The Cincinnati daily star. [volume] ([Cincinnati, Ohio]) 1875-1880, 1879-10-17
ENGLAND,s PREMIER.
The DBsrxeii OF 1s4e aad phs Bea-
n camkfiald Of 1S7a. ~. ~ l

CUf3AEohu " ISfOs -f.1ff
On the 23d of June, 1842, says the Liv-
erpool Daily Post, sdebate OH the war in
Afghanistan took place in the House of
Commons. Parliament was in i s first
session. In 184l Lord Melbourne had
dissolved in hopes of a majority, and find
ing a minority instead, resigned. Sir
Robert Peel was Prime Minister; the Adj
ministration, who had permitted the
Afghan war, were on trial at the bar OF
public opinion; and Lord Auckland, their
Governor-General, had just been dis
placed by Lord Ellenboroush.
The war itself was not over; the disas-
ter had come, but not the revenge; at tile
moment of the debate Sale and Pollock
were impatiently waiting at Jelalabad,
and Mott at Candahar, for orders to
advance on Cabul. The discussion took
place ON a motion for papers made by
Mr. Fl. J. Baillie, and seconded by Mr..
Disraeli. The lapse of thirty-eight
years has swept almost all the actors
from the stage, but the events are the
same, and follow one another in the same
sequence. g IT.
One actor remains, still playing the
most conspicuous parts; changed, yet un-
changed; willing to dare any inconsist-
ency for the sake of party triumph, and
thinking no sacrifice too great to
keep himself in the public eye. AT
ghanistan is what it was then; Rus
sia is what it was then, except
that her colossal weakness has
since been probed by the Crimean and
the Turkish wars; India is what it was
then, except that in gaining Sindh and
Punjab it has gained mountain from
tier. But Mr.. Disraeli said in 1912 what
advanced Liberals are saying now. "The
late Ministers of the Crown" he said,
"those fortunate gentlemen who pro-
claimed war without reason and prose-
cuted it without responsibility, would
have an opportunity tonight of telling
us why that war was entered into. He
wanted to know how a stronger barrier or
q more efficient frontier could be secured
than this which they possessed-which
nature seemed to have marked out as the
limit of great empire. But they want
ed a barrier. A barrier against whom?
Who was the unknown foe against whom
we waged these mysterious wars, to BAT
file whom we attacked chieftains who
were not our enemies, invaded countries
with which we had no quarrel, incurred
ruinous expenditure, experienced appall-
ing disaster? That foe could not be
RussiaT' And then, catching up
the word from an incautious in
terruption of Lord Palmerston's, he cried,
"Oh, then it was Russia" and proceeded
to argue that the aggressions Of Russia
against India, if real, ought to be met
and counteracted in Europe. And now,
after the lapse of almost forty years, the
cycle of affairs has come round again;
Britain has made another military prom.
enade to Cabul to put puppet on the
throne; her embassy has been massacred;
Yakoob Khan, like Shah Soojah, is weak
or faithless, and the British columns are
preparing to set out OH a similar errand
to those which Pollock and Sale and Mott
commanded. But the courageous assail
ant of the Afghan policy in 1889 is the
Prime Minister Of 1879, above all Other
men responsible for war precisely siini
lar to that which he eloquently de
nounced.