But this invention, though it was probably one of the means employed by the conspirators to increase the number of their associates, can hardly be admitted to account for the insurrection. The arrival of Akber Khan at Bameean, the revolt of the Giljyes, the previous flight of their chiefs from Cabul, and the almost simultaneous attack of our posts in the Koohdaman, (called by Lieutenant Eyre, Kohistan,) on the 3d November--the attack of a party conducting prisoners from Candahar to Ghuznee--the immediate interruption of every line of communication with Cabul--and the selection of the season of the year the most favourable to the success of the insurrection, with many other less important circumstances, combine to force upon us the opinion, that the intention to attack the Cabul force, so soon as it should have become isolated by the approach of winter, had been entertained, and the plan of operations concerted, for some considerable time before the insurrection broke out. That many who wished for its success may have been slow to commit themselves, is to be presumed, and that vigorous measures might, if resorted to on the first day, have suppressed the revolt, is probable; but it can hardly be doubted that we must look far deeper, and further back, for the causes which united the Affghan nation against us. The will of their chiefs and spiritual leaders--fanatical zeal, and hatred of the domination of a race whom they regarded as infidels--may have been sufficient to incite the lower orders to any acts of violence, or even to the persevering efforts they made to extirpate the English. In their eyes the contest would assume the character of a religious war--of a crusade; and every man who took up arms in that cause, would go to battle with the conviction that, if he should be slain, his soul would go at once to paradise, and that, if he slew an enemy of the faith, he thereby also secured to himself eternal happiness. But the chiefs are not so full of faith; and although we would not altogether exclude religious antipathy as an incentive, we may safely assume that something more immediately affecting their temporal and personal concerns must with them, or at least with the large majority, have been the true motives of the conspiracy--of their desire to expel the English from their country. Nor is it difficult to conceive what some of these motives may have been. The former sovereigns of Affghanistan, even the most firmly-established and the most vigorous, had no other means of enforcing their commands, than by employing the forces of one part of the nation to make their authority respected in another; but men who were jealous of their own independence as chiefs, were not likely to aid the sovereign in any attempt to destroy the substantial power, the importance, or the independence of their class; and although a refractory chief might occasionally, by the aid of his feudal enemies,