to denote a person born in the country and in whose veins ran mixed blood. Like the word half-caste it gradually fell into disfavour; and for a short space all people born in the country, no matter what their parentage might be, were classed officially as natives. This title was more offensive than Indo-Briton, and it was not an exact description of a people who claimed by right of their religion and European descent certain privileges not granted to natives, such as appointment to the civil and military services of the Company.
There was a reason for the use of the term 'native,' which in itself was an injustice to the whole community, and very properly resented. It marked (in 1786) a curious attempt on the part of the rulers of British India to ignore the inherited status of the Eurasian. The Venerable H. B. Hyde, when speaking in 1903 at a meeting of the Eurasian and Anglo-Indian Association, stated the case clearly. He related how the Court of Directors prohibited the wards of the Bengal Military Society, whose mothers were natives, from being sent home to be educated. This order marked the rise of a strange state of feeling on the part of the English in India which lasted for twenty or thirty years. The loyalty of the Eurasians was actually doubted; and a distrust of the whole community was engendered amounting almost to alarm. In 1792 the Supreme Government enacted that no one, whose father or mother belonged to a race native to the country, might be employed in the civil, military, or marine services of the Company, nor command one of the Company's ships. This prohibition was not enough apparently. Three years later it was further proclaimed that no man, unless descended from European parents on both sides, might serve in the European battalions except as musicians. Eurasians were also ineligible to serve on juries. For a whole generation the general policy of the
