al and
social point of view they may well claim in this connexion the sympathy
and support of all denominations and no-denominations that are
interested in the welfare and progress of backward races. From the
political point of view the conversion of so many millions of the
population of India to the faith of their rulers would open up prospects
of such moment that I need not expatiate upon them.

CHAPTER XV.

THE NATIVE STATES.

One of the chief features of the original scheme of constitutional
reforms submitted to the Secretary of State by the Government of India
was the creation of an Imperial Advisory Council composed of ruling
chiefs and territorial magnates. The proposal gave rise to a variety of
objections, the most serious one being the difficulty of adjusting the
relations to the Government of India of a Council in which the most
conspicuous members could have had no definite _locus standi_ in regard
to the internal affairs of British India--i.e., of the larger part of
our Indian dependency under direct British administration. The
difficulty was evaded by dropping the proposal. But to evade a
difficulty is only to postpone it. Though the constitutional reforms are
confined, in their immediate application, to British India, measures of
such far-reaching importance must react more or less directly upon the
whole of our Indian Empire. Is it therefore politic, or, indeed,
possible, to leave out of account the Native States, which occupy
altogether about one-third of the total area of India and have an
aggregate population of over 68 millions, or to ignore the rulers
charged with their administration?

The Native States of India vary in size and importance from powerful
principalities like the Nizam's State of Hyderabad, with an area of
82,000 miles--nearly equal to that of England and Wales and Scotland---
and a population of over 11 millions, down to diminutive chiefships,
smaller than the holdings of a great English landlord. Distributed
throughout the whole length and breadth of the peninsula, they display
the same extraordinary variety of races and creeds and castes and
languages and customs and traditions as the provinces under the
immediate governance of the Viceroy, and their rulers themselves
represent almost every phase and aspect of Indian history. The Princes
of Rajputana, headed by the Maharana of Udaipur, with genealogies
reaching back into the mythical ages, have handed down to the presen