[Footnote 1: Tradition ascribes this piece to the pen of James Mill. His son, J.S. Mill, was the author of the protest by the Company against the transfer to the Crown in 1858.] 103. By clause 87 of the Act it is provided that no person, by reason of his birth, creed, or colour, shall be disqualified from holding any office in our service. 104. It is fitting that this important enactment should be understood in order that its full spirit and intention may be transfused through our whole system of administration. 105. You will observe that its object is not to ascertain qualification, but to remove disqualification. It does not break down or derange the scheme of our government as conducted principally through the instrumentality of our regular servants, civil and military. To do this would be to abolish or impair the rules which the legislature has established for securing the fitness of the functionaries in whose hands the main duties of Indian administration are to be reposed--rules to which the present Act makes a material addition in the provisions relating to the college at Haileybury. But the meaning of the enactment we take to be that there shall be no governing caste in British India; that whatever other tests of qualification may be adopted, distinctions of race or religion shall not be of the number; that no subject of the king, whether of Indian or British or mixed descent, shall be excluded either from the posts usually conferred on our uncovenanted servants in India, or from the covenanted service itself, provided he be otherwise eligible consistently with the rules and agreeably to the conditions observed and exacted in the one case and in the other.