242 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. X 



perfectly within their right in declaring war without 

 calling Parliament together. . . . 



If you had lived as long as I have and seen as much 

 of men, you would cease to be surprised at the reputations 

 men of essentially commonplace powers aided by circum- 

 stances and some amount of cleverness obtain. 



I am as strong for justice as any one can be, but it 

 is real justice, not sham conventional justice which 

 the sentimentalists howl for. 



At this present time real justice requires that the 

 power of England should be used to maintain order and 

 introduce civilisation wherever that power extends. 



The Afghans are a pack of disorderly treacherous 

 blood-thirsty thieves and caterans who should never 

 have been allowed to escape from the heavy hand we laid 

 upon them, after the massacre of twenty thousand of our 

 men, women (and) children in the Khoord Cabul Pass 

 thirty years ago. 



We have let them be, and the consequence is they 

 now lend themselves to the Russians, and are ready to 

 stir up disorder and undo all the good we have been 

 doing in India for the last generation. 



They are to India exactly what the Highlanders of 

 Scotland were to the Lowlanders before 1745 ; and we 

 have just as much right to deal with them in the same 

 way. 



I am of opinion that our Indian Empire is a curse to 

 us. But so long as we make up our minds to hold it, 

 we must also make up our minds -to do those things 

 which are needful to hold it effectually, and in the long- 

 run it will be found that so doing is real justice both for 

 ourselves, our subject population, and the Afghans them- 

 selves. 



There, you plague. Ever your affec. Daddy, 



T. H. HUXLEY. 

 A few days later he writes to his son : 



