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 central control under the British system
calls for some further remarks. It varies greatly in different
localities.

Under the Indian system a council of experts is attached to the
Secretary of State in England. A good authority on this subject says[15]
that there can be no question of the advantage of this system.

No man, however experienced and laborious, could properly direct