CONCLUSION 319 
Of all the Indian public Services, the Forest 
Department acknowledges no superior in loyalty to 
its employers and in self-abnegation, however trying 
the conditions of the work. All the more is it a 
pity that there should have existed an almost 
chronic state of agitation for concessions to this 
Service. Such a state is probably not peculiar to 
one department of the Uncovenanted Services more 
than to another, and the concessions that have been 
granted from time to time during the past genera- 
tion prove that agitation has been based on legiti- 
mate demands. There can be no disloyalty in the 
presentation of such demands by men who in early 
youth have signed a lifelong contract; the regret 
is rather that the demands were not conceded as 
of voluntary gift, whereby generosity would have 
been imputed instead of pressure from difficulty of 
recruitment. 
But there remains yet opportunity for a trial of 
what may be termed original munificence, by re- 
moving some remnants of the ancient Uncovenanted 
Service rules that appear to be either obnoxious or 
unsuitable to present conditions. For instance, 
differentiation between the age of retirement of 
Englishmen recruited from the same public schools, 
colleges and Universities of England; and limitation 
of the pension of certain branches of the public 
Service to a small maximum sum, ignoring either 
length of service or amount of salary, and thus 
fixing the pension at a much lower sum than can 
be earned by Englishmen who serve the Empire 
either at home or in the colonies. Were such con- 
cessions made, the time and talent freed from the 
