298 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
Having regard to the fact that no minister unless he was in a position to justify the budget proposals, including even those which pertained to the reserved subjects, would have hoped to persuade the Legislature to agree to a proposal of new taxation, the influence of the ministry on the “reserved” subjects, i.e. on the Council, would have inevitably been in the direction of thrift and retrenchment. The moderates were entirely right in their interpretation of the proviso and also in their insistence upon acquiring power, even at the cost of burdening the country with new taxation [1] . But in the heat of the controversy and their desire to convince the public of the substantiality of the Reforms, they drew some very amusing pictures of how the ministers working under the aegis of the proviso would be able to hold the Council at bay. This alarmed the bureaucracy, which raised the cry that it was dangerous to leave the provision for the “reserved” subjects to the tender mercy of ministers who bore no responsibility for the consequences of refusing adequate Budget provision for those subjects. The authors of the Joint Report [2] had realized the force of this argument, and had confessed that the success of the arrangements depended upon their being worked by reasonable men who would conduct themselves in a reasonable manner. They were probably right in refusing to assume that the ministers would not co-operate, either by reducing their own claims or by imposing taxation, in order to meet expenditure which the Council considered essential for the proper administration of the “reserved” subjects. But the bureaucracy, which had been frightened by the tactless jubilations of the Moderates, insisted that even reasonable men would at times, in all good faith, differ vitally from other reasonable men when it was a question of providing supply for work which one party was responsible for safeguarding and developing, while the other was only concerned in getting a share of the money. In its opinion circumstances could well be imagined in which reasonableness might not prevail. Let us suppose, it was argued, that the Governor in Council finds new and heavy expenditure imperative on some reserved subject, but that he cannot induce ministers to consent to accept less for their
1 Vineberg, Separation of State and Local Revenues in Canada, p. 13, for an instance where military power was bought in Canada by volunteering to pay for the cost of it.
2 Joint Report, para. 257.