the native he represents the Government, and Government to the native represents Providence. He is Judge between man and man; he interprets the law, he administers the law; he executes the law. To the criminal he is at once detective, jailor, prosecutor, Advocate, Judge and executioner; he hunts him from his haunt of refuge and quits him only at the foot of the gallows. To the defrauded creditor he is the friendly attorney who guides the suit, the just Judge who makes the decree, the vigorous sheriff who carries that decree into execution. To the oppressed debtor he is the guardian angel who rescues him from an unjust claim which he was fain to satisfy because he could not understand the cruel craft of usury, and knew that he had borrowed a little and paid much, but could not answer though he could instinctively resent the eloquence of the money-lender who clamoured loudly that principal paid three fold with interest at fifty per cent., still left a balance due. To the agriculturist he is the tax gatherer who collects the revenue, but also the not unindulgent steward who makes allowances for accidents or bad seasons, who grants advances to make wells, but who can assume a sterner attitude and exact revenue with unyielding rigor from the indolent or the fraudulent. To that numerous class which abounds in all parts of the world, but more in India than elsewhere, and more in the Punjab than in the rest of India, to those who are technically known as hopers, waiters upon Providence, Mr. Micawbers ever expecting something to turn up, he is the fountain of riches and honor, of the coveted salary and the yet more coveted distinction which accrue to the successful candidate for Government employ. It may be supposed that a man whose functions have been only half described, when all is said has few vacant hours. And the supposition is correct. From the time when the Deputy Commissioner puts his foot in the stirrup to ride to the gaol in the morning, till he goes to bed at night he is involved in a miscellany of never ending work. The district officers assert, sometimes with anger, sometimes with self complacency, that they perform duties which in the North Western Provinces it takes three men to discharge. The old boast that one Englishman is worth three Frenchmen is repeated more by some injudicious eulogists in a form more offensive and far less true as applying to the respective capacities of the Civilian of the Punjab and his contemporary in the. North West Provinces. It is even demanded somewhat between jest and earnest that treble salaries should be paid to those who do the work of three men. This extravagance naturally provokes some caustic observer to draw a very different conclusion from admitted facts. It is true, they say, that one civil officer in one part of India professes to do the work which three Civil officers

are considered not more than competent to do in another, but to say that he does it, is an apparent absurdity. Unless we really believe that" man does acquire another nature by coming to the Punjab," that he takes in the strength of three mortal men by the mere fact of crossing the Sutlej, is it not obvious that his professions must be absurd; and is not the existence of a Magistrate, a Collector and a Judge at Agra a constant reproach to the arrogant Deputy Commissioner at Lahore ?

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Both parties forget that there is a third solution of the blem; it is possible that the Deputy Commissioner may really do the work which he professes, and yet not be entitled to treble pay on that account. It is monstrous indeed to think that one man should do the work of three, but there is nothing shocking to reason or very foreign to experience in supposing that three men are sometimes employed to do the work of one. Our own opinion combines a little of all three of the explanations given; we believe that the Punjab Deputy Commissioner is underpaid; we believe that he is overworked; and we also believe that the combination of three offices in one person is a great gain to the State and to the public.

Had this mean been observed, we should have witnessed a still greater reform in the machinery of administration than that which has been actually effected; the service would have been strengthened, and there would have been no cause for those complaints of hard treatment, of unrequited toil, of broken faith, which now are now so frequent among the Civil officers of the Punjab ; complaints which are heard with more regret because it cannot be said that they are utterly without foundation. These complaints are indeed often exaggerated, and unreasonable expectations are mixed up with just demands: the manner in which just demands are urged is not always perhaps calculated to enhance the dignity or promote the interests of the parties concerned; remonstrance is too frequently petulant; the advocate of a principle is too apt to degenerate into the mere selfish grumbler. If the pages of a Review were open to every official who considered his salary too small, Reviews would grow and multiply without any assistance from able editors. But the general question of salaries in the Punjab involves some points of great public concern. In the first place it is said that those officers who in 1848 were induced by large promises to leave the settled province of the North West for the howling tracts of the Central Doabs of the Punjab have not been fairly dealt with. The promises were given, the service was rendered on the faith of those promises, and now when payment is demanded it is refused almost with derision. It is true that this language of bargain must induce us to make some abatement of the praises which eight years

ago were bestowed on the Civil Service for the noble zeal with which they volunteered for an arduous service. The volunteer who demands substantial compensation for his sacrifices may indeed make a just claim, but forfeits his right to exceptional honor. If we pay his bill we must modify our praise of his disinterestedness. Still there seems no special reason why civil officers in the Punjab should be expected to be more disinterested than elsewhere; and when a man says "I have worked for eight years far harder than I need or should have done in the provinces, I have endured far greater hardships, I have said nothing, for I looked forward to the promised reward, but now I find that those of my contemporaries who have lived on in their comfortable houses at Meerut, and Bareilly are Magistrates or Judges while I am still a Deputy Commissioner, and all that I have gained by coming to the Punjab is a rough life, small thanks, and an income less by nearly one-half than I should have enjoyed in the Provinces," it is impossible not to feel that there is some force in such language, it is impossible to wonder that no Civilian who leaves the Punjab ever comes back to it. Men will prefer 2000 to 1000 rupees a month; but the result of this is clearly detrimental to the public service. There is a constant change of officers, in itself a great evil, and districts are frequently in the charge of men who however able are young and inexperienced.

The impolicy of allowing such a difference to exist between the salaries in the North West Provinces and the Punjabof setting up a lodestone at Agra which should draw all men Eastward,- -was so obvious that the Government of the latter Territory submitted to the Supreme Government a plan of reform. The plan was simply a compromise. The North West Officers were to be paid less, and those of the Punjab more. There could be no doubt that this was the proper remedy for a confessed evil, and the plan was forwarded to England for sanction. In England it is well known that there is a man called Smith, to whom, by one of those freaks of our constitution which occasionally stagger the conservatism of the most prudent and constitutional politicians, is entrusted the supreme veto in all matters affecting the interests of a country of which it is not pretended that he possessed the smallest knowledge before the month of February, 1855. All that a man in such a position can do is, like a prudent incapable Chief Justice who 'concurs' with the ablest Puisne, to give a tacit assent in all matters involving knowledge of details seizing the opportunity of any intelligible question of principle being raised, to maintain his character for independence by deciding according to the light of nature. Such an opportunity seemed to present itself when the plan for the ad

justment of salaries made its appearance in Cannon Row. It was true indeed that the plan seemed plausible; it was backed by the Chief Commissioner whose officers it would have benefited; it was not opposed by the Lieutenant Governor whose officers it would have reduced; it was recommended by the Governor General who had no ties of espirit de corps or fellowship with the members of a common service to influence him, and who was not likely to squander in excessive salaries the revenue which was not sufficient to save him from the inconvenience and discredit of a financial deficiency. But Mr. Vernon Smith was a Cabinet Minister, and what is the use of a Cabinet Minister if he does not lay down large principles, leaving details to men of smaller mould? Mr. Vernon Smith had heard of the Punjab; there had been a war there some years ago, and it was always the right thing to refer to in the house when Bright and Sir Erskine Perry began talking nonsense about India. Lord Dalhousie had invented some new cheap plan of governing the country; a thousand rupees was paid to one man, instead of two thousand rupees to three men, and still the Punjab system worked so well that it was called the model province. What could be better? So far from raising salaries in the Punjab, he should suggest their reduction in the North-West. We can well conceive that the President of the Board of Control is much pleased with his statesmanlike solution of a difficult problem. Individuals will suffer but that cannot be helped; the State will effect a large a retrenchment and be better served in consequence; what a charming arrangement to have to announce to the House of Commons!

Most sincerely do we trust that the enquiries now being made by Mr. Rickett's Commission will lead to the abandonment of this profound scheme of statemanship. We trust so not only for the sake of individuals, not merely for the sake of putting an end to that just but tedious grumbling which gives somewhat of a sombre complexion to life in the Punjab, but far more because we sincerely believe that the lowest point of salaries for the Civil Service which is consistent with safety has been reached if not transgressed already; that the institution of Deputy Commissioners will have been an evil rather than a good if it is only to be made a pretext for parsimony. Such was not the intention of its authors. The idea of Deputy Commissioners was conceived in wisdom and has been the cause of the successful administration of the Punjab. It was desired to obtain the advantages of centralization, and yet avoid the evils of a satrapy. And most happily was this idea carried out. That strong paternal authority which it is so essential that the Governor of Asiatics should possess, was in the case of the district officer combined with a complete responsibility which

afforded ample security against the tyranny of indolence, eccentricity, or oppression. It was an incidental advantage of the new system that it was economical; perhaps this economy was in some degree unfairly, and so far therefore only apparently, effected by entertaining too few officers; admitting however that a system of government which is founded on a just appreciation of the wants of the governed is pretty sure to be cheap, still the saving effected was, we repeat, only an incidental gain. In Cannon Row it has been regarded as the exclusive advantage of the Punjab system. The Board of Control does not perceive the real fact which has been proved, viz.: that the mixture of criminal, civil, and revenue functions in one person, odious as it may be to the prime theories of the benevolent but very ill-informed Ötways and Roebucks of the House of Commons, is the secret of successful Government in India: all which they gather from Lord Dalhousie's great experiment is that a Deputy Commissioner gets only a thousand or twelve hundred Rupees a month, yet does not find it worth his while to strike.

The long suffering body of Assistant Commissioners go to make up the complement of Punjab society. There was a place and there was a time wherein the title of an Assistant was suggestive of a gaily dressed, easy-working young fellow-full of self importance, but transacting little public business beyond signing his name and drawing his pay. But that place, be it what it may, is not the Punjab, nor is that time 1856. "The youth who travels farther from the East," finds as he leaves the tutor, the public School, the College or the University_successively behind him, that his troubles do but multiply, and examinations still recur in a perpetual order. But when at last he has attained the manly age of twenty-five, when he is married and settled, and with all the dignity of the father of a family begins to look forward to the education of his own children, he may well suppose that his schoolboy days, with their painful but wholesome examination tests are at least over. But the youth who travels to the East with such an opinion will find himself unspeakably deceived. He is appointed after due examination in the languages, an Assistant Commissioner in the Punjab. He assumes the charge of his office, and instantly eight hours of every day are claimed from him by his public duties. Presently he finds that he must be once more examined; he is annoyed, but it must be done : he reads before office and after office, becomes once more a schoolboy and passes the lower standard. But a vigorous Government has not done with him yet. A race of officers who passed no such examinations themselves, and yet appear singularly well satisfied with their own competency, suddenly make the discovery that with them the race of mortal men qualified to ac