Towards the end of April the court returned to Cabul. Affairs were far from satisfactory. The unpopularity of the English, and even of Soojah himself, became daily more and more obvious to all observant people. The dual Government was a failure. The English, pledged not to interfere with Soojah, were obliged to permit much of which they strongly disapproved to pass unchallenged, and were only called upon to intervene to pass measures which Soojah himself was not strong enough to enforce. Whenever therefore their presence did make itself conspicuously felt it had the natural result of only increasing their unpopularity. The expense had already been enormous, and showed no signs of decreasing. The wealth and liberality of the English had been a tradition in Afghanistan since the days of Elphinstone, and the Afghans, though they hated the infidel soldiers much, loved the infidel gold still more. Unfortunately, too, the dislike borne to the English by the Afghan men was not shared by the Afghan women, and the passion of jealousy, with but too good cause, was thus added to the passions of distrust and hate. Evil news, too, came from every quarter; from the Bamean frontier on the north, from Herat on the west, from Candahar on the south, from Peshawur on the east. Macnaghten had never ceased importuning the Viceroy to sanction the restoration of Herat and Peshawur to the Afghan dominions. The Sikhs were now open in their declarations of enmity to the English, though they had refrained as yet from any actual hostilities, and Macnaghten, with considerable reason, declared there could be no safety in Afghanistan till, to use his own words, "the road through the Punjab was macadamised." At Herat, too, Yar Mahomed, the Vizier, a man of boundless avarice and treachery, though living on British bounty, was openly intriguing with Persia, and had behaved with such gross and repeated insolence to our Envoy that the latter had at last left his court in disgust. But Lord Auckland, though not insensible to Macnaghten's arguments, did not dare at that time to increase either his responsibilities or his expenses, both of which were already sufficiently heavy. Grave complaints were heard from Candahar, where the old system of taxation that had made the Barukzye rule so irksome was still in force, and still in the hands of the same hated collectors. The Ghilzyes, who had already received severe punishment from Outram, were again in the field, and further still to the south the whole country was in revolt. Khelat had been won back from us by Mehrab Khan's son, and Loveday, the English officer in charge, barbarously murdered. In the far north our outposts had pushed on over the Bamean range, and were in frequent collision with the Oosbegs, and other supporters of the Barukzye cause. It is true that wherever our troops met the enemy in the open field the victory remained with the former, but that such meetings were as frequent as