are premature; we must wait.”  Still, though premature, I observe that your own suggestion in one of those papers adopts and accepts the principle of the scheme outlined in our despatch.  It is quite true to say, “Oh, but you are vague in your despatch.”  Yes, a despatch is not a Bill.  A Minister writing a despatch does not put in all the clauses and sections and subsections and schedules.  It is the business of a Minister composing a despatch like mine of November 27, 1908, to indicate only general lines—­general enough to make the substance and body of the scheme intelligible, but still general.  I should like to say a word about the despatch.  It is constantly assumed that in the despatch we prescribed and ordered the introduction of the joint electoral college.  If any of you will be good enough to look at the words, you will find that no language of that sort—­no law of the Medes and Persians—­is to be found in it.  If you refer to paragraph 12 you will see that our language is this:—­

“I suggest for your consideration that the object in view might be better secured, at any rate in the more advanced provinces in India, by a modification of the system of popular electorate founded on the principle of electoral colleges.”

You see it was merely a suggestion thrown out for the Government of India, not a direction of the Mede and Persian stamp.  You say, “That for the purpose of electing members to the Provincial Councils, electoral colleges should be constituted on lines suggested by his Lordship, composed exclusively of Mahomedans whose numbers and mode of grouping should be fixed by executive authority.”  This comes within the principle of my despatch, and we shall see—­I hope very speedily—­whether the Government of India discover objections to its practicability.  Mark, electoral colleges “composed exclusively of Mahomedans whose members and mode of grouping should be fixed by executive authority”—­that is a proposition which is not outside the despatch.  Whether practicable or not, it is a matter for discussion between us here and the Government in India.

The aim of the Government and yours is identical—­that there shall be (to quote Mr. Ameer Ali’s words) “adequate, real, and genuine Mahomedan representation.”  Now, where is the difference between us?  The machinery we commended, you do not think possible.  As I have told you, the language of the despatch does not insist upon a mixed electoral college.  It would be no departure in substance from the purpose of our suggestion, that there should be a separate Mahomedan electorate—­an electorate exclusively Mahomedan; and in view of the wide and remote distances, and difficulties of organisation in consequence of those distances in the area constituting a large province, I am not sure that this is not one of those cases where election by two stages would not be convenient, and so there might be a separate electoral college exclusively Mahomedan.  That is, I take it, in accordance