[111] Sir William Napier says, that “an enlightened desire to ascertain the commercial capabilities of the Indus induced Lord Ellenborough, then President of the India Board of Control, to employ the late Sir Alexander Burnes to explore the river in 1831, under pretence of conveying presents to Runjeet Singh.” But the enlightenment of this measure was questioned at the time by some of the ablest and most experienced of our Indian administrators. At the head of these Sir Charles Metcalfe emphatically protested against it. In October, 1810, he recorded a minute in Council, declaring “the scheme of surveying the Indus, under the pretence of conveying a present to Runjeet Singh,” to be “a trick unworthy of our government, which cannot fail when detected, as most probably it will be, to excite the jealousy and indignation of the powers on whom we play it.” “It is not impossible,” he added, “that it may lead to war.”—[MS. Records.] These opinions were repeated privately in letters to Lord William Bentinck, and, at a later date, to Lord Auckland. Metcalfe, indeed, as long as he remained in India, never ceased to point out the inexpediency of interfering with the states beyond the Indus.
[112] And doubtless, very absurd and uncalled for the jealousy was considered in those days. As Burnes ascended the Indus, a Syud on the water’s edge lifted up his hands, and exclaimed, “Sindh is now gone, since the English have seen the river, which is the road to its conquest.” Nearly twenty years before, Sir James Mackintosh had written in his journal: “A Hindoo merchant, named Derryana, under the mask of friendship, had been continually alarming the Sindh Government against the English mission. On being reproved, he said that although some of his reports respecting their immediate designs might not be quite correct, yet this tribe never began as friends without ending as enemies, by seizing the country which they entered with the most amicable professions.” “A shrewd dog,” said Mackintosh; but he did not live to see the depths of the man’s shrewdness.
[113] He was promised, too, the reversion of the office of minister.
[114] Burnes, when in England, had endeavoured to impress the Court of Directors with an idea of the expediency of sending him out as commercial agent to Caubul; but Mr. Tucker, who was then in the chair, could see only the evils of such a measure. “The late Sir Alexander Burnes,” he wrote some years afterwards, “was introduced to me in 1834 as a talented and enterprising young officer, and it was suggested that he might be usefully employed as a commercial agent at Caubul, to encourage our commerce with that country and to aid in opening the river Indus to British industry and enterprise.... I declined then to propose or to concur in the appointment of Lieutenant Burnes to a commercial agency in Caubul, feeling perfectly assured that it must soon degenerate into a political agency, and that we should as a necessary consequence be involved in all the entanglement of Afghan politics.”—[Memoirs of H. St. George Tucker.] Mr. Grant, who was then at the Board of Control, concurred in opinion with Mr. Tucker; Sir Charles Metcalfe also wrote a minute in council, emphatically pointing out the evils of this commercial agency.
[115] Mr. Percival Lord of the Bombay Medical Establishment, joined the Mission in transitu. Mohun Lal also accompanied it.
[116] Avitabile, an Italian by birth, was a General in the service of Runjeet Singh, and at that time Governor of Peshawur.
[117] Unpublished Correspondence of Sir Alexander Burnes.
[118] Unpublished Correspondence of Sir A. Burnes.
[119] And, on the 30th December, Burnes, with reference to this promised sympathy, wrote, in the following words, to Mr. Macnaghten. The passage was not published in the official correspondence. It was thought better to suppress it:-“The present position of the British Government at this capital appears to me a most gratifying proof of the estimation in which it is held by the Afghan nation. Russia has come forward with offers which are certainly substantial. Persia has been lavish in her promises, and Bokhara and other States have not been backward. Yet, in all that has passed or is daily transpiring, the chief of Caubul declares that he prefers the sympathy and friendly offices of the British to all these offers, however alluring they may seem, from Persia or from the Emperor—which certainly places his good sense in a light more than prominent, and, in my humble judgment, proves that, by an earlier attention to these countries, we might have escaped the whole of these intrigues, and held long since a stable influence in Caubul.”—[Ungarbled Correspondence of Sir A. Burnes.]
[120] “As I approached Caubul,” he wrote to a private friend, on the 5th of July, “war broke out with the Afghans and Sikhs, and my position became embarrassing. I was even ordered by express to pause, and while hanging on my oars another express still cries pause, but places a vast latitude in my hands, and ‘forward’ is my motto—forward to the scene of carnage, where, instead of embarrassing my government, I feel myself in a situation to do good. It is this latitude throughout life that has made me what I am, if I am anything, and I can hardly say how grateful I feel to Lord Auckland.... I have not as yet got the replies to my recommendation on our line of policy in Caubul, consequent on a discovered intrigue of Russia, and on the Caubul chief throwing himself in despair on Perso-Russian arms. I have at last something to do, and I hope to do it well.”—[Private Correspondence of Sir A. Burnes.]