the Government asked for the appointment of a joint select committee of Lords and Commons. The spokesmen of all parties were heard, and submitted to cross-examination with important results. Arguments in favour of doing nothing collapsed. Witnesses who attacked the principle of the measure were unable to produce alternatives which would bear analysis. Extremists on the other side were forced to disclose their real position by challenging the title of Parliament to decide the time and measure of the steps by which the approach to responsible government should be made. This challenge the Committee answered by reasserting the sovereign position of Parliament in the preamble of the Bill. The success which attended these proceedings in fact suggests the question whether many of the evils of party government would not be avoided if legislatures devoted more time to taking evidence and less to debate. The cross-examination of witnesses may well be an instrument as useful in legislatures as it is in courts. Would successive attempts to solve the Irish question have proved so barren, if the Bills before discussion in committee had been referred to select committees empowered to hear evidence from all parties in Ireland? Questions have far more effect than debate in revealing the tendency of views which lead only to a blank wall.

In any case it is doubtful whether the measure could have been carried through both Houses in time, if ministers had not been supported from the back benches by members with a knowledge and conviction acquired in the course of hearing evidence. There is every sign that this method of handling Indian affairs has returned to stay.

§ 44. Time was the governing factor. The promise of reform had been coupled with the words' as soon as possible', and the credit of England with India hung on this pledge. The eagerness of innumerable Indians to be heard was a danger averted only by the firmness of the Committee and of Lord Selborne whose whole conduct of the proceedings evoked admiration from all quarters. Unless the Committee reported in time the danger that the Bill would be talked

out before the end of the session was real. My evidence was requisitioned just before the Committee adjourned for its summer recess, which was in fact prolonged by the railway strike. I therefore had ample time in which to prepare, and as the questionnaire circulated to witnesses seemed to cover the whole field, I decided to give my evidence in chief in written answers to those questions and thus save the time available to the Committee for public sittings. My oral examination which took only a few hours is not printed in this volume, for it added nothing material to the memorandum.

§ 45. If other evidence were wanting this paper would show that I had had no hand in drafting the Montagu-Chelmsford report. With its argument against the principle of the Congress-League scheme I was altogether at one. The gist of my criticism is that the recommendations are largely at variance with that argument. To ministers responsible to the legislature and electorate, certain functions together with the powers necessary to discharge them were to be transferred. To the Governor-in-Council all other functions, including the maintenance of order, were to be reserved; but without unquestionable power to enact whatever laws he might find necessary to discharge them. To the powers so reserved was applied the principle of divided responsibility, which in the first part of their report, its authors had found unanswerable reasons to condemn.

§ 46. Parliament, on the advice of Lord Selborne's Com-1 mittee, removed this blemish by vesting in the governor final and unmistakable powers to enact by ordinance measures which the Legislative Council may refuse to pass in the shape required. This averts the certainty of dangerous deadlocks between the executive and legislature, and establishes the position that, in the sphere of the reserved powers the elected councils are advisory only.

§ 47. Personally I regret that the Committee did not prescribe a procedure frankly in harmony with the principle that the governor legislates on reserved functions, but only after listening to anything which the elected councils have

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to say on the details as well as on the principles of the measures proposed. In conformity with this principle measures would come before the council for advice. advice would be given first on the principle of the measure as proposed, then on every detail, and lastly on the principle of the measure as amended. But on each point the council would be told whether the governor accepted or rejected their advice before they proceeded to the next one. On a second reading debate they might advise him that the Bill as a whole was unnecessary and unacceptable. If their arguments convinced him he would drop it. If not he would intimate that in his opinion the measure was still necessary for the discharge of the duties imposed on him, and ask them, on that assumption, to say what changes they wished to have made in the details. They would next advise amendments; and he would inform them whether he accepted or rejected each before they proceeded to formulate the next one. The text upon which subsequent amendments were to be based would thus be clear at every stage. Lastly he would ask their opinion on the Bill as amended with his consent. In the light of that advice he would finally decide whether or no to enact it. The advice of the popular spokesmen would thus be on record at every stage, and the decisions of the governor would be taken with that advice plainly before him.

The old practice is, however, retained of submitting Bills under the reserved powers to councils as if they were sovereign legislatures, in the hope that they will emerge in a form acceptable to the governor. The governor may then reject them as a whole, and supersede the legislature by enacting an ordinance of his own, which may be something different from the measure as first introduced. In plain words the governor may not legislate until he has had a definite quarrel with the elected council. It is then superseded, and no further steps are taken even to ask its advice. § 48. I still hope that at this stage governors may try the merits of the procedure here outlined. There is nothing to prevent a governor from asking the elected members to

meet him informally and to give their opinion on every clause, or from telling them whether he accepts or rejects it before asking their advice on the next one. If the text of an ordinance is settled in this manner the electorate will then feel that the governor has only decided against them after listening to what their spokesmen have to say on every detail. The East is used to decisions made from above. Indeed it is used to little else. But the right to be heard on every detail is dear to their hearts, and rightly so. The difficult art of deciding issues for themselves must be learned in the region of the powers transferred to the legislative councils.

§ 49. It is, however, an immeasurable gain that Lord Selborne's committee secured to the governors real power to enact the legislation required to give effect to the duties imposed on them; a power beyond question denied in the scheme as first submitted to Parliament. The strongest part of a strong report is that in which the Joint Committee affirm with emphasis that the legislative powers vested in the governor are meant to be used. There is real danger that this essential feature in the scheme may be allowed to evaporate in practice. As one of the critics points out 1 the rules framed to give effect to the Minto-Morley reforms required that every resolution of the legislative councils should be 'in the form of a specific recommendation addressed to the local government'. It was clearly intended that local governments should have before them an expression of public opinion, give effect to it if advisable in the public interest, but if not refuse to do so and give their reasons. The proper course would have been to forbid officials to vote on such resolutions, leaving them to stand as clear expressions of opinion from members representing the public. But the nerve of Government failed, and so fearful was it of being confronted with unwelcome resolutions that officials were ordered if possible to vote them down. Official members were thus presented in the guise of a political party.

In like manner governors wanting in the nerve to enact unpopular measures which they know in their hearts are necessary for the discharge of the duties laid on them, may be tempted to influence votes in the legislatures to avoid the necessity arising. Such methods will not avail in the end. Government by influence creates distrust, which leads to disorder, though unhappily the evil fruits are not always reaped in the time of the sower. I hope that a governor who interferes with powers clearly vested in ministers and legislative councils, or fails to support them in the execution of those powers, will be summarily recalled. But I hope no less that a governor who fails to exercise powers necessary for the due discharge of the functions reserved to him will also be recalled. Parliament has now given the clearest instructions on the subject. If obstacles to giving effect to them are imposed from above the governor should resign and publish his reasons. A man, better situated then most to judge of such matters, once said to me that resignations in India were too rare.

No government can endure unless the powers conferred on it are adequate to its functions. And this principle is never so important as when two governments are called upon to operate side by side. With the definite breakdown of one, the system, as a whole, may collapse. When I urged that ministers and legislatures should have full and unfettered power to discharge the functions imposed on them, I urged with no less insistence that the same principle must also be applied to those reserved to the Governor-in-Council. The Minto-Morley reforms were fruitful of many useful results. But where the reforms had been carried furthest, provincial executives knew that they could not obtain from the legislatures powers necessary to quell disorder. For these it was recognized that resort must be had to the clear official majority on the Indian legislature. The inevitable crisis, masked and postponed by war legislation, was dangerously developed when the return of peace obliged Government to deal with it on lines prescribed by the existing constitution. The use of the official majority on