Affairs of State | Page 4

British good offices, and being hungry for assistance from
any source to meet the encroachments of the Sikhs, he professed
himself ready to abandon his negotiations with the western powers if he
were given reason to expect countenance and assistance at the hands of
the Anglo-Indian Government. Burnes communicated to his
Government those friendly proposals, supporting them by his own
strong representations, and meanwhile, carried away by enthusiasm, he
exceeded his powers by making efforts to dissuade the Candahar chiefs
from the Persian alliance, and by offering to support them with money
to enable them to make head against the offensive, by which Persia
would probably seek to revenge the rejection of her overtures. For this
unauthorised excess of zeal Burnes was severely reprimanded by his
Government, and was directed to retract his offers to the Candahar
chiefs. The situation of Burnes in relation to the Dost was presently
complicated by the arrival at Cabul of a Russian officer claiming to be
an envoy from the Czar, whose credentials, however, were regarded as
dubious, and who, if that circumstance has the least weight, was on his
return to Russia utterly repudiated by Count Nesselrode. The Dost took
small account of this emissary, continuing to assure Burnes that he
cared for no connection except with the English, and Burnes professed
to his Government his fullest confidences in the sincerity of those
declarations. But the tone of Lord Auckland's reply, addressed to the
Dost, was so dictatorial and supercilious as to indicate the writer's
intention that it should give offence. It had that effect, and Burnes'
mission at once became hopeless. Yet, as a last resort, Dost Mahomed
lowered his pride so far as to write to the Governor-General imploring
him 'to remedy the grievances of the Afghans, and afford them some
little encouragement and power.' The pathetic representation had no

effect. The Russian envoy, who was profuse in his promises of
everything which the Dost was most anxious to obtain, was received
into favour and treated with distinction, and on his return journey he
effected a treaty with the Candahar chiefs, which was presently ratified
by the Russian minister at the Persian Court. Burnes, fallen into
discredit at Cabul, quitted that place in August 1838. He had not been
discreet, but it was not his indiscretion that brought about the failure of
his mission. A nefarious transaction, which Kaye denounces with the
passion of a just indignation, connects itself with Burnes' negotiations
with the Dost; his official correspondence was unscrupulously
mutilated and garbled in the published Blue Book with deliberate
purpose to deceive the British public.
Burnes had failed because, since he had quitted India for Cabul, Lord
Auckland's policy had gradually altered. Lord Auckland had landed in
India in the character of a man of peace. That, so late as April 1837, he
had no design of obstructing the existing situation in Afghanistan is
proved by his written statement of that date, that 'the British
Government had resolved decidedly to discourage the prosecution by
the ex-king Shah Soojah-ool-Moolk, so long as he may remain under
our protection, of further schemes of hostility against the chiefs now in
power in Cabul and Candahar.' Yet, in the following June, he
concluded a treaty which sent Shah Soojah to Cabul, escorted by
British bayonets. Of this inconsistency no explanation presents itself. It
was a far cry from our frontier on the Sutlej to Herat in the confines of
Central Asia--a distance of more than 1200 miles, over some of the
most arduous marching ground in the known world. No doubt the
Anglo-Indian Government was justified in being somewhat concerned
by the facts that a Persian army, backed by Russian volunteers and
Russian roubles, was besieging Herat, and that Persian and Russian
emissaries were at work in Afghanistan. Both phenomena were rather
of the 'bogey' character; how much so to-day shows when the Afghan
frontier is still beyond Herat, and when a descendant of Dost Mahomed
still sits in the Cabul musnid. But neither England nor India scrupled to
make the Karrack counter-threat which arrested the siege of Herat; and
the obvious policy as regarded Afghanistan was to watch the results of
the intrigues which were on foot, to ignore them should they come to
nothing, as was probable, to counteract them by familiar methods if

serious consequences should seem impending. Our alliance with
Runjeet Singh was solid, and the quarrel between Dost Mahomed and
him concerning the Peshawur province was notoriously easy of
arrangement.
On whose memory rests the dark shadow of responsibility for the first
Afghan war? The late Lord Broughton, who, when Sir John Cam
Hobhouse, was President of the Board of Control from 1835 to 1841,
declared before a House of Commons Committee, in 1851, 'The
Afghan war was done by myself;