Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 | Page 8

thought, we should proceed with the utmost caution, and that we should
remember that our primary duty is, not to introduce a system which,
under the specious cloak of free institutions, will enable a small
minority of natives to misgovern their countrymen, but to establish one
which will enable the mass of the population to be governed according
to the code of Christian morality. A freely elected Egyptian Parliament,
supposing such a thing to be possible, would not improbably legislate
for the protection of the slave-owner, if not the slave-dealer, and no
assurance can be felt that the electors of Rajputana, if they had their
own way, would not re-establish suttee. Good government has the merit
of presenting a more or less attainable ideal. Before Orientals can attain
anything approaching to the British ideal of self-government they will
have to undergo very numerous transmigrations of political thought.
The question of local self-government may be considered from another,
and almost equally important point of view.
When writers such as M. Demolins speak of the "particularist" system
of England and of the "communitarian" system prevalent on the
continent of Europe, they generally mean to contrast the British plan of
acting through the agency of private individuals with the Continental
practice of relying almost entirely on the action of the State. This is the
primary and perhaps the most important signification of the two
phrases, but the principles which these phrases are intended to represent
admit of another application.
It is difficult for those Englishmen who have not been brought into
business relations with Continental officials to realise the extreme
centralisation of their administrative and diplomatic procedures. The
tendency of every French central authority is to allow no discretionary
power whatever to his subordinate. He wishes, often from a distance, to
control every detail of the administration. The tendency of the
subordinate, on the other hand, is to lean in everything on superior
authority. He does not dare to take any personal responsibility; indeed,
it is possible to go further and say that the corroding action of

bureaucracy renders those who live under its baneful shadow almost
incapable of assuming responsibility. By force of habit and training it
has become irksome to them. They fly for refuge to a superior official,
who, in his turn, if the case at all admits of the adoption of such a
course, hastens to merge his individuality in the voluminous pages of a
code or a Government circular.
The British official, on the other hand, whether in England or abroad, is
an Englishman first and an official afterwards. He possesses his full
share of national characteristics. He is by inheritance an individualist.
He lives in a society which, so far from being, as is the case on the
Continent, saturated with respect for officialism, is somewhat prone to
regard officialism and incompetency as synonymous terms. By such
association, any bureaucratic tendency which may exist on the part of
the British official is kept in check, whilst his individualism is
subjected to a sustained and healthy course of tonic treatment.
Thus, the British system breeds a race of officials who relatively to
those holding analogous posts on the Continent, are disposed to
exercise their central authority in a manner sympathetic to
individualism; who, if they are inclined to err in the sense of
over-centralisation, are often held in check by statesmen imbued with
the decentralising spirit; and who, under these influences, are inclined
to accord to local agents a far wider latitude than those trained in the
Continental school of bureaucracy would consider either safe or
desirable.
On the other hand, looking to the position and attributes of the local
agents themselves, it is singular to observe how the habit of assuming
responsibility, coupled with national predispositions acting in the same
direction, generates and fosters a capacity for the beneficial exercise of
power. This feature is not merely noticeable in comparing British with
Continental officials, but also in contrasting various classes of
Englishmen inter se. The most highly centralised of all our English
offices is the War Office. For this reason, and also because a military
life necessarily and rightly engenders a habit of implicit obedience to
orders, soldiers are generally less disposed than civilians to assume

personal responsibility and to act on their own initiative. Nevertheless,
whether in military or civil life, it may be said that the spirit of
decentralisation pervades the whole British administrative system, and
that it has given birth to a class of officials who have both the desire
and the capacity to govern, who constitute what Bacon called[14] the
Participes curarum, namely, "those upon whom Princes doe discharge
the greatest weight of their affaires," and who are instruments of
incomparable value in the execution of a policy of Imperialism.
The method of exercising the