The superintendence, direction, and control of the whole civil and military government of all the said territories and revenues in India shall be and is hereby vested in a Governor-General and Councillors to be styled “the Governor-General of India in Council.”

The only title recognized by statute to the Viceroy is that of Governor-General in Council, and how material is this conjunction of the Governor-General with his Council is shown by the exceptional character of the circumstances in which power is given to the Governor-General to act on his own responsibility alone, and by the extreme rareness of the cases in which a Governor-General has exercised that power.

Thus, on the one hand, Mr. Montagu forgets the Crown when he talks of the Secretary of State acting through the agency of the Viceroy; and, on the other hand, he forgets the Governor-General in Council when he talks of the relations between the Viceroy and the Secretary of State—­whose proper designation, moreover, is Secretary of State in Council, for, like the Governor-General, the Secretary of State has a Council intimately associated with him by statute in the discharge of his constitutional functions.  Though the cases in which the Secretary of State cannot act without the concurrence of the Council of India, who sit with him at the India Office, are limited to matters involving the grant or appropriation of revenues, and in other matters he is not absolutely bound to consult them and still less to accept their recommendations, the Act of Parliament quoted by Mr. Montagu clearly implies that, in the exercise of all the functions which it assigns to him, he is expected to act generally in consultation and in concert with his Council, since those functions are assigned to him specifically as Secretary of State in Council.

Now, as to the nature of the relations between the Governor-General in Council and the Secretary of State in Council as above defined by statute.  The ultimate responsibility for Indian government, as Mr. Montagu intimated, rests unquestionably with the Imperial Government represented by the Secretary of State for India, and therefore, in the last resort, with the people of the United Kingdom represented by Parliament.  The question is, What is in theory and practice the proper mode of discharging this, “ultimate responsibility” for Indian government?  It is not a question which can be authoritatively answered, but, if we may infer an answer from the spirit of legislative enactments and from the usage that has hitherto prevailed, it may still be summed up in the same language in which John Stuart Mill described the function of the Home Government in the days of the old East India Company—­“The principal function of the Home Government is not to direct the details of administration, but to scrutinize and revise the past acts of the Indian Governments; to lay down principles and to issue general instructions for their future guidance, and to give or refuse sanction