It is far less easy to appraise the value of the attempt which has been made at the same time to bring that large part of India which lies outside the sphere of direct British administration into closer touch with it by the creation of a Chamber of Princes, which will at least sit under the same roof with the Council of State and the Legislative Assembly in the great hall of Parliament to be erected in New Delhi.  The moment when the Government of India is departing from its autocratic traditions and transferring a large part of its powers throughout British India into the hands of representative assemblies which are to pave the way towards the democratic goal of responsible government, seems scarcely well chosen for the creation of a Chamber which must give greater cohesion, and potentially greater power to resist the spirit of the age, to a body of ruling Princes and Chiefs who all stand in varying degrees for archaic forms of despotic government and whose peoples have for the most part stood hitherto entirely outside the political life of British India.

The Native States, as they are commonly called, scattered over nearly the whole length and breadth of the Indian Empire, cover altogether more than a third of its total area and include nearly a quarter of its total population.  Some of them can compare in size and wealth with the smaller States of Europe.  Some are but insignificant specks on the map.  Great and small, there are several hundreds of them.  Their relations with the Paramount Power, which have been not inaptly described as those of subordinate alliance, are governed by treaties and engagements of which the terms are not altogether uniform.  The essence is in all cases the maintenance of their administrative autonomy under their own dynastic rulers whose hereditary rights and privileges are permanently guaranteed to them, subject to their loyalty to the British Crown and to reasonably good government.  The Princes and Chiefs who rule over them—­some well, a few rather badly, most of them perhaps indifferently; some Hindus, some Mahomedans; some still very conservative and almost mediaeval, some on genuinely progressive lines; some with a mere veneer of European modernity—­are all equally jealous of their rights and their dignity.  The Native States cannot, however, live wholly in water-tight compartments.  They must be more or less directly affected by what goes on in British India just across their own often very artificial boundaries.  Their material interests are too closely bound up with those of their British-Indian neighbours.  In many matters, e.g. railways, posts, telegraphs, irrigation, etc., they are in a great measure dependent upon, and must fall into line with, British India.  Their peoples—­even those who do not go to British India for their education or for larger opportunities of livelihood—­are being slowly influenced by the currents of thought which flow in from British India.