England is swayed to and fro under the action of this or similar problems. Epilepsy is not more overmastering than is the tempest of moral strife in England. And a new dawn is arising upon us in the prospect, that henceforth the agitations of peace will be more impassioned for the coming generation than the agitations of war for the last. But that sympathy, almost morbid, which England feels with the condition of social man, other nations echo by a reflex sympathy with England; not always by a friendly sympathy. Like the [Greek: aerobatentes] and funambuli of ancient days, equally when keeping the difficult line of advance, or when losing it, England is regarded with a searching gaze that might seem governed by the fabulous fascination of the rattlesnake. Does she ascend on her proper line of advance? There is heard the murmur of reluctant applause. Does she trip? There arises the yell of triumph. Is she seen purchasing the freedom of a negro nation? The glow of admiration suffuses the countenance of Christendom. Is she descried entering on wars of unprovoked aggression? All faces in Europe are illuminated with smiles of prosperous malice. It is a painful preeminence which England occupies—hard to keep, dangerous to forfeit. Hit, and a million of hearts are tainted with jealousy; fail, and a million revel in malignity. Therefore it was that Cabool and its disasters drew an attention so disproportioned to their military importance. Cabool was one chapter in a transaction which, truly or not, had come to be reputed incompatible with those august principles of public justice professed and worn amongst the phylacteries of Great Britain. Therefore also it was that on this subject, as we have already said, a library of works has been accumulated.

[1] A Great Country's Little Wars. By HENRY LUSHINGTON. London: Parker, 1844.

Of these works we assert, fearlessly but not arrogantly, that all are partially in error. They are in fact, one and all, controversial works; often without the design of the writers, and not always perhaps with their consciousness—but the fact is such. Not one of them but has a purpose to serve for or against Lord Auckland, or Dost Mahommed, or the East India Company, or the government at home and at Calcutta, which replaced that of the Whigs. Some even go into such specialties of partisanship as to manage the cause chiefly as a case depending against the political agents—Mr Ross Bell, Mr Loveday, Captain Outram, or Sir Alexander Burnes. Whilst others, which might seem a service of desperation, hold their briefs as the apologists of that injured young gentleman, Akbar Khan. All, in short, are controversial for a personal interest; and, in that sense, to be controversial is to be partial. Now we, who take our station in the centre, and deliver our shot all round the horizon, by intervals damaging every order of men concerned as parties to the Affghan affair, whether by action, by sanction, by counsel, or by subsequent opinion, may claim to be indifferent censors. We have political attachments: we do not deny it; but our own party is hardly touched by the sting of the case.

We therefore can be neutral, and we shall pursue our enquiry thus:—First, What was the original motive for the Affghan expedition? We insist upon it, that the motive generally assumed and reasoned upon was absurd, in a double sense puerile, as arguing a danger not possible, and (if it had been possible) not existing, and yet, after all, not open to much condemnation from most of those who did condemn it. They might object to the particular mode of execution, but they were pledged to the principle of a war in that direction.

Secondly, When the amended form was put forward, a rational form and the true form of the motive for this expedition, in what respect was that open to criticism? Far enough are we from going along with the views of the Auckland cabinet at this juncture; but these two things we are sure of—that those views were unsound, not by any vice which has yet been exposed, and that the vice alleged argues gross ignorance of every thing oriental. Lord Auckland might err, as heavily we believe him to have done, in his estimate of Affghanistan and the Affghan condition: he had untrue notions of what the Affghans needed, and what it was that they could bear: but his critics, Indian and domestic, were not in error by default merely of philosophic views as to the state of society in Affghanistan; they erred by want of familiarity with the most prominent usages of eastern economy. Lord Auckland was wrong, only as whole masses of politicians are wrong in Europe; viz. by applying European principles to communities under feelings and prejudices systematically different. But his antagonists were wrong as to palpable facts.

Thirdly, If we pass from the motive to the execution of the motive, from the purpose to the means of effecting it, we are compelled to say that Lord Auckland's government adopted for its primary means the most extravagant that could have been devised; viz. the making itself a party to the financial torture of the land.

Fourthly, When local insurrection had arisen, whether directed (as every body assumes) against the abuses of a system introduced by ourselves, or (as we assert) proper to the land, and hereditary to the morbid condition of Affghan society—we shall expose the feeble and inadequate solution yet offered by any military guide for the tragical issue of these calamities. Kohistan, or particular cases, need not detain us; but, coming at once in medias res as to Cabool itself, we shall undertake to show, that as yet we have no true or rational account of the causes which led to the fatal result. What! four thousand five hundred regular troops, officered by Englishmen—a number which, in the last eighty years, had shown itself repeatedly able to beat armies of sixty thousand men, armies having all the appurtenances and equipments of regular warfare—was this strong column actually unable to fight its way, with bayonet and field artillery, to a fortress distant only eighty miles, through a tumultuary rabble never mustering twenty thousand heads?[1] Times are altered with us if this was inevitable. But the Affghans, you will say, are brave men, stout and stout-hearted, not timid Phrygian Bengalees. True—but at Plassy, and again, forty years after, at Assye, it was not merely Bengalees, or chiefly such, whom we fought—they were Rohillas, Patans, Goorkhas, and Arabs; the three first being of Affghan blood, quite as good as any Barukzye or Ghilzye, and the last better. No, no—there is more to tell. The calamity ascends to some elder source than the imbecility of General Elphinstone, or the obstinacy of Brigadier Shelton. Others than the direct accomplices in that disaster are included in its guilt; some of the hitherto known only as the slain who have suffered by the insurrection, and as the survivors who have denounced it. Amongst them lie some of those impeached by the circumstances. So far we might add little to the satisfaction of the public; to see the rolls of the guilty widening would but aggravate the sorrow of a calamity which now it could do nothing to diminish. But oftentimes to know the persons concerned in a great disaster, is a step to knowing something of its causes. And this we will venture to say—that, in defiance of all professional pedantry incident to military men and engineers, the reader is likely to be of opinion that we, at a distance of 7000 miles, have pointed out capital blunders, ensuring ruin and forming temptations to conspiracy, which Lieutenant Eyre, a principal artillery officer on the spot, has failed to notice; and if he failed to notice them in his book à fortiori, he must have failed to notice them officially, whilst yet it would have been in time. There were those things done in Cabool by the "fantastic tricks" of men dressed in authority, which, placed in their