Burnes, of the Bombay establishment, who will be employed, under Mr. Macnaghten’s directions, as Envoy to the Chief of Kelat, or other States; Lieutenant E. d’Arcy Todd, Bengal Artillery, to be Political Assistant and Military Secretary to the Envoy and Minister; Lieutenant Eldred Pottinger, Bombay Artillery; Lieutenant R. Leech, of the Bombay Engineers; Mr. P. B. Lord, of the Bombay Medical Establishment, to be Political Assistants to ditto, ditto; Lieutenant E. B. Conolly, 6th Bengal Cavalry, to command the escort of the Envoy and Minister, and to be Military Assistant to ditto, ditto; Mr. G. J. Berwick, of the Bengal Medical Establishment, to be Surgeon to ditto, ditto.
W. H. Macnaghten,
Secretary to the Government of India, with the
Governor-General.
It was not to be supposed that such a manifesto as this could be published in every newspaper in India and in Europe, and circulated, in an Oriental dress, throughout all the states of Hindostan and the adjoining countries, without provoking the keenest and the most searching criticism. In India there is, in reality, no Public; but if such a name can be given to the handful of English gentlemen who discuss with little reserve the affairs of the government under which they live, the public looked askance at it—doubting and questioning its truth. The Press seized upon it and tore it to pieces.[263] There was not a sentence in it that was not dissected with an unsparing hand. If it were not pronounced to be a collection of absolute falsehoods, it was described as a most disingenuous distortion of the truth. In India every war is more or less popular. The constitution of Anglo-Indian society renders it almost impossible that it should be otherwise. But many wished that they were about to draw their swords in a better cause; and openly criticised the Governor-General’s declaration, whilst they inwardly rejoiced that it had been issued.
Had the relief of Herat been the one avowed object of the expedition, a war now to be undertaken for that purpose would have had many supporters.[264] The movement might have been a wise, or it might have been an unwise one; but it would have been an intelligible, straightforward movement, with nothing equivocal about it. It would have been addressed to the counteraction of a real, or supposed danger, and would have been plainly justifiable as a measure of self-defence. But it was not equally clear that because Mahomed Shah made war upon Herat, England was justified in making war upon Dost Mahomed. The siege of Herat and the failure of the Caubul Mission were mixed up together in Lord Auckland’s manifesto; but with all his own and his secretary’s ingenuity, his Lordship could not contrive, any more than I have contrived in this narrative, to make the two events hang together by any other than the slenderest thread. It was believed at this time that Herat would fall; and that Candahar and Caubul would then make their obeisance to Mahomed Shah. But we had ourselves alienated the friendship of the Barukzye Sirdars. They had thrown themselves into the arms of the Persian King, only because we had thrust them off. We had forced them into an attitude of hostility which they were unwilling to assume; and had ourselves aggravated the dangers which we were now about to face on the western frontier of Afghanistan. That in the summer of 1838, there existed a state of things calling for active measures on the part of the British Government is not to be denied; but I believe it to be equally undeniable that this state of things was mainly induced by the feebleness of our own policy towards the Barukzye Sirdars.
The comments which might be made in this place on Lord Auckland’s Simlah manifesto have been, for the most part, anticipated. How far Dost Mahomed “persisted in using the most unreasonable pretensions,” and “avowed schemes of aggrandisement and ambition, injurious to the security and peace of the frontiers of India,” I have shown in a former chapter. I have shown, too, how far the best authorities were of opinion that the Barukzye Sirdars were “ill-fitted, under any circumstances, to be useful allies to the British.”[265] Little comment is called for beyond that involved in the recital of facts, the studious suppression of which by the Government of the day is the best proof of the importance attached to them.[266]
The oldest, the most experienced, and the most sagacious Indian politicians were of opinion that the expedition, though it might be attended at the outset with some delusive success, would close in disaster and disgrace. Among those, who most emphatically disapproved of the movement and predicted its failure, were the Duke of Wellington, Lord Wellesley, Sir Charles Metcalfe, Mr. Edmonstone, Mountstuart Elphinstone, Sir Henry Willock, and Mr. Tucker.
The Duke of Wellington said that our difficulties would commence where our military successes ended. “The consequence of crossing the Indus,” he wrote to Mr. Tucker, “once to settle a government in Afghanistan, will be a perennial march into that country.” Lord Wellesley always spoke contemptuously of the folly of occupying a land of “rocks, sands, deserts, ice and snow.” Sir Charles Metcalfe from the first protested against Lord Auckland’s measures with respect to the trade of the Indus; and in 1835–36, when Mr. Ellis’s proposal to assist Dost Mahomed with British officers and drill-instructors to discipline his army, came down to Calcutta, said, one day after council, “Depend upon it, the surest way to bring Russia down upon ourselves is for us to cross the Indus and meddle with the countries beyond it.” Mr. Edmonstone always hung down his head, and almost groaned aloud, when the Afghan expedition was named. Mr. Elphinstone wrote in a private letter to Sir A. Burnes: “You will guess what I think of affairs in Caubul. You remember when I used to dispute with you against having even an agent in Caubul, and now we have assumed the protection of the state, as much as if it were one of the subsidiary allies in India. If you send 27,000 men up the Durra-i-Bolan to Candahar (as we hear is intended), and can feed them, I have no doubt you will take Candahar and Caubul and set up Soojah; but for maintaining him in a poor, cold, strong, and remote country, among a turbulent people like the Afghans, I own it seems to me to be hopeless. If you succeed, I fear you will weaken the position against Russia. The Afghans were neutral, and would have received your aid against invaders with gratitude—they will now be disaffected and glad to join any invader to drive you out. I never knew a close alliance between a civilised and an uncivilised state that did not end in mutual hatred in three years. If the restraint of a close connection with us were not enough to make us unpopular, the connection with Runjeet and our guarantee of his conquests must make us detested. These opinions formed at a distance may seem absurd on the spot; but I still retain them notwithstanding all I have yet heard.” Sir Henry Willock, whose extensive local knowledge and long experience entitled his opinions to respect, addressed a long letter to the Foreign Secretary, in which he elaborately reviewed the mistake which had been committed. And Mr. Tucker, in the Court of Directors, and out of the Court, lost no opportunity of protesting against the expedition in his manly uncompromising way. “We have contracted an alliance with Shah Soojah,” he wrote to the Duke of Wellington, “and have appointed a minister to his Court, although he does not possess a rood of ground in Afghanistan, nor a rupee which he does not derive from our bounty, as a quondam pensioner. We thus embroil ourselves in all the intricate and perplexed concerns of the Afghan tribes. We place Dost Mahomed, the de facto sovereign in open hostility against us; we alienate the Prince Kamran of Herat, who is nearer than Shah Soojah in the line of succession of the Douranee Family; and even if we succeed in ousting Dost Mahomed and placing Shah Soojah on the throne of Caubul, we must maintain him in the government by a large military force, at the distance of 800 miles from our frontier and our resources.”
As a body the Court of Directors of the East India Company were strongly opposed to the war, and had no part in its initiation beyond the performance of such mechanical duties as are prescribed by act of Parliament. The members of the Secret Committee are compelled to sign the despatches laid before them by the Board of Control; and the President of the Board of Control has unreservedly admitted that, beyond the mere mechanical act of signing the papers laid before them, they had no part in the recommendation or authorisation of the war. The policy of the East India Company is a policy of non-interference. They had seldom lost an opportunity of inculcating upon their governors the expediency of refraining from intermeddling with the Trans-Indian states.[267] The temper, indeed, of this great body is essentially pacific; all the instructions which emanate from them have a tendency towards the preservation of peace and the non-extension of empire; and when the merits and demerits of their government come to be weighed in the balance, it can never be imputed to them that they have been eager to draw the sword from the scabbard, or have willingly squandered the resources of India