Sir Charles Wood to Queen Victoria.
INDIAN HONOURS
India Office, 3rd May 1860.
Sir Charles Wood, with his humble duty, begs to submit for your Majesty's consideration, whether the letters of thanks to those Civil Servants who have not been thought deserving of the honour of C.B. should run in your Majesty's name, or in that of the Government.
Your Majesty desired that thanks for service should be in your Majesty's name, but there will be nearly two hundred of these letters to different officers, and Sir Charles Wood doubted whether it would be right to use your Majesty's name so profusely. He is inclined to think that it would be better to use your Majesty's name only when addressing higher officers. Sir Charles Wood encloses drafts of letters in both ways.
Sir Charles Wood also encloses an address on the occasion of the Thanksgiving in India, delivered by a Hindoo.
Queen Victoria to Sir Charles Wood.
Buckingham Palace, 4th May 1860.
The Queen returns these papers. She wishes the thanks to Civil Servants to be given in all cases, where to be given by the Home Government, in her own name. The Bath or Knighthood comes directly from the Sovereign, and so should the thanks; the Civil Servants are the Queen's servants, and not the servants of the Government. The Hindoo address is very striking and gratifying as a symptom.23 Presuming that Sir Charles does not want the copy back again, the Queen has kept it.
Footnote 23: The copy of this address does not seem to have been preserved.