rent-roll, one half of that L.30,000 a-year which we allowed to the Dost when our prisoner, or of that smaller sum[1] which we allowed to the Shah when our guest, would have made it good. Yet what if we had spent a million sterling through a period of ten years, as a sort of scaffolding for the support of our new edifice whilst yet green and rising? Even in that case, and supposing us to have taken our leave of the Dooraunee throne at the end of one year, after planting it as firmly as it ever could be planted, we should have pocketed six million of pounds sterling that now are gone; whereas we insisted on sinking three millions per annum for the first three years, in some bottomless Affghan Chatmoss, with the effect (seemingly with the intention) of enabling King Soojah to earn universal hatred by netting a few lacs of rupees. [1] _Smaller sum._--L.20,000 a-year. There was, however, a separate allowance, we believe, to Zemaun, the king's blind brother. This was the rock on which we split. Had we restrained the king from levying taxes, all might have gone well. Had we restrained ourselves from enforcing his levies, all might have gone decently. And had we prompted the king to inaugurate some great public benefit--as, for instance, by conferring upon the people a simple system of judicial process and distributive justice--both he and we might have become popular; for, even in Affghanistan, there must be multitudes of poor men, peasants and tradesmen in towns, mothers and wives, who sigh for peace, and curse their endless agitations. Yes, even amongst their martial spirits, who now live by war and the passions of war, many are they who would relent from their angry feuds, if it were possible to get justice without them. The sum, therefore, of that question; viz. of the _How_ and by what machinery Lord Auckland proposed to accomplish his not unstatesmanlike object, is this--that we failed utterly, and chiefly by applying European principles to Oriental communities; and in particular, 1st, By throwing a prodigious stress on the fancied consecration of royalty in a country where it would have snapped under the weight of a L.10 note. 2dly, By enforcing (and even exercising in our own persons as principals) the odious power of taxation, under the monstrous delusion that it was the first of a king's privileges, where in fact, and with some reason, it was viewed as the last of his excesses. The first was a _negative_ delusion. We fancied a mighty power where simply there was none; fancied a substance where there was not even a shadow. But the second was worse: it was a _positive_ delusion. We fancied a resource where simply there was a snare--a mooring cable where simply there was a rope for our execution--a sheet-anchor where simply there was a rock waiting for our shipwreck.