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IV. The Abolition of Patronage in the Indian Civil Service and the Closure of Haileybury College1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2010

R. J. Moore
R. J. Moore
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
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Extract

During the three great nineteenth-century debates on the charter of the East India Company, Whiggery's finest orators arraigned the system of patronage by which the Directors nominated civil servants to appointments in India. In 1813, Lord Grenville, in a speech to which for decades men turned for ‘inspiration and guidance’, advocated the appointment of writers ‘by free competition and public examination from our great schools and universities’. Defeated at the time, the case for the competitive principle was revived twenty years later by Macaulay in an address before the House of Commons which, it was said, would ‘console the young people for never having heard Mr. Burke’. That ‘universal genius’, as Sir Charles Trevelyan, his brother-inlaw, once described him, carried into legislation a plan for selecting by competitive examination the students for Haileybury, the Company's training college for civil servants. Nominees, four times as numerous as the places at the College, would be examined and the best of them enrolled. However, as Macaulay's biographer observed, ‘backstairs influence in Leadenhall Street’ contrived to render the plan inoperative, until ‘backstairs influence in Parliament’ effected its repeal.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , June 1964 , pp. 246 - 257
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1964

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References

1 At the outset, I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to Dr K. A. Ballhatchet, under whose direction this research was conducted.

2 Dodwell's, H. H. Chapter 1, ‘Imperial Legislation and the Superior Governments, 1818–1857’, The Cambridge History of India (1932), VI, I.Google Scholar

3 Quoted in ibid. p. 2.

4 Quoted in Stokes, Eric, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford, 1959), p. 45.Google Scholar See Hansard, 3rd Series, xix, 10 July 1833, esp. cob. 524-6.

5 Trevelyan to Sir Charles Wood, 2 February 1854, Trevelyan's Letter Books (T.L.B.), Bodleian Library.

6 3 & 4 William IV, c. 85, ss. ciii-cvii.

7 Trevelyan, G. O., The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, 2 vols. (London, 1876), II, 339.Google Scholar See also ‘Correspondence between the Board of Control and the Court of Directors… upon …the Act of 1837, relating to Appointments at Haileybury College’, Parliamentary Papers (H.C.), 1852-53, lxix; and I Vic. c. 70.

8 ‘Government of India Bill…Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 9th June 1853’, in India Office Library Parliamentary Collections, 120. For Wood's speech see Hansard, 3rd Series, cxxvii, 3 June 1853, esp. cols. 1156-8.

9 H. H. Dodwell, op. cit. p. 16. Russell had wanted to limit the term of the bill to five years (Russell to Vernon Smith, 4 December 1857, Russell Papers, P.R.O. 30/22/13).

10 [Whitty, E. M.], History of the Session 1852-3…(London, 1854), p. 175Google Scholar; cf. G. O. Trevelyan, op. cit., 11,340 ff. For Macaulay's speech, see Hansard, cxxviii, 24 June 1853, esp. cols. 746-58.

11 Birdwood, G. M. described him as an ‘intellectual charlatan’ in his address, On Competition and the Indian Civil Service (London, 1872), p. 21.Google Scholar See Martin, A. Patchett, Life and Letters of the Right Hon. Robert Lowe, Viscount Sherbrooke, 2 vols. (London, 1893), II, 78–9.Google Scholar For his speech, see Hansard, cxxviii, 23 June 1853, esp. cols. 638-41.

12 16 & 17 Vic c 95.

13 G. O. Trevelyan, op. cit. 11, 343.

14 O'Malley, L. S. S., The Indian Civil Service, 1601-1930 (London, 1931), p. 241.Google Scholar See also Parker, C. S., Life and Letters of Sir James Graham, 1792-1861, 2 vols. (London, 1907), II, 209Google Scholar;Blunt, Sir Edward, The I.C.S., The Indian Civil Service (London, 1937), PP. 45-6Google Scholar;Roy, Naresh C., The Civil Service in India (Calcutta, 1958), Foreword (by N. K. Sidhanta), p. viii, and pp. 66–8Google Scholar.

15 ‘Report, dated November 1854, from the Committee…[on] the F.ymiimtjnn of Candidates for the Civil Service of the East India Company’, Parl. Pap. (H.C.), 1854-55, xl.

16 Abbott, Evelyn and Campbell, Lewis, The Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett, 2 vols., and ed. (London, 1897), 1, 185Google Scholar.

17 ‘Heads of the proposed Plan for the Future Government of India’, enclosed with a letter from Wood to the Chairman and Deputy Chairman of the East India Company, I June 1853, and printed with other correspondence regarding the proposed act, Pearl. Pap. (H.C.), 1852-53, lxix.

18 Wood Papers (W.P.), II, India Office Library. The earlier paper, headed ‘I’, is of quarto, the later, which is endorsed ‘Memorandum. Indian Govt.’, of foolscap.

19 Op. cit. clauses 32-39.

20 Hansard, cxxix, 22 July 1853, col. 685.

21 Lord Stanley's phrase, ibid. col. 664.

22 Ghosal, A. K., Civil Service in India under the East India Company (Calcutta, 1944), pp. 332–3Google Scholar.

23 Hart, Jenifer, ‘Sir Charles Trevelyan at the Treasury’, English Historical Review, lxxv (1960), 92–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Hughes, Edward, ‘Civil Service Reform, 1853-5’, History, xxvii (1942), 51–83Google Scholar.

24 ‘Second Report of Select Committee of the House of Lords,… [on] the … Government of Her Majesty's Indian Territories’, 28 June 1853, paras. 6897-6921, Part. Pap. (H.C.), 1852-53, xxxii.

25 T.L.B.

26 Northcote and Lingen (‘head of the Education Office in London’). See Abbott and Campbell, op. cit. 1, 49-50, 185, for Jowett's previous acquaintance with them.

27 W.P. 51.

28 Jowett's biographers did not advert to his opposition to the original scheme, of which they shared G. O. Trevelyan's misunderstanding (op. cit.), see Abbott and Campbell, op. cit. I, 185.

29 Jowett to Gladstone, 26 July 1853, W.P. 51.

30 Jowett to Wood [26 July 1853], ibid.

31 Vaughan to Trevelyan, 26 July 1853 (original and copy), ibid.

32 Jowett to Granville, 27 July 1853, Granville Papers, P.R.O. 30/29/21.

33 Ibid, (letter and enclosure).

34 Aberdeen to Wood, 27 July 1853, Aberdeen Papers, B.M. Add. MS. 43198, fo.145. My italics.

35 Hansard, cxxix, 8 August 1853, cols. 1448-9; The Times, 9 August 1853.

36 These documents appear in the India Office Library Parl. Coll'ns, 120.

37 Commons Bill of 1 August, op. cit. clauses XL and XLIII.

38 Amended Bill of 8 August, op. cit. clauses XLI and XLII. Wood seems to have considered other amendments to achieve the same effect. These appear on two copies of the Bill of 9 June, op. cit.: (1) bound with coloured card-board and interleaved with sheets of plain white paper (see clause XXXVII); (2) endorsed‘Government of India Bill Amendments’ (clauses XXXVII and xxxix); W.P. 50. Lord Wharncliffe gave notice of, but did not propose, an amendment to the Bill of 1 August (clause XLII ) which would have required the Board of Control to open the final examinations to persons who had not attended Haileybury (Lords' Amendments, op. cit.).

39 Hansard, cxxix, 8 August 1853, col. 1448.

40 Ibid, cxxxv, 8 August 1854, cols. 1456-7.

41 Trevelyan to Jowett, 3 October 1853, T.L.B.

42 W.P. 3.

43 Trevelyan to Gladstone, 31 January 1854, Gladstone Papers, B.M. Add. MS. 44333, fo.123.

44 Abbott, Evelyn and Campbell, Lewis (ed.), Letters of Benjamin Jotoett, M.A. (London, 1899), pp. 44 ffGoogle Scholar.

45 Trevelyan to Gladstone, 20 January 1854, B.M. Add.MS. 44333, fos. 103-4.

46 Trevelyan to Jowett, 3 October 1853, op. tit.

47 Paper endorsed‘Thoughts on Patronage, Sir C. E. T. Jan. 17. 54’, B.M. Add. MS. 44333, fos. 91-4.

48 Jowett to Gladstone, 14 December 1853, B.M. Add. MS. 44376, fos. 210-15.

49 Trevelyan to Wood, 11 November 1853, T.L.B.

50 Trevelyan to Wood, 25 November 1853, T.L.B.

51 Jowett to Wood, 2 February 1854, W.P. 3.

52 Trevelyan to Wood, 2 February 1854, T.L.B.

53 Report of November 1854, op. cit. For its authorship, see Trevelyan to Jowett, 13 June 1854, T.L.B.; also, G. O. Trevelyan, op. cit. 11, 372.

54 The mistaken belief that the report recommended ‘the abolition of the Company's college at Haileybury’ was expressed by G. O. Trevelyan (op. tit. u, 373), and by L. S. S. O'Malley (op. cit. p. 241.)

55 Though the inspiration for the report came chiefly from Jowett, Macaulay's astute development of this stratagem in terms of the provisions of the act is reminiscent of his ‘tactically…brilliant success’ in his ‘Education Minute’ of 1835 (see Spear, Percival, ‘Bentinck and Education’, The Cambridge Historical Journal, VI (1938), 78–101, esp. p. 84CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

56 Wood to Chairman and Deputy Chairman of the East India Company, 30 November 1854, Parl. Pap. (H.C.), 1854-55, x1.

57 In the closing months of 1853, and early in 1854, Trevelyan sought the declared support of educationalists for the introduction of the competitive principle in the English Civil Service. Binding Jowett's paper (op. cit.) with the Trevelyan-Northcote Report was one example of this policy. Another was his request, addressed to Vaughan in a letter of 3 May 1854, for an opinion of the report in a form in which it could be laid before Parliament (T.L.B.).

58 Trevelyan, in letters to Gladstone, 18 December 1853, and to T. R. Redington, 16 September 1854, refers to this inquiry and to the report which resulted from it. For Wood's reliance upon him during the Irish famine, see Woodham-Smith, C., The Great Hunger (London, 1962), passimGoogle Scholar.

59 Granville Papers, op. cit.; T.L.B. op. cit. February-July 1853.

60 Quoted in Hughes, op. cit. p. 52.

61 That Macaulay's own ideas at the time accorded in detail with Wood's original scheme is suggested by the questions which he, as a member of the Committee of the House of Commons on Indian Affairs, put to Sir George Clerk on 5 April 1853 (First Commons' Report, Parl. Pap. (H.C.), xxvii, paras. 2217-33).