The Lee report

WHATEVER may be the outcome of the historic debate which commenced in the Indian Legislative Assembly on Wednesday, there is one point on which both the government and the people can unreservedly congratulate themselves. On both sides, the advocacy was all that could be desired. Sir Alexander Muddiman, who set the ball rolling by moving the official resolution for the important recommendations of the Lee Commission, not only made out as good a case as the warmest champion of those recommendations could have desired, but went about his task in exactly the manner that was most likely to commend itself to the House. There was no bullying, no hectoring, no holding out of a threat. These familiar and, in the case of officials of a certain class, favourite methods gave place to the methods of argument and persuasion. The chief arguments on which the speaker relied were: first, that the recommendations of the Commission were unanimous; second, that they were in themselves eminently reasonable. As regards the first, the point of the argument was that the Commission consisted of diverse elements, and when a Commission so constituted arrived at unanimous conclusions, it was impossible to deny special weight and authority to such conclusions. As regards the second, the point which the speaker sought to establish was the necessity of maintaining the Service on a footing of efficiency. “You may have the ablest of Ministers,” he said, “you may have an admirable Cabinet, but you will be like persons without arms, and the working of your administration will be a helpless muddle if you have not the hands to carry out our policy.”

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