gradually but surely changing the old order of things; young Burmans are receiving a literary and commercial education, and are being turned out as clerks in shoals, and the principles of commerce and competition are being inculcated in the place of the lofty precepts of Buddha; "in the place of placid content we have given the ambition to better things; in the place of the belief that to possess nothing is the highest good, we are implanting the faith that to gain money is the worthy aim of endeavour, and we are naturally enforcing the British view that to strive, to succeed, and to obtain is right and lawful, in the place of the Burmese belief that to share is better than to hold, to dance happier than to work, and to be content holier than to strive." But on the other hand, in the place of the rapacious cruelty of tyrants, we have given just government, and in the place of decimating war and civil strife-peace, security, and protection.

THE FUTURE OF BURMA

Burma and the Burmans are fated to undergo considerable changes; the great waste rich lands of the interior will be cultivated, the towns will be developed, the border tribes will be civilised, the dominant Burman race will become consolidated with the once subject races of the Karens, Shans, Kachins, and Chins, and with the Chinese immigrants, who largely intermarry with the Burmese women. European civilisation will become engrafted on Oriental customs, and British energy will banish to some extent Burmese indolence. It cannot but be good for the Burmans to undergo the discipline of British rule; but still we should regret to see the Burmese type a thing of the past, and the unique Burmese personality lost in a British imitation. In these days of the subjugation of the weak to the strong, and the levelling of all

to a money-making, industrious, and commonplace type of mankind, we can ill spare the loss of a personality so unique, of a moral code so pure, of a fancy so poetic, and of a life so simple as that of the Burman. As long as the Burmans remain Buddhist to the heart's core, and as long as every boy passes into manhood through the portals of the kioung, the people will retain their characteristics, their ideas and customs; and in the far future they, having learned the art of government from their conquerors, may, I trust, recover their lost nationality, and give a world condemned to commerce and competition in the race for wealth, and to military aggrandisement in the desire for power, the example of a people who can enjoy life without desiring to possess, and who by renunciation achieve peace and

contentment.

THE NATIVE STATES OF INDIA

BY WILLIAM LEE-WARNER, C.S.I.

(Late Resident, Mysore)

THE most casual glance at the map of India may suggest a fear that the subject of my paper is too large and unmanageable for the short space at my disposal, but it will certainly make the reader feel that an article on the Native States is an essential part of the study which the projectors of this Series have suggested. The territories included in India, but excluded from the title "British India," cover no less than 595,167 square miles, without computing the Shan States, and they contain a population well over 66,000,000. In area alone they are nearly five times as large as the United Kingdom, or nearly three times as large as the area of either France or the German Empire. Their population exceeds that of the United States of America. Two single States, Haidarabad and Kashmir, have more than 81,000 square miles apiece, being nearly as large as Italy without Sicily or Sardinia; and Gwalior and Mysore are each of them larger than Greece. States not only form huge blocks of territory under a certain ruler, as in the cases mentioned, to which Jodhpur and Bikanir might be added, but they also form large clusters of contiguous principalities under different rulers. Thus Rajputana, with its ten States, fills 130,268 square miles, almost the size of Prussia, and Central India under native rule takes up 77,808 square miles. Outside these larger States or blocks of States there are hundreds of scattered principalities

of every size, ranging from an area of about 20 square miles to 8226 square miles (Baroda), which honeycomb every province of British India with patches of foreign jurisdiction. Each of these conditions presents dangers of its own. Large States may have control over large armies; clusters of States are near to combine or to quarrel; and numerous little patches of foreign territory interfere with British administration. The first thought which must arise in looking at the map is surprise that the rising tide of British conquest did not submerge the greater part of these States and incorporate them, or at least the isolated patches of them, in the British Empire of India. That it has not done so is assuredly not due to want of power, or to temptation (for some, like Baroda or Mysore, are very fair and rich), or to opportunity, but solely to resolute fidelity to the principle that "it is not by the extension of our Empire that its permanence is to be secured, but by the character of British rule in the territories already committed to our care, and by practically demonstrating that we are as willing to respect the rights of others as we are capable of maintaining our own." Other writers will have told about the character of our rule in the territories administered by British officers, and I propose to say what I can about the respect we have shown for the rights of India's own rulers, who conduct the administration of more than one-third of the whole area of India.

You must begin by forming a general idea of what a Native State is. In a Native State, large or small, the Queen's writ does not run; that is the main point : it is foreign territory in the midst of the Queen's dominions. There is no supreme federal court in India, as there is in America, whose decisions are binding on the States; there is no uniform currency throughout them; and the British Government has, as a rule, bound itself not to interfere in their internal administrations, whilst

British power.

it has pledged itself to a desire to perpetuate the governments of the several princes and chiefs of India. There are no British police in the States, and there are but few military cantonments in them garrisoned by British troops. We have therefore on the spot no British force to command respect and obedience to Imperial policy. British supervision is represented by a single political officer, whose moral influence is the slender thread that ties the State to the suzerain I have met many foreigners travelling in India, and I have generally heard them cite the transformation of such elements of disorder as the Native States were in time past into loyal and peaceful allies of Government as the most striking proof of our capacity and moral power which they had witnessed in their tour through the Empire. I hope that I shall be able to convince you that this praise is deserved, especially when you recollect that Rome in her days of glory, and ourselves in modern times in dealing with the Highland chiefs of Scotland, found no satisfactory means of maintaining foreign jurisdictions in their respective empires.

You will be in a better position to realise the difficulty of the task which the British Governments of India undertook to accomplish if you look back at the unpromising elements which have been transformed into what the East India Company called "royal instruments of power." One's first idea would be that the Company found in India old established dynasties which commanded the respect, and perhaps the affection, of their subjects, and whose strong alliances secured for the British merchant-princes the goodwill of the nobility and the population of the Native States. Such was not the case. Except where nature, as in the deserts of Rajputana, protected old families from attack, the rest of India was the theatre of civil war and private plunder, when the Company was striv