Page:Allan Octavian Hume, C.B.; Father of the Indian National Congress.djvu/140

 lized departments extend their tentacles into every district and every village, paralysing the district administrators, and crushing the village organization. Decentralization is the remedy ; and this remedy Lord Ripon sought to apply by the only right method, that is, not by the multiplication of local autocrats, but by building up local self-government on the solid foundation of the village community.

I have likened the centralized departments, in their destructive action on the district and village organizations, to the grasp of the octopus. But if on the one hand the deadly tentacles have reached down to the ryot in his village, they have, with equally baneful effect, taken hold of the supreme Government at Simla and the Council of the Secretary of State at Whitehall, perverting to their own use the control of the House of Commons. They have thus been able to direct policy, and manipulate the Indian Legislature, which for many years has been simply an instrument for consolidating official authority. What is the object of the elaborate codes which, with ever increasing stringency, govern the operations of the Land Revenue, the Forests, the Excise, and other great departments ? Every one knows that all these codes originate with the department directly interested, and that they are all directed to increasing "efficiency," which means the perfecting of the official machine, and completing its domination over the outside public. Indian public opinion has little or nothing to do with the course of legislation : it is only consulted after the supreme Executive has made up its mind under the direction of the department interested. Hence the government of India has been called a tyranny of office boxes, only mitigated by an occasional loss of the key. It is in these office boxes that projects of law are incubated, and that ingenious devices are matured to close all loopholes of