DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.34827#0389
1842-59.
373
up whole days to settle whether a siege took place in June or
July, which, if employed on the nature of a village community
of the present day, might have thrown some light on the state
of society during many ages. What you say of the Prussian
Constitution is most interesting, and events have already shown
the justice of your view. I was astonished at the general dis-
position to treat it as a trilling, or merely apparent concession.
To me it seems likely to operate a more general and more
'beneficent (though more gradual) change than the French
Revolution. It lets in a popular element, and " the stream
which could have been stopped by a spadeful of earth cannot
now be forded on an elephant." I only wish it may take time
to work itself a channel, and not rush out to deluge the country.
' Yours most sincerely,
' M. E.'
It seems strange that there is no allusion to Affghan politics
in the journal of 1838-9 ; and there is only occasional and very
slight attention to the crisis of 1841-2 in the journal of that
date. How strongly he felt as to the impolicy of the action
of the Government in the original invasion of the country has
been already mentioned. His opinions were freely given to his
friends on both occasions.
The Countess Usedom informed me that the first to convey
to him the news of the intended invasion was an old Bombay
friend, Colonel Barnwell. That gentleman called on him, and
had hardly made the announcement, when Mr. Elphinstone
started from his chair with the exclamation ' Impossible! '
Colonel Barnwell came to their house to repeat this. His
views were more fully, but not more emphatically, expressed in
a letter addressed to an anonymous correspondent, which ap-
peared in Sir J. Kaye's ' History of the Affghan War':—
' You will guess what I think of affairs in Caubul. You
remember when I used to dispute with you against having
even an agent in Caubul, and now we have assumed the protec-
tion of the State as much as if it were one of the subsidiary
allies in India. If you send 27,000 men up the Durra-i-Bolan
373
up whole days to settle whether a siege took place in June or
July, which, if employed on the nature of a village community
of the present day, might have thrown some light on the state
of society during many ages. What you say of the Prussian
Constitution is most interesting, and events have already shown
the justice of your view. I was astonished at the general dis-
position to treat it as a trilling, or merely apparent concession.
To me it seems likely to operate a more general and more
'beneficent (though more gradual) change than the French
Revolution. It lets in a popular element, and " the stream
which could have been stopped by a spadeful of earth cannot
now be forded on an elephant." I only wish it may take time
to work itself a channel, and not rush out to deluge the country.
' Yours most sincerely,
' M. E.'
It seems strange that there is no allusion to Affghan politics
in the journal of 1838-9 ; and there is only occasional and very
slight attention to the crisis of 1841-2 in the journal of that
date. How strongly he felt as to the impolicy of the action
of the Government in the original invasion of the country has
been already mentioned. His opinions were freely given to his
friends on both occasions.
The Countess Usedom informed me that the first to convey
to him the news of the intended invasion was an old Bombay
friend, Colonel Barnwell. That gentleman called on him, and
had hardly made the announcement, when Mr. Elphinstone
started from his chair with the exclamation ' Impossible! '
Colonel Barnwell came to their house to repeat this. His
views were more fully, but not more emphatically, expressed in
a letter addressed to an anonymous correspondent, which ap-
peared in Sir J. Kaye's ' History of the Affghan War':—
' You will guess what I think of affairs in Caubul. You
remember when I used to dispute with you against having
even an agent in Caubul, and now we have assumed the protec-
tion of the State as much as if it were one of the subsidiary
allies in India. If you send 27,000 men up the Durra-i-Bolan