BY MR. T. R. VENKATARAMA SASTRI, B.A., B.L. OBODY will dare to assert that he has no faith in moral legislation. Most legislation will be conceded to have a moral basis. It is not unusual, however, for one opposed to a measure of moral legislation to ask whether a people, or any individual for the matter of that, can be made moral by an Act of Parliament. One may admit that a legislation by itself cannot make a man moral but the admission does not mean that the legislation is purposeless and should not have been undertaken. The purpose of legislation, as Gladstone once put it, is "to make it as easy as possible to do right and as hard as possible to do wrong." * A rule of conduct may be left to be enforced by society with the aid of weapons which it has at its disposal or may be enforced by the State by legislation imposing penalties on its breach. It is not easy precisely to describe the nature of the rules of conduct that the State does, or should, enforce by legislation. Widest divergence of view has prevailed about the extent to which the State might properly interfere with the liberty of action on the part of the individual. The State, like the individual, has varying moods-moods of non-interference and moods of active benevolent paternal legislation. One extreme view is expressed by the words "Government is a necessary evil and the best Government is that which governs least." Another extreme view is that the individual exists for the community and the State and no part of the individual's life is exempt from State control. Both views are extreme theoretic statements and no Government has found it possible to act rigorously according to either doctrine. No government will accept the first view and all governments have seen the wisdom of leaving a certain amount of freedom to the individual, even in its own interests. On the whole Governments, naturally see more truth in the view that concedes most to their control and the only limit to the interference of the State generally recognised is its own safety and the good of the community over which it rules. The liberty of the individual is a comparatively recent idea. The jurisdiction Quarter Century of Moral Legislation-Welbur F. Cragts PH. D. U.S.A. The first item of legislation partially carried out is about the observance of Sunday as a day of rest. It strikes one certainly as curious that the matter should be regulated by legislation. You cannot enforce the observance of the religious Sabbath. Nor is it the aim of legislators in America to compass this directly. Overworked are the crying evil of the age and of advanced nations in particular. One day of rest in seven is required in the interests of national health and no squeamishness on the score of the sacredness of private contracts should prevent the much-needed rest being secured to all the workers under state or private employ. nerves (One does wish that even in our country a convention were well established that no business visits should be made or received on Sunday and that they should be kept as days of rest from all dispensable work). Discouragement of liquor and other intoxicants is secured by a series of restrictive legislation. The book has a catena of medical opinions against alcohol and comparative statistics of crime in alcohol-consuming and abstaining areas. The inveighing against intoxicants as parent of all crime to be found in our ancient books receives ample support in the recorded facts. It is very doubtful if the crusade against alcohol has achieved any very substantial results in America. The book indicates a growing volume of opinion against alcohol, not much of achieved results. The war is said to have conquered America for total abstinence. Whether it is only a temporary national mood or a permanent conversion remains to be seen. * Another head of legislation is against gambling ⚫ in the numerous forms in which it appears in the western countries-betting, book making, prize fights between man and man or man and animals to which spectators are admitted by tickets. There is a curious prohibition of exhibiting any pictures of suicide or describing details of it except in medical journals in the interest of Science. The object is apparently not to familiarise and corrupt the people's imagination with the details of suicide. 串 Moral legislation in America is the result of the unwearied agitations of a society which goes by the name of the International Social Reform Bureau, Its excellent work is recorded in the above book published by its chief officer. In every country there is need for an organisation whose one concern should be to vigilantly watch the needs of society and move the legislature where its interference is needed to remedy a social wrong. In a country where the legislature is not fully in touch with the people's ideas, the need is even greater. The book is worth the attentive study of those who are interested in Social and Moral Legislation both as to things to be aimed at and methods by which to secure them. Nevertheless one cannot but feel that no rule of conduct not realised as based on the eternal dictates of religion ever acquires a strong hold on men. An appeal to reason brings a certain conviction but leaves men's impulses uncontrolled. Religion reaches deeper strata and regulates the life of impulse as well as the life of reason. This is why notwithstanding the advantage of easy communication which has abolished distance and of the printing press which makes one man's thoughts to day the property of the whole world to-morrow, Modern Society has not achieved as much success as ancient religion in moulding the life and habits of man. It is to religion that we owe the successful banishment of flesh and wine from whole communities in India and a wellregulated and faithful family life. ADVICE TO STUDENTS.* BY DR. SIR PRAFULLA CHANDRA RAY. OUR education cannot and ought not to be divorced from the needs of actual lifeyou ought to have a practicable ideal before you. The current notion must be given up that the end of a student's life is to pass examinations. In our country a means has usurped the place of an end. For, examination is, after all, a test and very imperfect test of our intellectual capacity. It is well nigh forgotten that the object of education is not storing the mind with ill-digested information but the development of our faculties. On the intellectual side the powers of observation and reasoning have to be cultivated. In our schools and colleges only the memory is *Presidential address delivered at the fourth Assam Students' Conference held at Tezpur on Oct. 8. developed at the expense of other faculties. The fault is not yours: it belongs to the system for which your elders are responsible. Our country is in a transitional state-there is often a wide gulf intervening between the ideas ruling one A lawyer often insists generation and the next. that his son should become a lawyer whether the latter has a taste or aptitude for the profession or Emerson truly says that benefactors sometimes become the worst malefactors and parents the enemies of their children as they try to force their crystallized views and opinions on the not. latter. TAKE NOTHING ON TRUST. You should be on your guard against accepting current opinions simply because they pass un OCTOBER 19191 ADVICE TO STUDENTS challenged in the society in which you move. Take nothing on trust! learn to think for yourselves. On the moral side you must improve the capacities for industry, patience, courage and self control. We are lacking in the strength of willthat is what more than anything else differentiates us from an average European. Merely negative virtues do not avail much in this world. It is not enough that you are not unjust and cruel but you must try to put a stop to injustice and cruelty in the country. Your virtues should more of the passive be manly our virtues are kind. Remember that courage is the first of virtues. While these general reflections apply to all, you should bear in mind that as students your Whatever subject you first duty will be to learn. have a liking for, you must strive to study and learn. For, it is not given to every one of you to continue your studies in the same way when you enter life. After all, what you learn from books is only an insignificant fraction of what you can gather from every day experience in life The provided you keep your eyes and ears open. besetting sin of our young men is that they are critics of a subject before they have acquired any knowledge about it. You must avoid the life of drift. Don't be like dumb-driven cattle but be a hero in the strife-have an ideal of your future even in your youth and try to work at it. This question has a practical bearing and is permanently connected with your career in life. The only arm of a young man at the present day is to be 4. doctor or a lawyer or a lawyer or a professor. The beaten paths of these learned professions are tracks they won't lead you to the gold minesthese are now paths of starvation. take to new walks of life-to industry, commerce and trade. Your province is a rich field for agriculture. Tea has revolutionised Assam but it is practically in the hands of foreigners. This plant is indigenous to Assam and was discovered during the first Burmese War. Nearly 3,67,000 acres of land are under tea-cultivation and it is estimated that the capital value of the gardens is about 15 millions sterling. Assam, as I have said, is the place for agriculture. The net area of your province excluding the feudatory states is 31 million acres. Of this the area under cultivation including acres, about 8 million current fallows is is culturable waste, about 14 million acres cultivated. The i.e., fit for cultivation but not Your forests cover about 3 million province is fit for nearly every variety of crop, rice, gram, sugarcane and oilseeds-and and pinealso for fruits such 88 oranges acres. You must apples. Commercial products such as rubber, jute, INDIANS FIRST, ASSAMESE NEXT. Whilst every educated Assamese should do his best to support the claims of his own province and see that its interests are not sacrificed, you should steer clear of the danger of looking at things from the narrow, sectional and parochial points of view. We must remember that we are Indians first and Bengalis and Assamese next. The broad principles for which we are now fighting; e. g the expansion of primary, secondary and higher education; concession of a larger measure of Self-Government; increased expenditure for sanitation and freer scope for indigenous_ talents affect all of us equally. India has already been drawn into the vortex of world politics. Mr. Lloyd George has aptly said that we are marching through the track of centuries in as many years and if we fail to move with the times our fate is sealed. The world is moving fast and it will no longer do to be self-centred and self-contained and sit with folded hands as passive and unconcerned spectators and bemoan lot. Japan has given the lie direct to the reproach of the East being immobile. She has shaken off her slumbers and stupor of ages and has secured a our THE INDIAN REVIEW. recognised and assured place in the comity of nations. We too must awake, arise or be for ever fallen. SOCIAL SERVICE FOR YOUNG ASSAM. You, gentlemen, representing the flower of the youth of Assam have a solemn and sacred duty to perform. What your province will be tomorrow will mainly depend upon your determination of to day. After all, remember nations by themselves are made. Speaking of the partplayed by the alumni of the old Hindu College in the intellectual renaissance of modern Bengal, I have elsewhere said: "the Bengalis have been the pioneers of western education in the United Provinces and the Punjab. The role played by them in the making of New India is now recognised everywhere. Sir Frederick Halliday who had been Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal during and after the Mutiny observed in his capacity as OCTOBER 1919 member of the Secretary of State's Council:"Every educated man has proved a missionary of education in his neighbourhood and among his dependents; and every considerable land holder vies with his neighbour in establishing and fostering village schools; until in 1862, one half of the whole state expenditure for vernacular education was met by private subscriptions and contributions from a people who, only a few years back, could by no means have been made to comprehend the value of education to themselves, still less the obligation of extending it to others." In fact, each and everyone of the alumni of the old Hindu College became a focus of religious, social and political intelligence, which gradually permeated and filtered through among his less favoured countrymen. Indeed, a little leaven leaveneth the mass. I hope young Assam will play a similar part. EYLON, like Burma, has been deeply affected by the great political movements in India and the people of that Island have begun to manifest signs of discontent with the present form of administration. It is more than a century since Ceylon came under British Rule but unfortunately that Rule has not progressed in proportion to the aspirations of the people. We find in that Island the same poverty, the same monopoly of power and prestige in the hands of a small number of Europeans, the same indifference to public opinion of which the Indian people are but too well aware. The people of Ceylon have much in common with the people of India and frequent intercourse between the two peoples, the bond of sympathy resulting from common suffering and the common desire to better their lot have brought the two more closely. Consequently, the political movement in Ceylon is also greatly affected by the political movements in India and the speeches of Indian leaders, the actions of our Rulers and various other activities in this country are followed shrewedly by the ancient people of the Crown Colony. It is not therefore surprising that the birth of a definite movement for Reform in Ceylon should have synchronised with the period of the present intense political activity in India. The War, the speeches of responsible statesmen on the causes and objects of the War had also a share in disturbing the placid atmosphere of Ceylon public life. We see as a result of all these that on the 17th May 1917, 'The Ceylon Reform League' was inaugurated with the Hon. Sir P. Arunachalam as President with the aim of securing such Reform of the administration and Government of Ceylon as will give the people an effective share therein.' On June 20, 1917, the League addressed a Memorial to the Secretary of State for the Colonies pointing out that the Crown Colony administration had outlived its usefulness and indicating the measures necessary for remedying the evils under which the people were suffering. The following Resolutions passed at a meeting of the Ceylon National Conference held on the 13th and 14th December 1918, present the case of the people very clearly. This Conference is of opinion that the system of Crown Colony administration, which has prevailed in this Island for over 100 years, is unsuited to its needs and conditions and inconsistent with British ideals, hinders the development and progress of the people and is detrimental to their welfare; and that a reform of he constitution and administration is imperatively required, and a vigorous development of self-governing institutions, with a view to the realisation of responsible government in the country as an integral part of the British Empire. This Conference is of opinion that reforms, more liberal than those deemed necessary for India by the Secretary of State for India and the Viceroy and set forth in their Report of 22nd April, 1918, should be immediately granted to Ceylon which, while akin to India in race and culture, has conditions more favourable for political development. That the Legislative Council of Ceylon should be enlarged and re-constituted so as to contain a substantial majority of members elected upon the basis of a territorial electorate with a broad franchise, with due safe-guards for minorities. That the Executive Council of Ceylon should be so reformed that half the number of its members shall be Ceylonese elected members of the Legislative Council, who shall be in charge of Departments. That a proportion of not less than 33 per cent., increasing annually by 2 per cent. up to 75 per cent., of the higher appointments in the Ceylon Civil Service and other branches of the public service should be filled by Ceylonese. That there should be complete popular control of Municipal Councils and other local bodies in Ceylon, urban and rural, with elected Chairmen and elected majorities. Meanwhile, much educative propaganda has been carried on in Ceylon ard throughout the country, branches of political organisations have been formed. Annual Conferences have been convoked and a great deal of political literature in the form of leaflets and pamphlets explaining the present position of the people have been issued by the Ceylon Reform League. Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam to whose initiative and energy the political organisation in Ceylon owes its birth and its present strength, in an address delivered by him before the Ceylon National Association pointed out : In Ceylon the Legislative Council contains a permanent official majority. Only four out of ten unofficial members are elected. Of the four two represent the Europeans, who are a small minority of our population and whose interests should be safe enough in the hands of the twelve official members who are all Europeans. There is not a single unofficial in the Executive Council. A seat in a Council of the Secretary of State has been beyond our wildest dreams. Municipalities were first established in Ceylon in 1865 in Colombo, Kandy and Galle. Though half a century has passed, neither their number nor their powers have been increased. The Councils remain practically departments of Government administered by officials of the Civil Service, with councillors who have little more than consultative powers; while the city of Bombay, with many times the population and revenue of Colombo, has for years had an elected Chairman and fifty-six elected to sixteen members (official and unofficial) nominated by Government. Local Boards, established in 1876, remain equally ineffective for the purpose of training people in the art of managing |