But the call was responded to but slowly.[86] Money did not come in freely, though it was going out with a freedom perhaps unexampled in the history of Indian finance; and the home authorities still continued to write out, as Sir Jasper Nicolls and others in India were declaring, that it had become necessary either to withdraw altogether from Afghanistan, or to fall back upon the alternative of a large augmentation of the army. As the year advanced, too, other influences were at work to move the Indian Government to consider more and more intently the subject of the continued drain upon the resources of India. Great Britain was on the eve of a change of ministry, which would settle in Downing-street a party of Conservative statesmen, and send to Calcutta one of their number, known to be hostile to the whole policy of the expedition across the Indus; and Macnaghten was already beginning to tremble at the thought of what he called prospectively an “unparalleled atrocity”—but what many would have regarded as an act of wisdom and justice—the withdrawal of the British army from Afghanistan. How strongly the Envoy felt upon this subject, and in what manner he argued against it, may be gathered from a letter which, on the 25th of September, he addressed to the Governor of Agra. Still he continued to report that the whole country was quiet, and insisted that the Shah’s force, aided by one European regiment at Caubul, and another at Candahar, would be sufficient to keep the whole country in order: