national character has been developed to the poor Ameers, by the follies we have practised in Persia, and the iniquities we committed in Affghanistan, common sense might have told us those Princes would be shy and slow to place confidence in our honor, or give credence to our well-known faithless professions, without an application of brutal force, and this it seems was predetermined to be ntroduced, per fas et nefas, into our negotiations with them. The object of our negociations, was not alliance, peace, and commerce --it was for ends which impure spirits only conceive and undertake, and which purer ones would blush to be employed to execute. The true objects of our negociations, as may be proved from the Parliamentary Papers themselves, were trickery, spoliation, and plunder !"

"The Ameers," says Sir H. Pottinger, "only required that their "Shikargahs shall not be molested. This is so reasonable a request "that I instantly acceded to it. In fact, when I recollected that "perhaps the only perfectly happy part of their Highnesses' lives is

passed in sporting excursions, in which they seem to be for the "time relieved from the cares and annoyances of the capital, and to "experience unalloyed enjoyment, I felt I had not only no right to "ask them to make a sacrifice of the kind, but that it would have "been wrong to do so; and besides this undeniable argument, I do "not consider that the preserves would materially (IF AT ALL) 66 prevent tracking, were the trees that fall into, and now remain in "the water, along the banks at those parts of the river, removed, "and for doing which, permission has been granted to us, though "the people of the country are prohibited from touching them "at their peril. Indeed the Shikargahs are watched and prized "with all the care and anxiety that were ever bestowed on royal "forests in any part of Europe, and which still are shewn to game preserves in our own enlightened country. We must, therefore, "bear all these facts in mind, before we can properly appreciate the "Ameers' disposition to meet our wishes in this hitherto ill-under"stood and apparently trifling point.”

"With this evidence on record before his eyes, can any man of common sense, say Lord Ellenborough, in pushing the spoliation of

the Shikargahs to a sine qua non, had any motive but one unworthy of himself and disgraceful to his country; namely, to prove whether the Ameers would tamely and quietly submit to a state of vassalage, or if they had still spirit and courage enough left to resist, -to thereby furnish himself with some sort of complaint as a point d'appui, on which to rest the horrible injustice and cruelty he was then ordered or himself meditated to commit against them. Now is your time, Gentlemen, to say, and I trust you are able to say, "Orders from us to ruin the Ameers, and dispossess them of their country, he had none." If this is asserted, it must be followed in Parliament, to save the character of our country, by this solemn question, By, or from whom, were such orders given? If this meets with no avowal, the crime rests on your Governor-General, and for the honour of the nation, for the sake of humanity, shall he not be called to a rigid and strict account!! In his private character, he may be very amiable for what I know. Verres even had private friends in the Roman Senate !"

Sir H. J. Brydges holds the possession to be as worthless as the act is criminal, and quotes the following passage from a friend in India :

"It might easily be shewn that it would not be advisable for us "to possess the country (Scinde), even had it come to us in a legitimate way-THAT IT NEVER CAN PAY ITS EXPENSES-that "its occupation involves us in interminable quarrels with a "bold and restless people, who have little to lose and who are "untameable-that it would at all times have been desirable to "have had an independent native power between us and the "Belochees-that by this accession of territory, we shall have to "increase our army, whose ranks will be continually thinned by the "extreme heat and malaria-that, in A COMMERCIAL POINT OF view, nothing is OBTAINED, for having established emporia for << our merchandize at Karachee, Shikarpore, and one or two other places higher up the Indus; we must leave the dissemination of "our goods to the native merchants, as we have been accustomed to "do in Turkey, Persia and Arabia—and it is not by creating in "the population of central Asia, feelings of hatred and dis

VOL. II.

C

"trust, we can incline them to more extensive commercial "relations."

"Now, Gentlemen, let me call your most serious consideration to a point well deserving of it; that is, how you stand with most of the States of Asia for a reputation of good faith and honest observance of the treaties you have concluded with them. You approached each in their turns with the olive branch in your hands, and when they had given you the right hand of friendship, you then drew the dagger forth from beneath the robe of hypocrisy, and stabbed them to the heart!

"In Arabia, turn to the business of Aden.

"In Persia, turn to the treaties concluded, abrogated, renewed, reconstructed, and always construed as best suited your advantage (?) : and lastly, the country, in time of peaceful intercourse with the Shah, invaded on the most frivolous pretence!!!

*

Affghanistan, invaded, plundered, and ruined, on no better ground than an unfounded and unjustifiable suspicion of an intention to injure us.

"In India, engagements concluded with the Rajah of Sattara, violated in a shameful manner, the Rajah deposed after a mock trial.

"And lastly, at which humanity recoils: the poor Ameers of Scinde, though apparently guarded with seven worthless treaties, are plundered, ruined, exiled, imprisoned like felons, and their wives and families consigned to beggary, and as far as lies in your power to disgrace.

"Unless Governor-General can prove, your which for your sakes, Gentlemen, I trust he may not be able to do, that he was jussus confundere foedera, the wickedness of the act will lie at his door; he will, in such case, hereafter have to account for it before God! But he ought in the mean time to be called on to account for it before men !"

* No! the suspicion was pretended, and the falsification of documents, &c. was to give colour to the pretence.-ED. PORT.

It is our duty to say, that although we refer to this publication for confirmation of all we assert against this nation, still the author of it is not one of us. He is not one of those, who, struck by the crimes and confusion of the nation at this time, have gone back to seek the knowledge of our duties, and the rule of our conduct,-not a generation or two ago, but to the fountain of our law, the origin of our Constitution, and the word of God. He is merely one of those who judges of England's acts in 1843, with the eyes with which all Englishmen would have judged of such transactions in 1793. He is what Englishmen were fifty years ago, when already so changed from their ancient standard as to be capable of giving birth to the generation that now encumbers the soil. But compare his thoughts with those of the present man, and what a contrast and change in the disappearance of a single generation! it might appear the result of a deluge or a pestilence that had suffocated or poisoned the intellectual and moral life of man. Therefore, may his requirements less absolute, and his judgments less repulsive, be more acceptable to the present times, than any word, which it is in our power, honestly and conscientiously to offer.

We would illustrate the contrast between Sir H. Brydges, and those whose thoughts are presented in this periodical, by a quotation or two of another character, which we hope may not be without profit to those who seek to trace and understand the successive steps of national decline.

"You may remember, perhaps, the bad names we bestowed during the revolutionary war with France, on several members of their Government, for the unjustiable propensity they then displayed. At all events it would be decent in us, whenever we feel inclined to use abusive terms in speaking of certain acts of our neighbours across the water, to recollect

“Mutato nomine,

"De te fabula narratur.'

How can a man, warring against heedlessness of crime, utter words implying reproof of the remnants of virtuous detestation we once felt for guilt in others? Between England and France, as represented in their national acts, sympathy is ruinous to the character of an honest man, except indeed the mutual sympathies of the honest of each, living in detestation of the acts of the other. Is there a man in France to whom we could tend the hand of fellowship, that does not detest the crimes of England, and abhor England for them? Is there one in England whom an honest Frenchman could treat as a friend, who does not detest France and her crimes? The bond by which England and France can alone be bound, is justice in each, and accursed be he who speaks of the bond that shall unite two such nations in criminal fraternity! Such an union of England and France is to give the world, and finally themselves, as a prey to the armed ministers of direful passions, or satanic designs. The union of England and France, that these people, a few years back, sought and possessed, was the arraying of justice with majesty and power, putting an end to crimes and fears. Such was the expectation formed, but they were in mind unequal to the duty of walking uprightly. They have fallen, and become the despicable things they are. Their separate strength is the source of dread to those whom they ought to have shielded; and their conjoined power, on such conditions, can only serve to affright the earth, and to subvert the laws, which are the foundation of states, and the bond of peace.

Observe, now, the degrading effect on each nation, of its still surviving sympathy for the other:

The Frenchman, if his conscience is wrung by the atrocities of Algeria, is reconciled to his own villany and cowardly cruelty, by turning to England; he sees in her no reproach to France, and he finds in her conduct