ling with "the
transferred subjects" were to be conferred on Indian Ministers
accountable to a Legislative Council in which there was to be a large
Indian non-official majority, elected also on the broadest possible
franchise. The Provincial Government would thus itself be divided into
two compartments: in the one the Governor-in-Council, responsible as
heretofore to the Government of India and to the Secretary of State,
_i.e._ the British Parliament; in the other the Governor--but not "in
Council"--acting with Indian Ministers responsible to an Indian
legislature.

This was the system of partial but progressive devolution that had
already come to be known as "Dyarchy," having been propounded in a
somewhat different form by an independent inquirer, Mr. Lionel Curtis,
whose "Letters to the People of India" on responsible Government, though
they at first caused almost as much displeasure in official as in
Extremist circles, did a great deal to educate the mind of the
"politically-minded" classes, and to prepare the ground for the
Montagu-Chelmsford Report. The authors of the Report were themselves
fully alive to the demerits as well as to the merits of dyarchy, and
they were careful to state it as their intention that "the Government
thus composed and with this distribution of functions shall discharge
them as one Government, and that as a general rule it shall deliberate
as a whole." The Governor-in-Council was to have, on the other hand,
within his narrower sphere, powers similar to those retained by the
Viceroy for overriding the Provincial Legislature in extreme cases of
conflict.

General principles were alone laid down in the Report, and its authors
confined themselves to a rough preliminary indication of their views, as
to the distribution of "reserved" and "transferred" subjects in the
Provinces and as to the constitution of electorates. The latter problem
they stated in brief terms: "We must measure the number of persons who
can in the different parts of the country be reasonably entrusted with
the duties of citizenship. We must ascertain what sort of franchise will
be suited to local conditions, and how interests that may be unable to
find adequate representation in such constituencies are to be
represented." But it was perhaps Mr. Montagu's doctrinaire Radicalism
that betrayed itself in the treatment of the question of "communal"
representation, _i.e._ the creation of separate constituencies for
various comm