When the Persian army was before Herat—when the Afghan garrison was on the eve of surrender—when the chiefs of Caubul and Candahar were prostrating themselves at the feet of Mahomed Shah, the expedition for the restoration of Shah Soojah was one of doubtful honesty and doubtful expediency. The retrogression of the Persian army removed it at once from the category of questionable acts. There was no longer any question about it. The failure of Mahomed Shah cut from under the feet of Lord Auckland all ground of justification, and rendered the expedition across the Indus at once a folly and a crime. The tripartite treaty did not pledge the British Government to send a single soldier beyond the frontier. The despatch of a British army into the heart of Afghanistan was no part of the covenant either with Runjeet Singh or Shah Soojah. It was wholly an after thought. When Macnaghten, after his conferences with the Maharajah of the Punjab and the ex-King of Caubul, returned to Simlah to lay the result of his mission before the Governor-General, the British Government had pledged itself only to furnish a handful of European officers to raise and discipline the Shah’s regiments; and so little had any obligation been imposed upon us to surround the ex-King with our battalions, on his restoration to his old dominions, that he himself expressed an eager hope that he would be suffered to advance as an independent prince, and not as a mere puppet in our hands.[268] To march a British army into Afghanistan was not, therefore, an obligation upon the Indian Government; it was their deliberate choice. The avowed object of the expedition, as set forth in the November declaration, was the establishment of a friendly power in Afghanistan. But the subversion of an existing dynasty could only be justified on the ground that its hostility threatened to disturb the peace and tranquillity of our own dominions. Whatever the hostility of the Barukzye Sirdahs may have been when Mahomed Shah was before the gates of Herat, it had now ceased to be formidable. It was obvious that the chiefs of Caubul and Candahar were little likely to exaggerate the power of a Prince that had brought all his military resources to bear upon the reduction of a place of no reputed strength, and, after an ineffectual struggle of nine months’ duration, had retreated, either because he was unequal to the longer continuance of the contest, or because the British Government had landed 500 Sepoys on an island in the Persian Gulf. It was only in connection with the Russo-Persian movement that an alliance with the rulers of Afghanistan had become a matter of concernment to the British Government. It was only by a reference to the crisis which had thus arisen that the Indian Government could in any way justify their departure from the course of non-interference laid down by the Court of Directors, and recognised by Lord Auckland and his predecessors. But now that the danger, to the