Page:The Marquess Cornwallis and the Consolidation of British Rule.djvu/107

 CHAPTER V

Private Life and Social Customs

While Cornwallis's relations with Henry Dundas were, even when they differed, of the most amicable nature, and while their correspondence is replete with instructive and statesmanlike views on most of the vital portions of Indian administration, it is clear that his endeavours to promote the efficiency of the Civil Service were sorely hampered by requests from sundry high personages in England to promote their relatives and friends. The Civil Service was not then regularly fenced in by exclusive rules and rigid restrictions, and there were divers occasions on which the Head of the Government might exercise his discretion in giving appointments to candidates who had not been sent out by the Court, or who had gone out on their own account, as the saying was. In the hands of a strong and just man it was not likely that the privilege of selection outside the ranks of the service would be abused. But peers and other acquaintances had not the slightest hesitation in writing out to Cornwallis to provide for Mr. Such-a-one in some lucrative and easy post. To one peer he had to reply that he had never heard of a certain clerical