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in Affghanistan is Dr. Kennedy's, and to us it is the most pleasing, partly as echoing our own feelings on the policy of the war, though generally in a light and satirical tone. It contains, however, the following remarkable passage, which is very striking when we consider that it appeared before any facts or surmises could have been thought to justify it. But there is no wonder that the spirit of indignant denunciation of wrong should for once be one with the spirit of prophecy.

"The day of reckoning is not come yet; but it will come, and bring with it results at which the ear of him that heareth of them shall tingle."

We are not able to refer at this moment to the passage, but these are, we think, nearly the exact expressions. Did not the tidings of the winter of 1841 make the ear of every hearer throughout Europe to tingle?

For the rest, Dr. Kennedy is a pleasant and lively writer, a bit of a humorist, a bit of a philosopher, and as humorist and philosopher should be, a kind-hearted man. He loses his baggage by thieves, in the Bolan Pass,-it is very annoying; but it does not make him approve of the wholesale executions by which Sir J. Keane thought it right to terrify the plunderers: his natural inclination is to laugh at the follies of men, but he can express just and earnest indignation when the crime predominates over the folly. His last visit at Cabool is to the tomb of Baber, his last at Ghuznee to the tomb of Mahmoud, where the Superintending Surgeon to the Bombay Column of the Army of the Indus meditates on the transitory nature of human grandeur. "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,' repeated I to myself, as I wondered what had become of the Sultan's Chief of the medical department."

The "Outline of Operations," in the monthly Bombay Times, is, in fact, a history of the Affghan war,-a history which we should gladly see rescued from the perishable (and often illegible) columns of an Indian newspaper, and transformed into a more permanent shape. The number published on the 1st of February contains the account of Lord Keane's campaign. The inquiry into the causes of the war appears in the March number, and is illustrated by many despatches and parts of despatches which were never laid before Parliament, and of some of which we gratefully availed ourselves in our recent article. The last, which we have just received, carries the history to the end of 1840. The writer is no friend of the originators of the war, but the grounds on which his view is supported are such as hardly admit of misrepresentation, and lie open to the judgment of every one. In the history of the war itself, his facts are apparently collected with care, and generally supported by the military memoir-writers of the campaign; and his estimate of the characters and conduct of individuals has every appearance of impartiality.

Such are the principal sources from which a knowledge of the earlier progress of the war may be sought. Mr. Masson's work, to which we shall hereafter refer, contains an account by an eye-witness and actor in many of the scenes he describes, of the Khelât insurrection in 1840; "an episode merely," as he says, "of the great political drama enacted west of the Indus," but not the least interesting, nor the least painful part of the drama. Upon works which, like Lady Sale's and Lieutenant Eyre's Journals, are in every one's hands, it is almost superfluous to offer any general remarks. Though, of course, indebted for the avidity with which they have been read, mainly, to the curiosity felt in reference to their subject, they are yet intrinsically entitled to much praise: they are most interesting records of events which no record could make quite uninteresting. Written by eye-witnesses, and without affectation, they have the one surpassing merit of reality; and the consequence is, that they make, what seemed when we first heard it the incredible story of the Cabool catastrophe, not only credible but intelligible. They coincide with each other to a degree which speaks well for their mutual accuracy, the main difference being, that the one is written by an actor in the scenes described, the other by a deeply-interested observer. There is indeed another not uncharacteristic distinction. The honourable caution of the military man, the anxious desire not to blame unjustly, the not unfrequent statement of facts from which the reader cannot but infer a severe censure, without the direct suggestion of any,-all this contrasts strikingly with the honest unreserve, the feminine vehemence, with which Lady Sale utters, from her whole heart, her well-merited praise or blame. Each book is in this respect just what it ought to be. Lieutenant Eyre's position as an officer doubtless strengthens, in this respect, his manly instinct of cool judgment and fairness; and the result is highly honourable to him. Perhaps the most remarkable feature in his book is the fair, calm, and unexaggerating tone with which he relates the long catalogue of errors, and misconduct. He never blames without stating his reasons; and he gives praise or blame, in opposition to his confessed personal predilections. Towards all on his own side-the English side-Lieutenant Eyre is uniformly and scrupulously just. If in his estimate of their opponents he appears to us occasionally partial and inconsistent,-if he deals a little too freely with words like "rebels," and "treason,"—if he sometimes seems to attribute to the whole nation the atrocities committed by a part,-we can, in his circumstances, excuse such an error without being misled by it. No one can read the work without receiving on the whole a most favourable impression of the writer.

Passing from the consideration of these works to offer some remarks on the course of the war, we feel that we cannot begin

more appropriately than with a quotation from the proclamation of Simla. What actually has been, we shall see afterwards; it was thus that, in October, 1838, the Indian Government announced what was to be::

"His Majesty Shah Sooja-ool-Moolk will enter Affghanistan surrounded by his own troops, and will be supported against foreign interference and factious opposition by a British army. The Governor-General confidently hopes that the Shah will be speedily replaced on his throne by his own subjects and adherents, and when once he shall be secured in power, and the independence and integrity of Affghanistan established, the British army will be withdrawn."

We place this passage here as a text, upon which any outline of the history of the next four years will be found to furnish an impressive comment. Contradicted in almost every particular by the subsequent facts, it received its first, and perhaps its most emphatic, contradiction from the government who proclaimed it. "His Majesty Shah Sooja-ool-Moolk will enter Affghanistan surrounded by his own troops."

What was the composition of the troops here described as his Majesty's own? They were Shah Soojah-ool-Moolk's own, in a sense rather less strong than that in which the Eleventh Hussars is "Prince Albert's Own." The Eleventh Hussars is not more dependent on the Horse Guards than these troops were on the Indian Government. They were levies raised partially from the camp-followers of the Company's regiments. They were Hindostanees, subjects of the Company, officered by British officers, paid by British gold, at the entire disposal of the British authorities; "it was notorious," says Colonel Dennie, who had the agreeable occupation of drilling these undisciplined levies, “that there was not a single Affghan among them.'

"His Majesty will enter Affghanistan surrounded by his own troops." This statement was deliberately made; apparently it was not true. What was it then?

Lord Palmerston's attempted defence (for this, like every other step in the business, Lord Palmerston is ready to defend,) amounts to saying that it was an erroneous conjecture; that the statement was made six months before the actual advance of the army; and might therefore have been intended to be true, though contradicted by subsequent events. It is a new thing to be told that state papers are not declaratory, but rather prophetic or conjectural; that the principle,

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"O Laertiade, quicquid dicam aut erit—aut non,' is to guide us in interpreting the public declarations of the intentions of a government. But the defence, such as it is, will not stand; if the march began only six months later than the declaration, the raising of the levies did not-and at the time at which Lord Auckland thus mistakenly prophesied that his

Majesty would enter his dominions surrounded by his own troops, the future character of the Shah's contingent must have been fully known. Lord Palmerston's equivocating defence is worthy of the assertion which he defends.

If, however, the Indian government failed in surrounding Shah Soojah with Affghan troops, they proceeded effectually to fulfil their promise of supporting him with a British army. The preparations made indicated an expectation of meeting with no inconsiderable amount of " factious opposition," and a resolution that no amount should interfere with the execution of their great project. Including the Shah's contingent, as it was called, and a few thousands of Sikh levies, the forces assembled in the early part of 1839, along the line of the Indus, amounted to more than 40,000 men. We subjoin a map, or maplike sketch of the country which was the scene of our operations, containing as few names of places as possible, but sufficient, we hope, to make our subsequent remarks intelligible.

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A glance at this map will show, that from Ferozepore, the head-quarters of the Bengal division of the "Army of the Indus," the nearest line of march on Cabool would have been that by which our troops, in 1842, evacuated the country, through the Punjaub and the defiles of the Khyber. The line ultimately chosen for the Bombay and Bengal divisions-the chief strength of the army both in numbers and efficiency-was the longer western route, leading through the territory of the Ameers of Scinde, and Eastern Beloochistan, by the Bolan Pass to Quettah and Candahar. It is curious to find that a principal reason for this preference was the reluctance of our "old and faithful ally," Runjeet Singh, to permit those, who, by a reciprocal relation, must have been his "old and faithful allies," to traverse his territories with so large a force. For his scruples we had every respect; but, apparently, it is not every ruler who is entitled by his position to object to the passage of armies. The scruples of the weaker Ameers of Scinde, and of the Khan of Khelât, the principal chieftain of Eastern Beloochistan, though not less natural, were less complacently regarded. The former, who had previously promised supplies, assistance, and carriage, were, on our arrival in their country, found to regard the advance of the army with hostile feelings, which were more than shared by the fierce Beloochee tribes who acknowledged their dominion. It is even said that large sums of money were distributed by them among their undisciplined followers, assembled in thousands along the Indus, to prevent their attacking the British army. For a long time they refused to subscribe the new treaty tendered for their acceptance, large as it was in its demands, and equivalent to a renunciation of independence. At length, under immediate apprehension of an attack upon their capital by twenty thousand men, they agreed to forward by all means an expedition, of which the immediate effect would be to restore them to their former dependent position upon the monarch of Cabool, to pay a large sum of money as instalment of tribute due to Shah Soojah since 1805, and to cede the fort of Bukkur, the key of the Lower Indus, to be permanently occupied by a British garrison. Ten months before this occurred that conversation between Captain Burnes and Dost Mahomed, in which "I referred him to Scinde as an example of the advantages of British connexion;" five years later that connexion reached its climax, in perhaps the fiercest battle ever fought in India, resulting in the captivity of the princes of the land, and the occupation of its capital; and now, as we learn, in its permanent annexation to our empire.

On the subject of our dealings with Scinde, in 1839, we have read Captain Havelock with painful astonishment. That officer, who "records, not without a sentiment of national shame and humiliation," that our original demand on the Ameers was in

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