receipts from excise and stamps fluctuate from year to year. Additional revenue raised at the instance of the council would be liable to the same fluctuations, and something like the present contracts between the Government of India and the Local Governments would again be required. In your Study No. 1 you have dealt at length with the drawbacks to that system. It works as between the Government of India and the Local Governments, because the Government of India is in the position of being able to give a flat refusal, which a subordinate Government cannot question; but who is to decide between the provincial governor and a responsible cabinet?

My conclusion is that the financial arrangements alone would give much scope for friction between the governor and the cabinet, at least in the transition stages preliminary to full responsibility in provincial affairs. This may not be a fatal objection, but I think at least an endeavour should be made to work out something which would minimize the risk.

I should also like to draw attention to another point not touched on in your scheme at all. Possibly you have omitted it for the present with a view to concentrating attention on the central idea. Are the future provincial parliaments to be single- or double-chamber institutions? I think most important countries have deliberately chosen the two-chamber system, and personally I should not trust a single chamber in this country; for I am not satisfied that the bulk even of the educated classes have sufficient backbone and independence to make them speak out publicly against proposals of which they really disapprove.

Incidentally, in order to secure freedom of voting in divisions in the council I should say that the BALLOT is essential. This is of course a minor matter at this stage, but it is worth mentioning, as pointing to the need for ample safeguards against hasty measures, whether administrative or legislative.

I am afraid this note is more destructive than constructive, but I have not yet been able to conceive any really practical scheme which shall suit the necessary transitional stages. I am convinced that the introduction of complete responsible government in one step is totally out of the question, and the existence of divided responsibility in the intermediate stages must give rise to many difficulties and possibly to dangers.

No. 20

(1) If you want to introduce representative government you can only do so in India by keeping a strong bureaucratic government there to introduce it, so

Don't water us any more with an Indian element. We have enough water in our constitution, and if you water us too much we will drift to native state government and down to Mandarin's

government. This is no agency to control elections, keep law and order, and collect revenue.

(2) It will be safe to give the following to the representative government:

I am all for

One man, one vote.

Age 25 and over.

You will say, literates only know how to vote. I reply 'that may be', but in India it is quite easy for a Collector to take a poll of 8,000 to 10,000 illiterate voters in half a day and I'll guarantee to do it. An Indian crowd is most amenable. It is quite easy to

(1) Pay off 400 beaters at 2 an. each in half an hour.

(2) Pay off 5,000 coolies in a famine camp in three hours. I could easily take the poll of 8,000 to 10,000 in half a day. Assume they are all illiterate, quite easy, don't ask them to ballot. Have two enclosures red and blue, or any colour you like. Let them go into the one they want to, or some other arrangement which one could easily devise. You could not take a poll of 8,000 miners in Cumberland in this way, but one could of the natives of India and there would be no free fight. No drunkenness and no bribery and corruption-that is the beauty of the Indian voter with his magistrate on the ground.

I start then with a constituency of 8,000 to 10,000 voters-that means 50,000 population.

That gives for every one of the divisions in the Province between

234

90-130 members. J. would have 44, K. 26 only, but make their constituencies populations of smaller numbers. Say 25,000 and 12,000 respectively as distances are big. Put the Commissioner over them in same position as a Colonial Governor and let them go ahead. Keep your magistrate and collector for

Law administration.

Police administration.
Revenue administration.
Electoral control.

Any constituency that felt this Divisional assembly was going the pace too fast would be at liberty to vote itself out of its clutches and come back to bureaucratic Government under the Collector and Magistrate.

Some might come back and very quick!

Make no distinction between rural and urban.

Very important, one man, one vote.

In 7, or 10, or 15 years' time the Leader of the Assembly and the Leader of the Opposition and two Collectors of Districts with the Commissioner as President would sit as a Committee and report to the Provincial Committee what further powers that individual Divisional Assembly should have.

Until the period of resettlement there should be no agitation permitted for further partition of spheres of action as between the bureaucracy and the Divisional Assembly. This makes the masses and not the classes the voting and perhaps the ruling factor. Provincial Council.

Clip the wings of the legislative council. As regards powers, give it legislative powers only, no power over budget, and let there be a provincial settlement of contributions (if any are required) of provincial money to Divisional Assemblies every 7 or 10, &c., years, just as you settle spheres of action.

The obvious council (leg.) would be

The leader of the Assembly

The leader of the Opposition and Commissioners.

Note. A village panchayat electing a head of the panch, then a number of heads of the panch form a union electing a representative and so on, ending finally in a certain number of delegates electing your member of the assembly for the constituency of 50,000 would never do.

Every one of the delegates would be bought. They would auction their votes or be intimidated or influenced, all the way down. The only way to play fair to the masses is to have one man one vote and vote straight for the member and let the magistrate and collector

control the election.

Hence don't water the I.C.S. more than you can help.

A district of one million means twenty elections. The magistrate and collectors and his Joint could work them off in two months and preside at each.

Let the first Assembly live for two years, then have elections again for three years; language of the assembly and script to be local. English barred.

Before Montagu comes out the first thing to settle and put down is the racial antagonism which has sprung up.

The literates call me an Anglo-foreigner. I call myself an old timer'.

However, I have thought about this a good deal when threshing water and getting no fish, and to my mind this is the way to play fair with the country and its 300 million, but it is absurd to assume that England can ever play fair with them if it attempts it by means of a watered bureaucracy. All agitation to water it should be suppressed. India for the Indians means an Indian bureaucracy, and would end in

Mandarin Government,

and no Mandarin Government or semi-Mandarin Government could control elections which year by year will become one of the most important functions of the District Magistrate. Under this scheme the District Magistrate will be required for one or two decades more. By that time the Divisional Assemblies would be really powerful bodies, and might have produced a better generation of politicians fit to administer and to enter the ranks of the bureaucracy which would be less necessary as power expanded towards Divisional Assemblies.

Comments from European Members of Public Services other than the I.C.S.

No. 21. FROM A TEACHER

1. The constitutional proposals for India are a dependent part of a comprehensive scheme for Imperial reconstruction, and must therefore inevitably share the strength or weakness of the latter. They must lose much of their argumentative force in the eyes of those who are unable to accept the larger scheme. Personally I do not believe in the desirability or feasibility of an Imperial Federal Parliament on an elective basis. What the ultimate solution will be no man can foretell, it will be decided by the course of events; but I think it is more likely to take the form of an Imperial Executive, than an Imperial elective Parliament, assisted possibly by an Imperial senate, which is not elective.

2. A corollary to the larger schemes is the periodical and prolonged review of Indian affairs by the Imperial Parliament. Even supposing this were made possible, I can see no attractions in returning to a course of procedure, which change of conditions has rendered obsolete. In the days of the Company there were obvious reasons, administrative and financial, why Parliament should watch and review the affairs of a company, which depended for its existence on itself, but those reasons ceased to exist as soon as India came

under the direct Government of the Crown. The consequent neglect of India by Parliament has been, I think, no unmixed evil: it has in fact been a blessing in disguise. Even in the eighteenth century the incursions of English politicians into Indian affairs were not always fortunate. Burke, e. g., disgraced himself in the matter, and Pitt's connexion with the matter left a blemish on his career. It has been a happy accident that Indian affairs have been for the most part removed from the interference of inevitable ignorance and the heated and unwholesome atmosphere of party politics. If Plato is right, and I think he is, in laying it down that wisdom is the first qualification for good Government, it is a good thing that the unwise have neglected Indian affairs. Nor is it to be deplored that Royal Commissions have failed to exercise the influence on public opinion that Parliamentary committees are said to have done. Their personnel is often unsatisfactory, e. g. in the latest, and their recommendations are often not according to knowledge.

3. The issue of a fresh charter is advocated taking the form of the promise of self-government. I strongly object to any such thing. As a matter of practical policy in ordinary life, I think it is most important never to promise what you cannot perform. (I may say that the rule has constantly to be applied in every day official life, which is lived in an atmosphere of importunity) and I see no possibility of granting self-government in any real sense to India within any period that one can foresee. Such a charter would only lead to disappointment, discontent, and charges of bad faith, unless of course the advent of chaos can be contemplated with equanimity. In all matters of politics in India, it is important to realize that the Indian has acquired the vocabulary of western politics (and morals) but attaches to the words only a fraction of the meaning attached to them by Englishmen. They know the onomata but not the pragmata. The Indian has only a verbal knowledge of self-government: hence the promise of it would be equivocal, because in India there is a deep gulf between thought. and things which will take a lot of filling up. It is worth while remembering that the proclamation of 1858 has meant different things to Europeans and Indians.

4. The advocacy of charters is part and parcel of the proposal to adopt a written constitution for the Empire after the American model. I see no need for this. The British Empire will have to settle its problems in its own way, and as General Smuts acutely observed, not follow precedents, but create them'. In high politics, as in official and private life, least said soonest mended' is a golden rule: unfortunately, a perpetual flux of talk is the fashion of the hour and it flows in torrents from the heights! We could do with a little more of Moses, and a great deal less Aaron. Nor do I think it necessary to follow French precedents in the enunciation of general principles. The British character, no doubt, suffers from the defects of its qualities, and dislike of system and logic is one of them. But I do not think it will improve itself by imitation