from most of the dynastic changes which agitate the phantasmagoria of Indian royalties. In the majority of instances it is a younger brother, or a nephew, or an uncle, or, at least, some remote cousin or relation of the royal family who drives out the possessor of the Crown; but in this instance it was a member of an inferior tribe that had never enjoyed royal privileges, so that the movement was not merely a successful rebellion against the monarch, but the revolution of one clan against another. The Barukzye race was triumphant over Afghanistan in the person of Dost Mahomed, while the Suddozye, or Royal race, were prostrate in the person of Shah Soojah, who was taken under the protection of the English at Loodhianah, where he had the satisfaction of enjoying the society of his blind brother Zemaun Shah, himself an outcast from the same throne, and a pensioner upon the same liberal power. Shah Soojah, afterwards the antagonist puppet who was to confront Dost Mahomed throughout the war, was a man of a different stamp from his great rival. He was totally unfit for the troublous times in which he was cast, and during the period he held the reins of power, he betrayed an incapacity for government which ought to have operated as a warning against his restoration. "His resources were limited," observes Mr. Kaye, "and his qualities were of too negative a character to render him equal to the demands of such stirring times. He wanted vigour; he wanted activity; he wanted judg ment; and, above all, he wanted money." He wanted money, because he had bribed his way to the throne by promises which it impoverished him to fulfil, and because he had not ability enough to organize a sufficient revenue to enable him to discharge them. Mr. Kaye, speaking in another place of his incompetent royalty, says, "he wanted the art to inspire confidence and to win affection." In short, his character was made up of negations, and was distinguished more by lack of the qualities which his position urgently demanded, than by the presence of their opposite vices or weaknesses. If we may believe the autobiography he left behind him, these defects were associated with an amiable and gentle spirit very rare indeed amongst his countrymen; but we apprehend that he mistook the feebleness of his nature for benevolence, and that, when he takes credit to himself every now and then for pardoning an enemy, he is unconsciously describing the same mental idleness and lethargy of resolution which so often made him neglect his friends, and fail to conciliate his rivals. The conduct he pursued in exile shewed the fatuous folly and shallow vanity of his character in their true colours. Having obtained the perfect ease and security best adapted to a man of his incapacity, he could not be happy unless he was engaged in the dissensions for which nature and

circumstances had so especially disqualified him. Two years of repose were lost upon his uneasy spirit. Again and again, an instrument in the hands of wily politicians, he attempted the recovery of his empire; but the means employed were so inadequate, and the results were invariably so ludicrous, that his efforts and his expectations ceased to excite any other feeling than that of contempt and derision. Yet this was the prince, under the mask of whose cause the Governor-General of India issued a formal manifesto, by which he declared war upon the Douranee Empire! It is unnecessary to speculate about the verdict which future times will pronounce upon this measure. The fiat of posterity is anticipated in the able and lumincus volumes before us, which, written with an impartiality and discrimination that reflect the highest honour on the author, shew that this war was begun without a shadow of justification, that it was carried on through a series of unprecedented disasters, and that it terminated in a loss of life, treasure, and glory, which cannot be otherwise regarded than as the fitting retribution for a proceeding at once impolitic and iniquitous.

The two prominent actors in this war-the Barukzye chief who had discovered a vigour and integrity in his government of the country which had never been imparted to it before, and the exiled Shah, whose inability became more and more evident as the difficulties of his position increased-are now fairly on the stage before us. We are afraid that the attitude of our Government in relation to them was as undignified as it was anomalous. With the internal revolutions of border kingdoms we had no concern, so long as they did not in any way affect our own interests; it was, therefore, a matter properly of no importance to us whether a Barukzye or a Suddozye occupied the throne of Afghanistan. Such, indeed, was the view taken of the subject by the authorities at Calcutta, who suffered the reigning sovereign to be expelled without interference or remonstrance, and received him, with their habitual hospitality, as a pensioner on their bounty. Had we drawn the line at this point, no very serious objection could be taken against our policy. To grant a pension to an unfortunate prince, and allow him to live under our protection, was nothing more than had been done in former cases, in the exercise of a large generosity, which seems to be one of the most graceful functions our civilisation and ascendency in India call upon us to discharge. But we did not stop here. Without espousing the cause of Shah Soojah, or openly exhibiting any interest in him beyond that of compassion, we suffered him to project on our own soil one expedition after another-as contemptible in resources, no doubt, as they were harmless in execution -against the victorious Dost Mahomed. If we did not actually

Sinister Policy of the British Government.

239 sanction these acts, we allowed them to derive a certain weight from our tacit acquiescence in them. This sufferance might possibly, however, be set down to our perfect neutrality; and, for our own parts, we should be quite willing to give the Government credit for having been guided throughout by the strict principle of non-interference, if they had not finally assisted Shah Soojah in a shape which admitted of no evasion, while they still professed a course of policy which they indirectly violated by that very proceeding. Looking back dispassionately on the events of that period, we do not hesitate to assert, that the first great error committed by the English Government was that of granting to Shah Soojah, in 1832, an advance of four months of his pension, by which he was enabled to raise a considerable. force, and to cross the Indus into Sindh, at its head. The Barukzye king had treated the former hostile spasms of Shah Soojah with ridicule; but this was a more formidable demonstration,— so formidable that there was not the vestige of an excuse on the part of the authorities at Loodhianah for affecting ignorance of its object, or of the uses to which the four months' stipend was applied under their eyes. The transaction was every way discreditable to us. It looked exactly as if we had secretly urged Shah Soojah to assert his claims without committing ourselves to support them, so that we might be ready to take advantage of the results let the expedition terminate as it might. That we did not, at that time, consider ourselves called upon to espouse the fallen fortunes of the stipendiary Shah, is sufficiently proved by the fact, that it was not till six years afterwards the British Government made the discovery announced by Lord Auckland, in the famous Simlah manifesto, "that a pressing necessity, as well as every consideration of policy and justice, warranted us in espousing the cause of Shah Soojah-ool-Moolk, whose popularity throughout Afghanistan had been proved to his Lordship by the strong and unanimous testimony of the best authorities!" Notwithstanding the indirect help, however, of the British Government, the expedition failed. Shah Soojah was ignominiously beaten, and made his escape with his life only by the forbearance of Dost Mahomed, who overruled the eager desire of the Candahar chiefs to give chase to the fugitive. He was not long allowed to enjoy the fruits of his clemency and his triumph, and had scarcely succeeded in crushing one enemy when another appeared at his gates. Runjeet Singh, the chief of the Sikhs, who had recently defrauded poor Shah Soojah of the celebrated Koh-i-noor diamond, had penetrated the Douranee Empire, and taken possession of Peshawur. In this extremity, Dost Mahomed proclaimed a religious war against the Sikhs, knowing that upon that pretext he could get together a much

larger force than upon any other; and presented himself before Peshawur with so powerful an army, that Runjeet Singh, afraid to encounter him in the open field, had recourse to an act of the basest treachery by which the whole of that vast concourse of soldiers melted away in a single night. The incident is very striking, and as it is related on the authority of the agent, a Mr. Harlan, an American adventurer, who had no reluctance to take the whole disgrace upon himself, the statement may be relied upon. Runjeet despatched him as an envoy to the Afghan camp, and when he got there he employed himself in corrupting the followers of Dost Mahomed. He divided his brothers against him by exciting their jealousy, and prevailed upon one of them (of all others, too, the lately deposed chief of Peshawur) to withdraw suddenly from the camp about nightfall, with 10,000 retainers. "The chief," says Harlan, "accompanied me towards the Sikh camp, whilst his followers fled to their mountain fastnesses. So large a body retiring from the Ameer's control, in opposition to his will, and without previous intimation, threw the general camp into inextricable confusion, which terminated in the clandestine rout of his forces without beat of drum, or sound of bugle, or the trumpet's blast, in the quiet stillness of midnight. At daybreak no vestige of the Afghan camp was seen, where six hours before 50,000 men and 10,000 horses, with all the busy host of attendants, were rife with the tumult of wild emotion." The picture is startling. We cannot recall any similar incident of so surprising and even appalling a character.

Falling back upon Caubul with the remnant of his forces, Dost Mahomed shut himself up in his palace, and plunged deeply, says Mr. Kaye, into the study of the Koran. What consolation or wisdom he drew from its pages does not appear; but, rankling under the loss of territory, and the disaffection of his natural allies, and apprehending nothing less than an ultimate movement against the capital, he turned his thoughts upon the necessity of calling in foreign aid. His desire lay between Persia and the British; and while he was debating this problem in his mind, two new events, equally alarming from their strangeness, although totally opposite in their complexion, arrested his attention the appearance of an English Envoy at Caubul, and the advance of a Persian army against Herat. In each case the avowed purpose concealed a sinister design. Captain Burnes was despatched to the Afghan capital for the ostensible object of negociating a treaty of commerce, but with the secret object of political diplomacy; and Herat was besieged by the Persians avowedly because it was a depot for kidnapping and selling Persian subjects into slavery, but really to gratify the ambition of the young Shah, fostered and urged on by Russia, who had

The Failure of the Caubul Mission.

241

her own ends to achieve by establishing the Persian power in that quarter. These two events, which occurred in the autumn of 1837, laid the seeds of the Afghan war. The recent death of

the Khan of Herat gives additional interest to these details at the present moment, since there is reason to believe that a similar intrigue is going forward at the present moment in Central Asia, with the ascendancy of Russian influence in the background, pointing at no distant day to a Russian descent upon Hindostan.

The mission of Captain Burnes had been in some sort invited by Dost Mahomed. Upon Lord Auckland's accession to the office of Governor-General in 1836, Dost Mahomed addressed a letter of congratulation to his Lordship, asking his advice at the same time as to the course he ought to take in reference to the Sikhs. Lord Auckland's reply expressed the most friendly wishes for the prosperity of the Afghan nation, urged the expediency of opening the Indus, and hinted at a mission for the discussion of "commercial topics." As to the Afghans, his Lordship declared that it was not the practice of the British Government to interfere with the affairs of other independent states. Well may Mr. Kaye give vent to astonishment and regret that these repeated avowals of a policy of neutrality were so soon followed by a declaration of war. "With what feelings, three years afterwards," he exclaims, "when a British army was marching upon his capital, the Ameer must have remembered these words, it is not difficult to conjecture."

Captain Burnes' mission failed. Success was impossible for a negociation which was intended merely as a cloak for ulterior designs. The envoy had a task to perform which no diplomatic ingenuity could accomplish with credit. To talk politics, as a representative of the British Government, with the Ameer of Caubul, without being invested with the power to come to any definite conclusion, placed Burnes in a dilemma both painful and humiliating. Actuated personally by the most sincere desire to cultivate a friendly alliance with the Ameer, but constantly checked in his impulses, and defeated in his views, by the restrictions imposed upon him from head-quarters, we can hardly regard him as fulfilling a much more honourable office than that of a sort of authorized and authenticated spy. Dost Mahomed sought assistance from the British Government in the matter of Peshawur and the Sikhs; but the British Government, acting through Captain Burnes, would give him nothing but good advice-or advice, whether it was good or not. For a long time, much longer than the pride of a European power could have preserved its amicable dispositions in the face of such discouragements, the Ameer continued true to his desire to culti

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