"There are so few opinions expressed in any part of your book with which I do not, so far as my knowledge extends, fully and heartily coincide, that I feel impelled to take the liberty of noting the small number of points of any consequence on which I differ from you. These relate chiefly to India; though on that subject also I agree with you to a much greater extent than I differ. Not only do I most cordially sympathize with all you say about the insolence of the English even in India to the native population, which has now become not only a disgrace, but, as you have so usefully shown, a danger to our dominion there; but I have been much struck by the sagacity which, in so short a stay as yours must have been, has enabled you to detect facts which are as yet obvious to very few: as, for instance, the immense increase of all the evils and dangers you have pointed out by the substitution of the Queen's army for a local force of which both men and officers had at least a comparatively permanent tie to the country; and again, that the superior authority in England, having the records of all the presidencies before it, and corresponding regularly with them all, is the only authority which really knows India; the local governments and offices only knowing, at most, their own part of it, and having generally strong prejudices in favour of the peculiarities of the system of government there adopted, and against those of the other party." [Footnote: James Mill, the father of John Stuart Mill, was the historian of India, and for a long time one amongst its official rulers at the India House.] Then followed an exhaustive and very friendly criticism, in which the most interesting points are his challenge of Dilke's proposal to make the Secretary of State for India a permanent office, not changing with party upheavals, and, lastly, this: "If there is any criticism of a somewhat broader character that I could make, I think it would be this--that (in speaking of the physical and moral characteristics of the populations descended from the English) you sometimes express yourself almost as if there were no sources of national character but race and climate, as if whatever does not come from race must come from climate, and whatever does not come from climate must come from race. But as you show in many parts of your book a strong sense of the good and bad influences of education, legislation, and social circumstances, the only inference I draw is that you do not, perhaps, go so far as I do myself in believing these last causes to be of prodigiously greater efficacy than either race or climate, or the two combined."