edlars, it must have been a nervous affection of penitential panic
during some fit of the cholera, and as transient as the measles; his
regard for pedlars being notoriously of that kind which tigers bear to
shoulders of lamb; and Cabool has since rung with his pillagings of
caravans. But we believe the pedlar's _mot_ to have been thoroughly
misconceived. If we see a poor man bleeding to death in a village lane,
we naturally exclaim--"What! is Dr Brown, that used to practise here,
gone away?" Not meaning that the doctor could have stopped the
hemorrhage, but simply that the absence of all medical aid is shocking,
and using the doctor's name merely as a shorthand expression for that
aid. Now in the East, down from scriptural days, the functions of a
sovereign were two--to lead his people in battle, and to "sit in the
gate" for the distribution of justice. Our pedlar, therefore, when
invoking Dost Mahommed as the redresser of his wrongs, simply thought
of him as the public officer who bore the sword of justice. "He cried to
Pharaoh," or he "cried to Artaxerxes"--did not imply any reliance in
their virtue as individuals, but merely an appeal to them as
professionally the ministers of justice. "Are there no laws and no
prisons amongst you?" was the poor man's meaning; and he expressed this
symbolically under the name of him who was officially responsible for
both.

But, as one throws a bone to a dog, we do not care to dispute the point
further, if any man is resolute to settle this virtue upon the Dost as a
life-annuity. The case will then stand thus: We have all heard of
"Single-speech Hamilton;" and we must then say--"Single-virtue Dost;"
for no man mentions a second. "Justice for pedlars" will then be the
legend on his coin, as meaning that there is none for any body else. Yet
even then the voters for the Dost totally overlooked one thing. Shah
Soojah had some shadow of a pretence, which we shall presently examine,
to the throne of all Affghanistan; and a king of that compass was
indispensable to Lord Auckland's object. But Dost Mahommed never had
even the shadow of an attorney's fiction upon which he could stand as
pretender to any throne but that of Cabool, where, by accident, he had
just nine points of the law in his favour. How then could we have
supported him? "Because thou art virtuous," we must have said, are we to
support future usurpation? Because the Dost is just to pedlars, "shall
there be no more ale and cakes