One point which Englishmen are apt to forget, and which has been rather lost sight of In the recent political reforms, is that more than a fifth of the population of our Indian Empire--about one third of its total area--is under the direct administration not of the Government of India, but of the Ruling Chiefs. They represent great traditions and great interests, which duty and statesmanship equally forbid us to ignore. The creation of an Imperial Council, in which they would have sat with representatives of the Indian aristocracy of British India, was an important feature of the original scheme of reforms proposed by the Government of India. It was abandoned for reasons of which I am not concerned to dispute the validity. But the idea underlying it was unquestionably sound, and Lord Minto acted upon it when he drew the Ruling Chiefs into consultation as to the prevention of sedition. Some means will have to be found to embody it in a more regular and permanent shape. If we were to attempt to introduce what are called democratic methods into the government of British India without seeking the adhesion and support of the feudatory Princes, we should run a grave risk of estranging one of the most loyal and conservative forces in the Indian Empire. The administrative autonomy of the native States is sometimes put forward as an argument in favour of the self-government which Indian politicians demand. It Is an argument based on complete ignorance. With one or two exceptions, far more apparent than real, the Native States are governed by patriarchal methods, which may be thoroughly suited to the traditions and needs of their subjects, but are much further removed than the methods of government in British India from the professed aspirations of the Indian National Congress. Just as the Ruling Chiefs rightly complained of the effect upon their own people of the seditious literature imported into their States from British India before we were at last induced to check the output of the "extremist" Press, so they would be justified in resenting any grave political changes in British India which would react dangerously upon their own position and their relations with their own subjects. When we talk of governing India in accordance with Indian ideas, we cannot exclude the ideas of the very representative and influential class of Indians to which none are better qualified to give expression than the Ruling Chiefs. One further suggestion. The policy of annexation has long since been abandoned, and the question to-day is whether we might not go further and give ruling powers to a few great chiefs of approved loyalty and high character, who possess in British India estates more populous and important than those of many whom we have always recognized as Ruling Chiefs. The objections to so novel a departure are, I know, serious, and may be overwhelming--foremost among them being the reluctance hitherto shown by the people themselves whenever, for purposes of administrative convenience, any slight readjustment of boundaries has been proposed that involved the transfer to a native State of even a few villages until then under British Administration.