There is little more to add. It had been part of Elphinstone’s shameful bargain with Akbar Khan that Jellalabad and Candahar should be evacuated before the army of Cabul should reach the former place, and orders had been sent to General Sale in Jellalabad and General Nott in Candahar to abandon these towns. Luckily, these officers were of the right British stamp, and they refused to obey. Akbar Khan besieged Sale in Jellalabad; Sale not only held that place but gave battle to the Afghans outside the fort, routed them, and made ready to co-operate with General Nott at Candahar for a forward movement on Cabul. But the faculties of Lord Auckland, the Governor-General, seemed paralysed. Regardless of British prestige, the very keystone of our rule in India, he ordered the precipitate recall of all the troops in Afghanistan. Luckily, again, his term of office was just drawing to a close, and Lord Ellenborough came out to take the reins of government. At first he issued a proclamation endorsing the withdrawal from Afghanistan, but more spirited counsel prevailed in the end. The re-conquest of Cabul was accomplished by the entry of General Pollock into the capital on September 15, 1842, when it was found that the unfortunate Shah Soojah had paid the penalty of the greatness thrust on him by English diplomacy, and had been assassinated by the people he had been set to rule. Of the English ladies and children who had been taken under the protection of Akbar Khan the story has been written in a once famous book, Lady Sale’s Journal. The husband of that lady, General Sir Robert Sale, was sent to recover the captives, who had suffered innumerable hardships. General Elphinstone had died—the best thing that could happen for his fame; the rest were found in a hill fort in the Indian Caucasus, in charge of a chief, who, having heard of Akbar Khan’s defeat, was easily bribed to surrender his trust. The retreat from Cabul had begun on January 6, but the news did not reach England till March 7.
Lowes Dickinson.] [National Portrait
Gallery.
RICHARD COBDEN,
1804–1865.
The son of a yeoman farmer in Sussex. Entered Parliament as Member for Stockport in 1841 and immediately took the lead in the House of Commons of the party identified with the cause of Free Trade, a cause he had already done much to strengthen. He opposed the Crimean War, and brought about the fall of the Palmerston Government in 1857, by carrying a vote condemning their action in regard to the Chinese War. He negotiated the commercial treaty with France in 1860.
The Tories—or, as they must in future be called, the Conservatives—had been carried to power by a strong wave of reaction in 1841, but it was the destiny of their leader, Sir Robert Peel, to shake the fabric of the Party to its base. There was a story current, of dubious authenticity, about this statesman, how that in his early days his father, also Sir Robert, warned Lord Liverpool that if the young man did not get office immediately he would go over to the Whigs and be lost to his party, whereupon Liverpool immediately appointed him Irish Secretary. No doubt Peel was far more disposed for progress and reform than the average Whig, and there was something paradoxical in the fate that made him leader of the Tories. At first all went smoothly; the leader of the House of Commons was chief of the Ministerial forces and master of the Opposition also. But the first note of approaching storm was sounded on the eve of the meeting of Parliament in February, 1842. The Duke of Buckingham, Lord Privy Seal, resigned his office and seat in the Cabinet on January 31. The reason for this, as the Duke afterwards announced in Parliament, lay in the following expression in the Queen’s Speech:—“I recommend to your consideration the state of the laws which affect the importation of corn, and of other articles, the produce of foreign countries.” |The Corn Duties.| This little sentence, wedged in among the usual ceremonial or occasional paragraphs, contained the kernel of the Ministerial programme, and at once excited extraordinary interest in the country. On February 9, when Peel was to propound his scheme, the delegates of the Anti-Corn Law League marched down in procession to Westminster, and it required all the force of the police on duty to keep them from taking possession of the lobby of the House of Commons.
Frank Holl, R.A.] [By permission of the
Birmingham Liberal
Association.
JOHN BRIGHT, 1811–1889.
He was the son of a Rochdale cotton spinner; entered Parliament as M.P. for Durham in 1843, and represented Manchester 1847–54, and Birmingham from that date to his death. He was appointed President of the Board of Trade in 1868, and in 1873 and again in 1881 Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He was a member of the Society of Friends, and one of the most eloquent and convincing speakers of the century. He is principally remembered for his advocacy of the Repeal of the Corn Laws.