The Duke of Westminster and a large body of well-known
gentlemen have addressed a memorial to Lord Beaconsfield,. praying him to inquire into the truth of the accounts received of executions in Afghanistan. To this the Premier rejoined, in. the regular evasive style, through a secretary :—" The memorial which you forwarded on the part of the signatories has been considered by Lord Beaconsfield; but before sending you a more definite reply, he desires me to request you to furnish him with the several pieces of evidence upon which its allegations are based." And the Premier complained in Parliament that the memorialists had sent him no " documentary " evidence. As a matter of fact, there is documentary evidence, and official documentary evidence—though, of course, it may be false— namely, public letters from Cabal to the Daily News and other journals, transmitted under a censorship so strict that General Roberts must be taken to have read them himself. Lord Beaconsfield, however, as Sir Arthur Hobhouse has shown in a letter to the Times, was asked for an inquiry, not for a decision. Would he have asked for " documentary evidence " before he• inquired into the Guy Faux plot ?
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