Page:The Earl of Auckland.djvu/220

214 Pax Asiae restituta — 'Peace restored to Asia' — was the legend of a medal struck by Lord Ellenborough's command in memory of our late successes against the Afgháns and the Chinese. And yet the vote of thanks had hardly been carried, before the peace thus proudly vaunted was broken by the march of Napier's little army against the forces of the Sind Amírs. The conquest of Sind, which gave us absolute command of the Lower Indus, formed the last scene of the sad political drama which opened with the Tripartite Treaty and the Simla Manifesto. That 'useful piece of rascality,' as Napier himself called it, served to emphasize the wild injustice of the policy which had sent our armies across the Indus to strike down the shadowy Frankenstein of Russian intrigue.

One good thing, however, came out of the Kábul disasters. For thirty-five years thereafter no sane English statesman cared to meddle with the internal politics of Afghánistán. When a Persian army in 1856 once more attacked Herát, a timely alliance with Dost Muhammad and the march of Outram's army along the Persian Gulf enabled us at little cost to compel the retreat of the Persian army from the captured city, and to make the Sháh's Government sue for peace on our own terms.

For the first three years after his return home Lord Auckland lived a quiet uneventful life. He never married, but one or another of his maiden sisters kept house for him at Beckenham or in London. He seems to have borne with dignified calmness the strong