'On Tuesday, December 10th, I spoke in the debate, doing my best to calm down a revolt which had broken out below the gangway against Hartington for not having countenanced an amendment to the Address, and for having made on the Address a speech supposed to be too friendly to the Government. 'On the other hand, Edward Jenkins, [Footnote: Author of _Ginx's Baby_.] who called himself a Radical, and who was a strong Imperialist, was busy drawing amendments which were mere pretexts for voting with the Government, and I noted in my diary my despair at finding such men blaming Hartington for going too far, when Chamberlain was blaming him for not going far enough. While I was speaking on the 10th Wilfrid Lawson passed to me his copy of the Orders of the Day, bearing at the head the lines: '"Lord Salisbury once was the 'master of jeers, But now he has met with disaster; For, on reading the Blue Book, it plainly appears That Giers is Lord Salisbury's master." The lines were excellent, and I burst out laughing in the middle of my speech. Giers was the new Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs, and the phrase quoted in Lawson's first line was, of course, an abridgment of Mr. Disraeli's memorable quotation from Shakespeare about his colleague, and the four lines formed a summary of my speech.... [Footnote: On August 5th, 1874, Disraeli, speaking in the debate on the Lords' disagreement to certain amendments made by the House of Commons in the Public Worship Regulation Bill, had described Lord Salisbury as "a great master of gibes and flouts and jeers."] It came out clearly in these debates that Northcote had not expected war, and that Lord Lytton had acted directly under the instructions of the Prime Minister, and had not only expected, but intended it. I called Lord Lytton in my speech "a diplomatist rather than a Viceroy, a Secretary of Legation rather than a ruler of men." This was not intended for abuse, but to bring the House to see him as I had seen him in my knowledge of him as Secretary at Paris, in order to show that he had been sent out to India to be an instrument--obedient to a policy dictated to him from home.' [Footnote: Sir Charles had been staying with the Commander-in-Chief at Madras, General Haines, afterwards Field-Marshal, in January, 1876, when the news came of Lord Lytton's appointment as Governor-General. 'The old soldier absolutely refused to credit the information, being a strong Conservative, and unwilling to admit that Mr. Disraeli could have been guilty of so extraordinary a mistake.'] This Afghan War, so lightly begun, and fraught with so much disaster, was the first of a series of events which sapped the credit of the Government that had triumphantly claimed to bring back "peace with honour" from the Congress of Berlin.