Burnes, fallen into discredit at Cabul, quitted that
place in August 1838. He had not been discreet, but it was not his
indiscretion that brought about the failure of his mission. A nefarious
transaction, which Kaye denounces with the passion of a just indignation,
connects itself with Burnes' negotiations with the Dost; his official
correspondence was unscrupulously mutilated and garbled in the published
Blue Book with deliberate purpose to deceive the British public.
Burnes had failed because, since he had quitted India for Cabul, Lord
Auckland's policy had gradually altered. Lord Auckland had landed in
India in the character of a man of peace. That, so late as April 1837, he
had no design of obstructing the existing situation in Afghanistan is
proved by his written statement of that date, that 'the British
Government had resolved decidedly to discourage the prosecution by the
ex-king Shah Soojah-ool-Moolk, so long as he may remain under our
protection, of further schemes of hostility against the chiefs now in
power in Cabul and Candahar.' Yet, in the following June, he concluded a
treaty which sent Shah Soojah to Cabul, escorted by British bayonets. Of
this inconsistency no explanation presents itself. It was a far cry from
our frontier on the Sutlej to Herat in the confines of Central Asia--a
distance of more than 1200 miles, over some of the most arduous marching
ground in the known world.
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