Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 327, January, 1843 by Various
page 37 of 348 (10%)
page 37 of 348 (10%)
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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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