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INDIA

tend to make them better rulers or improve their chances
of successful administration. The best that can be said
of them is that they are usually good sportsmen.
Of the loyalty of those chiefs who are more intimately
associated with the ruling powers in India there can be
no question. There are many of them who would not
only stand up against England’s foes in the East (European
 or native), and take their share in the perils of a
campaign with the hereditary eagerness of soldiers born
of a race of soldiers, but who would fall with the English
Government, if need be, and make no sign. But even
in this matter of political and social sympathy with the
English in India the geographical position of the native
states plays no unimportant part. Those Sikh states
which lie in and below the Himalayas, which exist, as it
were, under the shadow of the Simla mountains, are loyal
to the last unit. Constant personal association with Government
 officials leads to a bond of union in official action. If
discontent and criticism of our methods of government,
and a tendency to stir up awkward questions at inappropriate
 seasons are to be found in India, it is in those
states which lie farther away from the direct influence of
the Viceregal Court, and chiefly, no doubt, amongst those
princes and chiefs who are under the influence of the fanatical
 spirit of Islam.

Such a very general description of the geographical distribution of
administrative units throughout the great continent of India as the above
chapter contains may be found in almost any elementary treatise on
India. Sir John Strachey, Sir W. Hunter, Sir Alfred Lyall, and many
others have written clearly, forcibly, and conclusively on the subject of
the magnificent administrative machinery of the great provinces of
British India. Sir Lepel Griffin and Sir William Lee-Warner have
equally well illustrated the nature of its relation to the self-governing
institutions which are fostered in the native states. The reader who
would wish to know more of the most successful system of administration
 applied to a dependency that the world has ever seen would do well
to consult these high authorities.