consolidation of our power in India, as it hastened on the
construction of the roads, railways, and telegraphs, so wisely and
thoughtfully planned by the Marquis of Dalhousie, and which have
done more than anything to increase the prosperity of the people and
preserve order throughout the country. It was the Mutiny which brought
Lord Canning into closer communication with the Princes of India, and
paved the way for Lord Lytton's brilliant conception of the Imperial
Assemblage--a great political success which laid the foundation of
that feeling of confidence which now, happily, exists between the
Ruling Chiefs and the Queen-Empress. And it was the Mutiny which
compelled us to reorganize our Indian Army and make it the admirable
fighting machine it now is.

In the account I have given of our relations with Afghanistan and
the border tribes, I have endeavoured to bring before my readers
the change of our position in India that has been the inevitable
consequence of the propinquity upon our North-West Frontier of a
first-class European Power. The change has come about so gradually,
and has been so repeatedly pronounced to be chimerical by authorities
in whom the people of Great Britain had every reason to feel
confidence, that until recently it had attracted little public
attention, and even now a great majority of my countrymen may scarcely
have realized the probability of England and Russia ever being near
enough to each other in Asia to come into actual conflict. I impute no
blame to the Russians for their advance towards India. The force of
circumstances--the inevitable result of the contact of civilization
with barbarism--impelled them to cross the Jaxartes and extend their
territories to the Khanates of Turkestan and the banks of the Oxus,
just as the same uncontrollable force carried us across the Sutlej and
extended our territories to the valley of the Indus. The object I have