Governor Finds Them Difficult to Please

HOW difficult it is to please some people. The Bengal Government have gone nearly as far towards placating the European community as it could possibly go without reducing the Reforms to a pure mockery. It has trebled the already disproportionately large representation allotted to the European community, at its own instance, by the Franchise Committee, with the result that the community now gets nearly one-fifth of the total number of elective seats as against its numerical proportion of one in a thousand. Yet just because at the recent meeting of the Bengal Council, at which a resolution on European representation came up for consideration, the Governor directed the official members to abstain from voting, the Englishman thus comes down upon him:--“One fails to understand why the Governor directed the official members to abstain from voting on the question. Why are they in the Council at all if they are not to vote, particularly if the matter is one which affects European interests? Officials are concerned in the maintenance of British prestige in this country, for without that prestige, they would be unable to carry on the Government for a single day. Of course, some of the most short-sighted and selfish ones may believe that they will be out of the way before the evil days dawn for Europeans in India. But surely they might take little pride in the Empire, and have some regard for the members of their own race.” It is not a matter for wonder that Lord Ronaldshay has not come up to the writer’s expectation in the matter of the maintenance of British prestige. His Excellency is too shrewd a man not to see that this prestige, in the sense in which the Englishman uses the word, can only be maintained by stereotyping the present form of government and never uttering the word “Reform”. You cannot talk of Indianising the government and at the same time maintain the present position.

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