Although the separation of departments in India is less complete than in England, and the authority of a member of Council much less extensive and exclusive than that of an English Secretary of State, the members of Council are now virtually Cabinet ministers, each of whom has charge of one or more of the great departments of the Government. Their ordinary duties are rather those of administrators than of councillors. The Governor-General regulates the manner in which the public business shall be distributed among them. He usually keeps the Foreign department in his own hands; the other departments are-Home, Revenue and Agriculture, Finance and Commerce, Military, Public Works, and Legislative. While the member of Council takes the place of the English Secretary of State, there is in each department a Secretary holding a position analogous to that of a permanent Under-secretary in England. It is the duty of this secretary to place every case before the Governor-General or member in charge of his department, in a form in which it is ready for decision. He submits with it a statement of his own opinion. In minor cases the member of Council passes orders which are final. If the matter be one of greater importance, he sends on the papers, with his own orders, to the Governor-General for his approval. If the Governor-General concurs, and thinks further discussion unnecessary, the orders are issued. If he does not concur, he directs that the case shall be brought before the Council, as in England an important case might come before the Cabinet. The duty rests upon the secretary, apart from his responsibility towards the member of Council in charge of the department, of bringing personally to the knowledge of the GovernorGeneral every matter of special importance. All orders

of the Government are issued in the name of the Governor-General in Council.

Although, when a question comes before the whole Council, it is usually decided in accordance with the opinions of the majority, power is reserved by law to the Governor-General to act on his own opinion alone, whenever the safety, tranquillity, or interests of the British possessions in India may, in his judgment, be essentially affected.1 Recourse to this Recourse to this power is very seldom necessary. The only occasion in recent times on which it has been exercised in a matter of importance occurred in March 1879, when Lord Lytton, in opposition to the opinion of a majority of his Council, partially abolished the Indian import duty on English cotton goods. The occasion will be remembered in the economic history of India, because this measure rendered inevitable the speedy application to India of the policy of the freedom of trade.

Another consequence has followed from the changes that I have described. The abandonment by Lord Lawrence of the system of double government, and the establishment of the departmental responsibility of the members of Council, rendered it necessary that when the Governor-General left Calcutta for Northern India he should be accompanied by the Council. Lord Lawrence made Simla the ordinary summer head-quarters of the Government. There has been much criticism of these annual migrations, but no one who has had personal knowledge of the Government of India doubts the increased efficiency of its administration since it has passed a portion of every year in a climate less enervating than that to which it was exposed in the tropical heat of Calcutta, and in which Englishmen can work as

133 Vic. c. 3, sec. 5.

vigorously as at home. The Government does not go to Simla for a holiday, but for the hardest and most continuous portion of its work. The evil influence of the climate is not the only reason why the Government of India should not remain permanently in Bengal. It has no local duties. Its business is one of general control, and the countries of Northern and Western India will always be those which demand the largest share of its attention and anxiety. There is no province less suitable for the permanent head-quarters of the central Government than Bengal, because there is no province so unlike everything else in India, and none where the character and opinions of the educated classes of the Natives are so much at variance with those that prevail elsewhere. The influence of Bengal on the policy of the Government is, therefore, very likely to be misleading.

I shall give in another lecture some account of the manner in which the administration of a great British province is carried on. The last twenty years have seen a great and beneficial change in the relations between the supreme and provincial Governments.

In the speeches on India made by Mr. Bright, about the time when the Government of India was transferred to the Crown, one of the principles on which he insisted was the necessity of decentralising the Government. There is much in those speeches with which I am unable to agree, and much that was once true has ceased to be applicable, but I wish to read to you some passages which seem to me to indicate the principles on which government in India can alone be successfully conducted. Mr. Bright's speeches are accessible to everyone, and I need not be accused of misrepresenting his views if I quote only those passages with

which I myself agree, and which serve my present purpose:

"The point which I wish to bring before the Committee and the Government is this, because it is on this that I rely mainly -I think I may say, almost entirely-for any improvement in the future of India. I believe a great improvement may be made, and by a gradual process that will dislocate nothing. What you want is to decentralise your Government. You will not make a single step towards the improvement of India unless you change your whole system of government-unless you give to each presidency a Government with more independent powers than are now possessed. What would be thought if the whole of Europe were under one Governor who knew only the language of the Feejee Islands, and that his subordinates were like himself, only more intelligent than the inhabitants of the Feejee Islands are supposed to be? . . . How long does England propose to govern India? Nobody answers that question, and nobody can answer it. Be it 50, or 100, or 500 does any man with the smallest glimmering of common-sense believe that so great a country, with its twenty different nations and its twenty languages, can ever be bound up and consolidated into one compact and enduring empire? I believe such a thing to be utterly impossible. We must fail in the attempt if ever we make it, and we are bound to look into the future with reference to that point.'

years,

Mr. Bright, secing that the union of the various countries of India into a single state was impossible, went on to propose that each of the five great provinces should have a separate and almost independent Government of its own, directly subject to the British Crown, but that the central Government of India under the Governor-General in Council should be abolished. It is with no want of respect for Mr. Bright that I say that the latter suggestion was not feasible. There is nothing more essential to the maintenance of our empire than a strong central authority; but Mr. Bright's belief

was undoubtedly true that there can be no successful government in India unless each great province be administered by its own separate Government with a minimum of interference from outside.

There was a time when the tendency in India was towards greater centralisation; but since the Viceroyalty of Lord Mayo the current has happily turned in the other direction, and the provincial Governments are now more independent than they were twenty years ago. This change has been mainly the result of the measures of financial decentralisation initiated in 1870, which have been pronounced by Sir Henry Maine to be 'much the most successful administrative reform which has taken place in India in his time.'1 I shall speak of this in another lecture.

The Government of India now interferes very little with the details of provincial administration, and it invariably happens that the wisest and strongest Viceroys are those who interfere the least. They recognise the fact that the provincial Governments necessarily possess far more knowledge of local requirements and conditions than any to which the distant authorities of the central Government can pretend.

Although the Governor-General in Council exercises only a general supervision over the internal administration of the empire, there are some branches of the public business which concern the whole of India, and which obviously can be efficiently managed by the central authority alone. The military defence of India, and the conduct of our relations with Foreign powers and with the Native States of India, rest with the supreme Government. Although the duty of administering the laws rests with the provincial Governments,

1 The Reign of Queen Victoria—' India,' vol. i. p. 516,