Governments for their own free disposal, and in return they have to make fixed annual contributions to the Central Exchequer.  These contributions are in no case to be subject to increase in the future, but on the contrary to be reduced gradually and to cease at the earliest possible moment compatible with the irreducible requirements of the Government of India.  The Act of 1919, it is true, transfers to the Indian Legislature no direct or complete statutory control over revenue and expenditure, and powers are still vested in the Government of India to override the Assembly in cases of emergency and to enact supplies which it refuses if the Governor-General in Council certifies them to be essential to the peace, tranquillity, and interests of India.  But the fact that there was a deficit which could only be met by increased taxation offered exceptional opportunities which might easily have been used for embarrassing obstruction by a young and immature chamber naturally concerned for its own popularity.  Even a direct conflict between the Government and the Assembly might not have been impossible, and the consequences would have been lamentable.  For if the Government of India had been driven to use its statutory powers to impose taxation and secure supplies in opposition to the Legislature during its very first session, all the hopes of friendly co-operation based on the new constitution would have been wrecked far more disastrously and permanently than by any “Non-co-operation” movement.  The Legislative Assembly was wise enough to exercise its rights with sufficient insistence to show that it was conscious of them, but never to strain them.  It did not refrain from criticism of almost every department in turn or from motions to reduce the official estimates for them.  Many of the criticisms were sound, and some of the reductions were accepted by Government.  Mr. Hailey handled a delicate situation with unfailing patience and skill.  Even in regard to new taxation he endeavoured to meet, as far as the exigencies of the Budget allowed, the objections of the Assembly to such increases as, for instance, higher postal rates, which press most heavily on the least well-to-do classes.  Nothing, however, helped him so much to get his Budget through without a serious conflict as the decision of the Government to seek in an increase of the import duties over two-thirds of the new revenue to be raised to meet the deficit.  For there Government took up common ground with Indian opinion on fiscal matters and carried into effect the principle laid down by the Select Joint Committee on the Reforms Bill, and endorsed by the Secretary of State, that the Government of India must be granted the same liberty to devise Indian tariff arrangements on a consideration of Indian interests as all other self-governing parts of the Empire enjoy.  If the Assembly did not see altogether eye to eye with Government as to the necessity for all this increased expenditure and increased taxation, its objections were at least mitigated by a form of increased taxation in which it saw the first step towards fiscal autonomy.  In this as in every other question with which the Legislature had to deal, the Government of India showed its willingness to accept as far as possible the guidance of Indian opinion and to act as a national Indian Government, and not merely as the supreme executive authority under the Government of the United Kingdom.