expression presumably borrowed, but not very aptly, from Japan, where the Elder Statesmen have no doubt had immense influence but never any constitutional status.  The Report had, moreover, to contemplate the possibility of conflict between the Legislature and the Executive, and in accordance with the first of the two main conclusions at which it had arrived it proposed to arm the Governor-General in Council with power to override the Legislature if it failed to pass measures or grant supplies which he was prepared to “certify” as vital to the peace, safety, and interests of India.

For the great experiment in the provincial sphere, the eight provinces of Bombay, Madras, Bengal, the United Provinces, Behar and Orissa, the Punjab, the Central Provinces, and Assam, were deemed to be already ripe.  Burma (which is not really India at all, and whose people belong to another race and to another stage of political development), the North-West Frontier Province, and Baluchistan (which for strategical reasons must remain under the direct control of the Government of India), and a few smaller areas, whose populations are altogether too backward, were not to be touched at present.  The essential feature of the scheme was the division of the functions of the Provincial Government into two categories:  the one comprising what are now termed “the reserved subjects,” i.e. those with which the maintenance of peace and order and good government is immediately bound up; and the other, those which, though less vital, very closely affect the daily life and common interests of the people, and which were to be called “the transferred subjects,” because it was proposed to transfer at once the largest possible measure of power and responsibility in regard to them to exclusively Indian shoulders.  While all essential power and responsibility in regard to “the reserved subjects” were to remain vested in the Governor-in-Council, i.e. the executive body consisting of the Governor and (under the new scheme) one British and one Indian member of Council, real power and responsibility for dealing with “the transferred subjects” were to be conferred on Indian Ministers accountable to a Legislative Council in which there was to be a large Indian non-official majority, elected also on the broadest possible franchise.  The Provincial Government would thus itself be divided into two compartments:  in the one the Governor-in-Council, responsible as heretofore to the Government of India and to the Secretary of State, i.e. the British Parliament; in the other the Governor—­but not “in Council”—­acting with Indian Ministers responsible to an Indian legislature.