But let me not lose sight of the fact that this, though a very real plea on the part of the Government, is not the one on which they mainly rely. They have never pretended to be knights-errant for the righting of wrongs throughout the world. What contents them is the humbler _rôle_ of old-fashioned English statesmanship, which seeks first to make sure of the safety of our own empire and the promotion of our proper interests, doing what further good it can to other peoples incidentally in discharging the fair reasonable obligations which may in that way arise, nor disdaining any glory that so falls to it. But an enormous obligation of this sort was already on our shoulders--the preservation of India. We have a strict duty to two hundred millions of human beings in the East, and Lord Beaconsfield and his colleagues, who appeared to be the only public men in England who remembered this, were determined to discharge it. Anything and everything in their policy which may at first sight seem risky or belligerent is explained fully to every one who will keep that pressing need before his mind. It was this which made them purchase the Suez Canal shares, and strengthen their interference in Egypt; it was this that made them wish for a clearer understanding with the Ameer of Afghanistan. But so little did they go about matters with a high hand, that they most carefully humoured France with respect to Egypt, and at the very earliest moment that they could, they made a treaty with a new Afghan ruler. To try to make them appear responsible for what afterwards occurred at Cabul is the most shameless abuse of license on the part of an Opposition which parliamentary records can show. A Russian embassy had been installed in Cabul with no other guarantee for its safety than the word of a friendly Ameer, and our Envoy and his suite were sent thither under the very same guarantee. If we were not to be most dangerously overshadowed by the Russian example, an English embassy had to show its face in Cabul; and to say that our rulers either in Calcutta or in London should have foreseen the pusillanimous break-down of the Ameer and the consequent massacre of our brave countrymen is--well, it may be better not further to try to say what it is.