Sir Frederick Rogers (afterwards Lord Blachford), who was permanent under-secretary from 1860 to 1871, has left in his letters suggestive comments upon most of his political chiefs. The Duke of Newcastle, he says, is "very ready to accept your conclusions, very clear in his own directions, and extremely careful (which I respect very highly) never to throw back on a subordinate any shadow of responsibility for advice that he has once accepted."[180:2] "Cardwell," he remarks, "is happily absent, though not so much as I could wish";[180:3] and, finally, he writes that he likes Lord Granville, who "is very pleasant and friendly, and I think will not meddle beyond what is required to keep us clear of political slips."[180:4] Some people outside of the office evidently thought that the secretaries of state had not meddled overmuch, for George Higginbottom, afterwards Chief Justice of Victoria, once remarked in the Assembly, "It might be said with perfect truth that the million and a half of Englishmen who inhabit these colonies, and who during the last fifteen years have believed they possessed self-government, have been really governed during the whole of that time by a person named Rogers";[180:5] and in the same vein Rees, in his "Life and Times of Sir George Grey," refers to Sir Robert Herbert (permanent under-secretary from 1871 to 1892) as the man who "controls the destinies of the Colonial Office."[180:6] [Sidenote: Influence of Permanent Officials in Other Departments.] With the growing interest in the empire, there has come a change; but until a very recent period the fact that British statesmen knew little of the subject, and did not care much more, no doubt made the power of the permanent officials peculiarly great in the Colonial Office.