Since that period the suspicions of the nation have been continually directed against Russia by a small but able party, who, from their chiefly belonging to the Presidency of Bombay, have been termed the Bombay school. The late General John Jacob was the originator of the anti-Russian policy inculcated by them. He was a man of great ability and original views, and, if he had moved in a wider sphere, he might have left a name equal to that of the most illustrious of his countrymen in India. But he passed the greater part of his life on the barren wastes of Sind, and rarely came in contact with superior minds. In 1856 General Jacob addressed a singularly able paper to Lord Canning, then Governor-General, and which Sir Lewis Pelly afterwards published to the world.[8] This was just at the close of the Crimean War, when England was about to undertake an expedition against Persia to repel her aggression on Herat. It was Jacob's firm conviction that, unless India interposed, Russia, having Persia completely under her control, could, whenever she pleased, take possession not only of Herat, but of Candahar, and thus find an entrance to the plains of India, on which our dominion was to disappear. To thwart this contingency, and render the approach of a European army towards our frontier impossible, he would, as an ultimate measure, garrison Herat with twenty thousand troops, but in the first instance would occupy Quetta. These proposals were carefully considered by Lord Canning's Government, but were rejected. The same arguments were brought forward eleven years later by Sir Bartle Frere, whilst Governor of Bombay, and were laid before the Government of India. That Government was then remarkably strong, consisting of Lord Lawrence, Sir William Mansfield (Lord Sandhurst), Sir Henry Maine, Mr. Massey, and Major-General Sir Henry Durand; but the proposals to improve our frontier by extending our dominions westward, and by the annexation of independent foreign territory, were unanimously disapproved of.