'L'entreprise des Anglais dans l'Inde mérite que tous les amis de l'humanité et de la civilisation en souhaitent le succès. . . Mais, tout en l'admirant, on ne peut se défendre d'une appréhension, que de récents événements justifient de plus en plus, en s'accumulant chaque jour. L'Angleterre pourra-t-elle achever son œuvre? La paix, qui lui est indispensable, lui sera-t-elle laissée pendant le temps nécessaire? Un voisin ne viendra-t-il pas troubler et empêcher l'exécution de ses desseins magnanimes? Aucune puissance ne tentera-t-elle de remplacer le gouvernement britannique, au risque d'échouer là où il réussit, aux applaudissements sincères de tous les esprits éclairés et impartiaux? Sur une telle question, le doute n'est pas permis. Ce serait fermer volontairement les yeux à la lumière que d'hésiter à répondre. C'est l'empire russe, qui seul peut songer, dans un avenir plus ou moins lointain, à déposséder les Anglais et à se substituer à eux dans l'administration de l'Inde.'

M. Saint-Hilaire then proceeds to sketch rapidly the political and military history of Russia and England in Central Asia during the last fifty years. His brief account of our adventures in Afghanistan is clear and correct, except that he shares the ordinary error of greatly exaggerating our military losses in the disastrous retreat from Kabul in January, 1842.* He describes the course of events and the series of steps that have carried Russia eastward across Asia during the present century, until she now presses with multiplied momentum upon the somewhat feeble political barriers interposed between her outposts and the Indian frontier. He calculates the resources of the Russians for an organised attack, he traces their line of advance into Afghanistan, and marks its stages. He enlarges upon the might and magnitude of the Russian empire in terms and by comparisons that may well strike the very susceptible imagination of Orientals, among whom an empire is but the house kept by a strong man armed until a stronger cometh. The 'incontestable reality,' according to M. Saint-Hilaire, is that we are confronting in Asia the greatest and most populous

* M. Saint-Hilaire writes: La garnison anglaise de Caboul, forte de 'six mille hommes, avait été forcée de se rendre après un long siège et avait 'été massacrée. Le reste de l'armée, assailli dans sa retraite sur l'Indus, 'avait perdu son effectif entier de vingt mille hommes environ.' (Introduction, p. 26.) We actually lost some four thousand five hundred fighting men, and about twelve thousand camp followers and civilians, including women and children. In the same way, M. Darmesteter, usually so accurate, writes that we lost 15,000 men on that occasion; and he falls into the not uncommon error of supposing that the disaster took place in the Khyber Pass, in the country of the Afridis, whereas the actual scene was between Kabul and Jelalabad.

empire of the civilised world, with an enormous army, and a nationality that can be deeply excited by religious and patriotic enthusiasm. Such is the Power that directly threatens India and Turkey; Austria and Germany are in almost equal danger, and the independence of Europe is said to depend upon a coalition of these two states with England to stay the torrent of Russia's southward irruption, and to save Constantinople. It is some relief to find that we share our perils with companions that might be good at need; although, if M. Saint-Hilaire's warnings and forebodings are well founded, Englishmen in India may form some idea of the feelings with which their ancestors heard of the coming Spanish Armada, just three centuries ago. In that reminiscence, however, they will find nothing very disheartening: the rough narrow seas served us well in the sixteenth century, and the Afghan deserts and defiles have yet to be crossed by a great land army. Russia's march through Asia has hitherto been irresistible, because it has been practically unopposed; whereas in Afghanistan she would find her path stopped by an obstacle very different from any that she has yet met upon that continent. She would have to force a country of great natural strength, held by martial tribes and fortified by English skill; and in the most fortunate circumstances she must lose many battalions, and spend many millions, before her commanders can hope to look down from the Suleiman range or the Biluch hills upon the valley of the Indus.

We are not, in short, disposed to lose heart over M. Saint-Hilaire's formidable anticipations, and we think that threatened nations, like threatened men, live long. But we agree that any movement of Russia from her present stations on the Murghab and Oxus rivers may compel us to some steps for giving finality to our own policy with regard to Afghanistan. That policy has been subject to wide oscillations in the last fifty years. The disastrous episode of the first occupation of Kabul had its counterpart in the total failure of the Russian expedition against Khiva in 1839. Both nations made simultaneously a premature and precipitate stride forward into the central regions of Asia, and both retired with heavy discomfiture. For rash attempts to set up an Afghan king the English then substituted the principle of absolute non-intervention in dynastic struggles. This principle was proclaimed by Sir John Lawrence in 1867, when it was labelled with the well-known phrase of 'masterly inactivity.' Sir Stafford Northcote explained to

Parliament that England had no policy in Central Asia,' and Mr. Grant Duff told the House of Commons (rightly) that what was wanted was a quiet Afghanistan, just as we 'wanted a quiet Burmah,' an illustration to which recent transactions have since given a new significance. For some five and thirty years Afghanistan was really left to itself; but in this interval we twice interposed between the Russians and Constantinople, with the effect, on both occasions, of accelerating, instead of retarding, the advance of Russia towards our Eastern possessions, where she perceived an opening in our armour. Then came again, in 1878, an abrupt forward movement; we dethroned two Amirs, set up their successor, and drew back once more after establishing our advanced posts of observation towards Kandahar. Now at last those events seem near at hand of which the distant shadows alarmed and misled Lord Auckland so many years ago. For in the present aspect of Afghan affairs, internal and external, we can scarcely hope to escape the necessity of some authoritative interposition whenever the next acute crisis supervenes; nor is it possible to rely upon the durability of the existing régime, although it has now given seven years of comparative quiet to Afghanistan.

The policy of 1880, which placed the Amir Abdurrahıman at Kabul, has accomplished its immediate object. The whole country is now under a strong ruler, who commands a well appointed army, which he has used for breaking the power of the free tribes, and for establishing his authority with unrelenting severity. All the leading nobles and tribal chiefs of note are dead or in exile; and although the stronger clans still keep up a guerilla warfare in their hills, they cannot long resist his regular battalions. His cousin Ishak Khan, who was at first his leading adherent, and who governed his northern provinces for him well and faithfully, has just been driven into revolt, has been defeated and has fled into exile across the Oxus. But on the Amir's life depend the fortune of his family and perhaps the integrity of his kingdom, because the whole force and political cohesion of the government are embodied in his person. He is building palaces at Kabul and laying up treasures in the stronghold of Badakshan; he may have some hope that his sons, of whom little is known, may succeed him, although in Afghanistan an undisputed succession would be an amazing and unprecedented novelty. It is much more probable that every Afghan, from the Amir down to the Ghilzai highlander, regards the present reign of tranquil

lity caused by terror as a mere interlude, and that no man is prepared to say who will come on the stage after Abdurrahman leaves it. The natural consequence of the death of a powerful Afghan prince is a fierce struggle for the mastery among his kinsfolk, such as ensued upon the decease of Dost Mahomed twenty-five years ago. But the sons of the Amir Sher Ali, whose claims are strongest and most popular, are detained in India and Persia under political surveillance; and their energies are said to have been depressed by misfortune and long banishment. With the prospect before them of a vacant throne and a masterless kingdom, with a country which the Amir's policy of breaking the strength and fighting spirit of the free tribes has laid open to the next invader, with a deep-seated and impartial mistrust both of England and Russia, it is no wonder if the Afghans themselves believe the future of their nation to be darker than ever.

The high and prominent importance that belongs to the relations between England and Russia in Asia must be our excuse for dwelling so long in this article upon the state of affairs in Afghanistan. For, although we may not hold with M. Saint-Hilaire that upon this point hang the destinies of India, we may admit that it is influencing the whole external policy of the British nation. But it is now time that we should return to India itself, where indeed, although we shall find sufficient cause for reasonable solicitude, we enter upon a different order of considerations. M. SaintHilaire's tone becomes more hopeful and congratulatory as he describes the vigour and high-spirited determination with which, in his opinion, the English are pushing on the 'prodigious enterprise' of bringing India permanently within the circle of civilised nations. He devotes several chapters to the study of our administrative system, and of the profound and comprehensive effect that it is producing upon the manners and morals of the people. His careful study of the papers bearing on his subject has led him to conclusions upon which our nation may well be congratulated. Nevertheless his tone of genuine admiration is still interrupted here and there by a note of misgiving, by a query as to the durability of a civilisation so rapidly constructed, by an involuntary comparison between the smooth and prosperous appearance of India within our borders, and the rough menacing aspect of affairs outside. The feeling is natural enough, for the contrast is, in truth, as striking and abrupt as is the actual transition from the Afghan hills to

the plains of India; and nowhere, perhaps, in the world are civilisation and barbarism in such close contact as along the British border line at the mouth of the Khyber Pass. Immediately across this line may be seen in the Afridi tribes a complete and living facsimile of the picture drawn by Hobbes of man in his aboriginal condition of perpetual war, under no government at all, in constant danger of ending, by a violent death, a life that is 'poore, nasty, brutish, ' and short.' A few steps back into British India bring us among men of the same tribe and traditions, dwelling without arms in ease and security, pleading before regular law courts, reading in English schools, and taking their share in all the business and duties of a fairly civilised society. M. Darmesteter gives an accurate and very amusing description of the manners, feelings, and ways of life of the tribes who live on both sides of our Peshawar frontier, and who are much vexed by the problem of living up to ideas of Afghan honour without breaking British law. And as the traveller moves down into the interior of India, the signs of settled civilisation multiply so fast that he might be excused if he at first failed to discern the premonitory symptoms of latent complications indicated by Baron Hübner's friendly warning to us. Upon this subject, however, no inquirer would be long left without ready and copious explanations. One party would assure him that social and political changes are being pushed on much too fast; another would declare that progress is everywhere far too slow. A large majority among natives would say that a government which alters, levels, and modernises everything must expect trouble; an important and ardent minority would denounce the immobility of a reactionary bureaucracy that is afraid to move with the times. The impartial inquirer would soon perceive that these contradictory views are the natural outcome of an anomalous situation at a period of transition; that the Afghan frontier dilemma, between the old ways and the new, more or less exists everywhere; and that the latter stages of England's enterprise in India are beset by difficulties no less arduous than the rough obstacles she had to surmount at an earlier period.

Of these difficulties Lord Dufferin has had his full share. The question of finance lies at the root of all regular government; and though among natives of India opinions may be divided as to the necessity of improving the quality of our administration, there is remarkable unanimity in their reluctance to pay for it by increased taxation. Yet adminis