Civil Service out here. The greatest weakness of the present position is that the Civil Service have no orders on the subject, and in matters of policy they cannot act without orders.

§ 10. Such a promise, so bindingly made, is only the beginning though an all-important beginning. When a captain sets out on a voyage, it is of primary importance that he should have orders specifying the port to which he is to steer, however near or far that port may be. Having given him those orders you can next prescribe the course by which he is to steer. If I advocate an Imperial declaration that self-government is the goal of Indian policy, it is merely as a preface to taking some immediate steps for travelling in that direction.

§ 11. Assuming, then, that you have got an Imperial Government not only committed to this policy, but, what is equally important, able to consider it and to give effect to it, let us now turn to the question as to what the course should be. Let us glance at conditions involved in the problem of establishing self-government in India. This country with the doubtful exception of China, contains a population larger than that of any in the world which is geographically capable of achieving a specific nationhood of its own. Now contrast it with countries like England, France, or Italy. I am taking three countries which have national governments, and local authorities, but no provincial authorities intervening between the two. Here are three countries, which in area and population are commensurate with one of the larger provinces of India. It is scarcely in doubt that all three of them suffer from over-centralization. They would be far better off with provincial governments. In India such intermediary governments exist of necessity, and they transact the business which touches the people most nearly. In fact an administrator in a highly responsible position once said to me 'I am now coming to the view that there should be no Government of India except for Foreign Affairs, the Army and Navy'. However that may be, nine-tenths of the matters which affect the daily life of the millions of India, are handled by provincial executives and legislatures. If, therefore, in your progress towards self-government you wish to seek guidance from the past it is to countries like America, Canada, Australia, and South Africa you should look for it, rather than to England, Italy, or France. You should, in fact, look to the countries which, like India, are equipped with provincial governments, rather than to those which have none.

§ 12. Now of all these countries it is true that they devoted themselves to the achievement of self-government in the provinces, before attempting to apply the principle to the nation as a whole which includes the provinces. Personally I doubt whether they would have succeeded if they had attempted to effect both changes at the same time, or until the institutions of provincial self-government had been firmly rooted in the habits of the people. The reason is that men in the mass can scarcely think of two things at the same time. Look at a military organization and you will see that this is so. A company of one hundred men must learn to operate and to move as one unit instinctively, before it is of any use to drill eight companies together as a battalion. If you were to try and get eight hundred men to learn the practice of company and battalion drill together from the outset, they would fall into confusion so often that their whole training would be greatly delayed. The same is true of political organization. When Lord Durham in his famous Report eighty years ago recommended the introduction of responsible government into the Canadian Provinces, he saw clearly enough the need of a national government in Canada. But he did not advise that any attempt should be made to establish one until the separate provinces had mastered the art of running themselves. Ten years ago there were people who advocated that the Transvaal and Free State should only be given responsible government on condition that all the South African colonies united to establish a national government at the same time. Having watched at close quarters the establishment of provincial self-government, and also the subsequent establishment of the National Government in South Africa, I realize the difficulty of both these operations. I can imagine nothing more likely to prejudice the successful establishment of either than an attempt to establish both together.

§ 13. There is one apparent difference in the cases I have quoted. In America, Canada, Australia, and South Africa, provincial governments had first to be created and then a national government. In India such governments already exist, and it is only a question you may say of making them answerable to public opinion. You will find, however, that you cannot popularize the control of these governments without effecting a radical change in the mechanism itself. You cannot use petrol to drive the mechanism designed for a steam engine. In order to apply a new motive power you have to revise the whole machinery. Your whole system

of administration, inherited as it was from the Mughal Empire, was conceived from the outset as the instrument of an autocracy. Under British rule it has been throughout developed on the principle that the impulse which moves it is to be applied from outside India. The Government of India is to obey the Secretary of State; the Provincial Governments are to obey the Government of India. Some municipal bodies with executives of their own are the only faint beginnings of a system designed to be driven by internal combustion. The whole position is succinctly set forth in the following extract from the Report of the Decentralization Commission.

The present distribution of functions between the Government of India, also styled the Central or Supreme Government, and the Provincial or Local Governments and Administrations is, stated generally, as follows:-Amongst the important matters which the former retain in their own hands are those relating to foreign affairs, the defences of the country, general taxation, currency, debt, tariffs, posts and telegraphs, railways, and accounts and auditing. Ordinary internal administration, police, civil and criminal justice, prisons, the assessment and collection of the revenues, education, medical and sanitary arrangements, irrigation, buildings and roads, forests, and the control over municipal and rural boards fall to the share of the Provincial Governments. But even in these matters the Government of India exercise a general and constant control. They lay down lines of general policy, and test their application from the administration reports and returns relating to the main departments under the Local Governments.1 They also employ expert officers to inspect and advise upon a number of departments which are primarily administered by the Local Governments, including Agriculture, Irrigation, Forests, Medical, Sanitation, Education, Excise and Salt, Printing and Stationery, and Archaeology. These officers are commonly known as Imperial Inspectors-General.

The control of the Government of India is, moreover, not confined to the prescription of policy and to action taken upon reports and inspections. It assumes more specific forms. They scrutinize, and. when necessary, modify the annual budgets of the Local Governments. Every newly-created appointment of importance, every large addition even to minor establishments, every material alteration in service grades, has to receive their specific approval, and in many cases, reference to the Secretary of State is likewise necessary. The practical result is that no new departure in Provincial administration can be undertaken without their preliminary sanction or, in important matters, without that of the Secretary of State also. Moreover, the general conditions of Government service, such as 1 As already stated, the Local Governments also submit copies of all their printed proceedings to the Government of India.

leave, pension, and travelling allowance rules, and the Public Works and Forest Codes, are all strictly prescribed by the Central Government, either suo motu or on instruction from the Secretary of State. Lastly, there is a wide field of appeal to the Government of India, as also to the Secretary of State, from persons who may deem themselves aggrieved by the action of a Local Government.

The essential point to be borne in mind is thus that at present, even in matters primarily assigned to the Provincial Governments, these act as the agents of the Government of India, who exercise a very full and constant check over their proceedings.1

§ 14. In so far as you introduce any real self-government into the provinces these simple relations of subordinate to superior authorities must be changed. Orders can be given from above to provincial officials, who are there to take orders from above. But orders cannot be given from above to a popular government which by the law of its being obeys the impulse it receives from below. You can give limited powers to provincial assemblies, you can restrict those powers as you will; but within the limit of those powers such assemblies must exercise absolute freedom of choice. Popular government in any country too large to dispense with provinces, in fact, means that at least two governments must exist and operate side by side in immediate independence of each other correlated only by the terms of the constitution. In a Canadian Province, for instance, you may see the establishments of the post office and of the agricultural department working on these lines. The postal officials derive their instructions from the National Assembly at Ottawa, the Agricultural officials from the provincial assembly at Toronto, Quebec, or Winnipeg. Self-government in any large country thus involves the operation of two authorities with separate mainsprings side by side. The word 'dyarchy', compounded of the Greek words signifying 'two' and 'government', has been coined to denote this principle and for convenience I shall use it. Dyarchy is so foreign to military and bureaucratic conceptions, that the officers of such organizations are apt to suppose that the thing cannot exist.

§ 15. In order that two governments may be capable of operating in the same area, you must make the duties assigned to each as clear as possible in a constitution which may consist of one or of many enactments. You must distinguish the functions of the two governments and make 1 Report of the Royal Commission upon Decentralization in India, vol. i, pp. 20 and 21.

the distinction as plain as you can. Now the potential functions of government are infinite in number, while the actual functions constantly increase as the needs of society increase. You would never succeed in drawing out two final lists of functions, one comprising all the things which the national government is to do, and the other all the things which the provincial governments are to do. So you give a list of specified things to one of those governments. You may enlarge that list as you like from time to time; but you provide that all the things which at any given time are not on that list fall within the sphere of the other government. § 16. To bring matters to a fine point; if you are to introduce any real element of self-government into your provincial institutions, you must have a list of functions, however short, which the Central Government may not touch so long as they remain on that list.

§ 17. In India nothing of the sort has been done. There is nothing within the powers of a provincial government which the Government of India may not touch, and scarcely anything which it does not touch from time to time. But there is more in it than this. One finds oneself wondering whether any serious attempt has ever been made to distinguish the things which belong to the parts, from those which belong to the whole, to think out the principles upon which that distinction should be based, or to bring the cases which arise to the test of those principles. In books on India one reads a great deal of the infinite diversity of its peoples, a diversity which in some respects is greater than that between any two nations in Europe. But if so, how can it be right to apply one criminal code to the whole country? In the Punjab one is told that offences against the law of marriage are the commonest cause of murder and serious crime. Madras, on the other hand, is but little troubled by this factor. Is it really sound then that the Government of the Punjab should not be free within limits to mould its own criminal law to suit its own conditions? The other day the Viceroy's Council passed a bill dealing with one form of cruelty to animals. If, as I am told, this particular crime is practically confined to one province, why was the matter dealt with by the National Legislature? Then the Patna and Dacca universities were discussed; and finally the member for Burmah asked the Government of India to deal with the question of a Burmese University. Why did no one suggest that there was anything strange in asking the Government of India to deal with the University of