which not only the whole policy but the machinery of administration had to be directed.

Regarding the practical details of Self-Government in India dealt with in your memorandum, I may at once declare my general agreement with the broad outlines of the scheme formulated by you. I am not, however, convinced that an immediate liberalizing of the Indian Legislative Council side by side with the more radical reform of Provincial Councils is really as hopelessly impracticable as you seem to think; although a careful consideration of the many cogent arguments adduced by you have forced me to admit that the process in the higher council must be much slower and less drastic than in the Provincial Councils. For instance, there is no reason why the electorate for the Viceregal Council should not be more broad based than it is at present. Even if the Provincial Councils retain their privilege of electing the majority of non-official members, it would certainly be an improvement and a step in the right direction if a certain number of members are elected by a general Electorate of well-defined qualifications which will of course be put higher than those prescribed for the Provincial Councils. And since the Indian Legislative Council is to continue under your scheme a purely advisory body, at least for the present, no harm need be anticipated if there is a non-official majority—a state of affairs which Lord Minto was prepared to accept when even Minto-Morley reforms were introduced. These are mere instances, for it is not difficult to suggest certain other directions in which the progressive principle might be applied to effect a change.

Allow me to point out that in para. 14 of your memorandum you are not quite right in stating that double Government, or dyarchy' as you term it, is altogether foreign to bureaucratic conceptions; for, as a matter of fact, the system already prevails in some forms in the Government of India. For instance, while most of the administrative control of a Province is under the Local Government there are Departments-like the Finance, Posts, and Telegraphs-which are directly under the control of the Government of India. And indeed something in the nature of 'dyarchy is inevitable if autonomy is to be given to Provincial Councils the existence of which is, as you rightly maintain, essential in a large country like India. So far as Indian sentiment is concerned there is absolutely nothing against the idea.

While agreeing with you entirely that Self-Government in order to be real must depend upon and derive its inspiration from a general electorate, I am of opinion that a suffrage exclusively based upon mere individual qualification is not suited to the actual conditions of the country in its present stage of intellectual development. I have no hesitation in admitting that a general electorate can easily be formed in urban areas which could and would exercise its privilege of voting with intelligence and judgement. But when we come to think of rural tracts I am very much afraid that the general

level of education and intelligent appreciation of events not concerned directly with the details of daily duties is so low that it would be nothing short of a farce to ask the ordinary villages to vote for an election in the Provincial Council. In order to stimulate his interest in matters not touching him personally and in order to educate him into taking his share in the larger interests of life it is expedient to revive the time-honoured system of village Panchayats. Communal interests concerning the prosperity of his village will make a direct and intimate appeal to his reason and judgement and he may be trusted to elect the most suitable person as Panchas. These village Panchayats should have the privilege of electing members to the District Boards who should again have the right of electing some members to the Provincial Councils. But I see no objection to a gradual introduction of the general suffrage principle side by side with the electoral rights conferred upon such bodies as the village Panchayats and District Boards. For instance, even in the case of District Boards there is no reason why membership in them should be confined to the elections made by the village Panchayats. A qualification test can be devised by means of which persons who are not members of the Panchayats might also exercise their right of electing members to the District Boards. Similarly it is not proposed that by giving to District Boards the power of electing a number of members to the Provincial Council the public outside the Boards should have no right of voting. All that it is intended to secure is that by this means of indirect representation the rural areas may have some share, however remote, in the Government of the Province; whereas in a system of general electorate pure and simple the chances are that they will be excluded altogether.

The extent of powers with which the Provincial Councils will be entrusted depends naturally upon their fitness, but you have not mentioned the authority which is to determine the question of fitness. It is to be hoped that the deciding voice will be that of the Imperial Parliament so long as the Government of India is not autonomous.

I wish I could deal with the scheme suggested by you more critically or offer for your consideration more pregnant suggestions, but I am not by nature or education or training a politician, and I must therefore beg of you to treat the few remarks I have ventured to make as coming from an onlooker whose main interest is not in politics.

No. 11

I am much obliged for your note of the 21st instant. There is no doubt at all that after the termination of the War the question of the reconstruction of the machinery governing the British Empire will have to be taken up, and that the affairs of the dominions will perhaps have to be controlled by a Commonwealth Parliament distinct from the present Parliament of Great Britain, which already has too much to do. The representation of India in this assembly may be

numerically larger than the self-governing colonies, for the reasons that

(a) All the dominions have a preponderance of British blood in their population, are homogeneous to the people of the British Isles in their ways, manners, living, and thinking; and have many relations in the British Isles who are kept well informed by private correspondence of the needs and difficulties of these people in the colonies, while unfortunately no such facilities exist in the case of Indians. (b) In political and other respects India is not sufficiently advanced, and has a diversity of interests and races, and hence she stands in need of more help, which can be secured only by larger representation in that assembly.

The Indian point of view should, I think, be placed before the Commonwealth Parliament directly by pure Indians, chiefly elected with a few nominated members from among the aristocracy and the ruling native chiefs.

Your scheme of befitting India for self-government may be quite a frank and genuine one, but I should think that unless a definite goal and time is fixed and determined, suspicion and distrust of Government measures will never cease. The fixing of a goal to be reached in a fixed time will give an impetus to the public, and will exercise a much healthier effect on the public mind.

I hope you know that the burning question of the day is the grant of King's Commissions to Indians in the Army. I do not think that the extension of this privilege will help towards the improvement of Indian administration just at present, but it will surely create a very satisfactory effect on the confidence of the public in the projected scheme of reforms. The public will consider this grant as a sure guarantee for the future. But everything depends on education, and until Government produces a well educated and efficient electorate for the election of suitable members for these assemblies or Provincial Councils, there can be no hope of real improvement. At present the elections are confined to, or have been monopolized by, a few privileged people of the lawyer class, and are not of a really representative nature.

The following Papers are from Senior Members of the I.C.S.

No. 12

It appears of capital importance to obtain the clear recognition of the principle enunciated in para. 5 of your letter. It has been largely lost sight of in the administration of the last sixty years. Even now there will be many officials who will not assent to it. There will be many others who, while admitting it as a general proposition, will not admit it as a principle to be the one guiding their actions, or to be anything but something rather remote with which we have no particular concern just at present.

2. It is worth examining the history of official opinion on the question. Towards the end of the eighteenth century it appeared probable that we were to be the rulers of India, and the thoughts of officials constantly examined the difficulties of that position and the means by which we could make it successful. All the leading men at the end of the century saw the great danger and difficulty of our responsibilities. And all saw the importance of associating as far as possible the inhabitants of the country with our administration. To some, such as Malcolm, the safest course appeared to leave the Indian Governments as far as possible undisturbed in their several territories; others such as Munro were impressed with the importance of giving high official appointments in our own administration to natives of the country. The most clear and wise account of the problem, of our mistakes, and of the dangers in front of us, is given in Sir Thomas Munro's minute. On the state of the country and the condition of the people', dated December 31, 1824, and I suggest this be read in view of the present position. It is printed on page 124 of Gleig's life of Sir Thomas Munro, vol. ii.

3. This minute shows how far we were going in the direction of taking upon us the whole administration of this country, but his warnings and those of other distinguished men of the time did little to arrest the course that was being taken. The need and the fascination of restoring order out of chaos was as a rule too insistent for the political administrator to see the dangers ahead. And the policy of substituting wherever possible British for Indian agency found its culmination in the strenuous years of Dalhousie's administration, and was certainly one of the causes of the Mutiny. And the Mutiny in its turn perpetuated the policy of which it was really the outcome. We do not perhaps always appreciate the tremendous effect of the Mutiny on the minds of the Civil Administrators. The Civil Service was then a fairly close corporation and its members were interconnected with each other by various relationships. There was hardly a man who had not lost some woman relation, and the tragedies of the time completely clouded their judgement. Russell notes how bitter was the attitude of the Civil administrator compared with that of the military, so though many civilians were capable of seeing the mistakes of the policy that had lead to the outbreak, the prejudices aroused by the outbreak were so strong that there was no chance of the administration taking a more liberal turn. If this view of the matter is considered an exaggeration, let me quote the following passage from R

December 18th. We went to see the Jumma Masjid which is held now by a battalion of Beloochees. I sincerely hope that the plan proposed by Mr. Phillip Egerton, the Magistrate of Delhi, may be carried out. He suggests that the Mosque be used henceforth as a Christian Church, and on each of the thousand compartments of the marble floor, the name of one of our Christian Martyrs be inscribed. It is the general opinion that it would be madness to restore this noble building to the Mohamadens.

Raikes was a civilian of experience and a great admirer of Sir Henry Lawrence and his disciples: recognized that the bulk of the people had not in any way joined in the outbreak, and when younger had feelings of affection to the people of India. In view of the above quotation it is not surprising that he ends his book by saying we should legislate and govern in India as a superior race'. And though there were many men who attacked and criticized the policy of Government even after the Mutiny, we did in fact continue on the whole to govern without the co-operation of Indian opinion. Take for example the following passage from the English in India, by Captain E. Bell:

While the founders of our Indian Empire were maintaining and strengthening a precarious position, controlling and conciliating allies, and contending with powerful enemies, whom they could not but respect and admire in some degree, the English in India continued to place a high value on the good will and good opinion of the natives. While they were evoking peace and order out of a chaos of conflicting interests, they learned at every step to appreciate both the value of native tact in negotiation, and the powerful influence of our own reputation for honour and fair dealing. And as in all times of conquest, crisis, and real difficulty the work was done by a few heroes and statesmen, our most celebrated tasks of the pacification, settlement, and organization of large provinces were effected by one or two able and experienced English officers in each province, by means of some special native agency and the existing local authorities. These able and experienced men-first-rate or third-rate soldiers or administrators never, make themselves offensive to the natives, never despise the inhabitants of the country, or think lightly of their ancient rights, privileges, customs, or prejudices. In fact, they understood and respected them. Search the works, the official writings, and the official acts, of such men as Lord Metcalfe, Sir Thomas Munro, Frederick John Shore, Sir John Malcolm, Mountstuart Elphinstone, Sir Henry Russel, General Low, and Sir Robert Hamilton, for the proof of these allegations. But as our supremacy became every day more surely established and acknowledged, the immediate obvious necessity for reliance on native agency rapidly diminished, until the stream of home patronage, which grows with what it feeds upon, has at length filled the whole country with English gentlemen to be provided for, and with apparent functions to be performed. The mass of European idlers and non-entities in the civil and military services don't certainly add to the physical strength of England in India, while they detract from her moral strength, lower the native ideal standard of English ability and honour, and introduce an element of insolence, contempt, and tyranny, which is most dangerous to our power and derogatory to our national reputation. The same great vice pervades our entire system, and an unnatural and degrading rule of exclusion is manifest in all our establishments; appointments for Englishmen are multiplied, and young Englishmen without any peculiar qualifications are placed in minor positions, the duties of which could be fulfilled in a much more efficient manner by natives, with the great advantage of their improvement in knowledge, in self-respect, and in attachment to British interests.

4. The forty years after the Mutiny were years of construction and great material progress. The Indian administrator was