, the merits of each case, local conditions, antecedent
circumstances, and the particular stage of development, feudal and
constitutional, of individual principalities." It is obviously
impossible to enforce a more rigid control over the feudatory States at
the same time as we are delegating larger powers to the natives of India
under direct British administration. This is a point which Lord Minto
might indeed have emphasized with advantage. For there seems to be a
growing tendency, probably at home rather than in India, to ignore our
responsibilities towards the ruling chiefs, and to regard them as more
or less negligible quantities in the constitutional experiments we are
making in our Indian Empire. When an emergency arises such as a frontier
war or a military expedition in the Sudan or in China, we appeal
unhesitatingly to the loyalty of the Princes of India, and so far they
have cheerfully borne their share in these Imperial enterprises though
they were never drawn into consultation beforehand, and their own
material interests were not directly involved. On the other hand,
questions which do involve their material interests, questions which
necessarily affect the well-being of their States quite as much as that
of British India, questions of tariff and of currency that react upon
the economic prosperity of the whole of India are settled between
Whitehall and Government House at Calcutta without their opinion being
even invited. Sometimes even decisions are taken without their knowledge
on matters that directly affect their own exchequers, as in the matter
of the opium trade with China. Some of the native States are the largest
producers of the Indian poppy, and in order to satisfy the
susceptibilities, very meritorious in themselves, of our national
conscience, we lightheartedly impose upon them, without consultation or
prospect of compensation, the sacrifice, which costs us nothing, of one
of the most valuable products of their soil and chief sources of
revenue. Can they do otherwise than draw unfavourable comparisons
between the harsh measure meted out to them in this matter and the
generous treatment of the West Indies by the Mother Country when
L20,000,000 were voted out of the Imperial Exchequer towards
compensation for the material losses arising out of the abolition of
slavery?

How important it is to associate the Princes of India with the purposes
of our Indian policy has seldom been more clearly shown tha