NigG,
What a field for comment and question you present to us in your #216 ! First shot out of the locker:
... I take your point. Independence 'Freedom' Fighters don't necessarily make responsible and honourable politicians...
It was said at the time: "Self Government is better than Good Government". For the few, perhaps, but not for the many - of which sub-Saharan Africa today is a vivid illustration.
...That's not to suggest they didn't work hard, or that the hot season wasn't hard to bear. Nor that they weren't imbued with a sense of honour and self-discipline..
I remember a statistic quoted in Beverley Nichol's (or rather Katherine Mayo's ?) "Mother India", to the effect that: "The steel brace which held the whole edifice together, was the India Civil Service, numbering no more than 500 men" (devout skinflint though I am, I may lash out for the two Kindles [£0.99 and £3.98] I mentioned before and correct the quotation sometime).
These were picked men, the cream of the Oxbridge output of the year, who would all be alumni of the Victorian and Edwardian Public Schools which had been set up for this very purpose, to inculcate the idea of "playing a straight bat" - "behaving with honour and self-discipline", as you put it. They were the "top people", chosen above the entrants to the British Civil Service Administrative Class, the future Sir Humphries, ("men with "humble titles and immense power") whom I hope are running this country, as no one else seems to be at the moment !
Kipling alludes to this in his much derided poem "The White Man's Burden" (sometimes regarded as a covert plea to the US to take over the Empire from us)
"Take up the White Man’s burden—
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go send your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need"
..................and later:
"Take up the White Man’s burden—
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better
The hate of those ye guard"
There are many more bones to be picked out of your excellent Post, but this will do to be going on with !
Danny.