absurd to do so, as it would be suggesting
difficulties where none existed, and that if
any one had his attention drawn to the
matter it was easy enough to explain it."
After his countrymen had passed, Mr.
Blank, for reasons best known to himself,
informed against them. When called upon
to explain, they did explain. But the
decision of the commissioners is told in these
sentences from their subsequent petition for
its reconsideration, showing " that they
forwarded to the commissioners the
explanations asked of them, and offered to
procure from India further corroboration of the
fact that they had in respect of age at the
time of examination strictly and faithfully
fulfilled the conditions required of candidates
in the open competition for the Civil
Service of India. That four days after
their explanation had been forwarded they
received letters from the secretary to the
commission, informing them that the Civil
Service Commissioners had carefully
considered their reply, and that they removed
their names from the list of selected candidates
because they regarded the statement
of age made by them on matriculation as
' formal and authentic evidence.' Therefore
they did not so regard the affidavits
sworn by the fathers of their petitioners,
supported in the case of one of them by the
certificate of the Honourable Dwarkanath
Mitter, a judge of the High Court of
Calcutta,and in the case of the other by the
original of his horoscope, with his father's
solemn affirmation of its genuineness."

They argued modestly in their memorial
that the exact and legal evidence as to
their age was not rebutted by the entries
made at their matriculation in the Universities
of Calcutta and Bombay, because
those entries included no sworn evidence;
were never designed as exact evidence of
age; and, moreover, according to the cus-tom
among Hindoos, and, in the case of the
Calcutta University, according to the ordinary
meaning of words in the English
language, they were, and are, true, and also
not inconsistent with the declarations of
age made before the commissioners in the
more precise form then required.

Mr. Banerjea matriculated in the
University of Calcutta in December, 1863.
Upon matriculation he was asked his age
by the Principal of the Doveton College,
who was filling up a form of particulars.
He replied, " Sixteen," following the
universal custom of his country. He had
never read, or been required to read, the
Calendar of the University, or seen any
part of it in print or in writing. No part
of it was read or explained to him at the
time when he stated his age, nor was any
intimation given to him, that by stating
his age to be 'sixteen he would be understood
to say that he had completed his
sixteenth year. Again, this statement of
age at matriculation was made by himself
only, and no corroborative document was
required of, or put in by, any relative or
friend on his behalf; and upon this statement
of his own was founded a certificate
by the Principal of Doveton College, to the
effect that Surendra Nath Banerjea had,
"to the best of his belief, attained the age
of sixteen years." The certificate was
probably signed with a mistaken belief that
the boy had completed the age of sixteen,
Doveton College being attended chiefly by
students who are not Hindoos. But
according to the custom of his country, and
according also to what happened to be the
meaning of the words of the certificate, he
answered truly, although he had only
attained or entered upon it. For the word
"attained" is defined in Johnson's Dic-
tionary to mean, in the only connexion in
which it could be applied to a period of
time, "to come up to, to enter upon;"
meaning, according to its etymology, to
touch upon, and even, as Professor Key
has shown in a page of a volume of
philological essays published last year, " only
just to touch upon." Therefore, neither
technically nor equitably, was there at that
time supplied to the Civil Service Commissioners
" the formal and authentic evidence"
that Mr. Banerjea had, in December,
1863, completed his sixteenth year,
which is held to supersede the precise and
legally attested evidence which had been
laid before the commissioners in due and
exact accord with their requirements.

The case is one that should not have
needed argument. The commissioners made
short work of it by determining that they
would not hear argument. They would
accept nothing but a boy's loose statement
of age, not made to them, made without
caution, and in accordance with the custom
of his country; to this they would give a
false interpretation, and this, so interpreted
—this evidence not properly before them—
they would affirm to be " formal and
authentic evidence." In favour of this, they
resolved to exclude all the exact evidence
of horoscope (which is, for an Indian,
legally equivalent to our certificate of
birth), and sworn testimony which had
been produced before them, and accepted