In these circumstances, the duty of a practical rough-and-ready politician was very clearly indicated.  However little he might care for the measure on its own merits, political instinct pointed unmistakably to the absolute necessity of affording strong support to the Viceroy.  Lyall failed to realise this fully.  He admired Lord Ripon’s courage.  “We must,” he said, “all do our best to pull the Viceroy through.”  But withal it is clear, by his own admission, that he only gave the Viceroy “rather lukewarm support.”  “I have intrenched myself,” he wrote in a characteristic letter, “behind cautious proposals, and am quoted on both sides.”  This attitude was not due to any want of moral courage, for a more courageous man, both physically and morally, than Lyall never lived.  It was simply the result of what Lord Lytton called “the Lyall habit of seeing both sides of a question,” and not being able to decide betimes which side to support.  That a man of Lyall’s philosophical and reflective turn of mind should see both sides of a question is not only natural but commendable, but this frame of mind is not one that can be adopted without hazard by a man of action at the head of affairs at a time of acute crisis.

There is, however, a reverse side to this picture.  The same mental attributes which rendered Lyall somewhat unfit, in my opinion, to deal with an incident such as the Ilbert Bill episode, enabled him to come with credit and distinction out of a situation of extreme difficulty in which the reputation of many another man would have foundered.  I have no wish or intention to stir up again the embers of past Afghan controversies.  It will be sufficient for my purpose to say that Lord Lytton, immensely to his credit, recognised Lyall’s abilities and appointed him Foreign Secretary, in spite of the fact that he was associated with the execution of a policy to which Lord Lytton himself was strongly opposed, and which he had decided to reverse.  Lyall did not conceal his opinions, but, as always, he was open to conviction, and saw both sides of a difficult question.  In 1878, he was “quite in favour of vigorous action to counteract the Russians”; but two years later, in 1880, after the Cavagnari murder, he records in a characteristic letter that he “was mentally edging back towards old John Lawrence’s counsel never to embark on the shoreless sea of Afghan politics.”  On the whole, it may be said that Lyall passed through this supreme test in a manner which would not have been possible to any man unless endowed not merely with great abilities, but with the highest degree of moral courage and honesty of purpose.  He preserved his own self-esteem, and by his unswerving honesty and loyalty gained that of the partisans on both sides of the controversy.