BUDGET BY ASSIGNMENTS 125
demands for political advancement could easily imagine that the most urgent concern of the taxpayers would have been neither the well-being of the Imperial nor that of the Provincial Governments, but the distribution of the money they paid along the different channels of expenditure; and if their approval of the results of the scheme had been made a necessary condition of advance, it is probable that the development of Provincial Finance would have been along different lines.
There was a suggestion even at that time that the people of the country should have some voice in the financial arrangements of the country. In paragraph 19 of its Resolution of December
14, 1870, announcing the scheme of Provisional finance, the Government laid down that
“Each local Government will publish its own Provincial Service Estimates and Accounts in the local Gazette, together with a financial exposition (which should, where possible, be made before the local Legislative Council) analogous to that annually made in the Legislative Council of the GovernorGeneral.”
If this suggestion had materialized, the Indian taxpayer would have obtained a voice in determining the financial arrangements between the Government of India and the Provincial Governments. There were, however, certain legal difficulties in the way of giving effect to this suggestion. If the Budget was introduced in the Council and debate had followed upon it, such a proceeding would have offended against Section 38 of the Indian Councils Act (24 and 25 Vic. c. 67) and would have, therefore, been illegal unles the Budget involved some proposal for tax legislation. For, that Act had provided that the activity of the legislative Council should not be called into play except for strictly legislative purposes. If, on the other hand, there was to be no debate, there was no advantage in this mode of giving publicity to the Budget which was not equally secured by its publication in the official Gazette. As a solution of these difficulties, the Government of Madras proposed [1] to the Government of India.
“that the Provincial Budget should form a schedule to an Appropriation Bill, the contents of which would, after all the necessary explanation and discussion, be voted section by section.”
But the Government of India, which had first broached the subject, was shocked by this suggestion as being revolutionary. In reply [2] it observed:—
1 Letter to the Government of India, Finance Department, No. 147 of April
18, 1871.
2 Legislative Letter to Madras dated July 11, 1871, No. 765.