Page:The Indian Civil Service as a profession.djvu/14

 function of the Indian Civil Service is to provide a corps of trained officers to undertake the higher tasks of the judicial and general administration; and every junior member of the Service may reasonably hope that he will, in time, share the honour and responsibility of such tasks.

The officers enrolled in special technical departments, such as Police, Public Works. Forests, and Telegraphs, however important and honourable their employment may be, are not members of the Indian Civil Service.

Although, nowadays, no member of the Indian Civil Service is or can become a clerk, in the olden days all its members began their career as clerks or 'writers.' As everybody knows, the Empire of India is the unexpected result of the trading operations of the East India Company, which received its first charter from Queen Elizabeth on the last day of the year 1600. For more than a century and a half from that date, the transactions of the Company were almost wholly commercial; and its agents, who were