Lord Lawrence, besides an able speech on the Afghan policy
of recent years, gave a very firm and clear judgment on the great danger of annexing the border territories now belonging to independent mountaineers, on the large expenditure that will be necessary to subjugate and keep them down, and the vast addi- tional drain involved on the resources of India. He described the correspondence published as marked by unfair selection and unfair omission, and instanced the complete suppression of the fact that three Members of the Council of India, of great weight and authority, had opposed the new Afghan policy, in the most resolute way. Lord Derby, in a most dispassionate speech, defended the Afghan policy up to 1877, but strongly condemned the sequel, the excuse found for war. The Duke of Somerset again declared himself for the Government, and launched feeble jokes at the Ameer and Yakoob Khan; Lord Carnarvon described the whole Afghan policy as a policy discreditable to the British name, and dangerous to the British Empire ; while Lord Napier and Ettrick followed the Duke of Somerset into an apology for the Government and the war, adding on his own account that a binding treaty with Afghanistan was neccessary, in order to stand between the Government and the fluctuations of Parliamentary opinion. Lord Napier and Ettrick need not be afraid, under such a Government as the present, that Parliamentary opinion will be even a straw in its path.
