It would be tedious to detail how Lord Auckland, under evil counsel, gradually boxed the compass from peace to war. The scheme of action embodied in the treaty which, in the early summer of 1838, was concluded between the Anglo-Indian Government, Runjeet Singh, and Shah Soojah, was that Shah Soojah, with a force officered from an Indian army, and paid by British money, possessing also the goodwill and support of the Maharaja of the Punjaub, should attempt the recovery of his throne without any stiffening of British bayonets at his back. Then it was urged, and the representation was indeed accepted, that the Shah would need the buttress afforded by English troops, and that a couple of regiments only would suffice to afford this prestige. But Sir Harry Fane, the Commander-in-Chief, judiciously interposed his veto on the despatch of a handful of British soldiers on so distant and hazardous an expedition. Finally, the Governor-General, committed already to a mistaken line of policy, and urged forward by those about him, took the unfortunate resolution to gather together an Anglo-Indian army, and to send it, with the ill-omened Shah Soojah on its shoulders, into the unknown and distant wilds of Afghanistan. This action determined on, it was in accordance with the Anglo-Indian fitness of things that the Governor-General should promulgate a justificatory manifesto. Of this composition it is unnecessary to say more than to quote Durand's observation that in it 'the words "justice and necessity" were applied in a manner for which there is fortunately no precedent in the English language,' and Sir Henry Edwardes' not less trenchant comment that 'the views and conduct of Dost Mahomed were misrepresented with a hardihood which a Russian statesman might have envied.' All men whose experience gave weight to their words opposed this 'preposterous enterprise.' Mr Elphinstone, who had been the head of a mission to Cabul thirty years earlier, held that 'if an army was sent up the passes, and if we could feed it, no doubt we might take Cabul and set up Shah Soojah; but it was hopeless to maintain him in a poor, cold, strong and remote country, among so turbulent a people.' Lord William Bentinck, Lord Auckland's predecessor, denounced the project as an act of incredible folly. Marquis Wellesley regarded 'this wild expedition into a distant region of rocks and deserts, of sands and ice and snow,' as an act of infatuation. The Duke of Wellington pronounced with prophetic sagacity, that the consequence of once crossing the Indus to settle a government in Afghanistan would be a perennial march into that country. CHAPTER II: THE MARCH TO CABUL