The Government of India keeps its Political Agents scattered over the native states in small jungle stations.  It furnishes them with maharajas, nawabs, rajas, and chuprassies, according to their rank, and it usually throws in a house, a gaol, a doctor, a volume of Aitchison’s Treaties, an escort of native Cavalry, a Star of India, an assistant, the powers of a first-class magistrate, a flag-staff, six camels, three tents, and a salute of eleven or thirteen guns.  In very many cases the Government of India nominates a Political Agent to the rank of Son-to-a-Lieut.-Governor, Son-in-Law-to-a-Lieut.-Governor, Son-to-a-member-of-Council, or Son-to-an-agent-to-the-Governor-General.  Those who are thus elevated to the Anglo-Indian peerage need have no thought for the morrow what they shall do, what they shall say, or wherewithal they shall be supplied with a knowledge of Oriental language and occidental law.  Nature clothes them with increasing quantities of gold lace and starry ornaments, and that charming, if unblushing, female—­Lord Lytton begs me to write “maid”—­Miss Anglo-Indian Promotion, goes skipping about among them like a joyful kangaroo.

The Politicals are a Greek chorus in our popular burlesque, “Empire.”  The Foreign Secretary is the prompter.  The company is composed of nawabs and rajas (with the Duke of Buckingham as a “super").  Lord Meredith is the scene-shifter; Sir John, the manager.  The Secretary of State, with his council, is in the stage-box; the House of Commons in the stalls; the London Press in the gallery; the East Indian Association, Exeter Hall, Professor Fawcett, Mr. Hyndman, and the criminal classes generally, in the pit; while those naughty little Scotch boys, the shock-headed Duke and Monty Duff, who once tried to turn down the lights, pervade the house with a policeman on their horizon.  As we enter the theatre a dozen chiefs are dancing in the ballet to express their joy at the termination of the Afghan War.  The political choreutae are clapping their hands, encouraging them by name and pointing them out to the gallery.

The government of a native state by clerks and chuprassies, with a beautiful faineant Political Agent for Sundays and Hindu festivals, is, I am told, a thing of the past.  Colonel Henderson, the imperial “Peeler,” tells me so, and he ought to know, for he is a kind of demi-official superintendent of Thugs and Agents.  Nowadays, my informant assures me, the Political Agents undergo a regular training in a Madras Cavalry Regiment or in the Central India Horse, or on the Viceroy’s Staff, and if they have to take charge of a Mahratta State they are obliged to pass an examination in classical Persian poetry.  This is as it ought to be.  The intricacies of Oriental intrigue and the manifold complication of tenure and revenue that entangle administrative procedure in the protected principalities, will unravel themselves in presence of men who have enjoyed such advantages.