GOVERNMENT OF INDIA.
WE feel obliged by the corrections of our article on the Trade and Government of India, furnished by our correspondent A. B. in last week's Spectator. We had stated that no salary had been reduced or appointment abolished, of which the patronage was vested in the Home Authorities; and that, after a boastful and noisy denunciation
of the aristocracy of the skin, in Parliament, the patronage of India was still exercised pretty much after the old fashion,—that is, by an exclusion of the Indian and mixed races from all offices of honour and responsibility. We are quite willing to accept our correspondent's statements as he has made them ; and, indeed, they bear an air of demi-official authority, calculated to give them weight. Our first allegation is met by a statement that, at the India Board, a Secretary with 1200/. a year has been substituted for a Commissioner with 1500/., and that an Assistant Secretary- ship has been abolished, whose whole salary of 1200/. will be ultimately saved. The first of these items produces an imme diate saving of 300/.; and the second of 400/.,—for the super- annuation of the Assistant-Secretary is two-thirds of his salary, Here, then, is a saving of 700/. out of salaries and super- annuations, which, by the official returns, amount to near 30,000/. a year (29,847/.) This, for the labour of nearly two years, is but piddling work after all. But then come the salaries and super- annuations at the India louse; which altogether, excluding commercial ones, amount to above 275,000/. (275,359/.) These are substantially as much under the control of the India Board as the expenditure of the Board itself; but it is not pretended that a single place has been either reduced or abolished. Then in India there are about fifty great appointments, civil, military,
judicial, and ecclesiastical, of which the patronage is directly exercised by the Home Authorities. Here there has been no reduction, but, on the contrary, a great augmentation. Thus, the salaries of the great officers composing the Executive Govern- ment amounted, under the old system, to about 140,000/. a year. A new Governor has been created, and new Councillors have Leen added to the old ones, upon the old salaries; which will raise the whole charge to at least 200,000/. per annum. Over all these appointments the India Board either has direct control, or, through the Legisla- ture, may do what it pleases in the way of reduction. At home and abroad, in short, there exist appointments to the yearly amount of at least half a million sterling, of which the patronage is directly exercised either by the India House or the India Board ; and the President of the latter has a legal control over the whole. Out of that whole, he has abolished one appointment, and substituted an appointment with a lower salary for one with a higher,—on the whole, diminished by 700/. a yearly expenditure of 500,000/. This surely shows that the assertion of our former article was at least substantially correct. The proof given by our correspondent, that the President of the India Board does all that in him lies to carry into effect that part of the new statute for the Government of India, whith provides that offices shall be open to all British subjects without reference to religion or colour, is confined to that office having named an adopted son of the late RAMMOHUN ROY to an office at the India Board. This, however, does not amount to an impeachment of our assertion ; for we can hardly think that the naming of a young Bramin to a Clerkship of 100/. a year, at the office in Cannon Row, is equivalent to the appointment of an Indian to a place of trust and responsibility in the Government of India. The Presidents of the Indian Board have yearly in their gift, exclusive of the higher offices of patronage, about twenty-five ap- pointments, civil and military, for India. Since the passing of the Indian Bill, now more than two years, have they bestowed even one of these appointments upon an Indian of the whole or mixed blood? Not one, must be the reply ; and, until we see a different policy, our conclusion must continue to be, that the li- beral clause in the Act of Parliament, denouncing the aristocracies of" skin" and "creed." is little better than a claptrap.
We beg to be understood, that not one word we have uttered is meant to be directed personally against Sir Joica Honnouss ; whom we sincerely believe to be the most liberal and disinterested man ever placed at the head of the India Board, and one act of whose administration—the cancelling of the appointment of that arch-hater of liberty and reform, Lord Harressurty—is worthy of all commendation. But Sir Joust has a great deal to do, and much to answer for if he does little; for he has on his hands the government of a hundred millions of people, and the virtual con- trol over a revenue and expenditure which exceeds 20,000,0001. a year.
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