The _reductio ad absurdum_ is surely reached in the case of the Commander-in-Chief and the Chief of the Staff.

Though the Imperial Council is itself debarred from dealing with Army questions, they could be seen any day sitting through the debates merely because their votes might conceivably be required to maintain the official majority, and, except for one or two short excursions in the intervals between the meetings of Council, they were tied to Calcutta when they ought to have been travelling about the country and inspecting the troops.

Yet, it is generally admitted that at no period since the Mutiny has it been more important for the Commander-in-Chief to maintain the closest possible contact with the native army--especially when the Commander-in-Chief is as popular with the Indian soldier as Sir O'Moore Creagh.
Another obvious drawback of the present arrangements is the inconvenience to which members of Council from the provinces were subjected by the irregular intervals at which the Council held its actual sittings.

Either they had to waste their time at Calcutta during the intervals, to the detriment of their interests at home, or they had to spend days in railway carriages rushing backwards and forwards from their homes to the capital, for in a country of such magnificent distances there are few journeys that take less than 24 hours, and from Calcutta, for instance, either to Madras or to Bombay takes the best part of 48 hours.

Unless arrangements are remodelled so as to enable the Council to transact its business, whether _in pleno_ or in committee, either in one session or in two short sessions, but in any case continuously, many of its most valuable members, who have important business, of their own which they cannot afford to neglect, will cease to attend, and the Council will not only lose much of the representative character, which is one of its best features at present, but will fall inevitably under the preponderating influence of the professional politician.