hich remains to the home
administrations, and so heavy the pressure brought to bear upon them,
that there are persons also in these situations of whom it may be said
that the less they do, and the less they are enabled to do, the better
for the colony over which they preside.

The West Indies have been sufferers from another cause. In the absence
of other use for them they have been made to serve as places where
governors try their 'prentice hand and learn their business before
promotion to more important situations. Whether a man has done well or
done ill makes, it seems, very little difference unless he has offended
prejudices or interests at home: once in the service he acquires a
vested right to continue in it. A governor who had been suspended for
conduct which is not denied to have been most improper, is replaced with
the explanation that if he was not sent back to his old post it would
have been necessary to provide a situation for him elsewhere. Why would
it? Has a captain of a man-of-war whose ship is taken from him for
misconduct an immediate claim to have another? Unfortunate colonies! It
is not their interest which is considered under this system. But the
subject is so delicate that I must say no more about it. I will
recommend only to the attention of the British democracy, who are now
the parties that in the last instance are responsible, because they are
the real masters of the Empire, the following apologue.

In the time of the Emperor Nicholas the censors of the press seized a
volume which had been published by the poet Kriloff, on the ground that
it contained treasonable matter. Nicholas sent for Kriloff. The censor
produced the incriminated passage, and Kriloff was made to read it
aloud. It was a fable. A governor of a Russian province was represented
as arriving in the other world, and as being brought up before
Rhadamanthus. He was accused, not of any crime, but of having been
simply a nonentity--of having received his salary and spent it, and
nothing more. Rhadamanthus listened, and when the accusing angel had
done sentenced the prisoner into Paradise. 'Into Paradise!' said the
angel, 'why, he has done nothing!' 'True,' said Rhadamanthus, 'but how
would it have been if he had done anything?'

'Write away, old fellow,' said Nicholas to Kriloff.

Has it never happened that British colonial officials who have similarly
done nothing have been sent into the Paradise of promotion because they
have ke