NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE publication of Lord ELLENBOROUGH'S proclamation for ter- minating the Afghan war leaves no doubt as to the withdrawal of the troops ; and its terms leave _scarcely any room for doubt that the troops were originally meant to retire in October, neither sooner nor later. Few state-papers have so concisely enunciated import- ant principles, or arrested such general attention. It condemns the errors in which the war originated, abandons the principle of in- tervention in the internal affairs of the tribes, restores the Indus as our boundary, concentrates the strength of India for the maintenance of peace its wealth for the material improvement of the country and the people. It gives effect to a policy for which we have long con- tended—strict abstinence from overpassing the proper bounds of India, sufficiently vast in itself to be difficult of management. Sound in principle, the proclamation has been assailed on a far smaller point of official etiquette. In laconic and epigrammatic language, it conveys a censure on those who originated the war which Lord ELLENBOROUGH abandons : and it is angrily declared that he has committed a solecism in official decorum, on three seve- ral grounds,—the enunciation of his own opinions without await- ing the fiat of his superiors at home; the condemnation of prede- cessors in office; and the confession of error in the face of foreign nations. It has happened before now that Governors sent on im- portant but distant missions have been obliged by the eirc,um- stances which they found in the region of their government to adopt a course of their own, without awaiting the tardy because distant concurrence of the Government in Loudon. Lord DURHAM in Canada furnished one instance of a delegate taking his delegators by surprise; perhaps Sir CHARLES BAGOT furnishes another : Lord DURHAM was abandoned by the cowardly party that wished to use his name and reputation without venturing to share his acts; Sir CHARLES BAGOT appears to have been fully supported by the Conservative Ministry, his bold policy being justified by the cir- cumstances. Lord ELLENBOROUGH'S is of a far more literally " conservative" kind —a recurrence to the status in quo ante helium ; the war being an odious, impracticable, and perilous contest.
But what reason was the Indian Government to assign for ab- ruptly abandoning a war not one of the professed objects of which had been attained ? In the declaration of war issued by Lord AUCKLAND in October 1838, the objects put forth were—the failure of Buases's mission of 1836 to obtain the concurrence of DOST MOHAMMED KHAN in giving full effect to the treaties of commerce with the Ameers of Scinde, the Nawab of Bahawalpore, and the Maharaja RUNJEET SINGH' the designs of Russia, the siege of Herat, and the aid of the Doses family to the besiegers, with the withdrawal of Sir JOHN M'Neim, from Persia ; and Dosr MOHAM- MEDs hostile pretensions against RUNJEET SINGH. Of the attack on the Sikhs, Lord AUCKLAND said, "it was naturally to be appre- hended, that his Highness the Maharaja would not be slow to avenge this aggression ; and it was to be feared that the flames of war once kindled in the very regions into which we were endeavour- ing to extend our commerce, the peaceful and beneficial purposes of the British Government would be altogether frustrated." And it was "in order to avert a result so calamitous" that Lord AUCK- LAND carried war into those very regions. "His Majesty Shah Sujah-ool-Moolk will enter Afghanistan surrounded by his own troops, and will be supported against foreign interference and fac- tious opposition by a British army. The Governor-General confi- dently hopes that the Shah will be speedily replaced on his throne by his own subjects and adherents; and when once he shall be secure in power, and the independence and integrity of Afghanistan established, the British army will be withdrawn.'
The history of the contest now probably closed, up to the period of Lord ELLEsnottouou's arrival, is fresh in the recollection of all. Of the causes of the war, some have ceased, though not in such a Way as to induce its institutors to desist ; and others are as far 'Tom being removed as ever. The designs of Russia prove, on the Showing of BURNES'S own restored text, to have been a shadowy bugbear. The embarrassments of Herat have terminated, in con- sequence of occurrences at that place and in Persia itself, without affecting our position at Cabul. We have ourselves engaged the Sikhs to war upon the Afghans, and have concluded no peace be- tween the two peoples. Lord AUCKLAND himself produced the "result so calamitous," the kindling of war, which it was feared would frustrate the beneficial purposes of the Government respect- ing the treaties. SHAH SUJAH has been driven from his throne by his own subjects, and slain. Instead of acquiring a consolidated
integrity, Afghanistan was never so torn by anarchy. The army, which was to be withdrawn when all these things were attained that have not been attained, was slaughtered in the place. When, therefore, Lord ELLENBOROUGH entered India, he found things in this state : the visionary fears of foreign aggression had
been refuted by experience, and by information suppressed by Lord AUCKLAND'S coadjutors at home ; the peace, which was to be maintained in order to the extension of commerce, had been re- placed by a war interminable because its objects were impossible; SHAH Sultan, whose power was to be secured, had died, a despised fugitive ; the army, that was conditionally to be withdrawn, had ceased to exist.
In accordance with its conviction, the Indian Government had now to reverse its policy : but it was necessary to assign some reason—if only to let the Afghans know that they had new men to deal with, and that the retreat was the result of altered policy, not fear of their prowess. Lord ELLENnottouaa's censors have not pointed out what reason it would have been wisest to assign • and in the absence of that enlightenment, we are fain to believe that the true one was the wisest—that the ser- vants of England had been betrayed into error through mis- information and misjudgment ; and that, better-informed, she saw fit to alter her will. Was Lord ELLENBOROUGH to sup- press that justification of his decisive course, out of tenderness to those who followed him to India with unparalleled vituperation and charges of the grossest misconduct on pure assumption? On the contrary, it was safest to to give it distinct utterance. By various stratagems his adversaries tried to frighten or cajole him and his colleagues into an imitation and continuance of their own destructive policy, which has wasted so many and such valuable lives and so much treasure ; and the best reply that he could make to their calumnies—the best security he could record against their taunts for sharing their own sin—was to repudiate their policy in emphatic terms. The root of their chagrin and passion is, that in so doing he has for ever deprived them of the hope, that by making their successors participants in their crime they might shut out accusation and retrospection. They say that he has made England confess herself wrong before the nations. His unqualified avowal may take professional diplomatists by surprise; but he has strength- ened the position of the country by placing it on a solid basis, by seeking no flimsy transparent pretences to cloak its real will, and by leaving to others nothing to detect. An honest purpose, when weakly concealed and hostilely detected, may be a source of shame and injury to the concealer: it can only augment the influence of England, and baffle intrigue, to make her honest purposes and real strength as open as the day.
