1. That in retiring from the Affghan country, we were called upon to do so as much as possible in the light of triumphant victors, bearing every mark of military prowess and superiority that could readily be assumed, and inflicting as heavy a blow, and as severe a discouragement on our perfidious enemies, as humanity would permit.
2. That, the Affghan trophies of Mahmoud's success were treasured up by his nation as an assurance of continued ascendancy over their Hindoo neighbours; and that, in particular, the redelivery to India of these very gates of Somnauth, were, in negotiations of recent date, demanded by Runjeet Singh as an inestimable boon, and deprecated by Shah Soojah as a degrading humiliation.
Keeping in view these undeniable circumstances, it is clear that the seizure of these Somnauth gates was appropriately ordered as a palpable and permanent demonstration of conquest, and one eminently calculated to encourage the Indian army, and to depress their enemies.
That these gates were connected with the religion of the country, is of no relevancy in this matter. Every thing relating to Hindoo grandeur is more or less interwoven with religion; but we must take things as they are. We are the rulers of Hindostan; where the vast preponderance of our subjects and soldiers are Hindoos. We wish them to be Christians, but they are not so yet; and, until they become Christianized, we cannot hope or wish that they should forget the only faith which they have to raise them above the earth they tread. Their religion is corrupted to the core; but in its primitive type, after which its worshippers will sometimes even yet aspire, it is not destitute of a high spirituality that would seek to assimilate and unite men's souls to the Great Being, whom they reverence as the maker, maintainer, and changer of the universe. Hindooism is more fantastic, and less pleasingly endeared to us, than the paganism of Greece, but it is scarcely more lax or licentious; yet if Fortune, in its caprices, had ordained our Indian subjects to be heathen Greeks, with a Whig Governor-General bringing them back in triumph to their homes, Lord Palmerston, who now, in a mingled rant of mythology, and methodism, talks of "Dii and Jupiter hostis," would himself have penned a paragraph about the restored temple of Mars or Venus, and would have held up the scruples of Sir Robert Inglis and Mr. Plumptre to classical ridicule.
But it is plain that here no religious triumph was, or could have been, contemplated by Lord Ellenborough. On this point we need no other evidence than that of Joseph Hume, who, combining the properties of Balaam and his ass, often brays out a blessing when he intends a curse. He tells us that—
A Hindoo of high caste, now in this country, the Vakeel of the Rajah of Sattara, had written to him a letter, in which he stated— "It appears to me that the restoration of the gates of Somnauth could have no reference either to the support or degradation of any religious faith. To restore the gates to their original purpose is impracticable by the tenets of the Hindoo religion. Their doctrine is, that any thing, when in contact with a dead body, or any thing belonging to it, whether tomb or garment, is utterly contaminated and unfit for religious purposes. In my opinion, therefore, the proclamation must have been intended to gratify the feelings of the Hindoo portion of our army, by removing a stain which the western portion of India had long felt oppressive. In fact, he believed that the Governor-General, by this means, conciliated the feelings of the Hindoo soldiery in their return from those scenes of death and disaster in which they had behaved so well, and where thousands of their fellow-countrymen had fallen. I hope that this intention of Lord Ellenborough to conciliate the princes of India will extend to my unfortunate master.' This letter was from (we believe) Rumgoo Baffagee, Vakeel of the Rajah of Sattara, and he thought it was so important, that he had sent for the Vakeel, whom he found a most intelligent man; and from his conversation he (Mr. Hume) was satisfied that, so far from being applied to the Hindoo population exclusively, it was utterly impossible that the gates could be used for the religious purposes to which the Governor-General seemed to have destined them. He had satisfied him (Mr. Hume) that the object of the proclamation was merely to bring back to Western India those gates, the absence of which in Afghanistan had long been felt as an opprobrium. He hoped therefore, that those religious sects who had most unnecessarily take the alarm on this score, would be appeased. So far from the proclamation being an exclusive one, no single sentence was there in it which could be read after the address to 'all the princes and chiefs, and people of India,' as applicable to any one."
But it is said that such a trophy may give offence to Mahommedans; and Mr. Mangles tells us, that the Mohommedan population sympathize strongly with the Affghans, and revere the memory of Mahmoud. If that be the case, it would have been difficult to bring any trophy home, or to imprint any mark of the superiority of our arms, without displeasing this sect. But, in that view, who are the parties responsible for thus placing our essential interests, and the safety of India generally, in contrast with the feelings of Mohommedan subjects? Those certainly who, regardless of all justice, made a wanton aggression on a Mahommedan power. Those certainly who, regardless of all prudence, gave occasion to the Affghan massacre and captivity of British and Indian soldiers; and, by a great Mahommedan success, kindled a spark which was ready to set the freemasonry of Islamism on fire "from Morocco to Coromandel." If we have been placed in a false position, as regards our Mahommedan subjects, we have to blame the Whigs, whose wanton and unwise measures created this collision of interests, and not Lord Ellenborough, who has adopted measures the most natural and the most humane, to reestablish the ascendancy and the reputation of English and Indian power.
The proclamation of Simla needs no vindication. It has satisfied every one but the Whigs, who can never forget and never forgive it. It is poor pretence to say, that it denounces in an indecorous manner the errors of the previous governor. It does no such thing. It speaks, indeed, of errors, but only conscious culpability would have taken the allusion to itself. There were errors, and grievous ones. The Whigs themselves must say that; and they have not been slow to shift to the shoulders of military officers the results that most people think they should bear themselves. The proclamation of Lord Ellenborough seems to us to have been framed with a punctilious desire to reconcile in the eyes of India his own policy with that which had been avowed by his predecessor, and to ascribe the change of plans to a change of circumstances, and not of principles. We speak here of the avowed policy of his predecessor; for Lord Auckland, at least, pretended that he had no aggressive or hostile views against the Affghans, and no desire for a permanent occupation of their country. The real designs of the Whig Government are a different thing; and with these, as avowed by Lord Palmerston in Parliament, the intentions of Lord Ellenborough were wholly irreconcilable.
Let us listen here to one who knows the subject. The Duke of Wellington tells us the errors that Lord Ellenborough alludes to as occasioning our military disasters, and he shows us where those errors lay:—
"There is not a word in this proclamation that is not strictly true. But I do not blame the noble lord opposite, the late Governor-General of India; yet I cannot help looking at the enormous errors which have been committed from the commencement of these transactions in which these disasters originated, down to the last retreat from Cabul—I say, looking at all this, I still must blame, not the late Governor-General, but the gentlemen who acted under him. In the first place, I attribute the error to the gentleman who fell a victim to his own want of judgment. The army unfortunately was partly English and partly Hindoo—not Affghans, but Hindoos. What was the consequence? To maintain the whole system of the government, including the collection of the revenue, devolved upon that army. All the details of the government were carried on through the agency of that English and Hindoo army, and eventually it became necessary to support that army with some troops in the service of the Company. Now, the gentleman who was responsible for this ought to have known that there was one rule, the violation of which any one acquainted with the government of India knew nothing could justify, and that was, the employment of the Company's European troops in the collection of the revenue. That rule is invariably laid down, and is invariably observed. That, as your lordships must plainly see, is one of the errors that has been committed. There is another point to which I wish to call your attention; it is this, that the country never had been occupied by an army as it ought to have been occupied. With the north no practicable communication was maintained—no practicable communications were kept up between Shikarpore, Candahar, and Ghuznee. The passes were held only through the agency of banditti. I do not blame the noble lord, but I blame the gentleman to whom the army was entrusted. He seemed never to have looked at what had been done by former commanders in similar circumstances. Any officer who has the command of an army ought to feel it to be his first duty to keep up a communication with his own country. If such communication had been maintained, those disasters never would have befallen us—they could not have happened. This was one of the errors committed; but I do not say that the noble lord opposite is answerable for that error. Not only was no communication kept up with the north, but none was kept up with the south. Neither the Kojuck nor the Bolan pass was kept open. Can that, my lords, be called a military communication? Could such a state of things exist? Why, was not this another error—a gross error? The noble lord opposite (Lord Auckland) had no more to do with this than I have. Sir W. Macnaghten, the gentleman who perished, could not have been ignorant of what was done in other places. He must have read the history of the Spanish war, and he must have recollected how the French conducted themselves in a similar situation; how they fortified the passes, and secured their communications. But he was not an officer; the gentleman at the head of the army in Affghanistan was not an officer—that was another error."