The Council, the officials apart, is in reality at its very best advisory only. It cannot be more. It has no power behind it and could be given no responsibility. Yet without the fear of responsibility what advice is ever well given? Irresponsible advisers! Of what value have they ever been in the world's history?
"But"—I have been told and have read often enough—"the Council works well, it is a success, it has gratified the educated Indian. Why criticise it, then?" To that I reply, "In what has its success consisted—what has it done?" And to that I never get any answer except that it is a success because it has done nothing. The speakers were afraid, apparently, it might try to do something—to express, for instance, some of the desires and needs of the people, a few of which I have tried to explain in this book; to suggest some new policy to Government, to show how the great and increasing unrest might be guided into safe channels; and it has been a success because it has done none of these things and was capable of doing none of them. It has been as an influence nil. All it has done has been empty criticism. A writer trying to praise it says: "The debates in the Imperial Council are already not unworthy of older and more famous assemblies." If the comparison is with the House of Commons it is not inapt. For many years now debates there have been merely a pretence. The conclusions are already fixed and the speakers know it. They speak to pass time, to satisfy the electors that they are really doing something to justify their existence, and they try to show off—or to score off someone else. Their speeches have no value. They make no difference to the result. And the debates in the India Council are no different. It perhaps gives the members the illusion of power and authority to be able to badger Government and make long speeches, but it can effect nothing. The debates are make-believe. How should they be anything else? The men are not to blame, but the institution.
"But"—again say its advocates—"this is but a beginning. The Council is but in embryo. Wait till it comes to greater maturity."
To what greater maturity can it come? Is there in this Council any true idea that can expand and grow? There is no idea at all. Is it ever contemplated to make it really representative? How many members would it take to represent three hundred millions of people? On the British basis, not a liberal one, it would require an assembly of over four thousand five hundred members. Is that possible?
Is any election possible among the masses of the people?
Is it ever possible that real executive or legislative power should be given to an assembly when it is the English Government and the English people who in the last resort would have to carry out those orders and bear the brunt of their failure?
Think over the facts carefully. Could you make a central Parliament to govern all Europe? No. For a hundred reasons the idea is impossible. It is equally impossible in India. It is even more impossible in India than it would be in Europe.
Finally it is said that this Council has satisfied the educated class in India.
Has it?
And if it had could there be a greater criterion of its worthlessness than such satisfaction?