er have been
made the subjects of unqualified censure by those scribes of the
Opposition press who, "content to dwell in forms for ever," have
accustomed themselves to regard the mystified protocols of Lord
Palmerston as the models of official style. The _Morning Chronicle_,
with amusing ignorance of the state of the public mind in India,
condemns the Governor-general for allowing it to become known to the
natives that the abandonment of Affghanistan was in consequence of a
change of policy! conceiving (we suppose) that our Indian subjects would
otherwise have believed the Cabul disasters to have formed part of the
original plan of the war, and to have veiled some purpose of inscrutable
wisdom; while the _Globe_, (Dec. 3,) after a reluctant admission that
"the policy itself of evacuating the country _may be wise_," would fain
deprive Lord Ellenborough of the credit of having originated this
decisive step, by an assertion that "we have discovered no proof that a
permanent possession of the country beyond the Indus was contemplated by
his predecessor." It would certainly have been somewhat premature in
Lord Auckland to have announced his ultimate intentions on this point
while the country in question was as yet but imperfectly subjugated, or
when our troops were subsequently almost driven out of it; but the views
of the then home Government, from which it is to be presumed that Lord
Auckland received his instructions, were pretty clearly revealed in the
House of Commons on the 10th of August last, by one whose authority the
_Globe_, at least, will scarcely dispute--by Lord Palmerston himself.
To prevent the possibility of misconstruction, we quote the words
attributed to the late Foreign Secretary. After drawing the somewhat
unwarrantable inference, from Sir Robert Peel's statement, "that no
immediate withdrawal of our troops from Candahar and Jellalabad was
contemplated," that an order had at one time been given for the
abandonment of Affghanistan, he proceeds--"I do trust that her Majesty's
Government will not carry into effect, either immediately or at _any_
future time, the arrangement thus contemplated. It was all very well
when we were in power, and it was suited to party purposes, to run down
any thing we had done, and to represent as valueless any acquisition on
which we may have prided ourselves--it was all very well to raise an
outcry against the Affghan expedition, and to undervalue the great
advantages which th