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Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 327, January, 1843 by Various
page 37 of 348 (10%)
requiring, in those to whom it is entrusted, an intimate practical
acquaintance with Indian character and manners, with Anglo-Indian
history, and a clear view of the policy to be ever kept in sight, and
ability and determination to carry it out to the uttermost. When Lord
Auckland went to India, under the Whig Government, in 1836, he found
both its foreign and domestic affairs in a satisfactory state--peaceful
and prosperous--with, upon the whole, a sufficient military force,
notwithstanding the immense reduction of Lord William Bentinck. How did
he leave it to his successor, Lord Ellenborough, in 1841? The prospect
which awaited that successor was indeed dark, troubled, and bloody. An
army, alas! dreadfully defeated in one quarter, and dangerously
disaffected in another; a war of extermination in Affghanistan; probable
hostilities with Burmah and Nepaul; an almost hopelessly involved
foreign policy; and, moreover, under these desperate circumstances, with
a treasury _empty!_

We shall confine ourselves to one topic, the war in Affghanistan--which
we fearlessly, and with deep indignation, pronounce to have inflicted
almost irreparable injury on the British nation--an almost indelible
stain on the British character--and to have shaken the whole of our
Eastern possessions. Lord Auckland, in listening, and his superiors at
home in instructing him to listen, to the representations of Shah
Soojah, and to be persuaded by him to embark in the late disastrous and
disgraceful campaign, were guilty either of an incredible weakness and
ignorance of the nature of the cause they were espousing, together with
an inconceivable degree of short-sightedness as to the most obvious
consequences of it, or of infamous hypocrisy in making the restoration
of Shah Soojah only the pretext and stepping-stone to the conquest of
Affghanistan, in the most criminal and reckless spirit of imaginary
aggrandizement and extension of territory that ever has actuated the
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