themselves before the Ameer. Little did he think, when he received with honour, and took friendly counsel with a British officer sent to his Court to discuss matters of commerce, how soon that officer would again enter the Afghan capital, accompanied by a British army. Burnes appeared at Caubul—Mahomed Shah at Herat; and the seeds of the Afghan war were sown.
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| *—* * | The various treaties referred to in this Introductory Book will be found in an Appendix at the end of the volume. |
BOOK II.
[1835–1838.]
CHAPTER I.
[1835–1837.]
The Commercial Mission to Caubul—Arrival of Lord Auckland—His Character—Alexander Burnes—His Travels in Central Asia—Deputation to the Court of Dost Mahomed—Reception by the Ameer—Negotiations at Caubul—Failure of the Mission.
In the autumn of 1835, Lord Auckland was appointed Governor-General of India. The Whigs had just returned to power. The brief Tory interregnum which had preceded the restoration to office of Lord Melbourne and his associates, had been marked by the appointment to the Indian Viceroyship of Lord Heytesbury—a nobleman of high character and approved diplomatic skill. His official friends boasted largely of the excellence of the choice, and prophesied that the most beneficial results would flow from his government of India. But nothing of the Governor-Generalship ever devolved upon him, except the outfit. The Whig ministers cancelled the appointment, and, after a time, selected Lord Auckland to fill the rudely vacated place.
The appointment occasioned some surprise, but raised little indignation. In India, the current knowledge of Lord Auckland and his antecedents was of the smallest possible amount. In England, the general impression was, that if not a brilliant or a profound man, he was at least a safe one. The son of an eminent diplomatist, who had been won over to the support of Pitt’s administration, and had been raised to the peerage in reward for his services, he was generally regarded as one of the steadiest and most moderate of the Whig party. As an industrious and conscientious public servant, assiduous in his attention to business and anxious to compensate by increased application for the deficiencies of native genius, he was held in good esteem by his colleagues and respected by all who had official intercourse with him. India did not, it was supposed, at that time demand for the administration of her affairs, any large amount of masculine vigour or fertility of resource. The country was in a state of profound tranquillity. The treasury was overflowing. The quietest ruler was likely to be the best. There was abundant work to be done; but it was all of a pacific character. In entrusting that work to Lord Auckland, the ministry thought that they entrusted it to safe hands. The new Governor-General had everything to learn; but he was a man of methodical habits of business, apt in the acquisition of knowledge, with no overweening confidence in himself, and no arrogant contempt for others. His ambition was all of the most laudable kind. It was an ambition to do good. When he declared, at the farewell banquet given to him by the Directors of the East-India Company, that he “looked with exultation to the new prospects opening out before him, affording him an opportunity of doing good to his fellow-creatures—of promoting education and knowledge—of improving the administration of justice in India—of extending the blessings of good government and happiness to millions in India,” it was felt by all who knew him, that the words were uttered with a grave sincerity, and expressed the genuine aspirations of the man.
Nor did the early days of his government disappoint the expectations of those who had looked for a painstaking, laborious administrator, zealous in the persecution of measures calculated to develope the resources of the country, and to advance the happiness of the people. It appeared, indeed, that with something less of the uncompromising energy and self-denying honesty of Lord William Bentinck, but with an equal purity of benevolence, he was treading in the footsteps of his predecessor. The promotion of native education, and the expansion of the industrial resources of the country, were pursuits far more congenial to his nature than the assembling of armies and the invasion of empires. He had no taste for the din and confusion of the camp; no appetite for foreign conquest. Quiet and unobtrusive in his manners, of a somewhat cold and impassive temperament, and altogether of a reserved and retiring nature, he was not one to court excitement or to desire notoriety. He would fain have passed his allotted years of office, in the prosecution of those small measures of domestic reform which, individually, attract little attention, but, in the aggregate, affect mightily the happiness of the people. He belonged, indeed, to that respectable class of governors whose merits are not sufficiently prominent to demand ample recognition by their contemporaries, but whose noiseless, unapplauded achievements entitled them to the praise of the historian and the gratitude of after ages.
It was not possible, however intently his mind might have been fixed upon the details of internal administration, that he should have wholly disregarded the aggressive designs of Persia and the obvious intrigues of the Russian Government. The letters written from time to time by the British minister at the Persian Court, were read at first, in the Calcutta Council-Chamber, with a vague interest rather than with any excited apprehensions. It was little anticipated that a British army would soon be encamped before the capital of Afghanistan, but it was plain that events were taking shape in Central Asia, over which the British-Indian Government could not afford to slumber. At all events, it was necessary in such a conjuncture to get together some little body of facts, to acquire some historical and geographical information relating to the countries lying between the Indian frontier and the eastern boundaries of the Russian Empire. Secretaries then began to write “notes,” and members of Council to study them. Summaries of political events, genealogical trees, tables of routes and distances, were all in great requisition, during the first years of Lord Auckland’s administration. The printed works of Elphinstone, Conolly, and Burnes; of Malcolm, Pottinger, and Fraser, were to be seen on the breakfast-tables of our Indian statesmen, or in their hands as they were driven to Council. Then came Sir John M’Neill’s startling pamphlet on the “Progress and Present Position of Russia in the East.” M’Neill, Urquhart, and others were writing up the Eastern question at home; reviewers and pamphleteers of smaller note were rushing into the field with their small collections of facts and arguments. It was demonstrated past contradiction, that if Russia were not herself advancing by stealthy steps towards India, she was pushing Persia forward in the same easterly direction. If all this was not very alarming, it was, at least, worth thinking about. It was plainly the duty of Indian statesmen to acquaint themselves with the politics of Central Asia, and the geography of the countries through which the invasion of India must be attempted. It was only right that they should have been seen tracing on incorrect maps the march of a Russian army from St. Petersburgh to Calcutta, by every possible and impossible route, now floundering among the inhospitable steppes, now parching on the desert of Merve. The Russian army might not come at last; but it was clearly the duty of an Indian statesman to know how it would endeavour to come.
It was in the spring of 1836 that Dost Mahomed addressed a letter of congratulation to Lord Auckland, on his assumption of the office of Governor-General. “The field of my hopes,” he wrote, “which had before been chilled by the cold blast of wintry times, has by the happy tidings of your Lordship’s arrival become the envy of the garden of paradise.” Then adverting to the unhappy state of his relations with the Sikhs, he said: “The late transactions in this quarter, the conduct of reckless and misguided Sikhs, and their breach of treaty, are well known to your Lordship. Communicate to me whatever may suggest itself to your wisdom for the settlement of the affairs of this country, that it may serve as a rule for my guidance. I hope,” said the Ameer, in conclusion, “that your Lordship will consider me and my country as your own;” but he little thought how in effect this Oriental compliment would be accepted as a solemn invitation, and the hope be literally