PREFACE
These are lectures on the English Constitution which I delivered to the students of the Government Law College, Bombay, in 1934-35. In publishing these lectures I have not forgotten how presumptuous it may be deemed for an Indian to attempt to expound the principles of the English Constitution. Sir Austen Chamberlain in the course of his cross-examination of a certain Indian witness who appeared before the Joint Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform observed: I listen to the witness with great respect when he talks of Indian conditions, but when he expounds the British Constitution he must permit me to remain of my own opinion (Minutes of Evidence, Vol. 11c, Q. 9812). There is undoubtedly a great deal of truth in this remark and it should make every Indian who wishes to write on the English Constitution pause. An Indian, however, who wishes to enter into the field may well take courage from the fact that much of the English Constitution have been expounded by foreigners who have not only been heard with respect by Englishmen but whose writings have compelled a change of opinion. Be that as it may the remark made by Sir Austen Chamberlain need not come in my way. I am not expounding anything of my own. I am not expounding it to Englishmen. I am merely trying to make Dicey’s English Constitution easier for Indian students to follow and to understand. From the stand-point of Indian students Dicey’s treatise suffers from two defects. It presupposes a knowledge of certain parts of the English Constitution. For instance it presupposes a knowledge of what is Parliament, how it is constituted and how it functions. This presupposition, howsoever justifiable it may be in the case of Englishstudents, would be without warrant in the case of Indian students who are called upon to take up the study of Dicey for the first time. Without a complete knowledge of this pan of the English Constitution Indian student feels completely bewildered and fails to grasp the full import of such fundamental principles as supremacy of the rule of law or the role of conventions in the working of the Constitution. In order that the Indian student may follow in an