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PROGRESS, DURING HIS CAREER
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pied in native consideration, and the deference shown to it by its masters, could not have been longer tolerated. It was the emblem of Brahman supremacy; as the Emperor, who was dozing his last hours away in Delhi, was the symbol of Muhammadan dominion. These pretensions were inconsistent with the paramount rule of a foreigner, established throughout India. If there was to be free elbow-room and an open field for the play of English forces, it was as imperative that these should disappear as that the Company should be dissolved. But in 1826 such ideas would have been scouted. When Mr. Colvin first entered the public service the old traditions of the Company were still those by which the country was administered. The press was not free. The interloper, at the will of the authorities, might be hustled out of the country. Government schools, outside the Presidency towns, were unknown. Instruction in the English language was given only by missionaries or by the School Book Society. The native of India was excluded from public employ, other than that of the most subordinate kind. The procedure of the Company's Courts, and the law administered by them, were a terror to all but the evil-doer. Appeals from the Company's Courts, in suits to which European British subjects were parties, lay not to the Company's chief Court of Appeal, but to the Supreme Court, representing the Crown. Before Mr. Colvin died, the Press had been freed, railways had been opened, posts and telegraphs had been established,