Asia become conterminous.

Then will it be impossible for England ever to oppose Russia in Europe, because fear of complications in Asia will paralyze her. Then the tenure of India will depend on concessions, for which that country is not yet ripe, or on a reign of terror, either course ending in the withdrawal of British administration from, at any rate, Northern India. Yet it is "Fas ab hosti doceri," and when Prince Gortschakoff urged the establishment of a neutral zone with autonomous states, including Badakhshan, he advocated a policy that would have conduced to centuries of peace and to the preservation of various ancient forms of indigenous Oriental civilization by interposing the mysterious blanks of the Pamirs and the inaccessible countries of the Hindukush between Russian and British aggression.

Instead of this consummation so devoutly to be wished, and possible even now, though late, if action be taken under good advice and in the fulness of knowledge, either Power— "Thus with his stealthy pace

With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design

Moves like a ghost."

If ever the pot called the kettle black, it is the story of Anglo-Russian recriminations. Russian intrigues are ever met by British manœuvres and Muscovite earth-hunger can only be paralleled by English annexations. Here a tribe is instigated to revolt, so that its extermination may "rectify a boundary," there an illusory scientific frontier is gradually created by encroachments on the territories of feudatories accused of disloyalty, if not of attempts to poison our agents. By setting son against father, brother against brother and, in the general tumult, destroying intervening republics and monarchies, Anglo-Russian dominions are becoming conterminous. Above all

"There's not a one of them but in his house

I keep a servant fee'd."

And it is this unremitting suspicion which is alike the secret of present success and the cause of eventual failure in

wresting and keeping Asiatic countries and of the undying hatred which injured natives feel towards Europeans.

The attempt to obtain the surrender of the Takk fort, and of the Takk valley, a short and easy road to the British District of Kaghán, has merely indicated to Russia the nearest way to India, just as we forced her attention to Hunza and are now drawing it to Chitrál. David Urquhart used to accuse us of conspiracy with Russia in foreign politics. Lord Dufferin in his Belfast speech sought the safety of India in his friendship with M. de Giers and his Secretary popularized Russia in India by getting his work on "Russia" translated into Urdu. Certainly the coincidence of Russian as well as British officials being benefited by their respective encroachments, Commissions, Delimitations, etc., would show their "mutual interest" to consist in keeping up the farce of "Cox and Box" in Central Asia, which must end in a tragedy.

As an official since 1855, when I served Her Majesty during the Russian War, I wish to warn the British public against the will-o'-the-wisp of our foreign policy, especially in India. I can conceive that a small, moral and happy people should seek the ascendancy of its principles, even if accompanied by confusion in the camps of its enemies. I can understand that the doctrines of Free Trade, of a free Press, a Parliamentary rule, the Anti-Slavery propaganda and philanthropic enterprises generally, with which the British name is connected, should have been as good as an army to us in every country of the world in which they created a Liberal party, but these doctrines have often weakened foreign Executive Governments, whilst "Free Trade" ruined their native manufacture. What I, however, cannot understand is that a swarming, starving and unhappy population should seek consolation for misery at home in Quixotism abroad, especially when that Quixotism is played out. If bread costs as much now as in 1832, although the price of wheat has fallen from 60s. to 27s. a quarter, it is, indeed, high time that we should lavish no

more blood and treasure on the stones of foreign politics, but that we should first extract the beam from our own eye before we try to take out the mote from the eye of others.

What these foreign politics are worth may be inferred from the growing distrust on the Continent of British meddlesomeness or from what we should ourselves feel if even so kindred a race as the Prussians sought to monopolize British wealth and positions. It would be worse, if they did so without possessing a thorough knowledge of the English language or of British institutions. Yet we are not filled with misgivings when our Indian Viceroys or Secretaries of State cannot speak Hindustani, the lingua franca of India or when an Under-Secretary has a difficulty in finding Calcutta on the Map.

India should be governed in the fulness of knowledge and sympathy, not by short cuts. It should not be the preserve of a Class, but the one proud boast of its many and varied peoples. When Her Majesty assumed Her Indian title, it was by a mere accident, in which pars magna fui, at the last moment, that the Proclamation was translated to those whom it concerned at the Imperial Assemblage. This superciliousness, wherever we can safely show it, the cynical abandonment of our friends, the breach of pledges, the constant experimentalizing on the natives, the mysteriousness that conceals official ignorance, is the enemy to British rule in India, not Russia. A powerful Empire can afford to discard the acts of the weak, and should even show its hand." India should be ruled by a permanent Viceroy, a member of the Royal family, not by one whom the exigencies of party can appoint and shift. When in 1869 the Chiefs and people of the Panjab deputed me to submit their petition that H.R.H. the Prince of Wales be pleased to visit India, it was because they felt that it was desirable in the interests of loyalty to the Throne. If it be true that H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught is going out as the next Viceroy, I can only say that the longer his admirers miss him in England, the better for India, which

requires its best interests to be grouped round a permanent Chief.

Dec. 7th. As for the wanton aggression on Chilás which never gave us the least trouble, as all our Deputy Commissioners of Abbottabad can testify, it is a sequel of our interference last year with Hunza-Nagyr. The Gilgit Residency has disturbed a peace that has existed since 1856 and now continues in its suicidal policy of indicating and paving the nearest military road to British territory to an invader. In November 1891 I wrote of the possibility of driving even the peaceful, if puritanical, Chilásis into aggression and now the Times telegraphs the cock-and-bull story of the raft, enlarged in to-day's Times telegram into an attack of the Chilási tribesmen aided by those of Darêl (another newly-created foe) on our convoy proceeding from Bunji-the extreme frontier of Kashmir according to the treaty of 1846—to Dr. Robertson's Camp at (now) Talpenn (spelt “Thalpin" in the telegram) and (then) Gôr, with, of course, the inevitable result of the victory of the heroism of rifles against a few old muskets and iron wrist-bands (which the Chilásis use in fighting).

There are still other realms to conquer for our heroes. There is the small Republic of Talitsha of 11 houses; there is Chilás itself which admits women to the tribal Councils and is thus in advance even of the India Office and of the Supreme Council of the Government of India; there is the Republic of Muhammadan learning, Kandiá, that has not a single fort; there is, of course, pastoral Dareyl; there are the Koli-Palus tribes, agricultural Tangir and other little Republics. Soon may we hear of acts of "treachery," "disloyalty," etc. from Hôdur and Sazîn, till we shoot down the supposed offenders with Gatlings and destroy the survivors with our civilization. I humbly protest against these tribes being sacrificed to a mistaken Russophobia. I have some claim to be heard. I discovered and named Dardistan and am a friend of its peoples. Although my life was attempted more than once by agents

of the Maharaja of Kashmir, I was the means of saving that of his Commander-in-Chief, Zoraweru, when on his Dareyl expedition. This is what the Gilgit Doctor did in 1866 and what the Gilgit Doctor should do in 1892. This is how friendship for the British name was, and should be, cemented, and not by shedding innocent blood or by acts worthy of agents provocateurs.

As for the "toujours perdrix" of the Afghan advance from Asmár (Times, December 8th) it is better than the telegram in the Standard of the 2nd December 1892, in which the Amir makes Sher Afzul Ruler of Kafiristan, a country that has yet to be conquered, and which says "Consequently there is now no buffer-state between Afghanistan and the Pamirs"!! "Goods carried from India to Russian Turkestan, through Chitral and Kafiristan, will pay duty to the Amir." Such journalistic forecasts and geography are inevitable when full and faithful official information, such as it is, is, in a free country, not obtainable by Parliament, the Press, and the Public. Reuter's Central Asian Telegrams, though meagre, are more correct than those of certain correspondents of the Times and Standard.

Dec. 9th.-Dr. Robertson has, at last, entered Chilás. and found it deserted. Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant, The Times Correspondent now admits that Chilás has no connexion with Chitrál, but he still gives us "Tangail" for "Tangir," and omits the name of the member of the ex-royal family of Yasin, who is supposed to have stirred up against us the tribes of Darel and "Tangail," among whom he has resided for years. This is one of the Khushwaqtias, though not the loyal chief to whom I have referred, and who has rendered us good service. So we have now an excuse for entering Tangir also. In the meanwhile, the Russian Svet points out that the Russians "would only have to march some 250 miles along a good road to enter Cashmere," "since it is impossible to invade India viâ Afghanistan." Yet are we nibbling at the Amir