was over, at the
Paris Peace Conference.

But the creation of a Chamber of Princes at this particular juncture
raises very difficult issues. In the first place, though it has been
engineered with great skill and energy by a small group of very
distinguished Princes, mostly Rajput, it is viewed with deep suspicion
by other chiefs who, not being Rajputs, scent in it a scheme for
promoting Rajput ascendancy, and it has received no support at all from
other and more powerful Princes such as the Nizam of Hyderabad, the
Gaikwar of Baroda, the Maharajah of Mysore. Some have always held aloof
from the Delhi Conferences and have intimated plainly that they have no
desire to see any alteration introduced into their treaty relationships
with the Paramount Power. Without their participation no Chamber of
Princes can pull its full weight, and even if most of them considered
themselves bound out of loyalty to the Sovereign to attend an inaugural
ceremony performed by the Duke of Connaught in the name of the
King-Emperor himself, it would be premature to infer that their
opposition has been permanently overcome. The Supreme Government has of
course reiterated the pledges already embodied in the treaties that
there shall be no interference with the ancient rights and privileges of
the Native States and their rulers, but its eminent right to interfere
in cases of extreme urgency has not and cannot be surrendered. It has
been exercised very rarely, and only when administration and government
have fallen flagrantly short of certain standards, established by usage
and generally understood and accepted, which it is perhaps easier to
describe negatively than positively. Misrule cannot be tolerated when it
amounts to a public scandal or takes the form of criminal acts. The
whole question has always bristled with difficulties, and still does.
The tendency, since Lord Curzon's time, has been to relax the control of
the Supreme Government even in matters of slighter moment on which it
had been accustomed to tender advice not always distinguishable from
commands. That some of the Native States, and not the least powerful,
are badly governed is of common notoriety. But if the Supreme Government
has been sometimes inclined to turn a blind eye in such cases, and even
to forget that it has moral obligations towards the subjects as well as
towards the rulers of the Native States, it has been free hitherto to
obey considerations of political expediency