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Government to oppose the Russians, such opposition cannot take place without the co-operation of the disciplined troops of the British Government."
Again, he said—
"Should the British Government intentionally overlook this matter with a view to temporizing for a few days, it is their own affair; but I will represent my circumstances in a clear form in detail without time-serving hesitation." My lords, the Ameer represented his views through an influential Minister at great length to the noble earl at their interviews; that Minister got promises from the Viceroy which did not conciliate the Ameer. He considered that they did not in any degree tend to secure to him the assistance he wanted. Whoever may be to blame for it—and I do not now say that any one was to blame for it—from that time the Ameer distrusted England and began to look somewhere else. We have several proofs of the change in his mind. Take that letter in which he replied to the letter from the noble earl and ironically speaks of the delight at the arrival of that time when there is no danger of the peace being broken, and therefore no necessity for the precautions against such an occurrence. We have it on the authority of the noble earl and of a Minister that the Ameer took no notice of the request made of him in respect of British officers, though he was quite ready to accede to that before the conference with Syed Noor Mahomed in 1873. He did not let Mr. Forsyth pass through the country, and he did not communicate to the Viceroy his intention to choose a successor, but reported that his choice had been made. We find now that in his most recent letter he still strongly complains of the conduct of the Viceroy in interfering between him and his son as an indication of unfriendly feeling. His complaint is not only, however, of the interference, but of the manner in which it was effected. I admit that for the Ameer to have promised his son a safe conduct and then to have seized him and cast him into prison was a dastardly and a wicked thing; but what the noble earl did was not that which Lord Mayo did in reference to the Ameer's son—address him in a private letter. The noble earl directed the native envoy to go to Shere Ali and read him a lecture. Pride and haughtiness are character-
