Footnote 97: The new Ambassador to Vienna.
Lord Ellenborough98 to Queen Victoria.
LORD ELLENBOROUGH'S REPORT
INDIA AND AFGHANISTAN
Lord Ellenborough presents his most humble duty to your Majesty, and humbly acquaints your Majesty that having, on the morning after the Council held at Claremont on the third of this month, requested the clerks of the India Board to put him in possession of the latest information with respect to the Political, Military, and Financial affairs of India, he ascertained that on the 4th of June instructions had been addressed to the Governor-General of India in Council in the following terms:—"We direct that unless circumstances now unknown to us should induce you to adopt a different course, an adequate force be advanced upon Herat, and that that city and its dependencies may be occupied by our troops, and dispositions made for annexing them to the kingdom of Cabul."99
The last letters from Calcutta, dated the 9th of July, did not intimate any intention on the part of the Governor-General in Council of directing any hostile movement against Herat, and the Governor-General himself having always evinced much reluctance to extend the operations of the army to that city, it seemed almost probable that the execution of the orders of the 4th of June would have been suspended until further communication could be had with the Home Authorities.
Nevertheless, in a matter of so much moment it did not appear to be prudent to leave anything to probability, and at Lord Ellenborough's instance your Majesty's confidential servants came to the conclusion that no time should be lost in addressing to the Governor-General in Council a letter in the following terms—such letter being sent, as your Majesty must be aware, not directly by the Commissioners for the Affairs of India, but, as the Act of Parliament prescribes in affairs requiring secrecy, by their direction through and in the name of the Secret Committee of the Court of Directors:—
"From the Secret Committee of the Court of Directors of the East India Company to the Governor-General of India in Council.
"Her Majesty having been pleased to form a new Administration, we think it expedient that no step should be taken with respect to Herat which would have the effect of compelling the prosecution of a specific line of Policy in the countries beyond the Indus, until the new Ministers shall have had time to take the subject into their deliberate consideration, and to communicate to us their opinions thereupon.
"We therefore direct that, unless you should have already taken measures in pursuance of our Instructions of the 4th of June 1841—which commit the honour of your Government to the prosecution of the line of Policy which we thereby ordered you to adopt, or which could not be arrested without prejudice to the Public interests, or danger to the troops employed—you will consider those Instructions to be suspended.