Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎520r] (164/238)

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Proceedings of the East India Association.
the public service. If Government wanted, for example, to create two
new appointments for Europeans in the new Frontier Province, they could
make room for them in their budget allotment by appointing two Indian
District Judges in Madras and Bombay. This system, he thought, would
effect a large saving, would give Government a convenient elasticity in the
selection of their officers, and would secure automatically to Indians a due
share of posts in their own country, without in each case having a struggle
which produced an unhappy estrangement between European civil officers
and educated Indians.
Mr. J. D. Rees was decidedly for the further employment, as far as
compatible with safety, of the Indian element in India. It gave him great
pleasure to criticise Mr. Pennington, who was his master in India some
time ago, as thus he partook of all the pleasures of insubordination. It
was with great satisfaction he saw that Mr. Pennington had secured as
president of that meeting a gentleman unconnected with India. He
thought it important occasionally to have a gentleman from outside the
Indian world, like Mr. Wyndham, to preside. It brought the Association
more into relation with the public, who saw that they were not a mere
clique of Orientals, but that they had the sympathy and countenance of
Englishmen of position and experience. He was sorry to see that Mr.
Pennington in his paper contemplated that the English democracy might
retire from India. That he did not think at all likely. He did not
think this subject should be considered in the light of educating the
natives to take the Englishmen’s places, but that the Englishmen were
giving the Indians as a measure of justice, and to the utmost possible
degree, a share in the government of their own country. He would not
prescribe any minimum of Europeans, or indeed any maximum. He
would appoint a native to every appointment which it was possible and
advantageous for him to hold. As Sir William Wedderburn had said, that
might entail an official fight for every appointment, but he did not know
that people ever came to blows over such matters, and he did not see how
it was to be avoided. Mr. Pennington had referred to the judicial appoint
ments. If natives were, as they knew they were, fit to adorn the benches
of the High Courts, why should not they be fit to fill the office of District
Judge in every quiet and settled district of India ? They knew as a fact
that in the average Indian district it was the Indian Subordinate Judge on
yToo a year who disposed of all the difficult civil work, corresponding to
the work done in the English High Courts of Justice. An English Judge
netting four or five times the Subordinate Judge’s salary, however, was too
often engaged in deciding mere rule-of-thumb criminal cases. Sir William
Wedderburn had said that Englishmen were now getting too much pay,
since they no longer needed to be paid as miserable exiles. Surely native
gentlemen should be willing to serve for less pay than men who came 6,000
or 7,000 miles, and should accept office at 40 or 50 per cent, less pay
than Englishmen got. Mr. Pennington had looked upon the journey
home, which he' said was necessary, as a test of enterprise, and he was
therefore opposed to the simultaneous examination. He ventured entirely
to disagree with that. He thought the very best servant to India in India