however, carried out his threat, and he and his friends wrecked
that session of the Congress amidst scenes of disgraceful riot and
confusion.

Yet even after this the "moderates" lacked the courage of their
convictions. The breach has never been altogether repaired, but there
have been frequent negotiations and exchanges of courtesies. In the very
next year at Madras a man as incapable of promoting or approving
criminal forms of agitation as Dr. Rash Behari Ghose was holding out the
olive branch to "the wayward wanderers" who had treated him so
despitefully at Surat; and last year at Lahore, when Pandit Mohan
Malavya was expounding from the chair the latest formula adopted by
Congress as a definition of its aims, his chief anxiety seemed to be to
prove that it offered no obstacle to the return of the Surat insurgents
to the fold. This formula, it may be mentioned, lays down that "the
objects of the Indian National Congress are the attainment by the people
of India of a system of Government similar to that enjoyed by the
self-governing members of the British Empire and a participation by them
in the rights and responsibilities of the Empire on equal terms." This
is a formula which many "moderates" no doubt construe in a spirit of
genuine loyalty, but it does not exclude the construction which more
"advanced" politicians like Mr. Pal place upon _Swaraj_.

The last session of the Congress at Lahore, in December last, is
generally admitted to have aroused very little enthusiasm, and there are
many who believe that, weakened as it has been by recent dissensions, it
will scarcely survive the creation of the new enlarged Councils. These
Councils have been so constituted that they will be able to discharge
usefully the functions which the Congress arrogated to itself without
any title or authority. Perhaps it was the consciousness that the
Congress would at any rate be henceforth overshadowed by the new
Councils that led Pandit Malavya to inveigh so bitterly in his
presidential address at Lahore against the shape ultimately given to the
reforms. What one may hope above all is that the Councils will help to
give the Indian "moderates" a little more self-reliance than they have
hitherto shown. The Indian National Congress has at all times contained
many men of high character and ability, devoted to what they conceived
to be the best interests of their country, and at first, at any rate,
quite ready to acknowledge the benefits o