Page:The Earl of Mayo.djvu/139

Rh her border feuds rendered it very hard to discover with whom the actual authority rested, or how far it extended, and made it difficult for the British Government to take measures for the consolidation of the titular ruler's power.

Lord Mayo vigorously addressed himself to the solution of both the external and the internal problem of Baluchistan. His action led to the demarcation of a political boundary between Afghánistán and Persia; which practically put an end to the aggressions of the latter. He displayed not less vigour in trying to help Balúchistán to evolve from her conflicting factions a stable and permanent central power. The task proved a most difficult one. Each of the great parties in Balúchistán had a real basis of right on which to found its claims. The nobles could show that they had frequently controlled the Khán, and compelled him to act as the head of a confederacy of Chiefs rather than as a supreme ruler. The Khán could prove that although he had from time to time succumbed to his rebellious barons, yet that he had only done so after a struggle, and that he had exercised his royal authority whenever he again found himself strong enough.

The question resembled the worn-out discussion as to whether England was or was not a limited monarchy under the Plantagenets. The constitutional difficulties in Balúchistán were embittered by wrongs both great and recent on both sides ; and at the time of Lord Mayo's death, its consolidation into a