constant denunciation of Government by men who claimed to represent the intelligence of the country must tend to stimulate a spirit of disaffection and revolt amongst their more ignorant and inexperienced fellow-countrymen.  Yet not one of them had the courage to face the risk of temporary unpopularity by pointing out the danger of the inclined plane down which they were sliding, until they actually saw themselves being swept hopelessly off their feet at Surat.  It was then too late to avert the consequences of pusillanimity or to shake off their share of responsibility for the evils which the tolerance they had too long extended to the methods of their more violent colleagues had helped to produce.  One of the main purposes of the Indian National Congress has avowedly been to set up a claim for the introduction of representative government in India.  Yet it has itself seldom escaped the control of a handful of masterful leaders who have ruled it in the most irresponsible and despotic fashion.  The Congress has, in fact, displayed exactly the same feature which has been so markedly manifested in the case of municipalities, namely, the tendency of “representative” institutions in India to resolve themselves into machines operated by, and for the benefit of, an extremely limited and domineering oligarchy.

CHAPTER XIII.

CONSTITUTIONAL REFORMS.

When Lord Minto closed at the end of March the first Session of the Imperial Council, as the Viceroy’s Legislative Council, enlarged under the Indian Councils Act of 1909, is now officially designated, in contradistinction to the enlarged Provincial Councils of Provincial Governments, his Excellency very properly described it as “a memorable Session.”  It was, indeed, far more than that.  Even to the outward eye the old Council Chamber at Government House presented a very significant spectacle, to which the portrait of Warren Hastings over the Viceregal Chair always seemed to add a strange note of admiration.  The round table at which the members of the Viceroy’s Legislative Council used to gather, with far less of formality, had disappeared, and the 59 members of the enlarged Council had their appointed seats disposed in a double hemicycle facing the Chair.  They sat for the most part according to provinces, and the features as well as, in some cases, the dresses, of the Indian members showed at a glance how representative this new Council really was.

The tall burly frame of the Kuvar Sahib of Patiala was only more conspicuous than that of the Maharajah of Burdawan because the former wore the many-folded turban and brocaded dress of his Sikh ancestry, whereas the latter, like most Bengalees of the upper classes, has adopted the much more commonplace broadcloth of the West.  The bold, hawk-like features of Malik Umar Hyat Khan of Tiwana in the Punjab were as characteristic of the fighting Pathan from the North as were the