Page:Sir Henry Lawrence, the Pacificator.djvu/158

Rh we content ourselves with blaming the Envoy, or even the military authorities, instead of looking fairly and closely into the foundations of our power, and minutely examining the system that could admit of such conduct as was exhibited in Afghánistán, not in one case, but in many — then, I say, we are in the fair way of reaping another harvest more terrible than that of Kábul.

'The foregoing parallel has been drawn out minutely, perhaps tediously, for I consider it important to show that what was faulty and dangerous in one quarter is not less so in another.

'I wish moreover to point out that the mode of operation so pertinaciously styled the "Afghán question," and currently linked with the name of the late Envoy, as if, with all its errors, it had originated with him, is essentially our Indian system; that it existed with all its defects when Sir William Macnaghten was in his cradle, and flourishes in our own provinces now that he is in his grave. Among its errors are, moving with small parties on distant points without support; inefficient commissariat arrangements; absolute ignorance on all topographical points; and reckoning on the attachment of our allies (as if Hindu or Muhammadan could love his Christian lord, who only comes before him as master or tax-gatherer; as if it were not absurd to suppose that the chiefs of Burma, Nepál, Lahore, and the like could tolerate the power that restrains their rapacious desires and habits, that degrades them in their own and each other's eyes).

'Men may differ as to the soundness of our policy, but no one can question its results, as shown in the fact of Haidar Alí twice dictating terms at the gates of Fort St. George (Madras); in the disasters that attended the early period of the Nepál war; in the long state of siege in which Sir Archibald Campbell was held at Rangoon; in the