'The views and opinions of Brigadier General John Jacob, CB. Aide-decamp to the Queen; Aide-de-camp to the Governor General of India, &c. &c. &c.; late commanding in chief the British forces in Persia; at present commanding the Sind Irregular Horse, and Political Superintendent of the North-West frontier of Sind.' [‎27] (58/481)

27
payment; in others nothing whatever is paid to them,
though they may be kept at the work for months together.
I would respectfully observe that the question of the
advantage or disadvantage of pressed labour appears to me
to depend on those laws of political economy which are as
well established as the truths of geometry. No disputed
doctrines are involved in this matter. The principles on
which I rested my arguments are, it seems to me, as self-
evident as the axioms of the mathematician.
The differences of opinion shown in the summary now
forwarded appear to me to have been caused solely by
want of study and of acquaintance with the general laws
affecting the matters in question. To say, with regard to
such matters, that what may be right with respect to one
part of a country might be wrong with regard to another,
appears to be like asserting that though a triangle might
have three sides at Bath, yet at Bristol it must have four.
The natural laws and principles on which the truth of
the matter depends may be shown very clearly in a few
words.
A certain amount of labour has to be performed by the
inhabitants of a country in order to make that country
productive. In the case of Sind this labour is canal-clear
ing, and such like irrigational works.
The amount of work to be done is the same in whatever
form it may be represented or be brought to account; its
real value is always the same. And this must be taken
from the people of the country in some shape or other, in
whatever manner the work be performed.
It is evidently indifferent whether the actual work per
formed be called so many cubic feet of earth, so many
rupees Indian silver coin also widely used in the Persian Gulf. , or so many days of human labour. These all
represent the same thing, and, however reckoned, the work