CIVIL SERVANTS IN INDIA.
[To THE EDITOE OF THE "BrxcrAToft."] SIR,—I have only to-day happened to notice the pleasank letter of "A. F." in your issue of March 8th controverting my letter of December 14th, and beg a little room to assure him I agree with.hint, and, like him, have known white men who earned the veneration and even the love of coloured men. My exstct words were that the best of our civil servants. "can hardly hope," Ste. I did not mean to deny the peseilility,..bat to emphasize the dculty of sympathy Tsidia. He cannot be erspected to realize it from kW -experience in China, for in China there is very much less "caste" than in Europe, and in India very much more. Among my friends there is a venerable gentleman who for more than a lifetime was a representative of the United kingdom in the Far East, and whose son is an Anglo- Indian friend of mine. Visiting his son in India, the old gentleman was horrified to behold the behaviour usual to native gentlemen and subordinates of good position. I had -difficulty in persuading him of the truth that his son was better and not worse than the average. Some of the things he most vehemently disapproved were an inevitable consequence of caste. "A. F." was probably in his modesty 'unjust to himself in feeling the superiority of his Anglo- Indian fellow-traveller. If he had seen him at work he might 'have discovered great difference between theory and practice. Permit me to remind him of the remark of Confucius .(An. v. 9), "At first my way with men was to hear their words, and take their deeds on trust ; but now my way is to giear their words and watch their deeds." I did not in ray 'letter depreciate the Civil Service, though I may in conclusion express agreement with an article by Sir Henry T. Prinsep, -reviewed on p. 407 of the same Spectator, that the present arrangement of sending out men of twenty-four or twenty. five is working badly and should be abandoned. But it is easy to make too much of formal changes. I know men now in active service probably as good as ever were or maybe ever mill be.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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