Thus the Indian Councils Act of 1909 cannot be said to have actually modified the position of the Indian Legislatures.  With regard to the most important of them—­viz., the Imperial Council—­Lord Morley was careful to make this perfectly clear in his despatch of November 27, 1908, in which he reviewed the proposals put forward in the Government of India despatch of October 1.  “It is an essential condition of the reform policy,” the Secretary of State wrote, “that the Imperial supremacy should in no degree be compromised.  I must therefore regard it as essential that your Excellency’s Council, in its legislative as well as in its executive character, should continue to be so constituted as to ensure its constant and uninterrupted power to fulfil the constitutional obligation that it owes, and must always owe, to his Majesty’s Government and to the Imperial Parliament.”  The Indian Executive therefore remains, as hitherto, responsible only to the Imperial Government at home, and the Imperial Council can exercise over it no directly controlling power.  The same holds good, mutatis mutandis, of the Provincial Executives and their Councils.

Indirectly, however, the Indian Councils Act of 1909 materially modifies the relations between the Legislative Councils and the Executive by giving to elected and non-official members opportunities which they have never enjoyed before of discussing public policy and making their voices heard and their influence felt on both administrative and legislative matters.  The revised rules of procedure, under which supplementary questions may be grafted on to interpellations, and resolutions can be moved not only in connexion with the financial statements of Government, but, with certain specified reservations, on most matters of general public interest, are undoubtedly calculated to afford a vastly larger scope than in the past to the activities of Indian Legislatures, and it will depend very much upon the ability and resourcefulness of members themselves to what extent they may utilize these facilities for the purpose of ultimately creating real powers of control.  In an extremely interesting and dispassionate study of the Indian Constitution, and of the effects which the new reforms may have upon it, Mr. Rangaswami Iyengar, a Hindu journalist of Madras, comes to the conclusion that “if the powers now entrusted to the Councils are used with care, wisdom, and discrimination, precedents and procedure analogous to those of the House of Commons might gradually grow up, and might serve as a useful means if not of directly controlling the Executive—­a power which under the present constitutional arrangement of the Government of India it is impossible that the Council should possess—­at least of directing the Executive into correct and proper channels in regard to administrative policy and administrative action.”  Not the least important of the changes are those made in regard to Budget procedure.  Indian Legislatures will no more than in the past