40 PROMOTION OF OFFICIALS book ii
All
the subaltern officers of the Factories should be promoted by grades,
from that of the post of sub-writer to that of Commander, so that the
expectation of this promotion should encourage them to live decently,
and acquire all the niceties and details of the Indian trade which
qualify for the highest posts.
It
is of the greatest importance not to show any favour in this, and that
interest should not give advancement to anyone who has not passed
through all the grades ; for one of the things which does most injury
to the Dutch trade is that for some years back the higher classes in
Holland have sent their sons to India to seek for the posts which
secret trade makes so profitable. The access which they obtain to the
principal officers or to their wives, whose power is great in this
country, causes them to be preferred to those who have no other
recommendation than that of long service when any post becomes vacant.
It
is true that some years ago the General at Batavia and his Council,
seeing the injury this did to the Company, wrote to the Directors that
they might send people to India of any quality they please, but that
they should not send any more with recommendations ; that in the future
these would be of no avail, but would rather injure the advancement of
their friends, because it was not fair that favour should precede
merit; that the General and his Council had sufficiently good eyes to
recognize the fitness of those sent, and would employ them according as
they were worthy and as it was considered proper.
These
are all the remarks which I have been able to make in reference to the
discipline of the Factories and the methods that a new Company ought to
observe for its establishment in the East Indies.
But
I was forgetting one thing, which is of importance for a commercial
Company, and to which it should pay attention. Up to this hour the
Dutch observe this precaution, that they send to India neither captain
nor pilot who has not passed through all grades, from a simple ship's
boy up to the most important charge, and does not know how to take
observations, and is not thoroughly acquainted with the coasts.
Moreover,
