Lord Northbrook made a speech in the debate on the
Bill for raising the 22,000,000 which is to be lent to India without interest, by way of financial help to the Afghan campaign, which violently excited Lord Cranbrook and Lord Cairns. In that speech he reopened the policy of the war, and quoted Sir Henry Rawlinson's remarkable article in the Nineteenth Century, showing how much more our new frontier will cost us than our old one ; how incomplete the step we have taken, is ; how, in spite of the Treaty, we must occupy Candahar ; how even then we should only have made a beginning ; how we may have to guarantee Persia as we have guaranteed Asia Minor, besides settling the dis- turbances in Afghanistan, and holding ourselves ready to resent the Russian occupation of Merv. This speech of Lord Northbrook's was a great trial to Lord Cranbrook, who positively denounced Lord Northbrook for not giving him notice of his speech. And Lord Cairns, who followed, was quite as testy. The truth is that it must be a great disappointment to the Government ta find that they have acted on the advice of a perfectly insatiable school, who only use their concessions to prove the need of greater concessions still. You might as well try to pave the Slough of Despond, as try to satisfy the Indian statesmen who have got Russia-on-the-brain.
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