The Office of the Examiner of Indian Correspondence was one of the most important departments of the East India Company (which was in existence between 1600 and 1873). The primary duty of the office was to prepare dispatches to the central administration of India. The Chief Examiner and his three senior assistants exerted considerable influence in determining the substance of the dispatches, but before any dispatch could be sent it had to be approve by Court of Directors of the company and then by the Board of Control, representing the authority of Parliament. Mill entered the Examiner's Office in 1822 at the age of 17. He was the "chief conductor of correspondence" in the most important Political Department which dealt with affairs of native states (independent territories ruled by native chiefs but where the British had jurisdiction over some matters). During his career, he drafted over 1,700 dispatches, most of which were sent. Under his father's training, Mill acquired the habit of forming independent judgements by impersonal and rational analysis. He held a firm belief in men's ability to see and accept truth under the force of rigorous logic. But the duty of an admisnistrator required the cultivation of other dispositions, among which were the attitude towards cooperation, the habit of consultation and compromise, and the skill of presentation. As his career progressed, Mill recognized the importance of these dispositions, describing them as a necessary condition that enabled him to "effect the greatest amount of good compatible with his opportunities".
Source: Harris, Abram L. “John Stuart Mill: Servant of the East India Company.” The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science / Revue Canadienne D'Economique Et De Science Politique, vol. 30, no. 2, 1964, pp. 185–202. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/139555. Accessed 19 Feb. 2021