hope a petition was presented to him for redress of grievances. The imperial answer was the despatch of an enormous army to avenge the 'horrid treason' of the Poles; and ere the end of the succeeding year, after the most horrible atrocities, the bulletin 'Order reigns in Warsaw' was communicated to the appalled and sickened civilized communities of Christendom. For a time the struggle was kept up in the swamps and inaccessible recesses with which Poland abounds. But

no wished-for armed assistance came from abroad; and Austria and Prussia looked coldly on as Nicholas pushed his work of vengeance. At last he fairly trampled out the revolution. The prisoners were sent to the Siberian mines, noble ladies were married by force to common soldiers, infants too young to know anything of their nativity or its locality were transported to Russia to be Russianized; the universities were closed, the constitution was abrogated, and the very use of the Polish language prohibited. Western Europe, the while, gave sympathy and consolation; and large pecuniary contributions for the aid of the suffering Polish exiles were raised in England.

The Treaty of Vienna gave to England and France a perfect and incontestable right to interfere by force of arms in defence of Poland, if they thought fit. It has been stated, but upon authority which, although respectable, cannot as yet be accepted without further confirmation, that the Government of Louis Philippe urged upon that of William IV. the joint undertaking of warlike operations. It has also been alleged that Lord Grey, ere his death, acknowledged that the greatest error of his administration had been his refusal to act with France in behalf of Poland. And exactly the same incident is stated of Charles James Fox with regard to the first partition of Poland. It is impossible, in the absence of full documentary evidence, to determine the truth of this allegation. The fact was that neither France nor England, although both maintaining the right of interference, did do so otherwise than by remonstrance and diplomatic entreaty.

7. THE OPIUM WAR IN CHINA.

One of the chief branches of the East-India Company's trade has been that in opium, grown by them in Bengal, and largely exported to China. When their trading charter expired, in 1834, private merchants took up the enterprise, buying the opium from the Company, and conveying it to China. This was a smuggling traffic, for it was illegal by the Chinese law. The English Government sent out officers, called Superintendents, to regulate commercial intercourse between our traders and the Chinamen. It was distinctly enjoined that they should exercise no political functions; and when Lord Palmerston sent out Lord Napier as 'Chief Superintendent,' he expressly directed him not to pass the Bocca Tigris, or mouth of the Canton river, in a ship of war, as 'the Chinese authorities have invariably made a marked distinction between ships of war and merchantmen, in regard to the privilege of intercourse.' Unfortunately, these and similar injunctions were disregarded. The rapacity of the English smugglers, in combination with the headstrongness of the English semi-diplomatic representatives from the highest to the lowest, enkindled a war-if indeed a war it could be called-to which the term massacre was much more applicable.

Matters had gone on with tolerable smoothness up till 1838, when the opium smuggling had reached such a height that the Chinese Government resolved to redouble its exertions to abolish it. Matters began to look serious, and the English Government, after a long and far from blameless delay in sending any instructions to the Chief Superintendent, Captain Elliot, who had written urgently home for instructions and assistance, at length sent out intelligence of their determination to leave the opium-smugglers to meet the natural consequences of their behaviour, and declining to intervene in any way in their behalf. Unfortunately this wise decision came too late. Hostilities had broken out. A certain quantity of opium lying in an English trader's warehouse was seized, and our

factories were blockaded until all the opium in the possession of the English smugglers was given up. This was done, and immediately Captain Elliot sent to the Governor-General of India for men-of-war. This was in direct contravention of the declaration of Lord Palmerston, which had just arrived in the Chinese seas, that 'Her Majesty's Government cannot interfere for the purpose of enabling British subjects to violate the laws of the country to which they trade. Any loss, therefore, which such persons may suffer in consequence of the more effectual execution of the Chinese laws on this subject, must be borne by the parties who have brought that loss on themselves by their own acts.'

The war was fairly inaugurated. The English destroyed a fleet of junks, took the island of Chusan, slew a number of Chinese. At last, a year after Lord Palmerston had left the Foreign Office, a treaty was concluded by which the Chinese paid a large indemnity, opened to English ships and traders four of their chief ports, and ceded to England the island of Hong Kong.

8. THE INVASION OF AFGHANISTAN BY THE ENGLISH IN 1838.

Although it was by means of English money and the assistance of British officers that the young Shah had been established on the throne of Persia, he prized the Russian alliance more highly. So far back as 1835, Mr. Ellis, our envoy at Teheran, reported to Palmerston that this was the case; and, what was worse, that Persia, at the instigation of Russia, meditated a hostile movement against Herat, one of the three independent principalities into which the country of the Afghans was divided. This excited great alarm in England, and the more so, as the Ministers of the Shah made no secret to Mr. Ellis of their intention to proceed, after the capture of Herat, to the conquest of the other provinces of the Afghans-in other words, almost as far eastward as the frontier of our Eastern empire. There was not the slightest doubt that Russia was at the bottom of all this. It was

notorious that Russian agents were busily at work all through the affected districts, intriguing for their master Nicholas; and the Russian ambassador to the court of the Shah absolutely offered to take command of the young ruler's expeditionary force against Herat.

At last, despite all the remonstrances of the English Minister, the Persian army set out. Russia, now that the mischief was done, and the Shah fairly committed to hostilities, affected to disapprove the step as premature, and counselled further negotiation between the Persians and the ruler of Herat. Further complications were introduced into the embroglio by the expectation by the Afghans of an attack from the side of the Punjaub by Runjeet Singh. These fears induced them to apply for aid to the Government of British India. But these and all the other intricate details which led to an invasion of Cabul, and the well-known subsequent romantic events with which the names of Lady Sale, Burnes, McNaghten, Keane, Pottinger, Nott, and Pollock, will be associated, as long as the story of English fortitude and valour finds willing hearers-all this sad but splendid chapter in our national history is but too well known. We must take for granted, then, a sufficient general knowledge of the facts on the part of our readers, and make only such incidental reference to them as is necessary to explain the relations of Lord Palmerston to the military operations which ensued.

None of the disasters in Cabul occurred during Lord Palmerston's tenure of office; and even had it been otherwise, he cannot be held directly responsible for what strictly appertained to the administration of the Governor-General and the Board of Control. So long as he was Foreign Secretary all went well.

In October 1838, Lord Auckland, the Governor-General of India, declared war, and decreed the invasion of Afghanistan. Runjeet Singh was to act in combination with the English. In November he and Lord Auckland met at Feroze

pore, the most advanced of our strongholds in the NorthWest.

This meeting of the two great chiefs, with their magnificent armies and retinues, was a splendid and imposing sight. Thence the armies proceeded. The Bombay contingent had to force its way through Scinde, which territory, and its rulers, the Ameers, were also involved in this composite and complicated matter. At Shikarpore, a place within the boundaries of Scinde, but near the Afghan frontier, they were met by the main army from Bengal. Sir John Keane was appointed to the command of the united host. It marched forward under the greatest physical difficulties; now wading through artificially flooded rivers for whole days, and then hewing its path through tangled jungles, and all the while with hosts of predatory and murderous Beloochees hovering on its flanks. Candahar was entered, and Ghuznée stormed in the most magnificent manner, and at last the city of Cabul was in the hands of the British. McNaghten was appointed Political Resident. And there also the joyous and too confiding Sir Alexander Burnes took up his residence, all ignorant of the melancholy fate that was so soon to overtake him and was to end in great disaster and loss of life inflicted on the British armies.

First Period of the Eastern Question, 1835-1856.
9. MEHEMET ALI OF EGYPT.

Mehemet Ali struck a blow at his sovereign, the Sultan which enabled Russia to inflict a much heavier one. Mehemet was the Napoleon of the Moslem world. His character and career bear the most marvellous semblance to those of the great modern despot of Christendom. By a singular coincidence, both usurpers were born in the same year—1769, which contained the natal days of so many other illustrious men.

Born an Albanian peasant, he began life as the keeper of a petty shop, and he could not read until he attained his thirty-fifth year. Having volunteered into the Turkish army,