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one, but it cannot be that British statesmanship will be 

 unable to find a solution, more especially as steps have 

 been already taken for rendering the armies maintained by 

 Native States effective for purposes of Imperial defence. 

 Whether it might not be possible to introduce some plan by 

 which the bigger Zemindars, whose estates are as large as 

 small kingdoms, might be entrusted with the duty of training 

 a certain number of militia-men to be kept as a kind of 

 reserve for purposes of Police and internal defence in times 

 of danger, under strict supervision and adequate guarantees 

 for good behaviour, it is not competent for lay men to decide ; 

 they can only note the necessity for something being done in 

 this direction. Meanwhile, the entire closure of the military 

 career to the junior members of Hindu and Muhammadan 

 families of high rank and military reputation, and the neces- 

 sity imposed on all of them to obtain a living entirely out of 

 the landed estates of the heads of their families which do 

 not grow with the growth in their numbers, or to enter a 

 civil profession for which they may have no special apti- 

 tudes, is a serious drawback from the point of view of that 

 many-sided development which is an essential condition of 

 the economic progress of the country. 



Another class, which has suffered under the present regime, 

 consists of the favourites and minions of Native chiefs who 

 had fattened on the substance of the poor and are now no 

 longer allowed to do so. It is the existence of this class, to 

 some extent, that gives the capital cities of Native States an 

 appearance of greater wealth and prosperity than is the case 

 in the cities of British territory, where wealth is more dif- 

 fused and less concentrated in particular localities. The town 

 of Tanjore is an instance. Though the Rajah of Tanjore was 

 relieved of the administration of that province in the begin- 

 ning of the century, he was paid annually for over half a 

 century one-fifth of its revenues for the maintenance of his 

 court besides a fixed allowance of three and a half lakhs, and 

 all this money was spent within that single town. Thousands 

 of families lived on his bounty ; palatial buildings sprang up 

 in various parts of the town, and music and painting and 

 other arts, which minister to the pleasures of a luxurious 

 court, flourished. When the Raj became extinct, misfortune 

 overtook the thousands of families of unproductive consumers 

 who had not been bred in any useful occupation, and the 

 town has not yet recovered from the blow, while the other 

 towns in the district have greatly increased in size and 

 wealth. The ruined buildings in the Tanjore town no doubt 



