If we look at the Morley-Minto regime from another point of view, it is passing strange that the tendency to concentrate the direction of affairs in India in the hands of the Viceroy and to subject the Viceroy in turn to the closer and more immediate control of the Secretary of State, whilst simultaneously diminishing pro tanto the influence of their respective Councils, should have manifested itself just at this time, when it is Lord Morley who presides over the India Office.  For no statesman has ever proclaimed a more ardent belief in the virtues of decentralization than Lord Morley, and Lord Morley himself is largely responsible for legislative reforms which will not only strengthen the hands of the provincial Governments in their dealings with the Government of India, but will enable and, indeed, force the Government of India to assume on many vital questions an attitude of increased independence towards the Imperial Government.  The more we are determined to govern India in accordance with Indian ideas and with Indian interests, the more we must rely upon a strong, intelligent, and self-reliant Government of India.  The peculiar conditions of India exclude the possibility of Indian self-government on colonial lines, but what we may, and probably must, look forward to at no distant date is that, with the larger share in legislation and administration secured to Indians by such measures as the Indian Councils Act, the Government of India will speak with growing authority as the exponent of the best Indian opinion within the limits compatible with the maintenance of British rule, and that its voice will therefore ultimately carry scarcely less weight at home in the determination of Indian policy than the voice of our self-governing Dominions already carries in all questions concerning their internal development.

The future of India lies in the greatest possible decentralization in India subject to the general, but unmeddlesome, control of the Governor-General in Council, and in the greatest possible freedom of the Government of India from all interference from home, except in regard to those broad principles of policy which it must always rest with the Imperial Government, represented by the Secretary of State in Council, to determine.  It is only in that way that, to use one of Mr. Montagu’s phrases, we can hope successfully to “yoke” to our own “democratic” system “a Government so complex and irresponsible to the peoples which it governs as the Government of India.”

CHAPTER XXVII.

CONCLUSIONS.