Whether Macnaghten smiled at this version of the old alliance is not on record. But he began now to read and explain the articles of the amended treaty. The Shah’s comments were frequent and emphatic. Sneering at the minuteness with which the possessions of Runjeet Singh were defined in the first article, he declared that Peshawur was only a burden to the Sikh government, and that Runjeet would willingly hand it over to any one but Dost Mahomed. Indeed, he said, that the Maharajah’s vakeel had often pledged his word to him that, in the event of his recovering his throne, Peshawur should be reannexed to his dominions. But when Captain Wade and Moollah Shikore[230] recalled, to his Majesty’s recollection that Peshawur had been expressly named in the old treaty among the possessions of Runjeet Singh, the Shah acknowledged that it was so, and yielded the point. Other articles were then commented on by the Shah and his agent; but that which seemed most to stagger them was the stipulation for the annual payment by Caubul of two lakhs to the state of Lahore. Little advantage, observed the Shah, could the British Government expect to derive from his restoration, if they placed him in a position inferior to that held by the present ruler of Caubul, who paid no tribute to the Sikhs. “He had long,” he said, “indulged a hope that the day would come when the British Government, whose honoured guest he had been for more than twenty years, would restore him to the throne and possessions of his ancestors—that the British Government must be aware that, after such a period of dependence on them, in whatever manner they chose to send him forth, his fair name was identified with their own—that in this world a good name alone deserved to be prized—that half a loaf with a good name were better than abundance without it. He then alluded to the small revenues of Afghanistan—said that Caubul and Candahar yielded nothing—that when Shikarpoor paid its revenues regularly, the amount realised was only three lakhs—that to enable him to establish his government, and keep it, he would require to maintain 15,000 troops; and how were they to be paid?—that it would be less irksome if the money were only required to be paid whenever he had occasion to make use of the services of Runjeet Singh’s troops.”[231] To all this Macnaghten replied, that the payment was not by any means, to be regarded in the light of tribute from a weaker to a more powerful state, but simply as remuneration for services performed. Adroitly alluding to the subsidy recently paid by the British Government to the Persian state, the English Envoy said that a powerful government often subsidised, for its own uses, a weaker one; and that if Runjeet did not furnish the troops, the Shah would be exempted from paying the money; but that as the former was bound to hold them always in readiness for service, it would not be reasonable to pay them only when they were called into the field.