1 ( xxiii j}
2 No. 755.
3 Frou
4 R. TEMPLE, Esquire,
5 Secretary to the Chief Commissioner for the Punjab,
6 To eae
7 G. F. EDMONSTONE, Eseume,
8 Secretary to the Government of India,
9 with the Governor General.
10 Dated Lahore, the 8th October 1855.
11 Pouca, DEPARTMENT.
12 Sir,
13 I am directed by the Chief Commissioner to acknowledge
14 the receipt of your letter No. 493, of the 29th of
15 August last, with its enclosures, being copy of cor-
16 respondence connected with a complaint by Major
17 Jacob, im pugning the correctness of certain remarks in the First Punjab Report,
18 in which the duties performed by the Sind Horse on that frontier, are com-
19 pared with those of the Punjab Force and the Guides on the Western border
20 of the Punjab.
21 2. In reply I am to make the following observations. The remarks
22 quoted by Major Jacob were written from notes prepared by Sir Henry
23 Lawrence, the President of the late Board of Administration. The Chief
24 Commissioner is not aware of the sources from which this information was
25 obtained. But heis quite sure that neither that Officer nor auy of the other
26 Members of the Board of Administration had the slightest intention of mis-
27 representing the state of the case, or the smallest desire to detract from the
28 well-merited reputation of Major Jacob. The faet is that the Board, at the
29 time the Report was written, were desirous of defending their Administration
30 from cerfain attacks which had not long before been made against it, and thus
31 were led to contrast the arratgements in Sind with those in the Punjab, for
32 the defence of their respective frontiers.
33 3. The Chief Commissioner has no personal knowledge himself of the
34 exact circumstances of the Sind border. He has always understood, how-
35 ever, that there existed a wide extent of desert between the cultivated and
36 inhabited portions of Sind, which Major Jacob’s force guarded and the hills
37 from which the robber tribes issued to plunder. —
38 4, If this be the case, the Chief Commissjoner believes that it will be
39 generally admitted that this circumstance must prove a great advantage in
40 Section I., Punjab Re-
41 port, page 40, para, 133.