THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, MARCH 4, 1909. WHAT THE INDIAN REFORMS ARE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3129, 4 March 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, MARCH 4, 1909. WHAT THE INDIAN REFORMS ARE.

It is not easy to understand the bearing of Lord Morley's reforms without knowledge of the existing system of government in India. The problem is how to give Indians a share in that system. Mr S. K. Ratcliffe, in the London "Chronicle," supplies some useful information on the present system. The supreme authority in India, he says, is vested in the Viceroy and his Executive Council, this authority baitig officially known as the Hovernor-General in Council. The Executive Council, otherwise the Cabinet, 13 composed of six departmental members and one extra-

orJinary member—the Commander- ■ in-Chief. They are all, of course, Englishmen. No native of India has ; ever yet sat at the board. Lord : Morley, however, has resolved that whtn the next vacancy occurs he will advise the Sovereign to appoi.it an Indian, presumably as of the law department. That is ths first change. Next we come to the Viceroy's Legislative Council, the sole business of which is to enact laws. , The overwhelming majority are officials. The nou-official element is confined to five members-four Indians and one European representative of commerce—out of a total of twenty-four. It is evident, therefore, that native opinion at present ' counts for next to nothing in the \ Supreme Legislative Council. Under Lord Morley's scheme the total membership would be raised to sixty-two, ' of whom twenty-eight (Indians twenty-six, commercial Europeans two) would be elected, leaving the Viceroy with a very small official majority. All that the existing Indian members of Council have the power to do is to ask questions (all supplementary barred), make speeches, and sit on select committees. Lord Morley proposes that they should be given, the "Novel right of moving resolution?, and advising the Council on administrative questicns of public interest, and of : taking part in settling the actual / figures of the Budget, both by inI formal discussion and by bringing

forward specific recommendations, which will be put to the vote." We now come to the provincial administration. The Governors of Madras and Bombay are appointed direct from England. Being, by assumption, strangers to India when they go out, each is assisted by an ex- , ecutive council of two English officials. Lord Morley proposes that this number should be doubled, and j that one of the four should be an ' Indian. In addition to Bombay and > Madras, there are five major provinces, presided over by lieutenantgovernors who have risen in the grades of the Civil Service. They ha/e at present no executive councils, but such are to be created as the need may arise. It is, however, in connection with the existing legislative councils of the seven large provinces that Lord Morley's scheme will effect the most momentous change. Their membership is,

roughly speaking, to be doubled, their powers are to be extended on lints similar to those followed in the reform of the Supreme Cou icil, and the Government will be divested of ics permanent official majority. Here is, perhaps, the most controversial point in the whole scheme; but Lord Morley has the support of the Viceroy and his advisers, together with that of the non-official A^lo-In.Hans, and he has succeeded in gaining the assent of the provincial authorities themselves. These proposals have met with a very favourable reception at Home and by Nationalists in India. Lot'- Morley's admissions concede as much as could be asked. They concade the primal principle that it is well for Indians to be associated with the work of governing their own ccuntry.