At the time when the martyrs Conolly and Stoddart were pining in cruel imprisonment, out of which they were afterwards delivered only by the headsman's axe, there happened to be in British territory a number of Bokharians, Khokandies, and other Central Asiatics, by whose arrest the lot of the English officers might have been alleviated, and their deliverance from death assured. In such cases Russia is wont to clear herself from the dilemma by the law of retaliation. England acts differently. She would play the high-minded part; and what has she gained by it? When I was in Bokhara, I heard how this very act of British generosity had missed its mark. England, said the Bokharians, dares not awaken the wrath of the Ameer of Bokhara: her weakness commands this moderation. Do the gentlemen in Calcutta imagine that the Afghans think otherwise? No; and they likewise say: protected by the might and greatness of Islam, our indigo and spice merchants, our camel-hirers, can venture unharmed on British ground; whilst not one infidel soul dares show himself among us. The same unpardonable weakness did the Viceroy of India show in 1857, when he was sent by Lord Canning to Peshawar to conclude, in conjunction with Edwardes, an offensive and defensive alliance against Persia with the then reigning Dost Mohamed Khan. At that time the Afghans were hard pressed; they wanted arms and money: the grey-haired Barukzie chief, attended by his sons, betrayed this fact in every word; and yet his demands were fulfilled in every point, without his yielding in the least to any of England's leading claims. Four thousand stand of arms, with bayonets, sabres, pouches, and twelve lakhs of rupees a year, were promised him, so long as England was at war with Persia. Of this large sum they received, even after the conclusion of peace at Paris, a considerable instalment; and yet the chief end of the negotiations at Kabul and Kandahar--the appointment of a permanent English representative--was not attained. Dost Mohamed Khan avowed, as Kaye tells us in his "History of the Sepoy War," that he would not take on himself the responsibility of such a step; that he could not protect English agents against Afghan fanaticism; that every step of theirs might compromise, &c., &c. I cannot comprehend how John Lawrence, one of the few men acquainted with Eastern character, could yield to the endearments of the grey Afghan wolf,--how he could believe those false apprehensions. If even Dost Mahomed could say that an English mission might tarry in peace at Kandahar, why could it not fare as well in Kabul? The British commissioners were greatly in the wrong if they doubted even for a moment the supreme power of the Afghan ruler. With a very little more persistency, the English, who then appeared as helpers in need, might have obtained not two but several posts of embassy. The Afghans would soon have grown used to their presence, and the diplomatic alliance, once made easy, would have