supreme authority and dignity of the intellect. The school of which Newman, Pusey, and Keble were the acknowledged heads, if it did nothing else, taught unflinchingly and continually a religion of the heart and will, of the thoughts and emotions, of the passions and conduct, to which everything else was accessory or subordinate. None could accuse them of being blind to the beauty of poetry, the cogency of reason, the value of divine truth, the majesty of the divine dispensations; but one of their peculiarities was, that before beauty, before knowledge, before power, before self-satisfaction, they placed the simple-hearted and determined purification of the will and affections. This unflinching reference to true-heartedness as an avenue to all that Christians hope for, is constantly breaking forth in these earlier works of Dr. Mozley, and in my selection of extracts I see that I have, almost unconsciously, or rather unavoidably, illustrated it. But it is in some of his later works that his fervent sense of this supremacy is most adequately expressed. In force of language, fertility of illustration, and vividness of conception, they are scarcely superior to what is now published. In maturity of style and balance of thought they And in this they are remarkable, that while the author does not shrink from employing the full force of his intellect on the various great questions which our days have brought forth, he most rises above himself when he most directly asserts the inherent and illimitable authority of the central truth of morality, tears all disguise from its counterfeits, and casts the human heart naked at the feet of its Judge.

are.

BLACHFORD.

THE INDIAN SERVICES.

AMONG the many causes which have combined to bring about the existing difficulties of Indian finance, not the least important is the great and rapid increase of the charges which have to be paid in England for liabilities incurred in India. Among these are included the pensions of the retired English officials, which amount to about two millions sterling, divided in nearly equal parts between the civil and military services. This is the item of Indian expenditure which appears to excite the particular scorn of Mr. Bright, whenever he has occasion to speak on Indian affairs, and, from the tone he is wont to adopt on this head, one might suppose that the rate of Indian pensions was exceptionally liberal, not to say extravagant; indeed, that there is something discreditable to the Government which pays the pensions, as well as to the recipients, in the circumstance that any pensions should be paid at all. It may be as well therefore to explain at the outset, what is certainly not generally understood, even by persons otherwise well-informed on Indian subjects, that the rate of Indian pensions is not only absolutely but relatively exceptionally low. It will hardly be contended that the English public service is extravagantly remunerated, if regard be had to the incomes earned by the moderately successful among the professional classes; but the English rates of pension are much higher than the Indian. The clerk in an English public office who spends his life in the performance of routine clerical duties, living comfortably at home all the time, retires on a larger pension than the most successful Indian official in any capacity. The highest Indian pension-if we exclude the case of the judges of the High Courts-is that paid to the covenanted civil servant, who is nominally entitled to a thousand pounds a year on retirement; but only nominally, for a considerable portion of this sum is contributed by the annuitant himself, by the deduction of a percentage from his salary during the whole period of service. This deduction is seldom less than 400l. out of the total 1,000l., and is often much more; in fact, the more successful the civil servant, and therefore presumably the more deserving, the larger will be his own contribution, and the smaller the virtual pension paid by the Government; in the case of those who succeed to the highest

offices, as the seats in council or the governorships of provinces, it will be found that the effective pension realised is usually not more than about 200l. a year, it may even be still less. In every other branch of the Indian service, except the army, the maximum pension is limited to 5,000 rupees a year, which at the present rate of exchange represents less than 400l. It will be seen from this statement how far Mr. Bright's sneers are justified by the facts. Indian pensions are not only absolutely moderate, considered with reference to the duties performed by the annuitants: this form of their remuneration is on a lower scale than obtains in any other public service. While the head of a public department at home will usually be able to retire on 800l. or 900l. a year, often on a good deal more, the chief engineer of an Indian railway, or the head of the education department of a province, can get about 400l. at most. The governor of a colony is entitled to retire on 1,500l. a year; the governor of an Indian province, whose duties are far more onerous and important, will seldom receive more than from 200l. to 3001. Further, while the widows and orphans of officers in the British army receive pensions from the State, no similar provision is made for the families of Indian officers, which, so far as the State is concerned, may be left entirely destitute. So much as regards the facts of the case. No doubt, to a man living at home at his ease on ten or twenty thousand a year, with nothing to do except to run down his absent fellow countrymen at intervals during his leisure, the desire to have a pension of any sort may seem a very contemptible thing; still, even the retired Indian official must live, if he survives the period of his active service, and he could not well be expected to live on less than he now gets. Whatever reforms, therefore, the Indian public service may be destined to undergo in the future, a reduction of the pension rates is not one of the practicable modes of relief. Yet nevertheless the present aspect of the case is such as may well cause anxiety to those who consider the matter from the point of view either of the services or the State. This million a year for pensions on the civil list-I leave out of consideration the military charges of the same kind, as the subject is too large to be dealt with here is a heavy dead weight on the Indian finances, especially as it has to be paid in gold out of depreciated silver, but it is a small charge compared with that which will have to be incurred in the future. The pension charges now payable, it needs hardly be said, represent the services rendered by a past generation, the surviving residue from a very much smaller body of public servants than is now maintained. Within the last twenty years or so, the English agency in India has undergone a very great increase of numbers. In days gone by, both custom and law recognised only two classes of officials, the covenanted civil servants and their native subordinates; but of late years large and important branches of the public administration

have been created, the members of which far outnumber the covenanted civil service-although even now their status is but imperfectly recognised the staff of which branches is steadily increasing; and when the time comes for the retirement of the existing members of the Indian services the engineers, police officers, the professors and inspectors of schools, the members of the telegraph, forest, and other departments which have recently come into existence--the burden of the pension list will be very much heavier than it is now. In dealing with the subject, therefore, we have to consider not only the present, but the future liability under this head. But while the tendency of our policy in India has thus been to extend largely the agency of European officials in every branch of the administration, involving both a large present and prospective increase of charge, it is a remarkable and very unpleasant feature of the case, that simultaneously with this increase in their numbers, there has been manifested a growing dissatisfaction among the members of the Indian public services with their position. The fact is so notorious, that it is not necessary to do more than state it; as one instance, however, may be cited the recent agitation in the covenanted civil service, which was made the subject of a debate in the House of Commons; while, to judge from the correspondence constantly appearing in the Indian newspapers, the civil engineers, almost as numerous a body, are far from contented with their lot, and they also have memorialised for better terms. The same sort of feeling evidently pervades the other departments.

Thus the Indian public service has undergone a twofold change. It has become much larger and more expensive, and it has become much less contented. It will be useful to inquire how far this unsatisfactory state of things is susceptible of remedy.

It may be said at once that the grievance which is at the root of the matter practically resolves itself into one of unreasonably slow promotion, amounting to a violation of the understanding on which the officials concerned were appointed. This was the issue distinctly raised by the covenanted civil servants, and the reasonableness of a claim to compensation on this head has been admitted by the personal allowances lately granted to those who have been specially unfortunate in promotion, the result being a considerable increase of charge without any corresponding advance in the functions to be performed by the recipients, so that the service has become for the time relatively more expensive. The agitation of the civil engineers has had for object an improvement of their pension rules, but this is by implication needed only because salaries are too low to admit of saving; in other words, they pass what is in their view an unreasonably long part of their service in the lower and comparatively ill-paid grades.

As to the fact of general slow promotion there can be no question.

For one thing, men of late have entered the service at a much more advanced age than formerly was the custom, while the chances of exceptional good luck in promotion are greatly diminished. The new openings are fewer, and advancement tends constantly to go more and more by seniority. This is one of the necessary results of selection by competition. Whatever may have been the drawbacks to set against it, the effect of competition is not only to raise the standard of ability in the service to which it is applied; by keeping out the dull men who got in under the method of nomination, it tends to bring the members of the service more to one level, and to make it more difficult to select men on other grounds than seniority. The circumstances of the present day also afford much less chance for men to make their mark for ability than used to present itself. For example, Lord Metcalfe entered the civil service at fifteen, and was sent as special envoy to the court of Runjit Sing at three and twenty, an age at which the young civilian, if he may be so called, of the present day, will not have got to India. Sir John Malcolm obtained his commission in the Madras army at thirteen, and became ambassador to Persia at thirty. Nowadays officers are seldom less than four or five and twenty before they enter the Indian army, the first step towards getting the most subordinate post in civil or diplomatic employment. The same sort of change has been going on in all the other lines. Formerly the young engineer seldom remained for more than a couple of years as an assistant, and would often get independent charge of works as an 'executive engineer' at two and twenty, an age at which many of the present race of junior engineers were just going to college. And, entering the service now at four and twenty, they may very possibly remain as assistants for ten or twelve years.

For the great cause of deterioration in the prospects of Indian service arises from the increase of subordinate appointments, involving of course a retardation of promotion to the higher. To take this case of the engineers, which is in most respects typical of the others, the disadvantage under which the present junior members of the service suffer, from having entered it at a comparatively advanced age, is to be remedied in the future by lowering the limits of age for the preliminary competition, a wise change which has been made for the civil service also; but the other deteriorating cause still continues in full force, the maintenance of an undue proportion of officers in the junior ranks of the service. The rules of the Indian public works department provide that the working staff shall be organised in the proportion of two executive to three assistant engineers. It requires no spirit of prophecy to foresee that while this is the case, every man entering the service must expect to pass a considerable portion of his time in the junior grade.

There is something more than inference to guide us on this point. It