Lord Cranbrook's reply was very feeble. He merely repeated his
old charge that Lord Northbrook and the Duke of Argyll, cannot be trusted to know the drift of what they themselves did in 1873, and that to his mind they did, in effect, refuse to the Ameer of Afghanistan that assurance of support which they declare, and which the Ameer's own Afghan envoy also declared,. that they most frankly gave. If Lord Cranbrook insists on holding a purely subjective view in the matter, we need not grudge it him, but he cannot fairly insist that his subjective view was shared by the Afghan ruler who expressed one precisely opposite. Lord Cranbrook further stated that when the conferences with the Afghan envoys were closed in 1877, the British Government, far from hoping to drive the Ameer into the arms of Russia, hoped he would come round and renew his friendship with us ; but if so, they certainly went about their work very strangely, by withdrawing their native envoy, and breaking off all public relations with Afghanistan. Lord Beaconsfield closed the debate in a short speech, of which the key-note was that we were now in possession of "the great gates of India," which he trusted we should never again surrender,—a noble phrase, which, no doubt, he re- gards as popular enough to filter down to the constituencies. He did not, however, explain that these "great gates " are isolated posts, only accessible by long and straggling avenues, through a generally hostile country, each side of which avenues must be made good against possible attack. The permanent occupation of such gates as these does not make their owner stronger, but weaker, at the other end of the avenues by which they axe approached.
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