POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY 235

members of the Indian Civil Service, and they have a
Legislative Council only. A secretary and an A.D.C.
usually represent the staff of these high officials, who
govern provinces as big as European countries, and guide
the destinies of “men in nations.”
In 1870 the Governor-General made regulations
having the force of law for those provinces of India
which had more recently come into our possession, and
which not being considered fully ripe for the more complicated
 systems of administration which applied to the
older and more settled districts, had been known as the
non-regulation provinces. The chief difference between
regulation and non-regulation as applied to the form of
government, lay in the fact that in the latter executive and
judicial functions were combined in one and the same
person, fewer officers were employed, and the administrative
 staff were drawn either from the covenanted Civil
Service, from the ranks of the Staff Corps, or from the
uncovenanted service, and not from the covenanted service
only. The Central Provinces and Assam are still known
as non-regulation provinces, but there is in these days very
little difference between the forms of government in
regulation and non-regulation districts, the chief nominal
distinction being that the latter are placed under the
control of a Commissioner instead of a Governor or
Lieutenant-Governor, and that the Commissioner need
not necessarily belong to the Indian Civil Service.
Nothing, perhaps, is less understood in England by
the public generally than the status of the civil servants
of the Indian Government. We may divide them into
two distinct classes : the “ covenanted,” and the “ uncovenanted.”
 The covenanted civilian is the man who takes
his place in the service by the results of a competitive
examination. He is, par excellence, the representative of the
“Indian Civil Service,” and he may, if he likes, place the
letters 1.C.S. after his name. To him belongs by prescriptive
 right the highest offices in the land, many of
which can only be held by a member of his service.
The Indian Civil Service is the governing class of India,