India, its administration & progress / Sir John Strachey.

John Strachey

Date:: 1903

Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: India, its administration & progress / Sir John Strachey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

85/552 page 55

always been members of the Covenanted Civil Service.1 The Lieutenant-Governors have no Councils for execu- tive business, but the Governor-General in Council may establish in each province a Council for legislative purposes only. This power has been exercised in each of the Lieutenant-Governorships ; I shall have occasion to refer again to their Legislative Councils ; they are similar in their constitution to those in Madras and Bombay, the Lieutenant-Governor taking the place of the Governor; but in the Punjab and in Burma, the Councils having been formed under the Statute of 1861 and not under that of 1892, the members are all nominated. The Governments of the Central Provinces and Assam, are administered by Chief Commissioners. Excepting in name and dignity and in amount of salary and patronage, there is no great difference between them and Lieutenant-Governors. For pro- vinces which have no legislatures of their ownTTaws I must now speak of the manner in which the executive business of the Governor-General in Council is transacted. The system is very different from that in force under the Government of the East India Company. Although after the Act of 1793 the power of the Governor-General to over-rule his Council was not open to question, the fundamental idea, on which previous legislation had been based, still remained, that the Government was to be carried on by the Governor- General in concert with the whole Council. All public business of every kind, however trivial, was supposed to come before all the members of the Government. Questions were ordinarily decided by the majority, the Governor-General having a casting vote if the votes 1 5 and 6 Will. IV. c. 52, sec. 2, and 16 and 17 Viet. c. 95, sec. 16.

digitised image 1

digitised image 2

digitised image 3