ll, by fair means or foul, prevail.

The creation of this Service was the one great political invention in
nineteenth-century England, and like other inventions it was worked out
under the pressure of an urgent practical problem. The method of
appointing the officials of the East India Company had been a critical
question in English politics since 1783. By that time it had already
become clear that we could not permanently allow the appointment of the
rulers of a great empire kept in existence by the English fleet and army
to depend upon the irresponsible favour of the Company's directors.
Charles James Fox in 1783, with his usual heedlessness, proposed to cut
the knot, by making Indian appointments, in effect, part of the ordinary
system of parliamentary patronage; and he and Lord North were beaten
over their India Bill, not only because George the Third was obstinate
and unscrupulous, but because men felt the enormous political dangers
involved in their proposal. The question, in fact, could only be solved
by a new invention. The expedient of administering an oath to the
Directors that they would make their appointments honestly, proved to be
useless, and the requirements that the nominees of the Directors should
submit to a special training at Hayleybury, though more effective, left
the main evil of patronage untouched.

As early, therefore, as 1833, the Government Bill introduced by Macaulay
for the renewal and revision of the Company's charter contained a clause
providing that East India cadetships should be thrown open to
competition.[86] For the time the influence of the Directors was
sufficient to prevent so great a change from being effected, but in
1853, on a further renewal of the Charter, the system of competition was
definitely adopted, and the first open examination for cadetships took
place in 1855.

[86] It would be interesting if Lord Morley, now that he has access to
the records of the East India House, would tell us the true intellectual
history of this far-reaching suggestion. For the facts as now known, cf.
A.L. Lowell, _Colonial Civil Service_, pp. 243-256.

In the meantime Sir Charles Trevelyan, a distinguished Indian Civilian
who had married Macaulay's sister, had been asked to inquire, with the
help of Sir Stafford Northcote, into the method of appointment in the
Home Civil Service. His report appeared in the spring of 1854,[87] and is
one of the ablest of those State Papers which have done s