prepared beforehand, by the history and traditions of his faith, to be more cosmopolitan, more receptive of western ideas, than the Hindu or the Buddhist. Already there are Muslim thinkers and writers who disavow the militant exclusiveness and bigotry which are too often attributed to their religion, and openly advocate a rationalized Theism, neither aggressive nor intolerant. It is to be regretted that more efforts have not been made to frame the course of education in our schools in India on broader lines, so as to meet the special requirements of Musulmans. In many large district schools, while there are seven or eight masters to teach English and Western Science, with a Pandit or two to teach Sanskrit, there is very seldom more than one Maulavi to teach Persian and Arabic-frequently there is not even one; and the course of studies is generally so arranged as to leave only the very scantiest margin of time for the Maulavi's lessons. Many a Musulman gentleman has complained to me that if he sends his sons to the district school he has to pay a Maulavi to teach them Arabic at home. The prizes offered for proficiency in Arabic and Persian are few and poor; and even in schools founded by wealthy Musulmans expressly for the benefit of the youth of their own religion-such as the Calcutta Madrassa, and the Mohsin endowment at Hooghly ---Hindu youths have been admitted in such numbers as almost to monopolize the advantages of the institutions to the exclusion of those for whose benefit they were founded. This state of things has, however, attracted the notice of Government, and steps have, it is believed, been taken to remedy the evils of the present system. Measures have also been introduced for securing to Musulmans a larger share of official appointments. It is a matter of the greatest political urgency that these measures should be persevered in and expanded. A large, generous, tolerant system of education and patronage would do more than anything else to elevate the Musulmans of Bengal and to confirm and strengthen their loyalty to the British Government.

"THE PROTECTED PRINCES OF INDIA":

A PLEA FOR CONSTITUTIONAL UNION.

BY SIR ROPER LETHBRIDGE, K.C.I.E.

THE appearance of another elaborate work on the socalled "Political System" of our Indian Empire, so soon after the publication of Mr. Tupper's Our Indian Protectorate noticed by me in these pages, last January, is an interesting and significant phenomenon. "The Protected Princes of India," now published by Messrs. Macmillan, is from the accomplished pen of Mr. Lee - Warner, the Bombay political who, I believe, divides with Mr. Tupper the claim to the reversion of Elijah's mantle when Mr. Cuningham leaves the Foreign Office. That two officers so highly placed in the Department, and so representative in every way of its best traditions, as Mr. Tupper and Mr. Lee-Warner, should almost simultaneously come forward to enlighten the British public on the very obscure and hitherto mysterious subject of the relations between the Paramount Power and the Native States in India, is, I think, a remarkable sign of the times. It indicates, I hope, that there has arisen a noise and a shaking among the dry bones of the Political Department; and that we may now hope soon to see the sinews laid upon them, and the flesh brought with the skin to cover them, and the breath come into them, so that they may stand up and live. Men like. Mr. Lee-Warner and Mr. Tupper are too clever, too thoroughly men of affairs, to be under the delusion that the old Abracadabra and Mumbo Jumbo business of the Indian Foreign Office can be long maintained, in times when not only all the great Chiefs, but also all their Ministers and hundreds of their subjects, are well-educated men of the world, many of them travelled cosmopolitans, familiar with. our English Parliamentary system, with our free institutions, and with the usages of European life.

Time was-and not so long ago, for the distinguished Foreign Secretaries of those days are still honoured personages among us in London-when the relations between the Paramount Power and the Native States were treated as the Eleusinian mysteries of Simla and Calcutta, to be spoken of by outsiders with bated breath, and to be religiously guarded by the initiate from profanation. When Sir Charles Aitchison prepared his valuable collection of Treaties, Engagements, and Sanads, he was very careful— lest the world should be dazzled by too sudden light—to print very little more than the ipsissima verba of the instruments, with the baldest statistical, topographical, and historical statements. Even now, Mr. Lee-Warner, after describing the obscurity that still envelopes the subject and mentioning a few of the discordant and conflicting theories that have been put forward as if to accentuate the prevailing ignorance, meekly and timidly enquires, “Is it presumptuous"-yes, presumptuous is his word at page ix! -"to hold that some further light is needed to enable public opinion to form its own conclusion?' And speaking with a sort of guilty consciousness of profaning sacred things, or revealing masonic secrets, he adds

"It may be freely admitted that there are dangers in inconvenient precision and in premature inferences. There is no question that there is a paramount power in the British Crown, but perhaps its extent is wisely left undefined. There is a subordination in the Native States, but perhaps it is better understood and not explained. After the labours of a century and a half, the British rulers of India have not entirely extricated themselves from the maze of complexities and anomalies which have retarded their progress in building up the Empire. The full stature of British dominion and ascendancy cannot yet be measured."

I suppose it is this altogether unnecessary fear of the dangers that are supposed to lurk "in inconvenient precision and in premature inferences," that has induced the Government of India to make a dead secret of the great exposition of Indian "political" law that is understood to have been prepared by Sir Mortimer Durand. This work is referred to, in confidential whispers, as "Durand's Selected Cases"; and it is stated, I know not with how

much truth, to formulate, or at least to foreshadow, a complete constitutional system for the relations between the Paramount Power and the Native States. There are few living men better able than Sir Mortimer to formulate such a system on lines that would at once satisfy the Princes, benefit their subjects, and strengthen the Empire. Why then this mysterious secrecy about his work? Is it that the Government of India have been doing good by stealth -showing more consideration for the Protected Princes than they are accustomed to-and are afraid that a disclosure will cause them to "blush to find it fame"? Or is it that the habitual harshness of their treatment is made too obvious in these "Selected Cases"?

This nebulous state of things was all very well-perhaps it was necessary-in the olden time, when neither Chiefs nor people knew much of anything beyond their own frontier, when the Government of India was not very certain of its own overwhelming power, and when its political officers went out into the Protected States on the understanding that their duty was to increase that power, and to encroach on the independence of the State, as much as they possibly could without coming to actual blows. The Resident's rights and responsibilities were best left undefined, if his great object was to increase his rights and diminish his responsibilities, as occasion might offer through the good nature, the weakness, or the necessities of the Prince. The more ignorant a Prince, the less likely was he to be able successfully to resist these encroachments; and on the omne ignotum principle, the less that was authentically known of the true rights of the Foreign Office, as against the State, the more elastic were those rights naturally found to be.

But since the Proclamation of the Empire in 1877, we have abandoned the policy of encroachment, and have consequently no more need of Abracadabra or Mumbo Jumbo. Mr. Lee-Warner calls our present policy, the "policy of Subordinate Union"; and ingeniously traces its

evolution, from the "policy of the Ring-Fence"-which is the name he gives to the policy of non-intervention in vogue up to 1813-through the "policy of subordinate isolation," as he calls the policy pursued from 1813 until the Mutiny. His historical chapters, illustrating the construction of the Treaty-map of India, are exceedingly full and interesting, and probably not more inaccurate than the exigencies of his theories render absolutely necessary. In this the fulness, not the accuracy, of his historical retrospect-lies the chief point of difference between Mr. Lee-Warner's work and Mr. Tupper's; for the latter treats the subject in its philosophical aspect, and largely by comparison with similar or analogous systems, rather than from the historical point of view. The two writers fairly supplement each other; and between them-though they pay homage to the love of mystery so dear to the Simla Foreign Office by solemnly declaring that they write with no official authority-they construct a fairly complete and intelligible Constitution for the "Protected," as distinguished from the directly administered, portion of Her Majesty's Indian Empire.

Mr. Lee-Warner speaks of the Native States as being "in Subordinate Union with" the Government of India; and declares that it is "impossible to maintain the theory that the tie between the British Government and its protected allies is feudatory," though this theory is favoured by Mr. Tupper. I do not find, however, that the divergence on this point is anything more than a verbal one. Both writers are agreed that the Princes are entitled to be called Sovereigns; and both, following Sir Henry Maine's theory of the divisibility of sovereignty, point out that the completeness of the sovereignty varies enormously in the various States-from the almost complete internal independence enjoyed by the Nizam, down to the case of many petty chiefs possessing hardly as much power as a subordinate magistrate in British territory. On the other hand, both writers show the absolute need for a