e to say, that it denounces in an indecorous
manner the errors of the previous governor. It does no such thing.
It speaks, indeed, of errors, but only conscious culpability would
have taken the allusion to itself. There were errors, and grievous
ones. The Whigs themselves must say that; and they have not been
slow to shift to the shoulders of military officers the results that
most people think they should bear themselves. The proclamation of
Lord Ellenborough seems to us to have been framed with a punctilious
desire to reconcile in the eyes of India his own policy with that
which had been avowed by his predecessor, and to ascribe the change
of plans to a change of circumstances, and not of principles. We
speak here of the avowed policy of his predecessor; for Lord Auckland,
at least, pretended that he had no aggressive or hostile views
against the Affghans, and no desire for a permanent occupation of
their country. The real designs of the Whig Government are a
different thing; and with these, as avowed by Lord Palmerston in
Parliament, the intentions of Lord Ellenborough were wholly
irreconcilable.

Let us listen here to one who knows the subject. The Duke of
Wellington tells us the errors that Lord Ellenborough alludes to as
occasioning our military disasters, and he shows us where those
errors lay:--

"There is not a word in this proclamation that is not strictly
true. But I do not blame the noble lord opposite, the late
Governor-General of India; yet I cannot help looking _at the enormous
errors_ which have been committed from the commencement of these
transactions in which these disasters originated, down to the last
retreat from Cabul--I say, looking at all this, I still must blame,
not the late Governor-General, but the gentlemen who acted under him.
In the first place, I attribute the error to the gentleman who fell
a victim to his own want of judgment. The army unfortunately was
partly English and partly Hindoo--not Affghans, but Hindoos. What
was the consequence? To maintain the whole system of the government,
including the collection of the revenue, devolved upon that army.
All the details of the government were carried on through the agency
of that English and Hindoo army, and eventually it became necessary
to support that army with some troops in the service of the Company.
Now, the gentleman who was responsible for this ought to have known
that there was one rule, the violation of which any one acquaint