should be abandoned to his adoring subjects. Lord Auckland's policy was
gravely and radically erroneous, but it had a definite object, and that
object certainly was not a futile march to Cabul and back, dropping
incidentally by the wayside the aspirant to a throne whom he had himself
put forward, and leaving him to take his chance among a truculent and
adverse population. Thus early, in all probability, Lord Auckland was
disillusioned of the expectation that the effective restoration of Shah
Soojah would be of light and easy accomplishment, but at least he could
not afford to have the enterprise a _coup manque_ when as yet it was
little beyond its inception.

The cost of the expedition was already, however, a strain, and the troops
engaged in it were needed in India. Lord Auckland intimated to Macnaghten
his expectation that a strong brigade would suffice to hold Afghanistan
in conjunction with the Shah's contingent, and his desire that the rest
of the army of the Indus should at once return to India. Macnaghten, on
the other hand, in spite of his avowal of the Shah's popularity, was
anxious to retain in Afghanistan a large body of troops. He meditated
strange enterprises, and proposed that Keane should support his project
of sending a force toward Bokhara to give check to a Russian column which
Pottinger at Herat had heard was assembling at Orenburg, with Khiva for
its objective. Keane derided the proposal, and Macnaghten reluctantly
abandoned it, but he demanded of Lord Auckland with success, the
retention in Afghanistan of the Bengal division of the army. In the
middle of September General Willshire marched with the Bombay column,
with orders, on his way to the Indus to pay a hostile visit to Khelat,
and punish its khan for the 'disloyalty' with which he had been charged,
a commission which the British officer fulfilled with a skill and
thoroughness that could be admired with less reservation had the
aggression on the gallant Mehrab been less wanton. A month later Keane