Empires in that portion of the world. It was an essential part of this understanding, and was so recorded in many avowals, that Russia should abstain from all endeavours to exercise influence in Affghanistan ; while England, on the other hand, was to use her best efforts for inducing the Ameer to fulfil the duties of good neighbourhood towards his northern neighbours, who were the neighbours, on the other side, of Russia. While the late Government subsisted, this covenant was observed on both sides with fidelity and advantage; and although the friendly letters of General Kauffmann to the Ameer Shere Ali were somewhat officious, they had not been deemed to give occasion for complaint down to the time when Lord Northbrook gave up the viceroyalty of India early in 1876.

But a new epoch arrived when the British Government, in violation of the fifty-fifth section of the Indian Government Act, brought a handful of Indian troops to Malta, at an enormous charge, without the knowledge or consent of Parliament. The measure is now known to have been preceded by preparations made in India for moving, through Affghanistan, against the Asiatic territories of Russia. Of small military significance in itself, it was obviously intended as a stratagem to mislead: to inspire the perfectly untrue belief that the 180,000 men, who form our Indian Army, could be withdrawn from India, as our home Army can, in case of need, be safely withdrawn from the United Kingdom, and could thus be made available in our European wars. The ulterior aim of all this, of course, was to intimidate Russia, and to strengthen the hands of the Government in giving effect to the Turkish and anti-liberal propensities which it indulged at Berlin, and which it embellished with the misused name of British interests.'

There probably never was a measure of such large and varied indirect operation, which was adopted with such an intoxicated thoughtlessness. Against all the cautions which the sagacity of statesmanship would have suggested to any previous Government, the stage-effect of this curious coup de théâtre carried the day. It implied a radical change in the conception and use of the Indian Army, which up to that time might have been best defined by a negative: it was not an European Army. The effect on the peace of the country of a prolonged or extensive abstraction of its defensive force, its military police, was not worth considering. The authority of the Parliamentary inquiry, which had pronounced against measures of this kind, was quietly overlooked. There was no examination of the probable results on the contentment of India, when she should find herself saddled with the liability to provide men for wars from which she could derive no advantage; or on the soldiery, who, upon a footing of inferiority to their comrades, were to fight in climates, and amid races and associations, wholly strange to their experience. The contemptuous forgetfulness of all these subjects was remarkable.

But they were questions of the future. The Government also forgot the most obvious suggestion of the present; namely, that the game was a game which two could play at.

As to the mode of playing it, the skiil of Russia appears to have been more conspicuous than her generosity. It was natural enough that she should prepare to threaten British India through Affghanistan; and, when we had brought an earnest of the power of India into Europe, should indicate that there was also a possible, though a very uninviting, way from Europe towards India. But we must suppose that the design of Russia, in thus directing her troops, was much less military than political. She knew with whom she was dealing and sought to act on the timid susceptibilities of the British Government, so as to draw it into some false step.

It is probable, indeed, that Russia was, through her agents, less unaware than was the British Parliament, with how singular a perversity the Indian Government, impelled from home, had, ever since the year 1876, been preparing combustible material, to which she might at pleasure apply the match. During more than two years, the unfortunate Ameer of Affghanistan had been made the butt of a series of measures alternating between cajolery and intimidation. Down to the time of Lord Northbrook's departure, he knew, from a long ex perience, that he had fast friends in the Viceroys of India: and with a shortsightedness of petty craft, sufficiently Asiatic, he endeavoured to extort from their goodwill everything he thought it could be made to yield in one-sided largesses of men, money, and engagements. He knew we were jealous of the independence of Affghanistan, and he strove to turn this jealousy to account for his personal and dynastic views. He desired to make us parties in determining the question of succession to his throne; as if we had not learned by sore experience, in the case of Shah Soojah, the folly of our choosing a sovereign for that country; and to obtain from us guarantees for his security, which were not to be dependent on his conduct. Of the wise and necessary refusal to enter into such entangling stipulations, he more or less made a grievance. He likewise reckoned against us a friendly remonstrance of Lord Northbrook's against his most impolitic and vindictive severity towards his son Yakoob Khan, together with one or two minor matters, and with a complaint that we had not, as arbiters in the case of Seistan, decided according to the view which he, one of the parties, entertained. There was not any evidence of serious meaning in his attempts to make a market of these complaints. He exhibited to us no hostility; for it was not a hostile act to restrain the movement, in the interior of his dominions, of the subjects of a Power which had cruelly and wantonly desolated the country, within the memory of many living Affghans. In 1874, Sir R. Pollock had an opportunity of learning through a confidential channel the state of his feelings towards us; and hereupon he acquainted the Government

of India that they were in no respect altered for the worse. All the Ameer had done was to try, like a spoiled child, to get as much as he could out of our good nature, and to lay greater burdens on the willing horse. He little knew what a price he would have to pay for his indiscretion.

In 1876 Lord Northbrook withdrew; and the new Viceroy began too faithfully to give effect to the new ideas propagated from home.. The Ameer had asked engagements, which implied a greater intimacy of relations. The present Government, through Lord Lytton, declared its readiness partially to meet his views in these respects; but combined with the concession a variety of stipulations, which are recorded in the drafts given to guide Sir Lewis Pelly in his Peshawur negotiations, and which would have placed his independence entirely at our mercy. The ordinary salutations of international intercourse would not suffice. The British Government was determined on nothing less than embracing the Ameer: but with an embrace that strangled him. In the foreground of these counterdemands, there stood one stipulation which we made preliminary and indispensable, that he should admit British officers into his dominions as Residents at various points. To any plan of this kind it was well known that he objected, and Lord Lawrence has shown how reasonable his objections were; not only because he could not answer for the good treatment of our officers by his own people, but because, as often as he turned his eyes towards India, he saw, in scores of cases, that where Englishmen came in at one door, there and then the independence of Asiatic sovereignty went out at the other.

The Papers, so long unduly withheld from Parliament, cover an extended field; in which those, for whom it is needful to darken or evade the issue, can discover plenty of bye-paths in which to disport themselves. But the whole affair is summed up and brought to a head in the detailed conferences of Sir Lewis Pelly with the Ameer's Minister at Peshawur during the early part of 1877. Here both parties, fully provided with instructions, declared in the most authentic manner the minds and intentions of their principals. And here the Ameer discovered, when too late, that the little grievances which, with a childish craft, he had magnified or pretended, had brought upon him counter-exactions, which he regarded as fatal to himself and to his country. Extortioner against extortioner, the strong one must prevail, and the weak one must go to the wall. His Minister attempted to execute his change of front; but it was too late. Producing the grievances of the Ameer," he carefully excluded! from them all reference to the unreasonable expectations about the succession and the guarantee. Assured that those forgotten and fictitious wants would be supplied, he came face to face with what was, to him, the most real and most terrible of all exactions, the

5 Papers, p. 206.

admission of British functionaries; and without this, he was told, he could not move a step in the negotiations. Not only so, but that the promises given by Lord Mayo and by Lord Northbrook, unless he complied with the demand, would be withdrawn.

It is not often that diplomatic conferences have a pathetic aspect. But of the very few that have read these Papers, hardly any, I should think, can withhold an emotion of pity from the clever, but overmatched, representative of the Ameer.

Nowhere is more conspicuously exhibited the unquestioned possession of the giant's strength, and the cynical determination to use it like a giant. Again, and again, and again, the Asiatic Envoy entreats Sir Lewis Pelly to withdraw the stipulation, which he declares to be fraught with fatal peril to his country. All that the Ameer desires is to be let alone, and to rest upon the Treaties, together with the promises of Lord Mayo and Lord Northbrook. The agreement at Umballa, says the Minister (p. 205), is sufficient so long as the Queen will let it remain intact and stable. Till the time of the departure of Lord Northbrook, that previous course continued to be pursued' (p. 206). Lord Northbrook left the friendship without change, in conformity with the conduct of his predecessors' (p. 208). The Ameer desired only that the usual friendship should remain. firm upon the former footing' (p. 211). His former fears of Russia had disappeared; Lord Northbrook had thoroughly reassured him’ (p. 211). The sham or petty grievances have been put out of view: his desire only is that the Viceroy will, with great frankness and sincerity of purpose, act in conformity with the course of past Viceroys' (p. 213). But that is exactly what Lord Lytton will not do. While Parliament was assured at home that there was no change in Indian policy, the trumpery complaints put forward from time to time by the Ameer, so long as he thought his standing ground was safe, were now made to rise in judgment against him. Under the pretext of drawing the bonds of friendship closer, he was required first and foremost to concede the admission of British Residents whosepresence the Minister stated, eleven times over, would be dangerous or even fatal to his independence. On his refusal, he was told that he must stand alone, and that he was no longer to invoke the assurances of the former Viceroys. But English support was to him as the air he breathed, and the threat of its withdrawal was used as an instrument of torture. In this singular negotiation, the ruler of a thin and poor mountain population in vain struggles through his Minister to cope with the agent of an empire of three hundred millions. Before this agent he cowers and crouches, like a spaniel ready bound and awaiting the knife of the vivisector. It is no wonder if the Ministerdied of it. At any rate he died within a few days after the repulse.. The Ameer, hopeless and helpless, stood utterly aghast. He sent off Papers, p. 219.

a new Agent (p. 171), to continue the conferences, and, as was believed, to face all the future perils of the required concessions rather than incur the present desolation of the withdrawal of the English alliance. But the Viceroy advisedly put an end to the whole business, because the Ameer (ibid.) had not shown an eagerness' to concede the terms which he conceived to be pregnant with the ruin of his house and his country.

Such was the mode in which the present Ministers pursued what they constantly announced as their policy; to have, namely, on their frontier a strong and friendly Affghanistan as a barrier against Russia. Wishing him to be strong and friendly, they did, and they still are doing, everything which could make him weak and hostile. He stood between the two great Empires, like a pipkin (to use Lord Lytton's simile) between two iron pots. He had not substantive strength sufficient for self-support, in his kingdom at once turbulent and weak. He required to lean on some one; and we acquainted him that he should not be allowed to lean on us. Thus it was that, while we were in disturbed relations with Russia as to European politics, we laid open for her, as far as policy could lay it open, the way, through Affghanistan, to our Eastern possessions.

Accordingly, Russia did not trust to her military measures only, but determined to commit the unfortunate Ameer, whom we had thrown, so to speak, into her hands. Her advances in Central Asia have been put forward as the excuse for our pressure upon the Ameer. But she has made, so far as we are informed, no advances at all since the annexation of Khokand in 1875: and that advance has been far more than compensated by the establishment of the Persian authority at Merv, which has stopped her only practicable road. However, we kindly opened for her a diplomatic path; and she began to press upon the Ameer the reception of a Russian Mission. To such a Mission the Ameer showed a great repugnance. But in June 7 he was duly informed by General Kauffmann that the mission must be received. And we have the effrontery (for it is no less) to make this complaint against him, that, when he was deprived of all promises of support from us, and cast into utter isolation, he did not bid defiance to Russia also by refusing to her Envoy an entrance into his dominions.

But the Russians, while they deprived the Ameer of choice in the matter, proceeded like men in their senses, and did not disgrace him in the sight of his own subjects. Time was allowed for his decision. Leaving Tashkend in the end of May, General Stoletoff waited for a month' at the ferry over the Oxus until the Affghan Bek arrived who was to be his escort. He crossed it apparently in the beginning of July; and only reached Cabul (the exact day is uncertain") in the end * Central Asian Papers, No. 1, p. 140. Comp. pp. 12, 14, 18.

Ibid. No. 2, p. 14.