the
good old honest way of throat-cutting, without any fraternal discord on
questions of _Habeas corpus_; and had he been a luckier man in his long
rough-and-tumbles for the Affghan sceptre, so as to have escaped the
exile you reproach him with, he would not therefore, by one jot, have
been more or less a guilty one.

The _purisms_ of political delinquency had little share, therefore, in
any remorse which Shah Soojah might ever feel; and considering the
scared consciences of oriental princes in such matters, quite as little,
perhaps, had the two other counts in his London impeachment. One imputed
savage cruelty to him; the other, with a _Johnny-rawness_ that we find
it difficult to comprehend, profligacy and dissoluteness of life.

As to the cruelty, it has often been alleged; and the worst case,
besides being the only attested case, of the Shah's propensities in that
direction, is the execution of the Ghazees near the fortress of Ghuznee.
We scorn to be the palliators of any thing which is bad in eastern
usages--too many things are _very_ bad--but we are not to apply the pure
standards of Christianity to Mahometan systems; and least of all are we
to load the individual with the errors of his nation. What wounds an
Englishman most in the affair of the Ghazees, is the possibility that it
may have been committed with the sanction of his own country, officially
represented by the British commander-in-chief. But then that
consideration leads an Englishman to suspend with a stoic [Greek:
epoche], and exceedingly to doubt whether the fact could have been as it
was originally reported. So said we, when first we heard it; and now,
when the zeal of malice has ceased to distort things, let us coolly
state the circumstances. A Mahometan Ghazee is a prededicated martyr. It
is important to note the definition. He is one who devotes himself to
death in what he deems a sufficient cause, but, as the old miser of
Alsatia adds--"for a consideration;" the consideration being, that he
wins Paradise. But Paradise he will _not_ win, unless he achieves or
attempts something really meritorious. Now, in the situation of things
before Ghuznee, where a new ruler was brought in under the wing of
Feringee infidels, what meritorious service was open to him? To have
shot the commander-in-chief would have merely promoted some other
infidel. The one sole revolutionary act appropriate to the exigency, was
to shoot the Shah Soojah. There, and in one mo