These reports were received by Sir Neville Chamberlain on 19th September, and on the same day the Viceroy ordered the Mission to attempt to force its way through the Khyber Pass. All Europe knows the sequel. The Afghan officer in charge of the fort at Ali Musjid declined to let the Mission pass; but, while obeying his orders firmly, behaved, as Major Cavagnari reported, "in a most courteous manner, and very favourably impressed both Colonel Jenkins and myself." And then was telegraphed home the shameless fiction that he had threatened to fire on Major Cavagnari, and that the majesty of the Empire had been insulted. It is hard to write with calmness when one has to speak of actions like these. It is, I trust, impossible for any Englishman to read of them without the keenest shame and remorse. What, however, we have to consider at present is their effect upon the native mind. There is not, we may be certain, a single native Court throughout India where they have not been discussed again and again; and there is but one conclusion which could be drawn from them. It is, that despite of all we may say, we allow neither pledges, promises, nor treaties to stand in our way, if we imagine that they are in opposition to the material interests of the moment. There is not a native prince in India but will have seen the fate of his descendants in the doom which has fallen upon the unhappy Shere Ali. It is a fate which no loyalty can avert--which no treaties are powerful enough to ward off. Shere Ali was loyal; Shere Ali was fenced about by treaty upon treaty: he and his father had been our friends and faithful allies for more than forty years; but none the less, the English Government no sooner coveted his territory than they determined upon his destruction. For eighteen months was that Government engaged in secretly weaving the toils around its victim, and when at last it struck, it struck with a calumny upon its lips. Think, again, of the anger and the bitterness awakened by this war in the hearts of our Moslem subjects. A few months previously, the English Government had made appeal to their sympathies on the ground that it was upholding the integrity and independence of the Sultan's dominions. They now saw this very Government engaged in the unprovoked invasion of an independent Muhammadan State. They made no concealment of their feelings; and when Major Cavagnari and his companions were murdered at Kabul, the Moslems of Upper India openly expressed their satisfaction. It is not too much to say, that if Sir Salar Jung had not been ruling in Hyderabad, the outbreak at Kabul would have been instantly followed by a similar outbreak in the Deccan. Sir Richard Temple, writing from Hyderabad in 1867, thus describes the state of feeling existing there:--