THE English empire is undoubtedly, at the present moment, the most powerful on the face of the globe. She draws her resources from three quarters of the world. Her strength, drawing to a focus in her upper classes, and as remarkable for its capacity of concentration as for its immense abstract greatness; her vast wealth, and the character of her people formed by a continuance of contest, struggles, and exertion, peaceful and armed, prolonged through centuries, admirably qualified to develope every physical, intellectual, and moral energy-altogether render her at this moment the most desirable ally, and the most formidable foe, that the array of nations can produce.

The history of England constantly forces on the mind a parallel with that of Rome. The same constant appeal to arms, the same thirst for dominion, the same haughtiness and arrogance that unbridled power invariably generates. But with these things, England has others that Rome never had. If she is deficient in the softness and pliability that are engendered under a southern sun, the Christian religion has, on the other hand, gradually tempered the original harshness of the insular character, and the industry of her people gives her power an element of permanency that the Italian Republic never possessed. In addition to this, her geographical position has furnished her with a perpetual ægis that has kept at bay those foes which would otherwise have long since overrun her fields. The Channel only has saved England from the fate of Flanders and Holland:

-" that pale, that white-faced shore

Whose foot spurns back the ocean's roaring tides, And coops from other lands her islanders. -that England, hedged in with the

main ;

That water-walled bulwark, still secure And confident from foreign purposes."

In no case has the power of England been better exemplified than in the Affghan war. France, after twelve years of contest, has hardly made an impression upon the African coast. Eight years of conflict have scarcely enabled our government to expel a few hundred Indians from the peninsula of Florida; while in a single season, this island race wages two wars, nine thousand miles from her bordershumbles the power of China, and avenges the blood of her sons under the walls of Cabul.

But, after all, the narrative of the Affghan invasion is one of total defeat. The plans of her statesmen are completely baffled, an army of seventeen thousand souls destroyed, and she is compelled utterly to abandon the country itself.

It is well that it is so, for no warfare was ever more unwarranted, few more criminal in their origin or execution.

In regard to the origin of this war, no obscurity exists. From the earliest days of the Anglo-Indian history, the course of the English has been one of constant aggression, without any shadow of excuse or apology. It has been conquest, in its most relentless and grasping form, while the vanquished country has been farmed out for the younger sons of the victors, who could find no support at home. India has been nothing but a paddock for the pet stock of England-a pasturage for her fat cattle.

Nor do we think that the greatest military glories of England are to be drawn from Indian story. As Macauley well says, "The contest between the English and the Bengalese was one between sheep and wolves, men and demons." And so it was with almost There have the entire population. been exceptions. Hyder Ali and his son were more serious opponents. The Mahrattas gave occasionally some

trouble. But the contest was in no one respect equal; and from Clive's battle of Plassy to the victory of Assaye, there is nothing to furnish materials worthy of the nuse of conquest. It has been a conflict between science and discipline, arrayed against ignorance, sensuality, and sloth. If Wellington had no other laurels than those which he culled in the jungles of Central India, his name could not long live in

story.

But if their glories are not of the brightest, their crimes are of the darkest hue. The apologist of Hastings has only succeeded in giving prominence and notoriety to a series of the most lawless and atrocious outrages.

If India had been on the other side of Europe, if Christendom had had any knowledge of these transactions at the time, they could not have taken place. The moral sense of mankind, blunted and callous as it is, would not have permitted such horrors to be perpetrated year after year.

The early history of English India is a union of the horrors of Russian with those of Austrian despotism-the cruelties of the one, and the lethargic incubus of the other. As light poured upon the Asiatic territories of Great Britain, these things have become impossible, and there is no doubt that the present government is not merely free from open atrocity, but that in many of its departments it is controlled by a humane and benevolent spirit. The memoirs of Munro are alone sufficient to prove this; and, in truth, the whole colonial policy of England is now administered upon principles completely the reverse of those which were openly avowed during the whole of the last century. These states, while provinces, were treated with the utmost injustice and oppression. Canada is now a sort of Benjamin. Ireland was then plundered and trampled on ad libitum: she is now courted and caressed. India has unquestionably felt the same change.

But to return to the Affghan invasion. It is a story like that of the early days of the Cootes, the Clives, and the Hastings, and would perhaps have

been another Rohilla war, if the invaders had not found very different circumstances to deal with.

The avowed and perpetual dread, the cauchemar, the nightmare of the Anglo-Indian, is a Russian invasion. Separated only by a territory of thousands of miles, and of which the great part consists of uncultivated and uncultivable deserts, the few hundred English in India exist in daily dread of seeing the bayonets of the Muscovite gleam across the Indus.

The country to the north-west of India is that occupied by the Affghans; and to possess this, and hold the passes of that country, frightfully broken into defiles, would, it has long been thought, make sure their dominion in the Peninsula.

A pretext was easily made. It was the same at which the English rulers of India have always grasped. They availed themselves of a contest among the Affghan chiefs for the supremacy, although the struggle was in fact ended when the British operations commenced. The respective claims of Dost Mahommed and Shah Soojah are to us indifferent. It is enough that England had nothing to do with the matter; that she had no more right to interfere with the Affghans than with the succession to the French throne.

But this is not all. She sided with the least virtuous, the least popular, the least respectable of the competitors. Dost Mahommed, a man of vigor and influence, whatever his crimes may be, was imprisoned at Calcutta, while Shah Soojah, a wretch debased by every Eastern vice, was marched into Affghanistan at the head of an army which the English had resolved should place him on the throne.*

But they had reckoned without their host. The people which they had now to encounter were as different from the Hindoos as the climate which they inhabited. When the English reached the snows and rock-bound land of Cabul, they met a race as iron as their soil. They were deeply imbued, as are all mountaineers, with love of country, and detestation of foreign interference.

All our accounts of this invasion and retreat are as yet from English witnesses. But there is in them enough, to justify a very different conclusion in regard to the character of the Affghans, from that arrived at in the works the titles of which we have placed at the head of this article. There is abundant evidence to prove, that if the Affghans had the vices of wild and uncivilized mountaineers, they had generous and heroic qualities. Greater devotion to country, and greater courage, are not often met with. We find in Sergeant Taylor's book the following account of one among the multitudinous incidents, that proves the hatred of Shah Soojah. It took place on the first advance of the English:

The

"Of the prisoners taken at Ghuznee, the majority were released on condition of serving in Shah Soojah's army; but some thirty refused these conditions. Shah, on learning the circumstances, ordered them to be brought before him, and expostulated with them on the folly of their conduct. A chief, of haughty bearing, stepped from among the prisoners, and after overwhelming his Majesty with reproaches, told him that nothing should induce him to enter the service of a man who had brought the horrors of foreign invasion on his country. Then suddenly snatching a dagger from one of the attendants, he rushed with uplifted arms towards the Shah, and would have pierced him to the heart, had not one of his Majesty's servants interposed his person, and received the blow intended for his master. The faithful domestic fell dead at the feet of the Shah, and the officers and attendants instantly rushed towards the assassin with drawn swords; but he had already anticipated their intention, by plunging the poignard in his breast. The Shah, alarmed and exasperated, ordered the whole of the prisoners to be immediately executed, and in a few minutes their heads were rolling in the dust."

We hear a great deal, in the works before us, of Affghan "treachery" and "assassination." Every act of hostility against the English is an act of "treachery." Every Englishman dies by "assassination." We should be glad to know in what terms the act just recorded is to be designated. Thirty prisoners of war murdered in cold blood, because one of their number commits a crime, the others being

wholly unconnected with the act, which is evidently one of individual desperation. We have always supposed that to put prisoners of war to death was held "treachery," and that to murder in cold blood might be fairly called "assassination."

It will not do to say that these are acts of Shah Soojah. He was the creature and protégé of England. The prisoners were the prisoners of England. The puppet king could do nothing without her support or connivance, and in giving him the unrestrained power of life and death over his prisoners, England, in every point of view, rendered herself responsible for his acts. It can be held nothing else than English "treachery," and English " assassination." What does Macauley, the apologist of Hastings, say in regard to the Rohilla war, that greatest in the long list of the atrocities of the modern Verres?

"If we understand the meaning of words, it is infamous to commit a wicked action for hire, and it is wicked to engage in war without provocation. In this particular war, scarcely one aggravating circumstance was wanting. The object of the Rohilla war was this-to deprive a large population, who had never done us the least harm, of a good government, and to place them, against their will, under an execrably bad one. Nay, even this is not all; England now descended far below the level even of those petty German princes who, about the same time, sold us troops to fight the Americans. The hussar-mongers of Hesse and Anspach had at least the assurance that the expeditions on which their soldiers were to be employed would be conducted in conformity with the humane rules of civilized warfare. Was the Rohilla war likely to be so conducted? Did the Governor stipulate that it should be so conducted? He well knew what Indian warfare was. He well knew that the power which he covenanted to put into Sujah Dowlah's hands would in all probability be atrociously abused; and he required no guarantee, no promise that it should not be so

abused.

"He had troubled himself about nothing

but his forty lacs; and though he might disapprove of Sujah Dowlah's wanton barbarity, he did not think himself entitled to interfere, except by offering advice. This delicacy excites the admiration of the reverend biographer. Mr. Hastings,' he says, 'could not himself dictate to the