinions, expressed by three of the most eminent of Haileybury civilians, who, as Governors and Lieutenant-Governors of Provinces, had ample opportunity to test the men produced by the two systems, speak for themselves, and it is not necessary to comment further on the special advantages which they attributed to the Haileybury training. It may be worth while, however, to point out the generous manner in which the Haileybury men welcomed their successors, and endeavoured to instil into them the Haileybury ideas. Perhaps this is best shown by a quotation from the speech delivered at the Hai- leybury dinner in Calcutta on January 23, 1864, by Mr. W. S. Seton-Karr. Speaking on behalf of the Haileybury men, he said : "Every year must necessarily diminish the number of our race. For some years past all the junior posts in the service have been filled, and filled efficiently, by a new order of men, who owe their appointments to tried com- 1 Campbell, " Memoirs of my Indian Career," pp. 8, 10. 342 HAILEYBURY VERSUS OPEN COMPETITION petitive merit, and not to the accidents of private and political connection or of birth. I feel sure that we shall not content ourselves with a tardy acknowledgment of the claims of the new men, still less view the presence of ' new blood ' with dislike or jealousy ; but that we shall hold out to every fresh member the right hand of fellowship, and wish him success in his work. We shall rejoice heartily if the promises of the new system shall be even more than ful- filled. We shall welcome the new men if they come, rich with honours gained on the banks of the Cam and the Isis, more highly gifted, more completely educated, and more scientifically trained. We shall be content to be far sur- passed in talent, if we are only equalled in integrity and honour. I trust they will not disdain to adopt from us some of those traditions which it is now the fashion, in some quar- ters, to depreciate and disparage; and that, from the first, they will act steadily on the sure and simple maxim, that we are bound to govern India in trust for the natives, and for India itself." 1 In the same year in which Mr. Seton-Karr deliv- ered the speech from which this passage is taken, Mr. George Otto Trevelyan, now Sir G. O. Trevel- yan, published a series of letters from India, origi- nally printed in Macmillaris Magazine, under the title of "The Competition Wallah." No one could be better fitted to form a fair opinion on the respective advantages of the two systems than the eldest son of Sir Charles Trevelyan, one of the most distin- guished of the Haileybury men, and the nephew of Macaulay, the chief author of the system of open competition. The letters in question were written 1 " Memorials of Old Haileybury College," p. 94. HAILEYBURY VERSUS OPEN COMPETITION 343 when Trevelyan was fresh from a brilliant career at Cambridge, and were not, as they purported to be, the views of a real Competition Wallah. Some paragraphs from this volume may serve to close this account of the old East India College at Hailey- bury : " In old days a Writer came out in company with a score of men who had passed the last two years of their English life in the same quadrangle as himself. He found as many more already comfortably settled, and prepared to welcome and assist their fellow-collegian ; and, in his turn, he looked forward to receiving and initiating a fresh batch at the end of another six months. Haileybury formed a tie which the vicissitudes of official life could never break. . . . Wher- ever two Haileybury men met they had at least one set of associations in common. . . . Had they not rowed together on the Lea? Had they not larked together in Hertford? Had they not shared that abundant harvest of medals which rewarded the somewhat moderate exertions of the reading- man at the East India College ? This strong esprit de corps had its drawbacks. The interests of the country were too often postponed to the interests of the service. But the advantages of Haileybury outweighed the defects. Our situation is very different. Few of us are lucky enough to have more than two or three acquaintances among the men of our own years : and, while our seniors persist in looking on us as a special class, we have no bond of union among ourselves. . . . The idea entertained by the natives is droll enough : they say that another caste of Englishmen has come out." " We must not close our eyes to the undoubted advantages of competition. Short of competition, the old system of appointment by individual directors is far the best that ever 344 HAILEYBURY VERSUS OPEN COMPETITION was devised. . . . It is impossible for a statesman, with his hands full of work, however well disposed, to make, on his own judgment, a large number of appointments. He must rely on the recommendation of others. He might, indeed, request the head-masters of the great public schools to send in the names of those of their best scholars who fancied an Indian career which, after all, would only be an irregular competitive system under another name. But he would be far more likely to ask members of parliament, who were undecided which way to vote on the approaching stand-and- fall question, to assist him with their valuable advice in making the nominations. . . . Now, the system of appointment by directors worked well, because it was founded on the principle of personal responsibility. Each member of the board wished his protg6 to do him credit. He chose the most promising of his sons or nephews : and a public-spirited man would often go further and nominate the most likely young fellow of his acquaintance. The chief disadvantage lay in the fact that the lads, brought up in Anglo-Indian families, and among Indian associations, fro'm an early age, looked upon India as their birth-right, and failed to acquire the larger views and wider interests of a general English education." " Is there, then, any plan which would unite the advan- tages of the old and the new systems ? Why not appoint men by open competition, between the ages of, say, seventeen and nineteen, and afterward send the successful candidates to an East India College at or near London? By choosing your civilians at an earlier age, you will get hold of a class who now slip through your hands. A man of first-rate powers, who has once tasted the sweets of university success, will never be persuaded to give up his English hopes. . . . Such a college as I propose would retain all that is good in Haileybury, without its capital defect an excessive esprit CONCLUSION 345 de corps, a way of thought too exclusively Anglo-Indian. . . . Such an institution would obviate all the defects in the present system, that are so strongly felt both by its enemies and its well-wishers. It would again unite the members of the Civil Service, in the most indissoluble of ties ; and would prove an admirable corrective of a pedantic, unpractical turn of mind, or of a sedentary, effeminate habit of body. The innate evils of a close college would have no existence among a society of young fellows, picked by merit from the great places of education, and planted within easy reach of Lincoln's Inn and Westminster Hall." 1 It only remains to be added that no such college as Sir George Trevelyan commends was ever founded, and that, as Mr. Lowell has pointed out, candidates selected by open competitive examination have spent their probationary years generally at Oxford or at Cambridge. By the natural workings of time the Competition Wallahs have succeeded to the entire control of the administration of India, and only one Haileybury civilian, Sir Henry Thoby Prinsep, still remains in harness in the Indian Civil Service, as a Judge of the High Court at Calcutta. Conclusion It appears clearly from this history of the patronage system of the East India Company as to appointments in the Indian Civil Service and of the East India Col- lege at Haileybury, that patronage, when checked by training at a special college, entered only after a qual- 1 G. O. Trevelyan, "The Competition Wallah," 2d ed., 1866, pp. 6-15. 346 CONCLUSION ifying examination, produces results not inferior to open competitive examination. It is further brought out that the age of admission to such a college should be fixed low enough to allow a considerable period of residence at the college before its graduates need proceed, while still young enough to become acclima- tized, to Asia. It is proved by long and successful experience that the course of studies in such a college is best based upon a good general education, with sufficient elementary training in Oriental languages and subjects to enable early qualification for active work after arrival in Asia. While most clearly of all it is proved that the chief advantage of such a college as Haileybury lay not so much in the actual instruc- tion afforded, as in the association together of young men intended for a career in common, in which they specially needed the traditions of a noble service, while labouring side by side for the promotion of the welfare of the peoples of the East. THE CONTROL OF THE TROPICS By BENJAMIN KIDD Author of "Social Evolution." Cloth. 1 2 mo. 75 cents " The volume will be read with peculiar interest by the people of this country at this time, because of its bearing on the great problem of expansion and colonial government now in process of solving." The Outlook. " Profoundly stimulating and interesting as indicating the leading features of a condition of things which must receive the serious attention of English-speaking people." Daily Eagle, Brooklyn. " At present . . . profitable expansion will be a subject for national consider- ation, and the intelligent reading public will fain valuable information from reading this capital production from the pen of the famous author of ' Social Evolution.' " Worcester Spy. TROPICAL COLONIZATION By ALLEYNE IRELAND Author of " Demerariana: Essays, Historical, Critical and Descriptive. 1 WITH TEN STATISTICAL CHARTS Cloth. 8vo. $2.00 An especially timely work at the present moment. The author has spent ten years in the tropics in special study of his subject, and his book deals with the three great questions which arise in regard to colonies in the tropics : 1. How to govern a tropical colony; 2. How to develop a tropical colony; 3. The commercial value of a tropical colony. " There are some counsels which take the form of information rather than advice and the value of these is undeniable. Mr. Alleyne Ireland . . . has thrown a strong light on the financial administration of colonies and his statements deserve general attention." From an editorial in The Evening' Post, New York. " Mr. Ireland is familiar with industrial conditions in the tropics, both in this hemisphere and the othrr. Perhaps he is right in the conclusions which he draws. At any rate he ought to be high authority." Boston Transcript, Feb. n, 1899. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK BY DEAN C. WORCESTER Assistant Professor of Zoology, University of Michigan. Cloth. 8vo. $4.00 " Full of unexpected information, and still more full of material, interestingly presented, which elaborates the facts regarding the Spanish domination in the Philippines. . . . We strongly recommend this volume; first, because of the great variety and diversity of its information, which is well and discriminatingly presented, and, second, on account of the inherent interest of the whole volume, which is as absorbing, though of course in a different way, as a good adventure story." The Herald, Boston. " By far the most detailed and accurate volume on the Philippines that has ever come to our notice . . . perilous and exacting work well done. The book is an exciting chronicle of events, varied and entertaining as a story, with numerous excellent and unique pictures." The Transcript. THE MAKING OF HAWAII BY WILLIAM FREMONT BLACKMAN Cloth. 8vo. $2.00 "Professor Blackman's thorough, scientific, methodical, and judicial volume, the result of ten years' study and a work of permanent value ... a very entertaining book." The Churchman. " This book is not a history of the Hawaiian Islands or their people, but a study of their social, moral, and political development ... of rare interest and practical value." Mail and Express. " In this timely volume by Professor Blackman, of Yale, we have a remarkable volume which throws a flood of light upon a subject of great importance to every American who takes an interest in the new departure upon which the country has entered. . . . Prof. Blackman's studies have embraced a marvelous range of careful reading, as evidenced by his numberless references and quotations, and the result is one of the most comprehensive, exhaustive, and important works of this character that has emanated from an American source ... a smoothly written, clearly under- standable, and wonderfully entertaining study of the evolution of the social conditions with which we are confronted in the Hawaiian Islands." The Evening Telegraph, Philadelphia. 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