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My Legislative Council Work

Expansion of the Legislative Councils, 1892—my election to the Bengal Legislative Council—Sir Charles Elliott—the Bengal Municipal Act—Sir Edward Baker—the House of Commons and simultaneous examinations.

The Legislative Councils were reformed and expanded by the Parliamentary Statute of 1892, and the reformed Councils met for the first time in 1893. The Regulations framed by the Government under the Statute of 1892 were much less drastic than those under the subsequent Statute of 1909, when the Councils were still further expanded and liberalized. The elective principle having been definitely recognized and larger powers having been conferred upon non-official members, the Government assumed authority to interfere with the elections. Dismissed servants of Government and persons bound down for good behaviour under section 110 of the Indian Criminal Procedure Code were disqualified; and, above all, Government assumed a general power of declaring a person disqualified whose election would, in the opinion of the Governor or the Governor-General, be contrary to the public interest. It was not indeed necessary to reserve these powers in 1893, for the Government was the final authority in accepting or rejecting an election made by a constituency.

It has been, I fear, a traditional policy with the Government, when making a concession to popular demands, to fence it round with safeguards, promoted by a spirit of caution and sometimes in excess of what may be deemed necessary by the exigencies of the case. In the old days before the Councils were reformed, official members were permitted considerable freedom of action to vote as they thought fit; and the annals of the Bengal Legislative Council bear testimony to the fact that the President of the Council, the Lieutenant-Governor of the province, was defeated by the voice and vote of the Council, a majority of whom were officials, when, in the course of the debate in connexion with what became the Calcutta Municipal Act of 1876, he supported the motion for three-fourths of the members of the Corporation being elected. A remnant of that freedom still lingered when the Councils were reconstituted in 1893, and I remember my lamented friend, Mr. R. C. Dutt, then Commissioner of the Burdwan

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