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a right and fair comprehension of the subject to carry the mind back to the time of the Shah's entry into Cabul. This period is chosen, not because the events, which had preceded, should be altogether cast out of a review of the remote causes of the outbreak, but because in order to bring them to bear with their own proper weight and influence, a comprehensive summary of our general policy, and of its effects upon the minds and apprehensions of the people of Central Asia, would be indispensable. But such a retrospect would demand more space than we can afford; and, as the recovery of his throne by Shah Shuja was, after the repulse of the Russians from Herat, the ostensible object of the march of our army into Affghanistan, the attainment of that object forms a real epoch in the policy pursued, and is both a natural and convenient point, from which to consider the nature and character of our measures.

The Shah having been re-seated on his throne, though not (as had been prognosticated by the Governor-General) by his own subjects and adherents, a very grave and important question presented itself for the consideration and decision of Macnaghten, upon whose advice the Anglo-Indian Government was dependant. The objects of the British Government had been attained for, in the words of Lord Ellenborough," the Government of India had directed its army to pass the Indus in order to expel from Affghanistan a chief believed to be hostile to British interests, and to replace upon his throne a sovereign represented to be friendly to those interests, and popular with his former subjects." Both had been effected; and the question to be decided was, whether the moment contemplated by the GovernorGeneral had arrived: for Lord Auckland's manifesto had promised that "when once he (Shah Shuja) shall be secured in power, and the independence and integrity of Affghanistan established, the British army will be withdrawn." The promise, thus vaguely worded and qualified, admitted of fulfilment by the adoption of one of two very different courses. Macnaghten had the option, either to take advantage of the favourable juncture when the British army could be withdrawn with the honour and the fame of entire success, and to devolve upon Shah Shuja, holding with the contingent (upon whose fidelity he could rely) the main points of Cabul, Ghuzni and Candahar, the onus, not only of maintaining military hold of the country, but also, unshackled by the unpopular tutelage of a British Envoy and with the civil administration in his own hands, that of establishing the royal authority throughout the less accessible districts, and of reconciling by adroit management their turbulent chiefs to his sway :-or, it was open

to Macnaghten, mistrusting the Shah's power and ability thus to maintain himself, to continue the military occupation of Affghanistan by the British troops, and to govern in Shah Shujah's name, on the plea that the engagement was not alone to place him on the throne, but also to secure his power, and to establish the independence and integrity of Affghanistan. Had our policy been truthful and honest, every thing combined to favour the first proposition. Macnaghten avowed himself convinced of the popularity of the Shah, whose reception he had represented as being on the part of the Affghans "with feelings nearly amounting to adoration." The Shah was known to be by no means deficient in ability; Macnaghten himself described him to Rawlinson, as a shrewd, cool, sensible, calculating character. His courage was of a doubtful hue; but this alleged natural timidity could not fail of receiving assurance from the presence of a disciplined body of foreign mercenaries-the contingent-well armed and well officered; whilst the occupation of the key points of his country would, at small cost, have enabled the Shah to maintain with the aid of the contingent such a grip of Cabul, Ghuzni, and Candahar, that nothing but an army well provided with battering guns could have shaken his hold on these important points. Shah Shuja might possibly, with such a bit in the mouths of the people and with conciliatory conduct towards the chiefs, for whose restless but petty ambition he could have found scope in the Civil and Military Service of the State, soon have been in a position to brave the return of Dost Mahomed. Freed from the dictation of a British Envoy and from the domineering presence of a British army, provided that his financial measures had proved judicious, his popularity would have increased. He would have had the winter, which, from its severity, imposes rest and peace, as a season in which to consolidate his administration, and during which he would have had leisure to work on the characters and wishes of the chiefs, and to raise an influential party favourable to his reign. A person, sincere in his conviction of the Shah's popularity, and having a clear perception of our position in Affghanistan, would have seen that it was a critical moment in the Shah's career. We know that the Envoy's representations of the Shah's popularity were the creations of his own imagination; and that it is extremely doubtful whether the Shah, given the opportunity above contemplated, would have had either the tact, or the firmness, essential to success in his position. It is certain that his failure would have proved the hollowness, if not the falsehood, of our policy, and would

have given a denial to the bold assertions advanced in his behalf and that of the course pursued by the British authorities. We suspect therefore that the Envoy was rather the dupe of his own wishes, and of those which he knew to be entertained by the Governor-General, than of any real misapprehension of the exact degree of the Shah's popularity and influence. Certain it is that, inconsistently with his avowed and often-repeated persuasion of the Shah's favour in the hearts of his chiefs and people, the Envoy permitted himself to be influenced by Shah Shuja's fears, whose timidity could not rest so long as Dost Mahomed roamed at large, and who therefore deprecated the immediate withdrawal of the British troops. Macnaghten was also affected, only in a less degree than Burnes, with a dread of the onward march of Russian battalions and of the progress of the Czar's influence in Central Asia. Instead of keeping clearly in sight the primal interests of his Government, and in lieu of seizing the favourable moment for honourably and at once disembarrassing it from a position which every one saw to be both false and faulty, Macnaghten allowed minor motives, present importunities, and phantasms of a remote danger, to warp his judgment from a perception of his country's real honour and advantage; and, by adopting the second proposition, tarnished the one, compromised the other, and wrapped the close of Lord Auckland's Indian career in gloom and consternation. "Quinctili Vare, legiones redde !" (Varus! give me back my legions), did not indeed break vehemently forth from that sorrow-stricken amiable nobleman: but who, that saw him, will forget his deportment, both at the council-table and in private, during the last months of his rule in India?

The objections to the course which was adopted were many and incontrovertible. The number of troops requisite for the efficient military occupation of such a country as Affghanistan was far greater than India, threatened with disturbances in the Punjab, could spare; the cost of their maintenance was excessive; the difficulty of communicating with an army, so far removed from the British frontier, was great; all convoys of provisions and munitions of war must traverse the interposed states of doubtful allies, thread long and dangerous mountain defiles beset with wild, lawless, plundering tribes, and be exposed to a multiplicity of risks, before they could reach the isolated army; the civil administration, leaning from the first upon the strong arm of a British force and influenced by a British Envoy, acting through a puppet-king, could not be expected to mould itself to the habits and feelings of the people, and must therefore necessarily be disliked by them; and, worst of

all, there was no prospect that such a system could possibly terminate in a period when the Shah, dispensing with his leading strings and British bayonets, could be left to rule alone: for, under such a system, nothing native to the soil and people could arise, upon which to base his power and authority. A mock king; a civil administration, hated because under foreign dictation, and dissonant from the feelings of the Affghans; an Envoy, the real king, ruling by gleam of British bayonets, and thus enabled to impose his measures, however crude or unpalatable; a large army, raising by its consumption the price of provision, and preying on the resources of a very poor country; these were the inevitable concomitants of having shrunk from withdrawing at once, in good faith and sound policy, the British army, while the moral impression made by its entire success was fresh and deep upon the Affghan mind, and would for some time have been an element of strength to the Shah, had he been left to establish his own throne.

In order that the reader may better understand the foregoing remarks, and may also trace the connection between the policy at first adopted, and the condition and circumstances under which the insurrection found us, we must devote a page or two to the illustration of Macnaghten's initial measures.

Shortly after the first occupation of Cabul, Macnaghten heard from Pottinger at Herat, that a Russian force, destined for Khiva, was assembling at Orenberg, and that Stoddart was still a prisoner at Bokhara, and anticipated being kept there, unless rescued by an English army. This information was coupled with the recommendation that the army, or at least one brigade, should immediately move on Balkh; the advice was coupled with the assurance, that a single brigade would be quite sufficient, there being no posts on the route to cause delay or give trouble, and no troops that could oppose the march of the brigade. Outram's return from his unsuccessful pursuit of Dost Mahomed, and the escape of the latter to the regions of the Oxus, combined with Pottinger's report, immediately filled the Envoy's breast with apprehensions of Russian enterprize upon that famed river, and strengthened him in his resolution not to part with the British army, but to retain as large a portion of it, as he could induce Keane to leave, or Lord Auckland to sanction; and with this view he at once wrote to Keane in a tone of alarm at the march of Russian battalions upon Khiva, and their occupation of the banks of the Oxus. Keane, who had seen enough in Affghanistan to satisfy him that the Russian expedition from Orenberg might, with equal safety and propriety, be left to exhaust itself in overcoming the

difficulties of its route, replied with good-humoured pleasantry that "the only banks, he now thought of, were the banks of the Thames;" and he discountenanced indulgence in such a dread of Russian battalions, as invested them with a spectral facility of traversing long tracts of difficult and ill-explored countries. The Envoy's apprehensions were not however to be thus allayed; and he sent for Keane's perusal a letter addressed to Lord Auckland, the tenor of which was to acquaint the Governor-General, that the Bombay troops were to return by Kelat; that one brigade was to occupy Cabul; and that a force had moved against Bokhara without awaiting the Governor-General's approval to such an extension of the objects of the expedition, inasmuch as the lateness of the season precluded the delay of a reference to India. This proposal to push a small force across the Hindu Kúsh into the heart of countries, of which little was known, against a State, with which we had no ground for war, with the vague intention of liberating Stoddart, pursuing Dost Mahomed, and forestalling on the Oxus Russian battalions, surprised Keane, who, not trusting himself to write upon a project so Quixotic, sent back Macnaghten's letter by the hands of one of his aid-de-camps, with the verbal message, that he could not in any way join Macnaghten in forwarding such a letter to the Governor-General. For the present, therefore, Keane's good sense caused this dreamy enterprize to be abandoned; but Macnaghten, urged by the fears of Shah Shuja, and loath altogether to forego an expedition, which had flattered his imagination, resolved on making a demonstration to the westward. For this purpose a regiment of Gurkha infantry and a troop of horse artillery were despatched from Cabul with instructions to march to Bamian by the Kullú and Irak Passes, which Burnes declared to be perfectly practicable for artillery. In the event of Dr. Lord's failing to cross over by the more northerly Passes of the Hindu Kush, he was to join the detachment at Bamían; and it was to act under his orders.

To form a conception of this coup d'essai by the Envoy in military movements, the stupendous character of the Passes to be surmounted must be borne in mind. The most practicable are upwards of 12,000 feet above the level of the sea, and present such difficulties, that the chief engineer, having examined them, stated as his opinion that the Kullú Pass alone would retard an army with a respectable battering train at least ten days. The winter was fast approaching, when these lofty mountain ranges are covered with snow; yet the detachment was to winter at Bamían, depending on Cabul

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