e possession of the country was calculated to afford
us--but I trust the Government will rise above any consideration of that
sort, and that they will give the matter their fair, dispassionate, and
deliberate consideration. I must say, I never was more convinced of any
thing in the whole course of my life--and I may be believed when I speak
my earnest conviction--that the most important interests of this
country, both commercial and political, would be sacrificed, if we were
to sacrifice the military possession of the country of Eastern
Affghanistan." Is it in the power of words to convey a clearer
admission, that the pledge embodied in Lord Auckland's manifesto--"to
withdraw the British army as soon as the independence and integrity of
Affghanistan should be secured by the establishment of the Shah"--was in
fact mere moonshine: and the real object of the expedition was the
conquest of a country advantageously situated for the defence of our
Indian frontier against (as it now appears) an imaginary invader? Thus
Napoleon, in December 1810, alleged "the necessity, in consequence of
the new order of things which has arisen, of new guarantees for the
security of my empire," as a pretext for that wholesale measure of
territorial spoliation in Northern Germany, which, from the umbrage it
gave Russia, proved ultimately the cause of his downfall: but it was
reserved for us of the present day, to hear a _British_ minister avow
and justify a violent and perfidious usurpation on the plea of political
expediency. It must indeed be admitted that, in the early stages of the
war, the utter iniquity of the measure met with but faint reprobation
from any party in the state: the nation, dazzled by the long-disused
splendours of military glory, was willing, without any very close
enquiry, to take upon trust all the assertions so confidently put forth
on the popularity of Shah-Shoojah, the hostile machinations of Dost
Mohammed, and the philanthropic and disinterested wishes of the Indian
Government for (to quote a notable phrase to which we have more than
once previously referred) "_the reconstruction of the social edifice_"
in Affghanistan. But now that all these subterfuges, flimsy as they were
at best, have been utterly dissipated by this undisguised declaration of
Lord Palmerston, that the real object of the war was to seize and hold
the country on our own account, the attempt of the _Globe_ to claim for
Lord Auckland the credit of havin