WITH THE ARCHDEACON
In this article Ali Baba has pourtrayed with infinite skill and geniality the many-sided character of the late Joseph Baly, M.A., who was Archdeacon of Calcutta from 1872 until he retired from India in 1883. Appointed to the Bengal Ecclesiastical establishment in 1861, Mr. Baly served as Chaplain at Sealkote, Simla, and Allahabad until 1870, when, while on furlough in England, he acted as Rector of Falmouth until 1872. In 1885 he was appointed chaplain at the church in Windsor Park, built by Queen Victoria, in which appointment he died in 1909, aged eighty-five.
From the commencement of his Indian career the Reverend gentleman interested himself in that burning question of the employment of the Anglo-Indian and Eurasian community of India; a large indigenous and permanent element in the population, the disposal of which is still a question of very great public importance, and its practical solution a pressing necessity. The Archdeacon had this question, paraphrased by Ali Baba as that of the "Mean Whites," greatly at heart, and the conclusions he arrived at and suggestions made by him from time to time, ably and vigorously summarized in a paper he read before the Bengal Social Science Association on May 1st, 1879, in Calcutta, were productive of considerable good.
Archdeacon Baly's predecessor was the Venerable John Henry Pratt, an attached friend of Aberigh-Mackay's father, to whom his book, From London to Lucknow, published in 1860, was "affectionately inscribed." Certain traits in the character of this Archdeacon known to Ali Baba by tradition are pourtrayed in the concluding portion of the paper.
No. 5