with regard to the circumstances of the Presidency, to effect the necessary concentration of troops for this purpose." It was further pointed out that, "If through exposure during the hot weather of 1858, the strength of the British forces in India be seriously reduced--viz. by one-third, and less than that number could not be reckoned on were the campaign to be prolonged throughout the year--it will not be in the power of the Government at home to replace them." In his reply to Sir Colin's memorandum Lord Canning was willing to limit his demand to the capture and holding of Lucknow, without attempting more for the present. "Paradoxical as it may appear," wrote his lordship, "I think it of more importance to establish our power in the centre and capital of Oude, which has scarcely been two years in our hands, than to recover our older possessions. Every eye is now upon Lucknow, as it lately was upon Delhi. I grant that, as with Delhi so with Lucknow, we may find ourselves disappointed of a very wide-spread and immediate effect from its capture. Still I hold that the active mischief which will result from leaving it untaken will be incalculable and most dangerous--just as a retirement from Delhi would have been, and scarcely less in degree." Sir Colin replied temperately but firmly, maintaining his standpoint so far as true military principles were concerned. "After much thought," he wrote, "it appears to me advisable to follow up the movement now made by this force by an advance into and occupation of Rohilcund, to root out the leaders of the large gatherings of insurgents which we know to exist there, and to establish authority as is now being effectually done in the Doab. It seems to me that if we halt in this course to divert the only force at our command to another object, we run no slight risk of seeing the results of our late labours wasted, and of an autumn, perhaps a summer, campaign on the present ground to rescue the garrisons left in Futtehghur and Mynpooree. I come therefore to the conclusion that Oude and Lucknow ought to wait till the autumn of 1858." The Governor-General naturally had the last word, and his decision was for the earlier operations against Lucknow. "I am obliged," he wrote, "to say that I hold those operations should be directed against Lucknow at no long interval. I believe it to be impossible to foresee the consequences of leaving that city unsubdued." The tone of the correspondence, though expressing divergent convictions, may be held up as a pattern of the temper in which the interchange of opinions between the civil and military chiefs of a great Government should be carried on.