Presidential Address of the Hon. Mr. Surendranath Banerjea. All-India Moderates’ Conference. Bombay November 1 1918

The Congress was an organisation for the attainment of self-government the opening words of the first Article of the Constitution of the Congress being :- The objects of the Indian National Congress are the attainment by the people of India of a system of government similar to that enjoyed by the selgoverning members of the British Empire and a participation by them in the rights.and responsi [...] He urged that if the proposals were given effect to the authority of the Viceroy would be weakened and the present standard of the Indian Civil Service destroyed ; yet it was a Viceroy Nvho was one of the authors of the Scheme and it was the Executive Council of the Viceroy consisting of the most distinguished members of the Indian Civil Service and entitled fully to speak in their name and on [...] In pursuance of that policy and on the invitation of the Viceroy the Secretary of State proceeded to India to investigate on the spot the conditions of the problem. [...] Who are they who in season and out of season have urged the Government to introduce primary education who are they who have pressed for the abolition of the salt-tax the reform of the Police the separation of judicial and executive functions the raising of the taxable minimum of the income-tax—all questions intimately connected with the welbeing of the masses ? The last striking illustratio [...] In the next place there was the problem of local self-government; and lastly tyre was the question of constitutional reform involving the reconstitutiqi and the expansion of the administrative and legislative machinery of the Government.