In the opinion of many competent observers, the military revolt of 1857 was largely brought about by the injudicious diminution of the personal influence and authority of commanding officers and by the transfer of their power and patronage to impersonal boards and departments. If the present system of centralization in civil affairs continues to develope, any future movement of the people at large against their rulers will be similarly assisted to a most alarming extent by the growing want of touch between the district officer and the district for which he is responsible. To use the words of Sir Frederick Weld, one of the most able and successful of our Colonial Governors: "Personal government, so far as I am competent to offer an opinion, is a necessity for Asiatics; it is the outcome of their religious systems, of their habits of thought, and of long centuries of custom." But the typical Collector is now expected to forego all personal predilections and local attachments, and to live in the roughest camp-fashion, so that he may be moved at a moment's notice from one environment to another, without occasioning any perceptible break in the continuity of office routine. Every year he becomes less and less of an independent agent and more of a registered machine, which is warranted to work with equal regularity wherever it is placed,[1] in absolute dependence on the winding of the departmental key. It seems to be forgotten that people are always most keenly interested in comparatively petty local affairs: if these are sympathetically administered by the local authorities, the Government can treat larger questions as it likes in the dry light of the most advanced political science, with very little risk of ever exciting popular opposition.
- ↑ My own career, now almost at an end, has been the exact reverse of the above picture. I have only known three districts; Mainpuri as an Assistant, Mathurá as Joint Magistrate, and Bulandshahr as Collector. Each for the time being was my home, in which all my interests were centred, and in each I have left a permanent record of my connection with the place. In Mainpuri my special contribution to local progress was the development of the art of tárkashi, or brass inlaying, which I first introduced to public notice at the Agra Exhibition of 1867. Then it was treated with the greatest contempt; but in the Calcutta Exhibition of 1884 when æsthetic ideas had become more popular, my workmen were awarded a first class certificate and gold medal.
