clude all the different departments heretofore known under that comprehensive title-as the Political Department, the Public Works Department, &c.—the corps being divided into three parts, entirely independent of each other, for Bengal, Madras, and Bombay. All present incumbents will have the benefit of such incumbency; and, so far, we have every reason to be satisfied. We believe that nothing could be much fairer than the general administration of patronage in India under the old system, and that the men who now hold offices on the Staff who are in political or civil employment, or attached to Irregular corps are men who have fairly earned the distinction by their high character and superior attainments. But we cannot say that we have the same confidence with respect to the future. Under the old system, the candidates for Staff employment in India were the protegés of the East India Company, from whom they received their first appointments, and it very rarely happened that the dispensers of patronage in India had any especial interest in them. They went to India to spend their lives in India; they went because an Indian career had been marked out for them not to spend a few years in a lucrative appointment, and then to hurry home again. It was felt that men who bore the burden and heat of the day were those best entitled to share the special advantages of Indian service; and on this and other accounts, appointments on the general Staff, except in specified exceptional instances, were not given to officers of the royal service, who were in India merely as birds of passage.

But henceforth the Staff corps is to be open to the whole British army. The conditions of an appointment are, that the officer must have served three years with a regiment, two of which must have been in India; and that he must have passed the prescribed examination

in Hindoostani. The selection of officers for the Staff will rest with the Governments of India; but "no officer serving with any regiment" is to be detached without the permission of the Commander-in-Chief. The language of the general order announcing the formation of the Staff corps, leaves us in some doubt as to whether such appointments are to be restricted to officers whose regiments are in India at the time of appointment. If this be the intention, as it clearly ought to be, it is not set forth in the clauses (Nos. 79-80 et seq.) of the general order prescribing the conditions of appointment to the Staff corps. As far as we can see, there is nothing to prevent an officer who may have served two years in India at any former period of his career, and who has got up the necessary "cram" in Hindoostani, from slipping out of Aldershott or the Curragh into some responsible office in India. It is true that, in the first instance, his appointment to the Staff corps is only on “probation;" that he serves, as it were, experimentally, and that, if the experiment be not satisfactory to his employers, he may be remanded to his regiment, on the strength of which he is still to be borne during this year of probation. But we apprehend that it is only in cases of very signal incapacity or glaring misconduct that authority of this kind will be exercised by Government. And even if the officer from Aldershott or the Curragh should be a man of striking capacity, we should still look upon his appointment as highly objectionable; not merely because he would be wanting in local knowledge and experience, but because his nomination to the Staff would dishearten those who have been endeavouring to earn promotion of this kind by service on the spot. Under any circumstances, we are never likely to see again, in India, men like the officers of the old Company's army

with no thought beyond India,

proud of their Indian service, and desiring no better inheritance for their children; men who laid their bones in the soil, or perhaps lived to welcome their grandsons to the scenes of their own triumphs. But there is hope still that, unless the army should become even a more aristocratic profession than it now is, there may grow up in time a class of working officers, whose ambition it will be to be attached to regiments serving in India, and who will endeavour to qualify themselves, by hard service on the spot, for employment on the Staff; and, having been once appointed to the Staff corps, will look upon their duties as the profession of their lives, and will not suffer any home-sickness to mar their utility as public servants. There is hope of this, we say, if the avenue to Staff employment in India be strictly guarded. But if officers not serving in India are eligible for such employment, because at some former period of their lives they may have served two years in India-if interest at home, in such a case, is ever permitted to do more for a man than service in India-we may be sure that all heart and hope will be crushed out of the working officers, and that they will never develop into an enduring class; indeed, that when the present stock has died out, there will never again be such a thing as a genuine Indian officer.

These remarks apply with equal force, mutatis mutandis, to the Indian Civil Service, which is fast following the army to the tomb. No injurious effects may result from throwing open all the civil and military appointments in the gift of the Indian Governments to the general community of the British Isles, if there be any substantial guarantee for the nomination to such appointments of persons possessing the required amount of local knowledge and experience. As this sheet is passing through the press, the means of imposing due limitations and restrictions upon the

future distribution of Indian civil patronage is being considered in the House of Commons; and inasmuch as the area of selection is larger, and the general body of candidates likely to be of a hungrier order, the subject of such restrictions appears to us to be more important in its bearing upon the civil than upon the military patronage of the Indian Governments. We have seen what the limitations are in the latter case; but we must add that there is a further check upon the real administration of Indian patronage, that every appointment to the Staff corps is to be confirmed by the Secretary of State for India in Council, and that, unless confirmed within a certain time, it is not to take effect. The intent of this is sufficiently good; but it is one of those checks which is more commendable in principle than effective in practice. We believe that it is quite sufficient to prevent any gross job, but not to secure the general efficiency of the Staff.

The Staff corps having absorbed a considerable number of Indian officers, the absorption by the new Line regiments is next to be considered. Three regiments of light dragoons are to be added to the British cavalry, and nine regiments of foot are to be added to the British infantry. These are, of course, to be general-service corps, officered from the old local army. The number of officers thus provided with regimental duty will be between 400 and 500. The strength of the Staff, including officers of the new native regiments, we do not exactly know; but when every post is filled, and the new European regiments provided for, there must still be a considerable residue of unemployed officers. Now, the hope is that a large proportion of these may be induced to retire. To strengthen the inducements previously existing, the home Government, some months ago, offered a bonus for prompt retirement. But they did not bid high enough. The offer was

limited to £50 a-year to officers of all grades. That many officers, disheartened and disgusted, were eager to retire, was certain; but it may be doubted whether the additional £50 pension would in many cases have stimulated men to retire, who would not have retired without it. It always appeared to us to be a mistake. To offer men of all ranks and ages the same annual addition to their pensions, seemed to indicate a misunderstanding of the business, for which it was not easy to account. The elder officers were those whose retirement was most desired, and yet to them the least additional inducement was held out. The premium should have taken the shape of a percentage upon the legitimate pension of each rank. To give an annuity of £50 to a man aged forty, is to give much more than the same annual amount to a man at sixty, looking at the matter both from the donor's and the recipient's point of view. It was patent, therefore, that a rateable addition to existing pensions should have been offered in the first instance. That it will eventually be offered we see little room to doubt. It has been recommended by the commission appointed in Calcutta to consider the practical details of " amalgamation," that, starting from a minimum addition of £100 a year to retiring pensions, the rates of increase should rise from that point in proportion to the amount of legitimate pension claimable for different periods of service; and we believe that this recommendation has the concurrence of the Government of India. It now rests with the Secretary of State in Council to sanction or not to sanction it. We have no doubt that, if retirement of a large body of officers at the present time be a desideratum, this is the way to accomplish it. But it is not to be denied that, when we consider the principle on which such a scheme is based, there are very grave objections to it.

What it is proposed to do is, to offer a premium for the withdrawal of a large amount of knowledge and experience from the country, in order to make way for new and untried men. We are, in fact, endeavouring to detach men from the Indian service, just as they have come, or are becoming, valuable servants. Having paid for them in their crude or apprentice state, we are getting rid of them as skilled workmen, and entailing upon the revenues of India the cost of a greatly increased pension-list. But it is to be said, on the other hand, that these men, feeling themselves, as it were, swamped and absorbed, certain that they can never again occupy their old position, being mere burdens and excrescences upon the new system, can never again become good, earnest-minded, because hopeful, public servants. It is painful to contemplate such a state of things; but we fear that there is no help for it. And on the whole, perhaps, it is better that men should not remain in the service after they have lost all heart and hope-all energy in and affection for it. Let us provide for as many as we can, in such a manner as to render it unlikely that they will regret the change; and having done that, let us give the rest the option of retirement on liberal terms, the principle being that of compensation for loss of prospects. It appears to us that there is only a choice of evils, and that the greater evil of the two is the continuance on the strength of the Indian army (in what position we do not exactly see) of a number of discontented officers, chafing under a sense of injustice. We admit that the alternative is a melancholy one, but it is inherent in the scheme of "amalgamation ;" and we cannot help thinking that, the extinction of the Indian army having been devised, the best thing that now can be done is to make our old Indian officers as comfortable in their retirement as the re

venues of India can afford to make them.

"As the revenues of India can afford"-" Ay, there's the rub." Everybody knows that India's great difficulty, at the present time, is of a financial character. The mutiny cost an immense sum of money, by increasing expenditure on the one side, and diminishing revenue on the other; and the Government were obliged to borrow largely to make up the deficiency. There was no help for it. It was a matter of life and death; it was no time for grudging or stinting. The British army was hired freely for the suppression of the Indian mutiny. Nobody complained when India was called upon to pay for it. India, whatever may be her offences, has always paid freely and cheerfully. England has often thrown burdens upon her not properly her own, but has never been asked to bear her burdens. But although India, being in difficulties, consented to pay for extrication from them, there was no reason why she should pay all her life for the expensive remedies demanded only by a crisis -why the critical state should grow into the normal condition of affairs. But England having discovered the benefit, in time of peace, of employing a large portion of her military forces in India at the cost of the Indian revenues, will not willingly abandon an advantage of so palpable a kind. It being admitted that more European troops are required in India, England avails herself of the admission to lighten her own burdens. And why not? it may be said. If an arrangement can be made advantageous alike to the empire and the dependency, why grudge the former her share of the benefit?

The answer is, that if the arrangement were advantageous alike to India and to England, no one would grudge England her share of the advantage. But the arrangement is one which, however economical seen from the English point of

view, is, so far as India is concerned, wasteful and extravagant in the highest degree. If India, requiring the aid and protection of so many thousands of fighting men, were called upon to pay for them when serving her, there might be little to say financially against the arrangement. But the complaint is, that she is called upon continually to pay for a large body of fighting men who are not serving her. It is the waste of service that she deplores and resists. The system of garrisoning India with troops of the Line involves the maintenance of a large body of unserviceable troops at sea, on their passage to and from India. This is wasteful and extravagant, but it may be said that, as they are on their way to and from Indian service, and England has no benefit from them, India ought to pay the charge. But over and above the number of men who will be drawing pay on the high seas, there will be another large body, comprising the depôt companies of regiments in India, in garrison at home, which, although essentially a part of the available resources of the empire, are made a charge upon the Indian revenues. This does not appear to be just; and the appearance of injustice is greatly aggravated by the fact, made known to us in recent official correspondence laid before Parliament, that the Secretary of State for India in Council has protested against the inordinate strength at which these depôt companies are now kept up in time of peace, but has not succeeded in turning aside from their purpose the authorities of the Horse Guards and the War Office. Their object, of course, is to make the army estimates as pleasant as possible, and to lubricate the path of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, by making India contribute largely to the military defence of the British Isles. The authorities in India, no less than the Indian authorities at home, have remonstrated against this in

justice. The Governor-General says truly, in a published despatch, that if the income of India is to be made to balance its expenditure, there must be the strictest economy in England as well as in India; and Mr Laing has repeated this with emphatic reference to the case of the depôts, in his speech on the introduction of his budget. We hear by every mail of great reductions of military expenditure in India. We have always believed such reduction to be feasible without any diminution of the real strength of the empire. But it is disheartening to the Indian authorities, both abroad and at home, to know that all their efforts to bring the military expenditure of India within manageable compass are thwarted by the efforts of the Imperial authorities to throw upon India the burden of supporting as large a part of the British army as they can make any sort of pretence for casting upon the distant dependency. The struggle thus commenced between Imperial and Indian interests is no light matter. Hitherto, it must be acknowledged that those who have supported the former have been far more unscrupulous, and we may add more successful, than the Indian functionaries, who, somehow or other, always contrive to be beaten in these encounters. Indeed, when we come to think more of it, there is nothing surprising in this. The Indian Minister is but one against many, and what can he do against the combined influence of the whole Cabinet, backed by the Court?

We have alluded above to Mr Laing's observations, in his budget speech, upon the depôt system, which enables the Imperial Government to misappropriate, in so unjust a manner, the revenues of India. We shall do well to quote his words. "It is perfectly manifest," said the speaker," that the officers and men belonging to Indian regiments in depôt at home are as much a reserve for England as for India. In the event of any sudden and serious

danger threatening England, there is no doubt that these troops would be available there, and it is not fair that India should pay the full cost of the reserve establishments in England under such circumstances. The day is past when England can consider India as a sort of milch cow, on which to draw for a little here and a little there in order to round an English budget or ease an English estimate. Strict and impartial justice must be the rule in all money matters between England and India, if England wishes to get a return for her capital, which will soon amount to £100,000,000, invested in Indian securities and railways, and if she wishes to see India become every day more and more the best source of supply for her raw produce, and the best market in the world for her staple manufactures.” "These be brave words"-let him stick to them. India could wish nothing better than that Mr Laing should go home and become Chancellor of the Exchequer in place of Mr Gladstone. But such just and honourable notions as these, we fear, would not long resist the contact of Downing Street. It is one thing to enunciate such truths in Calcutta, another to vaunt them in Westminster. An Indian journal, commenting on this passage in Mr Laing's speech, says "These are memorable words; and if Mr Laing will persevere in the course he has marked out for himself, his mission to this country will be one of the happiest events that has ever befallen it.

We honour him for the courage with which he has spoken upon this invidious subject. We do not forget that it is easy for the journalist to say that which it requires much moral courage in the statesman to avow. If Mr Laing will really identify himself with us and we hail the evidence his speech affords that he intends to do so- -then will his mission to India be fruitful of more blessing to both lands than any appointment the mother country has yet made." But the difficulty does