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92 bite the hand of sorrow with the teeth of repentance.' Yet Lord Auckland still hoped.

On July 4th he wrote to the Chairman of the Court of Directors that he looked for influence sufficient to hold the rival powers on the British frontier in balance, and prepared to unite in common defence. But on September 8th he tells Sir John Hobhouse that despatches from Lahore and Kábul inform him that the Persian Embassy is daily expected in Kábul, with a Russian in its train. Something less of the spirit of accommodation, he adds, is seen in the last letter of Dost Muhammad Khán to Burnes.

On the following day, September 9, 1837, the Governor-General recorded a long Minute on Kábul affairs. After describing the balance of parties in Kábul, Kandahár, and Herát, so far as known to him, he lays before his colleagues in Council the final instructions which he would give to Captain Burnes, who was about to enter Kábul. His mission, he wrote, should be more political in character than it had been hitherto considered to be, though with no political power beyond that of transmitting any proposition which appeared to him to be reasonable through Captain Wade to his Government.

The Governor-General did not conceal his apprehension that the representations of Captain Burnes to Dost Muhammad were likely to have but little effect at the present moment. The Agent, upon a review of the influence which he was likely to gain upon passing events, should, he thought, decide upon the pro-