ABSTRACT
John Stuart Mill entered the Examiner's Office in 1822 at the age of seventeen. By the time he was thirty he had become third in rank to the two senior members, thus skipping ahead of more than a score of junior clerks. It is generally known that Mill spent his working career in the service of the East India Company, but very little has been written about him in the capacity. Mill's conviction that the East India Company had devised the best possible form of foreign rule for a country like India caused him to oppose the proposal for administering the government by means of a secretary of state as was done in other British colonies. Although Mill believed that the good government of India required for some indefinite period control by Europeans of the central organs of authority, he favoured the appointment of qualified natives to the administrative services and to the higher positions of government.
