THE NATURE OF THE CHANGE 251
a central control was inevitable. The Government of India could not allow a Province to go bankrupt. But if the Government of India were responsible for provincial solvency they must be in a position to control provincial expenditure. Again, as regards revenues, so long as the Government of India took a share in the proceeds they had a strong motive not only in interfering in the Budget estimates of the provinces, but also in interfering in details of administration. Their interest in land revenue, for example, inevitably led them to close supervision over revenue settlements, and the control tended to become tighter in cases where expansion and development of a source of revenue, such as irrigation, depended on capital outlay.
The legislative powers of the Provincial Governments had in the same manner been made subject to statutory restrictions. There was no doubt an extensive field in which, so far as the substantive provisions of the Statute were concerned, the legislative competence of the provincial Legislatures was legally unfettered. Actually, however, the power of the local legislatures was curtailed in two ways. In the first place, owing to the fact that in their existence all the Provincial Legislatures were younger, and most of them much younger, institutions than the Central Legislature of the Governor-General, a great part of the field that would have otherwise been open to them was covered by acts of that body, which had always retained a concurrent power of legislation for the country at large. But the field yet remaining open for Provincial Governments in the matter of legislation was further restricted by the fact that the power of the Secretary of State and Parliament to control all-Indian legislation was made operative by means of executive directions, which had made it incumbent on Provincial Governments to submit for the previous sanction of the Government of India and the Secretary of State all their projects for legislation before introduction. It is true that these directions did not apply to private members’ Bills ; but inasmuch as a Bill could only be introduced with the leave of the Legislature, and the Provincial Government was in most cases in a position if it chose to do so to oppose such a motion successfully, the Government of India by directions to the Provincial Governments were in a position to control all private provincial legislation almost as effectively as the Provincial Government’s Bills.