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8. THE PUBLIC SERVICES.
I have dealt fully in another memorandum with the question of the concentrated attack which has been made on the pay and privileges of public servants, and the extent to which the safeguards provided in the Order in Council have proved in- adequate, and I do not propose to touch on this question here. I shall deal only with the relations between heads of departments and their new masters, and the extent to which the new Constitution has added to the work of the Services. Relations on the whole have been as good as could have been expected. In the Council itself reckless attacks upon the Services have been if anything more frequent than in the Legislative Council, but, with a few notable exceptions, Committee members have made a genuine attempt to behave decently to heads of departments and others who appear before them, and heads of departments have done their best to be patient and tactful, and have unquestionably made a genuine attempt to work in the spirit of the Constitution. A certain amount of friction has been inevitable. Heads of departments are, after all, only human, and their patience has on occasions broken down under the strain of long and futile discussions in Committee. But the occasions when I have had to intervene to avert a brewing storm have been commendably few. There can be no question that the new Constitution has added enormously to the paper work of heads of Departments and their staff. An enormous amount of their time is wasted on the compilation of long memoranda, frequently on unimportant subjects, and in attending committee meetings and explaining their views. As I have already indicated, a large number of references to Government that used to be treated as purely formal are no longer so treated, and consequently have to be submitted with much fuller explanations than heretofore. And, naturally, submissions to an in- experienced Minister and Committee often have to be much more elaborate than similar submissions to an experienced Colonial Secretary. Again, the inquiries into existing practice to which I have referred in paragraph 2 of this memorandum often entail a great deal of work. Any transfer of responsibility would have involved this extra work to a considerable extent; but there can be no question that the Committee system does so to a greater extent than would any other system.
I have said in paragraph 2, that the number of actually unsound decisions recorded by Committees is not greater than might have been reasonably expected. It cannot be denied, however, that many of their decisions, if not demonstrably un- sound, have been of a decidedly opportunist nature, and consequently somewhat dis- turbing to a head of a department whose sole criterion is efficiency. Political con- siderations naturally have greater weight than they had with the old executive Govern- ment. Heads of departments consequently feel that their own efforts in the cause of efficient administration are liable at any time to be frustrated by a decision actuated by motives which they cannot regard as sound, and, however much they may sym- pathize with strivings after self-government, they cannot view with complete equanimity the deterioration in efficiency which is, I fear, the inevitable concomitant of those strivings. In short, quite apart from the general and serious disgruntlement which the services are feeling as the result of the attitude adopted by the State Council towards their pay and privileges, senior officials are unquestionably feeling the strain of the new Constitution. It is no exaggeration to say that, with the possible exception of the Land Commissioner, there is not a single European head of a depart- ment who would not be glad to retire if he could afford to do so, or who would not eagerly welcome a transfer to any other Colony on his present emoluments.
9. THE REACTION TO RESPONSIBILITY.
The main object of the new Constitution was unquestionably to do away with the pernicious divorce of power from responsibility which had made the old Constitu- tion well nigh unworkable, and to transfer, to the elected representatives of the people, as large a measure of responsibility as they were fit to assume. Nine months of the new order of things is sufficient to enable one to attempt an appreciation of the extent to which the hoped-for reaction to that responsibility has actually taken place. While admitting that the educational process is still in its infancy, it is possible. I think, to draw very useful lessons from the extent of the progress achieved up to date. I have endeavoured to show, in the preceding paragraphs of this memo- randum, that the reaction has been, in the case of the Ministers. remarkable, in the case of the Committee quite considerable, and in the case of the State Council nil. Unfortunately, the harmful results of the failure of the State Council to react are greatly intensified by the failure of that body, to which I have already referred, to recognize and support the responsibility of its own Committees and Ministers,
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or to repose any kind of confidence whatever in them. The Committees themselves, far from resenting this attitude on the part of the Council, appear to regard it as right and proper. A decision or expression of opinion by a majority of the State Council, right or wrong, is, in their eyes, sacrosanct, and they appear to resent not at all the reversal of their own decisions. I cannot, I think, do better than recount the history of one case which is illustrative to a remarkable degree, of all these points. Before the State Council came into being the Governor, on the advice of the Executive Council, decided to post a punitive police force to Egoda Uyana, and to recover the cost thereof from the inhabitants. A member of the State Council notice of a motion recommending to Your Excellency that the cost should not be recovered. The motion was referred to the Executive Committee for Home Affairs, who went into the case carefully and dispassionately and, much to my surprise, reached an unanimous decision that the cost ought to be recovered. The case was discussed in the Board of Ministers, who decided, also unanimously, to support the Executive Committee. I can say without hesitation that, in the old Legislative Council prac- tically the whole of the Committee, and almost all the Ministers would have unhesitat- ingly taken the opposite view. So far, the reaction to responsibility was admirable. But when the motion came up in Council, although several members of the Committee spoke, and all voted, in support of their decision, the inevitable claptrap about repressive legislation was trotted out, and only two elected members outside the Executive Committee and the Ministers, voted the right way. The motion recom-
mending that the cost should not be recovered was therefore carried by a consider- able majority. Reaction to responsibility on the part of the State Council, nil. I was present when the Executive Committee discussed the situation. They maintained firmly that their previous decision had been correct, and professed to have been entirely unconvinced by arguments to the contrary produced during the debate. But they maintained with even greater firmness that it was Your Excellency's duty to carry out the wishes of the Council, wrong though they were. unmoved by the argument that this was a matter coming within the purview of They were entirely Article 48 (2), and that the Council had, therefore, no constitutional standing at all. The State Council had spoken, and that, for them, was enough.
My conclusion is that a sense of responsibility, to have the desired effect, must be a sense of personal responsibility. The Ministers have, as a whole, got that sense. and. unhampered by their Committees, would, I feel sure, develop it to a marked degree. The Committees are developing it, but the State Councillors, as members of the whole Council, show no signs of developing it, and, in my opinion, it is futile to expect them to do so in respect of matters which do not come before their own Committees. It is, I think, no exaggeration to say that the most prominent defects of the Cevlonese politician are vanity, envy, a lack of a sense of proportion, and a marked tendency to subordinate practical experience to crude theory. The results of these defects can only be mitigated by personal responsibility, and it is useless to expect members of the State Council to feel any sense of personal responsibility for the result of their speeches in Council. It may be argued that the educative process is still in its infancy. Admitted, but I am afraid that the experiment of giving execu- tive power to the State Council as a whole has already evinced so many serious defects that it is too dangerous and too expensive to continue merely as a means of education
10. DecentralizaTION.
A subsidiary, but none the less important, object of the new Constitution was to effect a much-needed measure of decentralization. essential I am convinced. That this particular measure of decentralization has pro- That decentralization was duced no strikingly good results, and some bad ones, is due solely to the defects in the machinery to which I have already referred, and to one other. I am tempted to suggest that the Donoughmore Commission had discovererd, in some obscure diction- ary, a definition of decentralization as "the abolition of the centre." For that is,
in effect, the result of their recommendation.
The prototype of our constitution, the London County Council, owes its success very largely to the fact that for the first few years of its existence its deliberations (and the deliberations of most of its Committees) were guided by Lord Rosebery, a chairman of outstanding ability and force of character. The deliberations of the State Council are guided by nobody. It appears to me out of the question to expect any executive body to function properly unless presided over by a chairman, fulfilling all the functions of a chairman, and not merely the functions of a Speaker, whose sole duty is to see that the rules of procedure are properly observed. I am not suggest-
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