Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎518v] (161/238)

274 Proceedings of the East India Association.
keen in the discharge of their duties and so regular in their attendance? I he
reason was that they enjoyed more power than was allowed to the country
municipalities. It had been considered a grievance that even a resolution
which had been carried unanimously by country municipalities could be
set aside by the Commisioner without assigning any reason. He thought
the idea of relieving the Government official by means of the municipalities
had been carried too far. The municipalities had been burdened with
duties which they could not to a certain extent discharge within their
financial resources. He referred to the burden of primary education. He
thought a great part of the money thus spent ought to be provided by the
Imperial Treasury. Certainly the key of the whole thing was to make the
member feel that his position was more important, and carried more
power and influence with it.
Mr. Rogers was glad to find that the remarks made by members present
were very much in accord with his own opinions. His object in writing
the paper was to show the actual state of affairs. He was by no means
opposed to the spread of municipal institutions ; in fact, he wanted them
promoted in every possible way. His suggestion as to conferring honorary
titles upon those who took an interest in them and did their work
properly was for the purpose of fostering those institutions.
The Chairman, in proposing a vote of thanks to Mr. Rogers, said there
were one or two further remarks which he would like to make. He did
not think the attendance of members at meetings was absolutely conclusive
as to the interest taken by the members in municipal work, because a good
deal of the work was done outside the meetings. 1 here were investigations
and reports, and other things, none of which appeared in the statistics.
He had himself, as chairman, always endeavoured to get a great deal of
that sort of work done through the Commissioners outside the meetings.
In one municipality he had reported in favour of the adoption of the elective
system. Many of the formerly nominated members were elected by the
ratepayers, but there came in a small element of enterprising active men, who
for the first time undertook municipal work. At first those gentlemen felt
as so many people are apt to feel, that the executive was bound to be
wrong, and they opposed them with a little acerbity. He, however, took
an early opportunity of putting this right, one of his modes being to give
work of the kind mentioned, investigations and reports, to some of the new
members, because he wished to turn their energy to good account. He
would be sorry if anything he had said should lead anyone to believe that
he would discourage municipalities or any other selt-governing institutions.
On the contrary, he had always been in favour of making them elective
wherever the conditions might allow. In particular he might mention the
instance of the late “Suburban” municipality,a huge area containing 250,000
inhabitants, which has since been broken up, and the most populous
portions merged in the present Calcutta municipality. Here the result was
certainly good. As to the relief of officials, he agreed that municipalities
ought to do a vast amount of detail work which officials, whose work in
India in other directions was constantly increasing, could not do efficiently
and ought not to be expected to do; but, at the same time, it must