THE HOME GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. [From, the Examiner.}

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VIII, Issue 745, 22 September 1852, Page 4

THE HOME GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. [From, the Examiner.}

Including artillery, engineers, cavalry, infantry, and medical, staff, the Indian army has 5,855 officers, and, to recruit these, requires an .annual supply of about 185 youths. The cadets of artillery, engineers, and infantry are of about the same value or estimation as an ensigncy iq her Majesty's marching , regiments, viz., £450, and their number being taken at 130, the whole sum will come to £58,500. , The number of cadets of cavalry annually appointed is about twentyone ; and this being a snug bit of patronage kept by. the directors in their,,, own hands (c.very preferred yo t uih .being considered, by. virtue of; his nomination, an endowed or. heaven-born cafajier,),

each appointment is equal in value to a cornetcy in k diagoon regiment of her Majesty's forces, or worth £840. This makes ,the cavalry patronage worth £17,640. The recruiting of the medical staff requires about thirty* five appointments ; and, taking each of .these, at £500, we have, a further sum of £17,500. The whole military patronage, then, will come to £93,640 a-year ; and we are of opinion that the Duke of Wellington, orj any 'other honest, independent, and responsible man, would exercise it at, least is conscientiously and constitutionally as the board of four-and-twenty in.Leadenhall-street,to whose patriotism and love of "freedom it is consigned, and which is responsible to no one — not evenin- | dividual members of it to the- whole body. The proceeds ought to go into the Indian treasury, and the patronage which would remain to the Crown would be confined to that of selection. The military patronage is unnecessarily expanded by multiplication of superfluous establishments. Thus, there are three distinct Indian armies, with three distinct commanders-in-chief, and six distinct general staffs, one set of the latter being for the East India Company's and one for her Majesty's forces. The main portion of the civil government of India, in so far as European agency is concerned, is carried on hy a class of privileged officers, usually called '\civil servants,- or " covenanted servants." By prescription, this class has a vested interest in every civil'' office of trust or emolument, their salaries ranging, according to seniority, merit, or fortune, from £360 a-year up to £10,000. After twenty-two years' actual residence in this country, every man of this service, besides what be- may have saved from his salary, is furnished by the State, directly or indirectly, with the means of retiring from the service on a pension for life of £1,000 a year ; and of pensioners coming under this head, there are at present 240, a burden on the Indian revenue of £240,000 a year. For the first ten years of his Indian service the "covenanted" officer is precluded by act of Parliament from holding any other than second-rate -situations as to responsibility or emolument, and may.be said to be, more or less, undergoing education at the public charge. If he retire at the prescribed time, his effective services will htve been, therefore, of no more than 12 years' duration; and for this, with economy, he may return to his own country with a competent private fortune, and a pension of £1,000 a year. Early, extravagance, no doubt, often baffles this expectation ; but sti'l the principle is, that a youth iray go out at eighteen, and return home at forty with a competent fortune. A judge with us, for example, educates himself, and may serve his country for thirty-five | mature years ; but, in India, a' judge is trained i at the public cost, and serves little more than one third part of that time. There is something like equality, it must be added, in the remuneration of all the different departments of the service. Collectors of landtax or customs, or the member of a board of revenues, or of the sat and opium monopolies, are rewarded on a similar scale with judges of first instance, or judges of appellate jurisdictions, or secretaries or state, or ambassadors. k The pension of £1,000 a year is, in like manner, the same for a collector of customs as for a secretary of state, and for a chief justice of the highest appellate jurisdiction ; which is the same thing as if, in this country, we were to give the same retiring pension to a clerk in one of our public departments as to the lord chancellor of England. A director might send out three sons to India, and all, however different their capacities and conduct, would be entitled to similar emoluments while serving, and to exactly the same pension when retiring. This looks wonderfully as if salaries and pensions were made for men and not for duties — not for good government, but for fat patronage. No wonder that an Indian writersbip should be valuable. The well known Lord Castlereagh avowed, in his place in the house of Commons, with too much indiscretion even for bis unscrupulous day, that as president of the India board, he had bartered one for a seat in parliament. At present the value of the writership may be reckoned at £5,000 : and as there are usually about forty such appointments yearly, the total value of this branch of patronage willbe £200,000. The " covenanted " civil service is a remuant of the old commercial monopoly, borrowed from the Dutch, whose example in all mercantile matters we followed in the seventeenth century, from the herring fishery to the spice trade. Down to 1834, indeed, the members of it were classed according to seniority by the commercial designations of writers or clerks, factors, junior merchants, and senior merchants ; now given up for six classes numerically arranged according to years of service. The total number of civil covenanted officers in India is 816, which, for the performance of all duties, fiscal, judicial, magisterial, and administrative, will give about one man for a million and a half of inhabitants. This system, based on a vicious monopoly of patronage, is an intolerable nuisance, and cannot b? continued.. Indeed, successive governors-general have, from sheer necessity, already made large inroads npon it, by the appointment of natives, military officers, "up-, covenanted Europeans, and their, descendants. Perhaps the very worst Jeature of this, the chief branch of Indian patronage, is the bold effrontery with which the abuse itself is put forward as a cogent argument for continuing it in the same hands. The whole Indian patronage,, with the exception of the appointments, of governors and judges of the .Queen's courts, and bishops named virtually by the crown, and of members of the Indian councils, chaplains, and. the numerous establishi menu at the, India House by the. directors, will | amount in value, according to. our computation, to £292,640. Thistis divided into twenty-eighe shares, in the proportion of one share for each or--dinary director, two for each of the chairmen, and" two also for the president i of } the India boards The ' money, value of each director's patronage • exceeds therefore £1 0,000 a t year, and tbatofthe chairs -j £20,000 ;■ which .will account, easily- 2 enough, for the otherwise surprising facts of directors and chairs beings contented with the hum- 1 ' ble salaries of £300 and £500 a-year.