Some of the native States are the largest producers of the Indian poppy, and in order to satisfy the susceptibilities, very meritorious in themselves, of our national conscience, we lightheartedly impose upon them, without consultation or prospect of compensation, the sacrifice, which costs us nothing, of one of the most valuable products of their soil and chief sources of revenue.

Can they do otherwise than draw unfavourable comparisons between the harsh measure meted out to them in this matter and the generous treatment of the West Indies by the Mother Country when L20,000,000 were voted out of the Imperial Exchequer towards compensation for the material losses arising out of the abolition of slavery?
How important it is to associate the Princes of India with the purposes of our Indian policy has seldom been more clearly shown than during these last troublous years when the forces of disaffection have revealed themselves as a serious public danger.

The principle of authority cannot be attacked in British India without suffering diminution in the Native States.

They are not shut up in watertight compartments and sedition cannot be preached on one side of a border, which in most cases is merely an administrative boundary line, without finding an echo on the other side.

The prestige of an Indian Prince in his own land is great.