12 NOVEMBER 1842, Page 12

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

OUR AWKWARD POSITION AMONG THE AFGHANS, AND WHAT TOOK US THERE.

Form years ago the British forces crossed the Indus and advanced into the Afghan country. The professed objects were—to depose DOST MAHOMMED, and his brothers at Candahar; to place SHAH SWAT( on the throne of Cabul, and subject the whole of the Afghans (and the quarrel with the Khan of Kelat would make ft- appear the Belooches also) to his sceptre ; to settle the boundaries of the Sikhs and Afghans, and thus establish a permanent peace between the two races. The consequence of these operations, it was said, would be to give permanence to two powerful and friendly states on the North-western frontier of our Indian dominions, capable of serving as a bulwark against the approaches of Persia and Russia.

To a common observer all this looked vastly plausible upon paper. A numerous class of political speculators imagine, that when they have called a certain number of people a nation and assigned to them a defined territory, all has been done that is necessary to inspire them with the unanimity of senti- ment and identity of interest which constitute a real nation : such dreamers could see no flaw in the chain of reasoning by which it was demonstrated that in this manner British India was to be made inaccessible to Russian arms and Russian in- trigues. As long as there was nothing between India and Russia but mountains and deserts, occupied by Uzbeks, Turks, Juts, Raj- puts, Sikhs, Tajiks, Hazaras, Afghans, and other outlandish tribes, fighting among themselves and observing at best precarious armed neutrality, they saw nothing to prevent Russian armies landing on the South shores of the Caspian and marching straight to Delhi. But they felt quite satisfied, that by marking out two large spaces on the map, and calling the one the kingdom of SHAH SUSAN who lived at Cabul, and the other the kingdom of RUNSEET SINGH who lived at Lahore, two nations would be created sufficiently strong to arrest the progress of the invaders. So British troops were sent off to convey SHAH SILTAH to his future place of residence at Cabul ; and it was assumed that all the rest would follow as a matter of course.

There was at least one man who saw through the hollowness of all this. It is the fashion to talk of him as no statesman—as one who cannot take large philosophical views of human nature : and it may be so. But he has commanded armies, and shown by his success that he understands what they are made of, and what they can do. Above all, he has commanded Indian armies, and knows that in the East there are no nations, but only governments, and that there the armies are the governments. He looked not to the collective word " nation," which had imposed upon the politicians of the pen ; but he looked at the human elements who were to be worked with and upon. And, like his prototype Fluellen, he be- came convinced that the politicians of the pen, like their prototype Pistol, spoke "brave orts " and nothing more. " Triumph you may," said the Duke of WELLINGTON ; " confident you may be as I am in the gallantry of your troops ; but when, through their gal- lantry, the victory has been gained, then will come your embarrass- ments."

So it has proved. The British advanced with dazzling rapidity both from the Upper and Lower Indus ; and SHAH Susan was placed on the throne of Cabul. Then came the embarrassment. The revolt and the massacre at Cabul are merely the outward form impressed by accident on the course of events. A man of SHAH &WAR'S advanced age must soon have died at any rate ; and in that case, nothing but an overwhelming British force could have pre- vented the nominal monarchy from again resolving into anarchy. The Afghan country could not support a British army large enough to keep them in submission. The Afghan state could only be kept up by the presence of a British army ; and that army must have proved a constant drain on the treasury of India, large enough to render our empire in Hindostan precarious. All are agreed that Afghanistan must be evacuated. The only

difference of opinion latterly has been, whether the retreat should be commenced at once sans facon, or whether it should be pre- ceded by the bravado of an advance upon Cabul. Vanity has carried the day in favour of the latter arrangement. Brigadier ENGLAND has been sent back from Candahar with the heavy bag- gage, and General Norr, " relictis impedimentis," has marched from that city upon Cabul. From Jellalabad the other division of the British army is also marching upon Cabul, having left its heavy baggage behind. If the divisions meet at Cabul and take possession of it, their next step will be to retire, like that King of France who

" with twenty thousand men Marched up a hill, and then marched down again."

But their ability to reach Cabul, much more their ability to effect a retreat from it, is not yet certain. The communication between General Norr and the Lower Indus is broken off. By the latest intelligence, he was three days from Candahar in one direction, and Brigadier ENGLAND eight or nine from it n itbe other, and every day would increase the distance between them. The com- munication between the Commander-in-chiefs division-of the army and the Upper Indus was not interrupted ; but from the Khyber Pass it was kept open by the Sikhs, and the latest intelligence does not represent our relations with them as being upon the most satis- factory footing. The British forces in Afghanistan are all but iso- lated : at the best they can but march out of it with flying colours; and it is possible, though perhaps unlikely, that they may not be able to do this. The four years campaign West of the Indus will leave matters on our North-west frontier much as we found them : the country of the Sikhs held by an aristocracy of fanatical soldiers, whom nothing but the personal ascendancy of RUNSEET SINGH kept from fighting among themselves ; the Afghan clans in a state of utter anarchy ; the Khan of Kelat in firm possession of the Belooche country.

The unsatisfactory termination of the expedition—the no-results of the expenditure of much blood and much treasure—is not the fault of those who bring the operations to a close, but of those who began them. Under no circumstances could the result have been materially different. The enterprise was one in which we could only look to be baffled in some way or another. It is de- sirable that the origin of this culpable and foolish proceeding should be exposed. There is a passage of an able article in the last number of the Edinburgh Review which points to a probable explanation. The writer traces an outline of the constitution and working of our Indian government, in a style that shows a clear- headed man working upon official and authentic documents. From his statements it appears, that in the civil and military departments of the Indian Government the system of promotion by seniority is rigidly observed, with one exception. Civil and military officers must creep slowly upwards as their seniors die off: nothing short of po- sitive offences can prevent the incapable from rising ; no degree of merit can hasten the progress of the deserving, except in one line of employment. The exception is the diplomatic service—the career of Residents at the courts of dependent and Political Agents at the courts of independent princes. All the enterprise and am- bition of the servants of the Indian Government is paralyzed and dammed up in every direction but this. The mere knowledge of this fact would lead to the inference that there must be a morbid activity in the diplomatic service in India; a constant exertion on the part of the most active and daring spirits to cut out work for themselves—to prompt the extension of diplomatic re- latIons. in the hope of getting employment. And this inference may be proved to be correct by many books of travels lately pub- lished, and by the published correspondence about Persia and Afghanistan. An officer stationed on the frontier or returning overland to India receives assistance from a native : the Govern- ment shows its gratitude by giving the native a pension, with the nominal post of news-writer. The officer publishes a book, or besieges the Secretary of State with memorials to show himself a clever fellow : the native sends in reams of gossip about the politics of the whole Eastern world : the officer is sent to inquire into the truth of the reports. A whole flock of unfledged diplomatists take flight upon such missions at once from different points of the frontier : their reports are discordant: district Political Agents are appointed to keep an eye upon them, with power to ap- point more where they think it necessary. In no other branch of business is promotion to be accelerated by talent and ac- tivity: here it is ; and accordingly each agent tries to dazzle the Government with more wonderful stories and more brilliant suggestions than his fellows. And by such instrumentality is the Indian Government involved in the paltry and unintelligible intrigues of remote and barbarous tribes, with which it has nothing to do. The British dominions in India are surrounded by a number of petty princes with Political Agents at their courts : in the course of a few years these have become dependent princes with Political Residents at their court ; and a wider circle of independent princes with their Political Agents surrounds them. And this process must go on until the arrangements of the Indian Government find a safer and more useful field for the surplus energies of its servants within its own dominions, or until our empire in the East breaks down beneath its own weight.