Page:Allan Octavian Hume, C.B.; Father of the Indian National Congress.djvu/22

 of the middle century the life and instruction of the young civilian differed in many respects from those of his successor to-day. He had less office work and less of European society ; he was not so well equipped in theoretical knowledge, but he balanced the deficiency by a greater intimacy with the people he had to rule. Mr. Hume has himself described his early training. In the first month he had to take up the work of the Mohurrer or Clerk of the Police Station. Two or three months later he became Naib Darogha in another large thana, and then for a short period he had charge of a small thana as Thanadar. It was not until he had done all this that he was allowed to hear his first petty assault case. After the customary practical introduction into the routine of his varied duties, he became Assistant Magistrate and Collector, with special duties relating to dacoity investigations, and afterwards became Joint Magistrate and Deputy Collector at Etawah. This was the position he was holding when the Mutiny broke out." The method here described was a good healthy training for the young civilian, not at all calculated to produce a "sun-dried bureaucrat." Lord George Hamilton, when Secretary of State for India, complained that by the more modern system the district officials were deprived of the power of initiative, and taken out of touch with the people, being "so overburdened with correspondence, reports, and returns that they are really imprisoned in their offices for the greater part of the day." This result of over-centralization was not the system under which Mr. Hume was trained ; he began at the foot of the official ladder, and worked his way up, learning by experience the duties of each of his subordinates, and in an open-air life, coming into direct contact with all classes of the people. Not that he was in any way deficient in "book learning," for it was