f British rule and to testify
to their conviction that the maintenance of British rule is essential to
the welfare and safety of India. Many of them must have seen that the
constant denunciation of Government by men who claimed to represent the
intelligence of the country must tend to stimulate a spirit of
disaffection and revolt amongst their more ignorant and inexperienced
fellow-countrymen. Yet not one of them had the courage to face the risk
of temporary unpopularity by pointing out the danger of the inclined
plane down which they were sliding, until they actually saw themselves
being swept hopelessly off their feet at Surat. It was then too late to
avert the consequences of pusillanimity or to shake off their share of
responsibility for the evils which the tolerance they had too long
extended to the methods of their more violent colleagues had helped to
produce. One of the main purposes of the Indian National Congress has
avowedly been to set up a claim for the introduction of representative
government in India. Yet it has itself seldom escaped the control of a
handful of masterful leaders who have ruled it in the most irresponsible
and despotic fashion. The Congress has, in fact, displayed exactly the
same feature which has been so markedly manifested in the case of
municipalities, namely, the tendency of "representative" institutions in
India to resolve themselves into machines operated by, and for the
benefit of, an extremely limited and domineering oligarchy.

CHAPTER XIII.

CONSTITUTIONAL REFORMS.

When Lord Minto closed at the end of March the first Session of the
Imperial Council, as the Viceroy's Legislative Council, enlarged under
the Indian Councils Act of 1909, is now officially designated, in
contradistinction to the enlarged Provincial Councils of Provincial
Governments, his Excellency very properly described it as "a memorable
Session." It was, indeed, far more than that. Even to the outward eye
the old Council Chamber at Government House presented a very significant
spectacle, to which the portrait of Warren Hastings over the Viceregal
Chair always seemed to add a strange note of admiration. The round table
at which the members of the Viceroy's Legislative Council used to
gather, with far less of formality, had disappeared, and the 59 members
of the enlarged Council had their appointed seats disposed in a double
hemicycle facing the Chair. They sat for the most part according to
provinces,