His Majesty Futteh Alee Shah.
[Vol. I., page 352.]
[The following is the passage, from Mr. Henry Torrens’ letters to the “Friend of India,” cited by his biographer, (Mr. James Hume), and referred to in a note to the above page.]
“On the sound historical basis of ‘general opinion’ and ‘well credited report’ you do me the honour of ascribing to me the creation of a policy which was a sound and wise one, had it been carried out as devised, and of which I only wish I could claim the authorship; but you will perhaps allow me to cite against ‘general opinion’ and ‘well credited report,’ the assurance of a late Cabinet Minister, Lord de Broughton, that he was the author of the expedition, the which he undoubtedly was. Without this declaration publicly made, I could not state what follows.
“The facts now related for the first time are simply these. Mr. Macnaghten, with me for his under Secretary, most unwillingly accompanied the Governor-General in 1837 towards the North-West, in which his presence was not required. Mr. Macnaghten, in the conviction that with the peculiar turn of mind of the Governor-General, it were better for him to be with his Council, did his utmost to persuade his Lordship to return from Cawnpore to Calcutta, the rather that it was the famine year of 1837-38. Orders were at once given for our return, but countermanded. Before our arrival at Cawnpore, Mr. Macnaghten, pressed by his Lordship’s anxiety and uncertainties, had prepared a scheme, based upon the independent expedition of Shah Soojah in 1832—of which we often spoke together, with reference to the stormy aspect of the times,—which contained the germ of the famous Afghan expedition; the scope of this scheme was: 1. According to the policy of this Government in 1809, to interpose a friendly power in Central Asia between us and any invasive force from the West. 2. To exhibit the military resources of the Government which had experienced a dangerous decline in a native estimation. 3. To set at rest the frontier wars between Afghans and Sikhs which interfered with the extension of our trade. 4. To effect these objects by means of our pensioner, Shah Soojah, acting in concert with Runjeet Singh; settling through our mediation the claims of the latter on Scinde, and of the former on Cashmere and Peshawur; satisfying Runjeet as to his demand for Swat and Booneer, and purchasing from the Ameers of Scinde, by relieving them of tribute and vassalage to the Douranee Crown (Shah Soojah’s), the complete opening of the Indus navigation, and the abolition of all tolls. 5. To establish in the person of a subsidized Monarch in Afghanistan so firm an ally at the head of a military people as might assure us that, in the event of Runjeet’s death, the Sikhs would find occupation on the frontiers of Peshawur, for so large a portion of their army as might materially interfere with the assemblage of an imposing force on our own frontier. 6. To pass into Afghanistan, as Shah Soojah had done in 1832, by the Bolan Pass, place him on his throne, subsidized at twenty lakhs a year, and march home through the Punjab, showing our power.
“Such was the project submitted, rather to propose something to the Governor-General in his uncertainty, than to suggest a plan for absolute adoption. A few days afterwards, Mr. Macnaghten told me, that his Lordship had peremptorily rejected it, saying, “such a thing was not to be thought of.” Some fortnight or three weeks afterwards, letters arrived, I believe from Her Majesty’s Ministers in England, suggesting various schemes of diversion in the East as respected the aggressive views of Persia in connection with a great European power;—one, I believe, was analagous to that suggested by Mr. Macnaghten, and it was then Lord Auckland asked for the paper which had been previously submitted to him. I never saw it again after that time; but on it was framed a scheme in consonance with the views of Her Majesty’s Ministers which was approved by them and acted on; but which only contemplated the expedition to, not the occupation of, Afghanistan, and it was the change of policy which fathered our disasters. My duties, which as under and officiating Secretary were purely executive, brought me subsequently much into official contact with the Governor-General, but not until after the policy had been decided upon as respected Afghanistan, and so thoroughly decided, that Mr. Macnaghten was ascending the hill with the tripartite treaty in his pocket, at the time when ‘well credited report’ represents ‘some body’—myself—as rushing down the hill to tell him of the adoption during his absence, of the policy on which the treaty in his pocket was founded! I well recollect the subsequent discussions and difficulties as to execution, and in these Clerk, Wade, Colvin, Mackeson, Burnes, D’Arcy Todd, Lord, and others had a share. Of those curious councils it does not behove me to speak—save that previous to one I remember poor Burnes making his fifth suggestion within the week, to the effect that ‘we had but to send Shah Soojah to the mouth of the Khyber Pass with two battalions of Sepoys, and the Afghans would carry him through it in their arms,’[362] when I recollect saying with some asperity—‘surely it is better not to confuse high authority with fresh plans, when all our energies are needed to carry out the one decided upon.’ As you have honoured me with the title of adviser of Lord Auckland, and given me the opportunity of divesting myself of the unreal credit or discredit, as you may decide it to be, before the expedition was decided upon, I will in justice to myself record with you, two of the few opinions I ever had the opportunity of delivering after it began; the one was strongly against the fortification of Herat, the other strongly against the admission of English women of any rank into Afghanistan, for giving each of which I was strongly reprimanded, and from this anecdote I leave you to conclude the slight amount of my utility out of my strict line of duty.”
[If there is anything in this at variance with the statements in my narrative, the reader will now have an opportunity of comparing the one with the other, and forming his own judgment. It is necessary only to observe that there are two distinct questions to be considered, and that it rather appears that Mr. Torrens has evaded the more important one, and the one, too, with which he is more immediately concerned. The scheme of the tripartite treaty is one thing, the march of a British army on Caubul by way of the Bolan Pass is another. Mr. Torrens appeals triumphantly to the fact that at a time when he and others are represented (by Mr. Masson) as rushing down the hill to tell Mr. Macnaghten of the adoption of the policy of the war, he (Mr. Macnaghten) was ascending the hill with the treaty in his pocket founded on that policy. But, in the first place, the story to which Mr. Torrens refers (and which will be found in a note at page 353 of this volume) was not told with respect to Mr. Macnaghten’s, but to Captain Burnes’s, arrival at Simlah, in Mr. Macnaghten’s absence. And in the second place, the policy into which Lord Auckland is said to have been persuaded at this time was not the policy of the tripartite treaty, but the policy of marching a British army into Afghanistan. It will have been seen that when Mr. Macnaghten negociated the treaty with Runjeet Singh and Shah Soojah, it was no part of the scheme that the restoration of the Shah should be mainly accomplished by our British bayonets. This was obviously an after-thought. The question then is, how it arose—how “the army of the Indus,” to which Macnaghten at Lahore and Loodhianah had never once alluded, grew into a substantial fact. This is not explained by Mr. Torrens: I therefore leave the statements in the text of my narrative as they were originally written, and I will only add in this place—what I could produce living testimony of the highest order to prove—that when the war in Afghanistan was believed to be a grand success, Mr. Torrens boasted, not merely of his participation in the councils from which it emanated, but of the actual authorship of the war. He said, indeed, totidem verbis, that he “made the Afghan war,” an assertion which need not be taken too literally, but which, at all events, warrants the presumption that he counselled and approved the war in the shape in which it was undertaken. K.]
[Vol. I., page 356.]
[The following is the letter from Sir A. Burnes referred to in this page.]
Husn Abdul, 2nd June, 1838,