Of Macnaghten’s humanity I have never entertained a doubt. But it is a proof of the inconsistency even of the kindest and most amiable characters, that the Envoy, when greatly disquieted and perplexed by the difficulties which thickened around him, and irritated by the opposition, which he could not subdue, sometimes thought of resorting to measures repugnant to humanity, for the suppression of evils which baffled all the more lenient efforts of legitimate diplomacy. But these sterner feelings soon passed away; and all the more generous sentiments of his nature held dominion over him again. He regretted the excesses—always rather those of word than of deed—into which he had been momentarily betrayed, and was as merciful towards a fallen enemy as he had been eager in his pursuit of a triumphant one. Macnaghten was anything but a cautious man; his first hasty impulses were often set down in writing with perilous unreserve; and it would be unjust to record against him, as his positive opinion, everything that he set down suggestively in his hasty letters to his numerous correspondents, or spoke out still more hastily to his friends.
Posterity may yet discuss the question, whether, in these last fatal negotiations with Akbar Khan, Macnaghten acted strictly in accordance with that good faith which is the rule of English statesmen, and for which our country, in spite of some dubious instances, is still honoured by all the nations of the East. In one of the last letters ever written by him, the Envoy said, “It would be very agreeable to stop here for a few months instead of to travel through the snow; but we must not consider what is agreeable, but what is consistent with our faith.” On the same day, too—the day before his death—he had written, “I can never break that agreement (with the Barukzyes) so long as all the Khawanen wish me to stand by it.” It has been questioned whether the negotiations he was then carrying on with the Ghilzyes and Kuzzilbashes were consistent with his obligations to the Barukzye Sirdars. The stipulations, however, on the part of the British diplomatist, in this case, extended no further than the promise of certain money payments in return for certain specific services, and Macnaghten may have considered himself justified in retaining those services conditionally on the rupture of the existing covenant with the Barukzye chiefs. That covenant, indeed, was one of so precarious a nature—it was sliding away from him more and more certainly as time advanced—there was so little prospect of its obligations being fulfilled, that it seemed necessary to have something to fall back upon in the event of the open annulment of the treaty, the obligations of which had long been practically denied. Up to the evening of the 22nd of December, Macnaghten had been willing to abide by the stipulations of the treaty with the confederate chiefs; but there were such manifest symptoms of bad faith on the part of the chiefs constantly breaking out, that it appeared to him but ordinary prudence to prepare himself for an event so probable as an open rupture. He was ready to proceed, in mutual good faith, to the accomplishment of the original treaty; and so long as the chiefs adhered to their engagements, he was prepared to evacuate the country, but he believed that it was his duty to prepare himself also for a rupture with the chiefs, and to purchase supplies, wherever he could obtain them, for the use of the troops in the event of their retaining their position.
But the compact with Akbar Khan was altogether of another kind. There was nothing of a conditional character about it. The Envoy had, in the course of the day, virtually acknowledged that to break off the negotiations then pending with the chiefs would be a breach of good faith. Nothing had occurred between the hour in which he wrote this to Mohun Lal and that in which he received the overtures of Akbar Khan, to absolve him from obligations from which he was not absolved before. The same principle of diplomatic integrity which he had applied to the case of the Ghilzye alliance was doubly applicable to this: “It would be very agreeable to stop here for a few months instead of to travel through the snow; but we must not consider what is agreeable, but what is consistent with our faith.” If we read Macnaghten’s subsequent conduct by the light of these high-principled words, it must in truth be pronounced that he stands self-condemned.
In estimating the character of these transactions, it should always be borne steadily in mind that the Afghan chiefs had from the first violated their engagements with the British, and exacted from them after-conditions not named in the treaty. Their want of faith, indeed, was so palpable, that Macnaghten would, at any time, have been justified in declaring that the treaty was annulled. It is plain, that whilst they were violating their engagements he was under no obligation to adhere to the conditions of the violated treaty. But it appears to me that this matter is altogether distinct from the question of the honesty of negotiating with one party whilst negotiations are pending with another. There would have been no breach of faith in breaking off the treaty with the confederate chiefs; but it was a breach of faith to enter into any new engagements until that treaty was broken off. It is certain that up to the time of his receipt of the fatal overtures from Akbar Khan, Macnaghten considered that he was bound by his engagements with the confederate chiefs. He might, it is true, have declared those engagements at an end, but until such a declaration was made, he was not at liberty to enter secretly into any new negotiations practically annulling the old.
And whatever objections may lie against the general honesty of the compact, it is certain that they apply with double force to that portion of it which involved the seizure of Ameen-oollah Khan. It is not to be justified by any reference to the infamous character of that chief. Ameen-oollah Khan was one of our “new allies.” He had been, with the other chiefs, in friendly negotiation with Macnaghten. It was now proposed, during a suspension of hostilities—whilst, indeed, we were in friendly intercourse with the Afghan chiefs, this very Ameen-oollah Khan included—that a body of troops should be got ready as quietly as possible for secret service, that a sudden attack should be made on the unsuspecting garrison of Mahmood Khan’s fort, and that one of our allies—one of the chiefs with whom the Envoy was in treaty—should be violently seized. I confess that I cannot see anything to justify such a measure as this. It certainly was not in accordance with that good faith, the observance of which Macnaghten had declared to be of more importance than the retention of our position in the country.
But although I cannot bring myself to justify the act, either on the plea that the chiefs had not observed the engagements into which they had entered, or that Ameen-oollah Khan was an infamous wretch, and one of the archenemies of the British, it appears to me to be as little the duty of the historian severely to condemn the actor as to justify the act.[200] It is one of those cases in which the exercise of charity is a solemn duty—one of those cases, to the consideration of which every one should bring the kindliest resolution to weigh well the temptation before he measures the offence. There are cases to which, it is my deliberate conviction, a strict application of the ordinary rules of right and wrong would be a grievous injustice. It is easy, in one’s closet, to sit in judgment upon the conduct of a man tempted far beyond the common limits of human temptation—environed and hemmed in by difficulties and dangers—overwhelmed with responsibility which there is no one to share—the lives of sixteen thousand men resting on his decision—the honour of his country at stake—with a perfidious enemy before him, a decrepit general at his side, and a paralysed army at his back—driven to negotiate by the imbecility of his companions, and then thwarted in his negotiations by the perfidy of his “new allies.” But if, without injustice and cruelty, we would pass sentence on the conduct of a man so environed, we must ponder well all these environments, and consider what must have been the effect of seven wearing weeks of such unparalleled trial even on the strongest mind, and what must have been the temptation that arrayed itself before him, when there suddenly gleamed upon him a hope of saving at once the lives of his companions and the credit of the British nation. If, when that great temptation burst suddenly upon his path, and, dazzled by its delusive brilliancy, he saw the great object set before him, but did not see the slough of moral turpitude to be passed through before it could be attained, it is right that we should remember that Macnaghten, though a good and a brave man, was but a man after all, and that human strength, at the best, is but weakness to resist the pressure of overwhelming circumstance.
We have not the same intelligible guides to a right estimate of the conduct of Akbar Khan. If we regard the assassination of the British Envoy as a deliberate, predetermined act, it can only be said of it that it stands recorded as one of the basest, foulest murders that ever stained the page of history. But it does not appear that the murder of Macnaghten was premeditated by the Sirdar. It seems to have been the result of one of those sudden gusts of passion which were among the distinguishing features of the young Barukzye’s character, and which had often before betrayed him into excesses laden with the pangs of after-repentance. The seizure of the Envoy and his companions, which was designed by the Sirdar, was an act of deliberate treachery, which the chiefs would perhaps endeavour to justify by declaring that they only designed to do towards the Envoy as the Envoy had declared himself willing to do towards Ameen-oollah Khan.[201] But whilst Macnaghten had only consented to a proposal made to him by others—whilst he had merely yielded to temptation, and at the instance of one Afghan chief consented to the betrayal of another—Akbar Khan, with deliberate subtlety and malice, wove the net which he was to cast over the deluded Englishman, and treacherously enclosed him in the toils. The trap was cunningly laid and craftily baited; and the unhappy Envoy, all his perceptions blunted by the long-continued overstraining of his mind, fell readily into the snare, and went insanely to his undoing. Like Burnes, he had been warned of the treachery that encompassed him; and like his ill-fated colleague he had disregarded the warnings that might have saved him. The brave confidence of Macnaghten clung to him to the last; his sanguine temperament, at one time so dangerous and disastrous, at another so noble and inspiriting—which more than anything else had sustained the character of the nation throughout the sore trials which it had brought upon us—lured him at last to his death.