State agreed reluctantly to sanction more stringent legislation for dealing with the excesses of the Extremist press in India, but he was only the more resolved that it must be accompanied by a liberal reforms scheme.  The Viceroy himself shared this view and lent willing assistance.  But the interchange of opinions between India and Whitehall was as usual terribly lengthy and laborious.  A Royal Proclamation on November 28, 1908, the fiftieth anniversary of Queen Victoria’s Proclamation after the Mutiny, foreshadowed reforms in “political satisfaction of the claims of important classes representing ideas that have been fostered and encouraged by British rule.”  But not till the following month, i.e. three years after Mr. Morley had taken over the India Office, did the reforms scheme see the light of day.

It bore his impress.  He had a ready ear for Indian grievances and much understanding for the Moderate Indian point of view.  He was prepared to give Indians a larger consultative voice in the conduct of Indian affairs, and even to introduce individual Indians not only into his own Council at Whitehall but even into the Viceroy’s Executive Council, the citadel of British authority in India.  He was determined to enforce far more energetically than most of his predecessors the constitutional right of the Secretary of State to form and lay down the policy for which his responsibility was to the British Parliament alone, while the function of the Government of India was, after making to him whatever representations it might deem desirable, to carry his decisions faithfully and fully into execution.  He was prepared to exercise also to the full his right to control the administrative as well as the executive acts of the Government of India and its officers.  He was not prepared to devolve upon Indians collectively any part of the constitutional powers vested in the Indian Executive and ultimately through the Secretary of State in the British Parliament.  He was not therefore prepared to give India any representative institutions that should circumscribe or share the power of the Indian Executive.  The Indian Councils Act of 1909 was drawn up on those lines.  It enlarged the membership and the functions of the Indian Legislative Councils, and placed them definitely on an elective basis without doing away altogether with nominations by Government.  The only point upon which Mr. Morley yielded to pressure was in conceding the principle of community representation in favour of the Mahomedans, to whom, at a time when they not only held rigidly aloof from all political agitation but professed great anxiety as to political concessions of which the benefit would, they submitted, accrue mainly to the Hindus, Lord Minto had given a promise that in any future reforms scheme full consideration should be given to the historical importance and actual influence of their community rather than to its mere numerical strength.