THE COUNCIL OF INDIA BILL.
TiORD CURZON has done a very useful piece of work in directing public attention to the character of the Council of India Bill brought into the House of Lords by Lord Crewe. It is almost an open secret that this Bill is the handiwork of Mr. Montagu, one of the younger men in the present Ministry. Though the administrative energy with which Mr. Montagu is imbued is doubtless a useful quality in young politicians, it tends to become dangerous when dealing with the government of three hundred million people who have inherited an ancient civilization. Ever since the Crown became directly responsible for the good government of India in 1858, the Secretary of State for India has been under the legal obligation of consulting the Council of ladle before taking any important step, and, indeed, before taking any decision on many matters which cannot be described as important. That this system interferes with the smooth working of the Department and the bureaucratic ideals of government is perfectly intelli- gible. It is also readily admissible that in the case of minor matters the present system does impose a cumber- some method of working, which might with advantage be improved. The real improvement, however, in this case consists, not in permitting the Secretary of State to ignore the Council of India, but in preventing this mass of
detailed business from being brought to London at all. There are literally thousands of minute points which come up for decision in the India Office which might perfectly well be dealt with in Simla or Delhi, or, better still, in the capitals of the different provinces. La saying this we do not for a moment forget that the financial control exercised by the India Office and the Council of India is of extreme value as a protection to the Indian taxpayer, and financial control must necessarily concern itself with matters of detail as well as with matters of principle. Admitting this, we contend that it is still possible very greatly to reduce the amount of detail sent home from India for decision.
Unfortunately Lord Morley, while at the India Office, appears to have made no attempt whatever at decen- tralization of this character. He instituted reforms for which great credit is due to him. But while giving a quasi- representative character to the Provincial Councils and to the Viceroy's Council, he left these bodies completely dependent upon decisions taken in an office five thousand miles away. Indeed, the whole tendency of his adminis- tration was to bring the government of India and the government of every province of India more completely under the control of the India Office in Whitehall than ever it bad been before. At the same time, to a greater extent than any of his predecessors, be dispensed with the advice of the experienced administrators who constitute the majority of the Council of India. The whole govern- ment of India was concentrated in his hands, and instead of taking advice as required by law from a publicly con- stituted body, he preferred to accept the opinions of numberless people whom he consulted privately. No one, of course, objects to a Secretary of State seeking private advice from competent persons. It is excellent that he should do so. The real objection to Lord Aforley's adminis- tration is that he acted upon the advice no sought without submitting it to the judgment of the Council of India. The unfortunate precedent thus established may be re- garded as the groundwork of the present Bill.
Among the most objectionable features of the Bill is the proposal that the Council of India should no longer meet regularly each week as the existing law requires, but should meet only when summoned by the Secretary of State. That means that a Secretary of State who disliked the subjection of his judgment to any control could dispense with the Council almost entirely by never asking it to meet. This destruction of the powers of the Council is facilitated by a proposal in the Bill that the Secretary of State should have authority to place a large number of subjects in the category of secret subjects, which can then be removed altogether from the cognizance of the Council. It is also proposed to reduce the number of the members of the Council, and virtually to abolish the existing practice under which the Council is divided up into a number of Committees which deal with different branches of the administration of India. Instead, the Secretary of State is to be allowed to consult individual members of the Council privately. Thus the whole tendency of the Bill is in the direction of substi- tuting the autocracy of the Secretary of State for the consultative system of government established by the Act of 1858.
Needless to say, no Secretary of State, not even a super- man, would be able himself to deal with one hundredth part of the matters referred to his decision from India. In practice they would be dealt with, as many of them now are dealt with, by the clerks of the India Office. Those clerks are selected by the ordinary Civil Service examinations, and it is just a chance whether a successful candidate in these annual examinations drifts to the India Office or to any one of the numerous home Departments. Before the candidate who selects the India Office takes up his duties there, no opportunity is provided for him to visit India, nor does such an opportunity afterwards arise except by accident. At the present moment there are numerous clerks in responsible positions in the India Office who have never visited India at all. Therefore, in effect, Lord Crewe's proposal is that the final voice in the government of India shall in future rest with a body of clerks who do ' not necessarily possess the slightest first-hand know- ledge of Indian problems, and many of whom notoriously have no such knowledge. The one body of men in the India Office who know anything of their own personal knowledge about Indian problems is the Council of India, and that body Lord Crewe in effect proposes to abolish.
On the whole,we incline to hope that Lord Curzon's motion for the immediate rejection of the Bill will not be carried, but that instead the House will accept Lord Courtney's proposal to refer the whole matter to a Select Committee. This latter course would give to Parliament the opportunity of dealing in a more comprehensive manner with many of the issues involved in Lord Crewe's Bill. In particular, as is urged above, the most important point is to reduce the number of questions sent home for determination. Incidentally, this reform ought to render possible an appre- ciable reduction in the cost of the India Office. It is somewhat of a scandal that the India Office, which is paid for entirely by the Indian taxpayer, should cost over £200,000 a year. Particularly scandalous is the fact that India is asked to pay the salary of Lord Crewe and the salary of his Under-Secretary, who are members of the British Administration, bound by a closer allegiance to a British political party than to the country which provides their salaries. One practical point arises which affects the House of Commons rather than the House of Lords or the India Office—namely, the regulations with regard to questions upon Indian subjects put to Ministers in the House of Commons. Whenever a question solely affecting the internal administration of a self-governing Colony is put on the paper of the House of Commons, the Speaker rules it out of order, because it is not a matter for which British Ministers are responsible, or with which they could deal without interfering with Colonial self-government To apply precisely the same rule in the case of India is impossible, because the ultimate authority for the government of India rests with the British Cabinet., but it is possible to make an analogous rule which would obviate the worst of the existing evils. At present Indians who feel they have any grievance send home questions to English Members of Parliament to be put down in the House of Commons. The English Member has no means of testing the bona fides of these questions, but, following the easy-going practice of most Members, he will put down the question merely because it has been sent to him. By so doing he imposes upon the Indian Administration the obliga- tion of furnishing an answer to it, and simultaneously secures publicity for the subject in the Indian Press. This practice entails enormous expense upon the taxpayers of India for telegraphing, and it involves great and frequently entirely unjustifiable worry to Indian officials. The rule here suggested is that no question regarding the internal administration of any Indian province should be admitted to the paper of the House of Commons until it has first been put as a question in the Provincial Council concerned, and secondly put as a question in the Viceroy's Council. By this means two important purposes would be effected. First, there would be a great winnowing of questions, so that only matters of importance would be sent to the House of Commons ; and secondly, additional value would be given to the Indian Legislative Councils, because Indian reformers would then recognize that they must go first to their own Councils before appealing to England.
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