Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 56, No. 346, August, 1844. Various
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We have thus sketched a slender memoir for the leading family of saints amongst the Edinburgh reviewer's holy Suddozyes. Great must have been their sanctity amongst the Affghans. The reader will judge for himself whether that aureola, or supernatural glory about their heads, was altogether sufficient to guarantee the throne of King Soojah. And it must not be quite forgotten, that on the roll-call of legitimacy Penultimate Soojah did not stand next for promotion. Prince Caumraum, who commanded at Herat, stood before him equally in active qualities, and in precedence of title; for he was the son of Mahmood. The sons of Zemaun had a still higher precedency.
However, the Affghans, who are essentially democratic by the necessities of their turbulent condition, often make a compromise in their choice of khans between strict primogeniture and personal merits, where they happen to be appropriate. And they might have done so here. But we are now going, in conclusion, to bring forward one remark, which utterly prostrates Lord Auckland's scheme as a scheme of hope for Affghanistan, or of promise for his own purpose. It is this—no legitimacy of title, and no personal merits, supposing both to have met pre-eminently in the person of Soojah, had a chance of winning over the Affghans to a settled state. This truth, not hitherto noticed, reveals itself upon inspecting the policy of all the Suddozye shahs from Ahmed downwards; and probably that policy was a traditional counsel. Ahmed saved himself from domestic feuds by carrying away all the active, or aspiring, or powerful spirits to continual wars in the Punjaub, in Persia, or India. Thus he sustained their hopes, thus he neutralized their turbulence. Timour next, and his son Zemaun after him, pursued the very same policy. They have been both taxed with foolish ambition. It was not that: the historian has not perceived the key to their conduct:—it was the instinct of self-preservation. No otherwise than by exhausting the martial restlessness of the Affghans upon foreign expeditions, was durability to be had for any government. To live as a dynasty, it was indispensable to cross the Indus in pursuit of plunder. But exactly that policy it was, the one resource of prudent Affghan princes, the escape-valve for conspiracy and treason, which Lord Auckland's army had been put in motion to abolish.
Now, thirdly, let us examine the machinery by which these plans were to be executed. Under the last head we have seen that, if on the whole perhaps the best instrument at hand, and better essentially than the Dost, very soon, indeed, Shah Soojah must have learned the necessity of passing over to that aggressive system which he had been raised up to destroy. Merely for his own safety he must have done this. But now suppose this otherwise, and that Soojah had continued to be that passive instrument for the Indian cabinet which their plans required and presumed. Even on this supposition, our agent or lieutenant Soojah would have required at first some support. By what machinery was this to be given? What was to be the instrument for sustaining our instrument?
Simply taxation, energetic taxation. Yet, if that should happen to fail, what was to be the resource? Simply to fine and to amerce—i.e. more intense taxation. So, in Molière's Malade Imaginaire, the only remedy is "Saignare et Purgare." But lavemens had been known to fail. What was to be done in that case? What is to be done? shrieks the Macaronic chorus—Why, of course, "Purgare et ensuita purgare." To the present government of India, this organ of administration is all in all. And it was natural to transfer this doctrine to Affghanistan. But in that they mistook the notions of the Affghans. And, in order to understand them, it may be well to review the possible aspect and modifications under which the idea of a tax may fall.
First, there is the lawful and peaceful revenue raised in free Christian states under their noble civilization, which is paid even thankfully, as the purchase money for inappreciable social benefits. Next, and in the very opposite extreme, is the ruffian levy once raised upon central India by the ferocious Pindarree, who asked for it with the insolence of a robber, and wrenched it from the recusant with the atrocities of a devil. Here there was no pretence of equivalent given or promised: and this was so exquisite an outrage, a curse so withering, that in 1817 we were obliged to exterminate the foul horde (a cross between the Decoit and the Thug) root and branch. Now between these two poles lie two different forms of mitigated spoliation. One was the Mahratta chout, the other the black mail of the Scottish cateran. Neither of these gave any strict or absolute equivalent; but with a rude sense of justice, both, on different principles, endeavoured to indemnify the sufferer. The Mahratta generally, by a treaty with the local government, induced them to allow for the chout as twenty-five per cent advanced out of their own claim for taxes. And the cateran, if he did not go upon a convention with the government, gave the compounder a protection from other caterans, a discharge from irregular demands, and a means of recovering what might be stolen by knaves. The European case of taxation may be viewed as the fairest case of buying and selling; the Pindarree, as the vilest of robberies; and the two last as cases of compromise, (or what in Roman law was called transactio,)—as a toll or fine in fact, though too arbitrarily assessed.
Such are the categories of taxation; and, at the very best, all Affghans viewed it in the light of chout or black mail, a tribute to be thrown
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