58

INDIAN CONSTITUTIONAL DOCUMENTS

Defect of
Legislative
Council
created
in 1853

True func-
tion of
Legislative
Council
created
in 1853

The Council, however, quite contrary to my inten*
tion, has become a sort of debating society, or petty
parliament, My own view of its duties is expressed
in a letter I wrote to Lord Dalhousie in 1853, in which
I said : " I expect the non-official members of your
enlarged Legislative Council to be constantly employed
as a Committee of Council in working at Calcutta, on
the revision of your laws and regulations." It was
certainly a great mistake that a body of twelve
members should have been established with all the
forms and functions of a parliament. They have
standing orders nearly as numerous as we have; and
their effect has been, as Lord Canning stated in one of
his despatches, to impede business, cause delay, and to
induce a Council, which ought to be regarded as a
body for doing practical work, to assume the debating
functions of a parliament .... the objects of the
change in the position of the Governor-General's
Council, when sitting for legislative purposes, have
been most completely fulfilled .... but I think that
the general opinion, both in India and England, con-
demned the action of the Council when it attempted
to discharge functions other than those which <! have
mentioned—when it constituted itself a body for the
redress of grievances, and engaged in discussions which
led to no practical result. So much has this struck
those most competent to form an opinion, that I find
that the first Vice-President, Sir Laurence Peel, expresses
a very decided opinion against it, and says of the
Council, in a short memorandum :
"It has no jurisdiction in the nature of that of a
grand inquest of the nation. Its functions are purely
legislative, and are limited even in that respect. It is
not an Anglo-Indian House of Commons for the
redress of grievances, to refuse supplies, and so forth."
These obvious objections were pointed out to me
by the Government of India last year, and it was my
intention to have introduced a measure upon the
subject in the course of that Session. I felt, however,
so much difficulty in deciding in what shape the
measure should be framed, that I deferred its proposal