The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-10-12 00:00:00

SIR HENRY HAVELOCK AND LORD
LAWRENCE.

Some of Sir Henry Havelock's constituents having ob-
jected to the views he has expressed on the Afghan question,
Sir Henry writes to a Sunderland paper as follows :

I should not feel justified in assuming the position
that I have, in presence of the most solemn responsi-
bility that can rest upon a public man—the possibility
of that terrible scourge, war—if I were not fully con-
vinced that the maintenance of our position in India,
and consequently of our exclusive or predominant in.
fluence in Afghanistan, is not only unavoidable, but
defensible on every ground of justice, morality and right.
No man living ha.a a higher respect than .I. have for Lord
Lawrence, but there are two fallacies running through
his whole argument, which, in my humble opinion, en-
tirely vitiate it. Lord Lawrence says, in effect—" Accept
the Ameer's apology, and do not force a mission upon
him, and you will avert war." Undoubtedly we
should for the present. But how would that course
get rid of the Russian influence, permanently
established for all future time at the Court of Cabul ;
that is, at our very doors? Would it not leave it
there unmolested, admitted, and acknowledged, while
we were permanently excluded? Would Lord
Lawrence himself undertalse to govern India under
such conditions as these, with the political frontier of
Russia brought to our very gates? I am sure that he
could not, and that only his earnest desire to avert
war, in which I entirely agree with him, if it
only be possible, could have caused him to
overlook this consideration. That he has over-
looked it is obvious, for he makes no suggestion
whatever as to how Russian influence is to be
removed from Cabul. Even the recall of Lord Lytton
would not do that. Secondly, to talk of Shere Ali
being an independent prince, in the sense that Belgium
is independent of—and therefore nothing to—Germany
is to lose sight of the geographical facts of the case.
He is truly independent of us, and has, therefore, in
that sense, the right to do as he pleases, as long as his
acts do not affect our safety. But we are not indepen-
dent of him, in the sense that he undoubtedly holds
the keys of our house—lndia—and that he has no right
to transfer them to another Power. This gives us
the moral right to control his actions in that one
respect. This no man of common sense can deny.
And it is the second point that is omitted in Lord
Lawrence's argument. Lastly, let me say that I have
not advocated war, except as a last and unavoidable
resort. On the contrary, on the 25th of September,
when the London press of both parties had almost
unanimously declared that no further parley should
be held with Shere Ali, I came forward alone, and said
that before proceeding to extremities another chance
ought to be given him, and that he ought to have three
weeks more for further remonstrance and to reconsider
his position. I hope that the Indian Government
have acted upon this. I believe they have, and that
if they determine to resort at last to arms it will be
only when Shere Ali has again obstinately refused, as
he has done for the last two years, to give us an oppor-
tunity of stating our desire for a friendly alliance with
him personally by messenger.

On Tuesday night, Sir Henry Havelock, M.P., pre-
sided over a Baptist Missionary Meeting, in the
Leeds Town Hall, and in the course of his address re-
ferred to the Afghan Question. He said there were
some who seemed to think that the quarrel in which
we are involved is mainly a dispute on a point of
honour between ourselves and a native potentate. Now,
if it were a question of what was called resenting or
revenging an insult, we should take a part totally un-
worthy of a Christian nation if we allowed such a con-
sideration to be the main one that influenced us.
He believed that in our public, as well as in our
private life, we were as Christians bound totally to
ignore the resenting or revenging of an injury (Cheers.)
But the question, in his mind, presented altogether a
different phase. It was a question that affected them
in their missionary relations in a vital and prominent
manner. It was not a question between us and that
poor savage, with whom we might have some dispute,
but between us and influences that might shake or
disturb the tranquillity of our rule; and he thought
the first condition and necessity of the progress of that
work which they had assembled to advocate *as the
tranquillity of our rule, and that the quiet progress and
development of the country under it should not be
disturbed. This he would say, at all events, in praise
and laudation of our rule, that, though it might have
been deficient in many respects; thought it might have
fallen short of the standard which we set up for our-
selves, yet it had been honest, well-intentioned, and in
y those objects which the Gospel
a
keep before us—the well-being and the
said
the
id mainwe should
ded b
welfare of those whom we ruled. (Cheers.) He might
safely say that while in many respects we might have
been deficient, no rule that could possibly replace ours
was likely to be so favourable to the development of
Christianity. (Cheers.)