n during
these last troublous years when the forces of disaffection have revealed
themselves as a serious public danger. The principle of authority
cannot be attacked in British India without suffering diminution in the
Native States. They are not shut up in watertight compartments and
sedition cannot be preached on one side of a border, which in most cases
is merely an administrative boundary line, without finding an echo on
the other side. The prestige of an Indian Prince in his own land is
great. It is rooted in most cases in ancient traditions to which no
alien rulers can appeal. Nevertheless some of the most experienced and
enlightened of the ruling chiefs showed a much earlier and livelier
appreciation of the subversive tendencies of Indian unrest than those
responsible for the governance of British India. Some of them, like the
Maharajahs of Kolhapur and of Patiala, have been brought face to face
with the same violent, and even with the same criminal, methods of
agitation as the Government of India has had to deal with in provinces
under British administration. The Maharajah of Jaipur and Maharajah
Scindia felt themselves constrained just about a year ago to enact
vigorous measures on their own account against sedition and against the
importation into their States of seditious literature which was still
allowed to circulate with impunity in British India, whilst the State of
Bikanir was the first to introduce an Explosive Substances Act
immediately after the epidemic of bomb-throwing had broken out in
Bengal. Other States have also taken strong preventive measures, but
many have fortunately been spared so far any serious trouble within
their own borders, and their rulers have been able to study the problem
merely as interested observers and from the point of view of the general
welfare of the country.

On August 65 1909, the Viceroy took the unusual step of communicating
direct with all the principal ruling Princes and Chiefs of India on the
subject of the Active unrest prevalent in many parts of the country, and
invited an exchange of opinions "with a view to mutual co-operation
against a common danger." Some doubts were then expressed as to the
wisdom of such a course, on the ground that it might create in the
protected States an impression of exaggerated alarm. 'But the tone and
substance of the replies which his Excellency's communication elicited
showed that there was no reason for any such apprehensions. Th