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opinion was evidenced by the orders he passed in connexion with the Calcutta Municipal Bill after it had emerged from the Select Committee stage. To those orders I have already referred in a previous part of these reminiscences. They served to officialize the Calcutta Corporation. They were so unexpected that it was widely reported that Sir John Woodburn had threatened to resign. Why he did not, we do not know. They threw Calcutta into the vortex of an agitation that was only surpassed by the anti-Partition demon- strations, which also were due to Lord Curzon's policy. People were rapidly losing confidence in the Viceroy, and the popular sense of mistrust found expression in a Resolution of the Lucknow Congress of 1899, which I had to move. The Resolution was in these terms:

'That this Congress expresses its disapproval of the reactionary policy, subversive of Local Self-government, as evidenced by the passing of the Calcutta Municipal Act in the face of the unanimous opposition of the people, and by the introduction into the Legislative Council of Bombay of a similar measure, which will have the effect of seriously jeopardizing the principle of Local Self-government.'

The Calcutta Municipal Bill was a local measure, but it had an all-India interest as it affected the principle of Local Self-govern- ment, in the growth and development of which all India felt a concern. It used to be in those days the standing practice of the Congress to take up and discuss provincial questions in which the interest and the feelings of all India had been roused. In discussing the Calcutta Municipal Bill, the Congress did not act in contraven- tion of its traditional practice. Similarly, the Provincial Conferences often included in their programme questions which affected the whole of India. Such a procedure served to keep the public life of the province in touch with that of the rest of India, and contributed to the solidarity and the growth of national life.

There was a peculiar fitness in Mr. R. C. Dutt's presiding at the Congress when the question of the disfranchisement of the Calcutta Corporation was discussed. He was in England when we started the agitation against the Calcutta Municipal Bill. I placed myself in communication with him. It was chiefly through his efforts that the great debate on the Bill in February, 1897, was organized when Mr. Herbert Roberts, now Lord Clywd, pressed for a commission of enquiry, and Sir Henry Fowler, then in opposition, declared that he had discovered no evidence to show that the elected Commis- sioners had failed in their duty.