political officers on the spot—­often, it must be confessed, on rather petty and irritating lines.  The leading Princes were encouraged to come to Delhi during the winter season, and those who favoured a policy of closer combination amongst themselves were those who responded most freely to these official promptings.  Conversations soon assumed the shape of informal conferences, and, later on, of formal conferences convened and presided over by the Viceroy.  The hidden value of these conferences must have been far greater than would appear from the somewhat trivial record of the subjects under discussion, for it is out of these conferences that the new Chamber of Princes has been evolved as a permanent consultative body for the consideration of questions affecting the Native States generally, or of common concern to them and to British India and to the Empire generally.

The conception is in itself by no means novel and appeals to many upon whom the picturesqueness and conservative stability of the Native States exercise a strong attraction.  It can be traced back at least as far as Lord Lytton’s Viceroyalty over forty years ago, and the steadily growing recognition of the important part which the Native States play in the Indian Empire culminated during the war in the appointment of an Indian Prince to represent them specially at the Imperial War Conferences held in London during the war, and again, after the war 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