When the Hon. Leader of the House did me the honour of asking me whether I would be in a posaion to second the motion he was moving, and i was placed in that position by decisions of the party to-which I belong-the Sinhala Maha Sabha-I told the Hon. Leader that, whilst seconding the motion. I would like to adopt a procedure which is perhaps not quite usual in dealing with motions of this importance. I wished to second the motion formally and make the observations which I desired to make on the motion at a later stage of the debate.

I adopted that somewhat -unusual procedure for two reasons. The first is this, that the party to which I have the honour to belong-the Sinhala Maha Sabha-happens to be the largest party in this House today and on the attitude of that party, to a great extent, would have rested the final decision on this very important question.

There was another reason-that the various decisions taken by my party, and which I have to justify to this House, to my party and to this country generally, made it desirable for me to hear some of the arguments at least of hon. Members representing various points of view of various communities before I made any remarks myself. Those were the reasons that induced me to speak at a later stage of this debate rather than when seconding the motion.

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