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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

Reference :-

PELLIC.O.882/11

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO

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under examination; but it is clear that no revenue can be expected from this source at an early date. The issue of a loan at a time when no serious effort had been made to balance revenue and expenditure and to provide for the necessary interest and sinking fund would be prejudicial to the credit of the Island. Furthermore, it is clearly undesirable that the examination of the proposals for a change in the constitu- tion of the Island should be prejudiced by financial considerations arising from a failure to balance the budget.

4. I request, therefore, that you will inform the signatories to the protest that I have carefully considered their representations but that I see no reason to question the action which you thought it right to take in the circumstances.

5. I take this opportunity of acknowledging the receipt of your telegram of the 1st August. quoting the Resolution passed by the Executive Committee of the Ceylon National Congress to whom I request you will be good enough to reply in similar terms. 6. I have also received a number of communications on the subject from other bodies in Ceylon but I am unable to entertain their representations unless they are forwarded to me through you in accordance with the Colonial Regulations.

I have, &c.,

C. 63363 29 [No. 32].

No. 69.

THE GOVERNOR to THE SECRETARY OF STATE. (Received 18th November, 1929.)

(Confidential.)

MY LORD.

PASSFIELD.

Queen's House, Colombo, 25th October, 1929. UNDER cover of my despatch No. 839 of the 2nd October,† I had the honour to submit to Your Lordship the Appropriation Ordinance of 1929, to which I had on the assented on the previous day. Although the Ordinance was introduced 4th July, its final stage in the Legislative Council was not completed until the evening of the 28th September, only two days before the beginning of the financial year for which it makes provision. The proceedings throughout were attended by much difficulty, and to ine they present themselves as a disappointing commentary on that portion of my despatch of the 2nd June, in which I depicted the working of the present Constitution and the general attitude of the Unofficial Members in a more roseate light than had been thrown upon them in certain passages of the Report of Lord Donoughmore's Commission. I was not so sanguine as to suppose that relations which had been tolerably easy in times of financial prosperity would remain wholly unaffected by circumstances of financial stress; but recent experience suggests that, even so, I may have overestimated their stability. Allowance must be made, of course, for the reactions of an embarrassed financial situation upon the premonitions of a Had money been (ieneral Election believed at the time to be closely imminent. plentiful, it is probable that. notwithstanding the anicipated propinquity of a General Election, the co-operation of Unofficial Members with the iovernment in a policy of expenditure on the normal scale would have been readily obtainable. Had there been no prospect of a General Election for another two or three years, the call upon them to impose increased taxation might not have produced the demoralising effect which actually was created. Nevertheless, it is disconcerting to a supporter of proposals for an advance in self-government that at the first exacting test under the present Constitution so little disposition should have been shown to face disagregable facts calmly and rationally. After very careful reflection, however, I still feel able to adhere to the advice which in my despatch of the 2nd June, I ventured to tender upon the recommendations of the Donoughmore Report, except in so far as it has now become evident that a satisfactory general revision of official salaries and a satisfactory settlement of the question of the passage allowance are not likely to he effected locally in the near future, and consequently that there is more justification for the appointment of a Salaries Commission from Great Britain than I was inclined to think when I wrote the fifty-eighth paragraph of my above-mentioned despatch.

2. The course of events in the passage of the Supply Bill might probably have proved less arduous, if I had not used my reserve powers on the 5th July, to prevent the rejection of the Resolution imposing as a provisional measure a small surcharge on all import duties. Your Lordship is cognisant of the circumstances of that incident. C. 63230/29/7 [No. 1]: not printes.

* No. 64. + C. 63363/29 [No. 26]; not printed.

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and I need not enlarge upon them here. I would ask, however, to be allowed to tender an expression of my grateful thanks for the support which I have received - from you in sieli generons measure. I regret that any action of mine should have been the cause of involving you in the complex of our local disagreements, but the action itself seemed to me necessary at the time, and in the light of its consequences I remain unshaken in that opinion. Whatever may have been the determining factor in the attitude of the Unofficial Members towards the proposed Resolution, submission by the Government would have been interpreted as a confirmation of the theory that a majority of Legislative Councillors was entitled, save in respect of the power of initiative, to take all control over financial policy out of the hands of those charged with the responsibility for it, and would have opened up in the not distant future a prospect of financial and political difficulties more formidable than any which have actually arisen..

3. During the last five years the Government of Ceylon may have made mistakes in its dealings with the Legislative Council, but it certainly cannot be charged with failure to practise the virtues of self-repression and conciliation. I am not concerned now to argue where may have lain the balance of ultimate advantage as between firm- ness and flexibility. The temporising policy which was followed would seem to have had the effect of encouraging the Legislative Council to claim practically all the parliamentary and many of the administrative attributions of responsible government, except that of responsibility. A more rigid policy might have succeeded only in advancing the date of an open conflict between legislature and executive. The prac- tical question always has been whether a collision could be staved off until the present Constitution had been superseded by some different adjustment of responsibility and power. The risk which had to be faced was that the price payable for staying off the collision might well prove excessive if any considerable delay in the reform of the Constitution were to coincide with unpropitious financial or political conditions, but there was, of course, also the risk that at any time, irrespectively of the prospects of a constitutional change, unforeseen developments might compel the Government

to assert itself.

4. However much care and forethought the Governor may exercise, he cannot make sure of averting occasions for collision so long as any Unofficial Majority with which we may have to dea! is merely a fortuitous coalescence, changing from day to day in its composition, acknowledging no leadership, and ever ready to subordinate If the Governor's précautions for the consistency to the impulse of the moment avoidance of a collision have proved nugatory, and if the circumstances are such as to preclude his recourse to compromise or inaction, he is liable to find himself unable to discharge the obligations of his responsibility without provoking something in the nature of a crisis by the use of reserve powers so circumscribed as to render their application to almost any particular item of disagreement questionable on grounds of constitutional propriety. In such an emergency, therefore, he must be prepared either tc surrender control which he ought to exercise, or else to lay himself open to the charge, more easily made than repelled, of arbitrary perversity in the ascription of

paramount importance to the specific matter in dispute.

"

4. When I decided, on the 5th July, to use my reserve powers, I was well aware that I might expect to be criticised with some asperity, and my expectations were not belied. The protest may have been a little more declamatory, a little less courteous, than I had anticipated, but it is fair to remember that my action had come as a surprise to our local politicians and as a shock to their self-esteem, which for many of them is a peculiarly vulnerable point. It is intelligible that under the repercussion of such a shock some of them should not have displayed their most amiable qualities, and I think it unnecessary to say more about this aspect of the controversy than that the substance and tone of some of the speeches which have been delivered and some of the articles which have been written have shown how urgent the need for a reassertion of executive authority had become.

6. Although the immediate consequences were neither very agreeable nor very edifying, I think it probable that the ultimate effect will be salutary, and that the Government will have gained more in respect than it may have lost in popularity. Indeed, I am inclined to doubt whether such popularity as the Government had pre- viously enjoyed has been impaired appreciably in the country at large, and I do not conceive that the Unofficial Members themselves would claim to have emerged from the fray with any enhancement of credit. The aggression has proceeded from them, but I have endeavoured to deal with them considerately, as I wished to avoid any