THE 
 
 A SPEECH DELIVERED AT A MEETING 
 OF THE BENCH OF JUSTICES 
 
 held on Friday 21st June 1871 
 
 AND 
 
 A PAPER READ BEFORE A MEETING 
 OF THE 
 
 BOMBAY BRANCH OF THE EAST INDIA ASSOCIATION 
 
 held on the 29th November 1871 
 BY 
 
 Sir Plierozeshah M. Mehta, K. c. i. E., M. A. 
 
 ( SECOND EDITION. > 
 
 \ A '.
 
 CONSTITUTION OF THE BOMBAY 
 MUNICIPALITY; 
 
 (The following speech, was delivered by Sir 
 Pheroze.shari M. Mehta. at. a Meeting of the Bench of 
 Justices held on Friday,' 21st June, 1871, in the Durbar 
 Room of the. Town Hall with reference to the question of 
 the Reform of the Constitution of the Bombay Muni- 
 cipality.) 
 
 Mr. Chairman, It is not without considerable hesi- 
 tation and diffidence that I rise to offer a few remarks 
 on. the propositions that are now before the meeting, 
 unable as I am, to agree with the essential features of any 
 of the schemes of municipal reform that are submitted to 
 us for our consideration. I am not unaware that the 
 taking up of such a position is deprecated on all hands 
 by members of the Bench and people outside for whose 
 opinion I have the highest respect. It is urged by them, 
 that in the .present juncture of municipal affairs, it is 
 incumbent on us to be practical and moderate, that we 
 should give in our adhesion to one or other of the schemes 
 before us as the only ones having any chance of being 
 viewed or received favourably by Government, and that 
 we must not lose the little we can obtain in the quest 
 of something more desirable. Now I confess, Sir, that 
 this argument would be most convincing and conclusive if 
 any of the schemes of municipal reform advocated before 
 us to-day offered us a modicum (however small it may be) 
 of municipal reform, but which was at the same time 
 substantial and bona fide and which advanced us per- 
 ceptibly in the path of the improvement of our municipal 
 institutions. Now I have been obliged, though most re- 
 luctantly, to come to the conclusion that I can agree with 
 the advocates of either scheme only so far as they expose 
 the utter hollowness and inadequacy of the proposals of 
 their adversaries. Both" sides are perfectly successful in 
 demolishing the arguments of their opponents but are 
 totally unable to maintain their own and to show satis- 
 factorily that their proposals, if adopted, would secure 
 even a moderate settlement of the municipal question.
 
 For let us examine these resolutions calmly and carefully, 
 and I venture to say that we shall not have far to go to 
 point out that actual experience has already shown that 
 they are impotent for any real purpose of municipal 
 reform. I think that the criticism of the essential point 
 of Mr. Forbes's proposals contained in the first part of the 
 amendment proposed by Captain Hancock, hits ac- 
 curately a very great defect in Mr. Forbes's plan. I agree 
 with Captain Hancock in thinking that to vest the exe- 
 cutive authority in a Town Council assisted by a Secre- 
 tary, is the resuscitation of a plan already tried and con- 
 demned by experience as wrong in principle and inefficient 
 in practice. I must say with all due deference, that Mr. 
 Nowrojee Furdoonjee's indignant disclaimer against in- 
 stituting any comparison between the old Board of Con- 
 servancy and the proposed Town Council was charac- 
 terized more by assertion than by argument. He did 
 not even attempt to show what essential difference there 
 was between the old Board and the present proposed 
 Town Council that could justify the hope that the latter 
 would succeed w r here the former had failed. Nor was 
 his comparison with the Town Council of Liverpool more 
 conclusive. I have no doubt that Mr. Nowrojee Fur- 
 doonjee took very great pains to make himself intimately 
 acquainted with the constitution and working of that 
 beau-ideal of his, of the Town Council of Liverpool, but 
 when he proceeded to predict a promising future for the 
 Town Council of Mr. Forbes's scheme from the proved 
 excellence of the Liverpool Town Council, on the ground 
 that they were similar, the only difference being that the 
 latter was founded upon the elective principle, I also had 
 no doubt that Mr. Nowrojee had familiarized himself 
 with another English institution, the practice so well 
 known to English shopkeepers of urging the irresistible 
 argument of only a guinea. On that principle you could 
 easily prove that a dead body was as good as a living body, 
 the only difference being that the latter had what the 
 former had not, a life, a vital principle. If he thought 
 so little of this difference, what he ought to have com- 
 pared his Town Council with, were the Town Councils 
 of the English boroughs before the elective principle was 
 universally introduced in them by the Municipal Cor- 
 poration Act of 1835, characterized by the Commissioners 
 appointed to enquire into them as at once inefficient,
 
 3 
 
 mischievous and corrupt. I do not concur with those 
 who pass a wholesale condemnation upon the system of 
 municipal government in the English towns, not even 
 after they press into their service the authority of the 
 Quarterly Review a review which, after all, is only the 
 exponent of the views of the same party who struggled 
 frantically against the passing of the Corporation Act of 
 1835; but I do believe that in recommending an executive 
 Town Council, Mr. Forbes is copying by far the greatest 
 blunder of the English Act, to which alone is attributable 
 whatever inefficiency, mismanagement and corruption 
 still lingers in English municipal government. It is the 
 want of a responsible executive officer that has marred to 
 a very great extent the utility of the English Municipal 
 reform of 1835. The only effect of the establishment of 
 Mr. Forbes's Town Council would be to substitute in the 
 place of one responsible executive officer a heterogeneous 
 body of men equally powerful, men incapable and diffi- 
 cult of being controlled and with their responsibility so 
 attenuated by division and sub-division as to ren- 
 der them practically and really entirely irrespon- 
 sible. I am afraid that the framers of Mr. 
 Forbes's plan have failed to see that what they 
 should have aimed at was not so much to destroy 
 the executive authority, so far as it was necessary for 
 good and energetic administration but that they should 
 have devised some means sufficient and capable to keep 
 that authority within its proper and denned limits. As 
 I understand it, the complaint against the Municipal 
 Commissioner, true or false, is not that his powers are 
 inordinately large but that he exceeds them and defies 
 the limits placed on them. I must say that the true 
 remedy for such a complaint does not lie in substituting in 
 the place of one responsible Municipal Commissioner, 
 a whole host of practically irresponsible Commissioners. 
 
 But, while I concur with Captain Hancock in his esti- 
 mate and criticism of the proposals brought forward by 
 Mr. Forbes, I must say that he fails in making out a 
 case for his own substantive plans. The Town Council 
 proposed by him, and the same may be said of that of Mr. 
 Narayen Vassudevji, would be nothing more than a con- 
 solidation of the already existing Standing Finance and 
 other committees of the Bench, and if that is all that is 
 considered necessary for municipal reform, there is no
 
 4 
 
 need for all this agitation or for an Act of the Indian 
 Legislature, to carry out such a consolidation. But the 
 general puhlic feeling on this suhject indicates a deeper 
 sense of dissatisfaction and points to a greater failure than 
 is suggested or encountered by Captain Hancock's reme- 
 dies. Indeed it seems to me that all the schemes of 
 municipal reform presented to us fail in their object 
 because their authors have not succeeded in probing the 
 real causes of the failure admitted on all hands, of our pre- 
 sent municipal system. I cannot help saying that it is a 
 very superficial observation, that on the one hand ascribes 
 this failure to the existence of a municipal dictatorship 
 and on the other to the unwieldy and bulky character of 
 the Bench of Justices. This may be so, but the radical 
 causes of this failure lie deeper, and they lie in the nature 
 of the very constitution of the Bench Justices itself, 
 elected by Government and elected for life. What is the 
 popular meaning at present of a Justiceship of the Peace? 
 Some sort of honor most people will say, at least in the 
 main. The idea that it involves municipal duties and 
 municipal responsibilities, is at least in the generality of 
 cases, very vague, shrouded much in the background and 
 withal of a very passive character. What can be expected 
 from a conglomeration of men with such ideas? Mr. 
 Forbes tried to excuse and justify the Bench at the 
 expense of Act II of 1865. But when he was speaking 
 on that point, it seemed to me that every instance that 
 he produced proved exactly the contrary. If the ex- 
 penditure was extravagant, why did not the Bench exercise 
 the powers given to it by Bee. 35 of the Act? Mr. Forbes 
 stated that Dr. Dallas once attempted to do so in a sum- 
 mary manner but was told that that could not be done. , 
 Very true; why did he not then attempt to do so in the 
 manner indicated by the Act item by item ? Mr. Forbes 
 then drew a very dramatic picture of the terrible things 
 that would have happened if they had reduced the budget 
 estimates and the necessity they would have soon been 
 under to prostrate themselves before the Commissioner 
 seeking and begging for pardon. I must say, however, 
 that with more respect for the dignity of the Bench he 
 might have remembered that there was another alter- 
 native open to them. He might have -remembered that 
 not more than two-thirds of the Bench could have obliged 
 Government to dismiss such a contumacious Commis-
 
 sioner under Sec. 11. I must, .say that so far as Mr. 
 Forbes 's grievances are concerned, it is not Act II of 1,865 
 that is to blame, but it is the Bench of Justices' them- 
 selves. The only efficient radical remedy, , would be to 
 change the constitution of the Bench of Justices in a man- 
 ner to bring before them clearly, forcibly and vividly, ? 
 sense of municipal obligation and municipal responsibility, 
 disregard of which would entail exclusion from it. And 
 here it is that the English Corporation Act deserves to' 
 be followed in the large popular and responsible basis on 
 which it has founded its system of Municipal Govern- 
 ment. There never will be efficient Municipal adminis- 
 tration in Bombay till there is a popular and responsible 
 Bench of Justices elected at regular intervals by the rate- 
 payers themselves, a consultative Tow r n Council elected 
 out of it, with a responsible executive officer at its head 
 appointed by Government, and a controller of accounts 
 appointed by the Bench to control the Commissioner, I 
 am aware that most people scout this idea as chimerical 
 and visionary, and even if desirable, impossible to .get 
 accepted by Government. One gentleman at our last 
 meeting tossed it over to the next generation a gener- 
 ation of Nowrojee Furdoonjees though, .with remarkable 
 logical ingenuity, he immediately after proceeded to 
 meet that very idea half-way. However, I say .that, 
 if desirable, 'ft is 'our duty to present it firmly before Gov- 
 ernment , and I venture to say that the time is now past 
 when strong popular opinion on any subject can be suc- 
 cessfully resisted by Government for any length of time. 
 But, say people, it is dangerous and absurd to bestow 
 an elective municipal franchise upon people incapable of 
 appreciating or exercising it properly.- It is said that 
 there is a radical incapacity in Indians for representative 
 institutions, municipal or political. A more untrue pro- 
 position was never put forward, or one more opposed to 
 the opinion of people most qualified to speak on the sub- 
 ject. I will not detain the Bench by quoting authorities, 
 but I cannot resist the temptation of reading a short 
 opinion of a gentleman well-known to us all, Mr. Anstey. 
 It was given at a meeting of the East India Association 
 in London : 
 
 "We are apt to forget in this country when we talk 
 of preparing people in the East by education and all that
 
 6 
 
 sort of thing for Municipal government and Parliamentary 
 government (if I may use such a term) that the East is 
 the parent of Municipalities. Local self-government in 
 the widest acceptation of the term is as old as the East 
 itself. No matter what may be the religion of the people 
 who inhabit what we call the East, there is not a portion 
 of that country, there is not a portion of Asia from west 
 to east, from north to south, which is not swarming with 
 municipalities and not only so but like to our muni- 
 cipalities of old, they are all bound together as in a species 
 of net-work so that you have ready-made to your hand 
 the frame-work of a great system of representation and 
 all you have to do is to adopt what you have there and 
 invite the municipalities to send you their delegates." 
 
 For these reasons I feel convinced that the time has 
 now come when the municipality of a town like Bombay 
 ought to be founded on a larger popular basis, and that 
 in such a bold and decisive measure alone is its real sal- 
 vation and efficiency. I cannot therefore consent to vote 
 in favour of measures which, without doing any per- 
 ceptible good, nay, most probably proving mischievous, 
 would only postpone real reform. I have given, Mr. 
 Chairman, at some length my reasons for the position 
 I have taken up, for as partisanship is supposed to be the 
 order of the day, it may be misunderstood.
 
 THE BOMBAY MUNICIPAL 
 QUESTION OF 1871. 
 
 A PAPER READ BEFORE A MEETING OF THE BOMBAY BRANCH OF 
 THE EAST INDIA ASSOCIATION, HELD ON THE 29th NOVEMBER 
 1871. 
 
 I venture to bring, what may appear at first sight to 
 be a purely local question for discussion before this so- 
 ciety, for two reasons which combine to prove it to be of 
 general and imperial interest. The problem of intro- 
 ducing free municipalities in all the towns of India is fast 
 becoming ripe for settlement, and the arguments and 
 considerations concerning municipal government in Bom- 
 bay would apply in almost all their integrity to, and fur- 
 nish useful and instructive lessons for the inauguration of 
 free municipal government in the other Indian towns. In 
 the next place, the good, wise, and efficient administra- 
 tion of the municipal affairs of a town like Bombay,- the 
 metropolis of Western India, the great emporium of 
 Anglo-Indian commerce, and the connecting link between 
 England and her great dependency, is a question of 
 imperial moment. 
 
 The history of municipal government in Bombay may 
 be said to begin with a Board of Conservancy, which was 
 superseded in the fulness of time by a constitution com- 
 posed of a Bench of Justices and a Board of three Com- 
 missioners. Under Acts XXIV of 1856 and XXV of 1858, 
 this composite body continued to manage the municipal 
 affairs of Bombay, till the year 1865, when Government, 
 Justices and the Commissioners themselves, with one 
 acclaim, proclaimed the utter inefficiency and failure of 
 the system. In the early part of that year, Mr. Cassels, 
 then a member of the Bombay Legislative Council, 
 brought in a bill to organize a new Municipal constitution. 
 This bill, which ultimately passed into Act II of 1865, 
 formed the Justices into a Corporation and abolished the 
 Board of Commissioners in favour of one Municipal Com- 
 missioner with full executive powers, under the deliber- 
 ative guidance and financial control of the Bench of Jus- 
 tices, though appointed by Government. 
 
 It is now little more than six years that Act II of 1865 
 has been in operation and a cry has again risen for further 
 reform. It is complained that municipal taxation is
 
 8 
 
 falling heavily,' oppressively, and unequally, chiefly upon 
 the lower strata of the middle classes. It is complained 
 tlKit municipal-expenditure is carried on>at : too -grand and 
 extravagant a rate for a town like Bombay. It is com- 
 plained that the substantial benefits resulting from this 
 oppressive taxation and this grand and extravagant expen- 
 diture, are of a very disproportionate character. It soems 
 that these complaints .have been long ripening, and the 
 notice given by Mr. Forbes, in the month of Juno, of 
 motions concerning municipal reform, was only the spark 
 that kindled into a common explosion the train of the iso- 
 lated gunpowder grains of discontent, pervading the whole 
 town in respect of municipal mismanagement and oppres- 
 sion. 
 
 It- must be acknowledged that Mr. Forbes ' and his 
 supporters -deserve great credit for their opportune bold- 
 ness in coining out to give expression to the popular feel- 
 ing on the subject, and constituting themselves the leaders 
 of a municipal reform agitation. They deserve great 
 credit> for the energy and -earnestness with which they, 
 brought the whole subject of municipal affairs for review 
 and discussion in a formal and public manner. Tln-v 
 deserve gr.e at. credit for the persistency .with which they 
 pressed for practical and effective remedies for the evils 
 complained of. At the same time, it is a matter of grave, 
 regret, that, with their boldness, energy, and earnest-, 
 ness, they did not combine qualities equally necessary <--., 
 moderation, . wisdom and farsightedness. , The self- 
 constituted leaders, of popular movements have a two-fold 
 duty, to perform. It is not sufficient for them to. stand 
 forth boldly to give loud utterance to the cpn fused and in r . 
 coherent popular cries. It is not .sufficient for them to , 
 reiterate and proclaim the popular indiscriminate wailings 
 and inconclusive analyses of the public grievances. There 
 is another and a. higher duty cast upon them, the duty, 
 of guiding and rolling the movement in its proper path, 
 of extricating it from the confusion of words and thoughts 
 under which it usually labours, of analysing the genuine 
 and substantial causes of it, of discovering and proposing 
 measures well adapted to meet the end in view. It must 
 be said that, with a good, urgent and substantial cause, 
 the present leaders of municipal reform have completely 
 failed to perform this higher and nobler duty, and, if the
 
 9 
 
 recent reform movement fails to attain its object, and 
 succeeds only in retarding real reform, the responsibility 
 of that failure will lie on their heads, the blame of it will 
 lie at their doors. They have disdained to take the 
 trouble of probing with care the real causes of the popular 
 discontent, and of proposing, after mature deliberation, 
 measures which might further, and not retard the pro- 
 gress of municipal reform. They seem, perhaps with- 
 out consciously meaning to do so, to have rushed out in a 
 blind spirit of partisanship , like some of the leaders of the 
 late Commune of Paris, not caring to discriminate what 
 they attacked, or what they proposed, so long as they 
 overturned what they hastily considered the most ob- 
 noxious part of what existed. To them, the Municipal 
 Commissioner was the head and front of the offence, and 
 'away with him' was the remedy they proposed, no mat- 
 ter if they substituted King Stork in the place of what 
 might favourably compare as King Log. Unfortunately 
 they are mistaken both in the evil they claim to have dis- 
 covered and the remedy they indicate, and the double 
 mistake fundamentally arises from a total inability to 
 understand the real historical significance of the Muni- 
 cipal period between 1865 and 1871, what it was wanted 
 to effect, what it did effect, and what it should lead to. 
 
 In proceeding to set this point in its proper light, it 
 will be well to pause for a moment and look at the muni- 
 cipal state of Bombay just before Act II of 1865 came 
 into operation. It is a common remark that those who 
 see a sick person recover before their very eyes, are un- 
 able to realize the change so truly or so vividly as those 
 who observe it at longer intervals. Such has been exactly 
 the case with the majority of the reform leaders. The 
 municipal improvement of Bombay has been going on 
 before their eyes for several years, and they have got so 
 accustomed to it that they are now unable to recall the 
 fact that it was not always much the same. I happened 
 to leave Bombay about the end of 1864, and only returned 
 after an absence of four years. In my mind, the two 
 pictures therefore preserve their general features in 
 marked and broad contrast, without suffering them to 
 be gradually effaced by the continued and minute obser- 
 vation of the progress of the change from the one into 
 the other. I can recall forcibly and vividly a condition
 
 10 
 
 of things when the uneven and broken state of the roads 
 was not the exception but the rule. I can recall a state 
 of things when a preparation of mud and filth was the 
 normal macadam of the streets and gullies. I can 
 recall a state of things when you were liable any moment 
 of a walk through the town to be greeted with showers of 
 dirty water or dirtier kutchra. I can recall a state of 
 things when the roads, streets and gullies were moreover 
 uneven and narrow, with sudden projections over here, 
 and dangerous obstructions over there. I can recall a 
 state of things when the town excretions putrified at the 
 will of the tyrant halalcores in uncleaned privies in the 
 most crowded localities, or went spattering and splashing 
 in open baskets or rickety cars under your very noses at 
 the best times of the day when you might hope to get a 
 whiff of pure fresh air. I can recall a state of things when 
 you were not unfrequently exposed to be garroted and 
 plundered in dark thoroughfares and darker gullies. I can 
 recall a state of things when the near prospect of water- 
 famine blanched the faces of men, women and children, 
 and hurried them to propitiate the rain deities with pray- 
 ers, offerings and sacrifices of the most grotesque cha- 
 racter. I can recall a state of things when markets and 
 slaughterhouses were not so much places for supplying 
 the town with its daily food, as centres for disseminating 
 infection and disease. I can recall a state of things when 
 burial-grounds and cemeteries nestled side by side with 
 habitations for the living. I can recall a state of things 
 when the periodical recurrence of epidemics of the most 
 terrible and virulent type was waited for with sinking and 
 despairing hearts with as much certainty as the decrees of 
 fate. Not unaptly, and without exaggeration might the 
 state of Bombay in those days have been compared to 
 that of a dirty, filthy, ugly w r ight, sallow and pinched, witli 
 the wiry fingers of grim disease and death tightening their 
 clasp over his throat and piercing their sharp nails in his 
 flesh. 
 
 That this is no fancy picture drawn from imagination 
 can be easily ascertained by reference to the records of 
 the times. I suppose we have not yet quite forgotten 
 Dr. Leith's Report of the 29th February 1864, on the 
 sanitary condition of the town of Bombay, nor Dr. 
 Raines's able Mortuary Eeport for the year ending 31t
 
 January 1864, in which he stated that the mortality dur- 
 ing that year had "been the largest that has been recorded 
 in Bombay and nearly one-third in excess of the average 
 of the previous ten years." After noticing these figures 
 in moving the second reading of the Municipal Bill, Mr. 
 Cassels went on to state, "I wish I could congratulate the 
 community on their being the statistics of the official year 
 which closed yesterday. These I am able by the kind- 
 ness of Dr. Haines to state to you, and I regret to say 
 that they are still more frightful to contemplate. Last 
 year the total mortality was nearly 'one-third in excess 
 of the average of the previous ten years', this year that 
 mortality is exceeded by 27 per cent, and the average of 
 the preceding ten years by 58 per cent."* 
 
 Such was the state, or rather chaos of things in Bom- 
 bay, at the end of 1864, which instantly required to be 
 grappled with; such were the Augean stables that urgently 
 required to be cleansed. There is a crisis in human affairs 
 when slow and ordinary means avail not, when men must 
 consent to strong measures on the sole condition that they 
 are efficient, when they must give up their freedom 
 and lay aside their most cherished institutions, their most 
 valued forms and guarantees of order and economy, and 
 submit to the strong rule and the strong hand, absolute 
 and arbitrary, on the sole condition that it fail not. Such 
 crises are common in the history of the growth of minor 
 institutions as of great states and commonwealths. The 
 history of heroes and dictators is the history of such crises, 
 and fotunate are the people who can get hold, in their hour 
 of need, of one of such men at the nick of time. In their 
 great Municipal crisis of 1865 ,were the people of Bombay 
 fortunate enough to lay hold of such a man? We have 
 looked at the Municipal picture of the town as it was in the 
 early part of that year. Let us now look at the other picture 
 of Bombay as it is now after a Municipal administration 
 of six years, and we may perhaps be able to answer the 
 question. The first thing that strikes a person now is, 
 that the dirty, filthy, stinking, narrow streets and gullies 
 have mostly disappeared, and in their place are to be seen 
 roads and streets, scrupulously clean, generally kept in 
 good condition, well- watered, and well-lighted, a good 
 
 'Proceedings of the Bom. Leg. Coun. p. 7. Ditto, 8,
 
 12 
 
 many of which indeed would do honor to some of the best 
 towns even of the Western world. The tyrant, halalcores 
 no longer hold sway, and the open baskets are no longer 
 allowed to offend your nostrils and infect your lungs, but 
 are obliged to give way to light and compact carts emitting 
 no noxious smells whatsoever, and trudging only at the late 
 hours of the night. The night soil and rubbish no longer 
 poison the atmosphere near your very doors, but are carried 
 off to long distances to be burnt and destroyed. The burial 
 places, festering in the very heart of the town, are closed 
 and removed to distant localities. The markets and 
 slaughter-houses are transformed from centres of disease 
 and infection into things of beauty and cleanliness, that 
 might move the envy of towns like Paris and London. 
 Water-famine is become a thing of the past, and good, 
 wholesome water is now brought within easy reach of 
 the poorest. Epidemics are no longer the constant and 
 dreaded visitors of old, virulent and all-powerful; their 
 stray visits are few and far between, and their ravages are 
 easily withstood and repelled. The frightful rate of mor- 
 tality which prevailed in 1864-65 has been reduced to such 
 an extent that, in the Registrar-General's Report of this 
 year, the town of Bombay knows its old place no more. 
 And not only has it become so healthy itself, but it has 
 ceased any more to spread disease and death far and wide, 
 a circumstance of incalculable importance for the outlet 
 of all Indian trade. Nor have improvements for adorn- 
 ing and beautifying the town, not the less necessary even 
 from a sanitary point of view, been neglected. Public pro- 
 menades, boulevards, roads, foot-paths, and shady walks 
 planted with large trees, and interspersed with cool and 
 shady squares and triangles, splendid fountains, an 
 Elphinstone Circle, and a Rotten Row, all combine to add 
 at once to the health and beauty of the town. Indeed, 
 the ugly, decrepit, diseased old wight of 1865, tottering 
 almost on the brink of the grave, has drunk, it would 
 seem, the Medean potion, and has undergone a magical 
 transformation, from which he has arisen recovered and 
 invigorated, glowing with health, strength and beaut v, 
 and giving promise of a continued development. 
 
 How then are we to answer the question, whether 
 in her great Municipal crisis, our town was fortunate 
 enough to secure a man able to cope with the emergency?
 
 13 
 
 I think there can be no doubt, in spite of the assertions 
 of anonymous correspondents that there is nothing in all 
 this beyond performing one's duty, in spite of their 
 modest belief, now that the ideas are created and the 
 works accomplished, that they could have easily done the 
 same, in spite of the innate assurance of copyists that if 
 they are able to copy, say a Kaphael, they could be 
 Kaphaels themselves, that the man who effected in six 
 years the wonderful transformation of the Bombay of 1865 
 into the Bombay of 1871, deserves in the main to be em- 
 phatically proclaimed its great saviour and benefactor. 
 He may have been guilty of great faults, committed great 
 errors, and defied all restraints, forms and formulas what- 
 soever. But on these conditions only could the work 
 have been accomplished, and their memory must in jus- 
 tice be lost in the general successful result. It is exactly 
 like the case of the general, who, in the desperate hour 
 of the battle, defies his strict orders, relies upon his own 
 judgment, and gains the victory. Death, the just 
 punishment of his insubordination, if he had failed; a 
 grateful act of indemnity, the reward of his successful in- 
 trepidity. 
 
 This, as I understand it, is the only just appreciation of 
 the Municipal administration of ARTHUR CRAWFORD from 
 1865 to 1871. He was placed at the head of Municipal 
 affairs at a moment of great emergency. He found that 
 he had a task before him to perform, which urgently de- 
 manded intrepidity and despatch, while a Legislative Act 
 hampered him with checks which, if strictly observed, 
 could not but in the very nature of things be ultimately 
 productive of great delay. He found that he must spend 
 liberally to ensure quickness and efficiency, while the state 
 of the Municipal exchequer was in the greatest confusion 
 and disorder. A weaker, and perhaps a more con- 
 scientious man, with the narrow conscience of a French 
 official who could never look beyond the strict letter of 
 his orders, or a great financier would have succumbed 
 before these difficulties, and we would have been at the 
 present moment discussing the frightful penalty of delay 
 instead of criticising, as we are now vehemently doing, 
 the cost of the victory. Arthur Crawford rose to the 
 height of the occasion. He did his work, looked at 
 his rules and orders afterwards, And that a great portion
 
 14 
 
 of the Bench understood his position and acquiesced in 
 his way of dealing with it, is apparent. A gallant major, 
 a warm supporter of Mr. Forbes, expressed this idea very 
 characteristically at the reform debates. "The fact is, 
 I really believed most conscientiously, that Mr. Crawford 
 was all right; and that is my defence for having held up 
 my hand in the way I did; I threw up my hand for every 
 budget, because I thought, there is Mr. Crawford, the 
 Commissioner, a high-minded man; he said it was neces- 
 sary; and I had a gallant and honorable man, as my good 
 friend Mr. Taylor has just told you, Captain Hancock, and 
 his Committee; and they said to me it was all right, and 
 I saw their hands up, and up went mine."* It. may be 
 true that he may have committed some excesses in carry- 
 ing out such a policy. But the duty of keeping scrupu- 
 lously from going beyond certain founds, and refraining 
 strictly from committing unnecessary excesses in such an 
 emergency, is a lesson more easily preached than prac- 
 tised. 
 
 In urging this view, I am not unaware that many of 
 the improvements I have described above, are claimed 
 one by one person and another by another, the Circle 
 was projected by one and the Esplanade was adorned by 
 another, and that between them, the credit of very few 
 ideas and very few works would be left to the Commis- 
 sioner. Such claims are by no means uncommon, and 
 greater men have had their titles to glory questioned in 
 this manner. Francis Bacon was not the apostle of 
 Experimental Philosophy, because forsooth long before 
 him, the Inductive Method had been explained by Aris- 
 totle, and even just a little before him it had been prac- 
 tised and proclaimed here and there. And Mirabeau was 
 not original, that is, to explain it in the quaint but forcible 
 language of Carlyle, "The firepan, the kindling, the bitu- 
 men were his own; but the lumber of rags, old woo4, 
 and nameless combustible rubbish (for all is fuel to him) 
 was gathered from hucksters and ass-paniers, of every 
 description under heaven. Whereby indeed hucksters 
 enough have been heard to exclaim : out upon it, the fire 
 is mine." Perhaps just as similarly some of the ideas 
 were suggested to the Municipal Commissioner and some 
 
 *The Municipal Reporter, I. p. 32.
 
 of the works partially carried out by other men; his merit 
 and his genius lies in having, by a strong intellect and a 
 strong will, by untiring energy and by a noble enthusiasm, 
 furnished unity and organization, and moulded a complete 
 Municipal system out of isolated, scattered elements. 
 
 Nor do I forget that another objection is taken to the 
 view I have advanced of Mr. Crawford's Municipal ad- 
 ministration viz : that the success was achieved by a 
 ruinous outlay, and that the extravagance of the expen- 
 diture was entirely disproportioned to the result. In de- 
 termining this point, it is hardly fair, as some people are 
 at present doing, to single out works here and there, and 
 to point out that a little economy might have been prac- 
 tised here, and a little saving effected there. But it is 
 one thing, even in ordinary times, to ascertain the cost 
 Of works before they are finished, and another to criticise 
 it by the light of past? experience. And this is especially 
 so, when the works are to be undertaken urgently, and to 
 be finished without loss of time. At such times, free- 
 handedness to a certain extent becomes even a virtue and 
 a necessity, as it inspires enthusiasm and thus ensures effi- 
 ciency and despatch. The only fair and proper mode of 
 settling the point is to take the total expenditure and the 
 total results for the whole period in their general cha- 
 racters, and see if the one can be reasonably set off against 
 the other. Now the total expenditure for the seven years 
 from 1865 to 1871, both years inclusive, may be put in 
 round numbers at something under three crores of rupees. 
 One-fourth of that sum is represented - at the present 
 moment by property in the possession and ownership 
 of the Municipality. The remainder represents the cost 
 of two important functions. In the first place, the sick 
 man was to be cured and healed, and in the second place:, 
 he was to be supplied with the means of maintaining his 
 established health and of satisfying his daily wants. If we 
 strike an average for the seven years, it will appear that 
 these two important functions were performed at a cost 
 of something like thirty-two lacs a year. Now, remem- 
 bering the annual expenditure incurred by municipalities 
 of far less importance and of far less resources, estab- 
 lished for centuries, and which have only to keep up and 
 add to, without having verily to create from the very 
 beginning, the most essential municipal works, re-
 
 16 
 
 membering that the municipal expenditure of London is 
 4 crores of Rupees, and of Paris and New York something 
 like 8 crores, remembering these things by which alone we 
 can form a comparatively fair and proper judgment, can 
 we say that thirty-two lacs a year is on the whole too ex- 
 travagant a municipal expenditure for a town like Bom- 
 bay? Whatever faults can be found with respect to par- 
 ticular transactions and isolated items, an unbiassed and 
 dispassionate judgment can only come to one decision, 
 viz : that under all the circumstances of the case, our 
 municipal expenditure has been generally speaking far 
 from being very wasteful or extravagant. 
 
 Unfortunately a just, calm, and impartial consider- 
 ation of this point is rendered difficult at the present 
 moment by the sudden declaration oL a deficit in the 
 Municipal exchequer. Under cover of this one discovery, 
 a thousand vague rumours about what are proclaimed to 
 be new revelations of gross financial mismanagement and 
 confusion, brought to light by Mr. Hope's Committee, 
 are spread all over the town, diverting men's minds from 
 the real questions at issue, and prejudicing their better 
 judgments. Let us look steadily at these supposed re- 
 velations of Mr. Hope's Committee and see what they 
 really are. A careful perusal of the Report of this Com- 
 mittee indicates the charges brought by it to be principally 
 two, the first being, that Mr. Crawford incurred ex- 
 penditure in excess of or independently of the Budget 
 grants during the last five years to the extent of 
 Rs. 34,33,945-10-0, and, second, that he illegally mani- 
 pulated funds set apart for special purposes to provide 
 for this excess. Now in the first place, from the view 
 which we have taken of the character of the municipal 
 administration of Mr. Crawford, it may be urged that 
 the want of authority in exceeding the limits on his 
 power of expenditure, as also the diversion of funds from 
 their special object without sanction, must be held to be 
 condoned in the generally successful result. But secondly, 
 so far from this charge being a new revelation which 
 could now be brought against the Commissioner, the fact 
 is, that the greater portion of this unauthorized excess, 
 being no less a sum than Rs. 33,84,975-9-0 out of a total 
 of Rs. 34,33,945-10-0 was incurred in the three years 
 1866-7-8, and retrospectively sanctioned by the Bench of
 
 17 
 
 Justices. Nay, for the two years in which this excess is 
 the largest, amounting altogether to Es. 31,66,410-3-8, a 
 special vote of thanks was accorded to the Commissioner 
 and his colleagues by the Bench, with all the facts before 
 them, and with their eyes fully open. The only excesses 
 for which the Commissioner is indictable, are those of 
 1869-70, which are however very trifling in amount, being 
 Es. 47,114-14-10 for 1869, and only Es. 1,852-2-8 for 1870, 
 fully warranting the Committee's admission that there 
 has been a great improvement since 1868. And just as un- 
 fair is it now to show up as a new revelation of gross mis- 
 management and breach of faith this unauthorized excess, 
 the greater portion of which was known and sanctioned so 
 far back as 1869, equally so is also the proclamation of 
 the other revelation of the illegal manipulation of special 
 funds. That circumstance was also principally thorough- 
 ly well-known, and it is idle now to cry out that there was 
 never any formal notice given of it. Indeed, both these 
 charges would never have any weight at all, if they had 
 not been brought under cover of the discovery of the large 
 deficit of nearly twelve lacs and a half. In this respect 
 of the deficit, it is true that the Commissioner is seriously 
 to blame for having allowed matters to drift so far, and 
 not apprising the Bench in time for them to take measures 
 to meet it as best they could. All that can be urged in 
 extenuation of this grave dereliction of duty is, that the 
 deficit is mainly due to causes over which the Commis- 
 sioner had no control. About 5 lacs and a half of the 
 deficit, as Mr. Hope's Committee says, or 7J as the Com- 
 missioner estimates it, are attributable to the faulty ar- 
 rangements of 1869 induced pursuant to the calculations 
 of Colonel Harriot's Committee, and a considerable por- 
 tion of the remainder arose from the withdrawal of the 
 Government Police grant, the sudden fall in the yield of 
 the town duties, and the emergent expenditure necessi- 
 tated by the discovery of serious defects in the Vehar 
 Water Works. But, after all this has been said, the fact 
 remains that Mr. Crawford committed a grave error of 
 judgment and incurred a heavy responsibility in keeping 
 the embarrassed state of the Municipal finances concealed 
 from the Bench, in struggling vainly and hopelessly by 
 illegal shifts to stave off the evil day, and allowing the 
 discovery of it to fall like a thunderbolt on the Bench 
 as well as the whole town. This, 1 believe, is the sum
 
 18 
 
 and total of all the faults and shortcomings which can be 
 charged to the Commissioner from a careful consideration 
 of the results of the enquiry prosecuted by Mr. Hope's 
 Committee, and indeed that can be deduced from all our 
 present authentic knowledge of Municipal affairs. 
 
 But for such faults and such errors of judgment, I 
 ask you, gentlemen, to consider temperately and im- 
 partially, grave enough for the time though they may 
 be, are we to forget that he steered us safely through a 
 supreme Municipal crisis threatening the very life and 
 existence of the town? But for such faults and errors 
 of judgment, are we totally to wipe off the memory of 
 all that he had the daring intellect to conceive, untiring 
 energy to execute, arid tender zeal and enthusiasm to 
 direct, in so short a period as six years, in a time of 
 supreme danger and anxiety? But for such faults and 
 errors of judgment, are we to cancel all obligations for 
 not only having saved our town from immediate danger, 
 but for having set it on a career of increasing development 
 and improvement? Are we to forget, in our day of safety 
 and prosperity, that he has in so short a time driven 
 disease and death from our doors where they were such 
 constant visitors before? Are we to forget that if he has 
 touched our pockets too closely, he has put us in a position 
 to enjoy in comfort and safety the remainder a thousand 
 times more, nay, that in the case of the poorer classes, 
 by improving their chances of health and vigour he has 
 removed the continual drain which sickness and want of 
 health cast indirectly upon their pockets, and actually 
 supplied them with the means of fighting more vigorously 
 for their livelihood? And not only so, but are \ve to heap 
 disgrace and obloquy upon his name and fame for having 
 preferred to work out our salvation in defiance of legal 
 forms and authorized sanctions than tardily drag it out or 
 ingloriously incur utter failure by line and rule, like Mon- 
 sieur Tomes who would prefer to kill his patient according 
 to rule than cure him against it, or the German officer who 
 preferred to lose a battle according to correct tactics than 
 gain it in spite of them? Are we to hurl foul calumnies 
 and slanderous invectives, because in times of great peril 
 and urgent necessity, he sacrificed close haggling and 
 rigid economy to efficiency and despatch? Are we to 
 follow him with curses, because, after achieving triumph
 
 19 
 
 against ugliness, disease and death, he left us the citizens 
 of a town standing in the foremost ranks for population 
 and commercial and metropolitan importance with a 
 final deficit of four lacs and a half of rupees? It is a mat- 
 ter of sorrow and regret that, without guidance from 
 leaders, clear-sighted, just, and generous, the popular feel- 
 ing appears to tend towards such unworthy conduct. 
 There is a story told by Mr. Frederic Harrison in his re- 
 cent able article in the Fortnightly Review on the Fall 
 of "the Commune, as having occurred during the massacres 
 which followed the entrance of the Versailles troops into 
 Paris : " A woman, speechless and bleeding, was being 
 dragged through the streets to be shot as a petroleuse; a 
 furious mob were assailing her with imprecations and 
 blows. She was on the point of being shot by the troops, 
 when a bystander stepped forward to proclaim her in- 
 nocence. The fury of the mob was at once turned upon 
 him , and both he and the woman were in imminent danger 
 of their lives. At length, almost by chance, it was re- 
 cognised that the woman was the cook of a neighbour's 
 family, who had crossed the street to buy a bottle of salad 
 oil." The same sort of unreasoning unthinking public 
 mood, that the Versailles Government succeeded in ex- 
 citing against the Commune on the strength of such 
 monstrous falsehoods as organized attempts to burn 
 Paris by petroleum, is agitating the public mind here at 
 present with respect to Municipal affairs, and every act 
 and doing of the late Commissioner, though not less harm- 
 less than that of the woman of the anecdote, is either de- 
 fiance and disrespect to the Bench, gross financial mis- 
 management and confusion, if not something more, or 
 unpardonable dereliction of duty. But I have faith in 
 the ultimate instinct of popular judgment, and I feel con- 
 fident that when the present general financial depression 
 will have passed away,when men's minds will have ceased 
 to be unduly prejudiced by the sudden discovery of the 
 deficit, when the incidence of Municipal taxation will have 
 improved with time, with reflexion and with future ex- 
 perience, an impartial and a grateful verdict will honorably 
 embalm the, name of Arthur Crawford in the annals of the 
 Municipal administration of Bombay as its founder and 
 saviour. I only hope that, when driven from these 
 shores, as some people at present fondly exult to exclaim, 
 he has not, like Camillus, when forced to leave the city
 
 20 
 
 which lie had served BO well, raised his hands to heaven 
 in the bitterness of his heart, and prayed that it might 
 soon have reason to feel his want, and that a responsive 
 visitation like the Gallic invasion may not he destined to 
 remind us of and to make us rue our crying injustice and 
 our hasty ingratitude. 
 
 I have attempted, at perhaps tedious length, to in- 
 dicate the proper appreciation of the Municipal period 
 from 1865 to 1871. Had the leaders of our present reform 
 agitation taken pains to realize this historical estimate of 
 it, the narrative of their labours would have to be deline- 
 ated in far other colors than those with which we are now 
 obliged to characterize it. In that case, they would have 
 easily and distinctly seen the true direction in which 
 further reform ought to be pushed forward, and the only 
 effective mode in which it could be accomplished. 
 Dictatorial periods, dealing with crises of urgent emer- 
 gency, are essentially of a temporary and exceptional cha- 
 racter, and must be succeeded as soon as possible by 
 periods of constitutional regime , when arbitrary discretion 
 must give way before a systematic organization, when 
 order and economy must be permanently ensured by strict 
 forms and rules rigidly and unswervingly enforced, when 
 a searching control and supervision must be maintained 
 by a system of close checks and restraints, when the col- 
 lection of the revenue must be conducted as thriftily and 
 harmlessly as would be consistent with efficiency, when a 
 just and equitable incidence of taxation, must be settled 
 after careful consideration and mature thought, when new 
 projects must be taken up with great circumspection and 
 adopted after great deliberation, and when every penny of 
 the outlay must be made to show its substantial return. 
 And it would also have been abundantly manifest, by what 
 measures such a reform could be really secured. In the 
 reform debates of July, Mr. Forbes and his followers ad- 
 vocated with all their might the overhauling of Act II 
 of 1865, as being found utterly inefficient for the purposes 
 of enforcing a strict control and supervision. But every 
 fact which they stated, every argument which they pro- 
 duced, only led to the logical conclusion that the pro- 
 visions of Act II, with very few exceptions, were pre- 
 eminently adapted for such a purpose, and that the fault 
 lay only in the constitution of the body by whom they
 
 21 
 
 were to be enforced. If there was one thing more than 
 another conclusively established in the reform debates, it 
 was this, that the Bench of Justices was a body utterly 
 incompetent to carry on municipal government under a 
 constitutional regime. And this is just what might be 
 expected from a body constituted as the Bench is. The 
 Justices are elected by Government. In the first place, 
 there is nothing in the mode of election to rouse an active 
 sense of municipal duties and municipal responsibilities. 
 As I have said elsewhere 'What is the popular meaning 
 at present of a Justice-ship of the Peace ? Some sort of 
 honor, most people will say, in the main.' The idea that 
 it involves municipal duties and municipal obligations is, 
 at least, in the generality of cases, very vague, shrouded 
 much in the background, and withal of a very passive 
 character. In the second place, there is no guarantee 
 for a judicious and well proportioned choice in this mode 
 of election. The Government are obliged to work second 
 hand, and rely upon the judgment of people, themselves 
 hardly alive to the responsibility of their task. Then the 
 Justices are elected for life. Even if they started with 
 some sense of responsibility, no better plan could have 
 been easily devised to divest them of it as speedily as 
 possible and to induce indifference, inactivity, and stag- 
 nation. Every motive is thus removed from the mind of 
 the Justices which could instigate in them a desire to be 
 active and useful, at some sacrifice of time and labour, 
 and w r hich could inspire them to persevere in such gener- 
 ous resolutions. Thus elected by Government and elected 
 for life, the Bench of Justices is, by the very conditions 
 of its existence, organized only for inefficiency and in- 
 competency. I have not the least idea in making this ob- 
 servation of bringing a charge against the present Bench 
 of Justices that is to say, against any individual member 
 of it. We may say of it as Mr. John Bright once said of 
 the Board of Directors of the East India Company, that 
 the Justices who constitute it would act just about as 
 well as any other equal number of persons elected by the 
 same process, standing under the same circumstances, 
 and surrounded by the same difficulties. It is not the 
 men, but the system which is at fault. There is only one 
 remedy for such a state of things, the only remedy, which 
 history teaches us, has been successful in ensuring an 
 active and efficient municipal government. That remedy,
 
 I need hardly say, is the introduction of the free repre- 
 sentative principle in the constitution of the municipal 
 body. But, talk of government and representative insti- 
 tutions for the East in the same breath, and you ar-e 
 immediately met with the response, 'utterly out of the 
 question,' given by Mr. James Mill when asked by the 
 Select Committee of 1832 on Indian Affairs whether he 
 thought representative government practicable in India, 
 and echoed by Lord Macaulay in his speech in the House 
 of Commons in 1833 on the Government of India. Backed 
 by the authority of two of the greatest champions of free 
 and liberal forms of government, it has become the fashion 
 to shrug one's shoulders and to wonder at the amazing 
 stupidity of men who can have the hardihood to propose 
 representative institutions for people to whose genius they 
 are alleged to be so radically foreign and inappropriate. 
 But if we look closely into the matter, no such inference 
 of utter incapacity is deducible from the opinions passed 
 by Mr. Mill and Lord Macaulay. To interpret them in 
 that manner is to forget the limitations of time and cir- 
 cumstances, in the light of which alone ought such asser- 
 tions to be read. In 1832 and 1833, a time \vhen the 
 country had not yet recovered from the shock of its great 
 internal struggles, when the foundations of British supre- 
 macy were hardly yet assured, when tranquility and 
 repose so necessary for the successful initiation of great 
 changes had not yet set upon the land, no other answer 
 could have been given to the question of introducing 
 representative institutions than that given by Mr. Mill, 
 'utterly out of the question.' Perhaps, even at the pre- 
 sent day, the same answer must be returned, if the ques- 
 tion was of introducing in India the full-blown repre- 
 sentative institutions of the Western world. What is said 
 to be stated by Mr. Mill and Lord Macaulay goes no 
 further than this, and does, by no means, warrant the fur- 
 ther conclusion endeavoured to be drawn that it is chi- 
 merical to attempt to initiate even by slow and moderate 
 degrees, the introduction of representative institutions. 
 Nor would such a conclusion be borne out by fact and 
 experience. Indeed it is not a little strange how a pro- 
 position so utterly belied by all history, should ever have 
 come to be enunciated. A very moderate acquaintance 
 with oriental history informs us that, while the higher 
 political organization has seldom advanced beyond an en-
 
 23 
 
 lightened form of despotism, the whole lower substratum 
 and structure of oriental society are closely interpene- 
 trated by free representative combinations. As was once 
 said by our erudite townsman, Mr. Anstey, at a meeting 
 of the East India Association, 'We are apt to forget in 
 this country, when we talk of preparing people in the 
 East by education, and all that sort of thing, for muni- 
 cipal government and parliamentary government (if 1 
 may use such a term) that the East is the parent of mum- 
 cipalities. Local self-government, in the widest ac- 
 ceptation of the term, is as old as the East iteslf. No 
 matter what may be the religion of the people who in- 
 habit what we call the East, there is not a portion of the 
 country from west to east, from north to south, which is 
 not swarming with municipalities; and not only so, but 
 like to our municipalities of old, they are all bound to- 
 gether as in a species of net work , so that you have ready 
 made to your hand the frame-work of a. great system of 
 representation.' Such is especially the case in India, 
 where the caste organization, with its respective pun- 
 chayets and mahajuns, incrusted deeply in the very heart 
 of Hindoo society, and leaving no portion of it untouched, 
 is one vast and continuous chain of local self-governing 
 groups. 'The true view of India is that, as a whole, it 
 is divided into a vast number of independent, self-acting, 
 organized social groups, trading, manufacturing, culti- 
 vating.' Then there are those institutions of larger di- 
 mensions and more complicated functions, the village 
 communities, indestructible and of immense antiquity. 
 ''In whatever direction," says Sir Henry S. Maine in his 
 Ancient Law, " research has been pushed into Indian his- 
 tory, general or local, it has always found the com r 
 munity in existence at the farthest point of its progress."* 
 We all know the description given of a village community 
 by Mountstuart Elphinstone, "The indestructible atom, 
 from an aggregate of which the most extensive Indian 
 
 Empires are composed Each township conducts its 
 
 ow T n internal affairs. It levies on its members the revenue 
 due to the State; and is collectively responsible for the 
 payment of the whole amount. It manages its police and 
 is answerable for any property plundered within its limits, 
 It administers justice to its own members as far as punish- 
 
 *p. 260.
 
 24 
 
 ing small offences, and deciding disputes in the first in- 
 stance. It taxes itself, to provide funds for its internal 
 expenses. * * 
 
 * * It is provided with the requisite officers for con- 
 ducting all these duties, and with various others adapted 
 to the wants of the inhabitants; and though entirely sub- 
 ject to the general government, is in many respects an 
 organized commonwealth, complete within itself. This 
 independence and its concomitant privileges, though often 
 violated by the government, are never denied; they afford 
 some little protection against a tyrannical ruler, and 
 maintain order within their own limits, even when the 
 general government has been dissolved. * 
 
 * * The village communities (writes Sir Charles 
 Metcalfe) are little republics, having nearly every thing 
 they can want within themselves, and almost independ- 
 ent of any foreign relations. They seem to last where 
 nothing else lasts. Dynasty after dynasty tumbles down; 
 revolution succeeds to revolution, Hindoo, Pathan, 
 Moghul, Mahratta, Sik, English are all masters in turn; 
 but the village community remains the same. * * 
 
 * * A town-ship in its simplest form, is under a 
 headman. 
 
 * * Though he is still regarded as an officer of the 
 king, he is really more the representative of the people. 
 The selection of an individual from the proper family rests 
 sometimes with the village community, and oftener with 
 the Government. * * The headman, in short, does all 
 the duties of municipal government. All this is done in 
 public, at a place appropriated for the purpose; and on 
 all points affecting the public interest, in free consultation 
 with the villagers." * Some of the townships are of a 
 more self-governing character than the others. "It is 
 not disputed, " says Sir H. S. Maine in his recent work 
 on Villa ye Communities, "that villages are found in 
 great numbers in which the Government is lodged with 
 a council, neither claiming to be nor regarded as being 
 anything more than a representation of the entire culti- 
 
 *History of India pp. 62-4.
 
 vating body." t Again, in another place the same author 
 states 'I have good authority for saying that, in those 
 parts of India in which the Village Community is most 
 perfect and in which there are the clearest signs of an 
 original proprietary equality between all the families com- 
 posing the group, the authority exercised elsewhere by the 
 Headman is lodged with the Village Council. It is always 
 viewed as a representative body, and not as a body pos- 
 sessing inherent authority, and whatever be its real num- 
 ber, it always bears a name which recalls its ancient con- 
 stitution of Five Persons. ' t 
 
 The existence of such village communities thus proves 
 the utter falsity of the assertion of the racial incapacity 
 of Easterns for representative institutions; but what is still 
 more remarkable is, that recent investigations show that 
 they exactly correspond to the original substrata on which 
 Western municipalities themselves have arisen. The re- 
 searches of Von Savigny and others tend to the conclusion 
 that municipal communities were for a long time un- 
 known to the Germans, * and that the origin of Western 
 municipalities is to be traced in an engrafting of the 
 precise technical Roman form on the rude representative 
 institutions of the old Teutonic Mark. Now, in his work 
 on Village Communities, Sir H. Maine identifies the 
 Teutonic Mark with the Indian Village Community, 
 "If very general language," he says, "were employed, 
 the description of the Teutonic or Scandinavian Village 
 Communities might actually serve as a description of 
 the same institution in India. " Thus, so far from the 
 conditions of the introduction of free municipal institu- 
 tions being different in the East and the West, the origin 
 of Western municipalities indicates analogically as strong 
 a suggestion as history ever furnishes for the engrafting t;f 
 the western municipal system on Indian town-ships just 
 as the Roman municipium was successfully engrafted on 
 the corresponding Teutonic Mark. The same qualities 
 which fitted the Teutonic soil for the Roman graft are 
 found in the Indian soil, and the English plant, if trans r 
 
 t History of India, p. 155. Jp. 123. 
 
 * Savigny's Rom. Law, 274-6, seq. 
 
 0. 107.
 
 26 
 
 planted, would, it may be surmised hopefully, be reared 
 as successfully as its Roman parental stock. 
 
 But, as soon as the objection founded on a radical 
 racial incapacity is made to disappear on a close inspection, 
 another is urged, based on the incongruity of introducing 
 free institutions in the heart of an empire, ruled by an 
 essentially despotic, or as it is sometimes apologetically 
 termed, a patriarchal form of government. It is urged 
 that it would be productive of discord and confusion to 
 combine institutions of so directly ponflicting a character. 
 The whole history of municipal institutions furnishes, 
 however, the most convincing and instructive refutation 
 of this objection. Not only does it show most conclusively 
 that free municipalities are far from being discordant, 
 unmanageable and dangerous elements even in the most 
 despotic constitutions, but it also goes to establish in a 
 very strong manner the wisdom and desirability of in- 
 corporating them in such governments. "We learn from 
 it that the existence of municipal self-government in des- 
 potic states acts as a safety-valve for the peaceful emis- 
 sion of popular irritation, discontent, and disaffection 
 which might otherwise recoil upon them. We also learn 
 that the instincts and habits induced by the experience of 
 local self-government always assist in preventing the 
 violent and revolutionary overthrow of the states in which 
 it has been practised and fostered and favour gradual and 
 well-considered constitutional changes. The history of 
 Roman provincial government, so similar to the British 
 government in India, is full of instruction on this subject. 
 "It was the policy of the Emperors," says Mr. Merivale, 
 "first devised by the prudence of Augustus, to extend and 
 multiply the functions of the Roman municipality. 
 Maecenas, it was said, had counselled his master to fur- 
 nish public occupation to as many of the citizens as pos- 
 sible, in order to attach them to the Government by in- 
 terest, and at the same time give them experience in 
 affairs. It might be deemed of no less importance to 
 divert their restless energies into safe and useful chan- 
 nels."* We know that, in pursuance of this policy, 
 Roman colonies enjoyed a municipal constitution, ad- 
 ministered by a senate and officers of their own appoint- 
 
 * Hist, of the Eom. under the Empire. III. 518.
 
 27 
 
 ment; and this local arrangement was gradually extended 
 under the first emperors to the provincial cities generally, t 
 And it was something more than the mere shadow of 
 domestic government that was thus conferred upon the 
 provinces. " Kome had a marvellous power," says M. 
 de Champagny, in his recent valuable work on 'Lea 
 Cesars', "of perceiving how much of independence would 
 suffice to content nations without being dangerous, and 
 I doubt whether any free and sovereign city of our modern 
 Europe, Cracow for instance, is so completely mistress at 
 home, as Rhodes and Cizicus were allowed to be under 
 Augustus, whether there is any Senate so much respected 
 as the Curia of Tarragona, or the Council of Six Hundred 
 at Marseilles; or a burgomaster whose powers of police 
 are so sovereign as those of the Suffete at Carthage or the 
 Archon at Athens were allowed to be. "I 
 
 Coming down to modern times, Prussia and Russia 
 will be perhaps acknowledged to be two European king- 
 doms, where centralization and despotism may be said to 
 be most rampant. In Prussia, however, the King 
 granted, of -his own accord under the advice of his sage 
 ministers Stein and Scharnhorst, a large and liberal Muni- 
 cipal law which, with the other three great reforms in- 
 augurated at the same time, the redemption of the peas- 
 ant's glebe, the educational reform, and the landwehr 
 system, have combined to raise that country to one of 
 the proudest positions in Europe and the world. Mon. 
 de Coulanges, in reviewing Mon. Hesse's Work on 
 'L' Administration provincial e and communale en France 
 et en Europe', thus describes the Prussian commune : 
 "Elle forme un petit etat libre; elle elit son conscil com- 
 munal, qui nomme le maire et 1' adjoint. Ce conseil se 
 reunit sans qu'il soit necessaire que 1'autorite 1'ait 
 convoque. II vote son budget, nomme les employes 
 communaux, et a la direction souveraine de ses ecoles, de 
 ses etablissemens de bienfaisance, de sa police. Sauf cer- 
 tains cas prevus, il n'a pas besoin de solliciter 1' appro- 
 bation de 1'autorite. Ses actes ne peuvent etre annule's 
 que s'ils sont contraires aux lois. Ces communes Prus- 
 siennes, qui jouissent de tant d'independance, ne parais- 
 
 t Hist, of Rom. under the Empire, III, 526-7. 
 tVol. II. p. 338 West. Rev, July 71 p. 9.
 
 sent pas en faire un mauvais usage. Maitresses d'elles- 
 memes et exemptes de tutelle, elles s'entendent bien a 
 gerer leurs interets. Elles s'administrent sagement leur 
 piv.priete's et reglent avec bon sens leurs affaires. La 
 liberte communale, loin detre un embarras en Prusse, est 
 un gage de securite, de prosperity et d'ordre public. C'est 
 priit-etre elle aussi qui fait supporter la monarchic.'* 
 The same lesson of, not only the harmlessness, but the 
 positive wisdom and utility of introducing free municipal 
 institutions in absolute and despotic governments is taught 
 by Russian history. In Russia, the political despotism 
 is of the closest character; still the Russian municipal 
 commune enjoys great rights and liberties, and is allowed 
 to manage its own local affairs. The history of municipal 
 institutions in France affords a crucial instance in favour 
 of the proposition we are trying to establish. Roman 
 legislation early clothed the Gallic towns with municipal 
 rights and privileges, and the French municipalities grew 
 vigorously and flourished with great eclat till the end of 
 the 15th century. About that period, Louis XI, equally 
 anti-aristocratic and anti -democratic, as pointed out by 
 M. de Tocqueville, destroyed the whole popular and de- 
 mocratic character of the administration of the towns, and 
 restricted the government of them to a small number of 
 families attached to his reforms, and bound to his authority 
 by immense ad vantages, t Still some of the towns of 
 France continued dow 7 n to the close of the 17th century 
 to form, as it were, small democratic commonwealths in 
 which the magistrates were freely elected by the whole 
 people, and were responsible to the people in which 
 municipal life was still public and animated. The<-:e 
 elections, says M. de Tocqueville, were generally abolished 
 for the first time in 1692 by Louis XIV. The municipal 
 offices were then what was called put up to sale (mises en 
 office was the technical expression) that is to say, the 
 king sold in each town to some of the inhabitants the 
 right of perpetually governing all their townsmen. I In 
 its immediate effect, this measure cost the towns at once 
 their freedom and their well-being; its more remote, but 
 
 *Rev. des Deux Mondes-Icr Juillet 1871. p. 238. 
 f 'France before the Eevolution' pp, 42 and 89, 
 f Ditto pp. 75-6,
 
 29 
 
 not less certain, results are thus described in an article 
 in the Edinburgh Review for July on Communal France. 
 "We think it has been shown that the municipal insti- 
 tutions of France have never enjoyed or received their 
 proper functions, viz. : the independent control of local 
 affairs by elected magistrates in subordination to the 
 general laws of the kingdom, and that whatever power 
 they did possess,, in the Middle Ages had been gradually 
 subverted by the Crown, and was finally destroyed by the 
 Revolution. But one of the effects of the destruction of 
 legitimate municipal power has been that, in the absence 
 of traditional or organized control, based on usage and law, 
 the popular forces of the commune have made themselves 
 felt in a violent and irregular manner at all periods of 
 social commotion, that they have at once assumed mili- 
 tary power and usurped a supreme authority in direct op- 
 position to the sovereign will of the nation and the state." t 
 "En France", says M. de Coulanges, "tous les me'con- 
 tentmens et tous les desirs d 'innovation se portent en un 
 seul faisceau contre le pouvoir central, et le renversent 
 tous les quinze on vingt ans." The French Communes 
 have thus alternately proved to be instruments of des- 
 potism or centres of revolution. 
 
 I think we may now take it as established that, if 
 historical analogy and experience are to guide us in this 
 matter, they are strongly and uniformly in favour of the 
 wisdom and expediency of conferring the municipal fran- 
 chise on Indian towns. Such a measure would, so far 
 from being inconsistent with, and dangerous to, British 
 supremacy, tend powerfully to attach and reconcile the 
 subject races to British government, would increase its 
 strength and stability, and would go far towards providing 
 against a sudden, violent, and revolutionary overthrow. 
 
 Having disposed of these preliminary objections, it 
 now remains to be seen whether the Indian towns possess 
 the positive qualifications laid down by writers on repre- 
 sentative government as necessary before they could be 
 declared fit for free representative institutions. These 
 qualifications may be briefly described to be readiness and 
 ability to preserve and work the institutions that may be 
 conferred upon them. Confining ourselves to the town 
 
 t Ed. Key. July 1871 No. 273. p. 268. see also p. 255.
 
 30 
 
 of Bombay, with which we are at present concerned, no 
 one who has watched the active part which the public have 
 taken for the last six months in the agitation about muni- 
 cipal affairs, can entertain any doubt as to their ready 
 alacrity. Without proper guidance, instruction, or or- 
 ganisation, they have discussed municipal questions, pre- 
 pared petitions, formed rate-payers' committees, held 
 public meetings, and passed resolutions. v lt may be safely 
 presumed that people who could improvise representation 
 in this manner without being asked, would not be back- 
 ward in availing themselves of a municipal franchise if 
 it was conferred upon them. Then as to ability, if we 
 take the masses of the people, the populations of Indian 
 towns would compare most favourably with the popu- 
 lations of European towns with a municipal fran- 
 chise, in point of shrewdness and intelligence. "The 
 natives of India," says Sir H. Maine, "for poor and ig- 
 norant men, have more than might be expected of intel- 
 lectual quickness."* In the case of Bombay, a com- 
 mercial seaport and metropolitan town, this natural apti- 
 tude is enhanced by the enlightening influences of foreign 
 contact, so much so, indeed, that any body who has had 
 opportunities of forming a comparison can safely say that 
 our town can vie in this respect with some of the largest 
 and greatest towns of England and France possessing the 
 right of electing their own municipal bodies. 
 
 Perhaps here an objection might be raised, arising 
 from the peculiar position of this country, subject to a 
 nation superior to its people in point of civilization. It 
 might be urged, that the higher education and civilization 
 of the rulers, numerically inferior, would fail to be ade- 
 quately secured in a free municipal representative body, 
 and all the intelligence of the people would fail to point 
 out to them the advisability of securing their invaluable 
 co-operation. Such a consequence, how r ever, need not be 
 apprehended when we consider the high position and 
 great influence which is possessed by Anglo-Indians. 
 Still this difficulty, if it really existed, might be met by 
 a similar expedient to that adopted in the constitution of 
 the English Board of Guardians, in which the Justices 
 of the Peace of the district sit ex-officio along with the 
 
 Vill. Cora. p. 56.
 
 31 
 
 elected members, in number limited by law to a third of 
 the whole.! A number of members, holding positions of 
 public trust and importance, might be similarly incor- 
 porated ex-officio in our elected body, thus ensuring the 
 admixture of a certain amount of the highest intelligence 
 and education in the town. 
 
 From all these considerations, it is thus obvious that 
 the tow T n of Bombay is pre-eminently fitted for the intro- 
 duction of a municipal representative body, elected by the 
 rate-payers themselves. And if this be so, very 
 little reflexion will show us that no more efficient 
 or better remedy can be proposed for all the dif- 
 ferent varieties of municipal grievances and evils, 
 real or unfounded, which have been pro- 
 claimed from different quarters. If the executive offi- 
 cers are too dictatorial and overbearing, such a powerful 
 responsible body can be confidently relied upon to check 
 and control them. If the expenditure is too extravagant, 
 such a popular responsible body can be safely trusted to 
 reduce it within the farthest limits consistent with effi- 
 ciency. If the incidence of taxation is unjust, unequal 
 and wrong in principle, such a representative body may 
 be fairly expected to consider it carefully and maturely, 
 and settle it with a due regard to the interests of all classes, 
 rich or poor. If the present financial state of the muni- 
 cipality is in confusion and disorder, such an active and 
 responsible body may be reasonably charged with the task 
 of restoring order, of considering whether the deficit should 
 be met by fresh taxation or by a system of loans and sink- 
 ing funds in respect of expenditure incurred in repro- 
 ductive and permanent works, of determining whether the 
 appropriated special funds ought to be replaced or not , 
 and of starting the new municipal era w r ith a clear balance- 
 sheet and an available surplus. Such an independent and 
 popular body may also be expected fearlessly to fight the 
 battle of the municipality against such inequitable en- 
 croachments of Government as the withdrawal of the 
 Police grant. And, after the redress of immediate and 
 pressing grievances, such a body may be left, not to ad- 
 minister and govern for which it is radically unfit, but to 
 'fulfil its proper function, to watch and control the exe- 
 
 f Mill's Hep. Govt. 2nd Ed, p. 277.
 
 32 
 
 cutive government; to throw the light of publicity on its 
 acts, to compel a full exposition and justification of all of 
 them which any one considers questionable, to censure 
 them if found condemnable, and if the men w y ho com- 
 pose the executive abuse their trust or fulfil it in a manner 
 which conflicts with the deliberate sense of the people 
 to expel them from office, and either expressly or virtually 
 appoint their successors.* 
 
 Instead of proposing a comprehensive measure secur- 
 ing such a thorough radical reform, the leaders of the pre- 
 sent reform agitation have brought forward a remedy 
 which might well make us exclaim, 'Heat not a furnace 
 for your foes so hot that it do singe yourselves.' Not that 
 they were utterly insensible to its merits, but they allowed 
 themselves to forget its importance and deliberately to 
 sacrifice the chances of obtaining it, in a personal quarrel 
 with the executive as to the dignity of the Bench and of 
 some of its members. Their conduct is open to this in- 
 terpretation from the circumstance, that as if it were to 
 obtain this, in a manner, personal end, they urged a 
 scheme of reform opposed to one of those rare principles 
 of political science, with respect to w 7 hich all shades of 
 opinion have come to a unanimous conclusion. I watched 
 anxiously their speeches during the Reform Debates to 
 see, if, in recommending the establishment of an exe- 
 cutive Town Council, they had any special reasons for 
 overruling one of the most well-established of political 
 axioms. But there was not one such argument advanced 
 during the whole debate; indeed, in their hot anger, the 
 advocates of the motion seemed wholly unconscious that 
 they were supporting an exploded fallacy. And it would 
 indeed prove, not a day of blessing, the day on which the 
 municipal reform agitation was launched, but a day of woe 
 and curse, if the recommendation of its leaders is at all 
 adopted. For, with the Bench as it is at present con- 
 stituted, or even with a Bench organized on such a popular 
 and responsible basis as we have sketched above, the vest- 
 ing of the executive authority in a Town-Council would 
 be a retrogressive step, plunging the Municipality into a 
 gulf of mismanagement, inefficiency, and jobbery such as 
 the wildest rumours have not dreamed of ascribing to the 
 
 * Mill's Rep. 6ovt., 2nd Ed., p. 104.
 
 33 
 
 administration of the late Commissioner. The only safe 
 and efficient way of disposing of the executive authority 
 is to vest it in a single responsible officer. The descrip- 
 tion of an executive Board given by Bentnam in his 
 Letters to Lord Grenville on Scotch Judicial Eeform is 
 well-known. 'A board, my lord, is a screen. The lustre 
 of good desert is obscured by it, ill-desert slinking behind, 
 eludes the eye of censure : wrong is covered with a pre- 
 sumption of right, stronger and stronger in proportion to 
 the number of the folds.'* In another place, he says, 'The 
 greatest danger in plurality, either in a tribunal or an 
 administrative council is that it diminishes responsibility 
 in many ways. A numerous body may reckon on a kind of 
 deference on the part of the public and may allow itself to 
 perpetrate injuries which a single person would not dare 
 to do. ' In a confederation of many persons, the single 
 individuals may throw the odium of a measure upon the 
 others : it is done by all, it is acknowledged by none. 
 Does public censure rise against them ? The more numer- 
 ous the body, the more it is fortified against external 
 opinion; the more it tends to form a kingdom within a 
 kingdom a little public having a peculiar spirit and which 
 protects by its applause those of its members who have 
 incurred general disgrace.'! That numerous bodies, 
 popularly elected or otherwise constituted, ought not to 
 administer, is a maxim 'grounded', says Mr. J. S. Mill, 
 'not only on the most essential principles of good govern- 
 ment, but on those of the successful conduct of business 
 of any description. No body of men, unless organized and 
 under command, is fit for action in the proper sense. 
 Even a select board, composed of few members, and those 
 specially conversant with the business to be done, is 
 always an inferior instrument to some one individual who 
 could be found among them, and would be improved in 
 character, if that one person were made the chief, and all 
 the others reduced to subordinates.'! The result of en- 
 trusting administrative and executive powers to boards, 
 councils, or representative assemblies, is, says the same 
 great political thinker, 'jobbery more unblushing and 
 
 * Bcntham's Works, Bovnring's edition, Vol. 3, p. 17. 
 
 JVol. 1, p. 571; also Vol. 6, p. 558, Vol. 9, pp. 214-5. 
 
 ffiep. Govt., Sec. Ed., pp. 90-1.
 
 34 
 
 audacious than the worst corruption which can well take 
 place in a public office tinder a government of publicity.'! 
 History and experience verify the conclusions of both 
 these thinkers. The English parliament, in its wildest 
 mood, has not thought of meddling with the integrity of 
 the executive powers of Secretaries of State. The most 
 democratic republics have not yet ventured to entrust exe- 
 cutive and administrative functions to any but singly 
 responsible Presidents. Formerly it was the Council of 
 Madras or Calcutta which decided everything by a plurality 
 of votes; now the Governor decides everything in the last 
 resort. To take examples more closely bearing on our 
 present point, the example of English Town Councils was 
 urged to recommend the establishment of a similar body 
 in Bombay. Hear w r hat a man of such liberal tendencies 
 as Mr. Herbert Spencer says of them. 'Town Councils', 
 he says, 'are not conspicuous for either intelligence or high 
 character,' and extravagance is one of their most notori- 
 ous vices. American Town Councils teach the same 
 lesson. Under the New York Town Council, the New 
 York people pay 'over a million and a half sterling, for 
 which they have badly paved streets, a police by no means 
 so efficient as it should be, though much better than for- 
 merly, the greatest amount of dirt north of Italy, the 
 poorest cab-system of any metropolis in the world, and 
 only unsheltered wooden piers for the discharge of 
 merchandise. '* The greatest Town Council in the world, 
 the Corporation of London is characterised by Mr. Mill as 
 'an union of modern jobbery and antiquated foppery.' 
 All these examples, however, are of boards and councils 
 whose evil effects are to a great extent counteracted by 
 the working of the popular elective principle on which they 
 are constituted. When they are not popular elective bodies 
 watched by public vigilance, they are apt to be more 
 dangerous still. Look at the Town Councils of the 
 English boroughs before the elective principle w r as uni- 
 versally introduced into them by the Municipal Corpor- 
 ation Act of ]835, characterized by the Commissioners ap- 
 pointed to enquire into them as hotbeds of inefficiency, 
 
 t Rep. Govt., Sec. Ed., p. 93. See also p. 284. 
 
 Essays, p. 191-2. 
 This was written in 1863.
 
 35 
 
 corruption, and jobbery. We are not also without local 
 experience on this subject. We all know how little of 
 municipal improvement was effected by the Board cf 
 Commissioners, the predecessor of our present municipal 
 government. But not only did it effect nothing, but ifc 
 also left the municipal accounts and municipal finances in 
 a state of muddle and inextricable confusion, before which 
 the present state of our accounts and finances, even taken 
 at their worst, would be regularity and economy them- 
 selves. "Upon a recent occasion," says Mr. Cassels in his 
 speech on the second reading of the Municipal Bill, "the 
 President of the present Commission opposed the nomi- 
 nation of one of his subordinates as a candidate for the 
 office of Commissioner on the ground that a sum of 3 lacs 
 of rupees in the accounts of his office had remained for 
 many months unaccounted for, although that officer had 
 been repeatedly called upon for explanation, and in the 
 letter from which I have quoted you w y ill remember it 
 was stated that a sum of over three lacs had figured at the 
 credit side of the balance-sheet, although not a single 
 rupee of the amount had been actually paid. Even in the 
 statement laid by the Commissioners before the Bench as 
 the justification of their letter, an error of ten lacs was 
 discovered at the meeting."! With such facts before 
 us, it is a matter of no little wonder that the municipal 
 reform leaders should have allowed themselves to propose 
 a remedy worse than the disease, taking that disease even 
 in its worst aspect and as diagnosed by themselves. It 
 would indeed be reforming ourselves with a vengeance, to 
 set up King Stork in the place of King Log, a hydra- 
 headed Town Council in the place of a single executive 
 officer. W T e may thus conclude, that if real reform is to 
 be secured, the executive functions of the Municipality 
 must be entrusted, under the control and guidance of such 
 a popular representative body as we have described above, 
 to a single responsible officer, call him the Municipal 
 Commissioner or what you like, so long as he has un- 
 divided executive power and responsibility. In con- 
 nexion with this subject is the question ' with whom should 
 the appointment of the executive officer rest.' The most 
 liberal political thinker of the present age emphatically 
 
 f Proceedings of the Bombay Leg. Coun. Vol. IV. p. 6.
 
 36 
 
 lays down that such an officer should be nominated, not 
 elected, as election by the population is a farce, appoint- 
 ment by the local representative body little less objection- 
 able. Such bodies have a perpetual tendency to become 
 Joint Stock Associations for carrying into effect the pri- 
 vate jobs of their various members.* Watched and scruti- 
 nized, however, by these bodies, the appointment of the 
 executive may be safely left to the Local Government. 
 One appointment, however, that which we know by the 
 name of the Controllership of Accounts, being essentially 
 antagonistic to the executive and consequently requir- 
 ing above every thing to be independent of it, may be 
 advantageously left in the hands of the representative 
 body. Elected by that body, he could be confidently 
 relied upon to watch vigilantly and report, if its control- 
 ling orders are properly obeyed and observed. 
 
 I have now indicated, though imperfectly and briefly, 
 the direction in which municipal reform ought to be 
 pushed, and the means by which it might be accom- 
 plished. We saw that municipal affairs were driven to 
 an imminent and critical point by the end of 1864. We 
 saw how a strong rule and strong measures were required 
 to grapple with and overcome the great municipal crisis 
 of 1865. We saw how an able and energetic, though 
 irregular, informal, and sometimes illegal municipal ad- 
 ministration of six years achieved a signal triumph over 
 that crisis and steered us clear of it. We then observed 
 that, its work done and its mission accomplished, such a 
 dictatorial municipal government must, as speedily as pos- 
 sible, be superseded by government under a constitutional 
 regime. We pointed out how such a constitutional regime 
 could be inaugurated. We pointed out that the people 
 of Bombay were as deserving of a municipal franchise as 
 any town of the Western world, and that the real sal- 
 vation of its municipality lay only in such a measure of 
 thoroughness. We pointed out that, concurrently with 
 such a popularly elected body, the executive functions 
 must be vested in a single responsible officer, nominated 
 by the Local Government, but watched by a Controller 
 of Accounts elected by the popular assembly. Against 
 
 Mill's Eep. Govt. p. 284-5.
 
 37 
 
 such a plan of reform, the reform leaders in the wake of 
 Mr. Forbes have centred all their hopes in an executive 
 Town-Council. But I repeat that it is not wisdom to 
 propose a remedy worse than the disease in the face of all 
 principle and experience, nor is it patriotism to sacrifice 
 large public interests to vindictive anger against an indi- 
 vidual, however deserving even he may be of it. It is a 
 pity to discover that all the public spirit and all the credit- 
 able exertions, brought out by the present Municipal 
 reform agitation, will have been utterly thrown awaj', 
 or, if successful, will only end in retrogressive measures 
 threatening to plunge the town into greater confusion and 
 danger than ever existed before. It is not, however, too 
 late. The obnoxious Commissioner is gone, the new 
 Municipal Bill is still in course of construction. Before 
 its completion, there is still a splendid opportunity for 
 our reform leaders to earn the eternal gratitude of the 
 town of Bombay for acquiring for it a really efficient muni- 
 cipal organization, and at the same time, of all India, for 
 having inaugurated by their exertions a system fraught 
 with the fairest promises of a great political develop- 
 ment. 
 
 The Bombay Chronicle Press. J. No. 51.00020-2-13.
 
 
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