The debate on the reinserted third clause—that empowering the Viceroy
in Council to create provincial Executive Councils— led to an important intimation by the Government that, acting on a suggestion thrown out by Lord Percy, they would be prepared when the Bill returned to the Lords to introduce words giving Parliament effective control over proposals for the extension of the system of Executive Councils outside Bengal. Mr. Hobhouse, returning to the question of the treatment of deported natives, repeated that the Governmett aid not intend that the fact of deportation should of itself disqualify a man, after his release, as a candidate for a Legislative Council. The Bill was then read a third time. We sincerely trust that the Government will make their position more clear and definite than it is at present in regard to the election of the Mohammedan members. The demand for the allotment of a fixed number of Mohammedan members elected from a Mohammedan register seems to us eminently reasonable. Minorities are naturally, and indeed necessarily, timid as to schemes for their protection. Unless those schemes are absolute and indefeasible they are sure to seem useless.
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