The nature of such measures is well known. They should include a modification of the Partition of Bengal, by which the central province would be united under one Governor, having the same status as the Governors of Bombay and Madras, while the contiguous western districts were collected into a new province, and Assam remained isolated as it is by nature and race, under a Chief Commissioner responsible either to the Viceroy or to the Governor of Bengal.[73] They should include the appointment of at least one Indian on each of the Executive Councils (a concession which in the case of the Viceroy’s Council seems likely to be fulfilled), and an enlargement of the Viceroy’s and other Legislative Councils by genuinely elected members up to the number of half the Council. This would leave to the officials a steady but narrow majority, the right of absolute veto remaining with the Viceroy, Governor, or Lieutenant-Governor. It might then be laid down that if a large proportion of the elected members—say, two-thirds—were opposed to a certain measure, it should be suspended for further consideration. Some similar control should be granted over the expenditure of money, for at present the representative members have no voice in the revenue that is scraped off their people year by year, and the papers of protest or suggestion, which they read as they sit round the Viceroy’s council-table, might almost as well remain unread for any effect they have upon the official policy. These reforms could be followed by a gradual extension of primary education, which might in the end cost us £5,000,000 a year, but would be well worth the price, even if we had to save something off the £20,000,000 now spent on the Army, and something off the other public services. Owing to our present parsimony in education, the census of 1901 reported that there were 104,500,000 males in India who could not read, 826 boys out of every 1000 of school age who had no school to go to, and only 1 in 10 males literate, and 7 in 1000 females. Further, we could be loyal to the late Queen’s Proclamation and admit Indians without prejudice to the positions they had fitted themselves for. We could make the position of the police such that they would be no longer compelled to help out their livelihood by corruption and false evidence. We could resolutely extinguish the system of Begar or forced labour for the benefit of Civilians and other Europeans. And we could make it illegal for any representative of our Government to condescend to the baseness of opening other people’s letters, even on the off-chance of spying upon sedition. [Illustration: A DESERTED CITY. _[Face p. 334._ ]