The cry for reform in Chuprassies, or in other words the underlings of many Departments, is a very old one. Ali Baba's denunciation of the "Red Chuprassie" powerfully expands that one by Sir Alfred Lyall, where in his poem of _The Old Pindaree_, written in 1866, the "belted knave" is associated with the "hungry retainers" and others forming the camp establishment of an official on tour. Ali Baba's practice of adequate payment, which he states--in a spirit of banter--to be potent to remove temptation to bribery and corruption, has received attention in connection with recent ameliorations of the terms of subordinate service in India, and it is believed has met with a certain amount of success. The well-meant but not altogether satisfactory trial of the Gaikwar of Baroda, by a mixed tribunal of Indian Nobles and highly placed British officials, which took place during Lord Northbrook's viceroyalty, is alluded to in the conclusion of the article; in which the Anglo-Indian soubriquet for a subservient person--Joe Hookham, literally _jaisa hukam_ = as may be ordered--is also introduced. No. 12 THE PLANTER It is now upwards of thirty years since this genial picture of a veritable "Farmer Prince" was painted--in bold and broad outline, of course. The years that have passed bringing in their train many altered conditions, the most important of all, perhaps, being the replacing of a natural vegetable dye such as indigo by chemically produced substitutes. Probably in a few more years the still remaining features of the Bengal indigo planter's off duty life as depicted by Ali Baba will have quite disappeared, unless the substitution of sugar planting for that of indigo now receiving considerable attention in various Bengal, and more particularly Tirhoot, districts prove a success. Anyway, the Macdonalds, the Beggs, and the Thomases, names now, as formerly, prominently identified with the great indigo industry, have been assured of continual remembrance. So prominent, in fact, has the Scotch element among planting families always been that it is said that if any one present at a race, polo, or Christmas week gathering were to shout out "Mac!" from the verandah of the Tirhoot Club, every face in the crowd would be simultaneously turned towards the speaker. The bantering allusion to "Mr. Caird and _The Nineteenth Century_," applies to that great authority on many and very varied agricultural subjects, the late Sir James Caird, who died in 1892. In 1878-79 he was deputed to India by the Secretary of State as a member of the Indian Famine Commission called into being by the Strachey Brothers; the general impressions then formed by a six months' tour through India being embodied in the series of articles, entitled "Notes by the Way in India; the Land and the People," which appeared from July to October, 1879, in _The Nineteenth Century_ magazine, thereafter in book form in 1883, and in an augmented form as a third edition in 1884.