l position, and was resolute to keep within it, avoiding
entanglement with any party, and fulfilling with equal impartiality
and ability the duties of private secretary to his Sovereign-wife.

The Melbourne Ministry had had to contend with difficulties
sufficiently serious, and of these the grimmest and greatest remained
still unsettled. At the outset of the reign a rebellion in Canada had
required strong repression; and we had taken the first step on a bad
road by entering into those disputes as to our right to force the
opium traffic on China, which soon involved us in a disastrously
successful war with that country. On the other hand, our Indian
Government had begun an un-called-for interference with the affairs
of Afghanistan, which, successful at first, resulted in a series of
humiliating reverses to our arms, culminating in one of the most
terrible disasters that have ever befallen a British force--the
wholesale massacre of General Elphinstone's defeated and retreating
army on its passage through the terrible mountain gorge known as the
Pass of Koord Cabul. It was on January 13th, 1842, that the single
survivor of this massacre appeared, a half-fainting man, drooping
over the neck of his wearied pony, before the fort of Jellalabad,
which General Sale still held for the English. He only was "escaped
alone" to tell the hideous tale. The ill-advised and ill-managed
enterprise which thus terminated had extended over more than three
years, had cost us many noble lives, in particular that of the
much-lamented Alexander Burnes, had condemned many English women and
children to a long and cruel captivity among the savage foe, and had
absolutely failed as to the object for which it was undertaken--the
instalment of Shah Soojah, a mere British tool, as ruler of
Afghanistan, in place of the chief desired by the Afghan people, Dost
Mahomed. When the disasters to our arms had been retrieved, as
retrieved they were with exemplary promptness, and when the surviving
prisoners were redeemed from their hard captivity, it was deemed
sound policy for us to attempt no longer to "force a sovereign on a
reluctant people," and to remain content with that limit which
"nature appears to have assigned" to our Indian empire on its
north-western border. Later adventures in the same field have not
resulted so happily as to prove that these views were incorrect. Our
prestige was seriously damaged in Hindostan by this first Afghan war,
and was o