nservatism. The Report expressed the pious
hope that "inasmuch as the Council of State will be the supreme
legislative authority for India on all crucial questions and the
revising authority for all Indian legislation," it would "attract the
services of the best men available," and "develop something of the
experience and dignity of a body of Elder Statesmen"--an expression
presumably borrowed, but not very aptly, from Japan, where the Elder
Statesmen have no doubt had immense influence but never any
constitutional status. The Report had, moreover, to contemplate the
possibility of conflict between the Legislature and the Executive, and
in accordance with the first of the two main conclusions at which it had
arrived it proposed to arm the Governor-General in Council with power to
override the Legislature if it failed to pass measures or grant supplies
which he was prepared to "certify" as vital to the peace, safety, and
interests of India.

For the great experiment in the provincial sphere, the eight provinces
of Bombay, Madras, Bengal, the United Provinces, Behar and Orissa, the
Punjab, the Central Provinces, and Assam, were deemed to be already
ripe. Burma (which is not really India at all, and whose people belong
to another race and to another stage of political development), the
North-West Frontier Province, and Baluchistan (which for strategical
reasons must remain under the direct control of the Government of
India), and a few smaller areas, whose populations are altogether too
backward, were not to be touched at present. The essential feature of
the scheme was the division of the functions of the Provincial
Government into two categories: the one comprising what are now termed
"the reserved subjects," _i.e._ those with which the maintenance of
peace and order and good government is immediately bound up; and the
other, those which, though less vital, very closely affect the daily
life and common interests of the people, and which were to be called
"the transferred subjects," because it was proposed to transfer at once
the largest possible measure of power and responsibility in regard to
them to exclusively Indian shoulders. While all essential power and
responsibility in regard to "the reserved subjects" were to remain
vested in the Governor-in-Council, _i.e._ the executive body consisting
of the Governor and (under the new scheme) one British and one Indian
member of Council, real power and responsibility for dea