We regret to notice the death, at a great age,
of Sir Henry Ricketts, one of the ablest civil officers who ever was in the employ of the Indian Government. His specialty was com- prehension of native needs, and his administration saved or revived whole Provinces. From 1827 to 1838, be, in one capacity or another, virtually, or as acknowledged chief, governed Cut- tack, restored the Province, after great disasters, to prosperity, and terminated in the sub-Province of Khondistan the custom of sowing the fields with bits of children, whom it was a sacred custom to chop into bits and scatter over the land, lest the red turmeric should come up white. In 1840 he was sent to Chittagong, where the people, exasperated by taxation, were in a state of chronic insurrection ; and in 1848 he quitted the great county, amidst the lamentations of the people, who ex- cavated a mighty tank in his honour, and have ever since remained among the most contented of her Majesty's sub- jects. The Government, well aware of his value, repeatedly pressed on him high office, but his remarkable ability was crippled by an incurable self-distrust. He rejected the govern- ment of the Central Provinces in 1851, and of the North-West Provinces in 1858, and though he accepted a seat in Council. equivalent to a seat in the Cabinet,, it was after a refusal on the ground that a soldier was much more wanted. He was the kind of civilian, in fact, produced by the old Service; and as these men built the Empire, we are sorry to see one of the oldest and most successful of them pass away.
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