with regard to the Amír's grievance against the Sikhs, he said, 'My friend, you are aware that it is not the practice of the British Government to interfere with the affairs of other independent states.' At the same time he hoped shortly to 'depute some gentlemen' to Kábul to discuss commercial matters with the Amír. It seems clear from this that Lord Auckland in 1836 had no prevision of the extent to which in 1839 he would interfere with 'my friend's' affairs. It was equally clear that the project of a commercial mission to a country which had no commerce worth mentioning, which was shut off from India by mountain-ranges guarded by warlike, plunder-loving tribes, was meant to cover some ulterior, though possibly harmless design[1].
It had, in fact, a political object which Lord Auckland did not for the present care to avow. For some years past the steady advance of Russia in Central Asia had caused among our countrymen, both in Europe and the East, a revival of the fears which Buonaparte's ambition had twice aroused in the first years of the nineteenth century. More than once Zemán Sháh, the Afghán grandson of the far-famed Ahmad Sháh, had led his horsemen through the Kháibar towards the plains of Hindustán. One invasion was rolled back by the Sikhs at Lahore, and another was cut short by the advance of a Persian army into Khorásán. Malcolm's successful diplomacy at Ispahan in 1800, and the dethronement of Zemán
- ↑ Afghan Papers, 1839.
