e heads of the most important administrative and executive
departments should be kept in constant attendance during debates in
which many of them, are not in any way directly concerned, and that they
should thus be detained in Calcutta at a season when their presence
would be far more useful elsewhere, constitutes one of the most serious
of the many practical drawbacks of the new system for which a remedy
will have to be found. It is as if not only the Parliamentary
representatives but the permanent officials of our own great public
departments were expected to sit through the debates in the House of
Commons, without even the facilities which the private rooms of
Ministers, the library, and the smoking rooms at Westminster afford for
quiet intervals of work between the division bells. Nor is that all. The
Council sat during the very months of the short "cold weather," when it
is customary and alone practicable for heads of departments to undertake
their annual tours of inspection. The _reductio ad absurdum_ is surely
reached in the case of the Commander-in-Chief and the Chief of the
Staff. Though the Imperial Council is itself debarred from dealing with
Army questions, they could be seen any day sitting through the debates
merely because their votes might conceivably be required to maintain the
official majority, and, except for one or two short excursions in the
intervals between the meetings of Council, they were tied to Calcutta
when they ought to have been travelling about the country and inspecting
the troops. Yet, it is generally admitted that at no period since the
Mutiny has it been more important for the Commander-in-Chief to maintain
the closest possible contact with the native army--especially when the
Commander-in-Chief is as popular with the Indian soldier as Sir O'Moore
Creagh.

Another obvious drawback of the present arrangements is the
inconvenience to which members of Council from the provinces were
subjected by the irregular intervals at which the Council held its
actual sittings. Either they had to waste their time at Calcutta during
the intervals, to the detriment of their interests at home, or they had
to spend days in railway carriages rushing backwards and forwards from
their homes to the capital, for in a country of such magnificent
distances there are few journeys that take less than 24 hours, and from
Calcutta, for instance, either to Madras or to Bombay takes the best
part of 48 hours. Unless