other under General England; and the body which was the first finally to take the field was that under General England. At this distance, he did not blame the order of the 19th of April, repeated in the orders of 15th May and 1st June, all of which contemplated General Pollock's retreat by the shortest route; but was the Governor-General entitled to thanks? The degree of praise he might claim amounted to this, that arriving in India at a time when great disasters had befallen our troops, he took a sound and rational view of the actual situation of affairs, and used every means and all the diligence in his power to forward supplies to the troops. Beyond this he (Lord John Russell) found it impossible to go. He did not think that the order given in July to General Nott, to ad. vance if he thought fit, did give the Governor-General claims to the thanks of the House of Com. mons. Still, he must also say, that the motion to give thanks to the Governor-General having been made, and the motion being ac cording to precedent, he did not wish to take upon himself the responsibility of giving it a negative, He had heard, on what he considered good authority, a story that Lord Ellenborough had offer. ed an affront to Mr. Amos; but that was disproved by Mrs. Amos's letter.

Mr. George Bankes supported the motion.

Mr. Hutt who concurred in the praise accorded to the valour of the troops and to Lord Ellenborough's zeal, took exception to the excesses committed by the troops during the war. Ghuznee was a strong town, with a population of nearly

merly the seat of the Mahometan empire, and Mr. Elphinstone described it as exhibiting many signs of former magnificence. Ghuznee was taken and destroyed, the work of destruction going on for three days and three nights. It extended for three miles round the city. The temple which contained the tomb of the Sultan Mahmoud, which was looked upon with peculiar sanctity, and had for 800 years escaped the ravages of native warfare, was utterly destroyed; and it was boasted in a despatch that the razed temple and tomb of Mahmoud looked down upon the blackened ruins of Ghuznee. Istaliff, after a brilliant action, fell into the hands of General M'Caskill. The next day, the General, writing to head-quarters, said, “I directed the town to be set on fire in several places, after taking out various supplies which might be useful to our troops; and the work of demolition is still proceeding, under the direction of Major Saunders of the Engineers." This place was,according to the despatch, occupied by no less than 15,000 persons. The forts, heights, and suburbs, were successively won; and, as the despatch described it, those persons, including women and children, were driven from their homes up into the snowy mountains. At Cabul, the grand bazaar and the Feringhi mosque were demolished. The prin cipal sufferers in the destruction of Cabul were the Hindoo merchants, who relied confidently upon us for protection, and had nothing whatever to do with the murder of Sir William M'Nagh. ten. Not only was Cabul itself destroyed, but all the cultivated ground around it was ravaged.

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praised in Oriental literature, were laid waste, and village after village was destroyed in the surrounding district. lalabad was a considerable city, containing little less than a population of 10,000 persons; it was one of the most beautiful cities in Central Asia when it was entered by our troops; they left it a heap of ruins. Though not given in the book which had been laid upon the table, the history of the destruction of Jellalabad was but too well known. There were few cities which had so much to recommend them as Jellalabad when it was entered by our troops; but when they left it, it was one scene of blackness, of ashes, and of ruin. What was the result of our conduct? We had infuriated the people of Affghanistan, and must abandon all hope of succeeding in our commercial views and speculations in that quarter.

Sir Henry Hardinge was convinced that many of these reports were wholly untrue. Such had been the case before. Some months previously, when it became necessary for General Nott, with a view to the safety of the troops at Candabar, to turn out a considerable number of the inhabitants, the Indian press indulged in the most libellous attacks upon that gallant officer, and accused him of having committed the most extravagant excesses and cruelties upon the unfortunate inhabitants of that town. Now the reports which had since been received from General Nott's army proved distinctly that there was not a word of truth in that accusation. To the reports now current there had not been time for those implicated to reply. It must be observed, that

marching over a country wherein its policy was to destroy the fortifications, it was very difficult to distinguish between what might be fortifications and what private property, more particularly in a country where so many of the houses contained loopholes, and bore so much the appearance of fortresses. He had occasion to know, however, that the facts respecting Istaliff had been perverted. Istaliff did not contain so many inhabitants: there were not only the usual inhabitants of the town, but a great number of other persons collected around it. When it was thought necessary to order General M'Caskill to march to and attack Istaliff, it was well known that the chiefs of Ghilzie, one of whom was implicated in the murder of Sir Alexander Burnes, were there. There was also there a large military force, consisting of 14,000 or 15,000 men, and not as the hon. Member described, that number of peaceful inhabitants. great number of persons who had fed to Istaliff from Cabul and other places, confiding in the strength of the town, took refuge, in the midst of the attack, in its strongest points. He had there. fore no hesitation in saying, that it would not have been prudent or wise on the part of our troops, numbering as they did but 4,000, and opposed as they were to a force of 14,000, to have ceased firing upon getting into the town, Indeed, many of our troops, and among them Lieutenant Evans, had been killed in the town. The honourable Member spoke of the cruelty of turning out the women in the snow-at a time when there was no snow; but setting that aside, there were at the period of

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500 women, a large portion of whom had come from Cabul, and who were completely at the mercy of our troops; we had it not only from General M'Caskill's report, but from the libellers of the Indian press themselves, that the conduct of our troops on that occasion was most exemplary, and that not a single woman had been either hurt or insulted by them.

Now, when he recollected that among the Affghans there was no such thing as capitulation, and that they never took or gave quarter, he did not think General M'Caskill had acted improperly in allowing the troops to destroy the town. Strict orders had been given on the 15th of November not to interfere with the inhabitants of Cabul, nor to injure the city itself; and the fact that the people had returned to their usual occupations by the 21st, and that "abundance reigned in the camp," confirmed the supposition that these orders had been obeyed. General Pollock had, in fact, confined himself to the narrowest limits of retaliation-the destruction of the Mosque fitted up with plunder from our army, and of the bazaar where the remains of Sir William McNaughten were treated with indignity.

Sir J. Colebrook and Sir Robert Inglis having spoken in favour of the Motion,

Mr. Hume, imputing much of the mischief to Lord Ellenborough's journey northward,

away from the advice of his Council, desired further information; and moved, by way of amendment, on the first resolution, that the thanks of the House to Lord Ellenborough be deferred until certain documents should be produced.

that the documents already had been produced, for they were in the Report before the House. In the course of further debating,

Lord Ebrington said, he had no objection to award Lord Ellenborough thanks, as a good Commissary General.

The Motion was supported by Mr. Hogg, Colonel Wood, Captain Bernal, Sir Howard Douglas, Mr. Charles Wood, and Mr. Augustus Stafford O'Brien.

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Mr. Hume eventually withdrew his Amendment; the first resolution was carried and the remainder passed without opposition. The Speaker was ordered to transmit the thanks of the House to the Governor-General of India, to be communicated to the officers named.

Indian affairs again became the subject of discussion in the House of Commons, on the 2d March, upon a motion brought forward by Mr. Roebuck, for a select committee to inquire into the causes which had led to the late war in Affghanistan. His motion was for a committee of inquiry; before which he proposed to prove that the war was impolitic and unjust; and that the late ministers, when called on for their defence, had garbled the evidence of the facts. If he was mistaken in these accusations, those ministers, confident in their own integrity, would, of course, be the foremost supporters of a motion for a searching inquisition into their conduct; if they resisted that motion, he should have no alternative left but condemnation of them. He had a precedent in Mr. Burke's committee of 1783, on the Indian administration of Mr. Hastings. His first charge was,

politic, because it was a war of aggression; it being, in his opinion, essential, in order to render a war just, that it should be defensive. He was not now appealing to ancient Greeks and Romans, but to a nation of modern Christians, by whom this principle could not be disputed. He would admit that a war might be aggressive in appearance, and yet defensive in reality. But then the apprehension of danger must be a reasonable one, and the attack must be made on the party from whom that danger was to be apprehended. We must not knock down Thomas for fear of Richard. Now, he would say, that if the name of Britain had suffered, it was mainly through the mischievous activity of the late Secretary for Foreign Affairs, who had kindled wars in every region of the world, from western America to eastern China. He charged the noble Lord, not as some had charged him, with treasonably favouring the enemies of his country, but with knowing nothing of the way to conduct international negotiations, and with interfering in matters with which England had no concern. After drawing an outline of the geography of the British possessions in the East Indies, and of the Affghan boundaries, Mr. Roebuck gave a short history of the Royal family of Cabul, and of the affairs of Affghanistan; from which he proceeded to a similar narrative of Persian affairs, and adverted to a treaty of 1814, by which England was bound not to interfere in any dispute between Persia and Affghanistan, unless requested by both those nations to act as mediator. He censured the mission of Sir Alexander Burnes as amounting in truth to the employment of

a spy, and cited declarations of the British Government professing neutrality and non-interference. The dread of danger from Russia through Persia had filled the minds of the rulers of England; and whom did they attack? Not Russia-not Persia - but Dost Mahomed, a friend of their own. By way of precaution against a strong enemy, they attacked a weak friend. He called on an English House of Commons to rebuke this gross outrage on honour and honesty. Then the British Government had attempted to set up Schah Soojah-who, he must observe, was not the legitimate sovereign-against Dost Mahomed, who was beloved by his own subjects, and reputed to be one of the ablest princes in the East; and all upon this pretext of danger from Russia through Persia by the siege of Herat, and the probably consequent seizure of Affghanistan. But the siege of Herat was presently raised, and even that pretext was then cut away. So much for the honesty of this war-now for its expediency. There was no danger from Russia; and if there had been any, the way to meet it was not to put down Dost Mahomed. Whence had the English Cabinet derived its fear of the successful invasion of these countries by Russia? Even Alexander, with the finest army then in the world, had not achieved his objects. On the other hand, the Mahometan conquerors had not found a united government in India like that now wielded by Britain. Why then should we have feared the aggression of Russia upon our Indian territories? If we wanted to quarrel with Russia, we ought to have attacked her, not in Cabul,

but in the Baltic and the Black Sea: but there was really nothing to dread from her. She had not money to make head against us; in one month, we could sweep her from every sea. He charged Lord Palmerston with having been deluded by the idle gossip of letters too ridiculous to be the grounds of any serious proceeding. But even in the noble Lord's own view, were his means adapted to his end? No; his course should have been to consolidate the British possessions to remonstrate with Persia-to fix the friendship of Dost Mahomed-and to leave Affghanistan unmolested. But it was another ground of charge against the late Government, that they had garbled the evidence laid by them before Parliament. They had made Sir A. Burnes's correspondence appear an authority in their favour, when, in truth, it was an authority against them; and this they had contrived, by not only omitting some passages, but by altering the words of others. This he could prove before a committee, from a published work, containing the letters of Sir A. Burnes, in the shape in which they really were transmitted to the Foreign Office. A letter had been sent to that department by Lord Wellesley, who had omitted to keep a copy; and when Lord Wellesley asked for a copy of it from that department, the answer was, that it had been mislaid. But if a committee were granted, that letter, he suspected, would be forthcoming. He thought he had now made out such a prima facie case as entitled him to a committee; and he asked for it in the name and for the sake of his country, whose honour was stain

Mr. Hume seconded the motion. He had documents in his own power which would prove the garbling of the evidence, especially in the instance of Sir A. Burnes's letters.

Lord John Russell rose to defend the late Ministry. He referred to the repeated occasions on which the subject had been before the House, the last time in 1842, on a motion for papers, when only nine voted with the mover. He denied the applicability of the precedents cited by Mr. Roebuck; for they occurred when it took a year to communicate with India, and Parliament could only learn the facts by means of a secret committee. In the present case, the war was undertaken four years ago, and all its circumstances and causes were known to Parliament. Alluding to Mr. Roebuck's language, he said that terms had been applied to Lord Auckland and Lord Palmerston, which were not fitting; and he felt strongly the force of the great Condé's remark, "These libellers impute to us exactly that sort of motive, by which, if they were placed in the situations in which we stand, they would be themselves actuated." Lord John Russell denied that Sir A. Burnes's papers were garbled; Mr. Roebuck had brought no proof of the charge; and in his specimen, the passage omitted, was quite immaterial. Lord Fitzgerald had testified that there was no unfair garbling; nor did the question depend upon the opinion of a single officer, however meritorious.

Lord John Russell pro ceeded to touch upon the points of Mr. Roebuck's review. The views of Lord Auckland did not depend on the succession of the