downward progress, and practically cut them off, throughout large parts of India, from any fair share in the public employments which were once their almost exclusive birthright. Lord Mayo had been deeply impressed both in Russia and in his native Ireland by the political dangers arising out of such an excluded class. The measures which he initiated formed an important step towards reconciling the Muhammadans to our system, and of adapting that system to their needs. For this task of conciliation, conciliation alike of the princes and peoples of India, Lord Mayo had special gifts. For, to use the words of the Earl of Derby, 'it was with him not a matter of calculation, but the result of nature.'
In regard to the foreign policy of India, Lord Mayo arrived at a juncture when the pre-existing methods had come to their natural termination. Lord Dalhousie's annexation of the Punjab in 1849, by throwing down the Sikh breakwater between British India and Afghanistan, brought closer the boundaries of Russian and English activity in the East. Our Asiatic relations with Russia passed definitely within the control of European diplomacy, and during the next twenty years the Indian Foreign Office pursued a policy of laissez faire towards its transfrontier neighbours on the north-west. This policy, deliberately adopted and justified at its inception by the facts, had manifestly ceased to be any longer possible, shortly before Lord Mayo's arrival. The dangers of isolation were
