ENGLAND'S PREMUER.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XV, Issue 13, 15 January 1880, Page 6

ENGLAND'S PREMUER.

the disrlbm op 1842, and the beaconsfiei.d"oj? 1879, Ou (he 23rd of June, 1832, aaya (he Liverpool Daily Post, » <J. bite od the war jo Afghaui.s'.itu took plaas io iln ? loose of Common?. Parilaineot «vua in its lirat s.^ei'pn. la 1841 Lord Melborno had dissolved iv hopes of a uiujjiily, and fiadiug a minority iosteud, reaigus I.1 '. Sir Robert Peel was

Prime Minister ; the Administration who had permitted the Afghan war were on trial at the bar of public opinion ; an 1 Lord Auckland, their Governor-General, had just beea displaced by Lord Ellenborough. The war itself waß not over; the disaster had come, but not the revenge j at the moment cf tho debate Salb and Pollock were impatiently waiting at Jellalabtd, and Nott at Caudahar, for orders to advance on Cubul. The discussion took place ou a motion for papers made by H. J. Bsillie »nd seconded by Mr Disraeli. The lapse of 38 years has swept almost all the actors from the Bt*ge, but the events are the same, bnJ follow one another in the same sequence. One actor remains, still playing the most conspicuous parts : changed, yet unchanged ; willing td dare any inconsistency for the sake of party triumph, and thinking no sacrifice too great to keep himself in the public eye. Afghanistan is what it was then j Rußesia is what it was then, except that her coloasal weakness has since beeu prcv d by the Crimean and the Turkidh wars, • India U what it was then, except that in " gaining 6indh and the Puoj*ub it haa gained a mountain frontier. But Mr Disraeli Baid in 1842 what advanced Liberals are saying now. " The lata Ministers of the. Crown," he said, " those fortunate gentlemen who proclaimed w«r without reason anJ p O3ecuted it without responsibility, would have an opportunity tv-night of telling us why that war was entered into. He wanted to know how a stronger barrier or a more efficient frontier could be secured than this which they possessed — which nature seemed to have marked out as tbe limit of a great empire. But they wanted a barrier. A barrier againßt whom ? Who was the unknown foe against, whom we waged ihess mysterious wara, to bifid whom we at,;aokei lha chieftains woo were not our enemies, iuvaded countries with which we had noquarrol, incurred ruinous expenditure, experienced appalling disaster ? That foe could not be Russia ?" And then, catching jp the word from an incauiious interruption of JLord Pulmerstoa's, he cried, »• Oh, then it was RuaaU ?" and proaeeded to argue thut the aggressions of Russia against India, if real, ought to be mat and counteracted in Europe. And now, after a lapse of almost forty years, tha cycle oi : affairs has cooie arouud aguioj Britain has made »u----dther military prouienue to Cabul to put a puppet on the throne j her embassy has been massacred; Yakoob Khan, like Sbuh Soojah, ia weak, or faithless, and the British columns are preparing to set out oa a similar errand to those which Pollock and Sale and Nott comaiaudod. But tue'eourageous assailant, of (he Afghan policy ot 1839 is the Prime Minister of 1879j above all otber men responsible for a war precisely similar to that which be bo eloquently denounced.

R. Lucas & Soa, Printer*, Nelson,;

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