munal representation. And then those communities should have electorates of their own, composed of their members who satisfy the prescribed conditions, and such electorates ought to be given the power to elect one or more of their number as their representatives. But the Montagu-Chelmsford report says that 'when we 'consider what responsible government implies, and how 'it was developed in the world, we cannot take this view.' Yet elsewhere Mr. Montagu and Lord Chelmsford say that there is no parallel in the world' for the conditions that prevail in India. If so how can the development of responsible government in the world under entirely different conditions guide us in deciding the method of developing responsible government in India under peculiarly Indian conditions? The Indian problem is, no doubt, very complicated and highly perplexing. Finding themselves puzzled the authors of the report are proceeding on the principle of the American doctor who, when called in to see a child suffering from a nervous complaint, said: 'I don't understand 'this case, but that does not matter; give him these pills and 'they will bring on fits, and I am an authority on fits!' The treatment suggested for the present condition of India is sure to bring on new complications which Mr. Montagu and Lord Chelmsford may possibly understand better than they apparently understand the present situation; but it does not follow that the health of the patient will be improved by the experiment. What is true of communal interests is also true of interests other than communal. Under the Minto-Morley reforms the landed and commercial interests were also given special representation. These require extension. It is only by special and separate representation of all the important interests in the country, religious or otherwise, that a system of safe and equitable representative government can be instituted in the peculiar and almost unique circumstances of India. So far as southern India is concerned, I would propose separate representation to the following communities: (1) Brahmins, (2) Non-Brahmin Hindus, (3) Panchamas and other depressed classes, (4) Mohammedans, (5) Indian Christians, (6) Anglo-Indians (i.e. Eurasians) and non-official Europeans. I would also have European commerce and trade, Indian VOL. 228. NO. 466. 2 A commerce and trade, the planting and mining interests, the Zemindari, Ryotwari landholder, and the agricultural ryot interests specially safeguarded by separate representation. Against such a proposal it may be urged that it would introduce plural voting on a large scale. But we have plural voting under the Minto-Morley reforms, and I do not consider that plural voting, especially in the earlier stages of the development of an electoral system, is such an objectionable thing as would vitiate the whole system. It may also be urged that the representation of communal as well as other interests in India would result in a highly complicated electoral machinery. Would it be more complicated than the cleavages that exist in Indian society at the present time? Is it not a wiser State policy to accept the existence of sharp divisions and deep cleavages among the Indian population on account of race, religion, and caste, and shape and direct them in a manner preparatory to a future fusion, rather than to ignore them in the haste for the speedy attainment of responsible government, only to find out when too late that class and race divisions have merely been covered over and that Indian society has been made into a whited sepulchre with a fair exterior but full of dead men's bones within? The example of the racial divisions in Austria only gives a very imperfect idea of what dangerous complications India might develop under the proposed compulsory method of artificial unification of the Indian peoples. It is better to 'bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of. T. M. NAIR. LABO LABOUR AND A GENERAL ELECTION ABOUR is looming larger on the political horizon than any other single internal factor. The situation is extraordinarily paradoxical. Colloquially, the word Labour' is used to express the joint organization and activities of the trade unions and of certain socialist societies. Labour' thus defined takes no cognizance of, and is indeed regarded as hostile to, the unorganized elements among the manual workers. Until quite recently the same remark could have been applied to all other workers, i.e. the professional classes, the administrators, and the overwhelming majority of the clerk class. Now, however, efforts are being made to induce the brain-workers' to associate themselves with the Labour movement-not, as might have been anticipated, in their corporate capacity, but individually. In other words, the Labour Party has not sought to secure the affiliation of the Law Society, the British Medical Association, the Institute of Civil Engineers, and similar bodies, on the basis of a recognized salary for recognized work, but is angling for the individual members of these professions. In furtherance of this object, under the new constitution of the Labour Party, individuals, irrespective of class or calling, may become members of the party through the affiliated local groups and unions. In theory at least there is nothing to prevent the non-trade unionists, and even blacklegs, from becoming active members of a movement the foundations of which remain trade unionist in character. All this is extremely illogical and self-contradictory: whether it will result in a permanent strengthening or weakening of the movement time alone can tell. But however illogical or inconsistent its organization may be, the sheer weight of numbers renders the Labour movement a potentially formidable factor in the social, industrial, and political life of the nation. Primarily and essentially, the Labour movement is a class movement based on craft or industry. It maintained that character right through the Victorian period from the debacle of Chartism. From the period of Peterloo to the period of the rise of the modern socialist movement, British trade unionism was almost exclusively industrial in character. Practically the only trade unionist members who entered politics and the House of Commons were a handful sent up from mining constituencies, supported and encouraged by the Liberal Party. As industrialists they sat in the House of Commons in their quality of trade unionists, but as politicians they represented their constituencies as Liberals, being not only Liberals in name, but inheriting the principles, the economic ideas, and the limitations of Victorian Radicalism. On the whole, they were worthy representatives of their class, and no more honourable or clean-handed men ever sat in the House of Commons than the veteran Thomas Burt, or the late Sam Woods and the late Charles Fenwick. As representatives of the actual coal-getters, they were not without influence in their day and generation, but in la haute politique they were ciphers. Throughout all that earlier period the Trade Union Congress continued to be the exclusive expression of the British trade unionist movement. Subsequently there emerged the General Federation of Trade Unions, formed of affiliated organizations, largely, though not entirely, identical with the trade union organizations affiliated to the Trade Union Congress. The General Federation of Trade Unions was established for specific purposes of an industrial and economic nature, other than those discharged by the Trade Union Congress. While this slow and undramatic evolution of the organization of the manual wage-earning class was taking place in Great Britain, there had been an extraordinary revival of socialist thought and activities on the continent. In 1871 Marx and Engels had launched their famous Communist manifesto; the International had been re-formed, and a group of socialist propagandists had initiated an untiring campaign in this country. Chief among the latter were William Morris, H. M. Hyndman, H. H. Champion, Ernest Belfort Bax, and John Burns. They did not, indeed, initiate, in the true sense of the term, the socialist movement in this country, but rather inherited and modernized the evangel of which Robert Ow been the father, and of which, also, in their various ways, Ernest Jones, Charles Kingsley, and Frederick Denison Maurice had been the intermediate heirs. Marxist ideas and Marxist economics commenced to permeate the minds of the lesser-known leaders of British Labour. The new Unionism was born. As romanticism yielded to realism in literature, so a similar movement is traceable in politics. Hyndman's 'England for All' greatly popularized Marxist ideas amongst the more thoughtful of the younger generation of manual wage-earners. The materialistic or economic interpretation of history alike inspired and moulded the thought of those who were inheriting the mantles of the fathers of English trade unionism. Revolutionary socialism, however, was still in its infancy, and it would be true to say that up to the last decade of the nineteenth century the thoughts and aspirations of the rank and file of the British working classes failed to cross the rubicon of bourgeois Radicalism. About this time, however, the Independent Labour Party was established, and the late Mr. Keir Hardie commenced a virile propaganda amongst the Scottish and provincial workers, which only terminated with his death. Where Mr. Hyndman and the Social Democratic Federation had failed to proselytize the masses of the British workers, Mr. Keir Hardie and the I.L.P. came much nearer to success. The S.D.F. only succeeded in a few places outside London in forming anything like a strong movement. Their creed was too logical, too revolutionary, too melodramatically crude, perhaps, in its declaration of the class-war to appeal to the provincial working-class. Mr. Keir Hardie, and, later on, Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, Mr. Philip Snowden, Mr. Bruce Glasier, and others -very different types from Morris the artist, Hyndman the Cambridge graduate, Bax the scholar and metaphysicianprovincials in the double sense of the term, learnt to ' temper 'the wind to the shorn lamb,' and introduced what the revolutionary followers of Hyndman contemptuously described as 'soft socialism.' There still lingers in my mind the recollection of one of Mr. Snowden's earlier essays in oratory, enthusiastically distributed by his disciples at thousands of meetings and entitled The Christ that is to Be.' In a word, the I.L.P. found its recruits first by the score and then by the thousand amongst those who had been |