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measure the Government will fall, and we do not want to lose the Government, and, therefore, we will swallow this bad measure in order to keep the Govern- ment in." In Ceylon you are in this position, that if the Government brought in a bad measure, and you did not want it, you could vote against it, and throw it out without turning out the Government. The boot is on the other leg. That has often struck me as a great weakness of our Constitution.
MR. HAYLEY: I am looking at it including ourselves supposing we constitute part of the unofficial majority, you might find some dispute arise between the unofficials and the Government, and the Government brought to a standstill as has happened in other Colonies, Jamaica.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE: So long as you have not a completely responsible Government you must provide against the possibility of opposition on the part of the Legislature bringing the machine to a standstill."
It may be done obstructively,
MR. HAYLEY: It might arise at any time. throwing out bills one after the other, merely for the purpose of upsetting the Government.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE: It is possible.
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MR. HAYLEY: Even looking at it from a less serious prospect, to give them a majority without restriction or qualification means handing over to them the whole legislative power.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE: I do not think you have quite seized my point. I am not discussing the question of restrictions or no restrictions. What I was trying to get at (and I think you have really answered me) was, whether your objection to the possibility of an unofficial majority was based upon the general risks which that might involve, or whether it was based on any definite fear that these people had a particular kind of legislation in view which would injure Europeana. I gather you have not that fear.
MR. HAYLEY: I do not think we have ever considered that. They have never outlined any policy at all.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE: When I ask them what they want they say they want more education, a fair distribution of taxation, they want an income tax. I suppose you would not like an income tax; on the other hand it is a thing you might have to put up with.
SIR JAMES THOMSON BROOM: The Europeans would pay the tax. THE SECRETARY OF STATE: So would the natives.
SIR JAMES THOMSON BROOM: The income tax in India has been a dead loss for many years.
MR. COLES: All the native estates are mortgaged. As soon as they buy an estate they mortgage it, and with the money they buy another piece of land and mortgage it. They do not keep any accounts. I have never yet seen a statement of accounts They do not know what they make. They have no way of finding out their profits.
MR. HAYLEY: I think the more general fear is that the country is not yet developed enough to have sufficient men who could be put on a Council with that power. There are, no doubt, some men of capacity, but if you have a Council on which there are one or two men of capacity and a number of others who have no experience and capacity--they have had very little experience so far of execn- tive matters at all-at any time one man might bring forward a movement and the whole would follow him in a body. That is the objection, apart from the general point of view.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE: What else is there we have to consider?
MR. HAYLEY: In the report we have suggested that we should like education to come from the other end, from the local Government.
ment.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE: There has been a great extension of local Govern-
MR. HAYLEY: Yes. Since this was written there has been a Bill, now passed into law, not yet, I fancy, brought into active operation.
MR. GOLLAN: It will only be brought into operation piece-meal as the councils are constituted. There has to be some sort of expression of opinion on the part of districts to come under the Bill.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE: That gives them very largely the powers of an elected majority, and all that.
MR. GOLLAN: Yes, and an elected Chairman, and what they dislike still more is that they have to provide their own finance.
MR. COLES: I think on account of that they have not asked to be brought under the Bill.
MR. GOLLAN: It has only just been passed.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE: I should think that probably the danger is that the elected people will be against expenditure always. They will never want to vote money for public works and development. That, I think, is the greatest danger of this popular government. You will have one party against expenditure, and they do not realize very often that expenditure is necessary for improvement and progress.
MR. MACKWOOD: I have had a certain amount of experience of that in the Municipal Council in Colombo.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE: Is it very much a stick in the mud?
MR. MACKWOOD: I cannot say what it is now, I have been absent for the last half-dozen years. When I was a member of it the great difficulty was, as you say, to get things done; there was so much discussion and talk and opposition to the sufficient payment of capable officers, and that sort of thing
THE SECRETARY OF STATE: Yes. That is my experience in these cases. They are unwilling to pay money for a good article.
MR. GOLLAN: You have a concrete example of that in the case of education. They were given educational powers and they were a dead letter, and a Director of Education had to be put in to look after education in the interests of the country.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE: That, perhaps, is the greatest danger. Is there anything else!
On
MR. HAYLEY: There is the question of electorates and the provision for minority representation in the Council. We deal with electorates in paragraph 9 of the report. It is a matter which affects the native population more than ourselves, as to whether the representation should be territorial or communal. the whole we are inclined to favour territorial representation on the ground that it tends to do away with distinction between races and classes, subject to certain minorities being represented.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE: The only point of difficulty about that is in rela- tion to the Kandyans. I do not suppose anybody would doubt that the European, and I think also the Burgher and the Mohammedan representation, would have to be separate. However it is arranged for it will have to be communal. The whole point is whether all the rest should vote together on a territorial basis, or whether you should have a Kandyan electorate as distinct from Sinhalese.
MR. HAYLEY: I do not think it occurred to us to distinguish that point. We have not discussed it at all. If the Kandyans wanted separate representation we certainly should not oppose it to that extent, except as a general principle it seemed to us to lead to a greater possibility of fusion to have it territorially.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE As regards the European representation, there is only one point that I know of, and that is the question of representation of par- ticular interests; for instance, commercial-whether you should have the whole European community voting as one, two, or three constituents.
MR. HAYLEY: We are strongly of opinion (and I think the Chamber of Com- merce intends to make representations to your Lordship on the point) that there should be special representation for commerce and the planting industry. We put it in this way in the report. We suggest a Council consisting of 16 unofficial members, and for a Council of that size we only ask for one European member as such. He would probably be elected. Generally speaking, that would correspond to the old general European member, who was done away with in 1910. We ask that commerce and agriculture should have members nominated by the Ceylon Planters' Association, and by the Chamber of Commerce. We suggest, too, a member nominated by the Low Country Planters' Association. He would be a Sinhalese. They have in band chiefly the plumbago industry, and largely the coconut industry. Of course the Chamber of Commerce member and the planting member would be Europeans. But the report suggests that they are asked for not as Europeans but as experts in these particular matters. We ask for them as experts. We ask that very strongly. We ask that there should be some man with knowledge in the Council." At the present time there is no man with knowledge. The Government, of course, has experience of business, but experience from the Government point of view, not from the commercial point of view. Amongst the unofficials there is not a single man with commercial training and experience.