Canning described it, they were the breakwater against the storm which would otherwise have annihilated us. And they have furnished many proofs since then of the same spirit.
Up till quite recently not so much could be said of their administration. As late as the 1880's it could still be described as a wilderness of misrule; and even to-day, with some few shining exceptions, if we wish to think of them as a whole in that capacity, it must be as of states emerging from the Middle Ages.
A third feature of our constitutional development is well worth attention. In the long course of history the three old Presidencies have of course disappeared. In their place a new organisation has been gradually making its way, and has been considerably enlarged quite recently. Practically, British India now consists of nine great provinces or, in reality, different countries: Bombay, Madras, Bengal, the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, the Punjab, Burmah, Eastern Bengal and Assam, the Central Provinces, and finally the North-West Frontier Province. The fact that the first two of these are administered by governors, the next five by lieutenant-governors, and the last two by chief commissioners, must not conceal from us that here are a set of what may be termed separate nations in embryo.
A fourth feature is that, since the abolition of the old constitution of the Company, India has been brought strictly within the purview of our
