Page:A Nation in Making.djvu/131

Division, who was for some time a member of the Bengal Legislative Council, and Mr. Cotton, Chief Secretary, voting against the Government. But all that is now a matter of the past. The official members must vote with the Government, unless released by the authority of the President. The only occasion within my recent experience when this order of relaxation was given was in connexion with the debate on the resolution I moved in the Imperial Legisla- tive Council regarding the Chancellorship of the Calcutta Univer- sity. On that occasion every official member was allowed to speak and vote as he thought fit; and, I may add, the fullest advantage was taken of the privilege.

There was another point in which the Regulations under the Statute of 1892 compared favourably with those of 1909. No special electorates, representing class or commercial interests, were created. The constituencies were the district boards and the municipalities, the former representing rural, and the latter urban, interests. The middle class received the measure of prominence to which they were entitled, but this was taken away from them by the extraordinary Regulations of 1910. In 1892, although there were no separate electorates and special constituencies, no class interests. suffered. The Maharaja of Natore, the Raja of Tahirpur, Nawab Serajul Islam, the two former representing the interests of the land-holding, and the latter, those of the Mohamedan, commu- nity, found no difficulty in getting themselves returned to the Council. It is true that the Rajas and Maharajas had partly to depend upon the support of the middle class, and the Mohamedan candidates upon that of their Hindu fellow-subjects. But nobody in Bengal, so far as I know, ever made it a matter of complaint. The Hindu-Mohamedan question is of more recent date, and was accentuated, if not indeed created, by the partition of Bengal; and even to-day, notwithstanding the official acceptance of class representation, there is really no cleavage of interest between the landed aristocracy and the great middle class; and so prominent a member of the landed interest as the Maharaja of Burdwan delights to call himself a member of the educated community and to be associated with them in their public movements. Class representa- tion is the retort courteous of the bureaucracy to the middle class, who clamoured for the reform of the Councils and got it. It seriously curtailed the power which they exercised over the elections under the Statute of 1892; and the whole trend of the Regulations of