DOST MAHOMMED.

New Zealand Colonist and Port Nicholson Advertiser, Volume I, Issue 24, 21 October 1842, Page 4

DOST MAHOMMED.

The affair? of Afghanistan have elicited so much interest, that a slight narrative of the rice of its late sovereign may serve to clear some of the narratives on the subject. A portion, of the'troops of Nadir Shah, in his invasion of India about a century since, were Affghans—a race of barbarians, inhabiting a country whose Alpine temperature in winter, and whose fertility in summer, rendered them one of the most vigorous and athletic races of Northern India. ‘ Nadir, though a brilliant soldier, was a tyrant, and therefore hated; hut, on his return to Persia,-he became a sot, and was easily circumvented by a court cabal. Poison and the dagger are the Eastern Bill of [lights. A conspiracy was formed against him, and he was stubbed while lying in his tent, prohablv drunk. A period of general convulsion followed, in which his auxiliary troops fought each other, or dispersed to their own homes. In the general disruption, the principal officer of the Aftghans, Achmcd Shah, seized a convoy of treasure belonging to Nadir, returned with his barbarians to his mountains, drove all opposition before him, and giving himself the picturesque title of the “ Pearl of the Age” (Doorec Doorancc), became monarch of Afghanistan.

Aclnned had begun life as a robber on a large scale, and lie continued his trade on an increasing one as long as he lived. He must have been a formidable neighbour, for he made four invasions of India ; fell heavily on the decaying house of Arungzebe, and robbed and massacred without mercy wherever he conquered. At length, a quarter of a century of profligacy, plunder, and toil in the pursuit of both, brought the founder of the Afghan throne to his grave. He died in 1773, about 20 years after Clive had laid the foundations of the British Indian Empire, by the battle of Plassey.

In the East the conqueror is always succeeded by a coward—and the founder of a kingdom hv a fool; hut the kingdom sometimes escapes the natural fall of the dynasty. Timour Shah, the son of Aclnned, was an indolent voluptuary; but the kingdom survived him, though he reigned about as long as his 7 O• O o active and clever father.

On his death, four of his crowd of sons were rivals for the throne. Humaloon, the eldest, attempted to proclaim himself at Candahar, hut was attacked by the army of Shah Zemaun, His brother, who had seized on Cahul, and assumed the throne, and by that brother had his eyes put out, and was thus rendered, in the Indian style, incapable of empire. India is the land of conspiracy, and a conspiracy was now formed against Zemaun, or his vizier, or both. The conspirators were seized, and had their f leads cut off. But they had been powerful chieftains —their clans vowed vengeance : Mahmoud, a third brother, put himself at their head, left llelat, of which he had been governor, and seized Candahar. All these affairs were bloody, hut thoroughly Indian. Zemaun, who had been preparing for an excursion of robbery to llindostan, now stopped in his march, and hastened hack to crush the rebellion; but his troops, either tired of him, or corrupted by his brother, no sooner saw Mahmoud’s lines, than one half of them marched over to him. The vizier and the monarch had only to turn their horses’ heads and fly. They escaped to one of the mountain tribes, hut Mahmoud’s gold followed them there. They were both delivered up : Zemaun, by a retrihutary fate, was blinded, and the vizier, more fortunate, was put to death, But in this furious family, there was a fourth brother, Shoojah, who had been left in charge of Zemaun’s principal jewels at Peshawur. An insurrection—how raised H among the secrets of Cahul diplomacy suddenly hurst round Mahmoud in the midst of a life of revelry; he was dethroned, and the jewel-keeper placed in his room. Shoojah was now king. But the Affghan throne was again to be beset by insurrection. Mahmoud escaped from his prison, and Shoojah was forced to leave his harem, raise an army, and pursue him. He had, at the same time, an army fighting in Cashmere. The horizon now began to grow cloudy on all sides. His Affghanerian army was attacked and ruined in single battle; the next intelligence was that Mahmoud’s general, Futteli Khan, a chieftain of remarkable bravery and talent, had taken Canhahar: this was about 1810. Shall Shoojah then advanced to meet the rebels with a powerful army ; but he was beaten in two pitched battles, and forced to fly to the Punjaub, the territory of Runjeet Sing. Mahmoud was monarch once more, and, like a savage, forgetting what he owed to the talents and bravery of his vizier, Futteh Khan, or, probably, jealous of his popularity, he blinded him, and shortly after put him to death. This act of atrocity produced the consequences which it deserved : the brothers of the vizier flew to arms.

Dost Mahommed Khan, one of them, who has since figured so largely in the history of this distracted country, made himself master of Cabul. Two others seized Candahar, Cashmere, and the rest of the dominions.

Shah Shoojah, under the protection of Runjeet Sing, was still unlucky; he was plundered

of his jewels. The “ Lion of the Punjaub” starved the fugitive prince, until he gave up especially the famous diamond, named “ The Mountain of Light;” and, at length, Runjeet having no more to get from him, Shoojah and his family were suffered to make their way to the British territory in 1814. The origin of the war with Dost Mahommed is still involved in some obscurity. The Persian attack on Herat, openly directed by a Russian general, naturally excited suspicion of the loose fidelity of the Aftghan king. It was unquestionable that he had commenced a correspondence with Russia, under pretence of protecting himself against the aggressions of Runjeet Sing. The Britisli Governor-General, unaccountably forgetting the absolute fickleness of the barbarian character, and the notorious facility with which it is swayed by money, is said to have refused advancing a subsidy of 300,000/., which the “ Dost” (prince) declared to he absolutely necessary to his throne; and a march across India and a war were preferred, which have already cost, on a general calculation, about twenty times the subsidy, or seven millions sterling, and may cost an unlimited sum before quiet is restored. But the gallantry of the British troops shone conspicuously in this brief, hut dangerous, campaign. Dost Mahommed was beaten, and taken prisoner; and now, after two years of nominal triumph, the whole struggle is to be begun again.

But a new display of sentiment is actually fastening itself on this unpromising subject, and the Whigs and Radicals are beginning to exalt* the Aftghans into patriots, heroes, and all other fine things of the Radical school. The orators say that the Affghans had a right to hate the British for forcing a beloved sovereign from them, and an unbeloved sovereign on them ; that Dost Mahommed was the universal delight, and Shah Shoojah the universal hatred, and that they were only performing the part of William Tell and Timolcon. But what is the fact ? It is a mere repetition of the case of Napoleon and Louis XVIII. The French would, doubtless, have preferred Napoleon, because he gave them plunder; hut we had strong reasons for preferring Louis, because he allowed us to remain at peace. The Corsican was, doubtless, more a favourite with the French amateurs of “ La gloire,” thatfthe old fat descendants of forty lazy kings ; but he was a much more inconvenient neighbour for us —and that was the grand question for us to consider. Accordingly, we flung* tliut robbing and murdering emperor of les braves from the throne, and put the old man in his seat. This was exactly the case with the Aftghans. Dost Mahommed was sanguinary and treacherous; he made war upon us, and we beat him, captured him, and sent him to study the art of respecting the British Government in a dungeon. Shah Shoojah may be a sot or a simpleton, but he will not make war upon us, and, therefore, it is our convenience to keep him on the throne. Whether we have done all in the wisest way—whether, we might not have made Dost Mahommed as careful of preserving the peace as the Shah—is altogether a question of circumstances. Whether it would not have been much better to have left the Dost and the Kamram, and the whole circle of savages, to fight it out, and cut up each other, we have not the slightest doubt would have been the right proceeding, and must be the proceeding after all. But to represent the Affghans as chivalric, sensitive, and romantic —as imitating in the slightest degree the rising of the Swedes for Gustavus, or the Scots for the Chevalier, is nothing but to burlesque all truth, and make a tinsel novel out of a barbarian incident. The real nature of the insurrection is, an intrigue to drive Shah Shoojah from the throne, and put the contriver of the intrigue into it; the same thing has been done a hundred times over in India. An individual or a party have got together money enough to hire soldiers; the nation are banditti, and would hire themselves to any one; the perfidy, lies, bribery, and villainly of all kinds with which everything done by the Asiatics is carried on, make a conspiracy—at once, the conspiracy swells into a rebellion. If the British resident is a man of sense and vigilance, he watches the plot, crushes the rebellion, and hangs the principal performers. If he is merely a showy coxcomb, he allows himself to he tricked with his eyes open—imagines himself the first diplomatist in the world, while he was laughed at by his own palanquin bearers, and sits down to pen a dispatch to the GovernorGeneral, announcing the general, pacification produced by liis genius, when, in the next five minutes, he is shot in the midst of a general rebellion. Or, if he is a sulky, self-sufficient, and obstinate official, he despises all notice of the movements around him, refuses to believe that he is not infallible, and finally walks, into the pitfall of the enemy in the face of day. But the true evil of such things and persons is, the hazard into which they throw clever people and brave men, who were compelled to rely op them. Still we must have no varnishing of the Affghans ; they are a bloody, plundering, and vicious race of savages. The British certainly were impolitic in remaining so long in their country ; hut the Aftghans had been actually benefitted by them : British expenditure gives opulence wherever it goes—there had been no acts of tyranny —the population were protected

—and as to the idea of their feeling disgraced, like so many Romans or Englishmen, at seeing an enemy’s army supporting a returned soveleign, all is verbiage. The only difference between the parties is, that the Britisli paid, but did not bribe, while the Dost Mahommed party bribed, but did not pay, and, among barbarians, tjie bribe always carries the field. But the matter must cb;me before the great British tribunal. The -Governor-General must he compelled to account for his having suffered so foolish, rash, and wasteful a war, even to have been contemplated, and then to account for the palpable absurd, senseless, and hazardous manner, in which, after the conquest, the attempt to keep up the country was maintained. He must produce the correspondence of Sir Alexander Burnes, whose friends declare that he made the strongest remonstrances against the whole expedition. He must produce the correspondence of Mr. Clarke, and the other residents in that part of India. He must he able to satisfy the country on the project which was so long said to he entertained of garrisoning Herat, and thus extending the line of British hostilities from China to Persia, a line of 2000 miles. He must account for the ignorance which made the insurrection a surprise to him; or, if he knew of it, the scattered and helpless condition in which the various bodies of; our troops were left in that wild country. If he can defend himself on those points, so much the better; if he cannot, let justice be done to the army and the empire.

The blow in Cabul is the heaviest that has fallen on the Indian army since the days of Ilyder Ali, when the force under General Matthews was broken up by the Mysore cavalry — hut this was upwards of half a century ago. It is a heavier blow than fell on the Britisli army during the whole Continental war ; for though our troops on the Continent often suffered from disease and winter, they fought successfully, and even the march to Corunna was finished by a victory. But in Affghanistan, every kind of blunder seems to have been committed, and every kind of loss suffered, unrelieved by a single ray of victory. Our gallant troops have been forced indignantly to fly before a rabble, because the rabble had food and they had none; and the force which a few months ago would have marched triumphantly from end to end of India, is now fugitive, or showing its habitual bravery only in dying on the field. The French newspapers are in high exultation at this melancholy and bitter catastrophe. The miserable spirit of a Frenchman is never to be softened by a sense of -what is due to the sufferings of brave men. All Paris is dancing with eestacy at the idea of our troops being driven out of Cabul. All the scribblers are on tiptoe for disasters, and the contemptible vanity of the nation sees nothing less in them than wiping out the disgrace of Waterloo. “Perfide Albion ,” is the melo-dramatic rant of those most pitiful of penmen. “ Voila la Decadence ” is the prediction of the haranguers. And so, England is to be ruined, because a force, that after all would have made an advanced guard for a Continental army, has been cooped up by snow, and compelled to evacuate a country where it could not find food! But if France, has some high-minded and some even rational men, she has millions always pitiful, always boastful, and always mean; always talking of their high feelings, and always bitter and malignant; always vaunting their own prowess, and yet writhing under the scourge that every nation in Europe has in turn laid on France, and will lay on her again.

PORT PHILLIP REVENUE. The revenue of the district for the half-year ending June 30, as published in Tuesday’s Government Gazette, presents a decrease on the same quarter in the year 1841 of £42,481. 9s. Id. This decrease, however, is on the land fund, not on the ordinary revenue. On the amount of proceeds of sales of land and town allotments alone there is a decrease of £52,961, 2s. 3d. The amount derived from squatting licences has also considerably decreased. The general revenue presents an increase of £10,765. 2s. Bd. To make up this sum, there is an increase on duties on imported spirits of no less a sum than £4,377. 10s. 3d. In publicans’ licences there is also an increase of £456. 10s. The amount derived from assessment on stock beyond the boundaries presents an increase of £1,209. 15s. 9. The fees and fines collected by the commissioners have also increased by the considerable sum of £199. 19s. 6d. The fees of public offices have increased by £1,209 15s. 9d. The amount of the ordinary revenue for the half year last past is £39,251. 9s. sd. The amount of land revenue £2,051. —making together £41,302. 9s. sd. The gross revenue of the same half year in 1841 was 83,783.175.6 d., more than double the amount for 1842.