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1909 was to assign to them a back seat in the new system that was largely their creation.

The Councils having been reformed in 1892, and there being no legal bar in my way, I offered myself as a candidate for election to the Bengal Legislative Council by the Corporation of Calcutta, of which I was then a member. There were two other candidates, Babu Kalinath Mitter and Babu Joygovind Law. Babu Kalinath Mitter was the undoubted leader of the Opposition in the Corpor- ation and the foremost representative of the rate-payers. As such, when the Calcutta Municipal Bill, which subsequently became the Municipal Act of 1888, was under consideration, he was nominated by the Government as a member of the Bengal Legislative Council, to represent the interests of the rate-payers. He performed his duties on that occasion with conspicuous zeal and ability. As a member of the Corporation (which he served from 1876 to 1899, when he resigned along with twenty-seven other municipal Com- missioners) he was noted for his industry, his capacity, and his absolute candour and honesty of purpose. Babu Joygovind Law, though less distinguished as a member of the Corporation, was respected by his colleagues for his quiet, business-like ways, and his genuine interest in the affairs of the Corporation. We were all friends and we fought as friends. No misrepresentation, no word uttered in anger or in malice was permitted to mar the contest or to leave an unpleasant memory behind; and, when the elections were over, we were as good friends as ever and continued to be helpful colleagues, working in close co-operation so long as we remained members of the Corporation.

What a change now from those times—what a deterioration in the public life of the province, when mendacity and malice are the weapons, offensive and defensive, employed by those who call themselves the apostles of self-government and promise Swaraj to their countrymen! Swaraj means self-restraint in the great books of the Hindu religion where the word is first used. It means, as now employed by a certain class of people, license to use the meanest of mean tricks for the furtherance of their ends. If this is what we are to have in the green, what may we not expect in the dry?

I was returned at the head of the poll, the first representative of the Calcutta Corporation to the first reformed Legislative Council. What told in my favour it is difficult to say; for Babu Kalinath Mitter was undoubtedly a more distinguished member of the