On the credit side, first of all, the British empire was a liberal empire. It was founded on principles classically enunciated by Edmund Burke, who maintained that colonial government was a trust. It should to be exercised for the benefit of subject peoples, who would eventually attain their natural right to self-rule. As Burke famously declared: "The British Empire must be governed on a plan of freedom, for it will be governed by no other." More or less sincerely, Britons reiterated this claim over the next two centuries. The (Conservative) Primrose League took as its motto, Imperium et Libertas. In 1921, Lloyd George told the imperial conference that the British empire was unique because "Liberty is its binding principle." Whitehall mandarins said that the evolution of empire into commonwealth after the second world war completed the process whereby colonial territories came to stand on their own feet.
Bearers of the "white man's burden" also laboured to promote the positive welfare of their charges. At the top, for example, Lord Curzon worked indefatigably as viceroy to give India measures of justice, reform and social improvement. Taking to government (to paraphrase the Times) as other men take to drink, he aspired to give India the best administration it had ever had. He fostered commerce, expanded communications, developed irrigation, relieved famine, encouraged education, restored monuments, strengthened defence and promoted efficiency. He even ordered the removal of pigeon droppings from Calcutta's public library. Furthermore, Curzon resisted Britain's "Shylock" exploitation of India, writing to Whitehall as though he were the ruler of a foreign power. Similarly, at the bottom of the empire's administrative ladder, many British officials evinced a remarkable propensity to favour their black or brown charges at the expense of their white overlords. The unpublished memoir of an Irish lawyer, Manus Nunan, who was usually scathing about the English, contains nothing but praise for the district officers he met in Nigeria during the 1950s: "Their concern for the native people they governed was wonderful."
http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/globalisation/visions_reflections/british_empire