Such is the ideal
rule of a free people over a barbarous or semi-barbarous one. We
need not expect to see that ideal realised; but unless some approach
to it is, the rulers are guilty of a dereliction of the highest
moral trust which can devolve upon a nation: and if they do not even
'him at it, they are selfish usurpers, on a par in criminality with
any of those whose ambition and rapacity have sported from age to
age with the destiny of masses of mankind.
As it is already a common, and is rapidly tending to become the
universal, condition of the more backward populations, to be either
held in direct subjection by the more advanced, or to be under their
complete political ascendancy; there are in this age of the world
few more important problems than how to organise this rule, so as to
make it a good instead of an evil to the subject people; providing
them with the best attainable present government, and with the
conditions most favourable to future permanent improvement. But the
mode of fitting the government for this purpose is by no means so well
understood as the conditions of good government in a people capable of
governing themselves. We may even say that it is not understood at
all.
The thing appears perfectly easy to superficial observers. If
India (for example) is not fit to govern itself, all that seems to
them required is that there should be a minister to govern it: and
that this minister, like all other British ministers, should be
responsible to the British Parliament.
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