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1885.] the time of the Stolieteff mission, we are cognisant of a constant series of attempts made by Russia to draw the Ameer into the web of Central Asian intrigue. Unfortunately, during the whole of the intervening period, two agencies mutually counteractive of each other guided British diplomacy. At first we had Lord Mayo zealously endeavouring to confirm the Ameer in his alliance with us, to have definite bounds prescribed to the Russian advance, and to exclude the Czar's emissaries from Afghanistan; but we had also the Liberal Cabinet not merely giving Lord Mayo no encouragement, but aiding Russia to play the very game which she had in view. These positions were presently changed. The centre of activity and vigilance was transferred to her Majesty's Government, in which Lord Salisbury, as Indian Secretary, most inefficiently aided by the Foreign Office, under Lord Derby, strove energetically to exercise some control over Russian aggression. But Lord North brook's inaptitude and indifference more than neutralised all the efforts which the Marquis of Salisbury and the India Office could make to preserve Shere Ali from Russian entanglements. Lord Northbrook's Afghan policy, contributing as it directly did to the ruin and miserable fate of Shere Ali Khan and to the Afghan war, admits of no palliative explanation. He was something more than a mere clog upon the energies of a Government anxious to seek a stable settlement of this constantly vexing Central Asian Question. He quarrelled with the Ameer over the by no means vital question of the succession to the Afghan throne; irritated his Highness by interfering with his arrest of Yakoob Khan, for which sufficient grounds had been shown; and shook his confidence by negativing his request for a more definite understanding, in case of a Russian attack upon Afghanistan. The result was that Shere Ali was allowed, if not impelled, to drift towards Russian emissaries.

Lord Salisbury was not long in office when he foresaw that the danger of Russian aggression, which the recent seizure of Khiva had shown to be growing more and more imminent, demanded vigilant watching. In January 1875 he instructed the Government of India to "take measures with as much expedition as the circumstances of the case permit, for procuring the assent of the Ameer to the establishment of a British agency at Herat." How did Lord Northbrook proceed to carry out this injunction? By collecting evidence among Indian officials as to the improbability of the Ameer acceding to such a proposal, and by combating Lord Salisbury's orders in a despatch signed by himself and his counsel, all his colleagues being at that time adherents of the "masterly inactivity" school, except, perhaps, Lord Napier of Magdala; and at the same time urging that it would be time enough to take precautionary measures when the Russians had occupied Merv! Lord Salisbury, however, was not to be put off with such a reply, and in November of the same year he instructed the Indian Government to find occasion to send a special mission to Cabul to urge "very earnestly" upon the Ameer the desirability of stationing British officers on the frontier of Afghanistan. Again Lord Northbrook succeeded in shuffling out of his instructions on the score of doubts as to whether the Ameer would receive an envoy; and soon after his Excel-