But the meaning of the enactment we take to be that there shall be no governing caste in British India; that whatever other tests of qualification may be adopted, distinctions of race or religion shall not be of the number; that no subject of the king, whether of Indian or British or mixed descent, shall be excluded either from the posts usually conferred on our uncovenanted servants in India, or from the covenanted service itself, provided he be otherwise eligible consistently with the rules and agreeably to the conditions observed and exacted in the one case and in the other.

106.  In the application of this principle, that which will chiefly fall to your share will be the employment of natives, whether of the whole or the mixed blood, in official situations.  So far as respects the former class—­we mean natives of the whole blood—­it is hardly necessary to say that the purposes of the legislature have in a considerable degree been anticipated; you well know, and indeed have in some important respects carried into effect, our desire that natives should be admitted to places of trust as freely and extensively as a regard for the due discharge of the functions attached to such places will permit.  Even judicial duties of magnitude and importance are now confided to their hands, partly no doubt from considerations of economy, but partly also on the principles of a liberal and comprehensive policy; still a line of demarcation, to some extent in favour of the natives, to some extent in exclusion of them, has been maintained; certain offices are appropriated to them, from certain others they are debarred—­not because these latter belong to the covenanted service, and the former do not belong to it, but professedly on the ground that the average amount of native qualifications can be presumed only to rise to a certain limit.  It is this line of demarcation which the present enactment obliterates, or rather for which it substitutes another, wholly irrespective of the distinction of races.  Fitness is henceforth to be the criterion of eligibility.

107.  To this altered rule it will be necessary that you should, both in your acts and your language, conform; practically, perhaps, no very marked difference of results will be occasioned.  The distinction between situations allotted to the covenanted service and all other situations of an official or public nature will remain generally as at present.

108.  Into a more particular consideration of the effects that may result from the great principle which the legislature has now for the first time recognised and established we do not enter, because we would avoid disquisition of a speculative nature.  But there is one practical lesson which, often as we have on former occasions inculcated it on you, the present subject suggests to us once more to enforce.  While, on the one hand, it may be anticipated that the range of public situations accessible to the natives and mixed races will gradually be enlarged, it is,