ABSTRACT
Since 1885 the action of the House of Commons has seriously affected the position of the Government of India in the eyes of the natives, by giving evidence of the existence of divided authority. Neither Gladstonian suggestions in the Lords nor Radical amendments in the Commons had succeeded in pushing Salisbury farther than accepting the principle that the Legislative Councils should be enlarged and their members allowed to ask “Parliamentary questions” and discuss the Budget. Curzon, Cross’s Under-Secretary, in the Commons, even greater need of pointing to a “liberal” precedent, “boldly set by the Government”, when meeting full-blooded “elective principle” amendments moved by the Radicals. Exactly what concessions to long-standing Radical demands were made in the House of Commons during 1893 must be dealt with later. Ever since the opium traffic from India to China had brought on the unsavoury "Opium War" of 1839–42, led by philanthropists, Radicals and Friends, had declined to accept the interested arguments of official India.
