Responsibility to an authority which bas gone through none of the
labour, acquired none of the capacity, and for the most part is not
even aware that either, in any peculiar degree, is required, cannot be
regarded as a very effectual expedient for accomplishing these ends.
The government of a people by itself has a meaning and a reality;
but such a thing as government of one people by another does not and
cannot exist. One people may keep another as a warren or preserve
for its own use, a place to make money in, a human cattle farm to be
worked for the profit of its own inhabitants. But if the good of the
governed is the proper business of a government, it is utterly
impossible that a people should directly attend to it. The utmost they
can do is to give some of their best men a commission to look after
it; to whom the opinion of their own country can neither be much of
a guide in the performance of their duty, nor a competent judge of the
mode in which it has been performed. Let any one consider how the
English themselves would be governed if they knew and cared no more
about their own affairs than they know and care about the affairs of
the Hindoos. Even this comparison gives no adequate idea of the
state of the case: for a people thus indifferent to politics
altogether would probably be simply acquiescent and let the government
alone: whereas in the case of India, a politically active people
like the English, amidst habitual acquiescence, are every now and then
interfering, and almost always in the wrong place.
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