towards us than hitherto,' or that his feelings are in any way more embittered towards the British Government,' the explanation is that the Ameer's feelings were already as hostile to us as they could well be.' What particular time is meant by already' is not easy to say. But the assertions of June 1877 were taken, as Lord Salisbury well knew, to cover the whole period of Lord Lytton's action, and if they meant anything, they meant that Shere Ali was not more irritated with us in June 1877 than in April 1876. That is clearly untrue. Even if true, it would not cover Lord Salisbury's assertion that our relations with Shere Ali had 'undergone no material change since last year,' because those relations were in one direction, and for the worse, changed by every step that Lord Lytton took; and were changed definitely and by express and formal notification in the month of March 1877. These explanations, therefore, amount to a confession of deceit. Part of Lord Salisbury's statements on June 15, 1877, was untrue in the strictest acceptation of the letter, and what was true was true only in the letter and not in the spirit.

It is not too much to say that persons not in the secret were completely hoodwinked by these declarations, which set them at ease till the news came that we were on the brink of war.

In his defence delivered on December 5, 1878, Lord Salisbury treated his obligations to truth as a matter of 'small personal detail.' On December 10, speaking on the same subject, he lightly said that he would abandon his character in the eyes of his assailant rather than keep their Lordships out of bed. He added, "if you insist that no answer shall be given except such as contains a complete revelation of the policy of the Government, the only inference I draw is that in the future no answer at all shall be given to a question of this kind." On this we observe that there are occa

These accounts are taken from the reports in the Times of December 6 and 11, 1878.

sions on which a Minister may properly decline to answer a question on the ground that silence is better for the public interest; and that, so far as we know, Ministers are allowed much discretion, and are treated with confidence and generosity in such matters by both Houses of Parliament. But it is a new thing to hear that a Minister may give a false answer in order to parry an unpleasant question. Neither in this case would it have been true to say that the public interest required silence. The public interest required publicity. Silence was required only by the private interest of the Minister whose ill-advised policy had entirely broken down.

Another declaration as to the general policy of the Government was made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the House of Commons, in answer to Mr. Grant Duff. After recognising that there were two schools of politicians, the advocates of the forward policy, and those who would not commit us to advance beyond our frontier, he says (vide 'Hansard,' vol. ccxxxvi. 'House of Commons,' p. 718):

I have myself, as my hon. friend has reminded us, always leant to the policy of the second of those schools. I have always demurred to the idea which has been put forward by some, that the best way to meet danger is to advance beyond our frontier, and have always held that the true lines we ought to lay down for ourselves are these-to strengthen ourselves within our frontiers, and to do so by a combination of measures moral and material.

I think it is most important that we should in every possible way endeavour to husband the wealth and resources of India, and that it is of great importance to do all we can to complete-I am now speaking in a correct sense of a military question as to which I am no authority-to complete our internal lines of communication, so that we should be able to proceed rapidly to any point where we might be threatened, rather than that we should expend our force by distance, and weaken ourselves by an unwise advance. In all these views-which are the views I have always been led to

hold as the best mode of protecting India from direct attack -I believe there is no change whatever in the policy of Her Majesty's Government.

He then said that as circumstances were apt to change, measures must change too, and went on to justify the occupation of Quetta on that basis. With regard to an expression used by Lord Lytton, to the effect that the frontier policy of India was to be taken as a whole, of which the advance to Quetta was only a part,' he denied that it was thereby meant to change the policy from one of inactivity to one of activity, and went on to explain the expression by reference to a proposal for placing the command of the frontier under a single hand. He concluded by saying:

The main lines of our policy are unchanged, and I believe the country will be satisfied with them, and will wish them to continue.

1 See inf., pp. 213, 215.

CHAPTER XI.

AFTER THE PESHAWUR CONFERENCE.

It is a very singular thing that through the whole of these papers there is not to be found any statement of reasons why our Vakeel was withdrawn from Cabul, or even of the fact of withdrawal. And yet it is a most important fact to consider when we are judging Shere Ali for receiving a Russian Mission. Our Vakeel was a very important personage in the Cabul world; he had his residence and his staff in the city of Cabul; he attended the Durbars; he frequently had private conversations with the Ameer; he was privy to all important operations, perhaps to all operations, of Afghan foreign politics; he was the outward and visible sign of the British alliance. On his removal a great visible blank space would remain, notifying to all observers that the British alliance was no more as it had been. Nothing short of actual hostilities could so closely bring home to the mind of Shere Ali that we had cast him off. When our Resident was taken away, our deeds had tallied with our words. We had told him that if he refused English Residents he would 'isolate himself from the alliance and support of the British Government' (sup., p. 99). We had told him that the moment we ceased to regard Afghanistan as a friendly and firmly allied State, there was nothing to prevent our agreeing with Russia to wipe Afghanistan out of the map, and that Russia desired such an agreement at his expense (sup., p. 105). We had told him that our military power could break him as a reed; and that he was as an earthen

pipkin between two iron pots. Later on we had warned him that unless he yielded to our demands at once the terrible isolation had been completed, and that we repudiated all liabilities on his behalf (sup., p. 125). Then, when he was sending an Envoy to make concessions, we abruptly, and with an evident sudden change of policy, broke off the negotiations. And now, to crown the whole, we withdraw, and do not replace, the Representative we have had in Cabul for some eight years, and the Agency we have had for twenty. If the letters of July 1876 were, as predicted at the time, the first step in a war, the withdrawal of the Vakeel was a second and a very long step. Yet even now, when the war has come, we are told nothing about it.1

From such unofficial accounts as have appeared it would seem that the Vakeel, who was present at the Peshawur conference, never returned from thence to Cabul; so that he was withdrawn on March 30, 1877. If this be so, it is an additional condemnation of Lord Salisbury's assurances in June 1877, that our policy had undergone no change.

On the supposition that the clauses of the Peshawur conference meant that we were to take the first opportunity of breaking with the Ameer, the withdrawal of the Vakeel is an intelligible action. But supposing that we intended to act on the professions of the despatches of March 15 and May 10, 1877, to respect Shere Ali's independence and authority (sup., p. 125), and to maintain with him such relations as we commonly maintain with the Chiefs of neighbouring and friendly countries (sup., p. 151), the reasons for withdrawing the Vakeel are not easily to be conceived. Nor indeed is it easy to understand why, merely in our own interest and for the sake of information, we did not keep some representative at

In a work recently published, and called Through Asiatic Turkey, Captain Geary gives an interesting account of an interview between Shere Ali and the Envoy sent to him by the Sultan of Turkey in 1877. Shere Ali dwelt significantly on the occupation of Quetta and on the withdrawal of our Vakeel. The whole chapter (xvii.) is well worth reading. A portion of it is extracted inf., pp. 287–291.