seize him if he ventured out of the Balla Hissar. He is, as the Afghans say, like grain between two mill-stones.”[86] Many more passages might be cited from the correspondence of our political officers, to show the opinions entertained at this time by those most competent to determine the question of the Shah’s fidelity. But, after all, the question remains an open one. The future historian may still lose himself in a sea of conjecture. From the facts before us, and from all that is known of the character of Shah Soojah, the inference is, as I have said, that the king was faithful neither to his own countrymen nor to his British allies. He was at best a poor creature. He had few good qualities. But it should in justice be remembered, that he was surrounded by circumstances against which an abler and a better man might have struggled in vain. He had long been greatly perplexed and embarrassed by the anomalies of his position. He was tired of playing the part of the puppet; and had begun to long for an opportunity either of becoming king indeed, or of throwing down the trappings and the cares of royalty, and ending his days in the calm security of his old asylum at Loodhianah. He used to say that Macnaghten did all the good that was done in Afghanistan—and all the evil too; for that he himself did nothing. Unpopular measures of which he was not the author were executed in his name; he was compelled outwardly to sanction much of which he inwardly disapproved; he saw dangers thickening around him without the power of averting them, and painfully felt that he had always been a cipher, and had now become a hissing and a reproach. Under the directorship which we had forced upon him, Shah Soojah was not happy. He was altogether a disappointed man. He did not find the sweets of restored dominion what he expected them to be. He was an isolated being. The sympathies neither of the Afghans nor of the English were with him. All men suspected him. None loved him. When, therefore, he talked about leaving Caubul, he was probably not insincere; but he may have thought sometimes that if the English would leave Caubul, he might enjoy his sovereignty more. If to have desired to rid himself of an incubus, which sate so heavily upon him, was to be faithless to the British, Shah Soojah was unquestionably faithless; but this is a kind of infidelity so common to humanity of all ranks and in all places, that to record it against the Shah is only to say that he was a man.