clanging on one shoulder, he could
not have silenced the first feud, viz. on his personal pretensions. But
with the tallies of his exchequer rattling on the other--so furiously
would a second feud have exploded, that as easily might you gather a
hail-storm into a side-pocket, as persuade the Affghans of his right to
levy taxes. Do you see the cloud of African locusts warping on the east
wind? Will they suffer you to put them into Chancery? Do you see those
eagles rising from Mont Blanc on the morning breeze? Will the crack of
your mail-coachman's whip bring them to be harnessed? In that case you
are the man to tax the Affghans. Pigs can see the wind; and it is not
less certain that Affghans can scent a tax-gatherer through the Hindoo
Koosh: in which case, off they go on the opposite tack. But no matter if
they stay--not the less with them to be taxed is to be robbed--a wrong
to be remembered on death-beds, and to be avenged were it in the fourth
generation. However, as the reckoning does not come before the banquet,
so the taxes do not come before the accession. Let us look, therefore,
at the men, the possible candidates, simply in relation to that
magnificent claim. There are two only put in nomination, Dost Mahommed
and the Shah Soojah: let us bring them forward on the hustings. Or,
considering them as horses entering at Epsom for the Derby, the first to
be classed as a five-year old, the other as "aged," let us trot them
out, by way of considering their paces.

The comments upon these men in England, whether for or against, were all
personal. The Dost was the favourite--which was generous--as he had no
solitary merit to plead except that he had lost the election; or, as the
watchmaker's daughter so pointedly said on behalf of Nigel Lord
Glenvarloch, "Madam, he is unfortunate." Searching, however, in all
corners for the undiscovered virtues of the Dost, as Bruce for the coy
fountains of the Nile, one man reported by telegraph that he had
unkenneled a virtue; that he had it fast in his hands, and would forward
it overland. He did so; and what was it? A certain pedlar, or he might
be a bagman, had said--upon the not uncommon accident in Cabool of
finding himself pillaged--"What! is there no justice to be had amongst
you? Is Dost Mohammed dead?" Upon which rather narrow basis was
immediately raised in London a glorious superstructure to the justice of
the Dost. Certainly, if the Dost's justice had ever any reference to
p