Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 by Various

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The sequel we give from page 164 of the _History_, edited by Mr.
Charles Nash:[1]--"A scene now ensued, much less pleasant to
contemplate. It of course became a question what to do with the
captives, and they were brought before the Shah. _Some of them were
released, upon their declaring that they had been forced into the ranks
of the king's opponents against their will_." We pause to remark, that
already in this fact, viz. the cheerful dismissal of prisoners upon
their own verbal assurance of friendliness, though so little
reconcilable with the furious service on which they were taken, there
is enough to acquit the Shah of unmerciful designs. He made an opening
through which all might have escaped. "But," proceeds the author, "the
majority, excited by fanaticism, were not restrained, even by the
Shah's presence, from evincing their animosity towards his person, and
avowing their determination to have been to seek his life. One of them,
more violent than the rest, upon the interference of one of his
majesty's attendants, stabbed him with his dagger; and they were then"
[_then?_ what! because one was worse than the rest?] "immediately
ordered for execution. Two of them, however, were afterwards spared;
one upon the plea of his being a Syud," (i.e., a descendant
collaterally from the Prophet,) "and the other, because he pleaded hard
for his life."

[1] _History of the War in Affghanistan_. Brookes: London. 1843. We cite
this work, as one of respectable appearance and composition; but
unaccountably to us, from page 269 for a very considerable space, (in
fact, from the outbreak of the Cabool insurrection to the end of General
Elphinstone's retreat,) we find a _literatim_ reprint of Lieutenant
Eyre's work. How is _that_?

This account is not very luminous; and it is painful to observe that
the man who was abject, and the man who was lucky, were the two
selected for mercy. What proportion had previously been dismissed, is
not said. The affair occasioned much discussion, as we all know; and
the author speaks doubtfully of the necessity[1] under which the
execution took place, as not "satisfactorily ascertained." He speaks
even more doubtfully of the _persons_ supposed to be implicated, viz.
the Shah and the commander-in-chief, than of the _thing_. Little,
indeed, could have been known distinctly, where rumour ascribed to each
separately the most contradictory acts and motives. Us it surprises,
that Lord Keane has not publicly explained himself under such gloomy
insinuations. But, in the mean time, this is plain, that the Shah is
entitled to benefit by the doubts hanging over the case, not less than
our own officer. The writer suggests as one reason for a favourable
judgment on the Shah, "previous acts of humanity in the course of his
life." Undoubtedly there are such acts, and there are none well
attested in the opposite scale. In particular, he spared the eyes of
his brother Mahmood, when, by all oriental policy, he had every
temptation to incapacitate an active competitor for the throne. Two
considerations heighten the merit of this merciful forbearance; Mahmood
was the elder, a fact which slightly improved his title; and Mahmood,
in a similar situation, had _not_ spared the eyes of an elder brother.

[1] But afterwards, at page 166, there is a dreadful insinuation that
such a necessity might have founded itself on the danger of taking
prisoners "in a camp already subsisting on half and quarter rations."
Now we, in a paper on Casuistry, (long since published by this journal,)
anticipated this shocking plea, contending that Napoleon's massacre of
4000 young Albanians at Jaffa, could draw no palliation from the alleged
shortness of provisions, whether true or false; and on the ground that a
civilized army, consciously under circumstances which will not allow it
to take prisoners, has no right to proceed. Napoleon's condition had not
changed from the time of leaving Cairo. We little expected to see a
Jaffa plea urged, even hypothetically, for a British army.

We may certainly, therefore, dismiss the charges of cruelty against the
Shah, unless hereafter they shall be better established. But in doing
this, it is right to make one remark, overlooked by all who have
discussed the subject. If these Ghazees were executed as murderers
elect, and as substantially condemned by the very name and character
which they assumed, the usages of war in all civilized countries would
sustain the sentence; though still there is a difficulty where, on one
side, the parties were _not_ civilized. But if they were executed as
traitors and rebels taken in arms, such an act, _pendente lite_, and
when as yet nobody could say _who_ was sovereign, must be thought little
short of a murder.

With the remaining charge we shall make short work. The reader would
laugh heartily if we should call the Dey of Tunis a _dissenter_, the
Pasha of Egypt an old _nonconformist_, or the Turkish sultan a
_heretic_. But this way of viewing Islamism in some inconceivable
relation to the Church of England, or to Protestantism, would not be
more extravagant than the attempt to fasten upon an oriental prince the
charge of debauchery and a dissolute life. The very viciousness of
Asiatic institutions protects him from such reproaches. The effeminate
delicacy of easterns, and the morbid principle of seclusion on which
they build their domestic honour, will for ever secure both Hindoo
Pagans and Mussulmans from blame of this kind, until they pass under the
influence of a happier religion. How can _they_ act licentiously, in a
way cognizable or proveable, whom rank and usage will not permit to
wander, and who cannot have a temptation to wander, from their own
harems, authorized by the institutions of their country?

This last charge, indeed, being so intrinsically absurd, is hardly of a
nature to have merited any answer, had it not been the one most insisted
upon in England, where its ludicrousness is not so apparent, until the
mind is recalled from the life of Christendom to that very different
life which prevails in Asia. The charge then exhales into vapour; and a
man laughs as a ship's company on the broad Atlantic would laugh, if
charged with roaming abroad at night.

But why do we notice _personal_ considerations at all, in a case where
public relations to Affghanistan should naturally be paramount? We
notice them, because our own press dwelt on personal qualities almost
exclusively; and since this Cabool tragedy will make the whole Affghan
policy immortal, we are anxious, by dispersing the cloud of calumny
connected with the object of our choice, to clear the ground for a
juster estimate of what was either good or erroneous in our further
conduct. Not that personal accomplishments of mind or of body were
unimportant in a ruler of simple half-barbarous men; nor again is it to
be denied that Dost Mahommed, from advantages of age, (forty-five years
against the seventy of the Shah,) and from experience more direct and
personal, would, under equal circumstances, have been the better man.
But the circumstances were _not_ equal. The Dost could not have been
more than a provincial ruler in the land; consequently he could not have
undertaken that responsibility for the whole which formed the precise
postulate of our Indian government.

Yet because the Dost could _not_ meet our purposes, is it true that the
Shah _could_? That is the point we are going to consider; and to have
postponed this question to a question of personalities, even if those
personalities had been truly stated, is specifically the error which
vitiated all the speculations of our domestic press. We say then, that
Shah Soojah had a _prima facie_ fitness for our purposes which the Dost
had not; Soojah was the brother, son, and grandson of men who had ruled
all Affghanistan; nay, in a tumultuary way, he had ruled all
Affghanistan himself. So far he had something to show, and the Dost had
nothing; and so far Lord Auckland was right. But he was wrong, and, we
are convinced, ruinously wrong, by most extravagantly overrating that
one advantage. The instincts of loyalty, and the _prestige_ of the royal
title, were in no land that ever was heard of so feeble as in coarse,
unimaginative Affghanistan. Money was understood: meat and drink were
understood: a jezail was understood but nothing spiritual or ancestral
had any meaning for an Affghan. Deaf and blind he was to such
impressions and perhaps of all the falsehoods which have exploded in
Europe for the last six years, the very greatest is that of the
_Edinburgh Review_, in saying that the Suddozye families were "sacred"
and inviolable to Affghans. How could such a privilege clothe the
_species_ or subdivision, when even the Dooaraunee or entire _genus_ was
submitted to with murmurs under the tyranny of accident. In what way had
they won their ascendency? By thumps, by hard knocks, by a vast
assortment of kicks, and by no means through any sanctity of blood.
Sanctity indeed!--we should be glad to see the Affghan who would not,
upon what he held a sufficient motive, have cut the throat of any shah
or shahzade, padishah, or caliph, though it had been that darling of
European childhood--Haroun Alraschid himself.

But how could royalty enjoy any privilege of consecration in a land
where it was yet but two generations old? Even those two had been
generations of tumultuous struggle. Oftener had the Shah been seen
racing for his life on a Arab of the Hedjas, than eating
"dillecrout"[1] in peace, or dealing round a card-table grand crosses
of the Dooraunee order. The very origin of Affghan royalty fathoms the
shallowness of the water on which it floated. Three coincidences of
luck had raised Ahmed to the throne. One dark night his master Kouli
Khan, for the benefit of all Asia, had his throat cut. This Kouli, or
Nadir Shah, was much more of a monster than Ahmed; but not very much
less of a usurper. Riding off with his cavalry from Persia to Candahar,
Ahmed these robbed a caravan! Upon which every body cried out to him,
"Go it!" and his lucky connexion by birth with the best of the
Dooraunee blood did the rest. A murder, a flight, and a robbery, or
pretty nearly in the words of our English litany, "Battle, and murder,
and sudden death," together with a silver spoon in his mouth at his
natal hour, had made Ahmed a shah; and this Ahmed was the grandfather
of our own pet Soojah. In such a genealogy there is not much for a
poet-laureate to found upon, nor very much to make a saint out of.
Ahmed, after a splendid and tumultuous reign of twenty-six years, died
of cancer in 1773. His son Timour feigned distractedly for twenty
years. Dying in 1793, Timour left a heap of shahzades, amongst whom our
good friend Soojah was almost the youngest. As they call people
Tertius, Septimus, or Vicesimus, from their station in the line of
birth, let us call _him_--Penultimate Soojah Penultimate, if he was, he
could fight as respectably as the rest: and many was the kick he
bestowed on antepenultimate Mahmood. From that year 1793, the zenith of
the French Revolution, in Affghanistan was nothing but fighting for
some ten or fifteen years. Truly a battle royal it was; and if we
cannot report to a fraction the "list of the killed and wounded," we
know the main results. How many of the fraternal combatants leaped upon
the throne, we are not quite sure. Four we can swear to, who were all
pulled out by the ears before they had time to adjust the folds of
their purple. The case of Eteocles and Polynices was a joke to it; and
by the time the row or termashaw was over, and the candles were brought
back amongst this happy family, the following was the state of
matters--two stone blind, three (if not four) stone dead, and two in
exile living upon charity; amongst which last was Penultimate Soojah.
It is proper to mention, by the way, as an appendix to the adventures
of this old friend, that (improving upon his grandpapa's example) he
had run off from his elder brother with the crown jewels; but, like
Colonel Blood in our Charles II.'s reign, he benefited only by the
glory of this distinguished larceny; for soon after, falling amongst
thieves, at the head of whom was our late worthy ally the Seik
Maharajah, Runjeet Singh, he in _his_ turn, was effectually cleaned
out; and, in particular, his silk "wipe," in which he had wrapped up
the famous _Koh-i-noor_, or _summit of glory_, was cleanly forked out
of his fob by the artful dodger, old Runjeet, himself. Here was a
pleasant commentary on the adage of "_Diamond cut Diamond_." The
jewels, originally stolen by Ahmed, were passed on (as in our game of
_Hunt the Slipper_) from thief to thief, until at least forty thieves
had possessed them for a few weeks or months. All the forty are now
dead; and at this moment the _summit of glory_, possibly never once
worn by one of them, is a derelict in the hands of the latest murderer
at Lahore, of course attracting by its light all hands towards his
interesting throat.

[1] "_Dillecrout_."--This is the traditional dish of royalty at our
English coronation banquet in Westminster Hall.

We have thus sketched a slender memoir for the leading family of saints
amongst the Edinburgh reviewer's holy Suddozyes. Great must have been
their sanctity amongst the Affghans. The reader will judge for himself
whether that _aureola_, or supernatural glory about their heads, was
altogether sufficient to guarantee the throne of King Soojah. And it
must not be quite forgotten, that on the roll-call of legitimacy
Penultimate Soojah did not stand next for promotion. Prince Caumraum,
who commanded at Herat, stood before him equally in active qualities,
and in precedence of title; for he was the son of Mahmood. The sons of
Zemaun had a still higher precedency.

However, the Affghans, who are essentially democratic by the necessities
of their turbulent condition, often make a compromise in their choice of
khans between strict primogeniture and personal merits, where they
happen to be appropriate. And they might have done so here. But we are
now going, in conclusion, to bring forward one remark, which utterly
prostrates Lord Auckland's scheme as a scheme of hope for Affghanistan,
or of promise for his own purpose. It is this--no legitimacy of title,
and no personal merits, supposing both to have met pre-eminently in the
person of Soojah, had a chance of winning over the Affghans to a settled
state. This truth, not hitherto noticed, reveals itself upon inspecting
the policy of all the Suddozye shahs from Ahmed downwards; and probably
that policy was a traditional counsel. Ahmed saved himself from domestic
feuds by carrying away all the active, or aspiring, or powerful spirits
to continual wars in the Punjaub, in Persia, or India. Thus he sustained
their hopes, thus he neutralized their turbulence. Timour next, and his
son Zemaun after _him_, pursued the very same policy. They have been
both taxed with foolish ambition. It was not _that_: the historian has
not perceived the key to their conduct:--it was the instinct of
self-preservation. No otherwise than by exhausting the martial
restlessness of the Affghans upon foreign expeditions, was durability to
be had for any government. To live as a dynasty, it was indispensable to
cross the Indus in pursuit of plunder. But exactly that policy it was,
the one resource of prudent Affghan princes, the escape-valve for
conspiracy and treason, which Lord Auckland's army had been put in
motion to abolish.

Now, _thirdly_, let us examine the machinery by which these plans were
to be executed. Under the last head we have seen that, if on the whole
perhaps the best instrument at hand, and better essentially than the
Dost, very soon, indeed, Shah Soojah must have learned the necessity of
passing over to that aggressive system which he had been raised up to
destroy. Merely for his own safety he must have done this. But now
suppose this otherwise, and that Soojah had continued to be that passive
instrument for the Indian cabinet which their plans required and
presumed. Even on this supposition, our agent or lieutenant Soojah would
have required at first some support. By what machinery was this to be
given? What was to be the instrument for sustaining our instrument?

Simply taxation, energetic taxation. Yet, if _that_ should happen to
fail, what was to be the resource? Simply to fine and to amerce--_i.e._
more intense taxation. So, in Moliere's _Malade Imaginaire_, the only
remedy is "_Saignare et Purgare_." But _lavemens_ had been known to
fail. What was to be done in that case? _What is to be done?_ shrieks
the Macaronic chorus--Why, of course, "_Purgare et ensuita purgare_." To
the present government of India, this organ of administration is all in
all. And it was natural to transfer this doctrine to Affghanistan. But
in that they mistook the notions of the Affghans. And, in order to
understand them, it may be well to review the possible aspect and
modifications under which the idea of a tax may fall.

First, there is the lawful and peaceful revenue raised in free Christian
states under their noble civilization, which is paid even thankfully, as
the purchase money for inappreciable social benefits. Next, and in the
very opposite extreme, is the ruffian levy once raised upon central
India by the ferocious Pindarree, who asked for it with the insolence of
a robber, and wrenched it from the recusant with the atrocities of a
devil. Here there was no pretence of equivalent given or promised: and
this was so exquisite an outrage, a curse so withering, that in 1817 we
were obliged to exterminate the foul horde (a cross between the Decoit
and the Thug) root and branch. Now between these two poles lie two
different forms of mitigated spoliation. One was the Mahratta _chout_,
the other the _black mail_ of the Scottish cateran. Neither of these
gave any strict or absolute equivalent; but with a rude sense of
justice, both, on different principles, endeavoured to indemnify the
sufferer. The Mahratta generally, by a treaty with the local government,
induced them to allow for the _chout_ as twenty-five per cent advanced
out of their own claim for taxes. And the cateran, if he did not go upon
a convention with the government, gave the compounder a protection from
other caterans, a discharge from irregular demands, and a means of
recovering what might be stolen by knaves. The European case of taxation
may be viewed as the fairest case of buying and selling; the Pindarree,
as the vilest of robberies; and the two last as cases of compromise, (or
what in Roman law was called _transactio_,)--as a toll or fine in fact,
though too arbitrarily assessed.

Such are the categories of taxation; and, at the very best, all Affghans
viewed it in the light of _chout_ or _black mail_, a tribute to be
thrown into the one scale if a gleaming sabre lay in the other. King
Soojah levying taxes was to him a Mahratta at the least, if he was not
even a Pindarree or a Thug. Indeed it is clear that, where the
government does nothing for the people, nor pretends to do any thing,
where no courts of justice exist, no ambassadors, no police, no
defensive militia, (except for internal feuds,) title there can be none
to any but a nominal tribute, as a mere peppercorn acknowledgment of
superiority: going beyond _that_, taxation is borne only as robbery is
borne.

Under these circumstances, and having a motive so strong for reconciling
the Affghans to the new government, of all the incidents belonging to
sovereignty on our European notions, least and last should we have
suffered the Shah to exercise that of taxation. But to exercise it
ourselves, that was midsummer madness! If _he_ would have seemed a
robber in such a function, what must we have seemed? Besides, it is held
by some who have more narrowly watched the Affghan modes of thinking,
that, even where they _do_ submit to pay a tax, it is paid as a loan,
and on the understanding that the chief receiving it is bound to refund
it indirectly, by leading them at some convenient season (which many
conceive to be in every alternate year) upon a lucrative foray. But this
was exactly what we came to prevent. What we should have done is
manifestly this. How much could the Shah have levied on all
Affghanistan? A matter of L. 300,000 at most. But this was the _gross_
sum, before deducting any thing for costs of collecting, which costs
were often eighty shillings in the pound, besides counting on the
_little_ aid of our bayonets as a service wholly gratuitous. The sum
netted by the exchequer must have been laughably small; and even in that
respect the poor king must often have sighed for his quiet English
lodgings on the left bank of the Sutlege. Now, surely this trivial
revenue might have been furnished on the following plan. In a country
like Affghanistan, where the king _can_ be no more than the first of the
sirdars, it is indispensable to raise his revenue, meaning the costs of
his courtly establishment, as we ourselves did in England till the
period of 1688. And how was _that?_ Chiefly on crown estates, parks,
forests, warrens, mines, just as every private subject raised his
revenue, reserving all attempt at _taxes_ in the shape of aids,
subsidies, or benevolences, for some extraordinary case of war, foreign
or domestic. Our kings, English and Scotch, lived like other country
gentlemen, on the produce of their farms. Fortunately for such a plan,
at that moment there must have been a fine harvest of forfeitures rising
to the sickle all over the Affghan land, for rebels were as thick as
blackberries. But, if any _deficit_ had still shown itself on the Shah's
rent-roll, one half of that L.30,000 a-year which we allowed to the Dost
when our prisoner, or of that smaller sum[1] which we allowed to the
Shah when our guest, would have made it good. Yet what if we had spent
a million sterling through a period of ten years, as a sort of
scaffolding for the support of our new edifice whilst yet green and
rising? Even in that case, and supposing us to have taken our leave of
the Dooraunee throne at the end of one year, after planting it as
firmly as it ever could be planted, we should have pocketed six million
of pounds sterling that now are gone; whereas we insisted on sinking
three millions per annum for the first three years, in some bottomless
Affghan Chatmoss, with the effect (seemingly with the intention) of
enabling King Soojah to earn universal hatred by netting a few lacs of
rupees.

[1] _Smaller sum._--L.20,000 a-year. There was, however, a separate
allowance, we believe, to Zemaun, the king's blind brother.

This was the rock on which we split. Had we restrained the king from
levying taxes, all might have gone well. Had we restrained ourselves
from enforcing his levies, all might have gone decently. And had we
prompted the king to inaugurate some great public benefit--as, for
instance, by conferring upon the people a simple system of judicial
process and distributive justice--both he and we might have become
popular; for, even in Affghanistan, there must be multitudes of poor
men, peasants and tradesmen in towns, mothers and wives, who sigh for
peace, and curse their endless agitations. Yes, even amongst their
martial spirits, who now live by war and the passions of war, many are
they who would relent from their angry feuds, if it were possible to get
justice without them.

The sum, therefore, of that question; viz. of the _How_ and by what
machinery Lord Auckland proposed to accomplish his not unstatesmanlike
object, is this--that we failed utterly, and chiefly by applying
European principles to Oriental communities; and in particular,

1st, By throwing a prodigious stress on the fancied consecration of
royalty in a country where it would have snapped under the weight of a
L.10 note.

2dly, By enforcing (and even exercising in our own persons as
principals) the odious power of taxation, under the monstrous delusion
that it was the first of a king's privileges, where in fact, and with
some reason, it was viewed as the last of his excesses.

The first was a _negative_ delusion. We fancied a mighty power where
simply there was none; fancied a substance where there was not even a
shadow. But the second was worse: it was a _positive_ delusion. We
fancied a resource where simply there was a snare--a mooring cable where
simply there was a rope for our execution--a sheet-anchor where simply
there was a rock waiting for our shipwreck.

Not the less, however, we maintain, that whilst in fact our ruin was
self-prepared, come it would, sooner or later, from the necessity of
Affghan society, had the actual occasion of that ruin been wanting. You
build a palace on the waters, and you complain that a monsoon has
overthrown it. True; but had there been no monsoon, equally it would
have been supplanted by the _natural_ unsteadiness of the waves.

Now, _fourthly_, however, for Cabool, and the crape-bound banners
"perituraque castra!" Fourthly and lastly, for the solution of that
hideous calamity, whose memory is accursed for ever. But the solution--
is not _that_ plain already? If what we allege be true, if the delusions
exposed under the third head are rightly stated, will not _they_ solve
the ruin of Cabool? Are not _they_ sufficient? No, nothing will solve
it--no causes are sufficient for such a result, unless a strong spirit
of delusion had been inflicted from heaven, distraction, frenzy,
judicial madness. No dangers from the enemy, no pressure from without,
_could_ have accomplished that wreck, had they not been aided by
treachery within the counsels of our own hearts.

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