Education -- India; India -- Politics and government -- 1857-1919; India -- Social conditions
committed to his care, and, though railways have shortened distances,
rapid journeys in special trains with great ceremonial programmes at
every halting point scarcely afford the same opportunities as the more
leisurely progress of olden days, when the Governor-General's camp, as
it moved from place to place, was open to visitors from the whole
surrounding country. Moreover, the machinery of administration grows
every year more ponderous and complicated, and the Viceroy, unless he is
endowed with an almost superhuman power and quickness of work, is apt to
find himself entangled in the meshes of never-ending routine. It is in
order to supply the knowledge and experience which a Viceroy in most
cases lacks when he first goes out, and in some cases is never able to
acquire during his whole tenure of office, that his Executive Council is
so constituted, in theory and as far as possible in practice, that it
combines with administrative experience in the several Departments over
which members respectively preside such a knowledge collectively of the
whole of India that the Viceroy can rely upon expert advice and
assistance in the transaction of public business and, not least, in
applying with due regard for Indian conditions the principles of policy
laid down for his guidance by the Home Government. These were the
grounds upon which Lord Morley justified the appointment to the
Viceroy's Executive Council of an Indian member who, besides being
thoroughly qualified to take charge of the special portfolio entrusted
to him, would bring into Council a special and intimate knowledge of
native opinion and sentiment. These are the grounds upon which, by the
way, Lord Morley cannot possibly justify the appointment of Mr. Clark as
Member for Commerce and Industry, for a young subordinate official,
however brilliant, of an English public Department cannot bring into the
Viceroy's Executive Council either special or general knowledge of
Indian affairs. Such an appointment must to that extent weaken rather
than strengthen the Government of India.
The same arguments which apply in India to the conjunction of the
Governor-General with his Council apply, _mutatis mutandis_, with
scarcely less force to the importance of the part assigned to the
Council of India as advisers of the Secretary of State at the India
Office.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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