of the month. Now compare with this deferential caution our method of proceeding. On the 14th of August the Viceroy writes an imperious letter to the Ameer, virtually commanding him to receive an English Mission. Its delivery is delayed, by the death of the Ameer's favourite son, until the 12th of September (p. 237). Sir Neville Chamberlain arrived at Peshawur (p. 238) on the same day; and, with a gross indecency, of which the whole blame belongs to his superiors, he proceeded, before there could be any reply from the Ameer, to communicate directly with his servants. He was authorised at once to acquaint the Mustafi (ibid.) that 'the refusal of the free passage would bring matters to an issue;' and on the 15th of September (p. 240) Sir Neville Chamberlain demanded from the Commandant of the Fort of Ali Musjed a clear reply' whether he was prepared to 'guarantee the safety of the British Mission' or not, as I cannot delay my departure from Peshawur.' In case of refusal or

6

delay, he would act independently. The Ameer, thus disgraced in the sight of his own servants and people, would not (apparently) have sent instructions if he could, but certainly could not if he would. These are his words, reported by our own native Agent (p. 241): 'It is as if they were come by force. I do not agree to the Mission, coming in this manner: and, until my officers have received orders from me, how can the Mission come? It is as if they wish to disgrace me.' On the 21st the Mission was refused a passage by the Affghan officers, for the insulted Ameer had sent them no instructions to grant it. Thus was got up by us the 'affront' which is put forward in justification of a war as foolish as it is iniquitous, and as iniquitous as it is foolish. The case is completed when we find that the Ameer had actually intimated (p. 242) that he would receive the Mission in a short time (p. 242): that our Agent recommended that the Mission should be held in abeyance' (p. 241), as the Russian Mission, we have seen, with a studious respect for appearances, waited a whole month on the Oxus; and, finally, that our Prime Minister declared the object of our proceeding was to obtain a scientific frontier.

Thus far we have been contemplating a pitiless display of Might against Right. We shall now see how the genuine bully can crouch before his equal. Five days after the Viceroy addressed his highhanded letter to the Ameer, the Foreign Secretary despatched to St. Petersburg the expression of a categorical 'hope' of the British Government, equivalent to a demand, that the Russian Mission, as inconsistent with the understanding between the two countries, would be at once withdrawn from Cabul.10 Until the 8th of September, the Russian Foreign Office managed to shift off its reply; and then answered that, as a mission of simple courtesy, it was within the understanding. In this reply the present Ministers appear at once 10 Central Asian Papers, No. 1, p. 150.

to have acquiesced. No notice is taken of it, except in a letter to the Indian Office from the Foreign Office, where it is complacently treated as showing that the understanding with Russia has recovered its validity.' The Mission, of which the immediate withdrawal had been desired, was justified by a shallow and transparent pretext. This pretext was accepted. The Mission was not withdrawn, but the demand was. I do not know where to find, in our modern history, such an example of undue and humiliating submission to a foreign Government.

But when the facts became known by the publication of the papers on the 30th of November, it was at once declared, on the part of the late Government, that a Russian Mission at Cabul was a departure from the agreement at which the two States had arrived, and that, however it might be justified when their relations were disturbed, it could not otherwise be justified at all. Under the compulsion created by this declaration, the Ministry has changed its course. On the 13th of December it at length announced that, when they learned the Russian envoy had left Cabul, they supposed the Mission had gone too. And yet they knew well enough that the two things are perfectly distinct that, for example, at the close of the Conferences of Constantinople, every Foreign Minister left the Porte, and every Mission remained. Having accepted the hollow excuse of the Russian Government, they presented one as hollow for themselves to Parliament and their country. But, under compulsion, they now state they do not acquiesce in the continuance of a Russian Mission at Cabul. It remains to be seen whether Russia will relieve them from their embarrassment by bringing her compliments to a close, and allowing the Mission to pack up and depart. Not improbably she may, if she thinks its presence there might render it more difficult for her to act upon her plan of leaving the Ameer to shift for himself under the difficulties in which she has helped, for her own purposes, to place him. But how are we to escape from the facts, that she has declared a mission of courtesy to be within the Clarendon understanding; that her declaration has been received without protest for three months; and from the apparent consequence, that she has obtained, by the act of the present Ministers, a presumptive title to send a mission of courtesy' to Cabul when and as often as she pleases?

6

We have, then, sufficiently established the following propositions:

1. The British Tories are the traditional and natural allies of Russia, in the policy of absolutism which she commonly has followed in Continental affairs.

2. They only depart from her when, in the case of Turkish oppression, she departs from herself, and is found fighting on the side of freedom and humanity.

3. In thus departing, they have so managed their resistance, that they have played her game, fortified her position, and humbled their country before her.

When our roystering politicians begin their preparations for the coming Election, these propositions may afford them some instruction; and may render a degree of aid to the people in answering the great question they must then answer, whether the present mode is the mode in which they wish the country to be governed.

They will not, indeed, lack instruction from other sources. In vain does the Minister of Finance escape for the hour the payment of his just debts by postponing them as private spendthrifts use to do; by 'spreading' them over future years; and by borrowing the money of impoverished India, in which but a year ago we were told that 1,400,000 persons died of famine, until the Government can make up its mind whether the war, which they hope is nearly concluded, be one which should be paid for by England, or by its Eastern dependency, or by both. So stands the child before its dose of physic, and struggles for a few moments to put off swallowing the draught; which will be all the bitterer the longer it is delayed. Under the pressure of a vast expenditure, and in the thickened and unwholesome atmosphere of a blustering, turbulent, and vacillating foreign policy, trade and industry obstinately refuse to revive, and suffering stalks through the land in forms and measures unknown to our modern experience. In the soreness of this pressure it is, and it was, almost forgotten that through the various departments of public action reform and improvement stagnate. But there is one subject which not even now can be dropped from view. I mean the war that has been not proclaimed, indeed, but established in this country: the silent but active war against Parliamentary Government.

The majority of the present House of Commons has, on more than one occasion, indicated its readiness to offer up, at the shrine of the Government which it sustains, the most essential rights and privileges which it holds in trust for the people. The occupation and administration of new territories, intended and admitted to involve. large military charge; the assumption of joint governing rights, under circumstances of almost hopeless difficulty, over a range of territory which found room for several of the greatest empires of antiquity; the establishment of new policies, and the development of them into wars abhorrent to their countrymen; all these things have been effected under the cloak of deliberate and careful secrecy, which has been maintained with evident intention, and even with elaborate contrivance, to exclude the Parliament and the nation from all influence upon the results. The greatest encouragement has been afforded to a renewal of these experiments; for when at length they have become known, they have been accepted in Parliament with greedy approval, with that eagerness to be immolated which even an Ameer of Affghanistan failed to show.

When at length the House of Commons is allowed or invited to discuss the great acts of the Government, information of vital importance to a judgment upon them is still withheld. Thus, at the close of last July, on the motion of Lord Hartington, they debated, with the Treaty of Berlin, the Anglo-Turkish Convention. In that Convention, besides the gross breach of the Treaty of Paris in which it was based, the secrecy and haste with which it was concluded-because of the fear, as Mr. Bourke candidly declared, that, if time and publicity were given, the Sultan would refuse to sign-and the onerous and hardly conceivable engagements for the defence and government of the whole of Asiatic Turkey, there was one other essential consideration; its tendency to disturb our good understanding with friendly Powers, and especially with France. The wrong done to France by the Convention was strongly insisted on in the debate. But it seemed almost frivolous to dwell upon this topic in its several branches, when France herself was mute. And mute the House was allowed to suppose her. Not until we had passed well into the Parliamentary recess, a Correspondence was published from which it had appeared that France had taken the alarm, and that, on the 21st of July, Mr. Waddington had addressed to the British Government a despatch of expostulation and remonstrance, the existence of which was carefully concealed from Parliament during the debate.

It is not, however, over the War-making and Treaty-making powers alone that the majority of the present House of Commons have done what in them lay to forego their control. Even on their exclusive taxing privileges, and on their legislative powers, they seem to set no higher value. On the evening of the 17th of December, they voted that the revenues of India, or rather the money of India, for there is no revenue of the year applicable for the purpose, should be applicable to defray the expenses of the Affghan War. Under the authority of that vote, and of the corresponding vote in the House of Lords, the moneys of India may be so applied without any limit either of time or of amount. Should the expenses rise beyond those of the first Affghan War, which is stated to have cost thirty millions; should the series of operations last, as they then lasted, over some four years, Parliament has no more to say to it; the Houses have parted with their power, once for all, into the hands of the Executive Government.

But this is not all. In this unfaithfulness to India (for such it seems) is involved an abdication of the Parliamentary control over British expenditure. For it was declared on the part of the Government, by the leader of the House of Commons, that they could not as yet make up their mind whether any, or if any, what proportion, of the charge of the war should be defrayed by the Imperial Treasury; but that they would do so hereafter. The vote of Tuesday night was therefore passed, in order to constitute in the Government an autho

rity for an expenditure on the Affghan War without any limit of time or of amount, and this under full notice that an unknown proportion of that expenditure might hereafter be demanded of them from the purse of the English people. About as well might the House of Commons, instead of voting the Army Estimates from year to year, simply constitute a power of charge in the name of the Administration; and then wait until, in some future year, it should be called upon, when the money had been spent, to settle the account in the lump by a vote of ratification.

Not less remarkable is the disrespect exhibited by the present Government to the legislative office of the Lords and Commons of the United Kingdom. Of this Sir Alexander Gordon, on the 13th of December, pointed out in his place in Parliament the following noteworthy instance :

On the 28th of February, 1876," Lord Salisbury instructed Lord Lytton as follows:

The Queen's assumption of the Imperial title in relation to her Majesty's Indian subjects, feudatories, and allies, will now for the first time conspicuously transfer to her Indian dominion, in form as well as in fact, the supreme authority of the Indian Empire. It will therefore be one of your earliest duties to notify to the Ameer of Affghanistan and the Khan of Khelat your assumption of the viceregal office under these new conditions.

Now the Queen assumed the dignity of Empress of India under the Royal Titles Act of 1876. At the time when the Ministry gave these presumptuous instructions, that Act had not passed. Even of the Bill, the House of Lords had had no cognisance whatever; and the House of Commons had expressed no judgment on its merits, which were much contested. It had just been brought in, on the 21st of February. It was not read a second time till the 9th of March. It did not receive the Royal assent till the 27th of April, two months after Lord Salisbury had written to Lord Lytton his instructions for acting upon it. It must indeed be gratifying to those members of the House of Commons, who confide in the wisdom of the Government, to witness the reciprocal confidence which that Government reposes in their docility.

Domestic policy, then, as well as foreign, and that which lies deeper than any policy, the essential principle of Parliamentary government, will have to be considered and determined at the coming Election by the nation. But one word more as regards that foreign policy. The standing motto of Liberalism is friendship with every country; as it was indeed of Toryism, until the new-fangled Toryism of the day, not less turbulent than it is superstitious, came into vogue. Liberalism has disapproved, and must disapprove, that antagonism to freedom which has commonly marked the continental policy of Russia, almost though not quite as much as that of

11 Affghan Papers, p. 156.