o the Duke of Wellington; and you who now cracy in the land. (Cheers.) But, gentlemen, strive to stifle the voice of national gratitude, it is not by such testimonies alone that the owe to him the bread of yourselves and your public gratitude is to be expressed; it is the children. (Enthusiastic cheering.) And I tell multitude who must show "the electric shock you, whatever you may now think, so your of a nation's gratitude." (Cheers.) And grate own children, and your children's children ful to the Duke of Wellington as will be the will declare. (Immense applause.) Gentle-magnificent donations of the leaders of the men, I have now done with any topics on land, he will be still more gratified by the which division of opinion can arise. I am guineas of the citizens, and the half crowns of now to speak on a subject, on which, I trust, we the artisans. Gentlemen, I am sure that the are all agreed, for it relates to the embellish-gratifying result will be witnessed in this great ment of Glasgow. It is proposed to refer at city, and that the monument which will be once to a committee full power to carry into reared amongst us, will remain through many effect the resolutions of this meeting, (cheers,) ages a durable record of the magnificence and and I trust that before a year has elapsed, we gratitude of the west of Scotland. (Loud apshall see a noble monument, testifying our plause.) And there is a peculiar propriety in gratitude, erected in the heart of this great erecting in our city a statue to the Duke of city. We have seen what has been lost in Wellington. Glasgow already has a statue other places, by not at once coming to a deter-to her brave townsman, Sir John Moore, the mination, in the outset, on the design. We hero who first boldly fronted the terrors of the have seen the subscription for Sir Walter Gallic legions. She has a statue to Watts, Scott's monument at Edinburgh still unproductive, though seven years have elapsed since the national gratitude had decreed a monument. Gentlemen, while Edinburgh deliberates, let Glasgow act (cheers); and let ours be the first monument erected to the Duke of Wellington in Scotland. (Loud cheers.) Gentlemen, you will hear the list of the subscriptions already obtained read out, and a noble monu-] ment it already is, for the west of Scotland, embracing as it does splendid donations from the highest rank and greatest in fortune, from the first peer of the realm, to those princely merchants who are raising up a fresh aristo that matchless sage, whose genius has added a new power to the forces of nature, and who created the wealth which sustained the contest with Napoleon's power. And now you will have a statue to Wellington, who brought the conquest to a triumphant conclusion; and has bequeathed to his country peace to create, and liberty to enjoy, the splendour which we behold around us. (Loud cheers.) I have the honour to move "that a committee be now appointed for the purpose of procuring subscriptions, with full power to name sub-committees, and take all other measures necessary for carrying into effect these resolutions." (Loud cheers.) THE AFFGHANISTAUN EXPEDITION.* with the power of Holkar. His subjugation brought us in contact with the independent and brave mountaineers of Nepaul; and even their conquest, and the establishment of the British frontier on the summit of the Hima our Eastern possessions for which its rulers have so long and strenuously contended; and beyond the stream of the Indus, beyond the mountains of Cashmere, it has been deemed necessary to establish the terror of the British arms, and the influence of the British name. "In the light of precaution," says Gibbon, "all conquest must be ineffectual unless it could be universal; for, if successful, it only involves the belligerent power in additional difficulties and a wider sphere of hostility." All ages have demonstrated the truth of this pro- | layan snows, have not given that security to found observation. The Romans conquered the neighbouring states of Italy and Gaul, only to be brought into collision with the fiercer and more formidable nations of Germany and Parthia. Alexander overran Media and Persia, only to see his armies rolled back before the arms of the Scythians, or the innumerable legions of India, and the empire of Napoleon, victorious over the states of Germany and Italy, recoiled at length before the aroused indignation of the Northern powers. The British em-barous northern tribes, and erected our outpire in India, the most extraordinary work of posts almost within sight of the Russian viconquest which modern times have exhibited, dettes, is no impeachment whatever of the wisforms no exception to the truth of this general dom and expediency of the measure, if it has principle. The storming of Seringapatam, and been conducted with due regard to prudence the overthrow of the house of Tippoo, only ex- and the rules of art in its execution. It is the posed us to the incursions of the Mahratta destiny of all conquering powers to be exposed horse. The subjugation of the Mahrattas in- to this necessity of advancing in their course volved us in a desperate and doubtful conflict | Napoleon constantly said, and he said with jus. * Blackwood's Magazine, February, 1840. That such an incursion into Central Asia has vastly extended the sphere both of our diplomatic and hostile relations; that it has brought us in contact with the fierce and bar tice, that he was not to blame for the conquests he undertook; that he was forced on by invin duct. Remote or contingent danger produces little impression upon them; present peril is only looked at. They never negotiate till the dagger is at their throat; but when it is there, they speedily acquiesce in whatever is exacted of them. Regarding the success of their opponents as the indication of the will of destiny, they bow, not only with submission, but with cheerfulness to it. All our diplomatic advances in the east, accordingly, have followed in the train of military success; all our failures have been consequent on the neglect to assert with due spirit the rights and dignity of the British empire. The celebrated Roman maxim, parcere subjectis et debellare superbos, is not there a principle of policy; it is a rule of necessity It is the condition of existence to every power ful state. cible necessity; that he was the head merely of a military republic, to whom exertion was existence; and that the first pause in his advance was the commencement of his fall. No one can have studied the eventful history of his times, without being satisfied of the justice of these observations. The British empire in the east is not, indeed, like his in Europe, one based on injustice and supported by pillage. Protection and improvement, not spoliation and misery, have followed in the rear of the English flag; and the sable multitudes of Hindostan now permanently enjoy that protection and security which heretofore they had only tasted under the transient reigns of Baber and Aurungzebe. But still, notwithstanding all its experienced benefits, the British sway in Hindostan is essentially that of opinion; it is the working and middle classes who are benefitted by their sway. The interest and passions of too many of the rajahs and inferior nobility are injured by its continuance, to render it a matter of doubt that a large and formidable body of malcontents are to be found within the bosom of their territories, who would take advantage of the first external disaster to raise again the long-forgotten standard | of independence; and that, equally with the empire of Napoleon in Europe, our first movement of serious retreat would be the commencement of our fall. Nor would soldiers be wanting to aid the dispossessed nobles in the recovery of their pernicious authority. Whoever raises the standard of even probable war-lowers of Ali. In later times, and since the fare is sure of followers in India; the war castes throughout Hindostan, the Rajpoots of the northern provinces, are panting for the signal of hostilities, and the moment the standard of native independence is raised, hundreds of thousands of the Mahratta horse would cluster around it, ardent to carry the spear and the torch into peaceful villages, and renew the glorious days of pillage and conflagration. The court of Persia is, in an especial manner, subject to the influence of these external considerations. Weakened by long-continued and apparently interminable domestic feuds; scarce capable of mustering round the standards of Cyrus and Darius twenty thousand soldiers; destitute alike of wealth, military organization, or central powers, the kings of Tehran are yet obliged to maintain a doubtful existence in the midst of neighbouring and powerful states. The Ottoman empire has long from the west assailed them, and transmitted, since the era when the religion of Mohammed was in its cradle, the indelible hatred of the successors of Othman against the fol Cross has become triumphant over the Crescent, the Russian empire has pressed upon them with ceaseless ambition from the north. More permanently formidable than the standards of either Timour or Genghis Khan, her disciplined battalions have crossed the Caucasus, spread over the descending hills of Georgia, and brought the armies of Christ to the foot of Mount Ararat and the shores of the Araxes. Even the south has not been freed from omi But it is not only within our natural frontier of the Indus and the Himalaya that the ne-nous signs and heart-stirring events; the fame cessity of continually advancing, if we would of the British arms, the justice of the British exist in safety, is felt in the British empire in rule, have spread far into the regions of Centhe east. The same necessity is imposed upon tral Asia; the storming of Seringapatam, the it by its external relations with foreign powers. fall of Scindiah, the conquest of Holkar, have It is too powerful to be disregarded in the resounded among the mountains of Affghanisbalance of Asiatic politics; its fame has ex- taun, and awakened in the breasts of the Pertended far into the regions of China and Tar- sians the pleasing hope, that from those distary; its name must be respected or despised tant regions the arms of the avenger are deson the banks of the Oxus and the shores of the tined to come; and that, amidst the contenAraxes. The vast powers which lie between tions of England and Russia, Persia may again the British and Russian frontiers cannot re-emerge to her ancient supremacy among the main neutral; they must be influenced by the nations of the earth. one or the other power. "As little,” said Alex- The existence of Persia is so obviously ander the Great, "as the heavens can admit threatened by the aggressions of Russia, the of two suns, can the earth admit of two rulers peril in that quarter is so instant and apparent, of the East." that the Persian government have never failed to take advantage of every successive impulse communicated to British influence, by their victories in Hindostan, to cement their alliance and draw closer their relation with this country. The storming of Seringapatam was im mediately followed by a defensive treaty between Persia and Great Britain, in 1800, by which it was stipulated, that the English merchant should be placed on the footing of the most favoured nation, and that no hostile Strongly as all nations, in all ages, have been impressed with military success as the mainspring of diplomatic advances, there is no part of the world in which it is so essential to political influence as in the east. Less informed than those of Europe in regard to the real strength of their opponents, and far less prospective in their principles of policy, the nations of Asia are almost entirely governed by present success in their diplomatic con and lauded to the skies by the whole Liberal leaders of every denomination. . The consequences of this total dereliction of national character and interests, in order to gratify the short-sighted passions of an illiberal democracy, rapidly developed themselves. Russia, encouraged by the success with which she had broken the barrier of Hindostan in Central Asia, continued her aggressions on the Ottoman power in Europe. The Turkish fleet was destroyed by the assistance of a British force at Navarino; the Russian arms were carried across the Balkan by British suffer ance to Adrianople; and the Ottoman empire, trembling for its existence, was glad to subscribe a treaty which virtually surrendered the Danube and its whole northern defences to the Russian power. Not content with this, the rulers of England, during the halcyon days of the Reform mania, descended to still lower degradation and unparalleled acts of infatuation. When the Pasha of Egypt revolted against the Ottoman power, which seemed thus alike deserted by its allies and crushed by its enėmies, and the disastrous battle of Koniah threatened to bring the Egyptian legions to the shores of Scutari, we turned a deaf ear to the earnest prayer of the distressed sultan for aid. Engrossed in striving to conquer Antwerp in northern, and Lisbon in southern Europe, for the advantage of revolutionary France, we had not a guinea nor a gun to spare to preserve the interests, or uphold the honour of England in the Dardanelles, and we threw Turkey, as the price of existence, into the arms of Russia. The rest is well known. The Muscovite battalions gave the requisite aid; the domes of Constantinople reflected the lights of their bivouacs on the mountain of the giant; the arms of Ibrahim recoiled before this new and unexpected antagonist, and the treaty of Unkiar Skelessi delivered Turkey, bound hand and foot, into the hands of Russia, rendered the Euxine a Muscovite lake, and for ever shut out the British flag from the navigation of its waters, or the defence of the Turkmetropolis. European force should be permitted to pass The natural results of this timorous and vacillating policy, coupled with the well-known and fearful reduction of our naval and military force in India, were not slow in developing themselves. It soon appeared that the British name had ceased to be regarded with any respect in the east; and that all the influence derived from our victories and diplomacy in Central Asia had been lost. It is needless to go into details, the results of which are well known to the public, though the diplomatic secrets connected with them have not yet been revealed. Suffice it to say, that Persia, which for a quarter of a century had been the firm ally, and in fact the advanced post of the British power in India, deserted by us, and subdued by Russia, was constrained to throw herself into the arms of the latter. The Persian army was speedily organized on a better and more effective footing, under direction of Russian officers; and several thousand Russian troops, disguised under the name of deserters, were incorporated with, and gave consistency i wise to consider the Indus and the Himalaya as our frontier, and to disregard entirely the distant hostility or complicated diplomacy of the northern Asiatic states. But as long as India, like Italy, possesses the fatal gift of beauty; as long as its harvests are coveted by northern sterility, and its riches by barbarian poverty; so long must the ruler of the land preserve with jealous care the entrance into its bosom, and sit with frowning majesty at the entrance of the pass by which "the blueeyed myriads of the Baltic coast" may find? way into its fabled plains. to, the Persian army. The British officers, | long mountain passes and interminable barren who had hitherto had the direction of that hills. If, indeed, the politics of India could be . force, were obliged to retire; insult, the inva- confined only to its native powers, it might be riable precursor in the east of injury, was heaped upon the British subjects; redress was demanded in vain by the British ambassador; and Sir John M'Neill himself was at length obliged to leave the court of Tehran, from the numerous crosses and vexations to which he was exposed. Having thus got quit of the shadow even of British influence throughout the whole of Persia, the Russians were not long following out the now smoothed highway towards Hindostan: the siege of Herat, the head of the defile which leads to the Indus, was undertaken by the Persian troops, under Russian guidance; and Russian emissaries There was a time when British influence and diplomacy, ever preceding their arms, had might with ease, and at little cost, have been already crossed the Himalaya snows, and were established in the Affghanistaun passes. Dost stirring up the seeds of subdued but unex-Mohammed was a usurper, and his legal claims tinguished hostility in the Birman empire, to the throne could not bear a comparison with among the Nepaulese mountaineers, and the those of Shah Shoojah. But he was a usurper discontented rajahs of Hindostan. who had conciliated and won the affections of the people, and his vigour and success had given a degree of prosperity to Affghanistaun which it had not for centuries experienced. Kamram, the sultan of Herat, was connected with him by blood and allied by inclination, and both were animated by hereditary and inveterate hatred of the Persian power. They would willingly, therefore, have united themselves with Great Britain to secure a barrier against northern invasion; and such an alliance would have been founded on the only durable bond of connection among nationsmutual advantage, and the sense of a formidable impending common danger. The states of Candahar and Cabool were in the front of the danger; the Russian and Persian arms could never have approached the Indus until they were subdued; and consequently their adhesion to our cause, if we would only give them effectual support, might be relied upon as certain. It is well known that Dost Mohammed might have been firmly attached to the British alliance within these few years by the expenditure of a hundred or even fifty thousand pounds, and the aid of a few British officers to organize his forces. And when it is recollected that the Sultan of Herat, alone and unaided by us, held out against the whole power of Persia, directed by Russian officers, for one year and nine months, it is evident both with what a strong spirit of resistance to northern aggression the Affghanistaun states are ani mated, and what elements of resistance they possess among themselves, even when unaided, against northern ambition. There is but one road by which any hostile army ever has, or ever can, approach India from the northward. Alexander the Great, Timour, Gengis Khan, Nadir-Shah, have all penetrated | Hindostan by the same route. That road has, for three thousand years, been the beaten and wellknown track by which the mercantile communication has been kept up between the plains of the Ganges and the steppes of Upper Asia. Herat stands at the head of this defile. Its population, which amounts to one hundred thousand souls, and wealth which renders it by far the most important city in the heart of Asia, have been entirely formed by the caravan trade,which, from time immemorial, has passed through its walls, going and returning from Persia to Hindostan. When Napoleon, in conjunction | with the Emperor Paul, projected the invasion of our Indian possessions by a joint army of French infantry and Russian Cossacks, the route marked out was Astrákan, Astrabad, Herat, Candahar, the Bolan pass, and the Indus, to Delhi. There never can be any other road overland to India, but that or the one from Cabool, through the Kybor pass to the Indus, for, to the eastward of it, inaccessible snowy ranges of mountains preclude the possibility of an army getting through; while to the west, parched and impassable deserts afford obstacles still more formidable, which the returning soldiers of Alexander overcame only with the loss of half their numbers. It is quite clear, therefore, that Herat is the vital point of communication between Russia and Hindostan; and that whoever is in possession of it, either actually or by the intervention of a subsidiary or allied force, need never disquiet himself about apprehensions that an enemy will pene trate through the long and difficult defiles which lead in its rear to Hindostan. Since our empire in India had waxed so powerful as to attract the envy of the Asiatic tramontane nations, it became, therefore, a matter of necessity to maintain our influence among the nations who held the keys of this pass. Affghanistaun was to India what Piedmont has long been to Italy; even a second Hannibal or Napoleon might be stopped in its The immense advantage of gaining the support of the tribes inhabiting the valley of Affghan, thus holding in their hands the keys of Hindostan, was forgone by the British power in India, partly from the dilapidated state to which the army had been reduced by the miserable retrenchment forced upon the government by the democratic cry for economy at home, and partly from the dread of involving ourselves in hostility with Runjeet Sing, the formidable chief of Lahore, whose hostility to the Affghanistauns was hereditary and inveterate. There can be little doubt that the conclusion of a treaty, offensive and defensive, | straits to which a great nation must speedily with the powers of Cabool, would have ex- be reduced when its government, in an evil cited great discontent, if not provoked open hour, yields to the insidious cry for democra hostility, at the court of Lahore. In relinquish- tic retrenchment. ing their hold of the Affghanistaun states, from the dread of compromising their relations with the wily potentate of the Indus, the British government in India were only acting upon that system of temporizing, conceding, and shunning present danger, which has characterized all their public acts ever since the influence of the urban masses became predominant in the British councils. But it is now apparent, that in breaking with the Affghans to conciliate the rajah, the British incurred the greater ultimate, to avoid the present lesser danger. Runjeet Sing, indeed, was a formidable power, with seventy thousand men, and one hundred and fifty pieces of cannon under his command. But his situation, between the British territory on the one side, and the Affghans on the other, rendered him incapable of making any effectual resistance. His military force was by no means equal to what had been wielded by Tippoo or the Mahrattas, and his rear was exposed to the incursions of his hereditary and inveterate enemies in the Affghanistaun mountains. Still, more than all, his territories were pierced by the great and navigable river of the Indus-the best possible base for British operations, capable of conveying both the muniments of war and the provisions for an army into the heart of his dominions. In these circumstances, it is evident that the submission of Runjeet Sing must soon have become a matter of necessity; or, at all events, even if we had been compelled to commence hostilities with him, it would have been a far less formidable contest than that into which we have been driven, by abandoning the Affghans in the late expedition to Cabool. The one would have been what the subjugation and conquest of Prussia was to Napoleon, the other was an expedition fraught with all the cost and perils of the advance to Moscow. Notwithstanding these perils and this cost, however, we have no doubt that, at the time it was undertaken, the expedition to Affghanistaan had become a matter of necessity. We had been reduced to such a pass by the economy, concession, and pusillanimity of former governments, that we had no alternative but either to see the whole of Central Asia and Northern Hindostan arrayed in one formidable league, under Russian guidance, against us, or to make a desperate and hazardous attempt to regain our lost character. We have preferred the latter alternative; and the expedition of Lord Auckland, boldly conceived and vigorously executed, has hitherto, at least, been crowned with the most signal success. That it was also attended with great and imminent hazard is equally certain; but the existence of that peril, imposed upon us by the short-sighted parsimonious spirit of the mercantile democratic communities which for fifteen years past have swayed the British empire, is no impeachment whatever, either of the wisdom or necessity of the adventurous step which was at last resolved on. It only shows the Already the beneficial effects of this bold policy have become apparent. The crossing of the Indus by a powerful British army; the surmounting of the hills of Cashmere; the passage of the Bolan defile; the storming of Ghuznee; the fall of Candahar and Cabool, and the restoration of Shah Shoojah to the throne of his ancestors; have resounded through the whole of Asia, and restored, after its eclipse of fifteen years, the honour of the British name. The doubtful fidelity of the Rajah of Lahore has been overawed into submission; the undisguised hostility of the court of Persia has terminated, and friendly relations are on the eve of being re-established; and the indecision of the Sultan of Herat and his brave followers has been decided by the terror of the British arms, and the arrival of a train of artillery within its ruined bastions. As Britons, we rejoice from the bottom of our hearts at these glorious successes; and we care not who were the ministry at the head of affairs when they were achieved. They were undertaken in a truly British spirit-executed by whom they may, they emanated from conservative principles. As much as the ruinous reductions and parsimonious spirit of Lord William Bentinck's administration bespoke the poisonous influence of democratic` retrenchment in the great council of the empire, so much does the expedition to Affghanistaun bespeak the felicitous revival of the true English spirit in the same assembly. At both periods it is easy to see, that, though not nominally possessed of the reins of power, her majesty's opposition really ruled the state. In the Affghanistaun expedition there was very little of the economy which cut in twain the Indian army, but very much of the spirit which animated the British troops at Assaye and Laswarree;-there was very little of the truckling which brought the Russians to Constantinople. but a great deal of the energy which carried the English to Paris. In a military point of view, the expedition to Affghanistaun is one of the most memorable events of modern times. For the first time since the days of Alexander the Great, a civilized army has penetrated the mighty barrier of deserts and mountains which separates Persia from Hindostan; and the prodigy has been exhibited to an astonished world, of a remote island in the European seas pushing forward its mighty arms into the heart of Asia, and carrying its victorious standards into the strongholds of Mohammedan faith and the cradle of the Mogul empire. Neither the intricate streams of the Punjab, nor the rapid flow of the Indus, nor the waterless mountains of Affghanistaun, nor the far-famed bastions of Ghuznee, have been able to arrest our course. For the first time in the history of the world, the tide of conquest has flowed up from Hindostan into Central Asia; the European race has asserted its wonted superiority over the Asiatic; reversing the march of Timour and Alexander the sable battalions of the Ganges have ap |
