And what was gained by the war? What are the advantages to be summed up on the other side of the account? The expedition across the Indus was undertaken with the object of erecting in Afghanistan a barrier against encroachment from the West. The advance of the British army was designed to check the aggressions of Persia on the Afghan frontier, and to baffle Russian intrigues, by the substitution of a friendly for an unfriendly power in the countries beyond the Indus. After an enormous waste of blood and treasure, we left every town and village of Afghanistan bristling with our enemies. Before the British army crossed the Indus, the English name had been honoured in Afghanistan. Some dim traditions of the splendour of Mr. Elphinstone’s mission had been all that the Afghans associated with their thoughts of the English nation; but, in their place, we left galling memories of the progress of a desolating army. The Afghans are an unforgiving race; and everywhere, from Candahar to Caubul, and from Caubul to Peshawur, were traces of the injuries we had inflicted upon the tribes. There was scarcely a family in the country which had not the blood of kindred to revenge upon the accursed Feringhees. The door of reconciliation seemed to be closed against us; and if the hostility of the Afghans be an element of weakness, it seemed certain that we must have contrived to secure it. It has been said that the tendency of all these great movements in Central Asia has been to diminish the mutual jealousies and apprehensions of the British and the Muscovite powers, by revealing, in all their true proportions, the tremendous quicksands which lie waiting to engulph our armies in the inhospitable countries between the borders of the Russian and the Indian Empires. But although both states have learnt—the one from her Afghan, the other from her Khivan expedition—terrible lessons not to be forgotten, it may still be questioned whether the Cossack and the Sepoy are further apart than they were. The “Macadamisation” of Sindh and the Punjab has given England a forward position, which, advantageous as it is in itself, may have stimulated Russia to increased activity, whilst our awful disasters in Afghanistan have encouraged anew the aggressions of the Persian, and the intrigues of his Muscovite ally, by revealing the sources of our disinclination to entangle our armies again in its perilous defiles.