The Indian Councils Act, 1909, fell considerably short of the demands put forward even by the founders of the Congress five-and-twenty years before, as the new Councils, greatly enlarged, were still to be merely consultative assemblies.  But it did for the first time admit “the living forces of the elective principle,” and to that extent it met the demand for representative institutions.  Indian Moderates could point also to the presence of an Indian member, Sir Satyendra (now Lord) Sinha, in the Viceroy’s Executive Council and of two Indian members in the Secretary of State’s Council at Whitehall as a definite proof that India would have henceforth a hearing before, and not as in the past merely after, the adoption of vital lines of policy.  The Act was accepted by the Moderate leaders as a genuine if not a generous instalment of reform, and it restored to some extent their influence as the advocates of constitutional progress by showing that the British Government had not been altogether deaf to their appeals.  It did not of course satisfy the Extremists, but their influence had suffered a great set-back from the wrecking of the Surat Congress, their great Deccanee leader was working out a long term of imprisonment at Mandalay, and with the tide of anarchism still spreading and visibly demoralising the student class all over India, even to the undermining of parental authority, the first feeling of suppressed and largely inarticulate alarm and resentment developed into a definite reaction in favour of government as by law established.

The great wave of unrest which had swept over India was already subsiding when Lord Minto left India in 1910 amidst genuine demonstrations of returning goodwill, and the appointment of Lord Hardinge of Penshurst as his successor was welcomed in the same spirit, not because Lord Kitchener, who had run him very hard for the Viceroyalty, was personally unpopular in India, but because he owed to reactionary supporters the quite unmerited reputation of being “the man with the big stick.”

The visit of the King and Queen to India at the end of 1911 was therefore well timed, and it provoked a still greater outburst of popular enthusiasm than their visit as Prince and Princess of Wales in 1905.  For it was the first time that the Sovereign to whom it was given to rule over India from a remote Western island travelled out to receive on Indian soil the homage of his Indian subjects and appeared before them in the full majesty of crown, orb, and sceptre.  Apart entirely from the merits of the measure, the dramatic transfer of the capital of his Indian Empire from Calcutta to Delhi appealed to the imagination of Indians as a demonstration of the Royal power no less impressive than the splendours of the great Durbar at which the Royal command went forth.  Equally did their Majesties fulfil another of the time-honoured conceptions of royalty by knowing, so to say, when to step down from their throne and mix freely with