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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
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Colonial Secretary, recording his impressions of the recent debate in the Legislative Council on your offer of constitutional reform.
2. Mr. Bourdillon has had the advantage of being able to apply a mind un- biassed by previous association with local politics and politicians in the Council and the country. He heard the speeches which I have merely read, and he had opportunities not open to me of gauging the movement and trend of undercurrents by direct obser- vation. It is reassuring to me to find that his conclusions thus formed coincide generally with my own, which could only be based on interpretation in the light of past experience.
I have, &c.,
YOUR EXCELLENCY,
Enclosure in No. 68.
H. J. STANLEY,
Governor.
WHEN we were discussing Your Excellency's despatch of 23rd December, in which you commented on Sir P. Ramanathan's memorial to the Secretary of State about the Donoughmore Scheme debate, I ventured to bring to Your Excellency's notice certain impressions which I had gathered during the debate. Your Excellency suggested that I should record these impressions in a memorandum to be forwarded to the Secretary of State. I do so with some diffidence, as I feel that my ignorance of conditions and personalities may have led me astray. On the other hand, that very ignorance enabled me to follow the debate with a perfectly open mind; a factor not without value. Here, then, for what they are worth, are my impressions:-
(1) There were certain speakers, e.g., Sir P. Ramanathan and Mr. Wille. who were obviously genuinely opposed to the Reforms, and whose speeches, though they possibly did not reveal all (or in Mr. Wille's case even the strongest) of the speaker's real motives for opposing the Reforms, nevertheless had a clear ring of sincerity. There were other speakers who not only clearly desired that the Reforms should be accepted, but appeared to be stating their genuine reasons for that desire. The majority of the speeches, however, even when delivered with a considerable degree of eloquence and force (as in the case of Mr. Obeyesekere and Mr. Sandrasegara, to take one from each side) had a very insincere ring. These two speeches, and many others, sounded to me as if the speaker had made up his mind, without any regard for the merits of the Scheme, which way to vote, and had then proceeded to construct a series of arguments which had nothing whatever to do with his decision. In other words they sounded like the speech of a member of a debating society who has no personal con- victions about the subject under debate, and who has spun a coin to decide on which side he shall speak.
(2) If this picture is at all representative of the actual facts, one is driven to look for the motive which impelled members either to speak and vote against their personal convictions, or to support one side or the other with considerable vehemence with little if any consideration for the merits of the scheme under debate. The memorials with which Your Excellency's despatches of 23rd December and 24th December deal, give instances of Members who voted for the Reforms against their personal convic- tions. In the despatch of 23rd December Your Excellency mentions instances of the converse, and I may add that Mr. Mahadeva told me personally on the first day of the debate that he favoured the Reforms, but would vote against them. The motive is not far to seek. Setting aside the European Members, the representatives of the minority communities were practically solid against the Scheme, the Sinhalese prac- tically solid for it. One cannot avoid the conclusion that, although the minority Members with one voice disclaimed any fear of Sinhalese domination, the Tamils. Indians and Burghers voted against the Reforms, because their communities view with apprehension the disappearance of communal representation, and that the Sinhalese Members were actuated by the converse motive.
(3) If, as would appear, from what I have said so far, to be the case, the accept- ance or rejection of the Donoughmore Scheme turned solely on the question of com- munal representation. the prospects of its success would be indeed sorry. But I cathered another impression, and one which was, I know, shared by other Official Members: and this impression was that, with the exception of a few "die-hards "like the Tamil Knight, most Members--
(a) believed public opinion to be in favour of acceptance:
(b) whether believing in the soundness of the Scheme or not, felt that its rejec
tion would be a mistake:
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(c) hoped that the debate would end in acceptance by a small majority; and (d) had a comfortable feeling of assurance that, in the event of rejection this debate would not be the last word, and that on the next occasion (whether a reference to a new Council, or some form of referendum) the Reforms would be accepted.
A striking confirmation of (c) is afforded by Mr. Sandrasegara's action in asking for permission to speak at a moment when a snap division was so near that the oral voting had actually taken place. Three pro-reform Members were absent, and everyone in the House realized that the snap division, if allowed to take place would result in the rejection of the Scheme. And it was an (apparently) ardent rejectionist who asked
yet permission to prolong the debate. My impression is that, taking the four factors mentioned above into consideration, the majority of Members felt that it would be safe to vote in the manner most likely to appeal to the more extremist among their con- stituents, and therefore most likely to lead to their re-election. The Congress Menthers among the Low-Country Sinhalese were in a difficulty. On the one hand the majority of their community, attracted by the prospect of no communal representation, were in favour of the Reforms. Congress, on the other hand, had pronounced against them. Their agile hopping from one horn to the other of the dilemina has formed the theme of the two memorials with which Your Excellency's despatches deal. That of Sir P. Ramanathan is inspired by a genuine dislike of the Reforms, based partly on a fear of Sinhalese dominance, and partly on the belief that the day has not yet come when any but the select few are fit to exercise the vote. The other memorial I believe to be inspired by little more than the desire of the memorialists to wave the flag of patriotism and show their countrymen that they at any rate will be content with no halfway house to Swaraj.
(4) It is perhaps a little disappointing that a question of this importance should have been settled by such a farcical debate. But the real point is that the question was not settled in the debate; it has been settled beforehand, and in the circumstances it is not unnatural that many Members should have played for safety. The important facts which appear to me to stand out are:-
(1) That the great body of sober public opinion in the country was definitely
in favour of the acceptance of the reforms:
(2) That though few even among the " acceptionists" have a very strong belief in the Committee System, there appears to exist at the present moment a feeling of general satisfaction and determination to put forth every effort to make the Reforms a success.
29th December, 1929.
C. 73230/2/30 [No. 7].
(No. 85.)
SIR,
No. 69.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE to THE GOVERNOR.
B. I B.
Downing Street, 5th February, 1930.
I HAVE the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your despatch No. 1063 of the 24th of December,* transmitting to me a letter signed by three members of the Legislative Council of Ceylon on the subject of the proposed constitutional changes. 2. My telegram of the 31st of Decembert conveyed to you my views on the representations of the writers in so far as they had been communicated to me in your telegram of the 16th of December. The discussion in the Legislative Council was intended solely to elicit public opinion on the subject of the constitutional proposals. In these circumstances the motives which induced individual members to record their votes on one side or the other were of minor interest except in so far as they indicated the trend of popular opinion. The extracts from the speeches of individual members on which the writers lay emphasis appear to me to support the view that popular opinion was in general in favour of the proposals.
3. I see no reason to discuss the question whether there was any obligation on the Vice-President to record his vote on the resolution, since in any event it will be
* No. 67.
† No. 64.
‡ C. 63230/7/29 [No. 35]: not printed.