DEALINGS WITH THE FEUDATORY STATES
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III.Non-interference, and the lightest possible form of control, with Chiefs who governed well. Lord Mayo tried to make the Indian Feudatories feel that it rested with themselves to decide the degree of practical independence which they should enjoy, and that that degree would be strictly regulated by the degree of good government which they gave to their subjects.
IV.Above all, and as an indispensable complement to his whole policy, the education of the younger Native Chiefs under British officers, and in a high sense of their responsibilities alike to their subjects and to the Suzerain Power. I shall endeavour very briefly to show how Lord Mayo gave effect to these principles.
I take first a case in which Lord Mayo recognised the necessity for reform, but abstained from direct intervention. In the great Province of Kathiawar, with its 187 chiefdoms, Lord Mayo had to deal with the relics of five centuries of Native misrule. He found many conflicting claims to the soil and a number of ancient communities, each with a vested right to depredation. The 'ex-ruling classes,' representatives of old houses forcibly dispossessed, or of younger brothers of Chiefs unable to live on their slender share of the inheritance; 'predatory tribes,' and 'dangerous communities,' whose hereditary means of livelihood was plunder; 'aboriginal races,' penned into the hills by successive waves of invaders, — all these elements of
