“Those among us who are immediately connected with the civil administration know how, in the interior of the country, you have kept the native chiefs and gentry true to their allegiance by strictness tempered with conciliation; how emphatically you have been the friend of the middle and lower classes among the natives, the husbandman, the artisan, and the labourer. They know how, with a large measure of success, you have endeavoured to moderate taxation; to introduce judicial reforms; to produce a real security of life and property; to administer the finances in a prudent and economical spirit; to further the cause of material improvements, advancing public works so far as the means, financial and executive, of the Government might permit; to found a popular system of secular education; to advocate the display of true Christianity before the people, without infringing those principles of religions toleration which guide the British Government in dealing with its native subjects. They know how you have always administered patronage truly and indifferently for the good of the State. To the civil officers you have always set the best example and given the soundest precepts, and there are many who are proud to think that they belong to your school.” In this address the maintenance of order along the frontier Trans-Indus is mentioned prominently, and indeed this thorny subject had engaged his attention almost incessantly. He had been obliged frequently to order military expeditions against the martial and intractable tribes inhabiting that wild border. No such difficult frontier having previously been incorporated in British India, his policy though unavoidable was in some degree novel, and the public mind became at times agitated, perhaps even mistrustful of the necessity for this frequent recourse to arms. In 1855, at Lord Dalhousie’s suggestion, he caused his Secretary to draw up a report of the expeditions which had been undertaken, and of the offences which had afforded not only justification but grounds of necessity. That report was an exposition of his frontier policy at the time.