Collector’s ordinary work, has been that the people and the civilian know generally less about each other than in other parts of India.  Few Indians venture to impugn the Englishman’s integrity and impartiality in adjudging cases in which material interests are concerned, or in settling differences between natives; and nowhere are those qualities more valuable and more highly appreciated than in a country accustomed for centuries to every form of oppression and of social pressure for which the multitudinous claims of caste and family open up endless opportunities.  As he has no permanent ties of his own in India, it does not matter to him personally whether the individual case he has to settle goes in favour of A or of B, or whether the native official, whom he appoints or promotes, belongs to this or to that caste.  The people know this, and because they have learned to trust the Englishman’s sense of fair play, they appeal, whenever they get the chance, to the European official rather than to one of their own race.  But it is especially in times of stress, in the evil days of famine or of plague, that they turn to him for help.  Nowhere is the “sun-dried bureaucrat” seen to better advantage than in the famine or plague camp, where the “bureaucrat” would come hopelessly to grief, but where the English civilian, not being a “bureaucrat,” triumphs over difficulties by sheer force of character and power of initiative.  It is just in such emergencies, for which the most elaborate “regulations” cannot wholly provide, that the superiority of the European over the native official is most conspicuous.  If “Padgett, M.P.”, would go out to India in the hot rather than in the cold weather, and instead of either merely enjoying the splendid hospitality of the chief centres of Anglo-Indian society, or borrowing his views of British administration from the Indian politicians of the large cities, would spend some of his time with a civilian in an up-country station and follow his daily round of work amidst the real people of India, he would probably come home with very different and much more accurate ideas of what India is and of what the relations are between the Anglo-Indian official and the natives of the country.

Far from having flooded India, as is often alleged, with a horde of overpaid officials, we may justly claim that no Western nation has ever attempted to govern an alien dependency with a smaller staff of its own race, or has admitted the subject races to so large a participation in its public services.  The whole vast machinery of executive and judicial administration in British India employs over 1,250,000 Indians, and only a little more than 5,000 Englishmen altogether, of whom about one-sixth constitute what is called par excellence the Civil Service of India.  Not the least remarkable achievement of British rule has been the building up of a great body of Indian public servants capable of rising to offices of great trust.  Not only, for instance, do Indian