This mode of conducting the highest class of administrative business
is one of the most successful instances of the adaptation of means
to ends which political history, not hitherto very prolific in works
of skill and contrivance, has yet to show. It is one of the
acquisitions with which the art of politics has been enriched by the
experience of the East India Company's rule; and, like most of the
other wise contrivances by which India has been preserved to this
country, and an amount of good government produced which is truly
wonderful considering the circumstances and the materials, it is
probably destined to perish in the general holocaust which the
traditions of Indian government seem fated to undergo, since they have
been placed at the mercy of public ignorance, and the presumptuous
vanity of political men. Already an outcry is raised for abolishing
the Councils, as a superfluous and expensive clog on the wheels of
government: while the clamour has long been urgent, and is daily
obtaining more countenance in the highest quarters, for the abrogation
of the professional civil service which breeds the men that compose
the Councils, and the existence of which is the sole guarantee for
their being of any value.
A most important principle of good government in a popular
constitution is that no executive functionaries should be appointed by
popular election: neither by the votes of the people themselves, nor
by those of their representatives.
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