Englishmen, official and non-official.  Yet even there the exigencies of caste observances, especially in the case of Hindus, militate against the more convivial forms of intercourse which the Englishman particularly affects.  There are not a few Hindu members who will talk or play bridge with their English fellow-members into the small hours of the morning, but who consider themselves bound in conscience not to sit down to dinner with them; whilst some will doubtless feel obliged to perform ceremonial ablutions when they go home.  Others again, for similar reasons, would decline to join any European club.  They are no more to be blamed than Englishmen who prefer to reserve membership of their clubs to Europeans, but the fact remains and has to be reckoned with.

The best and most satisfactory relations are those maintained between Englishmen and Indians who understand and respect each other’s peculiarities.  No class of Englishman in India fulfils those conditions more fully than the Indian Civil Service.  It is, I know, the bete noire of the Indian politician, and even Englishmen who ought to know better seem to think that, once they have labelled it a “bureaucracy,” that barbarous name is enough to hang it—­or enough, at least, to lend plausibility to the charge that Anglo-Indian administrators are arrogant and harsh in their personal dealings with Indians and ignorant and unsympathetic in their methods of government.

That the English civilian goes out to India with a tolerably high intellectual and moral equipment can hardly be disputed, for he represents the pick of the young men who qualify for our Civil Service at home as well as abroad, and in respect of character, integrity, and intelligence the British Civil Service can challenge comparison with that of any other country in the world.  Why should he suddenly change into a narrow-minded, petty tyrant as soon as he sets foot in India?  A great part at least of his career is spent in the very closest contact with the people, for he often lives for years together in remote districts where he has practically no other society than that of natives.  He generally knows and speaks fluently more than one vernacular, though, owing to the multiplicity of Indian languages—­there are five, for instance, in the Bombay Presidency alone—–­ he may find himself suddenly transferred to a district in which the vernaculars he has learnt are of no use to him.  Part of his time is always spent “in camp”—­i.e. moving about from village to village, receiving petitions, investigating cases, listening to complaints.  Perhaps none of the ordinary duties of administration bring him so closely into touch with the people as the collection of land revenue, for it is there that his sense of fairness comes most conspicuously into play and wins recognition.  Hence, for instance, in Bengal one of the bad results of the “Permanent Settlement” of the land revenue, which leaves no room for the