any faults the work displays to the careful eye of a critical reader; while the improvements in the work, such as they are, must be credit. ed to the colleague, who has done her best to make the work fuller and rounder than before. I could have thanked her in conventional terms, did I feel my obligations less strongly. As it is, I simply have to acknowledge her the joint author, but the exclusive improver, of this work. February 1924. DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS, K. T. SHAH. Other Works by Prof. K. T. Shah. Sixty Years of Indian Finance. Trade, Tariffs and Transport in India. Indian Currency, Exhange and Banking. Guide to the Study of Indian Administration. Wealth of India (In the Press). The Indian Iron and Steel Industry, (a Pamphlet). Memorandum on Public Expenditure in India to the Indian Retrenchment Committee, (a Pamphlet) CHAPTER I. The British Parliament and the Government of India. ·(0)· Government of India Act, [ 5 & 6 Geo, 5, ch. 61; 6 & 7 Geo, 5, ch. 37; An Act to consolidate enactments relating to the Government of India. CONSOLIDATED ACT. Government of India Acts (1915-19.) Consolidated. Whereas it is the declared policy of Parliament to provide for the increasing association of Indians in every branch of Indian administration and for the gradual development of Self-Governing institutions with a view to the progressive realisation of Responsible Government in British India as an integral part of the Empire: and Whereas progress in giving effect to this policy can only be achieved by successive stages and it is expedient that substantial steps in this direction should now be taken: and Whereas the time and manner of each advance can be determined only by Parliament upon whom responsibility lies for the welfare and advancement of the Indian peoples: and Whereas the action of Parliament in such matters must be guided by co-operation received from those on whom new opportunities of service will be conferred and by the extent to which it is found that confidence can be reposed in their sense of responsibility: and Whereas concurrently with the gradual development of self-governing institutions in the provinces of India it is expedient to give to those provincial matters the largest measure of independence of the Government of India which is compatible with the due discharge by the latter of its own responsibilities: Be it therefore enacted by the King's most Excellent Majesty by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons in this present Parliament Assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:= 1. The Crown. The territories for the time being vested in His Majesty in India are governed by and in the name of His Majesty the King-Emperor of India, and all rights which if the Government of India Act, 1858, had not been passed, might have been exercised by the East India Company in relation to any territories, may be exercised by and in the name of His Majesty as rights iucidental to the Government of india. The foregoing preamble to the constitution of India does not make any radical change in the basis of the Governance of this country. It presupposes, as ever before in the British era, that: (1) India shall remain an integral part of the British Empire, and accordingly have the character and scope of her political development in harmony with the fundamental principles of that Empire. The British Empire is, indeed, an Empire in name only, since the principal constituents are autonomous units, who owe but a faint allegiance to the nominal sovereign of the Empire. The only uniting links between these mutually independent states that make up the British Empire are:- -(a) the British Crown, and (b) the centralised direction of the foreign policy of the Empire. But the first has no living importance upon the actual problems or details of the administration or Government of the Empire. The respect or veneration for the crown in the outlying parts of the Empire is due to the absence of the personal wearer of the crown for the time being. And as for (b), murmurs of dis content against the undue centralisation in the conduct of the Foreign Affairs of the Empire are not even now unheard. The Anglo-Japanese alliance for offence and defence was negatived in 1921, because the self-governing dominions were against it; and Canada at least has secured the right that in treaties with foreign states materially affecting the economic development of a Dominion, the representatives of that Dominion will be consulted and associated with the negotiation and conclusion of such treaties.* The unison of the *Cp. "The Imperial constitution and the Imperial Conference," by Prof. Berriedale Keith in the Edinburgh Review for July 1923. constituen tstates of the British Empire is thus exceedingly slight. Nevertheless the absence of complete autonomy in the Government of India, makes it impossible to say that the Indian people are free to work out by themselves their own political destiny. (2) The British Parliament remaing, as it has been since the Regulating Act, trustee and guardian for the people of India. While the people of India were a helpless prey in the hands of a foreign bureaucracy exclusively enjoying the powers of Government, the doctrine of trusteeship of the British Parliament may have had some justification in the sentiment of international morality, though it may be doubted if even then the duties and obligations incidental to the trust could have been effec. tively discharged in the circumstances of the case. But with the emergence of the Indian people from the stage of absolute ignorance and helplessness, the doctrine of trusteeship by a foreign body becomes increasingly difficult to maintain; while its inherent inconsistency could not have been more clearly demonstrated than by the provision in the preamble that: (3) The stages of progress on the road to complete autonomy will be determined at the exclusive direction of the trustee, -the British Parliament. No limit is fixed, no distinct condition laid down, for the termination of the trust. Should the interests of the beneficiaries under the trust conflict with those of the trustee, there is no means to make the trustee abdicate its authority which has become no longer acceptable. (4) The only contribution, then, of the Reforming Act of 1919, towards the promotion of responsible Government in India, is the measure of partial of partial Responsibility introduced in the form of dyarchy in Provincial Governments. The ideal of full responsible Government for India is to be achieved-not all at once, but by stages determined at the discretion of the British Parliament, and conditioned by the |