Page:Allan Octavian Hume, C.B.; Father of the Indian National Congress.djvu/137

 in India at the close of the eighteenth century. Autocratic personal government was thus both unavoidable and beneficial in the early years of British rule ; and Lord Cornwallis, by a judicious reorganization, laid the foundations of the "Covenanted" Indian Civil Service which, on the whole, has shown itself the most efficient and most honest official body of which there is record. But, as the poet warns us, the old order changeth, and one good custom may corrupt the world. The conditions which necessitated, and justified, an official autocracy administered by a privileged class of foreigners, have long passed away; highly trained Indians are available for every branch of the public service ; while public opinion claims for the people a revival of the ancient forms of local self-government.

As regards the later history of the official system, the one development of paramount importance has been the gradual rise of the great centralized departments till they have become the chief power in the State ; and it will be necessary to note their action on the different branches of the Indian administration, for to their usurpations is due the over-centralization which has proved destructive alike to local administration and to the control which should be exercised by the Secretary of State and the House of Commons.

The main object of Liberal statesmen, as shown by the policy of Lord Ripon and Lord Morley, has been, and must be, to bring these overgrown departments into proper subordination, and limit them to their proper I functions. And fortunately, in dealing with this problem we possess, in the events of Mr. Hume's career, materials for forming a judgment with regard to the effects of over- centralization upon the working of the public service in its various grades. In order to show these effects, I proposed, at the beginning of this memoir, a practical