Page:Lord Amherst and the British Advance Eastwards to Burma.djvu/38

 as distinguished from the more conspicuous functions of control vested in the courtiers or the politicians whom the British Cabinet or the Board of Directors sent out to be the agent of their will or—as generally happened, when good work was to be done—to receive instructions which the inexorable course of events had rendered obsolete or mischievous. The Governor-General at Calcutta was a little nearer the realities of the situation than the Commissioners of Control at Whitehall or the Directors at the India House. But closer still to the intrigues of native courts and the humdrum miseries of the seething masses were those illustrious servants of the Company, who, while Viceroys came and went, remained permanently on the field of action, and whose opinions not infrequently dictated decisions to the Governor-General. They possessed the indispensable information, the cultivated instinct, the knack of executive success. Following in their train, and acting loyally in concert with the chiefs in all matters that concerned the haute politique, there was already a school of district officials : men whose hearts and souls were absorbed in thought for the well-being of the common folk, who had a mastery of the vernacular speech, and an intimate acquaintance with the infinite variety of native customs and ideas. We would not draw any hard and fast line between the dignified administrator and the magistrate whose highest ambition was to suppress crime, to encourage industry, to enlist all that was best in native society on the side of the new lords of the