M 'Transferred' subjects, such as Local Self-Government, Medical and Sanitary administration, Education, Public Works, Agriculture, and Charitable Endowments. The branch dealing with 'Reserved' subjects consists of a Governor and two Executive Councillors (one British and one Indian), and that dealing with 'Transferred' subjects, of the same Governor and one or more Ministers nominated by him from among the elected members of the Legislative Council, who will hold office for the same period as the Council. The Governor, as President of both branches, will be able to promote co-operation between them, advise his Ministers, and, in the last resort, refuse assent to their proposals when the consequences of acquiescence would clearly be serious.' The Joint Parliamentary Committee rejected the MontaguChelmsford proposal for nominated Grand Committees of the Legislative Council, for the purpose of passing essential but opposed legislation, but allowed the Governors the power of passing laws in respect of 'Reserved' subjects on their own responsibility. The Budget is to be laid before the Legislative Council annually. If the Government proposals are not accepted, the Governorin-Council is to have the power to restore what has been rejected to the Budget, on his certificate that the expenditure is essential to the peace and tranquillity of the province, or for the discharge of his responsibility for 'Reserved' subjects. A Parliamentary Commission is to be appointed every ten years to report upon the progress of the Reforms, and whether more departments should be added to the Transferred' list. The Dyarchy system does not apply to the Government of India, in which the former Imperial Legislative Council is replaced by the Council of State and the Indian Legislative Assembly. The Council of State has a small official majority, and consists of sixty members, partly elected and partly nominated by the Viceroy, with a nominated President. Of the nominated members, not more than twenty may be officials. It is intended to check hasty or inconsiderate legislation. The Parliamentary Committee disapproved of the proposal to deprive the Legislative Assembly of the power of rejecting or modifying any Bill certified by the Viceroy to be essential to the interests of peace, order, and good government, including sound financial administration, but gave the Viceroy the same power of passing laws on his own responsibility as is allowed to Provincial Governors. The Indian Legislative Assembly consists of one hundred members, two-thirds elected, and one-third nominated, with a President possessing experience of the British House of Commons. To this post the Viceroy has appointed Mr A. F. Whyte, late M.P. for Perth; but, at the end of four years, the Presidents both of the Indian Legislative Assembly and of the Provincial Legislative Councils will be elected by the members instead of being nominated. In the Viceroy's Executive Council, three members of British birth are to be public servants with not less than ten years' experience in India, three are to be Indians, with a seventh member who must have definite legal qualifications, which may be acquired either in India or in the United Kingdom. The percentage of Indians to be employed in the Indian Civil Service is to be 33 per cent. and is to increase every year by 1 per cent. to a maximum of 48 per cent., when the question of the percentage will come under the review of this Decennial Commission. The Government of India will be increasingly autonomous, as the Secretary of State's interference will be limited to cases in which India has to do with other countries included in the British Empire or with foreign nations. He will maintain a control over expenditure on 'transferred' departments which is likely to affect the prospects or rights of the All India services which he recruits. The cost of the India Office, including that of the Secretary of State's salary, is to be included in the British Estimates, and any member of the House of Commons wishing to criticise adversely British policy in India will have the power to move a reduction of the Secretary of State's salary, when the Estimates for the expenditure of the India Office are under consideration, instead of, as formerly, during the Indian Budget Debate. Two Committees were appointed to investigate points connected with the Reforms. One, under the chairmanship of Lord Southborough, was to devise a scheme for the franchise, its duty being 'to number the persons who can in the different parts of the country be reasonably entrusted with the duties of citizenship, and to ascertain what sort of a franchise will be suited to local conditions, and how interests, that may be unable to find adequate representation in such constituencies, are to be represented.' This Committee reported in 1919 in favour of a scheme for territorial constituencies with about 5,000,000 voters, and communal representation for Mahomedans, Sikhs, Indian Christians, Anglo-Indians, and. Europeans. The greatness of the advance made in the direction of broadening the basis of political power will be appreciated, when it is remembered that under the Morley-Minto Reforms there were only about 33,000 voters. The other Committee met under the Chairmanship of Mr R. Feetham, Legal Adviser to the High Commissioner of South Africa. Its object was to secure autonomy for the Provinces, by dividing political functions and heads of revenue between the Government of India and Provincial Governments, in such a way as to relieve the Provincial Governments from the control of the Government of India, to the same extent as the Government of India itself was relieved from the control of the Secretary of State. The Government of India Bill, embodying the Montagu-Chelmsford Reform proposals, was introduced in the Commons in June 1919., After its second reading, it was considered by a Joint Committee of the Lords and Commons under the chairmanship of Lord Selborne.* On the report of this Joint Committee, the Bill passed through its remaining stages in the Commons, was sent to the Lords, and received the Royal Assent in December 1919. No sooner were the Montagu-Chelmsford Reform Proposals published (July 4, 1918) than the Indian Extremist party began to find fault with them as insufficient. The refusal to extend the Dyarchy scheme to the Government of India especially excited their indignation. They gave the Reform Scheme but a short The Committee, in addition to certain modifications already mentioned, introduced two important amendments: 1. That India should enjoy the same Fiscal Liberty as the self-governing Colonies. 2. That the whole field of Education should be 'transferred' to Ministers. shrift, broke off from the Moderates, and held a congress of their own at Bombay on Aug. 29, under the Presidency of Syed Hassan Iman, ex-judge of the Patna High Court. The Extremist Congress rejected the Reform scheme, and demanded completely responsible government for the Provinces at the end of six years, and, for Hindustan as a whole, at the end of fifteen. After this split Mrs Besant severed her connexion with the Extremists, and in consequence was compared by them to Putanna, the fiend who tried to strangle the infant Krishna. In January 1921 she broke away from the National Congress altogether, regarding it as the organ of the Extremists, and likely to lead India to ruin. During the war, a widespread anarchical conspiracy was revealed by the Rowlatt Sedition Inquiry Commission. In 1916 Lord Carmichael, Governor of Bengal, gave the figures of political crime in that province, in the period 1907-16, as amounting to 39 murders and over 100 political dacoities. In 1917, his successor, Lord Ronaldshay, in a speech at Dacca, regretted that 'the gruesome catalogue has been added to, even during the short period of my own rule,' and announced the appointment of a Commission of Inquiry under an English Judge of the High Court. The Commission was presided over by Mr Justice Rowlatt, and included two Hindu lawyers of high caste and Congress sympathies. Its report, which was unanimous, was published on Aug. 15, 1919. The report includes a survey from 1907 to 1917 of seditious conspiracies and crimes in Bombay, Bengal, the United Provinces, the Panjab, Madras, and Burma, with special emphasis on Bengal and the Panjab, as the worst centres of conspiracy. It describes the dangers which threatened India in 1915, from German intrigues for the purpose of fomenting rebellion in Bengal and of landing cargoes of arms for the use of the rebels, and from the anarchical activities of the emigrants of the Ghadr conspiracy in the Panjab, who had returned from America. This Ghadr conspiracy was aimed at the British Government of India with the object of taking revenge upon it, for the action of the self-governing Colonies, especially Canada and South Africa, in restricting the free immigration of Asiatics. The report goes on to refer to anti-British associations among the Mahomedans, and describes the method of organisation of secret societies. It concludes by giving reasons for the failure of the administration of justice under the Ordinary Law, and makes suggestions for its amendment. Since the Defence of India Act (1915), which was very useful in fighting sedition, became inoperative six months after the Peace, and since the danger from sedition still threatened, it was important to have some legal provision to put in its place. The Rowlatt Commission proposed certain emergency measures, to be put in force after a notification by the Governor-General declaring a province or district to be so disturbed as to justify them. In the proclaimed province or district, (1) All persons accused of sedition were to be tried before three judges of the highest status, without appeal and without assessors or juries who might be influenced by public opinion or terrorism. (2) Provincial Governments were to be invested with powers of internment, without trial, of persons suspected of seditious crime, similar to those provided by the Defence of India Act, but modified by checks in the shape of local investigating and visiting committees, in which non-officials were to take part. The system of internment under the Defence of India Act had been inquired into by Mr Justice Beachcroft and Sir Narayan Chandravarkar, ex-judge of the Bombay High Court. Out of 806 cases inquired into by them they recommended release in only six. The Rowlatt Commission, therefore, saw no risk in the continuance of internment even in time of peace. Early in 1919, the Government of India announced that they would introduce legislation, on the lines of the Report of the Rowlatt Commission, in the February session of the Imperial Legislative Council. The Government Bills 'to cope with anarchical and revolutionary crime' met with bitter opposition in the Legislative Council, which was not disarmed by the Government concession that they should be only in force for three years; but the Bills were ultimately passed into law on March 18, 1919. It was this event which brought Mr Gandhi into prominence as the leading champion of Indian nationalism. He was was a member of the English bar who first became known through his opposition to the |