"Shere Ali Khan is an ill-conditioned Prince—proud, coarse, and violent. Yet there is something to be noted on the side of this little Highland chief. His hostility dates from those early days when, perhaps, we deserved scant friendship. During the Sepoy Mutiny he urged the invasion of the Punjaub upon his wise old father, Dost Mohammed Khan, whom a Russian paper reports on the throne, although he has been dead for years. The masterly inactivity which Lord Lawrence still dares to recommend, did not prevent that Viceroy acknowledging the claims of Afzal Khan, the brother who had deprecated the Punjaub invasion. Shere Ali had a pet grievance against Lord Mayo, and he was especially hurt by Lord Northcote refusing to pay his subsidy—'tribute,' the wise would call it—with the desired regularity. His relations with the present Viceroy need hardly be noticed. The truth is that a policy of alternate do-nothing, bullying, and cajoling have persuaded him firmly that he holds the road to India; that the keys of the treasure-house are in his hands. Hence he persistently refused to receive the Káshgar mission; 'their blood be upon their own heads if they come to Cabul!' Hence he admitted no English representatives, and he hardly permitted the Wakeel, or resident Agent of her Majesty's Government, to address him in Durbar. That he despises us, we cannot fail to see; nor less can we fail to feel that we have not forced him to respect us. We might have withdrawn that phantom of a Wakeel; we might also have withdrawn his subsidy or tribute, a lakh of rupees per mensem, till his manners improved; or, better still, we might have reserved it for his successor. But a high-principled Viceroy objected that such proceedings would be a 'premium upon rebellion.'
"That unhappy mission has placed us between the horns of an ugly dilemma. If we do not fight, we offend public opinion at home and abroad, in England and in India. If we do fight, we play Russia's own game. Although never committed to paper, there was an implied agreement between the two great Europe-Asiatic Powers that our Asiatic army should not be employed in European wars. The policy of the moment thought fit to throw a new weight into the scale; and Russia's comment must have been something of this nature: 'Oh! you will employ your Sepoys in Europe, will you? All right; meanwhile you shall have enough to do with them in India!' Whatever alarmists told the world, Russia has hitherto meddled mighty little with our Eastern Empire. Now, however, times have changed, and we may look out for squalls. Our Imperial 'Bakht,' our conquering star, our unbroken good luck, may yet be our shield and our defender. Not the less this Afghan war threatens to be the beginning of serious, nay, of fatal troubles, which may shake our Indian Empire to its very foundation. Behind it stand General Scindia and the Nawab of Hyderabad,—now the great Moslem power, the Delhi of the Peninsula. Behind all, terrible and menacing as the Spirit of the Storm which appeared to Da Gama, rises that frightful phantom, a starving population reduced to the lowest expression of life by the exorbitant expenditure of our rule.
"I would willingly point a moral with the state of the Sepoy army, now reduced to a host of Irregulars; with the cost of a march à Cabul against an enemy whose improved weapons have been supplied by ourselves as well as by Russia; with the Russian claim to wage aggressive and non-official war, even as we did in Turkey; with the effect which our intense sensitiveness to every step taken by Russia must exercise upon the Sultan and his Ministers; and lastly, with the possible results to England, which under the workings of a Free Trade, the reverse of free, threatens to become a Macclesfield on a very large scale. Is the prophecy of the Koh-i-noor to be fulfilled after all, and a ridiculed superstition to become a reality?
"The Nizam Diamond—The Diamond in India.
Diamonds.
"It would be unpardonable to quit Golconda without a word concerning the precious stone which, in the seventeenth century, made its name a household word throughout Europe; and also without noticing the great diamond whose unauspicious name, Bala (little) Koh-i-noor, I would alter to 'The Nizam.' Not a little peculiar it is that professional books like Mr. Lewis Lieulafait's 'Diamonds and Precious Stones' (London: Blackie, 1874), which record the life, the titles, the weight, the scale, the size, and the shape of all the historic stones, have utterly ignored one of the most remarkable. Mr. Harry Emanuel does not neglect even the Násik diamond, which fetched only £30,000: we must, by-the-by, convert for intelligibility his 'Mahratta of Peshawur' into the 'Peshwa of the Maharattas.'
"The history of the Nizam diamond is simple enough; like the Abaïté, and unlike the Koh-i-noor, its discovery cost at most a heartache, and did not lose a drop of man's blood. About half a century ago it was accidentally found by a Hindú sonár (goldsmith) at Narkola, a village about twenty miles cast of Shamsábád, the latter lying some fourteen miles south-west of the Lion City, on the road to Maktal. It had been buried in an earthen pipkin (Koti or Abkhorah), which suggests, possibly, that it had been stolen, and was being carried for sale to Mysore or Coorg. The wretched finder placed it upon a stone, and struck it with another upon the apex of the pyramid. This violence broke it into three pieces, of which the largest represents about half. With the glass model in hand it is easy to restore the original octohedron. The discovery came to the ears of the celebrated Diwan (Minister) Rajah Chandú Lál, a friend of General Fraser, who governed the country as Premier for the term of forty-two years. He took it very properly from the sonár, before it underwent further ill-treatment, and deposited it amongst his master's crown jewels. Lately Messrs. Aratoon, of Madras, offered to cut it for three lakhs of rupees, a modest sum, considering the responsibility and the labour such operations involve; but the figure was considered exorbitant. A M. Jansen of Amsterdam, who died about a twelvemonth ago, volunteered to place it in the hands of Messrs. Costa, who certainly did not improve its big brother. This offer was also naturally enough declined. Let me hope, however, that it will not be cloven into a plate or flat slab more Indico.