On the 12th of November, 1840, Dost Mahomed Khan, under a strong escort,[57] commenced his journey towards the provinces of India; and two months afterwards Macnaghten wrote:
“I trust that the Dost will be treated with liberality. His case has been compared to that of Shah Soojah; and I have seen it argued that he should not be treated more handsomely than his Majesty was; but surely the cases are not parallel. The Shah had no claim upon us. We had no hand in depriving him of his kingdom, whereas we ejected the Dost, who never offended us, in support of our policy, of which he was the victim.”[58]
And so Macnaghten, in a few lines of irrepressible truth and candour, denounced the injustice of the policy of which he himself had been one of the originators. It is possible, too, that Lord Auckland may have felt that Dost Mahomed “never offended us,” but that we had victimised him; for he received the Prince he had deposed with becoming hospitality and respect, and burdened the revenues of India with a pension in his favour of two lakhs of rupees.
CHAPTER IV.
[November: 1840-September: 1841.]
Yar Mahomed and the Douranees—Season of Peace—Position of the Douranees—The Zemrindawer Outbreak—Conduct of Yar Mahomed—Departure of Major Todd—Risings of the Douranees and Ghilzyes—Engagements with Aktur Khan and the Gooroo—Dispersion of the Insurgents.
The remainder of the month of November passed away in peace and tranquillity. The Envoy began now for the first time to taste the blessings of repose, and to enjoy the advantages of leisure. But his active mind was soon again busily at work. Dost Mahomed had surrendered; but the Sikhs had not been coerced. The time for the “macadamisation” of the Punjab seemed now to have arrived. To the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces of India, he wrote on the 24th of November, of the “piping times of peace, so unfavourable to the exercise of the epistolary art,” and of the “cards which played so beautifully into his hands.” “This is the time,” he added, “for a subsidiary force in the Punjab, and for the cession of the districts to the west of the Indus. We are clearly not bound any longer by the Tripartite treaty, and so I have told Lord Auckland; but I don’t think his Lordship’s ambition will aim at more than keeping matters on their present footing. We start for Jellalabad in three or four days; and it is high time we should do so, as the weather is becoming bitterly cold here. We shall now have a little time to devote to the affairs of the country, and I trust its condition will be soon as flourishing as its poor resources will admit.”[59]
Before the end of November, the Court were on their way to their winter quarters at Jellalabad. On the morning of the 13th they reached that place. The Envoy found Sir Willoughby Cotton still there, but “anxious to get away;” and Captain Macgregor, the political agent in charge of the district, surrounded by a motley crew of the chiefs of the country, who seemed to look up to him as their common father. In the enjoyment of a little rest from pressing anxieties, the Envoy began to turn his thoughts to the domestic administration of the country. “We have hitherto,” he wrote to the Private Secretary of the Governor-General, “been struggling for existence, without any leisure to turn to the improvement of the administration.”[60] And very little of this leisure was even now vouchsafed to him. Though Dost Mahomed was on his way to the provinces of India, and the winter snows had now set in, the struggle for existence was still going on, and more fiercely than ever. The Ghilzyes and Kohistanees had already risen up against the government of the Shah and his supporters; and now the Douranees were breaking out into revolt.