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'Swayed, says Durand, 'by the vague apprehensions of a remote danger entertained by others rather than himself, he despatched to Afghanistan Captain Burnes on a nominally commercial mission, which, in fact, was one of political discovery, but without definite instructions.
Burnes wrote to the Envoy he was a soldier, but he was also a 'political, and political employ seemed often in Afghanistan to deteriorate the attribute of soldierhood that there was no alternative for the force but to fall back on Cabul, and entreated Macnaghten to order immediate concentration of all the troops.
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.
It was supposed at the time that Russia was advancing southward towards India in league with Persia, and the mission of Burnes was in reality political, its object being to induce the Ameer to enter into a friendly alliance. Dost Mahomed was quite willing to meet our views, and offered to give up altogether any connection with the two Powers named.
One of the four officers with Macnaghten was George Lawrence, a brother-in-law of Nat Barton; a distinguished man, and the father of five totally unprovided children. He is a prisoner, if not since murdered. Macnaghten I do not pity; he was the prime author of the whole mad War. But Burnes; and the women; and our regiments! India, however, I feel sure, is safe."
The Afghans had risen in Cabul; Burnes, the East India Company's officer in Afghanistan, had been murdered, together with other men, among them Broadfoot's brother, and though there were five thousand British troops stationed only two miles away, as Havelock well knew, they had never been called out to quell the insurrection.
'Bad ministers, wrote Burnes, 'are in every government solid ground for unpopularity; and I doubt if ever a king had a worse set than has Shah Soojah. The oppressed people appealed to the British functionaries, who remonstrated with the minister, and the minister punished the people for appealing to the British functionaries.
Notwithstanding the modern rage for exploration, but few of our countrymen have hitherto pierced the stupendous barrier of the Paropamisan range; but the works of Hanway, Forster, Moorcroft, and Trebeck, Masson, and Sir Alexander Burnes, convey most valuable information concerning the wild regions through which they travelled, and I am bound in simple honesty to confess that my little book does not aspire to rank with publications of such standard merit.
He was succeeded by Major-General Elphinstone, who assumed the command in April 1841. On the morning of the 2nd of November 1841, the inhabitants of Cabul broke out in rebellion, and murdered Sir A. Burnes, the political agent, as well as his brother and Lieutenant Broadfoot, who sold their lives dearly.
Any view of Burns would be misleading which passed over in silence the influences of his home and his father. That father, William Burnes, after having been for many years a gardener, took a farm, married, and, like an emigrant in a new country, built himself a house with his own hands.
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