to the great satisfaction of the people, and is never to be employed again.[14] The only department in which our native public servants do not enjoy the same advantages of security in the tenure of their office, prospect of rise in the gradation of rank, liberal scale of pay, and provision for old age, is the police; and it is admitted on all hands that there they are everywhere exceedingly corrupt.  Not one of them, indeed, ever thinks it possible that he can be supposed honest; and those who really are so are looked upon as a kind of martyrs or penitents, who are determined by long suffering to atone for past crimes; and who, if they could not get into the police, would probably go long pilgrimages on all fours, or with unboiled peas in their shoes.[15]

He who can suppose that men so inadequately paid, who have no promotion to look forward to, and feel no security in their tenure of office, and consequently no hope of a provision for old age, will be zealous and honest in the discharge of their duties, must be very imperfectly acquainted with human nature—­with the motives by which men are influenced all over the world.  Indeed, no man does in reality suppose so; on the contrary, every man knows that the same motives actuate public servants in India as elsewhere.  We have acted successfully upon this knowledge in all other branches of the public service, and shall, I trust, at no distant period act upon the same in that of the police; and then, and not till then, can it prove to the people what we must all wish it to be, a blessing.

The European magistrate of a district has, perhaps, a million of people to look after.[16] The native officers next under him are the Thanadars of the different subdivisions of the district, containing each many towns and villages, with a population of perhaps one hundred thousand people.  These officers have no grade to look forward to, and get a salary of twenty-five rupees a month each.[17]

They cannot possibly do their duties unless they keep each a couple of horses or ponies, with servants to attend to them; indeed, they are told so by every magistrate who cares about the peace of his district.  The people, seeing how much we expect from the Thanadar, and how little we give him, submit to his demands for contribution without a murmur, and consider almost any demand venial from a man so employed and paid.  They are confounded at our inconsistency, and say, where they dare to speak their minds, ’We see you giving high salaries and high prospects of advancement to men who have nothing on earth to do but to collect your revenues and to decide our disputes about pounds, shillings, and pence, which we used to decide much better among ourselves when we had no other court but that of our elders to appeal to; while those who are to protect life and property, to keep peace over the land, and enable the industrious to work in security, maintain their families and pay the government revenue, are left without any prospect of rising, and almost without any pay at all.’