again brought to the front the idea of Swaraj or Home Rule, which was so prominent in the Anti-Partition agitation in Bengal of 1905-12. What she meant by Home Rule is explained in her own words,

'India asked to be governed by her own men freely elected by herself; to make and break Ministers at her will; to carry arms, to have her own army, her own navy, her own volunteers; to levy her own taxes, to make her own budget; to educate her own sons; in fact to be a Sovereign Nation within her own borders, giving allegiance only to the Imperial Crown.'

On Sept. 3, 1916, Mrs Besant established the Home Rule League to promote the universal adoption of this programme. Owing to the generally seditious tone of her paper, the Madras Government called upon her to find pecuniary security for its better management under the Press Act. She did not mend her ways, so her security was soon forfeited. On depositing the larger sum required for permission to continue New India,' she appealed to the Madras High Court against the first forfeiture, but her appeal was dismissed. On March 7, 1917, the Press Association appealed to Lord Chelmsford to repeal the Press Act. This he refused to do, quoting, in his reply, two articles from New India' as flagrantly mischievous. Mr Justice Ayling, of the Madras High Court, in his judgment in the Besant appeal case, had remarked that these articles seemed to him 'pernicious writing, and writing which must tend to encourage political assassination, by removing the public detestation of such crimes.'

Mrs Besant manifested no disposition to change her defiant attitude, so she, with her co-adjutors, Messrs Arundell and Wadia, were interned, under the Defence of India Act, by order of the Madras Government, July 7, 1917. She did not remain in confinement long, for in September the Viceroy announced that she would be released, on condition of a pledge to abstain from further violent agitation during the war. The Secretary of State had interfered in her favour, and asked the Government of India whether, as circumstances had changed since his Declaration of Aug. 20, she could not be released from internment.

In his speech in February 1921, at the inauguration of the Council of State and the Imperial Legislative Assembly at Delhi, Lord Chelmsford traced the development of British Constitutional Government in India, showing that the events of past and present history could be considered as a coherent whole, and have formed part of a uniform policy of liberalising the structure of government in India. He told his hearers that throughout 1916 and the first half of 1917, he had pressed upon the Home Government the advisability of clearly defining the aim of British policy in India, and the steps to be taken to secure that aim. It was after this action by Lord Chelmsford that the declaration of August 1917 was made; and the Viceroy argued that this declaration was ' only the most recent and most memorable manifestation of a tendency that has been operative throughout British rule.' It follows from this that the Viceroy is more, and the Secretary of State less, responsible for the Reforms than has generally been supposed.

However this may be, the declaration to which the late Viceroy referred, made in the House of Commons on Aug. 20, 1917, was an epoch-making event. On that day Mr Montagu declared that the future policy of the British Government was to be the increasing association of Indians in every branch of the Administration, and the gradual development of self-governing institutions, with a view to the progressive realisation of self-government in India as an integral part of the British Empire.' He declined to consider the demand for Home Rule with a time limit, and continued:

'The British Government and the Government of India, on whom the responsibility lies for the welfare of the Indian people, must be judges of the time and measure of each advance; and they must be guided by the co-operation received from those on whom new opportunities of service will be thus conferred, and by the extent to which it is found that confidence can be reposed in their sense of responsibility.'

At the same time he announced that he would go to India in the winter of 1917-18 to discuss the Reforms with the Viceroy and other persons interested. Mr Montagu arrived in India on Nov. 9, and on the 26th received the Congress and Moslem League Address at

Delhi, with the joint scheme of reform. All over the country the Home Rule Leagues and District Associations re-echoed the same sentiments. The joint scheme was hailed as sufficient evidence that Hindus and Mahomedans could agree. The political Millennium had come, and the Hindu lion was ready to lie down with the Mahomedan lamb. The Shahabad anti-cow-killing riots of September 1917 provided sad evidence to the contrary.

The Congress proposals did not meet with universal acceptance. Considerable opposition was manifested to them in Madras by non-Brahman Hindus, such as the Panchamas or untouchables' and a considerable section of the castes above them, under the leadership of the late Dr Nair and Sir T. Chetty, Chairman of the Madras Municipality. In Bombay the Mahars (or depressed classes) and in Bengal the Namasudras opposed the Reforms. All over India, the permanently resident minorities such as the Anglo-Indians and most of the Indian Christians were unfavourable. The anti-Reform speech of Raja Sobhanadri Appa Rao Bahadur, Zemindar of Telaprole, to a non-Brahman conference at Tinnevelly, shows the point of view of these classes

'Great Britain has no right to say to us, I will put over you an oligarchy in which you have no share, which you distrust, and which is socially contemptuous of you. I will let that oligarchy shape its policy as it pleases, and if you dare dispute this authority, then I, even if I disapprove this policy, will use the British army to enforce a non-British policy. We are not cattle to be sold by one master to another, with the further humiliation of having the first master standing by with a bludgeon, in case we object to be sold.'

Whilst Mr Montagu was in India, he desired to preserve an atmosphere of calmness for the consideration of his Reforms. For this reason, Mrs Besant was released from prison, and Sir Michael. O'Dwyer, LieutenantGovernor of the Panjab, was called on by the Viceroy to apologise to those members of the Imperial Legislative Council whose feelings were hurt by Sir Michael's speech (September 1917), praising the work of the Panjab during the war, somewhat at the expense of the other provinces. In spite of these efforts at conciliation, Government

received a rebuff in the election of Mrs Besant as President of the Congress which met at Calcutta in 1917, and by that of Mr Mahomed Ali as President of the AllIndia Moslem League, mainly because they had both been interned,

The Montagu-Chelmsford proposals for Reform, published on July 4, 1918, were intended as a recognition of the generous assistance in men, money, and supplies afforded by India during the war. By means of Western education, a New India has been formed, to a certain extent united in thought, purpose, and political outlook, which claims to direct its own affairs and govern itself. The object of the Reforms is to place India on the path to ultimate self-government within the British Empire. Mr Montagu and Lord Chelmsford remark that, if the reforms are to succeed,

'Indian citizens will have to show capacity and self-reliance in the place of helplessness, to be animated by a sense of nationhood in the place of caste or communal feeling. They must be educated and stirred into becoming a nation. The masses accept any government which prevents others from robbing them, and by its system of civil jurisprudence allows them to enrich themselves. The placid, pathetic contentment of the masses is not the soil in which such Indian nationhood can grow, and we feel that in deliberately disturbing it, we are working for India's highest good.'

The originators of the Reforms acknowledge that it was a bold step to introduce responsible government into India; and the whole scheme depends, for its success or failure, upon whether the educated classes will use the political power entrusted to them, not for their own selfish interests, but as trustees for the inarticulate masses, till the masses themselves can be taught to take an interest in their own government. They maintain that there is no alternative but trust in the educated classes, and that the late Mr Gokhale's example is an encouragement to hope for the best.

To admit Indians to political power the system of Dyarchy has been invented. In India the Dyarchy is a system of provincial government with two branches, one dealing with 'Reserved' subjects, such as Land Revenue, Police, Law, and Order, and the other dealing with

'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