Page:The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 1.djvu/373

 to perpetuate for years, and probably with increased bitterness, the struggle between the Indians and the Europeans in this Colony with regard to the vote.

Your Memorialists appeal to Her Majesty’s Government to save the Indian community, if not the whole Colony, from such a dismal outlook—from perpetual agitation—and all this to avoid a danger that does not exist.

That the expenses of such a struggle to the Indian community must be beyond their control needs no argument to prove. The whole struggle is unequal.

Now, assuming further, that the highest legal tribunal has recorded its opinion that the Indians do not possess “elective representative institutions founded on the Parliamentary franchise”, the method provided in the Bill whereby the Indians may be placed on the Voters’ Roll is, in your Memorialists’ humble opinion, in every way unsatisfactory.

The disapproval of that portion of the Bill which confers the power on the Governor is very emphatic on the part of the Europeans also. The Natal Witness, in dealing with that branch of the subject, says:


 * It attacks great constitutional principles, and further introduces into the working of representative institutions in Natal what may be termed an unknown quantity—that is to say, the effect which the third clause, providing for an electorate of six to choose fit and proper Asiatics for the Voters’ Roll, will have upon them. . . . The Ministry appeared to have caught on to the idea (i.e., of indirect election), but in making themselves and the Governor an indirect electorate, they are not only doing what is decidedly preposterous but highly improper.

Reverting to the same question again, it says:


 * The Assembly has not gained in public estimation by passing a Bill which most of the leading members are distrustful of, which they can see is a compromise and a compromise which may prove quite ineffectual and which, as we pointed out when it was first published, is a most dangerous invasion of the privileges of the Assembly as well as an attack upon constitutional principles which it might have been assumed that every member would have held himself to be under a solemn obligation to maintain unimpaired. There was no need to remind some of the members of the last objection. Mr. Bale said that the Franchise ought to be vested in the people alone, to be exercised of course by their representatives. . . . But what the press is concerned about is not the present Parliament but all future ones. . . .When a great constitutional principle