Page:The Life of Lokamanya Tilak.djvu/99

Rh "2. The Rules for conducting the business of the Council." :3. A Bill to amend the Karachi Port Trust Act, 1886 (withdrawn). ":4. A Bill to amend the Bombay Boiler Inspection Act, 1891." :5. A Bill to amend the Bombay General Clauses Act, 1886. :6. A Bill to amend Act VIII of 1870 (an act for the prevention of the murder of female infants). :7. A Bill to further amend the City of Bombay Municipal Act, 1888.

A barren epoch, to be sure! Under the regime of the Morley-Minto Reforms, members could at least spread, peacock-like, the glorious plumage of their knowledge and oratory. They could at least show off their grasp of economic problems and administrative details and could count upon moral effect of their work,—moral effect, not certainly upon the Bureaucracy but upon their countrymen. But in the Councils established under the Act of 1892, neither actual nor moral effect was possible. Amendments, here and there, of the Government Bills and a desultory discussion on the Budget, after "it had ceased to be a Budget" and "had been sanctioned by the Government of India"—that was all that could be done. Even the Bureaucracy confessed that the "examination of the contents of the Budget was little better than a post-mortem dissection"; and though Mr. Tilak retorted by pointing out that " we could as well dissect a living as a dead Budget," still he had to submit to the inevitable. Under the flow of smooth and cour-