We became good friends, and the old man begged me to have my tents, which he supposed were coming up, pitched among them, that he might have an opportunity of showing that he was not a bad subject, though he grumbled against the Government.
The next day at Meerut I got a visit from the chief native judge, whose son, a talented youth, is in my office. Among other things, I asked him whether it might not be possible to improve the character of the police by increasing the salaries of the officers, and mentioned my conversation with the landholder.
'Never, sir,' said the old gentleman; 'the man that now gets twenty-five rupees a month is contented with making perhaps fifty or seventy-five more; and the people subject to his authority pay him accordingly. Give him a hundred, sir, and he will put a shawl over his shoulders, and the poor people will be obliged to pay him at a rate that will make up his income to four hundred. You will only alter his style of living, and make him a greater burthen to the people. He will always take as long as he thinks he can with impunity.'
'But do you not think that when people see a man adequately paid by the Government they will the more readily complain of any attempt at unauthorized exactions?'
'Not a bit, sir, as long as they see the same difficulties in the way of prosecuting him to conviction. In the administration of civil justice' (the old gentleman is a civil judge), 'you may occasionally see your way, and understand what is doing; but in revenue and police you never have seen it in India, and never will, I think. The officers you employ will all add to their incomes by unauthorized means; and the lower these incomes, the less their pretensions, and the less the populace have to pay.'[11]
Notes:
1. January, 1836.
2. The old Anglo-Indian rose much earlier than his successor of the present day commonly does.
3. For other popular explanations of the alleged decrease in fertility of the soil, see ante, Chapter 27, where three explanations are offered, namely, the eating of beef, the prevalence of adultery, and the impiety of surveys.
4. The inapplicability of these observations of the author to the present time is a good measure of the material progress of India since his day. The Ganges Canal, the bridges over the Indus, Ganges, and other great rivers, and numberless engineering works throughout the empire, are permanent witnesses to the scientific superiority of the ruling race. Buildings which can claim any high degree of architectural excellence are, unfortunately, still rare, but the public edifices of Bombay will not suffer by comparison with those of most capital cities, and for some years past, considerable attention has been paid to architecture as an art. A great architectural experiment is in progress at the new official capital of Delhi (1914).