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.  When I discussed the case of broken laws, I told you fairly that the Government denied the breaking of the laws, and make their own argument to show—­I suppose they think they show—­that they did not break the laws.  But when I pass to the next head, of the broken treaties, the case is different, especially in one of the most material points, which I will state in a few words, but clearly.  The first case which we consider to be that of a distinctly broken treaty is that of sending the warships of England through the Dardanelles without the consent of the Sultan of Turkey.  We believe that to be a clear breach of the Treaty of Paris.  But that also, if I remember aright, was argued on both sides, and, therefore, I pass on from it, and I charge another breach of the Treaty of Paris.  That famous Anglo-Turkish Convention, which gave to you the inestimable privilege of being responsible for the government of the island of Cyprus without deriving from it any possible advantage; that famous Anglo-Turkish Convention, which invested us with the right of interference, and caused us to interfere both as to the integrity and as to the independence of the Sultan by our own sole act; that Anglo-Turkish Convention was a direct and an absolute breach of the Treaty of Paris, which, bearing as it did the signature of England, as well as the rest of the Powers, declared that no one of these Powers should of themselves interfere in any matter of the integrity or independence of Turkey without the consent of the rest.  And here I must tell you that I never heard from the Government, or any friend of the Government, the slightest attempt to defend that gross act of lawlessness, that unpardonable breach of international law, which is the highest sanction of the rights of nations and of the peace of Europe.