Page:A Nation in Making.djvu/136

For the time, the interests of local self-government in the mofussil were saved.

The other measure affecting local self-government that came on for consideration while I was a member of the Bengal Legislative Council—and here I am anticipating events that took place much later—was what was known as the Mackenzie Bill. Its genesis has so often been told that I need not repeat it here. Sir Alexander Mackenzie, who succeeded Sir Charles Elliott as Lieutenant- Governor of Bengal was the author of the measure, and its scope and object were further amplified by Lord Curzon. It is an irony of fate that the Lieutenant-Governor over whose signature as Home Secretary the great Resolutions on local self-government had been issued, should have been instrumental in forgoing a deadly weapon against the institution of local self-government in the capital of British India. But perhaps as Home Secretary Sir Alexander Mackenzie was merely carrying out the orders of superior authority, and as Lieutenant-Governor he was the master of his own policy.

A successful Civil Servant has often no convictions; or, when he has any, he never allows them to interfere with his official advancement. Sir Richard Temple was the friend of local self- government in Calcutta, and to him we are indebted for the recognition of the elective system in the constitution of the Calcutta Corporation. But in England he sat on the Tory benches of the House of Commons, and conveniently forgot his liberal predilec- tions. Sir Alexander Mackenzie had been the pupil and assistant of Sir Ashley Eden in the Bengal Secretariat, and Sir Ashley Eden had once said, in derision of representative institutions, that they were a sickly plant in their own native soil. Sir Alexander Mackenzie, in his famous speech at the opening of the Pumping Station at Palmer's Bridge, said of the Calcutta Corporation that it was an armoury of talk and an arsenal of delays. The Commis- sioners talked ad libitum; he wanted to curb their loquacity, to reduce their brake power and to add to the vigour of executive authority. The head of the municipal executive was to have inde- pendent powers, no longer subordinate to those of the Corpor- ation; he was to be a co-ordinate authority, and the supremacy of the Corporation was to be emasculated. The Commissioners could talk as much as they liked; but, within his own sphere, the Chairman would act as he pleased with little or no responsibility to the Corporation. The authority of the Corporation was to be further restricted by creating a General Committee, another co-ordinate