"The tone of those Debates is unreal, unsubstantial and ineffective. If Estimates for India, like Estimates for the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and the Colonial Secretary were to be discussed on the floor of the House of Commons, the Debates on India would be as good as the Debates on foreign affairs. After all, what is the difference? Has it even been suggested to the people of Australia that they should pay the salary of the Secretary of State for the Colony? Why should the whole cost of that building in Charles Street, including the building itself, be an item of the Indian taxpayer's burden rather than of this House of Commons and the people of the country?" Can and does the House of Commons control the India Office? Here is Mr. Montagu's answer. "It has been sometimes questioned whether a democracy can rule an Empire. I say that in this instance the democracy has never had the opportunity of trying. But even if the House of Commons were to give orders to the Secretary of State, the Secretary of State is not his own master. In matters vitally affecting India, he can be overruled by a majority of his Council. I may be told that the cases are very rare in which the Council has differed from the Secretary of State for India. I know one case anyhow, where it was a very near thing, and where the action of the Council might without remedy have involved the Government of India in a policy out of harmony with the declared policy of the House of Commons and the Cabinet. And these gentlemen are appointed for seven years, and can only be controlled from the Houses of Parliament by a resolution carried in both Houses calling on them for their resignations. The whole system of the India Office is designed to prevent control by the House of Commons for fear that there might be too advanced a Secretary of State. I do not say that it is possible to govern India through the intervention of the Secretary of State with no expert advice, but what I do say is that in this epoch now after the Mesopotamia Report, he must get his expert advice in some other way than by this Council of men, great men though, no doubt, they always are, who come home after lengthy service in India to spend the first years of their retirement as members of the Council of India. "Does any Member of this House know much about procedure in the India Office? I have been to the India Office and to other offices. I tell this House that the statutory organization of the India Office produces an apotheosis of circumlocution and red tape beyond the dreams of any ordinary citizen." His own idea of what should be done at that juncture was thus expressed: