105. You will observe that its object is not to ascertain qualification, but to remove disqualification. It does not break down or derange the scheme of our government as conducted principally through the instrumentality of our regular servants, civil and military. To do this would be to abolish or impair the rules which the legislature has established for securing the fitness of the functionaries in whose hands the main duties of Indian administration are to be reposed—rules to which the present Act makes a material addition in the provisions relating to the college at Haileybury. But the meaning of the enactment we take to be that there shall be no governing caste in British India; that whatever other tests of qualification may be adopted, distinctions of race or religion shall not be of the number; that no subject of the king, whether of Indian or British or mixed descent, shall be excluded either from the posts usually conferred on our uncovenanted servants in India, or from the covenanted service itself, provided he be otherwise eligible consistently with the rules and agreeably to the conditions observed and exacted in the one case and in the other.
106. In the application of this principle, that which will chiefly fall to your share will be the employment of natives, whether of the whole or the mixed blood, in official situations. So far as respects the former class—we mean natives of the whole blood—it is hardly necessary to say that the purposes of the legislature have in a considerable degree been anticipated; you well know, and indeed have in some important respects carried into effect, our desire that natives should be admitted to places of trust as freely and extensively as a regard for the due discharge of the functions attached to such places will permit. Even judicial duties of magnitude and importance are now confided to their hands, partly no doubt from considerations of economy, but partly also on the principles of a liberal and comprehensive policy; still a line of demarcation, to some extent in favour of the natives, to some extent in exclusion of them, has been maintained; certain offices are appropriated to them, from certain others they are debarred—not because these latter belong to the covenanted service, and the former do not belong to it, but professedly on the ground that the average amount of native qualifications can be presumed only to rise to a certain limit. It is this line of demarcation which the present enactment obliterates, or rather for which it substitutes another, wholly irrespective of the distinction of races. Fitness is henceforth to be the criterion of eligibility.
107. To this altered rule it will be necessary that you should, both in your acts and your language, conform; practically, perhaps, no very marked difference of results will be occasioned. The distinction between situations allotted to the covenanted service and all other situations of an official or public nature will remain generally as at present.
108. Into a more particular consideration of the effects that may result from the great principle which the legislature has now for the first time recognised and established we do not enter, because we would avoid disquisition of a speculative nature. But there is one practical lesson which, often as we have on former occasions inculcated it on you, the present subject suggests to us once more to enforce. While, on the one hand, it may be anticipated that the range of public situations accessible to the natives and mixed races will gradually be enlarged, it is, on the other hand, to be recollected that, as settlers from Europe find their way into the country, this class of persons will probably furnish candidates for those very situations to which the natives and mixed race will have admittance. Men of European enterprise and education will appear in the field; and it is by the prospect of this event that we are led particularly to impress the lesson already alluded to on your attention. In every view it is important that the indigenous people of India, or those among them who by their habits, character, or position may be induced to aspire to office, should, as far as possible, be qualified to meet their European competitors.
Thence, then, arises a powerful argument for the promotion of every design tending to the improvement of the natives, whether by conferring on them the advantages of education, or by diffusing among them the treasures of science, knowledge, and moral culture. For these desirable results, we are well aware that you, like ourselves, are anxious, and we doubt not that, in order to impel you to increased exertion for the promotion of them, you will need no stimulant beyond a simple reference to the considerations we have here suggested.
109. While, however, we entertain these wishes and opinion, we must guard against the supposition that it is chiefly by holding out means and opportunities of official distinction that we expect our Government to benefit the millions subjected to their authority. We have repeatedly expressed to you a very different sentiment. Facilities of official advancement can little affect the bulk of the people under any Government, and perhaps least under a good Government. It is not by holding out incentives to official ambition, but by repressing crime, by securing and guarding property, by creating confidence, by ensuring to industry the fruit of its labour, by protecting men in the undisturbed enjoyment of their rights, and in the unfettered exercise of their faculties, that Governments best minister to the public wealth and happiness. In effect, the free access to office is chiefly valuable when it is a part of general freedom.
B
Proclamation by the Queen in Council, to the Princes, Chiefs, and People of India, November 1, 1858.[1]
[Footnote 1: This memorable instrument, justly called the Magna Charta of India, was framed in August, 1838, by the Earl of Derby, then the head of the Government. His son, Lord Stanley, the first Secretary of State for India, had drafted a Proclamation, and it was circulated to the Cabinet. It reached the Queen in Germany. She went through the draft with the Prince Consort, who made copious notes on the margin. The Queen did not like it, and wrote to Lord Derby that she "would be glad if he would write himself in his excellent language." The specific criticisms are to be found in Martin's Life of the Prince Consort (iv 284-5). Lord Derby thereupon consulted Stanley; saw the remarks of some of the Cabinet, as well as of Lord Ellenborough, upon Stanley's draft; and then wrote and re-wrote a draft of his own, and sent it to the Queen. It was wholly different in scope and conception from the first draft. The Prince Consort enters in his journal that it was now "recht gut." One or two further suggested amendments were accepted by Lord Derby and the Secretary of State; experts assured them that it contained nothing difficult to render in the native languages; and the Proclamation was launched in the form in which it now stands. One question gave trouble—the retention of the Queen's title of Defender of the Faith. Its omission might provoke remark, but on the other hand Lord Derby regarded it as a doubtful title, "considering its origin" [conferred by the Pope on Henry VIII] and as applied to a Proclamation to India. He was in hopes that in the Indian translation it would appear as "Protectress of Religion" generally, but he was told by experts in vernacular that it was just the title to convey to the Indian mind, the idea of the special Head and Champion of a creed antagonistic to the creeds of the country. Lord Derby was inclined to omit, but he sought the Queen's own opinion. This went the other way. The last sentence of the Proclamation was the Queen's. The three drafts are all in the records at Windsor.]
Victoria, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and of the Colonies and Dependencies thereof in Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Australasia, Queen, Defender of the Faith.