NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE most important news of the week comes from Calcutta. The Times' correspondent there, who is usually well informed as to official plans, states that the Government is understood to have insisted on the Ameer of Cabul receiving a permanent Resi- dent in his capital. It is intimated, moreover, that the "Indian Press "strongly advises the collection of a force upon the frontier, with orders to march if the British demand is refused. It is doubtful if this course has yet been sanctioned, but of course, if the British Government has made such a demand, it is intended to support it in some way. Shere Ali will certainly, for the reasons given elsewhere, refuse the application, if he dares, and may think that he can, at all events, refuse until troops appear. If he yields, we shall gain nothing, for an Embassy in Cabul could effect nothing that could not be accomplished without it ; while if he holds out, we shall in a very few months drift into a war with Afghanistan. That is not specially dangerous, but what is dangerous is to plant an army beyond the Suleiman, where in the event of a rising in the Punjab, it would be cut off from India almost as completely as if it were in another planet. The whole affair is another evidence of the Ministerial timidity about India, which was not conquered, and will not be kept, by fussy fidgetting.
