DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.34827#0099
1819.
,5W^77%<?7^.
the society can, to keep up the intercourse that ought to subsist
between the governors and the governed: there is, however, a
great chance that it will be allowed to die away. The great
means of keeping it up is for gentlemen to receive the natives
often, when not on business. It must be owned there is a great
difficulty in this. The society of the natives can never be in
itself agreeable ; no man can long converse with the generality
of them without being provoked with their constant selhshness
and design, wearied with their importunities, and disgusted
with their flattery. Their own prejudices also exclude them
from our society in the hours given up to recreation, and at
other times want of leisure is enough to prevent gentlemen
receiving them; but it ought to be remembered that this
intercourse with the natives is as much a point of duty, and
contributes as much towards good government, as the details in
which we are generally occupied.
' Much might likewise be done by raising our mamlutdars
to a rank which might render it creditable for native gentlemen
to associate with them. It must be owned our Government
labours under natural disadvantages in this respect, both as to
the means of rendering our instruments conspicuous, and of
attaching them to our cause. All places of trust and honour
must be filled by Europeans. We have no irregular army to
afford honourable employment to persons incapable of being
admitted to a share of the government, and no court to make
up by honours and empty favour for the absence of the other
more solid objects of ambition. As there are no great men in
our service we cannot bestow the higher honours on the lower,
on which also the. natives set a high value ; as the privilege of
using a particular kind of umbrella, or of riding in a palankeen,
cease to be honours under us, from their being thrown open to
all the world. What honours we do confer are lost from our
own want of respect for them, and from our want of sufhcient
discrimination to enable us to suit them exactly to the person
and the occasion, on which circumstances the value of these
ianciful distinctions entirely depends.
' To supply the place of these advantages we have nothing
,5W^77%<?7^.
the society can, to keep up the intercourse that ought to subsist
between the governors and the governed: there is, however, a
great chance that it will be allowed to die away. The great
means of keeping it up is for gentlemen to receive the natives
often, when not on business. It must be owned there is a great
difficulty in this. The society of the natives can never be in
itself agreeable ; no man can long converse with the generality
of them without being provoked with their constant selhshness
and design, wearied with their importunities, and disgusted
with their flattery. Their own prejudices also exclude them
from our society in the hours given up to recreation, and at
other times want of leisure is enough to prevent gentlemen
receiving them; but it ought to be remembered that this
intercourse with the natives is as much a point of duty, and
contributes as much towards good government, as the details in
which we are generally occupied.
' Much might likewise be done by raising our mamlutdars
to a rank which might render it creditable for native gentlemen
to associate with them. It must be owned our Government
labours under natural disadvantages in this respect, both as to
the means of rendering our instruments conspicuous, and of
attaching them to our cause. All places of trust and honour
must be filled by Europeans. We have no irregular army to
afford honourable employment to persons incapable of being
admitted to a share of the government, and no court to make
up by honours and empty favour for the absence of the other
more solid objects of ambition. As there are no great men in
our service we cannot bestow the higher honours on the lower,
on which also the. natives set a high value ; as the privilege of
using a particular kind of umbrella, or of riding in a palankeen,
cease to be honours under us, from their being thrown open to
all the world. What honours we do confer are lost from our
own want of respect for them, and from our want of sufhcient
discrimination to enable us to suit them exactly to the person
and the occasion, on which circumstances the value of these
ianciful distinctions entirely depends.
' To supply the place of these advantages we have nothing