ministration of the manufacture of salt; Higher Agricultural Research.

To the second or Provincial Category belonged-Land, Revenue, including cadastral Surveys, Customs, Opium, Stamps, Excise, and Salt in South India, Provincial Rates, Income Tax, Forests, Registration, General Administration, Medical and Sanitary Deparments, Civil Veterinary Department, Factory and Boiler Inspection, Relations with some of the adjacent Native States, Local self-government, including control of Municipalities and Local Boards, Law and Justice, Court of Wards, Charitable endowments, Jails, Police, Ports and Pilotage, Education, Museums, Ecclesiastical Affairs, Agriculture, including (1) Co-operative Credit (2) Scientific and Miscellaneous Departments, Stationery and Printing, Miscellaneous, Famine Relief, Irrigation, Public Works.

The work of all these provincial Departments was supervised by the Government of India. In some technical matters, this supervision was exercised on the advice of special departments attached to one or the other member of the Government of India. These departments were the following-Agriculture, including Research, Civil, Veterinary Works, Education, Forestry Medicine, Sanitation, Public Works, Irrigation, Survey, Criminal Intelligence.

Again provincial finance was supervised by the Finance Department, and provincial accounts were subject to the Auditor-General. Provincial legislation was supervised by the Legislative Department and wherever provincial Governments were left to handle their own relations with neighbouring Native States, they did so subject to the close supervision of the Political Department. In matters other than those specified above pro

vincial governments were supervised by the Home Department, which acted as the special custodian of constitutional usage and practice.

For the purpose of administration the province had an Executive Council which divided the departments into portfolios assigned to the Members of the Council, who administered through the Secretaries. The Secretaries corresponded with the Commissioners of the Divisions into which the province was divided, and the Commissioners in their turn corresponded with the District Officers. Civil Justice, however, was entirely under the High Court, which managed it through District Judges and their subordinate judicial officers.

29. Thus, though the actual administration was largely carried on by the Local Governments, the Govern

The classification of functions into Central and Provincial.

ment of India retained a general control over them and-often a rigid control-in the matter of legislation, finance, and administration. Now the preamble to the Act says "And whereas concurrently with the gradual development of self-governing institutions in the Provinces of India, it is expedient to give to those Provinces in provincial matters the largest measure of independence of the Government of India, which is compatible with the due discharge by the latter of its own responsibilities." The two questions of responsible Government in the provinces and provincial autonomy have thus been joined together by the Act; and no progress is possible in the former until and unless there is a substantial attainment of the latter. Before there could be any popular control over Provincial matters, the provinces must be relieved from that close control which the Government of India habitually exercised over them. To explain the nature of this control before the Reforms, and its subsequent

modification or relaxation it is necessary to survey the whole field of administration and its division between the Central and Provincial authorities.

The Reforms in fact postulate a two-fold division of the functions of Government-first between Central and Provincial Governments, and secondly, within a province, between the two halves of the Executive. This work of distribution was specially entrusted to the Functions Committee. Applying the principles laid down in the Report, it prepared its own lists of Central and Provincial subjects which, as finally adopted, are given in appendix A.

Explanatory

Remarks.

30. They call for a few words of explanation. First, as to the principle of this division. There is a compact group of subjects which being of All-India importance or extent, properly belong to the Central Government e. g. Defence, Foreign Relations, Tariff, Coinage, Post &c. On the other hand at the other end there are matters which are of predominantly local interest and are therefore proper subjects for provincialization, e. g. Local Self-Government, Sanitation, Famine Relief, Education &c. Between these, however, there is a group of subjects of an indeterminate nature, about which there is some difficulty. Though in many such subjects wide delegation to the provincial Governments was practised its mere extent is not a sufficient ground for provincialization. The proper criterion is "whether in any case the Provincial Governments are to be strictly the agents of the Government of India, or, are they to have acknowledged powers of their own ?" Applying this we arrive at the principle that if the interests of India as a whole or at any rate of more than one Province are affected, the subject is AllIndian; if the interests of the Province essentially predominate it is provincial.

Secondly though a subject be all-Indian, the Central Government might hand over its administration to the Provincial Government as a matter of convenience. In such a case

the Provincial Government is merely the agent of the Central Government. The agent might exercise wide powers, but they are strictly controlled by the principal who is responsibile for them. Provincial functions will thus be of two kinds-provincial functions properly so called, and agency functions.

In reading the lists the following things should be borne in mind; (1) there is no such statutory demarcation of powers between the Central and provincial Legislatures as to leave the validity of Acts passed to be challenged in the courts on the ground of their being in excess of the power of the legislature by which they were passed.

The Indian polity is in no way comparable to the federal form of the American Constitution. There only definite functions have been made over to the Central Government, the residual functions being retained in the hand of each State. And a law passed by the one or the other might be challenged in a Court of Law on the ground that it was ultra vires.

(2) The proviso "subject to Indian Legislation" means that legislation on that subject, in whole or in part, or any powers reserved thereunder to the Governor-Generalin-Council, are recognised as an All-India subject; and with regard to Provincial powers, not that the Province cannot legislate on the subject at all, but that in so far as the limitation operates, it cannot legislate except with the previous sanction of the Governor-General.

This proviso has been inserted in the matter of the borrowing and taxation powers of local authorities; infectious and contagious diseases; constitution and functions of Universities; Railway or Tramway which is in physical connection with a main line or is built on the same guage as an adjacent main line; interprovincial water relations of various kinds; protection against destructive insects and pests and plantdiseases; animal diseases; land acquisition; High Courts, Chief Courts, Courts of Judicial Commissioners, and Courts of

Criminal Jurisdiction; Court fees; registration of documents; registration of births, deaths, marriages; major ports; inland waterways for inland steam vessels; control of newspapers, books and printing presses; criminal tribes; European vagrancy; egulation of Medical or other professional qualifications; control of all-India and Provincial Services; &c.

The above list is not exhaustive; but where the subject is peculiarly important, or of extra provincial significance, this proviso might be used for securing uniformity of laws throughout India, or safeguarding the larger interests involved.

(3) And further, as the Joint Committee put it, these partitions of the functions of Government are not absolutely clearcut and mutually exclusive. They must in all cases be read with the reservations in the text of the Functions Committees' Report, and with due regard to the necessity for special procedure in cases where their orbits overlap.

(4) The object of the Lists is to make a division on general lines with reference primarily to subjects dealt with rather than to specific acts of administration. The method of cataloguing a number of separate items has this disadvantage that it leaves room for the inference that items not specifically mentioned were intentionally omitted. The lists therefore give general headings which require interpretation in the light of administrative experience.

(5) Where any doubt arises as to whether a particular matter does or does not relate to a provincial subject, the Governor-General in Council shall decide whether the matter does or does not so relate, and his decision shall be final.