We have noted that the Manchester Guardian quotes Mr. Sastri
as using the term "responsible Government." In this connexion we read with much interest some remarks by Mr. J. A. Spender in the News-Chronicle of Tuesday. He was writing about Germany, but went an to apply his argument to India. He said that when the Germans chose the British model of responsible Government for their Federal Assembly, instead of the American model, he expressed his misgivings on the ground that there would not be enough cohesion for stability among the ill-assorted German States. He feels the same misgivings about India. Unfortunately, in most discussions, as we have often complained, people will not distinguish carefully between responsible and representative Governments. The American democracy is representative, but has not proceeded to that further stage which in Great Britain has made the Executive directly responsible to Parliament. In the United States, of course, the Executive is not responsible to Congress, but only to the President. This undeveloped form of democracy, so to call it, has at least one advantage—that whatever may happen in Parliament a certain stability is assured during a
President's term of office. That is why Mr. Spender would like to see India beginning with representative and not with responsible Government at the Centre. Judging by experience, we cannot feel sure that Mr. Sastri used the word " responsible " in the exact British sense.
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