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