[Footnote 301:  Sir Robert Sandeman, by T.H.  Thornton, chaps, ix.-x.; Parl.  Papers relating to the Treaty . . . of 8th Dec. 1876; The Forward Policy and its Results, by R.I.  Bruce; Lord Lytton’s Indian Administration, by Lady Betty Balfour, chap. iii.

The Indian rupee is worth sixteen pence.]

The Treaty of Jacobabad is one of the most satisfactory diplomatic triumphs of the present age.  It came, not as the sequel to a sanguinary war, but as a sign of the confidence inspired in turbulent and sometimes treacherous chiefs by the sterling qualities of those able frontier statesmen, the Napiers, the Lawrences, General Jacob, and Major Sandeman.  It spread the pax Britannica over a land as large as Great Britain, and quietly brought a warlike people within the sphere of influence of India.  It may be compared with Bonaparte’s Act of Mediation in Switzerland (1803), as marking the triumph of a strong organising intelligence over factious groups, to which it imparted peace and order under the shelter of a generally beneficent suzerainty.  Before long a strong garrison was posted at Quetta, and we gained the right to enlist Baluchee troops of excellent fighting powers.  The Quetta position is a mountain bastion which strengthens the outer defences of India, just as the Alps and Juras, when under Napoleon’s control, menaced any invaders of France.

This great advantage was weighted by one considerable drawback.  The victory of British influence in Baluchistan aroused the utmost resentment of Shere Ali, who now saw his southern frontier outflanked by Britain.  Efforts were made in January-February 1877 to come to an understanding; but, as Lord Lytton insisted on the admission of British Residents to Afghanistan, a long succession of interviews at Peshawur, between the Ameer’s chief adviser and Sir Lewis Pelly, led to no other result than an increase of suspicion on both sides.  The Viceroy thereupon warned the Ameer that all supplies and subsidies would be stopped until he became amenable to advice and ceased to maltreat subjects known to be favourable to the British alliance.  As a retort the Ameer sought to call the border tribes to a Jehad, or holy war, against the British, but with little success.  He had no hold over the tribes between Chitral and the Khyber Pass; and the incident served only to strengthen the Viceroy’s aim of subjecting them to Britain.  In the case of the Jowakis we succeeded, though only after a campaign which proved to be costly in men and money.

In fact, Lord Lytton was now convinced of the need of a radical change of frontier policy.  He summed up his contentions in the following phrases in his despatches of the early summer of 1877:—­“Shere Ali has irrevocably slipped out of our hands; . . .  I conceive that it is rather the disintegration and weakening, than the consolidation and establishment, of the Afghan power at which we must now begin to aim.”