Excerpt from Imperial Rule in India: Being an Examination of the Principles Proper to the Government of Dependencies

Although an author cannot pretend to dictate what use shall be made of the ideas he puts forward, I should like at the outset to state explicitly that my intention has not been to furnish reactionaries with another argument against free institutions.

Those who believe that popular government is the highest form of political organization to which mankind has yet attained, may still be compelled to recognise that certain peoples are not yet capable of managing their own affairs. Admirers of representative institutions have hitherto chiefly concerned themselves with fully developed nationalities, and have not been to the trouble of explaining how less perfectly homogeneous peoples are to fit themselves for that form of government.

This book is intended to suggest how the transition from one phase of political development to another may be effected; and from a passing reference to the subject in his "Liberty", I gather that the solution I have proposed would not have been repugnant to Mill himself. For people in this early stage of development there is, he says, nothing but implicit obedience to an Akbar or a Charlemagne if they are so fortunate as to find one.

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