Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎521r] (166/238)

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Proceedings of the East India Association.
question. Much had been done to define the matter in point of principle.
He had heard much with regard to the proportion of Europeans and natives
of India, but he distrusted all prescribed proportional arrangements of that
kind. There were, of course, different methods of proving fitness for
important posts. Mr. Rees had said he would sweep away all distinctions,
and that any Indian in the Service should be open to be appointed to the
very highest post, but he did not think there was much danger of that being
adopted. A most unwarrantable use had been made of the phrase “ as far
as may be ” in the Proclamation.
Mr. Petre thought too little mention had been made of the Provincial
Services, which were practically entirely officered by natives of India.
Speaking, at any rate, for the North-West Provinces, he thought the
number of high appointments at present reserved for Indians in the
Executive was as high as it could with safety be. With regard to the
judicial line, he thought the number of posts open to natives might perhaps
be increased. It was sometimes forgotten how invidious often was the
position of a native in charge of a large district in the Upper Provinces.
He assumed that every native in the Civil Service, or in the Provincial
Service, was either a Hindu or a Mohammedan. There were Parsees, but
in his view a Parsee was nearly as much an alien to the native of India as
the European. (Hear, hear, and No, no.) He instanced the case of a
Hindu Collector under him, one of whose Mohammedan subordinates
insulted the priests of a Hindu Temple by shooting a monkey, and when
they complained, beat one of them with a shoe. The end of it was that
upon the man’s conviction the Collector merely fined him a month’s pay.
On appeal to him, Mr. Petre, as Commissioner, set the matter right by
dismissing the delinquent. The Collector, of whom Mr. Petre held the
highest opinion, was led into error by a desire to avoid any appearance of
prejudice in favour of his own co-religionist. In one of the more turbulent
districts such an occurrence would have raised a blaze of fanaticism which
would have made a Hindu or a Mohammedan Collector’s position intoler
able. Most natives of India would be only too glad to avoid a position of
that sort. On the question of economy, the European, he took it, was paid
for living the better half of his life in a foreign country and an uncongenial
climate. The native who had passed by open competition was paid at
precisely the same rate, and was thereby compensated for his voyage to
Europe. It was different in the Provincial Service, where the native in
charge of a district, having the same authority and the same position as his
confrere in the Covenanted Service, received only two-thirds of the pay.
If there were to be any such system as that suggested, of the Government
bearing the expense of candidates selected to compete for the Civil Service,
the corollary would be to differentiate between the pay of such candidates
and the pay of the European officers, as was done in the Provincial Services.
Mr. Connell said Mr. Pennington had alluded to a paper which he had
the honour to read before the Association thirteen or fourteen years ago.
He then had the benefit of a discussion which had been going on for some
years in the Indian press on the subject, and of having before him a large
amount of the evidence which had been taken in India by the Commission