which would not, like the Minto-Morley reforms, mean that executives responsible for government would be gradually deprived of the power to govern. § 13. The efforts devoted to this object were barren of results, other than that of confirming the conviction of the searchers that a further advance on the path marked by the Minto-Morley reforms was a step over the precipice and a plunge towards anarchy. This failure to find an alternative at length forced the gathering to consider whether the objections to dyarchy were really insuperable. If the principle were indeed novel, so was the situation to which it was applied. It might further be argued that a problem without precedent could only be solved by an expedient of a similar kind. It was also pointed out that a new principle of government could not be properly examined if left in the air. Before the reasons against it could be tested, the principle must be reduced to a definite scheme and considered in detail. So I urged that one of the members of the group, with lifelong experience of Indian conditions, should assume the position of a technical expert charged by a government with the task of reducing a principle, for which he was asked to take no personal responsibility, to the best scheme his knowledge would enable him to shape. A response to this challenge came from Sir William Duke, the last member of the I.C.S. to hold the LieutenantGovernorship of Bengal. As a member of the Council of India he still had the facts at his fingers' ends, so he undertook to see whether he could formulate a scheme for the government of Bengal on the principle of specific devolution, the term used in these discussions. Dyarchy, as we shall see, was a name applied to it later in India. So Sir William Duke produced a scheme, which was printed and circulated to the members of the gathering. With a workmanlike plan before them they were then in a position to consider how far the obvious objections to dyarchy could be minimized in practice to the point of safety. They retired to the seclusion of Oxford, and in the old bursary of Trinity College spent three days in a detailed discussion of Sir William Duke's draft. The draft was then completely recast by its author in the light of this discussion. § 14. With the results so reached and embodied in the memorandum now first given to the public in this volume, it is safe to say that none of the group were greatly enamoured. The best that could be said of it was that after the most careful analysis of the situation made during months of discussion, with the best technical information before them, they had failed to discover any less dangerous alternative. This experience is worth mentioning because it was afterwards repeated at every stage, both in India, and when the Reform Bill came up for final examination by the Imperial Government, and by the Joint Committee of Lords and Commons in London. Every responsible group of advisers in turn felt its novelty and its dangers. By some of them it was rejected with seeming finality. But when they came to examine the alternatives, either to leave the situation as it stood, or to change it on the line of other proposals, the dangers incidental to all these courses were found to be even greater. As with the informal gathering in London in the early months of 1916, they were all, with the exception of certain heads of provinces, driven back, however reluctantly, to the conclusion that the novel expedient of dyarchy was the least dangerous of the suggestions advanced. The alternative proposal of the heads of provinces was examined with the utmost solicitude by Lord Selborne's Committee in the light of evidence in its favour given by one of its authors, and was finally rejected as involving in a worse and more insidious form the principle of dualism alleged as an objection to the scheme embodied in the Bill before Parliament. § 15. In the ordinary course the scheme as formulated in the Duke Memorandum was intended for circulation amongst the Round Table groups in various parts of the British Commonwealth for study and criticism. The results of their labours would then have been sent to me and used in my treatment of the Imperial problem on its Indian side. In this case the document, like others previously circulated under the title of Round Table studies, would gradually have acquired a semi-public character. In view of references made to this scheme by an official witness before the Joint Select Committee, it is as well to state why it never became public in this manner. Speaking in the House of Lords on December 12, 1919, Lord Crewe said, 'I hope I am committing no breach of confidence-and I do not know whether I very much care if I am—in saying that I know from personal knowledge that before Lord Chelmsford went out to India in 1916 he had become clearly convinced in his own mind, from conversations he had had with those competent to give opinions and from his own reflections on the matter, that it would be necessary at once to make an announcement of the character which was made in 1917-namely that this country was looking forward to an advance in India with responsible government as the goal.' Lord Chelmsford was anxious before making such announcement to have in his mind some clear idea of the changes required to give effect to it. While he was governor of New South Wales, a Round Table group had been formed at Sydney, and hearing that this organization in London was studying the question of India he courteously asked to see the results. This was just after the completion of Sir William Duke's first draft. From Lord Chelmsford's request it was clear that he looked on the problem as one which required his early attention, and the meeting at Oxford felt that he might be embarrassed by the circulation at this juncture of novel ideas which they themselves regarded as purely tentative. On my friends' advice, I decided, therefore, not to circulate the memorandum to the Round Table groups, but merely to communicate it when revised in the light of the discussions at Oxford to Lord Chelmsford in response to his request. § 16. In the meantime I had come to realize that any attempt to deal with the Indian side of the Imperial 1 Proceedings of the Joint Select Committee on the Government of India Bill, vol. ii, question 651. problem without seeing the conditions for myself would be dangerous and absurd. I decided to treat any conclusions reached in the manner described as merely preparatory to a study of the facts at first hand. So immediately after the Oxford meeting I left England for India via Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, without waiting to see the final draft of the memorandum as revised by Sir William Duke. It was dispatched to Lord Chelmsford in May 1916, and reached me in Canada later. When in 1917 Mr. Montagu's visit to India was announced, and provincial governments were asked to prepare their proposals, the memorandum was reprinted by the Government of India and circulated with other papers for their information. It came to be known in official circles as the Duke Memorandum, but has never been published in any form. It is here placed on record as the first paper in which the principle underlying the present constitution of India was reduced to tangible shape. § 17. The manner in which this principle was evolved in the private studies of a few individuals has been the subject of some criticism which was voiced by Colonel Yate in the House of Commons and also by Lord Ampthill in the House of Lords. On December 16, 1919, Lord Ampthill remarked: 'The incredible fact is that, but for the chance visit to India of a globe-trotting doctrinaire, with a positive mania for constitution mongering, nobody in the world would ever have thought of so peculiar a notion as that of "Dyarchy". And yet the Joint Committee tells us in an airy manner that no better plan can be conceived.' A careful study of the report may suggest that the committee deserves this reproach less than its critic. Evidence was taken upon every aspect of the problem, and subsequent debates in the House showed that the opinions of members had been changed in the process. It is difficult to conceive inquiries more searching and impartial than those to which the principle of dyarchy was submitted. Whether it provides a real solution experience alone can show. It must first be tried; it is to be tried; and its warmest advocates will wisely hold their judgement in suspense till that trial is complete. The point which critics like Lord Ampthill have to face is that a succession of inquiries have led to the same point. So far as human intelligence has been able to foresee, in advance of further experience, the principle of dyarchy is the necessary outcome of the position as stated in the pronouncement of August 1917. For the purpose of the private inquiry above described, the principle of that pronouncement was assumed in 1915, and my own opinion is that any other set of inquirers, in seeking an answer to the question framed in this manner, would have reached and formulated the principle of dyarchy as the obvious solution. What matters, when a principle is suggested, is not whether it is new or old, still less who was the first to suggest it, but whether it is applicable to the problem in hand, or in plain words, whether the principle is a real one. The only final and conclusive test is to try it in practice. But no pains should be spared to detect counterfeit principles, not only before they are tried, but before the public is asked to consider them. An invention should not be placed on' the market until it has been tested by every expedient available to the inventor. And one test is always available to those who advocate principles embodied in phrases. Their first business is to ask themselves how the principle would work out when applied in practice. And the answer should always be reduced to writing; for to estimate correctly the products of his own brain the thinker must make them objective. What right, for instance, has any one to air a phrase like 'self-determination' as a principle of political conduct, until he has asked himself how he would apply it to cases like Ireland, Ulster, the Aaland Islands, Newfoundland, Egypt, or the Southern States in the time of Lincoln? Submitted to these tests the phrase would be found to beg two questions in as many words, whether the community in question is a separate political unit, and if so whether it is entitled to determine issues affecting other political units as well as itself. It presumes the right of |