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with side issues of a personal character, which may for the time being tickle their nerves, or satisfy their innate love of scandal. But the fit soon passes away and reason and common sense assert them- selves as the normal attitude of the public mind. It was suggested that we should hold another conference and tell them what had passed. I set my face against it, for I anticipated a repetition of the heckling, the quarrelling and wrangling of the last Conference. I proposed a Town Hall meeting; for I felt that such a meeting would, by its size, its publicity and its representative character, minimize the play of personal passions and even of partisan pre- judice. I was right in this view.

A public meeting at the Town Hall was held; it was the old prohibited meeting, with the glamour of success achieved over the obstructiveness of official authority. It was a vindication of our indefensible right to hold meetings so long as there was the fair promise of the observance of a constitutional procedure. In the absence of Sir Rash Behari Ghose, I was asked to preside, and I accepted the invitation. Mine was the only speech; none other was made. That was the universal sense of the meeting and it was cheerfully acquiesced in. I took advantage of this opportunity to explain the character of the Deputation that I had the honour to lead. I believe that what I said at the Town Hall meeting in this connexion met with general approval; and I cannot resist the temp- tation of quoting it here:

'My friend Babu Motilal Ghose and myself were at Bombay when the news of this prohibition reached us. We hurried back to Calcutta. A conference was held and a deputation waited upon His Excellency Lord Ronaldshay at Dacca. We as a deputation did not derive our authority from any association or public body, but from our representative character as individuals who on many critical occasions have borne the heat and brunt of battle in the service of the motherland. Our charter lay in the memory of our public services, in the purity of our motives, above all in the conviction that we enjoyed the confidence of our countrymen. At the interview with His Excellency we gave no undertaking of any kind; none was asked. We said that we should do our best to see to it that the meeting was conducted upon responsible lines. Call it an assurance if you like, but it was an assurance which is implied in all our public meetings; it is what is required by the law. There was no equivocation of any kind on our part, no compromise of any principle, no surrender of any right. We acted according to our lights, with dignity and firmness,

and with due regard to the constituted authorities of the land. His