e Ruling
Chiefs, on the contrary, appreciated and reciprocated the confidence
reposed in them, and their replies, indeed, constitute an exceptionally
interesting and instructive set of documents; for the very diversity of
origin and traditions and influence gives peculiar weight to the
position assumed by the rulers of the Native States towards the forces
of active unrest in India. Had those forces merely been engaged in a
legitimate struggle for the enlargement of Indian rights and liberties,
it is scarcely conceivable that the Ruling Princes and Chiefs should
have passed judgment against them with such overwhelming unanimity.

It may be argued that in replying to a Viceregal _Kharita_, the Ruling
Chiefs could hardly do less than recognize the existence of the "common
danger" to which Lord Minto had drawn their attention. But the careful
analysis of the influences behind the agitation and the practical
suggestions for dealing with it which the majority of the replies
contain, prove that their opinions are certainly not framed "to order."
They represent the convictions and experience of a group of responsible
Indians better situated in some respects to obtain accurate information
about the doings and feelings of their fellow-countrymen than any
Anglo-Indian administrators can be. The language of the Nizam is
singularly apt and direct, "Once the forces of lawlessness and disorder
are let loose there is no knowing where they will stop. It is true that,
compared with the enormous population of India, the disaffected people
are a very insignificant minority, but, given time and opportunity,
there exists the danger of this small minority spreading its tentacles
all over the country and inoculating with its poisonous doctrines the
classes and masses hitherto untouched by this seditious movement." The
Maharana of Udaipur, speaking with the authority of his unique position
amongst Hindus as the premier Prince of Rajputana, not only condemns an
agitation "which is detrimental to all good government and social
administration," but declares it to be "a great disgrace to their name
as also to their religious beliefs that, in spite of the great
prosperity India has enjoyed under the British _regime_, people are
acting in such an ungrateful way." No less emphatic is the Mahratta
ruler of Gwalior:--"The question is undoubtedly a grave one, affecting
as it does the future well-being of India," and "it particularly behoves
those who pre