The Shan population may be taken at about one million two hundred thousand persons. It would be a high estimate of the incidence of the tribute received by the Government if it were reckoned at sixpence per head. As a source of revenue, therefore, the Shan States are not of much account. The country, however, has improved--slowly, it is true, but without interruption. The railway from Mandalay to Lashio has done much for the Northern States. That now under construction from the Toungoo-Mandalay line to the headquarters of the Southern States will have greater and more rapid effect on that fertile country. I fully anticipate rapid progress in the near future. It is something to be able to say that since my visit to Fort Stedman in March, 1890, the peace of the Shan States has not been broken, except by a few small local risings of the wilder tribes (not Shans) in the mountains on the north and on the east. To the student of the science of politics the Shan States will prove, perhaps, the most interesting field of observation in the province under the Lieutenant-Governor of Burma. There is nothing quite of the same character in India. When we occupied the country, the condition of the Shan chiefs had more resemblance to that of the petty chiefs and Rajas in the central provinces of India before Sir Richard Temple dealt with them, than to any other Indian example. But Temple gave to the larger States the character of feudatory rulers of foreign territory outside of British India, whereas, as I have mentioned below, in the chapter on the Shan Expedition of 1887-8, the Shan States one and all were made part of British India by the proclamation annexing Burma. There is nothing in India similar to this case; where a great territory of sixty thousand square miles, being by law an integral part of British India, is administered not through the regular officials and courts, but directly by many quasi-independent chiefs, each supreme in his own territory, but guided and controlled by British officers, whose advice they are bound by their engagements to follow. It results from these conflicting conditions that everything has to be done by or under some legal enactment. If the ordinary laws of British India (for example, the codes of criminal law and procedure) do not apply, it is because under the Shan States Act or some other enactment the local Government has suspended their operation and has substituted other rules to which the force of law has been given. In the Feudatory States of India, on the other hand, any interference which becomes necessary is exercised not by virtue of an enactment of the legislature, but by the use of the sovereign executive power. That this difference is vital there can be little doubt. At present it is the policy, and no doubt the wise policy, of the Government of India to avoid interfering with the native States, as much as may be, even by way of advice.