But there was something more than his own doubts and misgivings to be considered. Lord Auckland knew that the connexion he had established in Afghanistan was distasteful in the extreme to the East India Company. There was good reason for this. The necessity of sustaining Shah Soojah on the throne of Caubul had drained the financial resources of the Company to the dregs, and was entailing upon them liabilities which, if not speedily retrenched, they might have found it impossible to discharge. The injustice of the occupation of Afghanistan was not confined to the people of that country. A grievous injustice was being inflicted upon the people of India, the internal improvement of which was obstructed, to maintain the incapable Suddozye in the country from which he had been cast out by his offended people. No man knew this better, or deplored it more deeply, than Lord Auckland himself. The opinions of the East India Company upon this subject had been well known from the very commencement of the war. But the Court of Directors had no constitutional authority to suspend the operations which they had not been called upon to sanction, and only so far as they were represented in the Secret Committee had they any influence in the Councils which shaped our measures in Afghanistan. But no one knew better than Lord Auckland that there was scarcely one of the twenty-four Directors’ rooms in the Great Parliament of Leadenhall-street in which the continued occupation of the country beyond the Indus was not a subject of perpetual complaint.