524 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, xxxm 



To HIS Eldest Daughter 



Science Schools, South Kensington, 

 Dec. 7, 1878. 



Dearest Jess — You are a badly used young person — you 

 are; and nothing short of that conviction would get a letter 

 out of your still worse used Pater the hete noire of whose exist- 

 ence is letter-writing. 



Catch me discussing the Afghan question with you you little 

 pepper pot. No, not if I know it. Read Fitzjames Stephen's 

 letter in the Times, also Bartle Frere's memorandum, also 

 Napier of Magdala's memo. Them's my sentiments. 



Also read the speech of Lord Hartington on the address. 

 He is a man of sense like his father, and you will observe that 

 he declares that the Government were 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 essen- 

 tially commonplace powers — aided by circumstances 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 civilisa- 

 tion 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 



