From the ranks of the district judges the best men are selected for a seat in the High Court of Calcutta. It is not very easy to select the best men, and the process of selection is uncertain, because the patronage is exercised nominally by the Viceroy, who has the least actual knowledge of the merits of individual officers, and must therefore be guided by the advice of others. We are prepared to admit that usually the best men are selected, but on every occasion there are several men who consider their own claims superior to those of the officer selected. The position of a judge of the High Court is certainly a very enviable one. It may be said to combine almost the highest amount of official dignity with no inconsiderable degree of otium. In the usual routine of the court work two judges sit together, and constitute what is called a bench. When two judges are sitting together it follows as a matter of course that one of them takes the leading part in the conduct of the case which is before them. Where two men ride on one horse, one must ride behind the other. As a matter of practice, where several cases come before them on the same day, they take the conduct of the cases alternately; but sometimes, where one judge is of a more masterly temperament than the other, he practically assumes the management of every case, whilst the other judge acquiesces in the arrangement. This leads to a powerful development of what has been called the power of the cypher. One judge, Mr. A., is a masterly man, and he scores as 1. The other judge follows his lead, and he therefore scores as 0. But 1 and 0 count ten, and in practice the working power of a bench thus constituted is far more effective than that of a bench where the two judges are antagonistic to one another and are disposed to take conflicting views of a case. It is therefore easy to conceive that whenever a judge is not disinclined to subordinate his own mental powers to those of his colleague, he can pass his time on the bench without any great strain on his intellectual faculties. He may be supposed to be taking copious notes of the arguments, but as a fact he is inditing an overland letter to his absent wife or his children in England. When the case is ripe for decision, and the arguments of counsel are at an end, a brief conference with his colleague satisfies his conscience, and he is prepared to sign his name in concurrence to the decision more or less elaborate which his colleague is ready to compose. The hours during which the High Court sits are not very long or exhausting. The judges usually take their seats at 11 o’clock, and after a sitting of three hours the court withdraws at 2 o’clock for lunch, the contending counsel gladly following their example. It is nearly 3 o’clock before the judges resume their seats on the bench, and by the time that the clock has rolled on to 4, it begins to be a question whether, on the conclusion of a particular case, there is sufficient time to take up and finish a new case, and so it not unfrequently happens that about 4 o’clock the judges retire to their carriages and are driven home to take their rest. At all events, 5 o’clock is the appointed hour for their rising, be the case finished or unfinished; so that it may be taken that about five hours of work is considered a good day’s average sitting. Each judge is accustomed to take one day in the week at home for the purpose of writing out his decisions, and for certain administrative and consultative functions. It not unfrequently happens that a judge, on arriving at court, finds that his colleague on the bench is disabled by indisposition from attending court, so that he is obliged to go home again for the day, unless it so chances that another judge on another bench is casually indisposed, and then the two odd men may combine and make up a sort of scratch bench between them for the day.
Whilst the ordinary daily work of a High Court judge is not very severe, the judges are indulged in a much longer vacation, and they have many more holidays than any other class of Government officials. We do not grudge them their holidays, and we are of opinion that many Government officers would be much more competent to work with full mental and bodily vigour if they had a few more holidays and enforced periods of rest. The judges of the High Court have an annual long vacation extending over a period of two months, from about the beginning of September to the beginning of November, when the season, especially in Calcutta, may be said to be most unhealthy and unfavourable to the English constitution. The High Court also closes for a week or ten days at Christmas, and for a similar period at Easter. The native Hindoo and Mahomedan holidays, which come on fixed or variable dates, are religiously observed in the High Court. An eclipse of the sun or moon, if visible, becomes the occasion for a holiday, out of deference to native feeling. We are sorry to say that there is a growing tendency to mutilate and diminish the holiday privileges of the judges. It was formerly open to them to combine a month’s privilege leave, under the Service Leave Rules, with the long vacation of the court, so that they got a holiday of three months, which enabled them to pay a flying visit to England. Sundry old gentlemen at the India Office are said to have taken offence at the sight of several High Court judges making their appearance in London for a few days, and actually entitled to their full pay whilst thus absent from duty. This was the real gravamen of the offence. It has always been a sort of principle in connection with leave of any kind to mulct the delinquent of his official salary, and so starve him into a return to his duty. It was, therefore, deemed to be an infringement of this principle that a judge should be seen walking about London with his pockets full of rupees, just as if he were in the streets of Calcutta. We are not able to give the precise history of the official communications between the India Office in London and the Government of India at Simla. But it may be easily understood with how much virtuous zeal and good-will the authorities at Simla set themselves to work to give effect to the suggestions of the India Office. The Viceroy and his Councillors, and the secretaries at Simla, are not in the habit of taking any holidays. What are holidays to them when they are living in a cool and healthy climate, drawing salaries which were fixed on a scale suitable to a warmer temperature? Their only avowed relaxation is found in the interval of the moves from Calcutta to Simla, and from Simla back to Calcutta, when their offices are temporarily closed, and their travelling expenses are defrayed by Government. The financial secretary and his department always go to Simla, and they never feel the beam that is in their own eyes, however diligently they espy the motes when an ordinary toiler in the hot plains wants his travelling expenses paid. So it has come to pass that between the parsimony of the India Office, where the scale of salaries is notoriously so low, and the unsympathising sternness of the Indian Government at Simla (sometimes called Capua), the poor judges of the High Court have been shorn of many of their leave privileges; and, even worse, a reduced rate of salary has now been assigned to them. At the end of the last century, we believe, some of the judges of the old Supreme Court went to court in palanqueens, with a stately retinue of sontaburdars, and chobdars, and khidmudgars, and hookahburdars, and chuprassies, and peadahs. Perhaps the time is not remote when we shall see the impoverished High Court judge making his way along Chowringhee Road in a tram-car, and taking a dirty hired palkee to convey him from the nearest point of the tramway to the entrance of the court-house. The leading barristers of the court make an income of £10,000 a year, and will probably give an occasional lift in their carriages to the poor judges who can no longer afford to keep a carriage and horse of their own. Sometimes briefless young barristers may be seen walking early to court, to spend the day in the bar-library, and tramping back again at sunset to their homes. They will hereafter probably find themselves in the honourable company of some of the under-paid judges of their court, who desire to combine exercise with economy.
There is one other position or grade in the Civil Service which we must not omit to describe. A seat in the Board of Revenue is the object of ambition set before commissioners and all executive officers as the reward of their persevering labours and acknowledged merit. Unfortunately it is a haven which few are destined to enter and to be at rest. In the good old days, forty years ago, there were two Boards, each Board consisting of three members. One Board was styled the Board of Land Revenue, the other was the Board of Customs, Salt, and Opium. Each Board had its own separate office and establishment, and its senior and junior civilian secretaries. In those good times there was a chance for many men of arriving at the dignity of a seat in one of the two Boards. But a wicked man was found, whose name must not be even mentioned, who proclaimed to the world that “Boards are screens,” and so the days of Boards were numbered, and the screen which for so many long years had served as a cover to the multitudinous sins of Government (yes, of Government, and not of the Board itself) was ruthlessly torn down. The Board consists now only of two members, who are expected to carry on the work for which six men were formerly needed, and their four secretaries have been reduced to two. Nor is this the only change. The Board is now a Board only in name. The two members take charge of separate departments, and each member carries on his work independently, and without consultation with his colleague, except in some few special matters which it is needless to enumerate. One member takes the Land Revenue Department, which provides him with plenty of employment. The other member takes what is absurdly called the Miscellaneous Land Revenue Department, which includes the Excise, Customs, Salt and Opium, Stamps and Stationery, and License-Tax Departments, with a few odds and ends from the Land Revenue (proper), such as the acquisition of land for public purposes, and the partition of landed estates. Occasionally the two members sit together to hear appeals, when there is a probability that the decision of a commissioner will be reversed, as the concurrence of both members is required to set aside the decision of such an experienced officer as a commissioner.
An appeal before the Board is usually supported by the most able counsel in the capital; and where the litigants are wealthy it is not uncommon to see the Advocate-General and two or three of the leading members of the High Court bar arrayed on one side, whilst on the other side the Government Solicitor-General and several other barristers are retained regardless of expense. Some serious dispute regarding land has arisen, and though the intrinsic value of the causa belli may be but small, it is a point of honour which neither side can yield. In former days the rival parties would doubtless have fought for it with their bands of armed retainers; but in more peaceful modern times it is safer, though not less expensive, to retain a small army of lawyers. The case has probably been locally investigated by a deputy collector, reinvestigated and decided by a district collector, whose decision has been disputed before the commissioner, and now the final appeal lies to the Board of Revenue. This is merely a sample of the kind of cases which sometimes come before the members of the Board. In less important cases, or in cases between less wealthy and potent litigants, the services of counsel are almost invariably engaged, and several of the native pleaders who devote themselves to practise before the Board are almost unrivalled in their knowledge of all the details of revenue law, and also in the clearness and precision with which they state the facts and the points of their case. The appellate duties of the Board are much more important than is generally known or understood, and as in very many cases each member sits singly his labour is ordinarily quite as severe as that of any two judges of the High Court when sitting together as a bench.
The greater part of the Board’s work is carried on by correspondence, partly with commissioners and partly with Government. The new letters are served up daily to each member in boxes, with all the important papers connected with each question. Lucid notes and suggestions are put up by the secretary subordinate to the member, so that the order to be issued can usually be passed with comparatively little difficulty, especially if the secretary is a man of practical experience and sound ability. There is, therefore, a smooth as well as a rough side to a seat in the Board. The member can, if he pleases, dispose of much of his correspondence in the quiet solitude of his own house. He is practically master of his own hours, and of his time for going to office and for leaving it. Sometimes a member spends the whole day at his office, and an instance has been known where a very zealous member actually took up his abode at the Board, so as to work uninterruptedly on some difficult subject on which he was engaged. On the other hand there have been members who only visited their office fitfully and carried on the greater part of their work at home. The members of the Board are also at liberty to make tours of inspection into the interior, and, in fact, they are authorised and encouraged by Government to make such tours, and occasionally they are expressly deputed by Government to visit a particular district to inquire and report upon some difficult question. So upon the whole the members of the Board lead a pleasant and well-employed life individually, although they often enjoy collectively the abuse and enmity of those who are under their authority; and, on the other hand, the Government usually takes advantage of the Board’s intervention to give them the discredit of anything that does not turn out satisfactorily, and to appropriate to itself the credit of anything that has been done well. So that the Board still continues to fulfil its old mission as a convenient screen.
The public generally may be said to mistrust the Board, partly from its now suspected title, and partly because it has no proper appreciation of those very ponderous publications which are known as the Board’s annual reports. The Board prepares and submits to Government an annual report on each principal subject that comes under its control. There is the annual report on the Land Revenue. There are annual reports on the Excise Department, on the Customs Department, on Salt, on Opium, on License-Tax, on Stamps, on Stationery, on the Shipping Office, and whatever other miscellaneous subject is susceptible of an annual report. Parliamentary Blue Books are light and cheerful reading in comparison with most of the Board’s reports, but fortunately they find very few readers. Nevertheless annual reports may be said to represent the circulation of the blood in the whole official community. Every official throughout the country contributes his quota to them. The Board’s reports may be compared to Aaron’s rod, as they swallow up the reports of all their subordinates, and reproduce them for the edification of Government. For weeks, and even for months, some unfortunate clerks in the Board’s office are toiling in the preparation of the rough drafts and the figured statements which form the basis of the Board’s reports. The drafting clerk has the report of the previous year as his immediate model, and his chief duty is to incorporate in his draft the principal new facts and opinions which he can glean from the new reports of the officers subordinate to the Board. From time to time the clerk consults the secretary as the work progresses, and the day comes at last when the secretary takes the draft into his own hands, and polishes it up into a presentable shape. He then sends it off to the printer for a broad-margined proof, and in this shape it at last comes before the member of the Board, who has to read and revise it, and put in a few patches of adornment—or technical bunkum. When the report is thus complete, it is submitted to Government. When it has reached Government it is carefully analyzed by a secretariat clerk, who prepares the draft of a resolution on it. The Government secretary next dresses up the resolution and adds a few pungent remarks, and submits it for the approval of the Lieutenant-Governor. The Lieutenant-Governor is expected to read the resolution which issues under his authority, and it is to be hoped that he always does so. The Government resolution is then communicated to the Board, and the Board pass it on with a copy of their report to their subordinates, many of whom are anxiously looking out for it in the hope of official praise, and in dread of some inconvenient censure. And thus the report on each subject circulates throughout the whole framework of the official body; and subsides to rest until the coming of another year sets it again in motion. Each annual report may well bear the same motto, “Adscribar numero, reddarque tenebris.”
We have very nearly exhausted the catalogue of the various official duties to which a civilian may be required to devote himself in the course of his career. There are a few miscellaneous appointments connected with the post-office and the sea-customs, and opium and survey and registration, and there are the much-prized but very laborious offices which the secretaries of Government fill. But we will not weary our readers with further details. The Civil Service, as a body, are a hard-working and not over-paid set of men, considering the heavy responsibilities which are imposed upon them, and the great power which they have to exercise. There are very few men, save a few prudent bachelors, who are able to save anything like a competence from their incomes. A man with a wife and rising family soon finds his means consumed by the expenses of two establishments, one in India and another in England, and perhaps a third in the hills. There is no lack of youthful candidates who are induced to enter the service by the prospect of early independence and a secured income, which tempts some of them into early matrimony. But now that competition has introduced into the service so many men of a very high average ability, it may safely be said that almost all of them would have done as well for themselves in any of the liberal professions in England, if they could have afforded to wait at home till their opportunity came. It has been said that in some social points the men of the new school are not equal to those of the old school, but we doubt if this is susceptible of proof. There may be this difference between them. The hard-bargains of the old régime were chiefly their own enemies; the hard-bargains of the new régime sometimes manage to make themselves enemies by their own conceit and indocility. But we have every reason to believe and hope that the new race of men have already been found to be no unworthy successors to the traditions of the old service, and that they are a body of men in whose character and services the English nation may place full confidence.
CHAPTER VI.
NATIVE LIFE IN INDIA.
There are some people who seem to think that in writing about social life in India, the first place should be given to a consideration of the natives of the land. But we say it with sorrow, though without shame, that we can only add our testimony to that of many of the best friends of India, that the more an Englishman sees of India, the less competent he feels to write about the natives of the country. They are a good and loveable people, towards whom our hearts go forth only too readily, but we never seem to come to a true and thorough knowledge of them. The substance eludes our grasp, and we find ourselves contemplating an imaginary shadow. Possibly the day may come when some traveller like Miss Bird, who has given us such graphic accounts of the people of Japan and the Sandwich islands, may find her way to Bengal, and succeed in penetrating the veil of mystery. But up to the present time we know of no English writer who has been able thoroughly to master the whole subject. The natives themselves, from time to time, tell us something about themselves, and we find a very vivid picture of village life in Bengal in the admirable novel called “Gobind Samunt,” which was written some years ago by the Rev. Lall Behari Dey. This, however, is a picture of the natives painted by one of themselves. What the English public want is a faithful picture of native life, drawn by an Englishman or a foreigner.
It is very natural to imagine that a member of the Civil Service has the most favourable opportunities of making himself acquainted with the natives. He certainly may have some advantages over non-official people, but, on the other hand, he is at many great disadvantages compared with non-official people. The official status puts him out of focus, if we may use the expression; he sees the natives under a false light, whilst they present themselves to his view with a fictitious colouring. Most of our readers have heard of Cicero and his writings and speeches. But it is not everyone who has read Cicero’s treatise on the duties of a magistrate. We shall try to explain, on the authority of Cicero, how it comes to pass that in the exchange of intercourse between the Indian civilian and his native acquaintances, there is very much the same difficulty as there was between a Roman officer and the people of Asia Minor in days long past. It happened that when Cicero was one of the Consuls at Rome, in the zenith of his power, he had a brother named Quintus, who was proprætor or governor of Asia Minor. The ordinary term of a proprætor’s government seems to have been for two years, but Cicero managed to get an extension of service for his brother for a third year. In sending the good news to his brother, Cicero took the opportunity of writing him a lecture, partly to show his own superior knowledge of all sublunary things, and partly because it is tolerably clear that the brother required a lecture. A little good advice might do him good, and it could not do him any harm. He was evidently an irascible, overbearing man, but Cicero particularly desires it to be understood that his hands were pure, and that he took no bribes. Admitting this to be so, he seems to have stood very much in the position which the Indian civilian sometimes fills. He too is often suspected of being irascible and overbearing, and is, fortunately, not often accused of any want of honesty or high principle.