the immediate consequence of their return was the disgrace and punishment of the "traitor," Hadji Khan. He had lately won riches and honour by betraying the Barukzye cause, and now, for favouring the escape of his old master, he was disgraced and punished. It was probably the only deed prompted by good feelings he had ever done in his life, and he did not find it answer. Doubtless, in the seclusion of his imprisonment at Loodianah, he resolved in his heart not to offend similarly again. Treason was no new game to him; but this time he had been traitor on the wrong side. It is an instructive lesson to scoundrels, to be careful, like Snake, to preserve their character, and not to disappoint their employers' estimate of their scoundrelism. We shall not attempt to follow in detail the subsequent fortunes of Dost Mahomed. It will be sufficient to say that he strove to maintain the war against us with an honourable pertinacity; that in the course of his endeavours to obtain assistance he was imprisoned, savagely treated, and his life endangered by the ruler of Bokhara-the same wretched tyrant who has since become infamous by the murder of our two countrymen, Colonel Stoddart and Captain Conolly; and that, escaping thence, he returned to Affghanistan, and became once more a rallying point of the "disaffected and rebellious," and at one time a source of most serious alarm, an insurrection, even in Cabool itself, being daily apprehended; that, after sustaining a ruinous defeat at Bamean, from Colonel Dennie, in an action which, in a military point of view, was perhaps the most brilliant fought in Affghanistan, a defeat which a slight advantage gained at Purwan Durrah seems only to have convinced him it was impossible to repair, he rode with one attendant straight from the last-mentioned field of battle to Cabool, met Sir William Macnaghten returning with his escort from his evening ride, and claimed, with a confidence honourably given, and honourably repaid, the protection of the representative of England. The Envoy merits praise for bestowing generously and readily the kindness which it would have been disgraceful to refuse,-but we regret to find that, true to his dislike to Dost Mahomed, he continued afterwards to attribute the favourable impression which he made on all who came in contact with him, to the singular misleading powers of this "accomplished dissembler." With this chivalric incident, which occurred in November 1840, exactly a year before the great insurrection in Cabool, closed for the time the public career of one whose name, otherwise little known beyond the limits of his own country, has now been made famous through the world; and carries with it, wherever it is spoken, a reproach to the impolicy and injustice of England.

We return to the course of earlier events; that is, to the autumn of 1839. Though Dost Mahomed had escaped for the time, the Indian government had kept its word, and placed Shah

Soojah on the throne of his ancestors, and a large part of the troops were at once withdrawn to India. The returning march of the Bombay army was signalized by one of the most important events of the year 1839, the capture of Khelât. We have already alluded to the causes of quarrel with the chieftain of that country. He was accused, not only of having failed in his engagements to furnish provisions, but of having incited the hill tribes to attack us in the Bolan Pass, of having waylaid the bearers of the treaty he had signed, and of other hostile proceedings. Had all that he was charged with been entirely established, we cannot but regard the resolution to depose him as a harsh, high-handed, and arbitrary proceeding. He was false, if false at all, to a compulsory agreement, an agreement entered into not in furtherance of his own interests, but of ours; and to whatever extent the original demand upon him may be held to be vindicated by apparent necessity, the same cause cannot be given for visiting the violation of his engagement with the very extreme of retribution, after the expedition had been perfectly successful. It would, we think, have been more consistent with policy and justice, as well as with humanity, to have accepted the excuses with which he was ready to propitiate the conquerors of Affghanistan, and to establish by future kindness some right to those services which hitherto we had attempted to exact by terror. These considerations either did not occur to our politicians, or were disregarded by them. They had already tasted the pleasure of being "proud setters-up and pullers-down of kings," and the Commander of the Bombay column was charged in his return to effect the deposition of Mehrab Khan.

That chieftain, whatever his conduct towards us had been, seems not to have expected such a proceeding. He attempted to delay the advance of the British by professions of attachment and allegiance, coupled with the declaration that if attacked he would defend himself to the last. Professions and threats were alike unnoticed, and the British force appeared before Khelât on the 13th November. All the writers on the Affghan war bear testimony to the dashing gallantry of the assault which followed, and the determined resistance of the besieged.

The English general performed skilfully and bravely the service entrusted to him, and Mehrab Khan kept his word. Fighting to the last for the independence of his country, and for his own hereditary dominion, he died like a brave man in what was, in the main, a good cause, and the reverence of his people has not unworthily bestowed upon him and the chiefs who fell with him before the Feringee invaders, the blood-earned honour of martyrdom.

Mr. Masson, who arrived at Khelât a few months after these events, and who gives a painful picture of the depression prevailing among the inhabitants, and the resignation with which it was

borne, states that he found there but one opinion respecting the conduct of Mehrab Khan; that he had not been guilty of the offences imputed to him, against the British government. We cannot go at length into the arguments by which Mr. Masson maintains that Mehrab Khan had not, as he was accused of doing, excited the mountain tribes against us: that this was done by others, who betrayed his confidence. That he was in the hands of traitors there can be no doubt. It is certain, that his principal agent in our camp threw every obstacle in the way of an amicable arrangement,-that he was at one and the same time doing all he could by letter to excite in the Khan's mind fear and hatred against the English, and representing to us in the strongest light the hostile and faithless disposition of his employer. The first half of this treason, which was not discovered till after the death of his unfortunate master, deprived him of the reward which he had earned in the character of our partisan by the second. This man is said by Masson to have forged, without Mehrab Khan's knowledge, the intercepted letters to the tribes: and there can be no doubt that he was quite capable of doing so. His object, evidently, was to ensure the Khan's destruction, by leading him to commit himself with the English, and, perhaps, by their all powerful assistance to procure the succession for himself. It is difficult, without fuller information, to form a positive opinion upon the question of Mehrab Khan's conduct. The fullest establishment of his guilt would be, we think, an inadequate defence for the precipitate and vindictive course of the British authorities; but if he was, in every sense, unjustly attacked—then, no deed more truly lamentable than this "brilliant exploit" has ever stained the annals of England.

We must give a short summary of the rest of this Khelât episode.

The territory of the slain chief was partitioned, our pet and protegé, Shah Soojah, coming in for a large share. The son of Mehrab Khan, a boy of fourteen, became a fugitive and wanderer, and Nawaz Khan, the relation to whom we have before alluded, was set up in Khelât to govern the diminished dominions, as the tributary of Shah Soojah, and under the control of an English political agent. Of the individual who filled this station at his arrival, Mr. Masson gives an account, to which we have, as yet, seen no contradiction offered; and it is frightful to think of the amount of unchecked power over hundreds of thousands thus placed in hands which, if the account be true, were unfit to exercise subordinate authority over a single company of soldiers, -over a single form of schoolboys.

The panacea of this Lieutenant Loveday for any disturbance apparently was-to blow the disturber from a gun; his way of visiting any offence to himself personally-to set his bull-dogs on the offender. We can hardly bring ourselves to believe this.

Mr. Masson states that he was at first himself incredulous on the subject, and thought that some accident must have been exaggerated.

"I was frequently told, that, since I had been at Khelât, he had discontinued to use his dogs; and when I expressed anxiety to proceed, I was entreated to remain, that Lieut. Loveday might behave himself decently.” But afterwards,

"Yaiya, a déhwâr or agriculturist of Khelât, employed as a begar, or forced labourer, in some works connected with the house in progress of erection, incurred the displeasure of Lieutenant Loveday, who gave the necessary signal to his dogs, and they inflicted several wounds on the wretched individual. He was carried home in a grievous state and in a few days died."— Masson, p. 118.

To this dreadful incident, Mr. Masson in some degree attributes (and no wonder,) the insurrection which followed, and which terminated in the deposition of our puppet, the imprisonment of Loveday, and the reinstatement of the son of the late chief, Nusseer Khan. A superior British force was speedily directed upon Khelât, and Nusseer Khan again became a fugitive. In the course of his flight the miserable Loveday was murdered, but not by his orders. But the British authorities apparently began to feel the injustice of their former conduct, and, as far as it was now possible, wished to repair it. They made kind offers to the young Khan; but it was not easy to bring him to trust in the Feringees. With no unkindly intention, he was hunted like a partridge on the mountains. We recollect that the Indian newspapers of the day used to tell how, on the entrance of the English force into a valley, the young Khan and his followers would be seen escaping over the ridge of the hills, his mountain pony following him close, like a dog, and clambering over the rocks after him. At length, Colonel Stacy, the officer to whom the settlement of the country was entrusted, having ventured, unattended, into the fugitive camp of Nusseer Khan, confidence was won by confidence, and the young chief consented to be replaced by the English in the seat of his father. This took place in October, 1841. We are glad to find that the portion of his dominions taken from him, has since been restored by the present Governor-General.

It is worth observing that, to this single act of justice—the restoration of Nusseer Khan-we may attribute the subsequent tranquillity of that country, and therefore, in all probability, a great diminution of the danger to which, a short time after Nusseer Khan's restoration, the general insurrection in Affghanistan exposed our troops at Candahar. We are glad to find one spot upon which the eye can dwell with pleasure, in the dark history of our four years' supremacy beyond the Indus.

From Khelât, we return to the affairs of Cabool. One of Shah Soojah's first steps, on his restoration, was to institute what

was called the "Order of the Douraunee Empire;" and if our readers wish for a laugh, in the midst of serious matters, they may read Dr. Kennedy's account of the institution of that burlesque upon chivalry, the most amazing absurdity, one should think, ever perpetrated under the sun;-how their decorations were successively inflicted upon the chief military and political authorities, Colonel Pottinger alone escaping-an escape, in the Doctor's opinion, only to be explained "by the unparalleled good fortune which has attended that gentleman through life;"-and how Sir John Keane, on receiving his " Grand Cross" from the hands of a Mahomedan sovereign, made a long speech "about hurling an usurper from the throne." Well, allowance must be made for the infirmity of human nature, when a speech is expected of it; and Sir John Keane, in 1839, had done something. But we have felt surprise, and something more than surprise, to see it solemnly announced in 1843, that-has applied for, and received, gracious permission to wear the insignia of some class or other of the Order of the Douraunee Empire. Flebile ludibrium! The Order of the Douraunee Empire! Where is the Douraunee Empire? Buried in the bloody defiles of Khoord Cabool, and Jugdulluk! Like a straw on the top of a flood which has swept away bridges and buildings, this miserable Order comes floating by. Let us cease, in common sense, to exhibit with pride a memorial of miserable and unparalleled disasters, which could only be worn rationally as a mark of penance.

The memoir-writers of the campaign give us but little from which to judge of the general state and government of the country, during the two years, from the autumn of 1839 to November 1841, of Shah Soojah's precarious dominion. The real ruler of the country, of course, was Sir W. Macnaghten the "lord sahib," as the insurgents at Khelât styled him, refusing, with contempt, to hold any communication with the puppet set up by the Feringees, but willing to write to the "lord sahib.” We should be glad to believe, that his government was, in any material respect, wise or beneficial to the country. In the Asiatic Journal, for October and November last, we find a letter, written by Sir Alexander Burnes, in August 1840, descriptive of the then state of the country, with remarks upon it by Sir William Macnaghten. The following appears to us a very singular instance of unwisdom. Sir Álexander Burnes has represented, among many other sources of danger, the unpopularity arising from the presence of

"A body of Sikhs, in the costume of their country, as the king's guard in this Mahometan capital. A few evenings ago, I was saluted by several of them with the Sikh war-cry, in the very streets of Cabool. I assert, without fear of contradiction, that no Sikh ever durst, in the time of the Affghan monarchy, appear thus in this city; and further assert, that their presence here is odious to the people, and to the last degree injurious."