into oblivion for there is a distinct note of warning in its sound; it reproduces the identical words commonly used to describe the intention, with which, to our shame and sorrow, we once before undertook to interfere in the domestic dissensions of the Afghans. It was precisely this idea, the idea of "establishing a friendly power and a strong Government in Afghanistan,"1 that inspired the expedition of 1838; and the phrase into which the member for Elgin so naturally slipped is a distinct memento of that evil time. True, there is a vast difference in the methods by which Lord Auckland thirty years ago, and Lord Mayo in these days, have respectively proceeded; but the fact of their both having sought the same object, throws a startling light on the true bearings and ultimate tendency of the present Viceroy's policy.

However, it must be admitted that the debate of the 9th July had, on the whole, the effect primarily desired by Mr. Grant Duff and the Ministry. One organ of public opinion at Moscow (the Sovremenni Izvesti) warned its readers not to be diverted from mistrust of our actual deeds in India by our farcical assertions of innocence in the House of Commons; but Russia, at large, was for the time mollified and appeased.

Some approach to a better understanding with the Muscovite Government was day by day growing into a political necessity. For while our diplomatists had been smiling, and our ministers, like the lady in Hamlet, protesting too much, the local politics of Central Asia had kept the bias imparted to their course by British hands in India, and were developing events calculated to reawaken and intensify any previous suspicion which Russia might have conceived of our designs. The Ameer of Bokhara, who in the summer of 1868 had been compelled to accept terms of peace from General Kaufman, was troubled with a rebellious son, known to the Russians as Katti Tura, and in India called Abdool Mullik. This young prince, with the blessing of all the priesthood, had taken the leadership of a quasi-national party in Bokhara, comprising the numerous classes whose patriotism or fanaticism spurned accommodation of any kind with the invading infidels from Russia. The south-eastern provinces adjoining Afghanistan had enthusiastically responded to his warcry; and, with the help of the well-known guerrilla chief, Sadyk, operating in the north on the new Russian frontier about Samarcand, this modern Absalom had so nearly succeeded in deposing his father that, in November, 1868, General Abramoff had felt constrained to rescue and re-establish the Ameer by force of arms. Then the

(1) Kaye's "War in Afghanistan," vol. i. p. 370.

(2) The terms were-cession of the conquered territory; payment of £80,000 indemnity; protection and liberty of trade for all Russian subjects throughout Bokhara; and limitation of import duties on Russian goods to 24 per cent. ad valorem.

Prince had fled, first to Khiva and afterwards to Merv, labouring hard wherever he went to organise a league of Islam against the renegade Ameer and the accursed Russians. His movements up to this point had mattered nothing to British India. But from Merv he came into the Afghan territory of Bulkh, and there converted the asylum afforded him by our friend, Shere Ali, into a lever for raising rebellion across the Oxus among his compatriots and former associates in the Bokhariot territories of Shuhr-i-subz, Sherabad, and Hissar. Not this only, but, for the furtherance of his designs, he freely used the names of Shere Ali and of the British Government as his aiders and abettors. It would be superfluous to observe that the British Government was totally free from any complicity in these intrigues. Whether Shere Ali was equally guiltless is open to doubt. The Ameer of Bokhara had done him grievous injury in the late civil war by siding with his rivals, and the present enterprise afforded him a fair chance of repaying the Oosbeg Durbar in its own coin. Also, perhaps, he may have thought that, although no hint regarding the conduct expected of him in this affair had reached him from his patrons, the English, he could not wrongly interpret their unspoken wishes if he fostered a project avowedly intended to hamper the Russian advance. Be this as it may, the refugee pretender to the throne of Bokhara was allowed to have his own way while he stayed in Bulkh; and when, towards the close of last summer, he repaired to Cabul, he was received by Shere Ali with every sign of the most distinguished consideration. The menacing shadow thrown by the conjunction of these hostile forces across the southern border of Bokhara filled Ameer Moozuffer-ood-deen with disquietude. Looking to his Russian allies again for salvation, the Oosbeg monarch determined to send an embassy all the way to St. Petersburg. He placed his fourth and favourite son, a boy of twelve years, at the head of the mission; and he officially avowed to the local Russian commandant that his object was to inform the Ak Padshah, or White Emperor, of the danger in which he stood from the English and the Afghans. The Invalide Russe, a Government organ, made no secret of the Ameer's declaration. Its authoritative voice proclaimed to all the world that Bokhara had appeared before the Czar's tribunal to accuse the English of kindling war against herself and her Russian protectors. After such an announcement no one can be surprised to find an impartial1 witness reporting presently from St. Petersburg that "the ill-will with which England is regarded in Russia is slowly but steadily increasing," and that an impression is spreading in the Russian capital "that the complications in Central Asia must lead to a violent collision with the ruler of India." Pretty firstfruits these of our precious intimacy with Shere Ali!

To relieve the morbid state of our relations with the Northern

(1) The St. Petersburg correspondent of the Cologne Gazette.

Power, the doctors of diplomacy-a profession as grudgingly honoured by the British public as that of medicine is by healthy youth-again came on the stage. The London conferences between Lord Clarendon and Baron de Brunnow had been adjourned without any definite conclusion; and so, when the happy coincidence arose last autumn that Prince Gortschakoff, the Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs, and our own Foreign Secretary were both spending their so-called holidays in Germany, the one at Wiesbaden and the other at Baden Baden, what more natural than that the pair should arrange a meeting at an equidistant third point, Heidelberg, and there take up the thread of the unfinished negotiations? In past years it had been England's constant complaint, that while the Czar's Government at St. Petersburg disowned all ideas of further territorial aggrandisement in Central Asia, his Majesty's generals on the spot nevertheless proceeded unchecked to add conquest to conquest, thereby leaving us in helpless perplexity between Russian professions and Russian actions. Now the tables were turned, and the charge of inconsistency pointed against ourselves. Prince Gortschakoff could not get over the wide discrepancy between our pacific sentiments in London and our inimical doings, real or supposed, at Umballa and at Cabul. Lord Clarendon, however, was ready with a remedy. There happened at the time to be in Europe, on leave, a Bengal civil servant, Mr. T. D. Forsyth, who was understood to possess the entire confidence of the Indian Viceroy in respect of Central Asian affairs. It was, therefore, proposed and settled between the two high negotiators that the discussions begun in London and renewed at Heidelberg should be concluded at St. Petersburg, the English side being represented at the Russian capital, not by our ambassador alone, but by Sir Andrew Buchanan, with Mr. Forsyth added as plenipotentiary from Lord Mayo. In the meantime the path of our spokesmen was cleared for them by the despatch of urgent instructions from the Duke of Argyll to Lord Mayo, desiring that strong efforts should be made to induce Shere Ali to abstain from any such exaggeration of the duties of hospitality as might involve Afghanistan in complicity with Abdool Mullik's scheme against the Governments of Bokhara and Russia. Thus all that could be done was done to purge our hands of the dark stain they had unconsciously caught by contact with doubtful

company.

The St. Petersburg conference came off in October. Rightly to understand the circumstances which had to be handled, we must remember that the preceding twenty months had wrought a great change in the position not only of Russia and of England towards Bokhara and Afghanistan, but of Bokhara and of Afghanistan towards one another. Formerly Russia had been at war with Bokhara, and Bokhara had been vainly seeking assistance from

England against Russia; England had been keeping aloof from any responsibility in Afghanistan; while between the Ameer of Bokhara and the faction headed by Azim Khan, which was then dominant in Afghanistan, a cordial understanding had prevailed. Everything was now reversed. Russia was at peace with Bokhara, and Bokhara was claiming protection from Russsia against the supposed hostility of England. England was largely responsible for the conduct of Afghanistan; while between the Ameer of Bokhara and Shere Ali, the restored ruler of Afghanistan, there was hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness. Out of this new combination flowed a clear necessity that Russia, on behalf of her client, Ameer Moozuffer-ooddeen, and England, on behalf of her client, Ameer Shere Ali, should take steps for ensuring a maintenance of the peace between the neighbour kingdoms of Bokhara and Afghanistan. And the first step was to separate the antagonists by a definite boundary. What quickened our interest in this point to the highest degree was, that Russia had affirmed, and we had accepted, the axiom, that in regard to all territory within Bokhariot limits she must hold herself unfettered to act as she in the future might think fit. Hence the arguments at St. Petersburg revolved principally about the question whether Bulkh, the province intercepted between the river Oxus on the north and the mountains of Hindoo Khoosh on the south, should be assigned to Afghanistan or to Bokhara. Though held for a score of years past by the Afghans, it has always been a bone of contention for the two states. Eventually Russia accepted the principle of existing possession, recognised the Afghan tenure of Bulkh, and contented herself with securing the ferries of the Oxus for Bokhara. With this result the negotiations were brought to a final close; and nothing, I believe, has since occurred to modify the situation. The end obtained by our representatives seems as much as, under the circumstances, they could have hoped for; and it may, therefore, be considered creditable to them and satisfactory to England. But obviously it falls far short, I will not say of a settlement of the Central Asian question, which perhaps lies in the limbo of impossibilities, but of that neutralisation of Afghanistan, which, except for the intervention of the unlucky Durbar, might in some form have been accomplished for us at the beginning of the year. Further, we must note that Russia's concessions, if concessions they can be called, are not guaranteed to us by a single stroke of her pen. The agreement effected was purely conversational. Sir Andrew Buchanan read aloud to Prince Gortschakoff, General Miliutin (Minister for War), and M. Stremöukhoff (Chief of the Asiatic Department), the despatch reporting to his own Government the incidents and issue of the conference, and his audience assented verbally to its general correctness; but this was all. The corresponding despatch which Prince Gortschakoff ad

dressed to the Russian Ambassador in London, and of which, it was hoped, a copy would have been furnished to Lord Clarendon, proved, on receipt by Baron de Brunnow, to be of a confidential character, not intended for communication to the English Government. I do not presume—indeed, I have not even the wish-to question the good faith of Russia in this transaction. I merely regret the omission of a formality, without which the pledges she has given are, from a diplomatic point of view, incomplete.

Another consideration not to be overlooked is that Russia, while politely deferring to English views in respect of the northern boundary of Afghanistan, has not carried conciliation to the length of relaxing her aggressive efforts in other parts of Central Asia nearer to her present frontier. As for pausing in her southward march, she is rather striding forward with redoubled speed and energy. Quite recently she has sent an expedition across from the Caucasian to the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea to establish a fort in Krasnovodsk Bay, and from thence to construct a caravan road along the ancient bed of the Oxus to a convenient point on the modern river; and this is but the prelude to a campaign against Khiva in the spring. The annexation of Khiva will lead immediately to absorptions of Bokhariot territory higher up the Oxus, so that really we are now in a fair way to see verified an important event which hasty writers have often already anticipated, namely, a Russian occupation of the tête-de-pont at Charjooee. Further eastward other signs of movement are not wanting. Against the Afghan principality of Budukshan the Khan of Kokand, Khooda Yar Khan, who is a mere Russian cat's-paw, is said to have been making hostile demonstrations at Kolab: and in Eastern Toorkistan, unless the Attalik Ghazee speedily throws open to Russian trade his own markets and the old commercial communication with China, the independence of his state is threatened with summary extinction. Generally, Russia's policy at the present time appears animated by a resentful determination to meet our recent activity by increased activity of her own. She has entered with a will upon measures of aggression which, except for our step forward, she might have indefinitely postponed. Far from retarding, we have positively accelerated, the appearance of the Cossacks at Charjooee.

Having now seen that in India, in Persia, and above all in Europe, the consequences of the change in our Central Asian plans from quiescence to action are unmixed evil, my readers might fairly expect to find some solid compensation for these misfortunes in an ameliorated condition of Afghanistan. Surely the year cannot have terminated without "a strong Government," or at least its stable foundations, having been built among the Afghans. By this time surely Shere Ali must have done much to consolidate his power; and so the success of our protégé shall supply the amends owed us by