our own contemptible conduct was exactly the most calculated to make us still weaker, and to advance and strengthen the direct influence of Russia. Throughout the transaction, we have continued more closely united than ever with the same power, in its political action upon other states. To purchase this happy understanding with the very power whom we so much distrust, that we do not scruple to break with our allies for no other reason than that we suspect them of being secretly in league with her against us, we have, perhaps irrevocably, parted with France, and destroyed the confidence which Austria had begun to repose in us. It is true that the hostilities which this figment of a Russian at Cabul is meant to justify, were not actually commenced on our side until after Russia had been called by us to an account, and until three months after her explanations had been received and read in Downing Street. But this very circumstance sets the seal upon the folly and wickedness of hostilities so commenced. For those explanations were examined, and declared "highly satisfactory to Her Majesty's government." Actually the siege of Herat had been raised six months, and Lord Palmerston had for three months been fully satisfied that the Czar was no ally of the Affghans, by the imperial protestation to that effect, when the Army of the Indus crossed that river for the avowed purpose of raising that siege, and punishing the Affghans for entering into that alliance. The raising of the siege was made known to our envoy, at the court of Teheran, on the 15th August 1838; -on the 8th November, the Governor General notices it to the Indian public. Lord Palmerston's assurances of Her Majesty's high satisfaction with Count Nesselrode's despatch of the 20th October, were intimated to Count Pozzo di Borgo, in his lordship's letter of the 20th December in the same year; and yet, on the 19th February 1839, the British troops crossed the Indus, and marched against Cabul!* The folly of the enterprise, be it observed, was about equal to its injustice. It now turns out that, up to its commencement, neither Russia nor Persia had any influence whatever in Affghanistan. Mr. Masson (whose able work on that country appeared soon after this Report), was one of the witnesses who gave evidence before the committee. This gentleman had resided for many years at Cabul. We shall extract some of his evidence. "There had no Russian, or Russian agent, appeared there before Vicovitch, and he was nothing at all. The Affghans looked upon the Russians with * Report of the E. I. Committee, pp. 12-16. great aversion; they looked upon the Persians as their natural enemies, but without dreading them ;* they looked upon the English as a friendly and superior people, from whom they could obtain support, in case of being attacked by any body. But since our unprovoked assault, they look upon England as an enemy. They are, however, little disposed to turn to Persia even now; and as to Russia, the experience they have had of the best of the Feringhis, (the English), will dispose them little in favour of the worst, (the Russians). The only way to make the Affghans turn to Persia, or to Russia, is by England's continuing to press them as she has done.""† To those whose unbelief requires further elucidation, we recommend the attentive perusal of Appendix B, at pp. 34-6, of this Report. It contains some curious anecdotes, which are not only highly ludicrous, but serve to show the value of all the diplomatic communications that ever passed between Russia and Affghanistan, on the one hand, or Persia and Affghanistan, on the other. As to Vicovitch himself, he was nothing more than a commercial agent, if Nesselrode's despatch is to be credited: that despatch, which Lord Palmerston declared te be "highly satisfactory to Her Majesty's Government." That he came uninvited by the Amir Dost Mahomed, and that he was only tolerated in Cabul out of deference to Sir A. Burnes, our own envoy, who had requested the Amir to receive him, is evident from that lamented officer's despatch of the 20th December, 1837. It was from the Amir himself, he says, that he received early intelligence of the approach of the Russian emissary; early enough to have ensured his detention on the road, and ignominious expulsion from the country, which the Amir offered to effect upon the spot. The very despatches he brought were placed by the Amir in Burnes' hands for perusal. To the lasting infamy of the late administration, the whole of the passages in this important despatch, which narrate the above instances of Dost Mahomed's zeal for the British alliance, and readiness to make common cause with us against the Muscovite, were suppressed in the copy which was laid before Parliament! The only passages, that were not suppressed, were the two short paragraphs at the beginning of the despatch, communicating the simple fact of Vicovitch's arrival at Cabul, direct from the Emperor of Russia. The effect, (as is well observed by the committee), of this extract, standing by itself, is indeed alarming, but that effect would have been * The Persians are of the Shiah, the Affghans of the Suni sect of Islam. † Report of the E. I. Committee, &c. p. 23. reversed, had Lord Palmerston allowed the reader to continue the despatch, as Burnes had written it.* Having examined the grounds alleged in vindication of these piratical hostilities, (we prefer to style them so, the word being sanctioned by the law of England, and of nations, in its present application) let us, before we pass further, represent to ourselves the bewilderment in which they were brought about. On the 22nd May, 1838, Lord Auckland, the Governor General, had written to the home authorities, in the most feeling terms, begging them to tell him what he was to do in the Cabul question, and in what manner he was to do it. Yet his lordship had already accredited an envoy at Lahore, who was to sign the Tripartite Treaty! On the 23rd May, (the very next day, be it noticed), that envoy, Sir William Macnaghten, who was already in the Punjab, wrote to Mr. Masson, at Cabul, asking his advice at this juncture, as to the best "means of counteraction to the policy of Dost Mahomed," more particularly with reference to the possibility of establishing at Cabul, by "any (and what?) instrument of Affghan agency," of all people in the world, the Sikhs,- -a race odious to the Affghans, as their hereditary enemies, and an abomination before them, as idolaters! On the 26th of the following month, (and of course before Lord Auckland's despatch of the 22nd May could possibly have reached Downing Street), the Tripartite Treaty between Runjeet Singh, Shah Shujah, and the same Lord Auckland, was signed. Under that treaty, not a Sikh prince, as was at first projected, but Shah Shujah himself was set up as sovereign of Affghanistan. Certes, for men groping in the dark, as these appear to have been, it was a very memorable undertaking! And then the subsequent aggression on the sovereign we had recognised, Dost Mahomed, without even so much as an apparent cause of quarrel, and without any declaration of war, is attempted to be covered by this same Tripartite Treaty, subversive of the international law, injurious to English interests, and transacted in direct violation of the act of 1784, as well as of succeeding enactments, which forbad Governors General from entering into aggressive wars, or compacts tending thereunto.+ Verily, this new pretext is of a piece with that of Russian intrigues in Cabul, which required an invasion of the Affghans to put them effectually down, after we had been completely satisfied that they had no existence; and that in their place the "happiest understanding" existed between ourselves and the Russian government! Cruel and unjust to the Affghan people, these hostilities have been scarcely less so to our Indian fellow-subjects. Their flourishing treasury having been exhausted, and their charges permanently increased to the amount of 5,000,000l. while the total loss, up to the publication of the latest returns, is said to have been, at least, 15,000,000.; their commerce is almost paralysed, a complete stop has been put to internal improvement, the means of culture, transport, and revenue, have been diminished, and the country has been drained of its circulating medium. Add to these the loss of 15,000 men and 50,000 camels, and the picture of physical misfortune may, perhaps, be considered as completed. But these are but the shadows of darker events to come. Our character for fair dealing was once more valuable to us than our character for success, and now both have abandoned us. Discontent, engendered by the pressure of taxation, is made open rebellion by the withdrawal of our armies. The exasperation of the British residents in India against their fellow-subjects is calculated to fan the flame into a fiercer conflagration. The affections of the native army are said to have chilled towards us; there is an indisposition to enlist; the whole Mussulman population is demonstrative of hostility. Where will these troubles end? * Since the last peace, to use the language of the Committee's Report, "this nation has become indifferent to the forms of law, and to the maintenance of right."+ But the truth is, that ever since the Reformation, this indifference to law and right has been gaining its actual ascendancy over us. This truth is elsewhere recognised by the same Committee. Instead of being the epoch, the origin of the evil, it is acknowledged that the last peace, although the source of still further degeneracies, was in itself an indication that Europe had already lost the sense of international justice. The Holy Alliance, that system of violent intervention in the affairs of other states for unjust and not national purposes, was only a consequence of the treaty of Vienna, by which nations were disposed of without their consent, and for objects, termed in the jargon of the day, political. We must go much further back than 1815, to understand the cause of the degeneracy. Let us hear Mr. Urquhart. "It has been the character of all the Churches that separated themselves † Ibid. p. 4. * Report of the E. I. Committee, &c. p. 29. from the state of Rome, to fix attention too exclusively upon mere points of dogma, and consequently to induce neglect or disregard of the general character of the acts of the people and its government. And in this manner they have ceased to act in directing, controlling, or restraining the march of public events, through which, more especially, the character and mind of nations are formed. . . . . . From the performance of this function, the Church of England could be dispensed by no authority, by no law, by no encroachment of any other portion of the State. From this station it has not been forced, but has itself voluntarily or unconsciously withdrawn. How wonderful that it should not be seen that such an extensive dereliction of its religious and official duty is an entire abandonment of its hold upon existence, as a Church of England! .... With what impaired authority and confidence must not its ministers proceed to speak of morality in private life, who placed in Senates and Basilicas for the highest purposes and examples, have so far yielded to the worldliness of a mean age, as on occasions of great public crimes, not only to decline the denunciation, but even to consider themselves precluded from the right of judgment!.... Had the bench of bishops responded to the dying appeal of the Earl of Chatham,-had they raised their voice against the injustice perpetrated against our fellow-citizens in America, what would have been the position of the Church-what the position of England ?.... In that instance, for the last time was an appeal made to the Church in a matter of justice, and then were British thoughts for the last time uttered in a British Senate."* The Protestant bishops who listened to Chatham's impassioned voice knew themselves and their position too well to obey it. Had they done otherwise, who would have regarded them? When and where have prelates of the Erastian Establishment been heard upon such subjects? Men who have accepted the law temporal, in all its aspects, as the rule of their own consciences, have not the best right to prescribe a different rule to other men. If the state can do no wrong in settling religion for the whole nation, it cannot err in the collateral points of diplomatic morality, we think. If the Thirty-nine Articles may be sworn to without perfect belief on the clerical subscriber's part-if the same cleric is prepared to denounce on oath, as damnable idolatry, a worship which he firmly believes to be neither idolatrous nor damnable,—and if this may be done for no other reason than that the state awards it,-it would, indeed, seem remarkable that the reverend gentleman should afterwards, and upon an occasion not touching his own private interests, turn round upon the state and its subjects, preaching to the latter about conscience, and to the former about its responsibility * * Duty of the Church of England in respect to Unlawful Wars, pp. 22-3. |