Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 56, No. 346, August, 1844

With any safety to ourselves, certainly not. At least the outline of Lord Auckland's policy must be approved as wise and seasonable. All the great internal enemies of Indian peace had been reduced within English control by former governments; others had dealt, so far as circumstances required, with the most petulant of our outlying neighbours, Nepaul and Burmah; and sooner or later, if mischief were to be prevented, as well as healed, it would be necessary to bring Affghanistan within the general system of cautionary ties. We wanted nothing with the independence of that country, nor with its meagre finances; but reasonably we might desire that she herself should not wield either for the perpetual terror of her eastern neighbours. Westwards and northwards furnished surely an ample range for mischief; and with those quarters of the compass we had no mission to interfere. Like Hamlet, the Affghans would still have a limited license for going mad, viz.—when the wind sate in particular quarters; and along a frontier of more than a thousand miles. Still, whilst seeing the necessity of extending the Indian network of tranquillization to the most turbulent and vigorous of neighbouring powers, the reader will feel a jealousy, as we do, with respect to the time chosen for this measure:—why then in particular? After which comes a far more serious question, why by that violent machinery, that system of deposing and substituting, which Lord Auckland chose to adopt?

As to the question of time, it is too clear from the several correspondences, however garbled, which have been laid before Parliament, that Herat was a considerable element in the councils at Calcutta. This seems so far a blunder; because of what consequence to India, or even to Affghanistan, was the attack of an imbecile state like Persia upon the Affghan frontier? Here, however, occurs the place for an important distinction; and it is a distinction which may better the case of Lord Auckland. In ridiculing the idea which regarded Russia as the natural enemy of India, between which two mighty realms we may conceive a vacuum to exist so as to cut off all communication, we applied our arguments to the case of a direct attempt upon India. This we hold not only to be impossible at present, but even for centuries to come, unless Russia shall penetrate to Bokhara, and form vast colonies along the line of the river Amor; and, if ever such changes should be made, corresponding changes will by that time have established a new state of defensive energy in India. The Punjaub will by that time have long been ours: all the roads, passes, and the five great rivers at the points of crossing, will have been overlooked by scientific fortresses; but, far beyond these mechanic defences, Christianity and true civilization will, by that time, have regenerated the population, who will then be conscious of new motives for defending themselves. A native militia will then every where exist; and mere lawless conquerors, on a mission of despotism or of plunder, will have become as powerless against the great ramparts of civilization as American savages. The supposed Russian colonies indeed, in stages of society so advanced, would probably have shared by that time in the social changes; possibly would themselves form a barrier between the countries to the south and any ambitious prince in St Petersburg. Any direct action of Russia, therefore, flies before us like a rainbow as futurity expands. But in the mean time an indirect action upon India is open to Russia even at present. That action, which she is powerless to carry on for herself, she may originate through Persia. And in that we see the remarkable case realized—that two ciphers may politically form an affirmative power of great strength by combining: Russia, though a giant otherwise, is a cipher as to India by situation—viz. by distance, and the deserts along the line of this distance. Persia, though not so ill situated, is a cipher by her crazy condition as to population and aggressive resources. But this will not hinder each power, separately weak quoad hoc, from operating through the advantages of the other; as the blind man in the fable benefits by the sight of the lame man, whom, for the sake of wider prospect, he raises upon his shoulders; each reciprocally neutralizing his own defects by the characteristic endowments of the other. Russia might use Persia as her wedge for operating, with some effect, upon the Affghans; who again might be used as the wedge of Persia for operating upon ourselves, either immediately if circumstances should favour, or mediately through the Seiks and the Beloochees. On this theory we may see a justification for Lord Auckland in allowing some weight to the Persian Shah's siege of Herat. Connected with the alleged intrigues of the Russian agent, (since disavowed,) this movement of the Shah did certainly look very like a basis for that joint machinery which he and Russia were to work. Yet, on the other hand, we cannot but think that Lord Auckland might safely have neglected it; and on the following argument, that whatever influence Persia could have acquired in Affghanistan through the possession of Herat, would to a certainty have been balanced or overbalanced by an opposition growing out of that very influence. This happened to ourselves; and this will arise always in similar cases out of the incohesion essential, to say nothing of the special feuds incident to the Affghan tribes, khans, and sirdars.

Whilst, therefore, we recognize, as a policy worthy of an Indian statesman, the attempt to raise up a barrier in Affghanistan by way of defensive outwork to India, we conceive that all which should have been desired was a barrier against the Affghans themselves, by means of guarantees reposing on the structure of the Affghan government, and not any barrier against Persia as the agent of Russia; because, from the social condition of the Affghans, Persia was always sure to raise up barriers against herself, in exact proportion as she should attempt to intermeddle with Affghan affairs. The remedy was certain to grow up commensurately with the evil.

But now, quitting the question of the when, or why particularly at that time Lord Auckland interfered with Affghanistan, let us touch on the much more important question of the how, or by what machinery it was that he proposed during this interference to realize his object? Here comes the capital blunder, as we regard it, of our Affghan policy. Lord Auckland started from the principle—and in that doubtless he was right—that the security sought for Western India could be found only in a regular treaty of alliance with an Affghan government—firm at least by its tenure, if circumstances forbade it to be strong by its action. But where was such a government to be found? Who, in the distracted state of Affghan society, was the man presumptuous enough to guarantee any general submission to his authority? And, if no man could say this for himself, could we say it for him? Was there any great Affghan philosopher in a cave, for whom Lord Auckland could become sponsor that he should fulfil all the purposes of British diplomacy? We are come upon evil ground, where not a step can be taken without cutting away right and left upon friend and foe. Never, in fact, do we remember upon any subject so many untruths as were uttered upon this by our own journals, English and Indian; not untruths of evil intention, but untruths of inconsideration or of perfect ignorance. Let us review the sum of what was said, both as to the man chosen and the man rejected; premising this, however, on behalf of Lord Auckland—that, if he made an evil choice, means there were not for making a better. The case was desperate. Not if Mr Tooke's Pantheon had clubbed their forces to create an Affghan Pandorus, could the perfect creature have faced the emergency. With the shafts of Apollo clanging on one shoulder, he could not have silenced the first feud, viz. on his personal pretensions. But with the tallies of his exchequer rattling on the other—so furiously would a second feud have exploded, that as easily might you gather a hail-storm into a side-pocket, as persuade the Affghans of his right to levy taxes. Do you see the cloud of African locusts warping on the east wind? Will they suffer you to put them into Chancery? Do you see those eagles rising from Mont Blanc on the morning breeze? Will the crack of your mail-coachman's whip bring them to be harnessed? In that case you are the man to tax the Affghans. Pigs can see the wind; and it is not less certain that Affghans can scent a tax-gatherer through the Hindoo Koosh: in which case, off they go on the opposite tack. But no matter if they stay—not the less with them to be taxed is to be robbed—a wrong to be remembered on death-beds, and to be avenged were it in the fourth generation. However, as the reckoning does not come before the banquet, so the taxes do not come before the accession. Let us look, therefore, at the men, the possible candidates, simply in relation to that magnificent claim. There are two only put in nomination, Dost Mahommed and the Shah Soojah: let us bring them forward on the hustings. Or, considering them as horses entering at Epsom for the Derby, the first to be classed as a five-year old, the other as "aged," let us trot them out, by way of considering their paces.

The comments upon these men in England, whether for or against, were all personal. The Dost was the favourite—which was generous—as he had no solitary merit to plead except that he had lost the election; or, as the watchmaker's daughter so pointedly said on behalf of Nigel Lord Glenvarloch, "Madam, he is unfortunate." Searching, however, in all corners for the undiscovered virtues of the Dost, as Bruce for the coy fountains of the Nile, one man reported by telegraph that he had unkenneled a virtue; that he had it fast in his hands, and would forward it overland. He did so; and what was it? A certain pedlar, or he might be a bagman, had said—upon the not uncommon accident in Cabool of finding himself pillaged—"What! is there no justice to be had amongst you? Is Dost Mohammed dead?" Upon which rather narrow basis was immediately raised in London a glorious superstructure to the justice of the Dost. Certainly, if the Dost's justice had ever any reference to pedlars, it must have been a nervous affection of penitential panic during some fit of the cholera, and as transient as the measles; his regard for pedlars being notoriously of that kind which tigers bear to shoulders of lamb; and Cabool has since rung with his pillagings of caravans. But we believe the pedlar's mot to have been thoroughly misconceived. If we see a poor man bleeding to death in a village lane, we naturally exclaim—"What! is Dr Brown, that used to practise here, gone away?" Not meaning that the doctor could have stopped the hemorrhage, but simply that the absence of all medical aid is shocking, and using the doctor's name merely as a shorthand expression for that aid. Now in the East, down from scriptural days, the functions of a sovereign were two—to lead his people in battle, and to "sit in the gate" for the distribution of justice. Our pedlar, therefore, when invoking Dost Mahommed as the redresser of his wrongs, simply thought of him as the public officer who bore the sword of justice. "He cried to Pharaoh," or he "cried to Artaxerxes"—did not imply any reliance in their virtue as individuals, but merely an appeal to them as professionally the ministers of justice. "Are there no laws and no prisons amongst you?" was the poor man's meaning; and he expressed this symbolically under the name of him who was officially responsible for both.

But, as one throws a bone to a dog, we do not care to dispute the point further, if any man is resolute to settle this virtue upon the Dost as a life-annuity. The case will then stand thus: We have all heard of "Single-speech Hamilton;" and we must then say—"Single-virtue Dost;" for no man mentions a second. "Justice for pedlars" will then be the legend on his coin, as meaning that there is none for any body else. Yet even then the voters for the Dost totally overlooked one thing. Shah Soojah had some shadow of a pretence, which we shall presently examine, to the throne of all Affghanistan; and a king of that compass was indispensable to Lord Auckland's object. But Dost Mahommed never had even the shadow of an attorney's fiction upon which he could stand as pretender to any throne but that of Cabool, where, by accident, he had just nine points of the law in his favour. How then could we have supported him? "Because thou art virtuous," we must have said, are we to support future usurpation? Because the Dost is just to pedlars, "shall there be no more ale and cakes" for other Affghan princes? All Asia could not have held him upright on any throne comprehensively Affghan. Whether that could have been accomplished for any other man, is another question. Yet unless Lord Auckland could obtain guarantees from the unity of an Affghan government, nothing at all was done towards a barrier for the Indus.

Let us resume, however, the personal discussion. The Dost's banking account is closed; and we have carried one to his credit; but, as the reader knows, "under protest." Now let us go into the items of the Shah's little account. Strange to say, these are all on the wrong side— all marked with the negative sign. The drollest of all was the charge preferred against him by our Radicals. Possibly the Chartists, the Leaguers, and the Repealers have something in reserve against him. What the Radicals said was to this purpose: having heard of the Shah's compulsory flight more than once from Affghanistan, they argued that this never could have happened had he not committed some horrible faux pas. What could that be? "Something very naughty, be assured," said another; "they say he keeps a haram."—"Ay," rejoined a third, "but they care little about that in the East. Take my word for it, he has been playing tricks against the friends of liberty: he has violated the 'constitution' of Caboolistan." And immediately reverting to the case of Charles X. under the counsels of Prince Polignac, they resolved that he must have been engaged in suppressing the liberal journals of Peshawur; and that the Khyberees, those noble parliamentary champions of the cause for which Sidney bled on the scaffold, had risen as one man, and, under tricolor banners, had led his horse by the bridle to the frontiers of the Seiks. This was the colouring which the Radical journals gave to the Shah's part in the affair; and naturally they could not give any other than a corresponding one to ours. If Soojah were a tyrant kicked out for his political misdeeds, we must be the vilest of his abettors, leading back this saevior exul, reimposing a detested yoke, and facilitating a bloody vengeance. O gentlemen, blockheads! Silent inter arma leges— laws of every kind are mute; and as to such political laws as you speak of, well for Affghanistan if, through European neighbourhood, she comes to hear of those refinements in seven generations hence. Shah Soojah saw in youth as many ups and downs as York and Lancaster; but all in the good old honest way of throat-cutting, without any fraternal discord on questions of Habeas corpus; and had he been a luckier man in his long rough-and-tumbles for the Affghan sceptre, so as to have escaped the exile you reproach him with, he would not therefore, by one jot, have been more or less a guilty one.

The purisms of political delinquency had little share, therefore, in any remorse which Shah Soojah might ever feel; and considering the scared consciences of oriental princes in such matters, quite as little, perhaps, had the two other counts in his London impeachment. One imputed savage cruelty to him; the other, with a Johnny-rawness that we find it difficult to comprehend, profligacy and dissoluteness of life.

As to the cruelty, it has often been alleged; and the worst case, besides being the only attested case, of the Shah's propensities in that direction, is the execution of the Ghazees near the fortress of Ghuznee. We scorn to be the palliators of any thing which is bad in eastern usages—too many things are very bad—but we are not to apply the pure standards of Christianity to Mahometan systems; and least of all are we to load the individual with the errors of his nation. What wounds an Englishman most in the affair of the Ghazees, is the possibility that it may have been committed with the sanction of his own country, officially represented by the British commander-in-chief. But then that consideration leads an Englishman to suspend with a stoic [Greek: epochê], and exceedingly to doubt whether the fact could have been as it was originally reported. So said we, when first we heard it; and now, when the zeal of malice has ceased to distort things, let us coolly state the circumstances. A Mahometan Ghazee is a prededicated martyr. It is important to note the definition. He is one who devotes himself to death in what he deems a sufficient cause, but, as the old miser of Alsatia adds—"for a consideration;" the consideration being, that he wins Paradise. But Paradise he will not win, unless he achieves or attempts something really meritorious. Now, in the situation of things before Ghuznee, where a new ruler was brought in under the wing of Feringee infidels, what meritorious service was open to him? To have shot the commander-in-chief would have merely promoted some other infidel. The one sole revolutionary act appropriate to the exigency, was to shoot the Shah Soojah. There, and in one moment, would have gone to wreck the whole vast enterprize of the Christian dogs, their eight hundred lakhs of rupees, and their forty thousand camels. The mighty balloon would have collapsed; for the children of the Shah, it was naturally imagined by Affghans, would divide the support of their father's friends. That alone would have been victory to the Mussulmans; and, in the case of the British army leaving the land, (which then was looked for, at any rate, after one campaign,) the three Shahzades would, by their fraternal feuds, ensure rapid defeat to each other. Under this state of expectations, there was a bounty on regicide. All Ghazees carried the word assassin written on their foreheads. To shoot the Shah in battle was their right; but they had no thought of waiting for battle: they meant to watch his privacy; and some, even after they were captured, attempted in good earnest to sting. Such were the men— murderers by choice and proclamation—and the following were the circumstances:—On the afternoon immediately preceding the storming of Ghuznee, from the heights to the southward of that fortress descended a body of these fanatics, making right for the Shah's camp. They were anxious to do business. Upon this, a large mass of our cavalry mounted, went forward to skirmish with them, and drove them back with the loss of a standard. There the matter would have stopped; but Captain Outram, casually passing, persuaded some of the cavalry to go round the hills, to a point where they would have intercepted the retreat of the Ghazees upon that line. Seeing this, the devotees mounted the heights, whither the cavalry could not follow; but Captain Outram, vexed at the disappointment, just then remarked an English officer marching in command of some matchlocks—him he persuaded to join the chase. Outram leading, the whole party pushed on, under a severe fire, to the very topmost pinnacle of the rocks, where was flying the consecrated banner, green and white, of the fanatic Mussulmans. This was captured, the standard-bearer was shot, thirty or forty killed, and about fifty made prisoners.

The sequel we give from page 164 of the History, edited by Mr. Charles Nash:4—"A scene now ensued, much less pleasant to contemplate. It of course became a question what to do with the captives, and they were brought before the Shah. Some of them were released, upon their declaring that they had been forced into the ranks of the king's opponents against their will." We pause to remark, that already in this fact, viz. the cheerful dismissal of prisoners upon their own verbal assurance of friendliness, though so little reconcilable with the furious service on which they were taken, there is enough to acquit the Shah of unmerciful designs. He made an opening through which all might have escaped. "But," proceeds the author, "the majority, excited by fanaticism, were not restrained, even by the Shah's presence, from evincing their animosity towards his person, and avowing their determination to have been to seek his life. One of them, more violent than the rest, upon the interference of one of his majesty's attendants, stabbed him with his dagger; and they were then" [then? what! because one was worse than the rest?] "immediately ordered for execution. Two of them, however, were afterwards spared; one upon the plea of his being a Syud," (i.e., a descendant collaterally from the Prophet,) "and the other, because he pleaded hard for his life."

This account is not very luminous; and it is painful to observe that the man who was abject, and the man who was lucky, were the two selected for mercy. What proportion had previously been dismissed, is not said. The affair occasioned much discussion, as we all know; and the author speaks doubtfully of the necessity5 under which the execution took place, as not "satisfactorily ascertained." He speaks even more doubtfully of the persons supposed to be implicated, viz. the Shah and the commander-in-chief, than of the thing. Little, indeed, could have been known distinctly, where rumour ascribed to each separately the most contradictory acts and motives. Us it surprises, that Lord Keane has not publicly explained himself under such gloomy insinuations. But, in the mean time, this is plain, that the Shah is entitled to benefit by the doubts hanging over the case, not less than our own officer. The writer suggests as one reason for a favourable judgment on the Shah, "previous acts of humanity in the course of his life." Undoubtedly there are such acts, and there are none well attested in the opposite scale. In particular, he spared the eyes of his brother Mahmood, when, by all oriental policy, he had every temptation to incapacitate an active competitor for the throne. Two considerations heighten the merit of this merciful forbearance; Mahmood was the elder, a fact which slightly improved his title; and Mahmood, in a similar situation, had not spared the eyes of an elder brother.

We may certainly, therefore, dismiss the charges of cruelty against the Shah, unless hereafter they shall be better established. But in doing this, it is right to make one remark, overlooked by all who have discussed the subject. If these Ghazees were executed as murderers elect, and as substantially condemned by the very name and character which they assumed, the usages of war in all civilized countries would sustain the sentence; though still there is a difficulty where, on one side, the parties were not civilized. But if they were executed as traitors and rebels taken in arms, such an act, pendente lite, and when as yet nobody could say who was sovereign, must be thought little short of a murder.

With the remaining charge we shall make short work. The reader would laugh heartily if we should call the Dey of Tunis a dissenter, the Pasha of Egypt an old nonconformist, or the Turkish sultan a heretic. But this way of viewing Islamism in some inconceivable relation to the Church of England, or to Protestantism, would not be more extravagant than the attempt to fasten upon an oriental prince the charge of debauchery and a dissolute life. The very viciousness of Asiatic institutions protects him from such reproaches. The effeminate delicacy of easterns, and the morbid principle of seclusion on which they build their domestic honour, will for ever secure both Hindoo Pagans and Mussulmans from blame of this kind, until they pass under the influence of a happier religion. How can they act licentiously, in a way cognizable or proveable, whom rank and usage will not permit to wander, and who cannot have a temptation to wander, from their own harems, authorized by the institutions of their country?

This last charge, indeed, being so intrinsically absurd, is hardly of a nature to have merited any answer, had it not been the one most insisted upon in England, where its ludicrousness is not so apparent, until the mind is recalled from the life of Christendom to that very different life which prevails in Asia. The charge then exhales into vapour; and a man laughs as a ship's company on the broad Atlantic would laugh, if charged with roaming abroad at night.