It is by a steady adherence to these principles that the Indian Civil Service has been raised to its present high character for integrity and ability; and the native army made what it really is, faithful and devoted to its rulers, and ready to serve them in any quarter of the world.[21] I deprecate any innovation upon these principles in the branches of the public service to which they have already been applied with such eminent success; and I advocate their extension to all other branches as the surest means of making them what they ought and what we must all most fervently wish them to be.
The native officers of our judicial and revenue establishments, or of our native army, are everywhere a bond of union between the governing and the governed.[22] Discharging everywhere honestly and ably their duties to their employers, they tend everywhere to secure to them the respect and affection of the people. His Highness Muhammad S'aīd Khān, the reigning Nawāb of Rāmpur, still talks with pride of the days when he was one of our Deputy Collectors in the adjoining district of Badāon, and of the useful knowledge he acquired in that office.[23] He has still one brother a Sadr Amīn in the district of Mainpurī, and another a Deputy Collector in the Hamīrpur District; and neither would resign his situation under the Honourable Company to take office in Rāmpur at three times the rate of salary, when invited to do so on the accession of the eldest brother to the 'masnad'. What they now enjoy they owe to their own industry and integrity; and they are proud to serve a government which supplies them with so many motives for honest exertion, and leaves them nothing to fear, as long as they exert themselves honestly. To be in a situation which it is generally understood that none but honest and able men can fill[24] is of itself a source of pride, and the sons of native princes and men of rank, both Hindoo and Muhammadan, everywhere prefer taking office in our judicial and revenue establishments to serving under native rulers, where everything depends entirely upon the favour or frown of men in power, and ability, industry, and integrity can secure nothing.[25]
Notes:
1. This can no longer be safely assumed as true. Newspapers now penetrate to almost every village.
2. Fyzābād (Faizābād) was the capital for a short time of the Nawāb Wazīrs of Oudh. In 1775 Āsaf-ud-daula moved his court to Lucknow. The city of Ajodhya adjoining Fyzābād is of immense antiquity.
3. In. the south of Oudh. It is not now a military station.
4. Monghyr (Mungēr) is the chief town of the district of the same name, which lies to the east of Patna.
5. August, 1811.
6. Such a spectacle is no longer to be seen in India. Four or five inconspicuous railway carriages or motor-cars now take the place of the 'magnificent fleet'.
7. The percentage is 29½.