ABSTRACT
During the nineteenth century the scope of rationalisation spread from private to public life, and under Utilitarian influence men increasingly applied rational principles to the art of government, and insisted that administration should be efficient. Gradually the Liberal principle of leaving welfare to the play of economic forces yielded ground to the Socialist doctrine of promoting welfare by State action. Early signs of the new trend appeared in the formation of a Colonial Ministry in France, the federation of Malaya, and the promotion of Burma to the status of a Province; the decisive impulse came with the appointment of Chamberlain to the Colonial Office in 1895, of Doumer to Indo-China in 1897, and of Curzon to India in 1898. From the first the French were impatient of the slow working of economic forces, and in France manufacture and commerce were less powerful than in England.
