And whatever objections may lie against the general honesty of the compact, it is certain that they apply with double force to that portion of it which involved the seizure of Ameen-oollah Khan. It is not to be justified by any reference to the infamous character of that chief. Ameen-oollah Khan was one of our “new allies.” He had been, with the other chiefs, in friendly negotiation with Macnaghten. It was now proposed, during a suspension of hostilities—whilst, indeed, we were in friendly intercourse with the Afghan chiefs, this very Ameen-oollah Khan included—that a body of troops should be got ready as quietly as possible for secret service, that a sudden attack should be made on the unsuspecting garrison of Mahmood Khan’s fort, and that one of our allies—one of the chiefs with whom the Envoy was in treaty—should be violently seized. I confess that I cannot see anything to justify such a measure as this. It certainly was not in accordance with that good faith, the observance of which Macnaghten had declared to be of more importance than the retention of our position in the country. But although I cannot bring myself to justify the act, either on the plea that the chiefs had not observed the engagements into which they had entered, or that Ameen-oollah Khan was an infamous wretch, and one of the archenemies of the British, it appears to me to be as little the duty of the historian severely to condemn the actor as to justify the act.[200] It is one of those cases in which the exercise of charity is a solemn duty—one of those cases, to the consideration of which every one should bring the kindliest resolution to weigh well the temptation before he measures the offence. There are cases to which, it is my deliberate conviction, a strict application of the ordinary rules of right and wrong would be a grievous injustice. It is easy, in one’s closet, to sit in judgment upon the conduct of a man tempted far beyond the common limits of human temptation—environed and hemmed in by difficulties and dangers—overwhelmed with responsibility which there is no one to share—the lives of sixteen thousand men resting on his decision—the honour of his country at stake—with a perfidious enemy before him, a decrepit general at his side, and a paralysed army at his back—driven to negotiate by the imbecility of his companions, and then thwarted in his negotiations by the perfidy of his “new allies.” But if, without injustice and cruelty, we would pass sentence on the conduct of a man so environed, we must ponder well all these environments, and consider what must have been the effect of seven wearing weeks of such unparalleled trial even on the strongest mind, and what must have been the temptation that arrayed itself before him, when there suddenly gleamed upon him a hope of saving at once the lives of his companions and the credit of the British nation. If, when that great temptation burst suddenly upon his path, and, dazzled by its