However, the Affghans, who are essentially democratic by the necessities of their turbulent condition, often make a compromise in their choice of khans between strict primogeniture and personal merits, where they happen to be appropriate. And they might have done so here. But we are now going, in conclusion, to bring forward one remark, which utterly prostrates Lord Auckland's scheme as a scheme of hope for Affghanistan, or of promise for his own purpose. It is this--no legitimacy of title, and no personal merits, supposing both to have met pre-eminently in the person of Soojah, had a chance of winning over the Affghans to a settled state. This truth, not hitherto noticed, reveals itself upon inspecting the policy of all the Suddozye shahs from Ahmed downwards; and probably that policy was a traditional counsel. Ahmed saved himself from domestic feuds by carrying away all the active, or aspiring, or powerful spirits to continual wars in the Punjaub, in Persia, or India. Thus he sustained their hopes, thus he neutralized their turbulence. Timour next, and his son Zemaun after _him_, pursued the very same policy. They have been both taxed with foolish ambition. It was not _that_: the historian has not perceived the key to their conduct:--it was the instinct of self-preservation. No otherwise than by exhausting the martial restlessness of the Affghans upon foreign expeditions, was durability to be had for any government. To live as a dynasty, it was indispensable to cross the Indus in pursuit of plunder. But exactly that policy it was, the one resource of prudent Affghan princes, the escape-valve for conspiracy and treason, which Lord Auckland's army had been put in motion to abolish. Now, _thirdly_, let us examine the machinery by which these plans were to be executed. Under the last head we have seen that, if on the whole perhaps the best instrument at hand, and better essentially than the Dost, very soon, indeed, Shah Soojah must have learned the necessity of passing over to that aggressive system which he had been raised up to destroy. Merely for his own safety he must have done this. But now suppose this otherwise, and that Soojah had continued to be that passive instrument for the Indian cabinet which their plans required and presumed. Even on this supposition, our agent or lieutenant Soojah would have required at first some support. By what machinery was this to be given? What was to be the instrument for sustaining our instrument?