s of service would be conferred, and the extent to which it was found that confidence could be placed in their sense of responsibility.

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It would have been better to have abstained from measuring the future; but the conditions on which progress must necessarily depend were clearly defined. The visit of the Secretary of State and the publication on July 8, 1918, of the proposals of Mr Montagu, Lord Chelmsford, and their Councillors followed. The reformers disclaimed all intention of satisfying political impatience. They did not mean their plans to result merely in the transfer of powers from a bureaucracy to an oligarchy.' Their scheme was welcomed by the Moderate politicians who, however, proposed to ask for more, as indeed they were virtually invited to do. The Extremists condemned the scheme as inadequate and disappointing, one gentleman describing it as 'a monster fondling of the Round Table.' Its main features were accepted by a Joint-Parliamentary Committee, which sat for some months in London in 1919, and they passed into law in the December of that year. When speaking at the inauguration of the new central Legislature by H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught at Delhi, in February 1921, Lord Chelmsford said that one era had been closed and another opened. The most innovating provisions of the Government of India Act of 1919 had, however, their roots in the past, in the Councils Act of 1861, the enlarged councils of 1892, and the Morley-Minto reforms. From the last, the element of responsibility was absent, for the final decision rested with the Government, and the Councils were left with no functions but that of criticism. The demand of educated Indians for a larger share in the government gained in volume and intensity every year and could not find adequate satisfaction within the framework of the Morley-Minto constitution. Confronted with this situation in the years of 1916-17 the Government of India had decided to seek a new point of departure for British policy. The declaration of August 1917 was the result. The British Government would now become a guiding authority, whose rôle it would be to assist the steps of India along the road that eventually would lead to complete self-government within the Empire.

The new constitution imposed upon British India, a form of government hitherto unknown, designed carefully and with much ingenuity to satisfy not any spontaneous demand of the people at large, but the aspirations of that section which had learnt its political creeds from English teaching and was impatient to free itself from foreign control. In many members of this section there was present the belief that when once this freedom had been attained, India could resume the great position she occupied in the ancient world, and in all the desire that in the new age which was now beginning she should take an honoured place in the councils of the nations. To these aspirations Parliament was willing to make a fair and generous response. But the actual facts of modern India; the complexity of its populations; their still widespread illiteracy; their deep religious and racial cleavages; their diversity of thought and outlook, compelled some measure of caution. While, therefore, administration was in a marked degree transferred to parliaments with limited powers in the nine major provinces, and at headquarters a central legislature consisting of two chambers was given considerable authority over the budget from which the government derived its motive power, precautions were taken to prevent deadlocks. Reserve powers were given both to the GovernorGeneral and to governors of provinces which enabled them on emergency to pass necessary laws, and allot funds for necessary purposes, independently of their Legislatures but subject to the approval of the British Parliament.

The system called Dyarchy was introduced into the major provinces. It divided a provincial government into halves and its functions into 'reserved' or absolutely vital, such as law and order, and transferred' or less urgently essential. For the former the governor and two councillors, for the latter the governor and two or more popular ministers would be responsible. If all went smoothly 'reserved' functions would become 'transferred' until ministers held all administrative portfolios and government responsible to the peoples of the major provinces was an accomplished fact. It was not, however, clear what would happen then at central headquarters or in the government of India

generally. Dyarchy was denounced on Jan. 15, 1919, by five Heads of Provinces as 'exposing a large surface to legislative, administrative, and financial friction, and having all the elements which made for division at a time when there was most need for co-operation.' At the same time the five provincial governors criticised the whole scheme put forward by the Secretary of State and Viceroy as a leap in the dark' in respect of the probable conduct of the new and untried electorates (about six million strong and including many illiterate persons); they noticed the misgivings current in all the Services, European and Indian, as to prospects under a dual form of government; and they made counterproposals. But the Joint Parliamentary Committee preferred Dyarchy, and Parliament endorsed the choice.

The schemes of reforms provided for a council of princes, but did not interfere with constitutional arrangements in or relating to Native States. The Act provided that, ten years after its passing, the Secretary of State would submit to Parliament the names of persons who would serve on a commission to inquire into, and report on, the results of all these changes and the growth of education. They would say to what extent the degree of responsible government then existing should be extended, modified, or restricted. Another feature of the Reforms was a programme of progressive reduction in the European element which was predominant in the higher civil services. In the Indian Civil Service, for example, from 1920 onward, recruitment was arranged with the object of providing a proportion of Indian selected candidates, beginning at 33 and rising to 48 per cent. of the whole number. Entrance examinations would be held in India as well as in England.

The change of ideas implied by this arrangement is apparent from some passages in a notable correspondence laid before Parliament in 1894. A resolution, moved by a private member, had passed through the House of Commons in favour of simultaneous examinations in India and England for admission to the Indian Civil Service. The Government of India protested very strongly against any measure likely to reduce the British element. It was a great mistake to suppose that the principles of law and order had penetrated the

minds of the Indian people so deeply that this could be done; and the number of the men upon whom, and not immediately upon military force, British rule rested, was extraordinarily small. A letter was forwarded from Sir Dennis Fitzpatrick, Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab, who represented that, apart from the danger of religious rioting, there were always to be found in many parts of India, predatory classes ready to break out whenever British administration might be temporarily relaxed or British control disorganised. It was a mistake to suppose that the substitution of India for British administrators would be popular with the masses; its popularity would be limited to the advanced Indians, a small fraction of the population.

6

'British rule,' he wrote, brought this country out of a state of chaos, and if the grasp of the British power were relaxed, chaos with all its attendant horrors would come again. Englishmen, even Englishmen who spend all their lives in India, are not given to reflecting much on this, and I doubt whether many natives of the country now-adays think of it, though it was a good deal present to the minds of the people of the Punjab when I first came to India.'

After reading through the whole correspondence the Secretary of State, H. H. Fowler (the late Lord Wolverhampton), decided that there were insuperable objections to any measures calculated to reduce the British element in the Civil Service. Time, however, had gone on since then; ideas had altered; much water had flowed under the bridge, and the Declaration of 1917 prescribed 'the increasing association of Indians in every branch of the administration.' So measures were now adopted which combined with other circumstances to produce such a shrinkage of recruitment for the Indian Civil Service that very soon it showed signs of ceasing altogether. On Aug. 2, 1922, Mr Lloyd George, whose Cabinet had been responsible for the Declaration of 1917, found it necessary to say in the House of Commons that he could see no period when the people of India would be able to dispense with the guidance and assistance of the British Civil Service. Few indeed in number, they were the frame of the structure, and without them that structure would collapse. Afterwards a remedy for the

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slump in recruitment was found by the appointment of the British-cum-Indian Lee Commission, whose recommendations were, in the main, adopted by the Secretary of State and by Parliament. The chief principles accepted were that recruitment for the Indian Civil Service and the Police should be arranged with the view of producing a service half European and half Indian within fifteen and twenty-five years from the year 1925. The All-India Services employed in 'reserved' fields of administration would continue to be controlled and appointed by the Secretary of State in Council; but the Educational, Agricultural, and other Services working in transferred' fields of administration were provincialised. Convinced that British recruitment for the Indian Civil Service was a cause of the gravest urgency and importance,* Lord Birkenhead spared no pains to resuscitate it, and succeeded in doing so.

The new constitution of British India was launched under a lowering sky. Lord Chelmsford's Government had inherited from their predecessors the ominous legacy of failure to grapple effectively with Hindu revolutionary terrorism in Bengal. This failure, which was destined to produce a long succession of disastrous consequences, went back to Morley-Minto days. Some years before the War it had become evident that trial after trial of revolutionary criminals was halting or breaking down in Bengal because witnesses feared to give evidence in open Court. Proposals for special legislation were discussed, but nothing was decided. The real obstacle was British reluctance to imprison any person without regular trial in open Court. At the end of 1913 the situation was regarded as very dangerous. The conspiracies had left a long trail of murders of police officers, bomb outrages, robberies, and ruined lives. The movement intensified after the commencement of the War. In 1915 it was absolutely necessary, for this and other reasons, to pass a Defence of India Act. Its provisions proved effective when rigorously applied; but with the conclusion of the War the Act would lapse, and it was desirable that some new measure should take its place. Toward the close of 1917 the central government, at the suggestion of the

See Parliamentary Debates, House of Lords, April 1, 1925.