“And now, my dear Colvin,” continued the vexed envoy, “you must allow me to disburden my mind to you. I have perceived, or fancied I perceived, on several occasions lately, a want of confidence in my proceedings, and a disposition to listen to every unfavourable report regarding affairs in this quarter; whilst I do not receive that support to which the overwhelming difficulties of my position entitle me.” He then adverted to a controversy which, he said, had been “thrust upon him” by Brigadier Roberts, who commanded the Shah’s force. There had been from the first a jealousy, almost amounting to a conflict of authority, between the envoy and the brigadier. It was often difficult to observe the just frontier-line between the military and the political, and each had chafed under the supposed interference of the other. The soldier, whose imagination did not colour affairs in Afghanistan with the roseate hues which flushed everywhere the future of the civilian, was regarded as an intrusive alarmist; whilst to Roberts it appeared, on the other hand, that the sanguine temperament of the envoy, was likely to be the parent of a host of evils which might culminate in some frightful disaster. The controversy had been brought to the notice of the Governor-General, rather in the shape of private or demi-official correspondence than in a formal appeal to the higher authority; and Lord Auckland, who still looked forward to the entire withdrawal of the regular troops from Afghanistan, and was, therefore, anxious to support the functionary on whom would then devolve the chief military command, ordered an official letter to be written containing some passages which stung the envoy to the quick.[46] Believing, then, that the Governor-General had withdrawn his confidence from him, he talked of resigning his appointment. “If no important operations,” he wrote to the Private Secretary, “should be contemplated for next year in this quarter, for the conduct of which it may be thought desirable that I should remain, some of the public money will be saved by the appointment of a less-paid though equally qualified agent. I never yet have served in an office where I had not the confidence of my superiors, and my inclination to do so is by no means strengthened after a laborious public life of thirty-one years.”