kids, we forswear in a tragedy so torturing to our national
sensibilities. We pass, in sympathy with the burning wrath of our
readers, the madness of dallying and moping over the question--to starve
or not to starve. We pass the infamy of entertaining a treaty with
barbarians, _commenced_ in this foul insult to a British army--that
_after_ we should have submitted to indignities past expression, they
(the barbarians) would consider at their leisure whether it would please
them to spare our necks; a villany that gallant men _could_ not have
sanctioned, an which too certainly was not hurled back in their teeth as
it ought to have been. We pass the lunacy of _tempting_ barbarians to a
perfidy almost systematic in their policy, by consenting to a conference
_outside_ the British cantonments, not even within range of the British
guns, not even within the overlooking of British eyes. We pass the
lunacy of taking out sixteen men as an escort against a number
absolutely unlimited of the enemy, and where no restraint, even of
honour or mutual understanding, forbade that unlimited enemy to come
armed from head to foot. It is a trifle to add--that no instructions
were given to the sixteen men as to what they were to do, or in what
circumstances to act; and accordingly that one man only, out of the
whole sixteen, attempted any resistance; and this in defiance of
warnings eight several times reiterated by English officers, and by
friendly Affghans, that treachery was designed. We pass the triple
lunacy of treating at all in a case where Sir William M'Naughtan well
knew, and himself avowed his knowledge, that no man or party existed
amongst the enemy who could pretend to have authority sufficient for
ratifying, or for executing, any treat of whatsoever tenor. The Cabool
forces perished eventually by the _dissension_ of the two first in
command. This is notorious. And yet, to mark the dread fatality which
pursued them, the _concord_ of these two officers was even more
destructive to their victims than the worst of their disputes. In the