basis--were William Eyton Tooke, son of the eminent political economist,
a young man of singular worth both moral and intellectual, lost to the
world by an early death; his friend William Ellis, an original thinker in
the field of political economy, now honourably known by his apostolic
exertions for the improvement of education; George Graham, afterwards
official assignee of the Bankruptcy Court, a thinker of originality and
power on almost all abstract subjects; and (from the time when he came
first to England to study for the bar in 1824 or 1825) a man who has made
considerably more noise in the world than any of these, John Arthur Roebuck.

In May, 1823, my professional occupation and status for the next
thirty-five years of my life, were decided by my father's obtaining for
me an appointment from the East India Company, in the office of the
Examiner of India Correspondence, immediately under himself. I was
appointed in the usual manner, at the bottom of the list of clerks, to
rise, at least in the first instance, by seniority; but with the
understanding that I should be employed from the beginning in preparing
drafts of despatches, and be thus trained up as a successor to those who
then filled the higher departments of the office. My drafts of course
required, for some time, much revision from my immediate superiors, but
I soon became well acquainted with the business, and by my father's
instructions and the general growth of my own powers, I was in a few
years qualified to be, and practically was, the chief conductor of the
correspondence with India in one of the leading departments, that of the
Native States. This continued to be my official duty until I was
appointed Examiner, only two years before the time when the abolition of
the East India Company as a political body determined my retirement. I
do not know any one of the occupations by which a subsistence can now be
gained, more suitable than such as this to anyone who, not being in
independent circumstances, desires to devote a part of the twenty-four