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further changes in the constitution may be necessary. All these preliminaries are laid down with a view to giving effect to the message of August 20, 1917.

It will thus be seen that the British Parliament and democracy are definitely pledged to the introduction and progressive expansion of responsible government, the full measure of which will be con- ceded only after a trial of ten years. The immediate grant of full- fledged responsible government therefore goes beyond the declared policy of Parliament. Are they likely to be hustled into a change of this policy under the pressure of obstructionist tactics? That has never been the traditional attitude of a British Parliament; and the great organs of English opinion have strongly condemned the obstructionist methods that are being followed in some of the Legislatures, declaring that they are calculated to prolong rather than shorten the period of probation. If these obstructionist tactics inside the Councils are a prelude to revolutionary methods outside, by inflaming the minds of the masses, they are intelligible and perhaps logical; otherwise they are futile and meaningless. They will not wreck the Government, but may deprive it of its popular element, and a return to the old bureaucratic system may be the outcome of presistence in this policy. The obstructionists may temporarily pose as heroes who have defied an autocratic Govern- ment, but they will leave behind them for their countrymen the bitter harvest of their sinister activities. That has already been the result in Bengal and the Central Provinces. In this connexion, it may not be out of place to quote a few lines from the letter of a revolutionary produced in the Cawnpore cases, reports of which have appeared in the newspapers. The letter says:

'Without a party with a revolutionary outlook, the tactics of breaking the Councils can hardly be carried on successfully.'

Thus Revolution and the breaking up of the Councils go together in the opinion of this revolutionary writer.

In this onslaught upon diarchy, the fundamental conditions, subject to which diarchy found a place in the Reform Scheme, seem to have been ignored. Nobody, not even its supporters, were enamoured of diarchy, many were frankly doubtful of its success. At best it was a tentative beginning, the first starting-point of a great experiment. I said in my evidence before the Joint Parliamen- tary Committee: 'We (and here I was speaking on behalf of the National Liberal Federation) support diarchy, not because it is