As the death of the Envoy has interrupted these negotiations, no conclusion has at present been arrived at. Papers relating to the settlement of the difficulties in Khelat will at once be laid upon the table of the House, but they are very voluminous, and, I fear, will not be in the hands of hon. members for some time.

Mr. Grant Duff: Have the negotiations with the Ameer entirely ceased?

Lord George Hamilton: I believe that the Ameer has expressed a wish to carry on negotiations, and the matter is under the consideration of the Government of India.

Now, April 20 was sixty days after the practical closure of the conference by Sir Lewis Pelly, thirtysix days after the letter of March 15 was sent, twenty-five days after the death of Noor Mahomed, and twenty-one days after the formal and final closure of the conference by Lord Lytton's order. Six months before that time the Ameer had, either directly or through one who was faithfully to convey it to him, been told that, not having accepted English Envoys, he had isolated himself from the alliance and support of the. British Government (vide A, p. 176); that we might come to an understanding with Russia which would wipe Afghanistan out of the map altogether; that if he did not wish to come to an understanding with us Russia did, and desired it at his expense; that if he became our enemy we could break him as a reed; that our relations with him could not remain as they are, but must become worse or better; that he was an earthen pipkin between two iron pots (vide A, 183); that he had only verbal understandings with us; and that Lord Mayo's letter, on which he relied, was no treaty (vide A, pp. 183, 184). Thirty days before that time the Ameer had been told that the British Government repudiated all liabilities on his behalf. Twenty-one days before that time the Ameer's Envoy, coming to Peshawur with instructions, as is believed, to yield everything, was barred by the news that all negotiation was broken off, and therefore that

all these threats were in full force. It is almost certain that before that time we had withdrawn from the Court of Cabul the Agency which had represented the British Government there for thirteen years. Fifty-two days before that time the Ameer was formally charged, and he still stands charged, with having tampered with frontier tribes in our pay, with maligning the character of the British Government, and with actually exciting a jehad against us. Is it possible that the authorities of the India Office knew none of these things? And yet is it possible that, knowing them or any of them, they could have permitted their spokesman to say that no change whatever had occurred in the relations of the British Government with the Ameer? Lord George Hamilton knew of the death of Noor Mahomed, and that the Ameer had expressed a wish to carry on negotiations. He must, then, have had information to a date considerably later than March 26, when Noor Mahomed died. It must have been known in England that neither the practical nor the formal closure of the conference had the slightest reference to the death of Noor Mahomed; the one being due to his non-acceptance of the preliminary condition, and the other to the change of policy on Lord Lytton's part. It is very strange if it was not known that twenty-one days had elapsed since Lord Lytton had put a peremptory end to all negotiations whatever. How, then, came it to be said, firstly, that it was the death of the Envoy which interrupted the negotiation; and, secondly, that the matter was under the consideration of the Government of India?

On June 11, 1877, Lord Salisbury, replying in the House of Lords to Lord de Mauley, spoke in the most scornful terms of the fear of Russian inroads on the frontier of British India. On the same day the same Peer spoke in the same sense at Merchant Taylors Hall, calling the fear in question a nightmare.' On the same day Lord George Hamilton, answering Sir Charles Dilke, who had moved for papers relating to the Peshawur

M

conference, said: 'No change in our obligations to the Ameer has been the result of the conference, but it would not be consistent with the interests of the public service to publish the conversation.'

Now at this time the despatch of May 10, 1877, must have been lying some days at the India Office, and the authorities there must have known that the Government of India had 'repudiated all liabilities to the Ameer.'

Moreover the whole affair was over, and what public interest was there which would have been injured, or rather which would not have been benefited, by the publication of the papers?

On June 15, 1877, the Duke of Argyll spoke in the House of Lords as follows (vide 'Hansard,' vol. ccxxxiv. p. 1833) :—

The Duke of Argyll: The Ameer of Afghanistan was not perhaps a great Power, but another Afghan war would be, he need hardly say, a very serious matter. But though they had of course no cause to dread such a movement, at the same time another war would cost several millions of money, and it would, in any event, be a great misfortune if our good understanding with the Ameer were seriously disturbed. He was bound to add that, if he had put the question ten days ago, he might have been suspected of doing so from fear that the noble Marquis was affected by Russophobian propensities; but after the speech the noble Marquis delivered in their Lordships' House last Monday, followed by his speech the same evening at Merchant Taylors Hall, he could now have no such apprehension, and he could not but thank the noble Marquis for the language he held on those two occasions.

Although those speeches assumed a light form, and administered some friendly 'chaff' to certain alarmists, he believed the noble Marquis's language had served to calm the public mind both in India and England. It was however all the more important that the noble Marquis should have an opportunity of giving their Lordships' House and the country an assurance that he did not contemplate any serious change in the policy heretofore pursued towards Afghanistan,

and above all that he desired to continue, at all events, that friendly but watchful course of conduct which he believed was the only safe course to adopt in our relations with such a sovereign as the Ameer.

Lord Salisbury answered as follows:

Of course it is perfectly true that there has been a conference at Peshawur. A great many subjects were discussed at it, but it will be difficult to produce papers, because the politics of the East, much more than those of the West, are of a personal character, and often communications, which, if they occurred in Western nations, it would be very easy to lay upon the table, involve in the East the personal feelings of Potentates to such an extent as to make such disclosures inexpedient. Therefore the conversations which occurred at Peshawur are not matters which I could prudently place on record among the papers laid before Parliament.

With respect to the information asked for by the noble Duke I can hardly give him such a positive knowledge, but I think I can give him some negative information. He has derived from the sources open to him the following statement, as I understood him-that we had tried to force an Envoy upon the Ameer at Cabul; that we had selected for that purpose Sir Lewis Pelly, whose vigour of mind and action might possibly inspire apprehension in the councils of a native Prince; that we had supported this demand by a large assemblage of troops on the North-Western Frontier; and that we were preparing boats on the Indus. Now, we have not tried to force an Envoy upon the Ameer at Cabul; the troops were assembled without the slightest reference to any such demand; and, with regard to the boats on the Indus, I never heard of them until to-day. Our relations with the Ameer of Cabul have undergone no material change since last year. I do not believe that he is worse disposed towards us than hitherto, or that his feelings are in any way more embittered towards the British Government.

I only wish emphatically to repeat that none of those suspicions of aggression on the part of the English Government have any true foundation; that our desire in the future, as it has been in the past, is to respect the Afghan Ruler, and to maintain, as far as we can, the integrity of his dominion.

There is no ground for any of the apprehensions to which the noble Duke has referred, or for suspicions which are too absurd to be seriously entertained. The affairs of the frontier are maintaining a peaceful aspect, with the exception of a little trouble with a local tribe-the Afreedees. We have also maintained our relations with Khelat, and the papers we have laid on the table will explain what has occurred. But there is no reason for any apprehension of any change of policy or of disturbance in our Indian Empire.

When the Afghan Papers came-out, Lord Salisbury was challenged with having made this statement, and he attempts to reconcile it with the truth by saying that in using the expression 'Ameer at Cabul,' he referred to the city of Cabul, where it was not proposed to have a resident Envoy; whereas all his hearers understood it in the ordinary sense of the 'Ameer of Cabul,' the 'country,' 'state,' or 'government' of Cabul. Cabul is the name of a country as well as of a city, and in connection with the words 'Ameer' or 'Government' is used to signify the ruling power of Afghanistan. Among the hearers of Lord Salisbury were two former Secretaries of State for India, and two former Viceroys; as skilled a body of officials as could be found to consider such a question. They were deceived by the statement of Lord Salisbury, believing that he meant to say that it had not been the policy of the Government to force English Residents on the Ameer. Lord Northbrook in particular expressed his satisfaction at the declared policy of the Government, and he certainly would not have felt any satisfaction at a mere announcement that English Envoys were not to go to the city of Cabul, if they were to be forced on the Ameer at all, for the latter was the proposal against which he had so strongly advised. Lord Salisbury allowed the expression of Lord Northbrook's satisfaction to pass in silence, with no attempt to correct the error into which he had been led. As for the assurances that 'our relations with the Ameer of Cabul have undergone no material change since last year,' and 'I do not believe that he is worse disposed