it.

  What makes matters worse is that when the public mind is invoked
(as, to its credit, the English mind is extremely open to be) in the
name of justice and philanthropy, in behalf of the subject community
or race, there is the same probability of its missing the mark. For in
the subject community also there are oppressors and oppressed;
powerful individuals or classes, and slaves prostrate before them; and
it is the former, not the latter, who have the means of access to
the English public. A tyrant or sensualist who has been deprived of
the power he had abused, and, instead of punishment, is supported in
as great wealth and splendour as he ever enjoyed; a knot of privileged
landholders, who demand that the State should relinquish to them its
reserved right to a rent from their lands, or who resent as a wrong
any attempt to protect the masses from their extortion; these have
no difficulty in procuring interested or sentimental advocacy in the
British Parliament and press. The silent myriads obtain none.

  The preceding observations exemplify the operation of a
principle- which might be called an obvious one, were it not that
scarcely anybody seems to be aware of it- that, while responsibility
to the governed is the greatest of all securities for good government,
responsibility to somebody else not only has no such tendency, but
is as likely to produce evil as good. The responsibility of the
British rulers of India to the British nation is chiefly useful
because, when any acts of the government are called in question, it
ensures publicity and discussion; the utility of which does not
require that the public at large should comprehend the point at issue,
provided there are any individuals among them who do; for, a merely
moral responsibility not being responsibility to the collective
people, but to every separate person among them who forms a
judgment, opinions may be weighed as well as counted, and the
approbation or disapprobation of one person well versed in the subject
may outweigh that of thousands who know nothing about it at all. It is
doubtless a useful restraint upon the immediate rulers that they can
be put upon their defence, and that one or two of the jury will form
an opinion worth having about their conduct, though that of the
remainder will probably be several degrees worse than none. Such as it
is, this is the amount of benefit to India, from the control exercised
over the Indian government by the British Parliament and people.

  It is not by attempting to rule directly a country like India, but
by giving it good rulers, that the English people can do their duty to
that country; and they can scarcely give it a worse one than an
English Cabinet Minister, who is thinking of English, not Indian
politics; who seldom remains long enough in office to acquire an
intelligent interest in so complicated a subject; upon whom the
factitious public opinion got up in Parliament, consisting of two or
three fluent speakers, acts with as much force as if it were
genuine; while he is under none of the influences of training and
position which would lead or qualify him to form an honest opinion
of his own. A free country which attempts to govern a distant
dependency, inhabited by a dissimilar people, by means of a branch
of its own executive, will almost inevitably fail. The only mode which
has any chance of tolerable success is to govern through a delegated
body of a comparatively permanent character; allowing only a right
of inspection, and a negative voice, to the changeable
Administration of the State. Such a body did exist in the case of
India; and I fear that both India and England will pay a severe
penalty for the shortsighted policy by which this intermediate
instrument of government was done away with.

  It is of no avail to say that such a delegated body cannot have
all the requisites of good government; above all, cannot have that
complete and ever-operative identity of interest with the governed
which it is so difficult to obtain even where the people to be ruled
are in some degree qualified to look after their own affairs. Real
good government is not compatible with the conditions of the case.
There is but a choice of imperfections. The problem is, so to
construct the governing body that, under the difficulties of the
position, it shall have as much interest as possible in good
government, and as little in bad. Now these conditions are best
found in an intermediate body. A delegated administration has always
this advantage over a direct one, that it has, at all events, no
duty to perform except to the governed. It has no interests to
consider except theirs. Its own power of deriving profit from
misgovernment may be reduced- in the latest constitution of the East
India Company it was reduced- to a singularly small amount: and it
can be kept entirely clear of bias from the individual or class
interests of any one else.

  When the home government and Parliament are swayed by those
partial influences in the exercise of the power reserved to them in
the last resort, the intermediate body is the certain advocate and
champion of the dependency before the imperial tribunal. The
intermediate body, moreover, is, in the natural course of things,
chiefly composed of persons who have acquired professional knowledge
of this part of their country's concerns; who have been trained to
it in the place itself, and have made its administration the main
occupation of their lives. Furnished with these qualifications, and
not being liable to lose their office from the accidents of home
politics, they identify their character and consideration with their
special trust, and have a much more permanent interest in the
success of their administration, and in the prosperity of the
country which they administer, than a member of a Cabinet under a
representative constitution can possibly have in the good government
of any country except the one which he serves. So far as the choice of
those who carry on the management on the spot devolves upon this body,
the appointments are kept out of the vortex of party and parliamentary
jobbing, and freed from the influence of those motives to the abuse of