The open, acknowledged danger, to be met by vigorous measures on the part of our Anglo-Indian statesmen, was the attempt of Mahomed Shah to destroy the integrity of Herat, and his asserted claims to the sovereignty of Ghuznee and Candahar. It is true that by the ninth article of the treaty with Persia, England was especially bound not to interfere in any quarrels between the Afghans and the Persians; but our statesmen both in the East and the West, saw a ready means of escape from these conditions in the circumstances of the assault on Mr. M’Neill’s courier, which, however contemptible in themselves, were sufficient to bring about a temporary rupture between Persia and Great Britain. Lord Auckland was slow to encourage an idea of the expediency of such direct interference as would be involved in the passage of a British army across the great boundary line of the Indus. But he saw the necessity of so establishing our influence in Afghanistan as to erect a secure barrier against invasion from the westward; and now that he had abandoned all desire to propitiate Dost Mahomed and the Barukzye chiefs, and had begun to think of carrying out his objects through other agency, it was only natural that he should have turned his thoughts, in the first instance, to the Suddozye pensioner of Loodhianah, who had made so many unsuccessful efforts to reseat himself upon the throne of the Douranee Empire. Shah Soojah had lived so long upon the bounty of the British Government, that it was only reasonable to believe that we should find in him a fast friend and a faithful ally. But when in the month of May, 1838, Lord Auckland, then at Simlah, wrote an elaborate minute, setting forth his opinions regarding the measures best calculated to secure the integrity of the western frontier of Afghanistan, and suggesting the restoration of the exiled Suddozye Prince, it was evident that he had not, at that time, grasped the grand, but perilous idea, of sending a British army into the fastnesses of Afghanistan to break down the dynasty of the Barukzyes, to set up a monarch of our own, and so to roll back for ever the tide of western invasion. He meditated nothing more at this time than the encouragement of an expedition to be undertaken by Shah Soojah and Runjeet Singh, the British Government supplying money, appointing an accredited agent to accompany the Shah’s camp, and furnishing a certain number of British officers to direct the movements of the Shah’s army.[217] It appeared to him that there were but three courses open to him; “the first to confine our defensive measures to the line of the Indus, and to leave Afghanistan to its fate; the second, to attempt to save Afghanistan, by granting succour to the existing chiefships of Caubul and Candahar; the third, to permit or to encourage the advance of Runjeet Singh’s armies upon Caubul, under counsel and restriction, and as subsidiary to his advance to organise an expedition headed by Shah Soojah, such