“It is curious to observe the manner in which the Douranees have reasoned upon the liberality of his Majesty’s Government, and the gradual modifications which we may suppose their feelings to have undergone, from the evidence of alterations in their tone and conduct. During the first year of his Majesty’s restored government, they exhibited outwardly but little change from the same passive demeanour which had characterised their submission to the Sirdars under the later periods of the Barukzye administration. No sooner, however, had the new order been issued for the remission of the land-tax, than, with resuscitated hopes, they began to remonstrate, to agitate, and ultimately to take up arms, when other means of intimidation failed them. I bring forward, by way of illustration, the example of the tribes in Zemindawer. They had been subjected, during the preceding year, to some severity of treatment by the financial arrangements of Wullee Mahomed Khan; but they had endured the yoke almost without a murmur. Since the arrival of the Wukeel at Candahar they had been, on the contrary, entirely free from interference. Not a government agent of any class had appeared in Zemindawer, nor had a khurwar of grain been realised, yet the tribes of that district, on the first demand of revenue, took up arms to withstand, as they said, oppressive exactions; and whilst a party of horse were encamped upon this side of the Helmund, appointed to support the government officer in his collections, they crossed the river, and attacked them without the semblance of an excuse on the score of provocation or actual rapacity. The unpopularity of the agent deputed to realise the revenues, and the apprehension of a repetition of the exactions of the previous year, may have been instrumental in assembling the tribes in arms as a measure of defence; but surely such motives are insufficient to justify or explain a gratuitous attack before the collections of the present year had commenced; or, if the motives which the Zemindawerees assigned for their offensive hostility be admitted, surely some radical change of character must have taken place, to have emboldened to this act of aggressive rebellion tribes who had submitted passively to the most galling tyranny on the part of the Sirdars, and who had even yielded, since the accession of his Majesty, to the harshness of the collections of the preceding year without betraying any open signs of discontent. It appears to me that, had the land-tax on the _Tajul Kulbas_ been continued, the tribes in Zemindawer, seeing no indication of a change in the policy of the government, and conscious that the power of coercion was stronger at the present than at any previous time, would never have dreamed of assembling in arms to resist the royal authority; and that we must consequently attribute to the exercise of his Majesty’s clemency, and to the impression which had arisen from it, that it was the aim of the government to manage the