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Resolution that we drafted. The feeling was high on the day when the question first came up for discussion. I allowed full scope to the debate, which had to be postponed on account of the lateness of the hour; and, as I anticipated, the temperature was much cooler on the following morning when we met and the discussion was resumed. Speaker after speaker followed, until Mr. Tilak suggested that a committee should be appointed to con- sider the question. That was Sir Provash Chunder Mitter's oppor- tunity, and he moved that the matter, in view of its importance, be referred to the Provincial Congress Committee for report. A time-limit was fixed for the report: it was to be the first week of October. The motion was carried with practical unanimity; and, as the event showed, a difficult situation was saved. Everything pointed to an early pronouncement by the Government on the question of self-government; and if the pronouncement was made before the meeting of the All-India Congress Committee in October, the excitement and irritation which lay at the root of the idea of passive resistance would be allayed.

We in Bengal, who had passed through the ordeal of fire in connexion with the anti-Partition and the Swadeshi agitation, knew the difficulties that surrounded a movement of defiance of authority culminating in the violation of official orders, legal or illegal. The incidents of the Barisal Conference (where we followed a policy of passive resistance), the nameless insults offered to respectable people at Sirajgung, Banaripara and elsewhere, the persecution of Swadeshi workers under the guise of the maintenance of law and order, were all still fresh in our minds; and we felt that passive resistance could not succeed unless there was an overwhelming body of public feeling behind it and there were many who would be willing to suffer for the cause which had provoked it. We were not sure that these conditions existed in the present case; and we were glad of a postponement, which allowed time for thought and reconsideration, and, as we hoped, for the development of a situation that would make passive resistance unnecessary and undesirable.

In the meantime in Bengal the question had assumed an acute form owing to circumstances which I shall presently relate. I have already referred to the meeting held at the Indian Association rooms to protest against Mrs. Besant's internment. It was held in a hurry and was in the nature of a preliminary conference, delegates from the mofussil not having been invited. It was therefore resolved to