Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 56, No. 346, August, 1844. Various
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 pedlars, it must have been a nervous affection of penitential panic during some fit of the cholera, and as transient as the measles; his regard for pedlars being notoriously of that kind which tigers bear to shoulders of lamb; and Cabool has since rung with his pillagings of caravans. But we believe the pedlar's mot to have been thoroughly misconceived. If we see a poor man bleeding to death in a village lane, we naturally exclaim—"What! is Dr Brown, that used to practise here, gone away?" Not meaning that the doctor could have stopped the hemorrhage, but simply that the absence of all medical aid is shocking, and using the doctor's name merely as a shorthand expression for that aid. Now in the East, down from scriptural days, the functions of a sovereign were two—to lead his people in battle, and to "sit in the gate" for the distribution of justice. Our pedlar, therefore, when invoking Dost Mahommed as the redresser of his wrongs, simply thought of him as the public officer who bore the sword of justice. "He cried to Pharaoh," or he "cried to Artaxerxes"—did not imply any reliance in their virtue as individuals, but merely an appeal to them as professionally the ministers of justice. "Are there no laws and no prisons amongst you?" was the poor man's meaning; and he expressed this symbolically under the name of him who was officially responsible for both.
But, as one throws a bone to a dog, we do not care to dispute the point further, if any man is resolute to settle this virtue upon the Dost as a life-annuity. The case will then stand thus: We have all heard of "Single-speech Hamilton;" and we must then say—"Single-virtue Dost;" for no man mentions a second. "Justice for pedlars" will then be the legend on his coin, as meaning that there is none for any body else. Yet even then the voters for the Dost totally overlooked one thing. Shah Soojah had some shadow of a pretence, which we shall presently examine, to the throne of all Affghanistan; and a king of that compass was indispensable to Lord Auckland's object. But Dost Mahommed never had even the shadow of an attorney's fiction upon which he could stand as pretender to any throne but that of Cabool, where, by accident, he had just nine points of the law in his favour. How then could we have supported him? "Because thou art virtuous," we must have said, are we to support future usurpation? Because the Dost is just to pedlars, "shall there be no more ale and cakes" for other Affghan princes? All Asia could not have held him upright on any throne comprehensively Affghan. Whether that could have been accomplished for any other man, is another question. Yet unless Lord Auckland could obtain guarantees from the unity of an Affghan government, nothing at all was done towards a barrier for the Indus.
Let us resume, however, the personal discussion. The Dost's banking account is closed; and we have carried one to his credit; but, as the reader knows, "under protest." Now let us go into the items of the Shah's little account. Strange to say, these are all on the wrong side— all marked with the negative sign. The drollest of all was the charge preferred against him by our Radicals. Possibly the Chartists, the Leaguers, and the Repealers have something in reserve against him. What the Radicals said was to this purpose: having heard of the Shah's compulsory flight more than once from Affghanistan, they argued that this never could have happened had he not committed some horrible faux pas. What could that be? "Something very naughty, be assured," said another; "they say he keeps a haram."—"Ay," rejoined a third, "but they care little about that in the East. Take my word for it, he has been playing tricks against the friends of liberty: he has violated the 'constitution' of Caboolistan." And immediately reverting to the case of Charles X. under the counsels of Prince Polignac, they resolved that he must have been engaged in suppressing the liberal journals of Peshawur; and that the Khyberees, those noble parliamentary champions of the cause for which Sidney bled on the scaffold, had risen as one man, and, under tricolor banners, had led his horse by the bridle to the frontiers of the Seiks. This was the colouring which the Radical journals gave to the Shah's part in the affair; and naturally they could not give any other than a corresponding one to ours. If Soojah were a tyrant kicked out for his political misdeeds, we must be the vilest of his abettors, leading back this saevior exul, reimposing a detested yoke, and facilitating a bloody vengeance. O gentlemen, blockheads! Silent inter arma leges— laws of every kind are mute; and as to such political laws as you speak of, well for Affghanistan if, through European neighbourhood, she comes to hear of those refinements in seven generations hence. Shah Soojah saw in youth as many ups and downs as York and Lancaster; but all in the good old honest way of throat-cutting, without any fraternal discord on questions of Habeas corpus; and had he been a luckier man in his long rough-and-tumbles for the Affghan sceptre, so as to have escaped the exile you reproach him with, he would not therefore, by one jot, have been more or less a guilty one.
The purisms of political delinquency had little share, therefore, in any remorse which Shah Soojah might ever feel; and considering the scared consciences of oriental princes in such matters, quite as little, perhaps, had the two other counts in his London impeachment. One imputed savage cruelty to him; the other, with a Johnny-rawness that we find it difficult to comprehend, profligacy and dissoluteness of life.
As to the cruelty, it has often been alleged; and the worst case, besides being the only attested case, of the Shah's propensities in that direction, is the execution of the Ghazees near the fortress of Ghuznee. We scorn to be the palliators of any thing which is bad in eastern usages—too many things are very bad—but we are not to apply the pure standards of Christianity to Mahometan systems; and least of all are we to load the individual with the errors of his nation. What wounds an Englishman most in the affair of the Ghazees, is the possibility that it may have been committed with the sanction of his own country, officially represented by the British commander-in-chief. But then that consideration leads an Englishman to suspend with a stoic [Greek: epochê], and exceedingly to doubt whether the fact could have been as it was originally reported. So said we, when first we heard it; and now, when the zeal of malice has ceased to distort things, let us coolly state the circumstances. A Mahometan Ghazee is a prededicated martyr. It is important to note the definition. He is one who devotes himself to death in what he deems a sufficient cause, but, as the old miser of Alsatia adds—"for a consideration;" the consideration being, that he wins Paradise. But Paradise he will not win, unless he achieves or attempts something really meritorious. Now, in the situation of things before Ghuznee, where a new ruler was brought in under the wing of Feringee infidels, what meritorious service was open to him? To have shot the commander-in-chief would have merely promoted some other infidel. The one sole revolutionary act appropriate to the exigency, was to shoot the Shah Soojah. There, and in one moment, would have gone to wreck the whole vast enterprize of the Christian dogs, their eight hundred lakhs of rupees, and their forty thousand camels. The mighty balloon would have collapsed; for the children of the Shah, it was naturally imagined by Affghans, would divide the support of their father's friends. That alone would have been victory to the Mussulmans; and, in the case of the British army leaving the land, (which then was looked for, at any rate, after one campaign,) the three Shahzades would, by their fraternal feuds, ensure rapid defeat to each other. Under this state of expectations, there was a bounty on regicide. All Ghazees carried the word assassin written on their foreheads. To shoot the Shah in battle was their right; but they had no thought of waiting for battle: they meant to watch his privacy; and some, even after they were captured, attempted in good earnest to sting. Such were the men— murderers by choice and proclamation—and the following were the circumstances:—On the afternoon immediately preceding the storming of Ghuznee, from the heights to the southward of that fortress descended a body of these fanatics, making right for the Shah's camp. They were anxious to do business. Upon this, a large mass of our cavalry mounted, went forward to skirmish with them, and drove them back with the loss of a standard. There the matter would have stopped; but Captain Outram, casually passing, persuaded some of the cavalry to go round the hills, to a point where they would have intercepted the retreat of the Ghazees upon that line. Seeing this, the devotees mounted the heights, whither the cavalry could not follow; but Captain