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to have little chance of taking shape as ultimate actualities. We are not aware how far the measure will be carried out, what limitation may be put upon it or whether the control of the official chairman will not be replaced by a higher and more distant but eventually more effective control. We shall have to be thoroughly assured on these points before we can allow that any measure of local self-government included in the measure can outweigh the nugatory character of the main change in the instruments of government. Unless the local self-government is complete and ungrudging, it may be a convenient measure and to a slight extent strengthen the educated glass in the mofussils, but it cannot be a vital measure or even one of the first importance ainong changes of administrative structure. In any case it cannot outweigh, however fult it may be, the disas trous character of the principle of separato electorates introduced by Lord Morley, intentionally or uninten tionally, as the thin end of a wedge which, when driven well home, will break our growing nationality into a hundred jarring pieces. Only by standing aloof from the new councils can this destruction be avoided. This is the point on which we feel bound to lay stress again and again because it is the one vital and effective thing in the new measure, all the rest is mere frippery and meaningless decoration. It would be a poor statesmanship which bought & small and temporary gain by throwing away the future of the nation and the hope of an united India, and posterity will have reason to curse the memory of any popular leader who for the sake either of more gilt on the "gilded shams" or even for a real measure of local self-government, induces the nation to accept the reforms with the separate electorate and special previ leges for one community as an es sential feature, The Limitations of the Act.
There is another point in this connection which destroys the little value that might possibly have attached to the argument from Lord Morley's intentions about local selfgovernment. One peruses the Act in vain for a guarantee of any mensure of reform which may be conceded under it to the people except the number of elected and nominated
KÄRMATOGIN.
members in the Councils. Every thing else, literally everything else, is left to the discretion of AngloIndian officialdom. No doubt the present Secretary of State will have the ultimate decision as to the rules of election, nomination, formation of electorates, acceptance or rejection by the Government of elected members, veto, division, interpellation etc., and he may decide to put the felt on thickly and copiously. But even if this be done, not one of these things will be assured to us, not one of them but may be reversed by subsoquent Viceroys and Secretaries of State without infringing, the meagre provisions of this Act. As for local self-government we fail to find any guarantee either for its introduction or, if introduced,-as, no doubt, Lord Morley will have some slight respect even yet for his own reputation,-for its retention in the future, What is to prevent
a future Alexander Mackenzie in the
Viceregal seat from so altering any measure that may be given as to ronder it nugatory and what is to prevent a future Curzon in the India Office from confirming this step to rearwards? So far as we have been able to find, nothing at all. We are just where we were before, with concessions granted by arbitrary condescension which may be withdrawn at any moment by arbitrary arrogance. Well may Lord Morley say that this is not a measure of self-government and, if he thought it were, he would not concode the measure. The nationalist party is not opposed to all acceptance of reform; it would welcome and support a measure which would really concede even a minimum of control and provide a means for future expansion while perpetually guarantee ing the small amount conceded; but a measure by which no control is given, no step taken is guaranteed as to permanence and no provision
made for future expansion is one which no thinking man would care to have even apart from other defects, and no practical politician will look at for a moment when coupled with provisions disastrous to the future of the nation. Shall we accept the Partition?
This may sound a startling proposition to a nation which is perpetually reaffirming its decision never to accept the settled fact: But it rises definitely upon the question of accepting the reforms. We cannot conceal from ourselves the sturingly
patent fact that if we accept the reforms, we accept the Partition. The new changes are partly meant to confirm the division which every English statesman deelares. it to be essential to British prestige to perpetuate, and if the older lenders of West Bengal accept the reforms and stand for Sir Edward
Baker's Council or allow their followers to stand for it, the sooner the partition resolution is deleted from the proceedings of Provincial and District conferences and the celebration of the 16th October discontinued, the better for our. national honesty and sincerity. If the West Bengal leaders, who under the pressure of public opinion gave up their seats on the old Council and the idea of becoming Honourables in future, join the reformed Council in Calcutta, there is nothing to prevent the East Bengal leaders from joining Sir Lancelot Hare's Council in the capital of the New Province. If that happens, where will the Anti-Partition agitation be and where the solemn vow of unity? Ta sulemaly meet once A year and declare that we will never, never accept what we have accepted, would be a farce too hy-. pocritical for the conscience of the most cynical or the intelligence of the most deluded to tolerate. Any revival of the fiction that it is East Bengal which has been partitioned from West therefore there is no obligation on Bengal and the West Bengal leaders to boycott the Councils while the East Bengal leaders are so bound, will not be suffered. But the Moderates have definitely and rigidly excluded political boycott from their programme; yet what is the abstention from the Councils but a political boycott;? If they carry this exclusion to its logical result and accept the reformed Councils, that is the end of the Anti-Partition agitation. Lord Morley's policy will be entirely successful and Mr Gokhale may still more loudly acclaim him as the saviour of India from a state of anarchy and chaos. '
THE PROCESS OF EVOLUTION.
The end of a stage of evolution is usually marked by a powerful recrudescence of all that has to go out. of the evolution, It is, principle, of Nature that in order to get.
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