Foreign Office: Dec. 8, 1840. My dear Granville,-This day has brought us a flight of good news: Mehemet's submission, Dost Mahomed's defeat, and the occupation of Chusan. The first settles the TurcoEgyptian question. The great point now will be to decide on what yet remains to be arranged, in such a way that Mehemet shall be really and bond fide a subject of the Sultan, and not a protected dependent and tool of France.

One general result of this long but successful contest over Eastern affairs was to produce the same respect for the names of Palmerston and England in the East, as had been already produced in Europe. Those names were whispered in the tents of the Arabs with fear and reverence. Who could measure the strength of that nation which had so easily and so rapidly accomplished such mighty results? They saw that England acted with energy and decision, and carried out to its full accomplishment whatever she announced to be her set intention. No wonder that the star of Queen Victoria appeared to them to be in the ascendant.

CHAPTER XII.

AFFGHANISTAN AND CHINA-DISPUTES WITH NAPLES AND UNITED STATES-SPEECH AT TIVERTON ON DISSOLUTION OF PARLIAMENT— RETIREMENT OF MELBOURNE MINISTRY.

THE narrative of Turkish and Egyptian affairs must now be succeeded by a brief account of what had been passing relative to the affairs that Lord Palmerston has just alluded to, in Affghanistan and China; for though they did not belong practically to the Foreign Office, they were within the range of its administration.

Our relations with Eastern nations were until lately managed by companies. This arrangement was on the one hand disadvantageous-by confining commercial relations; while on the other it was advantageous-by regulating political ones. The company was represented by a small body having the enjoyment of privileges on the acceptance of obligations, which a company could easily compel its own limited number of servants to observe.

When the Chinese trade became open to all comers, all sorts of irregularities commenced, the most notable of which was the smuggling of opium contrary to Chinese law. An officer, called a superintendent, who had been sent out to regulate our commercial intercourse, ought to have had the power to do so; but he was impotent; and the question constantly arose as to whether he should attempt to protect the illicit practices of his countrymen, or allow them to be put down and punished. The declaration that we were not to protect British subjects in violating the Chinese laws came out from the Home Government, but it came out late.

The Superintendent, Captain Elliott, had already applied to the Governor-General of India for some ships of war; and had already commenced war-these ships having arrived. It was judged difficult under such circumstances to stop it, without producing impressions that would have led to future wars. Guided by political expediency, but acting with very doubtful morality, we allowed the continuance of hostilities. Junks were

burnt; Chusan, as Lord Palmerston in his recent letter notices, was taken; and eventually (a year after Lord Palmerston was out of office), a treaty was concluded, by which the Chinese agreed to pay us a large indemnity, to open to us four of their chief ports, and to cede the island of Hong Kong.1

The war in Affghanistan was a more serious adventure; and it is difficult to sketch its outline more briefly and eloquently than it is sketched in the following passage, which, with slight alterations, is copied from a little work the merits of which are hereby acknowledged:

2

At this time the north-western frontier of our possessions in India was a great sandy desert extending from the jungles of the hill states of Gurwal to the sea. Beyond this lay the Punjaub, ruled by Runjeet Singh, the old lion of Lahore. Beyond this again, further to the west, lay a country, one of the most interesting in all Asia. From time immemorial it has served as the great highway-alike for trader and conqueror-from Western to Eastern Asia. This country-Cabul, or Affghanistan-lying directly between Persia and the Punjaub, has been traversed by all the great conquerors who penetrated to India from the Mediterranean, the Black, and the Caspian Seas.

An old Indian proverb runs, that he alone can be Emperor of Hindostan who is first lord of Cabul. Alexander of Macedon

1 On Aug. 10, 1842, in a speech in the House of Commons, Lord Palmerston observed that exception had been taken to his China policy; but on that head he said he would appeal to the Duke of Wellington in the House of Lords, merely observing, that if a satisfactory arrangement of commerce with a nation of two hundred millions of people was the consequence, a greater benefit to British manufactures could hardly be conceived.

2 Lord Palmerston: A Biography. By M'Gilchrist.

HISTORY OF THE CABUL EXPEDITION.

399 had to fight his way through, capturing Herat as he went, ere he met and defeated Porus, discoursed with the sacred Gymnosophistæ, and founded a city in honour of his steed Bucephalus on the shores of the Hydaspes. Timour Bec Mahmoud, the founder of the Mahometan dynasty in India, Nadir, and Baber, all conducted their mighty hordes to India by the same route. It was, and is, the key to India from the north-west.

Although it was by means of English money and the assistance of British officers that the young Shah had been established on the throne of Persia, he prized the Russian alliance more highly than the British. At least so far back as 1835, Mr. Ellis, our envoy at Teheran, said this was the case; and, what was worse, that Persia, at the instigation of Russia, meditated a hostile movement against Herat, one of the three independent principalities into which the country of the Affghans was divided. This excited great alarm in England, and the more so as the Ministers of the Shah made no secret of their intention to proceed, after the capture of Herat, to the conquest of the other provinces of the Affghans-in other words, almost as far eastward as the frontier of our Eastern empire. Meanwhile, it was notorious that Russian agents were busily at work all through the affected districts; and the Russian ambassador to the court of the Shah, Count Simonivich, had absolutely offered to take command of the young Prince's army in the expedition against Herat.

Now the ruler of Herat, thus menaced, was Kamran, the only descendant of the great Timour Shah, who was then in possession of actual power. His relatives and chiefs, Zeman Shah and Soojah Shah, had been successively dispossessed of the throne of Affghanistan, and a rival dynasty, that of the Barokzye, ruled, under Dost Mahomed, in their place. Dost Mahomed was naturally anxious to overthrow Kamran at Herat, as he had overthrown Soojah Shah at Cabul. Thus there appeared the probability of Persia and Dost Mahomed, under the influence, as it was said and thought by our agents, of Russia, uniting in a coalition that had at once to be encountered.

To force the Shah of Persia to raise the siege of Herat— which we did partly by menace, partly by the expedition from India of a small force to Karrak, an island in the Persian Gulf

-was the first measure which the Government of India deemed it necessary to adopt; the second was to substitute for Dost Mahomed in Affghanistan, who was an open or disguised

enemy, a prince who, owing his throne to our assistance, might be considered our friend. Soojah, whom Dost Mahomed had deposed, was the rival whose cause we resolved to espouse.

In October, 1838, Lord Auckland, the Governor-General of India, who was, rightly or wrongly, considered as an especial nominee of Lord Palmerston, although Lord Palmerston was certainly not the Minister of the Crown responsible for his appointment, declared war, and decreed the invasion of Affghanistan. Runjeet Singh was to act in combination with us. In November he and Lord Auckland met at Ferozepore, the most advanced of our strongholds in the North-West.

This meeting of the two great chiefs, with their magnificent retinues, was a splendid and imposing sight. Thence the march commenced. The Bombay contingent had to force its way through Scinde, which territory, and its rulers, the Ameers, were also involved in this complicated conflict. At Shikarpore, a place within the boundaries of Scinde, but near the Affghan frontier, they were met by the main expedition from Bengal. Sir John Keane was appointed to the command of the united host, which now proceeded forward under the greatest physical difficulties, wading through artificially-flooded rivers for whole days, then hewing a path through tangled jungles, and all the while having predatory and murderous Beloochees hovering on its flanks. Candahar was entered, Ghuznee stormed in the most magnificent manner, and at last the city of Cabul was in the hands of the British. McNaghten was appointed Political Resident. And there also the joyous and too-confiding Sir Alexander Burnes took up his residence, too unsuspicious of the melancholy fate that was so soon to overtake him. All seemed to go well. Everybody at home was satisfied. The general unpopularity of the Melbourne Government was to some extent redeemed by the éclat of the campaign; and the whole country gladly approved when the Crown showered honours upon the organisers and leaders of the enterprise; when Auckland received two steps in the peerage; when Sir John Keane was made a baron, and Pottinger and McNaghten baronets.

Lord Palmerston's success at the time was, indeed, complete. For as to the disasters that three years afterwards followed, owing to the incapacity and want of foresight of those who had the management of affairs within the conquered territory, he was no more respon