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the Amir, though knowing their designs, led them out to meet the foe; and when, on the second, the advanced guards came in sight, he proceeded to review his army, carrying with him a Koran, on which he asked them to swear fidelity once more. They had conscience enough to refuse; when, facing the line of his cavalry, he told them with wild passion, "You are going to desert me, but, oh, give me first one charge on these Feringi (European) dogs, and then abandon me for ever."He asked in vain, and seeing his last chance gone, he left the ground, and, accompanied by about two hundred faithful cavalry, fled to Bamian, and from thence to Kunduz. Sujah and Keane entered Cabul the 7th of August, and the Shah resumed his old home, where he was to find his grave in the Bala Hissar.

The after operations were the storming of Khelat on the 13th Nov. after a resistance in which the Khan Mihrab and his principal officers were slain, while the English loss was 138 killed and wounded.

The taking of several minor forts was proceeded with, a tribute to the Khybers was agreed on, and a large body of Afghan troops being in course of organization, Sir John Keane, with about half the English army, returned to India across the Punjab. The Russians having invaded Khiva, the departure of Sir W. Cotton was delayed; but the sands of Tartary and the lances of its wild men having reduced the Russian army, it retreated to Orenburg, and Sir W. Cotton resumed his march.

And now it was done; every city, every considerable fort in Afghanistan had received an English garrison; the Khybers had been successfully bribed, the Ghilzis repulsed, the Duranis humbled! Yet were the English farther than ever from having conquered the country. They had literally no friends, not even Sujah; for no sooner was he enthroned, than fancying himself a king instead of a puppet, he required respect and in some cases obedience from the British officers; and his sons and friends required unlimited rights of plunder and slaughter over their old foes throughout the country; and being disappointed, some of them raised troops against their father and friend. But the English naturally resented any assumption of authority in their paltry creature, and insisted on all public crimes being perpetrated by themselves, and after a civilized fashion. Nor were these quarrels their only vexation; their troops were in continual action north, east, and south. Dost Mohamed entering Bamian with a body of Kulum horse, after sweeping off the English outposts, was beaten by Colonel Dennie, while to counterbalance this, the Beluchis retook Khelat, slaying every one of the foreign garrison; and following up their success, they blockaded or stormed the English redoubts in Upper Scinde, Gundava, and the Bolan.

But the Ghilzis and Cakers began a more formidable system, namely, a guerilla war. Unsettled themselves, without towns or local attachments, they retreated before any large force; but every courier and convoy, every detachment sent to procure forage or relieve an outpost, was attacked, and in three cases out of four successfully. In fact there

were not any three months in the year 1840, in which the English did not lose more soldiers than in the campaign of invasion. On the 8th of November of that year, Dost Mohamed having suffered another defeat, and finding his dependant life among the Usbegs intolerable, surrendered to General Sale, and was transmitted as a state prisoner to India. With him went all his family, except Akbar Khan, who remained in Bokhara. Nussir the son of Mihrab, the Khelat Khan, crushed by an immense mass of troops, pressing on himat the same time from Scinde and Quettah, having destroyed Khelat, and protracted the war for many months, at length submitted, and still the country was unconquered. Commerce had absolutely ceased, every dispatch required a couple of squadrons and field pieces to guard it. Every convoy had a corps d'armée round it. Tribe after tribe appeared on the field; no sooner were the Ghilzies beaten, than the Nurzyes broke out, and a victory in Shal was followed by an insurrection in Bajur. The government of Herat was at the same time usurped by Yar Mahomed, the English mission turned out, and literally chased to Girhisk. The Khybers and Kujjuks respectively beat the troops sent against them. All these occurrences compelled the Indian government to restore their Afghanistan force to its war complement, and as the winter of 1840-1 advanced, to raise it to a third more than Lord Keane led through the Bolan. The effect of this was to enforce a temporary tranquillity on the main lines of road, by which means quantities of English goods were conveyed into the country. But this temporary lull had a mischievous effect, for as it confirmed the power of Shah Sujah's officers, it established a system of tyranny, persecution, and bribery so bad, as to alienate every man from the Shah's government, and thus fresh wars were prepared. Throughout the whole spring and summer of 1841, there were continual skirmishes with the Ghilzis and Duranis, (the minor tribes being quiet) and it often happened in these engagements that eighty or ninety men and officers were killed and wounded.

And thus affairs proceeded in conquered Affghanistan, until the general rising of last autumn, in which Cabul, Ghizni, and all the outposts, with the guns and magazines, have been captured, Shah Sujah, Burnes, M'Naghten, and over one hundred English officers killed, and the Cabul force (13,000), the Ghizni (1,500), the Kohistan (1,000) annihilated. It is needless for us to repeat the details of these events to our readers, who are doubtless familiar with them, from the newspaper accounts. Suffice it, that the Anglo-Indian government having perpetrated every degree of treachery and cruelty, having made war without provocation and against policy, having dethroned an able patriot to raise a feeble villain, having wasted ten millions of money between military expenses and bribes, having lost their ablest diplomatists, their forts, officers, and armies, having stained themselves with every crime, weakened themselves by every blunder, and disgraced themselves with every ally, every subject, every neighbour, and every enemy, they are now about to resume the war they should

never have begun. It is not easy, without detail, to predict the immediate results of the present campaign. As yet, General Sale's defence of Jelalabad is the only military feat to which the English can turn from their countless failures; but their successes in other quarters, if not quite so honourable, had been much more decisive. Sale* bribed for provisions to be sure, but then he held his own, and beat his besiegers with ball and blade; but Pollock, more simple in his operations, bought all his success, and if report speaks true, jockied the Kybers into the bargain. He agreed to pay £15,000 for the sale of the pass; £5,000 down, and £10,000 at Ali Musjid, receiving fourteen chiefs as hostages. But as it turned out that (designedly or accidentally upon Pollock's part) he was opposed by some Afridi robbers, and marching in great array he lost fourteen men, (one for every hostage it seems) for this he is said to have withheld the balance of the £10,000, and to have threatened the hostages with a short shrift and a stout gallows. To us this seems unjust, for as he went thro' the upper and stronger part of the pass, from Ali Musjid to Duka, without the loss of even fourteen men, or any attack at all, we must assume that he had satisfied the Kybers with the full £15,000 according to promise, though we should not be sorry to find the vagabonds who sold the passes of their country miss the wages of their iniquity. Just as Pollock made his way by gold where Wylde failed with arms, General England seems to have cleared the road to Candahar, where he had suffered so sharp a check a fortnight before.

The English having such means of dividing their enemies, being enabled to force the strongest passes without any loss of men at the rate of £200 per mile, (the proportion paid at the Kyber) we think it probable that if forward operations be continued, Cabul and Ghuzni will be besieged, and the former, at least, taken this campaign; nor is it improbable, that by the help of a convoy of donkeys, (to which General Nott has resorted in the dearth of camelst) British armies may move through the great valleys of the country with the loss of a few hundred men. But for all this, too, a reckoning will come: the winter will destroy the military communications, the ulusi of the Afghans will rise again, the outposts will all be taken, the British occupations will be pared down to Cabul, Ghuzni, and Candahar, and without looking for even any grand disaster, the spring of 1843 will bring its fresh expeditions, and its fresh bribings, and intrigues. The mountaineers must be broken again, and the passes forced once more; and should the Kybers pick up a conscience, or their avarice rise above the English treasury, larger English armies than General Elphinstone's may find permanent quarters in the valleys of Cabul. But be this as it may, the Indian accounts must be made up. The bare communications with Afghanistan will cost a couple of millions a year; add the army and civil

By the way, it turns out that he was in the act of surrendering the town to Akbar Khan when the political agent interfered.

That the English have thus fallen back on the jackasses, appears from the official

returns.

establishment of that country, and it will appear that a more effectual means could not have been devised of producing that bankruptcy in India (which even Sir Robert Peel is forced to speak of as impending) than burdening it with the preservation of Afghanistan.

On the other hand, whether Afghanistan may not be soon abandoned is unknown to the public. Sir R. Peel's government has certainly the knack of keeping its own counsel, and till accounts reach us from the seat of war we must only speculate. The Times continues to assert and vindicate the withdrawal of the English army to the east of the Indus, while the Chronicle as eagerly denies and stigmatizes such a proceeding, and Sir R. Peel plumply refuses to shew a line of his despatches, fearful, quoth he, of the Afghans reading his speech as soon as the Governorgeneral. That Lord Ellenborough issued an order for the evacuation of Jellalabad is clear; and equally so that this step involved in it, as a necessary consequence, the abandonment of Eastern Afghanistan. But whether this order was mistakenly extended to an order for an immediate retreat by the Commander of the Forces in India, (Sir Jasper Nicholls) or whether the whole design of the retreat has been given up, a few weeks will solve.

FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT OF IRELAND.*

When the legislative union between Great Britain and Ireland was effected, there was a great difference of financial circumstances between the two countries. There were two debts, but one was not more than the sixteenth part of the other. There was necessarily a proportionate difference as to taxation. One of the " Papers relating to the Income, Expenditure, Commerce and Trade of Ireland," presented to Parliament in 1834, on the motion of Mr. Spring Rice, shews that certain articles of consumption, such as tea, sugar, wine, &c. yielded, in the year 1801, a revenue of £1,531,446; but if they had been subject to the British rate of taxation, they would have produced £2,882,370, and that therefore Ireland was favoured in mitigated imposts with reference to these articles to the extent of £1,350,924 (Sessional Papers, No. 194). Ireland had besides the advantage of a commerce, which had for years been making an extraordinary progress. Lord Grey, in debating the Union question in 1799, contended that there was nothing in the advancement even of Scotland comparable to the increase of commercial wealth in Ireland. Mr. Pitt boasted of this prosperity, because it afforded him a ground on which he could claim the confidence of the Irish people in the

Speech of JOHN O'CONNELL, Esq. M. P. delivered in the House of Commons on Thursday, July 21, 1842.

Parliamentary History, vol. 35, p. 68.

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justice and generosity of Great Britain, from whose parliament he contended that the prosperity emanated. He referred to a speech delivered by Mr. Foster in 1785, in which there was a description of the advantages we even then began to enjoy in our commerce with England. "In the present time," said Mr. Pitt, "the trade is still more advantageous, as far as relates to the mere interchange of manufactures; the manufactures received in Ireland from Great Britain amounting to one million, while Great Britain, on the other hand, imported manufactured produce from Ireland to the amount of between four and five millions sterling. There are other circumstances of advantage. All the articles which are essential to the trade, to the subsistence, or, as raw materials, to the progress of Irish manufacture, are sent free from duty. Other very considerable advantages are given; for the chief article in their manufacture, and indeed what constitutes four-fifths of her export trade to all parts of the world, Ireland is indebted, not to that independent legislature on which her prosperity is said to depend, but to this parliament. It is by the bounty granted by this parliament that the linen trade has been brought to the height at which it now is. It is by this parliament that a market has been given for its linen to the amount of three millions. By the bounty which we give to Ireland we afford her a double market for this article, and thus ensure to her an advantage, in competition with other countries, in linens, of thirty-three per cent. It may be thought, perhaps, that by so doing we injure ourselves; but we wisely determined to sacrifice advantages, which by conducing to the prosperity of Ireland, were ultimately beneficial to the whole. By this practice we indeed appear to forego the advantage of the duty arising from the importation of other linen, constituting a revenue of £700 000; or, by admitting their linens only, to sacrifice in the price of the article a million sterling."*

In another part of the speech Mr. Pitt asks himself, if Ireland be so prosperous, what are the advantages she is to derive from the Union. His reply is that it is of no little consequence "to secure the advantages she already enjoyed." He speaks of grants for the encouragement of internal improvement. "If we have done this," he says, "when the parliaments of the two countries have been separated, and under circumstances when it was at least doubtful whether what was in fact given to Ireland was also given to Great Britain; and when the former country was but partially united to the latter; can there, I say, be any well founded apprehensions that when Ireland is parliamentarily united with ourselves, such grants would be resumed? The advantages of the linen trade have been stated in Ireland by a respectable authority, as an argument against the Union; but I must observe, that this trade at present rests on the independent discretion of the parliament of Great Britain; whereas, were a Union to take place, the trade would, in the first instance, be secured by formal and irrevocable compact, and would besides,

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