ficials, the people generally have profound trust in our
justice--in our _insaf_--and as a rule, except when they think the
native partial to themselves, they prefer to have their cases tried
where an Englishman presides. When on a journey I once came up to two
men engaged in eager talk. I heard them use frequently the words,
_Ungrez_ and _Insaf_--_Englishmen_ and _Justice_--and on stopping I
heard the one telling the other of the bribes taken by native officials
in a case he had, and of the justice done when the Englishman took it
up. He ended with the words, "What a wonderful people for _insaf_ these
English are!" to which remark the other man assented. I thanked them for
their good opinion, and held on my way.

If the administration of India in its present state must, in its chief
offices, remain in the hands of Europeans, it must be expensive. The
great officers of state, considering the dignity they have to maintain
and the establishments they have to keep, must be highly paid. When we
think of the qualifications required by those who are charged with the
ordinary administration, the great expense to which they are put, the
years they spend in laborious work in an exhausting climate, and their
unfitness as a rule for work in England on their retirement, I do not
think their income or pension can be to any large extent safely or
justly reduced. The era of nabobs, returning with vast wealth to
astonish the English people, has long since passed away. These men had
small pay, but great perquisites. The pay has been greatly increased,
but the perquisites are gone, and India has benefited vastly by the
change.

Indian magistrates have much to tell of the litigiousness of the people,
their constant attempts to overreach each other, the carefully woven
lies which they have daily to unravel, the trust put in bribes to
influence decisions, and the deeply ingrained notion in the minds of
native officials that they should get more for their services to the
public than the bare pay, the _sookha tulub_--_dry wages_--as it is
contemptuously called.

[Sidenote: THE POVERTY OF THE PEOPLE.]

The people of Northern India are mainly agricultural, and they are
unquestionably poor. Our very success has in one aspect tended to their
impoverishment. With very few exceptions they marry young, and during
the many years of peace which have passed over them, with the exception
of the short sharp crisis of the Mutiny, the population has gr