There are good reasons
why (saving exceptional cases) the Viceroy should not be a member of
the regular service. All services have, more or less, their class
prejudices, from which the supreme ruler ought to be exempt. Neither
are men, however able and experienced, who have passed their lives
in Asia, so likely to possess the most advanced European ideas in
general statesmanship; which the chief ruler should carry out with
him, and blend with the results of Indian experience. Again, being
of a different class, and especially if chosen by a different
authority, he will seldom have any personal partialities to warp his
appointments to office. This great security for honest bestowal of
patronage existed in rare perfection under the mixed government of the
Crown and the East India Company. The supreme dispensers of office,
the Governor-General and Governors, were appointed, in fact though not
formally, by the Crown, that is, by the general Government, not by the
intermediate body; and a great officer of the Crown probably had not a
single personal or political connection in the local service: while
the delegated body, most of whom had themselves served in the country,
had and were likely to have such connections.
This guarantee for impartiality would be much impaired if the
civil servants of Government, even though sent out in boyhood as
mere candidates for employment, should come to be furnished, in any
considerable proportion, by the class of society which supplies
Viceroys and Governors.
Pages:
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381