to expedite its information. Constantly attending the parade where the work of recruiting was going on, he desired personally to superintend both the payment and the enlistment of his men; and was fearful lest a belief should become rooted in the public mind that he was not about to return to Afghanistan as an independent Prince, ruling his own people on his own account. The tact and discretion of Captain Wade smoothed down all difficulties. Whilst preventing such interference on the part of Shah Soojah as might embarrass the movements of the British officers appointed to raise and discipline his regiments, he contrived to reconcile the mind of the King to the system in force by directing that certain reports should be made to him on parade, and at other times through an appointed agent, of the number of men enlisted into his service, and the amount of pay that was due to each.[259] At the same time, it was suggested to the commanding officer of the station that, as one entitled to the recognitions due to royalty, the Shah should be saluted by the troops when he appeared in public. The suggestion was promptly acted upon; and the King, whose inveterate love of forms and ceremonies clung to him to the end of his days, rejoiced in these new demonstrations of respect, and bore up till his time of trial was over.
In the meanwhile Lord Auckland, having thus mapped out a far more extensive scheme of invasion than had ever been dreamt of, a few months before, in his most speculative moments, was thinking of the agency which it was most desirable to employ for the political management of the ensuing campaign. It had been determined that a British Envoy should accompany Runjeet Singh’s army by the Peshawur route, and that another should accompany Shah Soojah’s camp on its march towards the western provinces of Afghanistan. There was no difficulty in naming the officer who was to superintend the demonstration to be made by the Sikh troops through the formidable passes of the Khybur. Captain Wade was nominated to this office. He was to be accompanied by the eldest son of Shah Soojah, the Prince Timour, a man of respectable character, but not very brilliant parts, whose presence was to identify the Sikh movement with the immediate objects of his father’s restoration, and to make obvious to the understandings of all men that Runjeet Singh was acting only as Shah Soojah’s ally.
But it was not so easy to determine to whom should be entrusted the difficult and responsible duty of directing the mind of Shah Soojah, and shaping, in all beyond the immediate line of military operations, the course of this great campaign. It seemed at first that the claims of Alexander Burnes could not be set aside. No man knew the country and the people so well; no man had so fairly earned the right to be thus employed. But it soon appeared to Burnes himself, sanguine as he was, that Lord Auckland designed to place him in a subordinate position; and chafing under what appeared to him a slight and an injustice, he declared that he would either take the chief place in the British Mission, or go home to England in disgust.[260] But these feelings soon passed away. It had been debated whether the chief political control should not be placed in the hands of the commander-in-chief; and Sir Henry Fane, naturally favouring an arrangement which would have left him free to act as his own judgment or his own impulses might dictate, wished to take Burnes with him as his confidential adviser. But this plan met with little or no encouragement. The Governor-General appreciated Burnes’s talents, but mistrusted his discretion. He thought it advisable to place at the stirrup of Shah Soojah an older head and a steadier hand. Men, who at this time watched calmly the progress of events, and had no prejudices and predilections to gratify, and no personal objects to serve, thought that the choice of the Governor-General would fall upon Colonel Henry Pottinger, who had been familiar from early youth with the countries beyond the Indus, and was now in charge of our political relations with the Court of Hyderabad, in Sindh. But Lord Auckland had no personal knowledge of Colonel Pottinger. There was little identity of opinion between them; and the Governor-General recognised the expediency of appointing to such an office a functionary with whom he had been in habitual intercourse, who was necessarily, therefore, conversant with his views, and who would not scruple to carry them out to the utmost.
The choice fell on Mr. Macnaghten. It seems, at one time, to have been the design of the Governor-General to associate this gentleman with the Commander-in-Chief, in a kind of Commission for the management of our political relations throughout the coming expedition;[261] but this idea seems to have been abandoned. It was finally determined that Mr. W. H. Macnaghten should be gazetted as “Envoy and Minister on the part of the Government of India at the Court of Shah Soojah-ool-Moolk.” And at the same time it was resolved that Captain Burnes should be employed, “under Mr. Macnaghten’s directions, as Envoy to the chief of Kelat or other states.” It was believed, at this time, that Shah Soojah having been reseated on the throne, Macnaghten would return to Hindostan, leaving Burnes at Caubul, as the permanent representative of the British-Indian Government at the Court of the Shah. It was this belief that reconciled Burnes to the subordinate office which was conferred upon him in the first instance, and made him set about the work entrusted to his charge with all the zeal and enthusiasm which were so conspicuous in his character.[262]
And so Burnes was sent on in advance to smooth the way for the progress of the Shah through Sindh, whilst Macnaghten remained at Simlah to assist the Governor-General in the preparation of the great official manifesto which was to declare to all the nations of the East and of the West the grounds upon which the British Government had determined to destroy the power of the Barukzye Sirdars, and to restore Shah Soojah-ool-Moolk to the throne of his ancestors.
On the 1st of October the manifesto, long and anxiously pondered over in the bureau of the Governor-General, received the official signature and was sent to the press. Never, since the English in India first began the work of King-making, had a more remarkable document issued from the council-chamber of an Anglo-Indian viceroy. It ran in the following words, not one of which should be omitted from such a narrative as this:
DECLARATION ON THE PART OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF INDIA.
Simlah, October, 1, 1838.
The Right Hon. the Governor-General of India having, with the concurrence of the Supreme Council, directed the assemblage of a British force for service across the Indus, his Lordship deems it proper to publish the following exposition of the reasons which have led to this important measure.
It is a matter of notoriety that the treaties entered into by the British Government in the year 1832, with the Ameers of Sindh, the Newab of Bhawalpore, and Maharajah Runjeet Singh, had for their object, by opening the navigation of the Indus, to facilitate the extension of commerce, and to gain for the British nation in Central Asia that, legitimate influence which an interchange of benefits would naturally produce.
With a view to invite the aid of the de facto rulers of Afghanistan to the measures necessary for giving full effect to those treaties, Captain Burnes was deputed, towards the close of the year 1836, on a mission to Dost Mahomed Khan, the chief of Caubul. The original objects of that officer’s mission were purely of a commercial nature. Whilst Captain Burnes, however, was on his journey to Caubul, information was received by the Governor-General that the troops of Dost Mahomed Khan had made a sudden and unprovoked attack on those of our ancient ally, Maharajah Runjeet Singh. It was naturally to be apprehended that his Highness the Maharajah would not be slow to avenge the aggression; and it was to be feared that, the flames of war being once kindled in the very regions into which we were endeavouring to extend our commerce, the peaceful and beneficial purposes of the British Government would be altogether frustrated. In order to avert a result so calamitous, the Governor-General resolved on authorising Captain Burnes to intimate to Dost Mahomed Khan, that if he should evince a disposition to come to just and reasonable terms with the Maharajah, his Lordship would exert his good offices with his Highness for the restoration of an amicable understanding between the two powers. The Maharajah, with the characteristic confidence which he has uniformly placed in the faith and friendship of the British nation, at once assented to the proposition of the Governor-General, to the effect that, in the mean time, hostilities on his part should be suspended.
It subsequently came to the knowledge of the Governor-General that a Persian army was besieging Herat; that intrigues were actively prosecuted throughout Afghanistan, for the purpose of extending Persian influence and authority to the banks of, and even beyond, the Indus; and that the Court of Persia had not only commenced a course of injury and insult to the officers of her Majesty’s