of successive statesmen have ensured to the Princes of India the safe and peaceable enjoyment of their possessions and rendered a direct encroachment upon their powers and privileges next to impossible. A tendency was shown sometime ago to treat the Proclamation as a dead letter — as a make-shift which was intended to serve a temporary political purpose, but which, having served that purpose, should not carry any binding force on succeeding statesmen and administrators. Happily for the good name of the British government and the British nation, such a tendency received no countenance, and it may be hoped and expected that the royal words of the Empress of India will continue to impose obligations upon the rulers of the country whose force neither time nor distance will affect or obliterate. The Indian Princes are as steadfast and firm in their friendship and fidelity as ever ; and the voluntary offers of help which reached the Government of India a few years back when there was an in-
