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The Dost took small account of this emissary, continuing to assure Burnes that he cared for no connection except with the English, and Burnes professed to his Government his fullest confidences in the sincerity of those declarations. But the tone of Lord Auckland's reply, addressed to the Dost, was so dictatorial and supercilious as to indicate the writer's intention that it should give offence.
We have been at a great many SOIREES, at Lady Palmerston's, Lady Grey's, Lord Auckland's, Lady Lewis's, etc., etc. And now, having given you some idea WHOM we are seeing here, you will wish to know how I like them, and how they differ from our own people.
He had not been discreet, but it was not his indiscretion that brought about the failure of his mission. Burnes had failed because, since he had quitted India for Cabul, Lord Auckland's policy had gradually altered. Lord Auckland had landed in India in the character of a man of peace.
All men whose experience gave weight to their words opposed this 'preposterous enterprise. Mr Elphinstone, who had been the head of a mission to Cabul thirty years earlier, held that 'if an army was sent up the passes, and if we could feed it, no doubt we might take Cabul and set up Shah Soojah; but it was hopeless to maintain him in a poor, cold, strong and remote country, among so turbulent a people. Lord William Bentinck, Lord Auckland's predecessor, denounced the project as an act of incredible folly.
The time therefore would seem to have arrived when, in fulfilment of Lord Auckland's proclamation, the British army should be withdrawn from Afghanistan. For the moment this appeared to be the case. But in reality it was not so, and our position soon became dangerous, then critical, and at last desperate.
The supposed objection to Heytesbury was his known sympathy with Russia, at a moment when distrust of Russia's designs on the north-west frontier was about to become the keynote of Anglo-Indian statesmanship. During the interregnum between Bentinck's retirement and Auckland's accession, three more remedial measures were carried into effect, the wisdom of which is not even yet beyond dispute.
Last evening we passed at the Earl of Auckland's, the head of the Admiralty. The party was at the Admiralty, where there is a beautiful residence for the first lord. . . . I had a long talk with Lord Morpeth last evening about Mr. Sumner, and told him of his nomination. He has a strong regard for him. . . . Not a moment have I had to a London "lion."
His successor was on the voyage out, and in the remnant of his term that remained he could not do more than make dispositions which his successor might find of service. Every soldier of the 'Army of Retribution' was despatched to the frontier during Lord Auckland's rule.
At the Palace Mr Montefiore delivered Lord Auckland's and Lord Strangford's letters to the Governor, the Hon. F. C. Ponsonby, who advised him to go to the East in a ship of war, on account of the Greek pirates.
I am almost ashamed to tell the House what I believe to have been the reason. I believe that Lord Ellenborough affixed the false date of the first of October to his proclamation because Lord Auckland's manifesto against Afghanistan was dated on the first of October.
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