238

INDIA

Living in an atmosphere of official uprightness has made
native judges and magistrates upright also.”
But although a certain amount of statistical information
 is necessary to illustrate the composition of that
corporate body in India which we call the British Government,
 it is more interesting to turn to the picturesque
aspects of Indian administration, and to examine the
actual working of the governing machine from the point
of view of the native. What is it that the villager sees
and knows of the “Sirkar "—that vague authority which
from Olympian heights directs his destinies and shapes
his ends? He never goes to Simla, to Calcutta, or any
great central town. His narrow view of the flat plains
that produce crops in rotation under the influence of a
rainfall with the amount and disposal of which he is not
quite certain that the Sirkar has not power to interfere ;
or with the rugged scantily-covered mountains that form
the generality of his hill scenery, can scarcely grasp the
compass of those inscrutable influences which, emanating
now from Calcutta now from Simla, are hardly to be
clothed in incarnate form. Pomp, magnificence, display,
and all that is included under the generic term of
“tamasha,” these things he understands, although he
sees but little of them ; and indeed in these latter days
there is but little to see.
Few, even amongst Englishmen in England, are
inclined to concede that the Viceroy is but a hard-worked
official, infinitely harder worked than any Secretary of
State in England; and that he is supported by a band
of equally hard-worked councillors and secretaries, men
who rise early and late take rest, and eat the bread of
carefulness in their Himalayan “Capua,” just as much
as if they were stockbrokers and merchant directors in
London. It is curious that the popular view of Simla
in England should be as unsound as it is, The native
of the “flat plains” is, after all, not much more ignorant
in regard to all that appertains to the greatness and
dignity of the real builders and upholders of our Indian
empire, than is the average ‘man in the street” at home.