The two speeches
THE Legislative Assembly session, which opened on Tuesday last with a speech from the Viceroy, is likely to be one of the most momentous sessions of that body held so far. We do not have the speech of the Viceroy before us at the time of writing and are, therefore, not in possession of the government’s intentions, whether in the matter of legislation or finance. But the Viceroy’s speech differs in one essential respect from the King’s speech. The latter is the speech of the Prime Minister for the time being, and the PM is not merely the nominal but the real leader of the people’s House except in those cases, now fast going out of vogue, when the PM happens to be in the other House, in which case a nominee of his leads the House of Commons. The result is that the King’s speech does foreshadow the most important events of the ensuing session, although, as a rule, only in broad, general outline. The Viceroy’s speech, on the other hand, is the speech of one who, while he is the actual head of the government, is not even a member of either House of the Legislature. While it is true that one of his nominees nominally leads the Assembly and another the Council of State, the real lead, at least in the first case, belongs to a non-official or a body of non-officials. It thus happens that really important business of a session can seldom be accurately foreshadowed in the Viceroy’s speech, and is usually what the Opposition and not the government determines that it should be. That this is so, only a cursory review of last year’s happenings in the Legislative Assembly will conclusively show.
