As a lesson in revenue and finance, each chief is now required to frame a simple form of budget for his state, subject to the approval of the Superintendent, fixing the amount to be devoted to the private expenditure of the ruling family, and making reasonable provision for the administration of civil and criminal justice, police, and public works. It puts one in mind of a class of boys coming up with their lessons written out for the teacher to see; but it is evidently needed work, and it will not do to despise the day of small things. It will of course be a new idea to them that anybody else but the sawbwa himself has anything to do with the expenditure of the revenue of the state, which they have always been accustomed to consider as his private property. But Orientals take kindly to this tutelage, and will scarcely think of resenting it, though they might be tempted to neglect it if they could. And it must not be supposed that this case of the Shan States is any rarity, for this kind of inspection, instruction and guidance is only what we are called upon to do in a greater or less degree in all the protected states which are feudatory to our Indian Empire, and in other parts of the world. The Chief Commissioner of Burma, to whom all the chiefs are amenable, commenting on the above rules, endorses the opinion expressed by one of the Superintendents, that it will probably be found impossible to effect any real reforms until a trained Dewan (Prime Minister) is appointed for each state to teach the rulers how to rule. As England is very resolute in all she takes in hand in this way, perhaps in course of time some faint sense of the responsibility of ruling may find its way into the minds of these benighted Shan sawbwas. But if it be not so, and if in the end England should find herself compelled, in the interests of humanity, to take a still larger share of the responsibility of ruling in that country, of which however there is at present no sign or mention, the foregoing information clearly shows that it will not be for want of an honest effort to get them to do it themselves. All this explains incidentally how it is that Empire with its responsibilities grows on our hands. In human affairs, when a man does his work well, you promote him by giving him more work to do. When the sudden emergency arises men naturally saddle the willing horse. It is so throughout the divine economy also. “Whatsoever _thy hand findeth to do_, do it with thy might.” “For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not, even that which he hath shall be taken away.”