John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

Il6 BUSINESS Al THE INDIA OFFICE. 1849-1872.
I am tempted here to give one of his letters to Thornton,
belonging to the present year (1860) ; as conveying his first im
pressions of the working of the change in the Government of
India. He repeatedly adverted to the subject in the corre
spondence of the next few years ;
and his letters will be after
wards of use in comparing his prophecies with the actual events.
"Your letter of September 19 gave me much pleasure,
because it contained better and more encouraging accounts
of your health, and also because it said that things were likely
to be made pleasanter to you at the India House by changes
in the mode of transacting business. I shall be greatly
interested by hearing more of these changes, since, as you are
aware, I think that the practical goodness of a government
depends, much more than is generally supposed, on the forms
of business. It is a comfort to hear of any changes for the
better. Unfortunately,
the deteriorations in the structure
of the instrument of Government in detail, which I always
feared would follow from the substitution of the traditions of
the Government Offices for those of the India House,
seem to be taking place still more rapidly than I looked
for. If the Council at Calcutta is to be abolished, and a
Cabinet of Secretaries put in its place, as the newspapers say,
and as is too probable, the change will be almost fatal : for the
Members of Council are the only high administrative Officers
not dependent on the will of the Governor-General, and their
Minutes are the only Channel through which an independent
and ungarbled opinion necessarily reaches the home authorities.
The difficulties of governing India have so much increased,
while there is less and less wisdom employed in doing it, that
I begin to despair of the whole subject, and almost believe that
we are at the beginning of the end."
It was in 1860, that he wrote his volume on Representative
Government. The state of the Reform question, which led him
to prepare his pamphlet on Reform, was the motive of the still