Mr Robinson goes too far when he taxes the rulers of the present day with dislike to the natives generally; but it is evident, from Mr Campbell’s own admission, that there is a strong prepossession in the minds of the young men of his school against all natives with any pretensions to rank. This feeling extending to those beyond the limits of our own dominions, has stamped on our foreign policy the character of our internal administration, and found its full development in the late Afghan war. Thirty or forty years ago, when natives, if excluded from office, were more often admitted to familiar intercourse with their European rulers, a mere regard for our own character in the eyes of our subjects would have withheld us from making an unprovoked attack upon an unoffending neighbour, and thus incurring a certain loss of reputation for a very uncertain amount of gain. This view of the case does not of course even occur to Mr Campbell as one likely to be taken by any reasonable being, and he sums up his account of the Afghan war with the following remarks, suggestive to our minds of little beyond a most earnest hope that the future advancement, doubtless in store for one of his abilities, may lead him far away from meddling with matters either political or military:—
“Such it was—a grievous military catastrophe and misfortune to us, both then and in our subsequent relations with the country; but in no way attributable to our policy, from which no such result necessarily or probably flowed. To the policy is due the expense, but not the disaster.”—(P. 136).
Mr Campbell has evidently not made very minute inquiry into the facts of the war, or he would never have hazarded the assertion contained in the following passage, that Sir George Pollock literally paid his way through the Khyber Pass:—
“Through the Western mountains only has India been invaded; for beyond them are all the great nations of Central India, and they are penetrable to enemies through one or two difficult passes. But these passes are so narrow, difficult, and easily defended, that it is believed that no army, from Alexander’s down to General Pollock’s, has ever passed without bribing the mountain tribes. In the face of regular troops and an organised defence, all the armies in the world could not force an entrance; but in the absence of such a defence, experience proves that the local tribes are always accessible to moderate bribes.”—(P. 27).
The absolute impracticability of any mountain barrier is, we believe, disputed; but, without offering any opinion on that point, we are happy to have it in our power to correct the mistake into which the author has fallen, in supposing that it was by bribing that Sir George Pollock carried his army through the Khyber Pass. It is true that, in the anxious time preceding our army’s movement from Peshawar, negotiations had been entered into with the local tribes; but we have the most unquestionable authority for asserting that, before the march towards Cabool began, the sum advanced to their chiefs, being 20,000 rupees or £2000, was demanded back from them by the political agent on the frontier, and actually repaid; so that the mountaineers had not only the clearest warning of the British general’s intention, but the strongest possible inducement to oppose him, as they did to the utmost of their power.
But our chief motive for alluding to the Afghan war is, that we may show how the spirit of the two schools, under which, according to our theory, those engaged in the work of Indian government may now be classed, showed itself even in the direction of our armies in the field. Sir George Pollock was there the representative of what would be called by us the considerate and moderate, by Mr Campbell the soft-hearted and over-cautious school; while Sir William Nott was at the head of that which, going straight to its object, tramples under foot, without compunction, every consideration that might hamper its freedom of movement. We select but a few instances in proof of our position, choosing such as, from their notoriety, can be cited without injury or offence.
As the two avenging armies, the one from Candahar on the south, the other from Peshawar on the east, drew nigh to Cabool, a powerful party, consisting chiefly of the Kuzzilbashes or Persians, who had never taken part against us, prayed earnestly that the citadel, the Bala Hissar, might be spared to serve as a place of refuge to themselves amid the troubles likely to ensue on our again evacuating the country.
This prayer General Nott would have rejected, and in so doing would have gained the applause of every member of that school by which concession to the feelings of natives in opposition to the requirements of expediency, or the sternest justice, is regarded as a proof of weakness. With this prayer General Pollock complied; and to his doing so may the safety of the ladies and other prisoners, in whose fate the whole civilised world took so deep an interest, be ascribed; for it was through the co-operation of those thus conciliated that the Afghan chief, charged with the custody of the captives, was won over to assist in their escape. General Nott was fortunately the inferior in rank; for had he commanded in chief, we have his own words for the fact, that he would have destroyed the Bala Hissar and the City of Cabool, and marched on with the least possible delay to Jellabad, of course leaving the poor captives to their fate; or, in words which, from the manner of their insertion in the pages of the historian, it is to be feared he must have used, “throwing them overboard.”—(Kaye’s History of the Afghan War, vol. i. pp. 617, 631).
Incomplete indeed, to use Mr Kaye’s words, would any victory have been, if these brave men and tender women, who had so well endured a long and fearful captivity, had been left behind; and it is well to reflect that we were saved from this reproach by the ascendancy of the milder principles of rule in the mind of the officer upon whom the chief command at this moment, we may almost say providentially, devolved.
Many more instances are recorded, in the chapter just quoted, of the influence of a contrary spirit on the closing events of the Afghan war; but we must pass on to what happened in Scinde, where the anti-judicial principle may be said to have reached its climax.