controversy. Let any one consider whether this decision could have been so made and so accepted if the same individual had been a prime minister, responsible not to the British Government, but to an electorate in the United Provinces, and dependent for the tenure of his office on the support of a majority in the legislative council, elected by a majority of the voters. Imagine the position of the same individual, with the same character and reputation in this wholly different position, and one then begins to see how much depends upon the fact that he is now responsible to an authority which is detached and impartial because it is foreign.

§ 16. It is this that is meant by saying that the government of India is in trust. The acceptance of decisions made by that government between two rival sections in India is due to the confidence in the trustees, by reason of their disinterest in and detachment from the issues at stake. Where questions are at issue between India and the British trustee, as in the case of the cotton duties, this confidence is wanting.

§ 17. The immediate administration of vernacular schools, within limits carefully prescribed, has been entrusted to district and municipal boards. Within those limits, they are charged with the task of making decisions which must often affect minor matters at issue between Hindus and Moslems. They might support maktabs at the expense of pathsalas. A religious majority on a board might abuse its position in appointing the teachers. But the crucial decisions on matters of policy, such as that dealt with in the present case, are made for them by an authority responsible to a government and public opinion outside. India.

§ 18. In the Joint Address a method has been suggested whereby decisions of this class might be relegated to a ministry responsible to a provincial electorate, and removable from office by the vote of a majority of legislators elected by a majority of voters. For the purpose of this inquiry it is useful to consider how the decision in question would have to be made under these circumstances. It is fair to assume that the same pains would be taken to elicit opinion as was taken in the case of the present government. An Indian minister of education, either a Mohammedan or a Hindu, would then draft the terms of a decision, which would be discussed, and probably modified, in the cabinet council. The government supporters would be sounded

as to whether they would be prepared to back the decision. And, if the government were wise, means would also be taken to ascertain how far the minority in opposition and their constituents would be prepared to accept it. And all this time, it must be remembered the point at issue would be the subject of a burning public controversy. Meetings would be held, angry speeches would be made, and bitter articles would be written. Ministers would scarcely think of finding the best solution. Rather their efforts would be directed to finding one which their supporters would be prepared to back, but such as would not drive the minority of voters into an active or passive resistance of the law when passed. For the decision would have to take the form of a Bill to be debated by the legislature in open session; and upon the acceptance or rejection of the Bill the fate of the ministry would depend. The existence of the ministry itself would certainly hang on the issue. The best decision would scarcely be reached in the heat of the controversy. The best result attainable in practice would be the acceptance of some decision by the minority when they had been voted down. And that acceptance would depend, partly on their patriotism, upon their desire to support a system under which Indians could settle Indian questions for themselves, but largely also on the tolerance of the majority, on their willingness not to abuse their power shown by making concessions which would render the decision tolerable to the minds and consciences of their opponents.

§ 19. When compared with the smooth, detached, and accurate working of a good bureaucracy, responsible government is an ugly business, even in the British Isles. Why then, if you have such a system in India, should you seek to replace it by responsible government? An answer to that question can only be found by reference to the ultimate aims which government should seek.

§ 20. Some light may be thrown on the subject by considering an imaginary case in another field. As any one knows who has been in an army when rations are short and soldiers grow hungry, the question of apportioning the food available has a wonderful effect in revealing the character of different men and different units. In exceptional regiments you will find the men stinting themselves, so as to be sure that comrades, perhaps weaker than themselves, have enough. In such regiments the officers will readily leave the apportionment of the rations to the men themselves.

And now let us turn to a regiment of average men, some better and some worse. In many regiments, unhappily, there is pilfering in the cook-house when rations are short. In such a regiment, if the division of rations be left to the men themselves, some selfishness will be shown. The weaker and more unselfish will not get all they should. The justice done is rough and imperfect. There is some bickering which is rather squalid, but no positive violence, no actual starvation of the weaker men. So the officers leave the men to work out the division for themselves, trusting that, given sufficient time, they will learn to do the thing more fairly. And experience, indeed, teaches that, given time, this will be the result. This regiment, if the officers do not interfere, will gradually approximate to the standard of the first regiment described.

Thirdly we may take the other extreme and exceptional case, that of a regiment where the men in the cook-house eat their fill, and when the remainder does reach the rest, the stronger take so much that the weaker or less selfish actually starve and go sick. Or else there are constant disputes that end in a fight. In the case of such a regiment the officers must watch the food in the cook-house, to see that it is not pilfered by the cooks. And when the food is prepared, they must measure out the proportion justly due to each of the men, and watch while they eat it, to see that it is not taken from them. Externally, justice and order will prevail. The scene presented in the cook-house, and by the men at their meals, will contrast favourably with that presented in the second regiment described. There will be no unfairness, no ugly bickering, no squalid disputes, no pilfering by the cooks, and generally less waste. And yet results so secured by supervision of officers, however necessary, are almost barren of hope for the future. True, they will enable the men to see what justice and order mean; but when that is done, the spirit of fairness will develop but little, until they are able to assume some responsibility for dividing the food themselves. To become more just they must have opportunities of injustice; and unless they can be given some such responsibility, and some such opportunity, they will never begin to realize what a hateful thing injustice is.

If

§ 21. In this fanciful picture is implicit the philosophy of freedom, the whole issue at stake in the present war. material development, visible order, mechanical efficiency and financial economy in the present and in the immediate

future are the ends in view, then the Prussians are right. The decisions of government should be left to a handful of men of the clearest intellect and the strongest character. And, as in Prussia, the government from first to last must aim by all means in its power to foster a habit of unquestioning submission in the people they rule.

§ 22. If, on the other hand, the character of the people at large, the development in common men of their innate sense of justice, and of their faculty of doing justice to each other at their own expense, is the end in view, then government will decide nothing which it can relegate to the decision of those people themselves, without permitting a breakdown of social order. The choice lies between results we can handle and see, reduce to cash values, depict in reports and tabulate in figures, and those which cannot be seen, measured or described, or ever be perceived in the span of our own lives. You can measure railways in miles, and their earnings in cash. You can enumerate the acres brought under irrigation, estimate lives saved from famine. and disease, and exhibit an unprecedented growth in the population. You can dwell on the increase of schools and scholars, the improvement in tillage and in crops per acre, and the growth of industrial undertakings. There is something so definite and tangible in it all; and rulers who compile such reports have the satisfaction of knowing that they are telling of things which they themselves have helped to achieve. The effect which a system has on the character of a people can never be stated in figures, and can scarcely be perceived in the life of a single administrator. It is in the end a question between ponderable and imponderable values, between things to be seen with the eye, and those to be seen only in dreams, between seed that the sower may reap, and that which shall only whiten to harvest long after he is dust and his memory forgotten amongst men. The heaven-sent ruler is one with an ear deaf to audible praise, an eye fixed upon a goal which he shall not reach, and above all, an indomitable faith in the power for growth in the weakest of his kind.

§ 23. The issue is between immediate efficiency, a rapid, material, and calculable progress, and the slow incalculable growth of character. But in the long run there is no conflict between the policy which looks to develop the character of a people, and that which seeks to promote their efficiency. The policy which looks only to efficiency and measurable progress, ends by destroying the objects it

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pursues. If Englishmen have established order in countries. which could not create it for themselves, it is only by virtue of qualities developed through ages in which their own. characters have been tempered and moulded by their own mistakes. Such justice as Englishmen have exported to India has been learned in the doing of much injustice among themselves. And if Englishmen know how to get things done, that lesson has slowly been learned by enduring the results of their own neglect. It is much to have stopped bloodshed in India, to have created order, to have enforced justice, to have given her a modern equipment, and to have set her on the path of material progress. But the character of a people will not always stand still, even in the East. If it does not get better it will surely get worse. England cannot always provide these benefits for India without fatally enfeebling the character of her people. Neither material equipment nor even the enforcement of peace and justice between man and man are ends in themselves. They are hardly means. They are rather the beginnings of means. The end is simply the character of the people, which is formed in the process of adjusting their relations to each other. The establishment of social order from without renders it vastly easier for a beginning to be made. Suddenly to impose upon strength and faculties still unexercised the whole burden of maintaining order, is to jeopardize the conditions under which responsible government can begin. But unless or until genuine responsibilities are imposed on those few who are in some sort able to assume them, neither the capacity for making decisions will develop, nor yet the numbers of those who show promise of developing such capacity. All minor ends must be subordinated to that of fostering this native capacity, which, as it grows, will in ages to come yield a harvest of native efficiency and capacity for justice. Without travail there is no birth, and the glories of motherhood are hard to discern in the throes of delivery. Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and all things else shall be added unto you' is a saying as true in politics as in any other department of life. One final truth issues from the commonplace details set down in these pages. If effect on the growth of character is to be taken as the criterion of policy, it is not enough for government to consult the people. The burden of making decisions must be imposed upon those in some sort able to decide.

§ 24. Even amongst the wisest and most experienced of