Lord Amherst was succeeded in 1828 by Lord William Bentinck, a man who, having had Macaulay to write his epitaph, enjoys a reputation far above his deserts. He was mediocre alike as soldier and statesman, and had an extraordinary knack of doing foolish things. While Governor-General his only idea was to save money for the Directors--he even tried to sell the Taj Mahal, the gem of Mohammedan architecture in India;--but he neglected to keep the peace; he reduced the allowances of the European officers, in direct breach of agreement; and finally, to curry favour with the humanitarians, he, in the face of all advice from British and native soldiers, abolished the punishment of the lash in the native regiments. The mischief which he thus did was incalculable; for he lowered the officers in the eyes of the natives, and so ruined the discipline of the Sepoys that beyond doubt he was the greatest of all contributors to the Mutiny of 1857. The Duke of Wellington, and all who knew India, were furious with him; but being a sentimental Whig, which is synonymous with a man of good intentions and bad judgement, he found and still finds many admirers at home. Let me beg you not to be carried away by their admiration. Bentinck certainly did some good work, but an Indian administrator who ruins the discipline of the army--and Bentinck undoubtedly did so--is not only no statesman, but a foolish and mischievous person. Bentinck was succeeded by Lord Auckland, whose name, unfortunately for him, is bound up with the greatest of our military disasters in India. Since the fall of Napoleon Russia had steadily pursued her advance eastwards, and by 1828 had not only appropriated some of the western territory of Persia but had gained paramount influence in that country. Thus we found ourselves confronted with the probability that we should presently have an European Power of colossal strength for our neighbour; and the question was how she should be kept at arm's length. The Government resolved that a barrier must be formed in Afghanistan. That country had lately passed out of the line of the creator of the Afghan kingdom into the hands of a strong and competent usurper. Since Persia threatened to indemnify herself for the territory lost to Russia by encroachment upon Afghanistan, this usurper, Dost Mohammed, was anxious for the English alliance. Lord Auckland on the contrary preferred to support the legitimate sovereign, Shah Shuja, who was an exile in the Punjab, and decided to replace him on the throne by an armed force, on the assumption that such an ally would be surer than Dost Mohammed. The operation was one of extreme danger, for the British and Afghan boundaries were hundreds of miles apart. Our base of operations was Scinde, a foreign state under rulers unfriendly to us; and full upon our flank, able at any moment to cut us off from India, lay the Sikhs, equally a foreign state, nominally amicable but really very jealous, and in possession of a powerful army.