in that English was not the mother tongue of those who delivered them.  They were, as a rule, sober and dignified, and if all members did not at once abandon a habit much favoured in the old Councils of putting long strings of questions and moving impracticable resolutions in sonorous harangues, often prepared for them by outside hacks, their own colleagues soon taught them that such methods were no longer likely to pay even for purposes of advertisement.  The majority quickly acquired a knack of suppressing wind-bags and bores quietly and effectively.  The Act of 1919 reserved to Government the appointment of the President of the Assembly for the first four years, after which he will be chosen by the Assembly itself.  Not even the House of Commons could treat the Chair with more unfailing deference than the Assembly showed to Mr. A.F.  Whyte, who brought with him the prestige of Westminster traditions and experience to which he from time to time appealed aptly and successfully, and the Assembly appreciated the tact as well as the firmness with which he discharged his novel duties.  A gentle reminder of what was the usual practice in the House of Commons was never lost on Indian members whose inexperience occasionally failed to realise the Parliamentary implications of the procedure adopted by them, but was always ready to accept guidance that derived its authority from the wisdom of the Mother of Parliaments.

But the qualities shown by the Assembly transcended mere matters of form.  Mr. Whyte bore testimony at the close of the session to debates “well worthy to stand by the side of the best debates in the Imperial Parliament.”  It was no empty compliment, for they revealed the makings of real statesmanship, and the circumstances in which the Indian Legislature met for the first time to give collective expression to the feelings of the people of India, called for statesmanship.  The King-Emperor’s message impressed them with a sense of the great responsibilities and great opportunities arising for them out of the far-reaching rights conferred upon them.  The personal appeal with which the Duke of Connaught accompanied the delivery of the Royal message went far to dispel “the shadow of Amritsar,” which had, in his own apt phrase, “lengthened over the face of India” and threatened even to darken their own path.  For on no subject had Indian feeling been more unanimous during the elections all over the country than in regard to the Punjab tragedy.  None had been more persistently exploited by the “Non-co-operationists” to point their jibes at the “slave-mentality” of candidates and electors who were merely the willing dupes of a “Satanic” Government.  On no subject did the Assembly feel itself under a greater obligation to give expression to the unanimous sentiments of the people it represented—­all the greater indeed in that opportunity of expression had been denied to the old Legislative Council.  It was the acid test to which the sincerity and the