The next charge is the charge of broken laws. We have contended--it is
impossible to trouble you with argument--but we have contended, and I
think we have demonstrated, in the House of Commons, sustained by a
great array of legal strength and bearing, that in making that war in
Afghanistan, the Government of this country absolutely broke the laws
which regulate the Government of India. I do not say they admit it;
on the contrary, they deny it. But we have argued it; we believe, we
think we have shown it. It is a very grave and serious question; but
this much, I think, is plain, that unless our construction of that
Indian Government Act, which limits the power of the Crown as to the
employment of the Indian forces at the cost of the Indian revenue
without the consent of Parliament--unless our construction of that Act
be true, the restraining clauses of that Act are absolutely worthless,
and the people who passed those restraining clauses, and who most
carefully considered them at the time, must have been people entirely
unequal to their business; although two persons--I won't speak of
myself, who had much to do with them, but two persons who next to
myself were most concerned, were the present and the late Lord Derby,
neither of them persons very likely to go to work upon a subject
of that kind without taking care that what their hand did was done
effectually.
Now besides the honour, if it be an honour, of broken laws, the
Government has the honour of broken treaties.
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