on the part of ruling Chiefs, borne with patience, almost with apathy, by their people, whose innate feeling of loyalty silenced complaint, and compelled them to endure vicissitudes which in British India would have speedily led to an outburst of popular demonstration. Fortunately, such cases are becoming rare. Chiefs are learning that good administration is one of the conditions on which they hold their States, and that the British Government will not tolerate misrule.
The future of Native States lies entirely in the hands of their rulers. A retrospect of close upon a century gives remarkable evidence of their capacity for improvement, and of a surrender of many of those old-fashioned ideas which so long impeded progress and development. It must be borne in mind that a new generation of Chiefs has come into existence—men who have received careful education and training, and who have not been slow to profit thereby. The old traditions exist, and in some places are cherished; but the general tendency of the native rulers of to-day is to emancipate themselves from the trammels of custom, and, without any severance of the bonds of caste or religion, to come forth as the leaders of thought and opinion in their States, and as the real rulers of their subjects. Great changes have occurred, and a flood of light has been brought into the darkest places by the expansion of education and the civilizing effects of improved communications, not only throughout India, but with the world. There is hardly a State in India that has not realized the benefits of the extension of railways, telegraphs, and post-offices. Many Chiefs—notably the Nizam, Scindia, Mysore, Baroda, Bhopal, and Holkar—are interested in lines of railway in their own territories, and participate in the profits accruing therefrom. The Imperial telegraph and postal systems traverse every State, irrigation and public works have been generally adopted, and of recent years the Chiefs of India, with but one or two exceptions, have relinquished their right of coinage and nave adopted the currency of British India. These and many other
