Justice sold by venal judges, oppression and corruption rampant in every department of internal administration, it was no wonder that nobles and people alike resented the inflictions under whose sting they writhed. They were accustomed to a certain amount of oppression; Dost Mahomed had chastised them with whips, but Shah Soojah, whom the English had brought, was chastising them with scorpions. And they felt his yoke the more bitterly because, with the shrewd acuteness of the race, they recognised the really servile condition of this new king. They fretted, too, under the sharp bit of the British political agents who were strewn about the country, in the execution of a miserable and futile policy, and whose lives, in a few instances, did not maintain the good name of their country. Dost Mahomed had maintained his sway by politic management of the chiefs, and through them of the tribes. Macnaghten would have done well to impress on Shah Soojah the wisdom of pursuing the same tactics. There was, it is true, the alternative of destroying the power of the barons, but that policy involved a stubborn and doubtful struggle, and prolonged occupation of the country by British troops in great strength. Macnaghten professed our occupation of Afghanistan to be temporary; yet he was clearly adventuring on the rash experiment of weakening the nobles when he set about the enlistment of local tribal levies, who, paid from the Royal treasury and commanded by British officers, were expected to be staunch to the Shah, and useful in curbing the powers of the chiefs. The latter, of course, were alienated and resentful, and the levies, imbued with the Afghan attribute of fickleness, proved for the most part undisciplined and faithless.