"I consider that the safest and strongest frontier India can possibly possess would be a belt of independent frontier States, throughout which the British name is honoured and trusted; within which British subjects are welcomed and respected, because they are subjects of a Government known to be unselfish as it is powerful, and resolute as it is humane; by which our advice is followed without suspicion, and _our word relied on without misgiving_, because the first has been justified by good results, and _the second never quibbled away by timorous sub-intents or tricky saving clauses_--a belt of States, in short, whose chiefs and populations should have every interest, and every desire, to co-operate with our own officers in preserving the peace of the frontier, developing the resources of their own territories, augmenting the wealth of their own treasuries, and vindicating in the eyes of the Eastern and Western world their title to an independence, of which we are ourselves the chief well-wishers and supporters." It is hardly credible that the same man who gave expression to these magnificent sentiments had just caused the Ameer to be informed that he did not regard the promises made to Shere Ali, by Lords Northbrook and Mayo, as binding upon the Government of India, because they were "verbal." "His Excellency the Viceroy," said Sir Lewis Pelly to the Ameer's Envoy, "instructs me to inform your Excellency plainly, that the British Government neither recognizes, nor has recognized, the obligation of these promises." And the official journal called upon India to rejoice, because one result of the conference had been the cancelling of these "verbal promises and engagements," which the Government had found "very embarrassing."