'I have objected to the abandonment of Pesháwar upon one ground alone — the bad effects which would result from it at the present crisis; and this for the moment is the paramount objection. But I also incline to the mountain boundary in preference to the river. The expense is inordinately large, and will continue so as long as a large European force is retained on the other side of the Indus. Yet, as a military frontier, I have never seen the case satisfactorily made out in favour of the river.'
Amid such anxieties throughout this eventful year, Lord Canning continued to perform his arduous task with unruffled calmness and unshaken nerve. One of his letters to Lord Granville towards the end of 1857 breathes a serene and magnanimous spirit, and shows how thoroughly he had thought out the grounds which rendered a policy of conciliation essential.
'Look at a map. With all the reinforcements you have sent (all the Bengal ones are arrived, except 800 men) Bengal is without a single European soldier more than we had at the beginning of the Mutiny, Calcutta alone excepted, which is stronger. Twenty-three thousand men have moved through Bengal, and in Bengal we are still dependent (mainly) upon the good- will — I can't say affection, and interest — well understood by themselves — of the natives.
'Suppose (not an impossibility, although I hope not a likelihood) — suppose that hostilities train on, and that we don't make our way with Oudh and other disturbed places, that our strength becomes again
