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INDIA

acquaintance with their own modes of thought or the
ethics of their everyday life. The prejudice of caste
is still strong, and the influence of neither District
Commissioner, nor missionary, is extended by any effort
to break through those social barriers which caste has
recognised for centuries. So the District Commissioner
takes the native as he finds him, and troubles himself
only about his material welfare and his general good
behaviour. «His duties, even with these limitations, are
such as to call into action every faculty of observation
that he possesses. There is nothing that occurs in his
district that he does not know and provide for. In his
functions as chief of the district he possesses a large
share of administrative independence. He is the initiator
of all new enterprise ; he is the fiscal officer, charged with
the collection of revenue from the land, just as much as
he is sometimes criminal judge ‘both of first instance
and in appeal’ as well. . . . Police, jails, education,
municipalities, roads, sanitation, dispensaries, local taxation,
 and the imperial revenues of the district are his
daily concern. He is expected to make himself acquainted
 with every visible phase of the social life of the
natives, and with each natural aspect of the country.
He should be a lawyer, an accountant, a financier, and
a ready writer of state papers. He ought also to possess
no mean knowledge of agriculture, political economy,
and engineering.” So says Sir W. Hunter.
But his multifarious duties do not oppress him, and
few lives of men offer so much happy interest in the
concerns of everyday life as do those of a deputy commissioner
 or ‘ magistrate and collector.” In the cool of
the early mornings he is out with his attendant native
satellites, and as he moves along the bordered and wellkept
 roads of the civil station, or through the crowded
streets of the multi-coloured bazaar, his eyes are everywhere.
 He is a moving “court of appeal” for all the
small affairs of each day’s existence, whether it is in the
matter of planting vegetables or of building a new courthouse.
 The interest of his morning’s walk or ride is quite