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192 temperament which conduced to such accumulations. But in no case would it have been practicable, as the official machine was then worked, for public business to be despatched with adequate promptness. Sir John Strachey, the greatest living authority on topics of Indian administration, has given an interesting account of the causes which rendered such delays inevitable and necessitated a change of procedure. From the first institution of Indian Councils the idea had always been that public business was transacted by the Governor-General and his whole Council, and that, consequently, every detail, however insignificant, was to come before every member. Disputed questions were decided in accordance with the votes of the majority, the Governor-General having a casting-vote. This mode of conducting public business was commended by no less competent an observer than Mr. J. S. Mill as 'one of the most successful instances of the adaptation of means to an end which political history, not hitherto prolific in works of skill and contrivance, has yet to show;' and its probable destruction was deplored as one of the disastrous consequences of a change by which Indian institutions had been 'placed at the mercy of public ignorance and the presumptuous vanity of public men.' The system has perished. Sir John Strachey explains, not from the causes anticipated by Mr. Mill, but for the excellent reason that it was unworkable. 'A more cumbrous and, I might say, a more impossible system of administration for a great Empire could