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Rh regard to the British system of precautionary defence. In London the ministers had declared that "the welfare of our Eastern possessions require that we shall have on our western frontier an ally interested in resisting aggression, in the place of chiefs ranging themselves in subservience to a hostile power"; and they had pressed Lord Auckland to take decisive measures in Afghanistan. The Governor-General proceeded to conclude, with the full approbation of the English ministry, a tripartite treaty, by which the British government and Ranjit Singh covenanted with Shah Shuja' to reinstate him in Afghanistan by force of arms. Lord Auckland declared that the unsettled state of that country had produced " a crisis which imperiously demands the interference of the British government/' and that he would continue to prosecute with vigour his measures for the substitution of a friendly for a hostile power in the eastern Afghan provinces, and for "the establishment of a permanent barrier against schemes of aggression on our northwest frontier." In 1838 a British army marched through Sind up to the Baluch passes to Kandahar, with the avowed object of expelling Dost Mohammad, the ruling Amir, and of restoring Shah Shuja' to his throne at Kabul.

This, then, was the position of the English dominion in India at the opening of Queen Victoria's memorable reign. The names of our earlier allies and enemies – the Nizam, Oudh, the Maratha princes, and the Mysore State – were still writ large on the map, but they had fallen far into the rear of our onward march; while