'No one can read ----'s letter without coming to {114} the conclusion that there still exists in the minds of the local authorities an ardent though partly concealed desire for that avenging policy which the Government of India is so anxious to avoid.' Lord Mayo proposed 'to substitute, as far as possible, for surprise, aggression, and reprisal, a policy of vigilant, constant, and never-ceasing defence of those parts of our frontier which are by their position liable to be attacked by foreign tribes.' It had been objected that such a system of watchful defence 'must act as a constant menace to the tribes.' To this Lord Mayo replies: 'I cannot see the force of this objection. The presence of a policeman is indeed a standing menace to the thief; and a sight of the gallows may be a salutary reminder to the murderer. It is, I fear, too much the habit to adopt what is doubtless the view taken by the mountaineers themselves of these affairs. They look upon them as acts of war and justifiable aggression. We have to teach them that assassination, the attack of a defenceless village by night, and killing people in their beds, are not acts of war, but are esteemed by civilised nations to be acts of murder. The sooner we teach these people this lesson the better. We have already taught it to millions who are less intelligent than the Pathans of the Hazara frontier.' Lord Mayo's policy was to remove such crimes from the operations of honourable warfare into the jurisdiction of a strong armed police. To the objection that a raid, unless avenged by a military {115} expedition, would impair 'our prestige on the frontier,' he answers: 'I object to fight for prestige. And even those who may still think that killing people for the sake of prestige is morally right, will hardly assert that the character and authority of the British arms in India are affected one way or the other by skirmishes with wild frontier tribes. But there are other considerations connected with the subject, of wider and greater import than the punishment of a few mountain savages, and the vindication of a local officer's prestige. Every shot fired in anger within the limits of our Indian Empire reverberates throughout Asia; gives to nations who are no friends to Christian or European rule the notion that amongst our own subjects there are still men in arms against us; and corroborates the assertion that the people within our frontier are not yet wholly subjected to our sway, and that the British power is still disputed in Hindustan.'