1972 Garbled Blue Books of 1839--myth or reality by Alder s.pdf

8/10/2019 1972 Garbled Blue Books of 1839--myth or reality by Alder s.pdf

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T H E HISTORIC L JOUR N L

VOL.

XV

972

No.

C O N T E N T S

A R T I C L E S

P A C E

I. The Defection of Sir Edw ard Der ing, 1640-1641. By Dcrek H ir st

193

11. Governor Sir Robert Wilm ot Hor to n an d th e Reforms of 1833 in

Ceylon. By Vijava Samaraweera . 209

111.

Th e Garbled Blue Books of 1839-Myth or Rea li ty? By G . J

Alder

229

IV. Bismarck s Imperialism : T h e Case of Samoa , 1880-1890. By P. M .

Kennedy . 261

V.

British War Aims and German Peace Feelers during the First

World W ar (December 1916-November 1918). By W . B. Fest

285

I

Earl Temple s Resignation and the Ques tion of a Dissolution in

December

1783

By P.

J Jupp

309

2 James Mill s Politics: A Final W or d. By Wendell Robert C ar r

315

3 Some Notes on Sir Ed ward Grey s Policy in July 1914. By

Michael Ekstein 321

R E V I EWART ICLES

1 Computing, Statistics and History. By R. S Schofield

325

2 World Power Status or World Dominion? By Meir Michaelis

.

331

L. B Smith,

Henry

V l

T h e Mark of Roy alty

By David R

Starkey . .

361

Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Ma gic Studies in

p o p ~ l a rbeliefs in sixteenth and seventeenth century England

By

Margaret Bowker 363


3/33

hc

Histotical lournal,

xv, 2

1g72),

pp.

229-259.

printed

in

Great Britain

III. T H E G A R B L E D B LU E B O OK S O F

1839-

M Y T H O R R E A L I T Y ?

University

of

Reading

T H EAfghan war blue bwks of 1839 have usually been regarded as classic

examples of the way official documents can be mutilated by skilful and unscrupu-

lous editing almost to the point of forgery. Sir William Kaye s monumental and

authoritative history of the first Afghan war,

published in 1851, contains this

crushing indictment

I cannot, indeed, suppress the utterance of my abhorrence of this system of garbling the

oLial correspondence of ~ubl icmen - sending the letters of a statesman or diploma-

tist

into the world mutilated, emasculated - he very pith and substance of them cut

out by the unsparing hand of the state anatomist. The dishonesty by which lie upon lie

is palmed upon the world has not one redeeming feature.

This unqualified verdict, reinforced by the persuasive parliamentary oratory of

John Bright, has been accepted by practically every subsequent writer as a his-

torical fact.3 The 1839 blue books are always either garbled or something else

equally uncomplimentary. Recently, however, J A. Norris, a journalist

by

pro-

fession but writing on the basis of wide reading in the original sources, has chal-

lenged practically every aspect of Kaye s version of the Afghan war

and with it

his classic verdict on the garbled blue books. Norris concludes

:

Sir John Kaye waxed exceedingly indignant about the garbling and never

aid

atten-

tion to other possible motives. Why should Kaye be believed? He was convinced

that the Auckland policy was a misguided policy, and that the decision to withhold

and shorten dispatches was motivated by a feeling of guilt. The author of th present

work submits that Kaye was seriously mistaken.

It seems timely, therefore, to re-examine this parliamentary cause

cCl2bre

in

rather more detail than either Kaye in the 1850s or Norris in the 1960s could allow

themselves in order to see whether any decision between them can be reached.

W aye History of the War in Afghanistan Ord edn, London, 1874, I , 2 0 4 3 .

see

below, pp. 250-1.

See among many others,

V K .

Chavda, India, Britain, Russia : a Study in British Opinion,

1818-1878

Dclhi, 1967), pp. 16 and 44; F . R Flournoy , Parliament and War London, 1g27),

PP 2wI;

M H .

Jenks, The Activities and Influence of David Urquhart,

1813 56

unpubl. Ph-D-

thesis

London, ~ g h q ) ,p. 241;

A .

Lw ~ d .) , ndia under Lord Ellenborough London, 1926), pp.

[1 9--20]

and

[471; M. A .

Naim, Anglo-Afghan Relations,

1809 1839

unpubl. B.Litt. thesis,

Oxford 1965)~ . 125; W . A. ~ r c h b o ld n Cambridge History of India Cambridge, 1929),

v

499.

A .

Norris, The First Afghan War,

1838 42

Cambridge, 1967), pp. 224 and 423.


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230 G

J. A L D E R

T h e dra ma tic events in C entral Asia which early in 1839 persuaded

the

gov ernm ent to lay papers before parl iament are well kno wn. Lord Auckland, the

whig app ointm ent to the vacant governor-generalship, had arrived in India early

in 1836 with a very healthy scepticism about reports of Russian and Persian

thre ats t o the security of the no rth-w est fron tier. A t the en d of 1837, however,

a

large Persian army advanced eastwards and invested the independent

A han

frontier tow n of H er at . So on a lar m in g reports of pow erful Russian financial, dip

lomatic and even military support for Persia's

rang nach Osten

began to come

in fr o m Jo hn M cN eill, Palmerston's trusted a n d able representative in Teheran.

M cNeill tried a n d failed to wi th dr aw the Persian arm y. A s a result, Anglo-Per-

sian dip lom atic relations w ere b rok en off an d a n I nd ian task-force seized Persian

territory at th e head of the G ulf. W hi le all this was goin g on, Captain Alexander

Burnes, A uck land 's you ng com mercial agent a t the court of Dost Mohamed

at

K ab ul, fo u n d himself a t the en d of 1837 embro iled in a tangled diplomatic nego-

tiation designed to keep Dost M oh am ed frien dly by resolving his border disputes

w ith Britain's Si kh allies in the east, an d a t the same time to prevent him and his

brothers at K an da ha r fro m seeking help fro m the encroaching Russians and Per-

sians in the west. Bu rnes wa s unsuccessful on all counts. Auck land,

with

India

sim m erin g, became convinced d u ri n g the sprin g an d early summ er of 1838 that

Russian intrigue and Persian advances constituted a serious threat to India's

security and, despite Burnes's arguments to the contrary, that

Dost Mohamed

could not

be

relied up on to resist tha t threa t. A n earlier treaty between the Sikhs

and

D ost M oha m ed's exiled rival, S ha h Shu ja, was d u g ou t and hastily converted

into a Tripar t i te Trea ty by the adhesion of the Indian Go vernment . O n October

1838 A uc kl an d published his declaration of w ar he so-called Simla Declara-

tion whic h set ou t all th at could pub licly be stated of the reasons for the policy

about to be adopted. And in December British and Sikh troops began the long

marches thro ug h the Bolan an d K hy be r passes wh ich in 1839 took Shah Shuja

successfully back to the th ro ne of his father s in the Bala His sar of Kabu l.

Very little beyond the bare facts w as kno w n in L on do n at the end of 1838 but

it was en ou gh to cause opposition to gath er. H en ry T uc ke r, the belligerent former

cha irm an of the E ast Ind ia C om pa ny an d a stau nch tory, took the early initiative.

His opposition to what he regarded as unnecessary meddling across the Indus

w en t back at least to 1834. N o w a t the en d of 1838, as soon as the news of the im-

pen din g invasion of Afgh an istan a rrived, he opened a correspondence with some

of the C onse rvative leaders an d later offered to supp ly w hat information he could

so that they could mo unt a well-prepa red attack in parliament. t the same time

he pressed hard in Leadenhall Street that explanatory correspondence should be

laid before the cou rt of com pany directors and , w hen on ly a little was given,

p t

do w n a motion in mid-Febru ary 839 demanding

a

gre at deal more.' H e got

little

I

W. Kaye, The Lif e and Correspondence of Henry Tucker London,

1854).

pp.

49 ff .

I[ndia]

[fice

Library, London] Court Minutes B 197, fos. 256 and 27 ;Lushington chair-

man

o

directors) to Hobhouse,

19

Jan. 1839.

1

Home Misc[ellaneous] 836,

0

58.


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THE

G A R B L E D B L U E B O O K S O F 1 8 3 9 3

ch nge

out of Sir John Hobh ouse, the Presiden t of th e Board of Contro l. H o b -

house's view was that the Co urt, a body wh ich n o long er ha d any of ic ia l pa rt in

h making of Indian policy, wou ld hav e to wai t until it wa s decided w h at in for-

mation to lay before parliament.' H e was qu ite ce rtain th at so m eth ing w ou ld

have to be given. W e expect m an y criticism s o n the wh ole proceeding a t the

meeting of parliament , he had wri tten to Auckland a t the beginning of Decem-

ber

1838

5 n d had begun even then to clear the decks against tha t eventuality.

Two days after Christmas he wrote to his Ca bine t colleague a t th e Tr ea su ry to

seek some assistance for the elderly S enior C lerk in the Secret De pa rtm en t of the

Board, William Cabell. H ob ho use ex plained th at as P residen t he ha d

only

one person to help him to prepare for a parliamentary discussion on an y sub-

ject

of which the details have been made matter for consideration by the Secret Com-

mittee

of the Cabinet. Such is the case at this moment, when it is by no means impro-

bable that the whole of the great enterprise in which Lord Auckland is engaged will

become the subject of debate in both houses. Mr Cabell is a respectable man w ho wishes

to do what is right, but it is not saying anyth in g to his disparagement to assert that he

is

utterly incompetent to do what any President has a right to require of him .

Cabell was already overw orked pr ep ar ing abstracts of th e cop ious letters pou r-

ing in from India by every mail as well as drafting many of the outgoing des-

patches.l0 It was he w ho suggested a m eth od of pre sen ting th e m ass

of

information

to parliament and he whoprobably did most of the editorial work when the

opposition attack came.

I t

came as soon as the ne w session open ed o n

5

February. In the debate on the

Address, Peel in the commons and Wellington and Brougham in the lords all

criticized what they knew of wh ig policy in Pers ia an d A fghanis tan a nd d em an-

ded much more inform ation. T h e oppo sition

,

wrote H obhou se to Auckland

a few days later,l2 has assumed in both H ou ses of P ar lia m en t rat he r a threate n-

ing aspect but has agreed to w ait for such papers a n d exp lan atio ns as m ay be

ble

t give respecting your op erations beyon d the I nd us

.

T h e p rob lem was how

to give those explanations in the least d am ag in g way. H ob ho us e confessed him -

self puzzled.'Vf anything beyond the Tri pa rtite Trea ty an d the Simla Declara-

tion were laid before parliament then he believed that

he

whole

ought to be

prod~lced.Otherwise justice will not be done to the policy which the Indian

H~hhousc o Lushington, Jan . 183 9,1 Home Misc. 836, fo. 59.

Letter

of 5 Dcc.

I R ~ R 0

Home Misc. 839, fo.

36.

Wohhouce to Spring Rice, 27 Dec. 1838, ibid. fo.

76.

O

Only

a

few days aftrr Hobhouse s letter, Cabell complained to h im that he w as finding the

burden too heavy

a t his present time of life

,

Blri t irh] M[useum] ~dd[ i t ional ]

MSS

36,470.

f0

1

is dear from the evidence in this volume that he was working a very long day indeed. f i

extra clerk arrived only in April 1839 when the worst of the rush was over.

Hfl ) l~ard[ ' . f orlinmrnrary

Debate ,

3rd ser.] XLV 19-20, 35-8. It should always be remem-

bred t h a t at this time Hansard i s not to be relied upon as a strictly verbatim record.

On

9

Fch.,

1 0

Home Misc. 839, fo. 95.

W n da te d memorandum, B .M . ~ d d . SS 3 6 , 4 7 ~ , o .

2 0

cited in full in Norris, pp.

221 2.

Hohllouse to Auckland,

19

Feb. 1839,

1

Home Misc. 839, fo. 99.


6/33

3

G J. A L D E R

G ov er nm en t is pu rsu ing , w hic h policy is no t only intimately connected with, but

may

e

said to be foun ded up on the conduct of Persia a nd Russia . O n the other

han d, H ob ho us e saw three d istinct objections to any thin g like full publication :

it wou ld necessarily raise mos t em ba rras sing qu estions regarding the state of

our relat ions with Russia

;

it would reveal vital information about Indian

security; a n d it wo uld w eaken th e wa r effort being m ou nted in Afghanistan by

creating alarm and premature discussion. The last two points are obvious

enough. But why, i t might be asked, need Britain in February

1839

have been

sensitive ab ou t Russia w he n she was w ag in g a w ar in A fghanistan directed above

all a t cou nter ing R ussian in trig ue ? T h e answ er lies in th e state of the Turkish

question a n d in a diplomatic exchang e which Palmerston had had with the

Rus-

sian ambassador in London in October and November

1838.

Challenged about

the doings of their agents in Persia and Afghanistan, the Russians had backed

down as gracefully as they could.14 Palmerston had no wish to humiliate them

any fur the r :

that would be useful only if we wanted to lay the ground for a

ru ptu re; wh ereas w ha t we w an t is to carry ou r points w ithout a rupture; and as

the Russians ar e disposed q uietly to back ou t, it is no t for u s to criticize their gait

in so doing

.I5

F ar fro m provok ing a qu arrel w ith Russia, Palmerston s Turkish

policy d epen ded on the closest ce op er ati on w ith her. H is particular aim was to

destroy t he one-sided treaty of Un kiar-Skelessi, whic h Russia had fastened upon

Turkey in

1833

after saving her from defeat by Mehemet Ali of Egypt, and

replace it w ith a n internatio na l gua rantee. Ho bho use s instinct in the light of all

this was to publish almost no thin g, bu t tha t was impossible. T h e truth is

,

he

wrote

l 7

later, we had no choice . a n d had we refused the papers, a hostile vote

would have extorted them fr om us

.

Given that publication was inevitable, the problem then became one of decid-

in g ho w to publish in the least ha rm ful m an ner . It was the incompetent Cabell

w h o sug ges ted ho w a com plete justification of the proceedings of the Gover-

nor-General might be made out without giving any just cause of offence to

Russia . T h e lon g m em ora nd um which follows this opening sentence is so ill

ordered that one can never be sure at any point whether Cabell is talking about

the a rran gem en t of the blue book or th e strategy fo r its defence in parliament.

H is key proposal was tha t in the first instance Hob house s bare minim um he

Tr ipar tite T rea ty an d the Simla Declaration should be laid, bu t as a deliberate

provocation to the Conservatives. T h e n let the opposition come forward and

4

The corrc~pondcnccwac puhlichcd in

Accortnts and Papers 1839, xr., 176-94.

1 ; 7 0

Hohhouce,

1 4

N o v .

1838,

H.M. Add. MSS

46 915

o .

137;

Hobhouse to Palrnerqton,

1 6 N o v .

1838.

1 H o m e M i x .

839,

fo . 24.

I n l i .

Tcrnperlcy,

Englund and the Near East :

The

Crimea

(London,

1936),

pp. 92f;

C

Webqtcr*

The Fo rr~ gn olicy o f Palmcrr ton 8jn-4

(London,

195 r), 1 1

che

7

and

R.

11

7 0 Auckland , Apr. 1839. B.M. Add. MSS 46,915, f o .

1 2 1 .

18

Mcrno. on the principle of a selection of Papcrs for Parliament in explanation of our

pre

ceeclinp in Perqia

and

Afghanistan, and in vindication of he conduct of the Governor General. and

of the R r ~ t~ c h iniqter in Perci.1

,

undated, B .M . Add. MSS

36 ,470 ,

fo .

1 0 .


7/33

T H E G A R B L E D B L U E

B O O K S O F

1 8 3 9

233

move for further Papers , in d oing which n o do ubt a furiou s a ttack wo uld be m ade

on

h

proceedings of the Go vern or-G eneral

.

Th is, Cabell impl ied, wo uld sh if t

from the ministers the emba rrassm ent of n am in g Ru ssia because they co uld p lead

dire necessity. An d once the Russian G ov er nm en t ha d been given cre dit for its

disavowal of its agents by the pu blica tion of t he recen t Ang lo-R us sian diplo m atic

exchanges,

here would then be no occasion for reserve in regard to com m un i-

cating to Parliament the accounts whic h have been received of th e pro ceed ings

of those agents. This could best be done by producing a selection

of

Ind ian des-

patches from Alexander Burnes showing the extent of Russian intrigue in

Afghanistan and simultaneously a selection of fore ign office pape rs fr o m J ohn

McNeill doing the same for Persia. T h e aim thro ug ho ut n d Cabell em pha sized

this more than once wou ld be to vindicate A uc kl an d by dem on stra ting th at the

danger was so serious tha t no othe r course wa s open to his adoption th an th at

which he was forced at last to pursue by the substi tution of a frien dly for a n

unfriendly power in Afgh anistan

.

Just

how Hobhouse reacted to this or even what influence it had is not at all

clear. Certainly on 18 Fe brua ry 1839, a fo rt n ig ht afte r the o pen in g of th e n ew

session, the Tripartite Tr eaty an d Simla De claration w ere laid, an d then n ot hi ng

more for nearly three weeks.

H ob ho use seems to have reached n o final decisions

about what else to publish

'O

until at the end of the m on th the init iat ive w as taken

by the shadow president of the board, Lo rd Ellenboroug h. H e pu t som e ques-

tions to the prime m inister in the lords on 28 Feb ru ary an d fo llowed this u p w ith

a specific shopping-list of requirem ents. M elbo urn e had alr ea dy told the house

that the fullest information w ould be laid. N o w Ellenb orou gh spelled ou t exactly

how he wanted it (Hobhouse 's reac tions in each case are given in pa ren thes es )

:

copies of treaties with the Indus states

(

these ma y be given

),

copies or extracts

of

letters from B urnes du rin g his K ab ul mission

(

som e of these ma y be given ),

a

copy of Burnes's original ins tru ction s

(

the instructions m ay be given

),

corres-

pondence about Shah S huja's abo rtive bid for th e Af gh an th ro ne in 1834

(

a selec-

tion of these may be given he collections are exceed ingly vo lum ino us o pre-

p '~ the extracts and make the copies will require some time ). I t was El len-

borough even more than C abell wh o de term ine d h ow the papers sho uld be laid.

The next few weeks at the In dia bo ard were frantic as docum ents were collec-

ted, annotated, copied, despatched to the printers, edited again, proof-checked,

and

f ina l ly

returned for final pr in ti n g . ' T h c easiest came first . O n

8

March Hob -

East India, Copy of the Treaty with Runject Singh and Shah Shujah-ool-Moolk; Accounrs

and d a p r r s 1839,

X I .

40

To I.ushington, 26 Frb. 839 1 Ho m e Misc. 836, fo.

69.

2 1 Hnn s a r d x ~ v , 63.

2 2 E ~ C I ~ ~ [ Jn Mclhourne to I lobhouse, r Mar. 1839,

R M

dd. MSS

36,470,

fo.

150.

S See Cahell to Peacock, 6 and Mar. ,839 , 1 LIPSI312. Much of the first editing was done

the

MSS ropics of the letters from India in 1 Enclosures to Secret Letters from India, ~01s.

X1.VI l l 2nd

~ 1 . 1 ~ .

ome of the first

versions from which the final editing was done are in

1

I . / P a r l . / 1 / 8 ~ .


8/33

234 G

J

ALDER

house laid on the table of the commons the collection of treaties which Ellen.

borough had asked for. This of course only provoked further pressure for papers

both inside and outside parliament. Tucker, privately castigating this collection of

old treaties as a mere mockery and insult to our understandings ,put his views

on record in a stiff address to the court of directors on 16 March.25 n the lords on

19 March Ellenborough made his much-quoted remark that

they might assume,

from the evidence already produced, that his [Auckland's] conduct was a folly;

i t remained for the evidence to determine whether it were a crime .26 The next

day the correspondence of 18319 concerning Shah Shuja's earlier expedition was

given, and a week later five more separate collections appeared. Three of them

were s traightf~rward.~ ' ut instead of

a

simple chronological collection of

Burnes's letters, as both Cabell and Ellenborough appear to have suggested,

his

correspondence was presented in two parts. One, known in the board as th V

(or Vickovitch) Papers contained Burnes's evidence of Russian intrigue from

September 1837 until January 1839. The other, known as the Dost Mohamed

Papers and including extracts from some of the same letters as the first, described

India's relations with that ruler between May 1836 and April 1838.~'

Not surprisingly, after this avalanche of paper, there was a parliamentary

silence for

a

week or two. Then, on

11

April, Aberdeen and Wellington in the

lords reproached the government for publishing frequent references to Russian

intrigue without at the same time giving publicity to the satisfactory explanations

already received from St Petersburg. This of course was the very thing Cabell's

plan had been intended to avoid. It occurred because the foreign office was ex-

tremely tardy in producing its own collection of McNeill's correspondence from

Persia and the Russian explanation^.^^ These papers were not laid until sometime

Indian Papers no.

2 ,

Treatics;

Accounts and Papers

1839, X L , roo. It was later discovered

that the texts of some of the treaties were faulty and the whole thing had to be run off again.

23 Kaye, Tucker p. 505. This is probably the document given in Kaye, Memorials o f Indian

Gouernment

(London, 1853), p. 266.

z

Hansard

X L V I, 70. See also ibid. 791, 801-2 an d 865-71.

2 7

Indian Papers no.

3

Extracts relative to the E vpedition of S hah Shooja-001-Moolk into

Afghanistan in

1833-4 etc.;

Accounts and Popers

1839, XL , 113.

z 8 Indian Papers no.

4,

Correspond ence relating t o A fgha nista n 131--1; India n Papers, Copy of a

Despatch from the Court

of

Directors of the East India Company etc.

2

Sept. 1837 131-111;

Indian Papers no.

7,

Occupation of Ka rrak 131-V. All in

Accounts and Papcrs

1839, vol.

xL.

z

Indian Papers no. 6, Correspondence relating to Afghanistan;

Accounts and Papers

1839, xL9

131-IV.

36 Indian Papers no. 5, Correspondence relating to Afghanistan;

Accounts and Papers

1839, xL9

131-11.

3

Hansard

X L V I, 304-6.

3 O n the p reparation of this collection, see Palmerston to H obh ouse , 28 Jan. a nd t o Mar. 18391

B M Add.

MSS

46,915, fos. 151 an d 161. Pa lm ent on s o w n copy of a Cabinet confidential print

annotated in pencil in his own hand is in P[ublic] R[ecord] O[ffice] F O 39, I and 2


9/33

THE G A R B L E D B L U E BOOKS OF 1 8 3 9

235

in

hemiddle of April

and the Afghan war collection was ~omplete.~ 't filled

most

o a stout foolscap volume of over 500 closely printed pages packed with

detail

full

of outlandish names and divided into nine different sections, some of

which were arranged topically and others chronologically, and varying in length

from

a

single document to a collection of over

200

pages. No wonder that one

enterprising printer saw the need to reproduce the complete volume in a more

manageable octavo format 35

while other anonymous authors rushed into print

with

plain

man's guides designed to save the reader

'

the task of wading through

vast masses of irrelevant and comparatively unimportant matter .S6 Nor is it

really surprising that most of these works presumed that the blue book possessed

the highest degree of accuracy that can be attained

'

and regarded the case

for

the Afghan Gar as proven.

Henry Tucker did not. He submitted another long letter to the court on 2

April

attacking what he called the mutilation of the papers by heavy excisions,

denying that the omissions could have anything to do with ' political delicacy or

reserve

towards Russia

',

and arguing that the papers completely failed to make

out

a case for the invasion of ~ h a i i s t a n . ~ ' ut Tucker, for all his pugnacity,

was outside the corridors of power, although of course in close touch with the

leading members of the opposition on the inside. Much more worrying for Hob-

house

was the very real prospect of an attack from them in ~arliament.~ ' hat

something was brewing was quite certain. Ellenborough, whom Hobhouse

always

regarded as the real enemy, composed in mid-April a document which

looks

as

if it was intended to be the basis of an attack in the lords.*' In the com-

mons, Sir James Graham put down a hostile motion for

2

April after the Easter

break

and prepared himself by picking the brains of elderly Anglo-Indians like

Wellesley.41Graham had always been interested in India; indeed he had been

Foreign Office, Correspondence relating to Persia and Afghanistan;

Accounts and Papers

1839, xL 171. There is some confusion about th e dat e w hen this was la id, originatin g in an

erroneous entry in the Commons

lorrrnal,

XC IV, 55. H . Temperley and L. Penson,

A C en tu r y o f

Diplomatic Blue Boots, 1 8 1 4 - 1 9 1 ~Cambridge, 1938), p. 71 also give the date wrongly as 26 Mar

1839.

I t

must have been about 15 April. See Cabell to Peacock, 12 A p r. , I 0 L / P S / 3/ 2 .

3 4 The bound vol. X L of 1839

contained papers on the seizure of Aden (98 pp.) and some

accounts of the East India Company (28 pp.).

Vo rre ~p on de nc e elating to Persia and Afghanistan (London, 1839).

Notes on the relations of British India w ith som e o f the countries we st of the l nd us (London,

1819).

p a

3. See, too, Th e Policy o f the G ove rnm ent of British India as exhibited in Ofic iaI

Documents (London, I 839).

Notes on the relation s of British In dia , p. 3.

v e p o r t o f the East India Commit tee of the ~ o lo n ia l ociety on the causes and consequences of

Akhon War (London, 1842)~Appendix

D.

his very gloomy lcttcrr to Au ekla nd, 16 Mar. an d

11

Apr. 1839. 10 I-Iome Mix. 839, for.

109

and

121

''

of 23 Apr. ,839, P.R.O. 30/1 2/15 /5, reprinted in full in Law. Ellenborough, pp

1 9.

Graham to Wellesley, I

I

Apr. 1839, B.M. ~ d d . SS 37,312, fo. 146. Cf. H . Reeve (ed.),

A

lournal of the Reign of Queen v i c a r ; a from 1837 to 1851 by the a Char les C . F GreviIle

(London, 1885), 11,

roo


10/33

36 G.

J

ALDER

tipped as a possible governor-general w he n A uck land was appointed in 1835 By

then he had already parted company from his former whig colleagues and his

wh iplash attack s on th em became increasingly savage in the late 1830s as he

moved closer to the official Conservative position. Other lesser mortals prepared

to join in as well, such as the recently elected member for Maidstone, Mr Ben-

jamin D i ~ r a e l i . ~ ' t would certainly have been a bitter debate. And yet the

attack, so dreaded by Hobhouse that he fully expected the government to

be

defeated, never came. T h e re wa s scarcely a m entio n of Persia or Afghanistan in

either house for the remainder of the session. Hobhouse was puzzled. His first

though t was th at G ra h a m h ad simply deferred his attack in the hope that some

grea t disaster w ou ld g ive it point. Late r he convinced himself that the blue book

had persuaded the enemy to silence '. Both these explanations were wide of

the m ar k. Peel 's strategy w as no t to topple the wh igs prematurely on an obscure

a n d relatively trivial issue like a n In dia n war . H e wanted the crunch, when it

cam e, to be ove r some gr ea t clash of princ iple on a comprehensible an d preferably

domestic issue like the Corn Laws so that the Conservative party could stand

for th a nd govern w ith a clear ma nda te an d majority ind epend ent of the goodwill

of its opponents. Peel's political cautio n was reinforce d by W ellington's habitual

reluctance to indulge in party warfare when British troops were embarking on

the real thing. W hic h of the tw o finally persuaded G ra ha m to withdraw his

m otion is not clear bu t it was never hea rd of again. T h e Bedchamber Crisis of

May 1839 w hic h pu t the wh igs o u t of office fo r three-and-a-half days, the pressing

problem s of dom estic policy, the n ew Ang lo-Russian harm ony in the middle east

and, perhaps above all, the first striking successes of Auckland's p~licy,~'ll

tend ed to keep the o pposition q uiet. O n the very f ew occasions in the sessions of

1840 an d 1841 w he n A fgh an policy was m entio ned at all, it was usually by the

whigs in se l f -co ngra t~la t ion .~ 'h e challenge was rarely taken up.

Although all was, so far as Afghanistan was concerned, quiet on the western

Disraeli to Urquh art, 23 Mar. 1839, Balliol College, Urquhart Bequest I / J / r ; Urquhart to

Disraeli, 25 Feb. 1839, Hughenden Papers B/XXI/U/ I .

4

Hobhouse t o Aucklan d, 16 Sept. 1839,

I 0

H om e Misc. 8 ~ 9 ,o. 183.

44

T o Auck land, Apr. an d 15 Jun e 1839, ibid. fos. 2 and 146.

4 j

C. S. Parker. Sir Robert Peel from his private papers (London, 1899), 11, 373ff. There

is

scarcely a reference to Asian affairs by Peel or his correspondents at this time in the B.M. coll~tion

of Peel correspondence. The main issues were domestic. See D Close, Th e formation of a two-

party alignment in the house of commons between 1832 and 1841

,

English Historical Rcvicru.

L X X X l V (1969).

46 See the conflicting explanations on offer in T. M. Torrens, Th c Life and Tim es of the Right

Honourable Sir /ames Graham (London, 1863). 11, 165; H. Reeve (ed.), Grcville lorrrnal, 11, ;

Hansmd LX IV , 46; Gladstone in Quarterly Review ,

C I

(1857)~252; Graham to Peel, undated (Apr.

1839?), B M dd. MSS 40,318, fo. 143. J T. W a r d , Sir /amcs Graham (London, 1967)~P I74

completely misunderstands the affair.

47

The arch-tory B l a c ~ u ~ o o d s a ga zi ne , XL (1840)~ z46 could only argue rather lamely that

these glorious successes at least em ana ted from Conservative principles .

48

T h e Quarterly Revietu. xcr (1852)~36 said not unfairly that m any w h i p regarded the Afghan

expedition as the war-horse of their party

.


11/33

T H E ' G A R B L E D ' B L U E B OO K S O F 1 8 3 9

37

front n 1839-41, a row was brewing in the eas t d ur in g those years which wa s

still aoubling both Palmerston an d H ob ho use m ore th an twen ty years later. C ap-

tain Alexander

'

Bokhara ' Burnes had throughout the whole of his abort ive

in Kabul in 1837-8 argued the case for all iance with Do st M oha m ed

in order to build the barrier against Russian and Persian encroachments which

he believed to be so essential for India's security. Auckland had accepted his

diagnosis - hat India was

in

dange r but had rejec ted h is t rea tmen t an d ha d

proposed instead that D ost M oh am ed s ho uld be replaced by his a pp are ntly m o re

reliable rival, Shah Shuja. W h e n Bu rnes, o n his w ay b ack t o Sim la in early Ju ne

1838

and after a final appeal for th e D ost, expressed the op inio n t ha t th e B ritish

government had only to send Shah Shuja with two regiments

'

as an honorary

escort, and an avowal to the Afghan s, th at w e have tak en u p his cause, to ensure

is

being fixed for ever on his throne

',

the die was cast.4g

A t

t h e e n d o

1838

Captain Burnes, then aged thirty-four, becam e Lie ute nan t-C olo ne l Sir Ale xa nd er

Burnes and went back to K ab ul in 1839 with the successful British a rm y as under-

study to Sir William Ma cnaghten, th e En voy to Sh ah Shu ja. I t wa s there in t he

late summer of 1839 that he received a set o the parliamentary papers and first

had an opportunity to compare what he had written with what was published.

His reaction was explosive a n d typical.

'

T h e exposition of the Go vernor-

General's views in the Parliamentary papers

',

he wrote n a letter to his

brother-in-law which was m uc h qu ot ed late r,

is pure trickery, and I have said so in every com pany since I have read them. All my

implorations to Government to act with ~ ro m p t i tu d e nd decision had reference to

doing something when Dost Mohamed was King , and all this they have m ade to appear

in

support

of

Shah Shoojah being set up But again, I did advocate the setting up of

Shah Shoojah, and lent all my aid, nam e, nd knowledge to do it; but when was this?

When my advice had been rejected, and the Government were fairly stranded.

Burnes was an extraordinarily unbuttoned correspondent in his letters to his

friends and family but he seems on th e w hole to h ave been careful in his public

use

of

his

official knowledge. Ind eed, as an am bitious an d no w senior ' political

',

he

had little choice. H is account of his Kab ul mission, ~ u b l i s h e d osthumou sly

but written in 1840-1 afte r he h ad seen the blue books, is as the Bombay Times

grumbled, '

a

travelogue innocent of all ~ o li ti c a l l lusion

'.

Nevertheless Burn es

certainly had it in m in d, as indeed the preface of th e book hin ts, t o tell th e inside

story one day

5

:

4 9 To

Macnaghtcn. Jun e 1839, Accounts ond Papers 1859, Session 2

x x v ,

1 242. Auckland

a great deal of w ight to this opinion from t h e m an w h o knew ~ f ~ h a n i s t a n

est

and had

S U P ~ ~ r t e dost Mohamcd

so

loyally, letter to Hobhouse, 17 June 1838, I 0 Home Misc. 841, 0 180.

To co1onel Holland, 6 No . 1 8 ~ 9 ,

in

G .

Buist, Memoir of

Sir

~ l e x a n d e rBurnes

(Edinburgh, 1851 , p. 6 .

Mar. 1841, p. 139. The book s Cabool : being a personal narrative o f a journey t o and

in

tho city, 1836-8 (London, 1842).

Ilctter

of

I

Apr. 1841, Ruist. Btdrnes, p.

63.


12/33


13/33

T H E G A R B L E D B L U E B O O K S O F 1 8 3 9

239

ing

f i r ly

correctly the omissions which ha d been m ad e in th e blue boo k versions.

Even then, although Buist ha d been thu nd erin g aw ay i n almo st every editorial

since January against the folly of the A fg ha n w ar a n d th e m isrepresen tation

o

Alexander Burnes's views and ur gi ng th at those w h o h ad th e evidence sh ou ld

indicate him, yet he respected Jam es's w ishes a n d co m pletely ig no re d t he revela-

tions of the G ~ z e t t e . ~ 'his obviously could no t g o on very m uc h longer. F or o ne

thing the dispute abo ut Bu rne s, described

9

w ith considerable exaggeration a t a

meeting in Bombay as

'

the most dist inguished public servant that Bombay has

produced this century

',

rapidly escalated into yet ano the r inter-Presidency q ua rre l

between the Bombay new spapers a n d those a t Calcu tta. T h e latter, ins pired by

what Buist called

'

the dregs of the C alcutta clique ', argued th a t Burnes was as

responsible for the Afg han w ar as th e C alcutta politicals w h o h ad advised A uck -

land in 1838. They supported their ar gu m en ts by citing extracts fro m official docti-

mentsn60

n

this sort of si tuation Buist was not the man to confine himself to

unsupported assertions for lon g, w he n ready am m un itio n lay so close at h an d.

But

that was not all. In May 1842 some of the London newspapers picked up

the

Bombay United Services Gazette's revelations about the blue book suppres-

sions and either reprinted them entire or used them to attack the late whig ad-

ministration and demand that parliament should launch a full inquiry into the

allegations of improper s ~ p p r e s s i o n . ~ ~n e Conservative M .P. a t least was ready

to do so. More than a month before these articles appeared, Henry Baillie, the

member for Invernesshire, had received a letter from a friend of Burnes com-

plaining that he had been m isrepresen ted an d enc losing copies of som e of th e fu ll

versions of his despatches. Baill ie said noth ing ab out this when he ha d a hu rried

conversation with Peel in the house on Ap ril to exp lain w hy he inten de d to pu t

down a motion for a full inquiry into the origin s of th e Af gh an wa r. N o r d id he

mention

i t when

he wrote 6 Z to Peel the next day to amplify his reasons. T h e

1839

blue

book papers, he wrote,

are

so

meagre

I ]

so incomplete, and

so

garbled, that

I

defy anyone to fo rm , from their

perusal a correct opinion upon the subject, indeed they appear to have been arranged

rather for the purpose of concealment than of afford ing information.

Baillie ended by explaining that of course he did not wish to embarrass Peel's

government. Peel was embarrassed a n d his reply betrayed it. Fo r several reasons,

he

argued, the motion would be premature and he advised Baillie to wait and

'

ornbay Times

30 July 1842,

P.

489. See especially the editions of 26 Jan . , p . 60 3 F e b . ,

P

124 30 Mar.. p. 206 and 2 Apr.. p. 213.

s a

)'

Dr

Kcnncdy, author of the first hostile book on the Afghan war. Reported in Bombay

20

A u ~ .

842,

p.

537.

The F ri~ rid of India

9

Feh.

1 8 ~ 2 ;

he Eng l i shrna t~

1 8

J a n . , 1 1 Feb. and June

1842;

Tln l f l

23

Fcb., 30 Mar..

1 4

May,

15

June.

1 8

June

1842.

The Calcutta newspapers

made great play w ith Rurncs s unq ual ified statement in favour o f Sha h Shuja cited

ab ve , p. 237.

Aflf l . f 4 May; Morning Herald 1 6May; Colonia l Magazinr

I

June 1842.

To Peel.

2

Apt.

1842,

.M. Add. MSS

40,506,

o .

153.

See

Hansard

CLXII,

3


14/33

340

G

J LDER

see.e3 Baillie did for a month and then at the end of May put down

his

motion,e4 forcing Peel in the house to urge him on public grounds to postpone

it yet again.65 So anxious was Peel to keep Baillie quiet that, when the matter

finally came up on 23 June, Baillie was deliberately invited to a party at the

Duchess of Buccleuch's in the hope, so the story went, that the House could

be

counted out before he got back.66But even if Baillie had been persuaded by these

improbable methods to abandon his motion, its seconder, Benjamin Disraeli,

would not. He, it will be remembered, as a new member anxious to live down a

disastrous maiden speech, had planned to criticize the Afghan war in April 1839

but had been frustrated when Graham withdrew his motion. Now, three years

later and with a growing parliamentary reputation, he would not be baulked

again. Ever since 1839, he had kept very closely in touch with the brilliant,

impulsive and paranoid publicist, David Urquhart probably the most bitter

critic of Palmerston's eastern policy and certainly the most kno~ledgeable.~~

Urquhart had already submitted the 1839 blue book to his own peculiar analysis

in a lengthy series of articles in the Glasgow Herald and concluded that the docu-

ments were deliberately presented in a confused way to conceal the fact that

Palmerston was a traitor in the pay of R us~ia. '~israeli, of course, did not believe

this nonsense but he admired much about Urquhart and found his knowledge a

useful reinforcement to his own growing interest in Indian affairs.%'In April

Disraeli managed to drag an attack on the Afghan war into a debate on the

income-tax. At the end of May, after the first newspaper revelations

of

some of

Burnes's correspondence, he asked l Hobhouse in a brief exchange why he had

adopted such a course with respect to the despatches of a British Minister at a

foreign court, as to induce that person to say that the proceeding was a piece of

e3 T o Baillie, 15 Apr. 1842, ibid. fo. 155.

e 4

Copies of the correspondence of Sir Alexander Burnes with the Governor-General of India

du ri ng his mission t o Kabul in th e years 1837 an d 1838; also copies of the correspondence of the

Governo r-Genera l of Ind ia w ith t he President of the Board of C ontr ol, a nd w ith the secret com-

mittee of the East India Company, from the 1st day of September, 1837, to the 1st day of October,

1839, relative to the expedition to Afghanistan .

Hansard , LX II I , 86 .

e e

Hobhouse Diary, 22 Jun e 1842, B.M. Add . MSS 43,744.

e 7 T he re is a considerable literature on different aspects of Da vid Urq uha rt s life but the most

useful general accounts are

G

Robinson, David Urquhart (Oxford, 1920) and

M.

H. Jenks, The

Activities and Inprrencc of David Urqtdhart,

1833 56

(unpubl. Ph.D. thesis, London, 1964).

0 9 Published as D. Urquhart, Diplomatic Transactions in Central Asia from

834

to

839

(London, 1841). Urquhart sent part of this to Disraeli on 24 Mar. 1841, Balliol College, Urquhart

Bequest I / J / I and invited him down to Southampton so that he could brief him. It is dear fro*

the Disraeli papers at Hu ghe nde n B /x xT /U that they were workin g very closely together at this

time.

e 9

Je nk s, pp. 250-1. DisraeIi1s connexion w ith U rqu ha rt w as an open secret. See L. J Jennings

(ed.), T he Corresp ondence an d Diaries of john Wilson Croke r (Lo ndo n, r885), 111, 9; Hobhouse

.

Dia ry, 18 Ju ne 1842, B.M. Add. MSS 43,744, fo 61.

7 0 Hansard, Lxrr, 1028.

7

Hanrard ,

L X I I I ,

1021

Hobhouse s diary account is

B M

Add. MSS 43,744, 46, 4 7 ~ 9-5 .


15/33

T H E G A R B L E D B L U E B O O K S O F 1 8 3 9

24

trickeryand f r au d? Hobhouse made

a

very spir i ted reply a n d en ded

by

telling

Disraeli that he w ould hav e

a

fuller opportunity to ventilate the w hole quest ion

when Baillie s motion cam e u p a t the end of Jun e.

Before then, however, Hobh ouse ga ine d a n u nexpected a n d very w elcome ally

in

the

person of L ord Fitzg era ld, th e ne w con servative presid ent of th e board of

~ontro l . ~s soon as the news of the Kabul disasters had reached London the

Colonial Society, a private association of ab ou t 600 m em be rs int ere ste d in th e

welfare of the British colonies

had se t u p w hat they ca lled an E as t India Com -

mittee to investigate the origins of the A fg ha n w ar. T h i s body very qu ick ly con -

cluded that the 1839 blue book did not give enough information, and petitioned

parliament for m or es r4 h e petition was presented in the lords by Lord B eaumont

on 3

June 1842 and, mu ch to Hob house s indig nation , in the co m m ons y his

former radical colleague of the We stminster hustings, old Sir Francis B ~ r d e t t . ~

Beaumont confined himself to ob liqu e criticism of A uc kl an d s w ar policy a n d ,

making no accusations of garbling, merely asked on behalf of his petitioners for

more information. Fitzgerald in reply followed the orthodox Peelite line that it

would be premature to produce any more papers, that in any case a substantial

volume of them h ad been pub lishe d in 1839, a n d th a t he wo uld opp ose th e pub li-

cation of any more. H e then added, 6 alth ou gh Be aum on t had m ad e n o such

charge,

that

he thought nothing more unfa ir than to charge those with an ything like interpola-

tion or

unfairness who, in their responsible situation, had produced papers in a certain

manner. It

was due to them that he should say th at , having had access to all the papers

in question, he could trace no intention improperly to withhold information, and that

if

any

had been withheld i t had been done upon their view of the exigency of the

pu l ic service.

Hobhouse never forgot this unsolicited and categorical denial of the garbling

charge from his political opponen t. W it h the ir lea ders tak in g a line like this, th e

omens for Baillie an d Disraeli s m otion did no t look very g ood. Ne vertheless,

Hobhouse prepared his case fo r the d efenc e w ith im me nse care, wo rk in g thro ug h

the

weekend and taking five days over it. O n t he afterno on of 23 June he was

walking peacefully dow n to W estm inste r in the co nfid ent belief th at Baillie w as

at the Buccleuch party an d the house inqu ora te whe n h e was m et a nd told tha t he

was wrong in both assumptions. H e hurri ed ho m e fo r his papers an d retu rne d

0

find

a

thin house but Baillie in his place and the public gallery packed. It

Fitzgcrald had succeeded Ellenborough at the end of 1 8 ~ 1 hen Ellenborough went to India

to replace Auckland as governor-general.

I Rules

and

Regt4lotknr

o

the Colonial Society (London, 1842).

I Report the

East

India

C o m m i t t e e

Appendix A.

[Jrquhnrt was probably behind this too. He and Burdctt were both members of the ~olonial

S w i ~ t ~

nd

he had been a recent d in ne r-p rty guest at Burdett s house, H o b h o ~ ~ ciary. 18 June

8429 B .M . Add. MSS 43,744, fo. 61.

Hansard 1 - ~ 1 1 1 1 1 5 1 ;Hobhouse Diary, June 1842, B.M . Add . MSS 43, 744, fo . 53


16/33

4

G J A L D E R

included, he noticed, ' the no torious U rq uh ar t, the originator of the motion '.

Baillie rose soon a fter five, an d h e a n d D israeli m ad e a joint tweand-a-half-hour

attack on the w h ig policy.78 Baillie w as th e m ore restrained an d Disraeli, in a

wid e-rang ing attack, seem ed to be aim ing m ore at Palmerston than anyone else.

N eith er of th em m ad e any accusations of d eliberate misrepresentation.

I t

was an

ineffectual perfo rm ance an d, so far as th e ga rblin g charge was concerned, Hob-

house h ad n o case to answer. H e answered i t n ev er th ele s~ . '~ e repeated his view

that he papers laid before Parl iam ent in 1839 d o afford a full an d fair view of,

and a complete justification for, the expedition to the westward of the Indus '.

H e did not deny that B urnes entertained a different view of Do st Mohamed from

that of Lo rd A uckland. But , he asked,

Was that a charge against Lord Auckland? W as the Governor-general to

act

uniformly

upon all that was told him by one British agent? Was he not to consider others too?

It has been said that all the documents were not laid upon the Table, and that parts had

been omitted. That is true : but there has been no garbling of the papers. Various parts

were withheld , and very reasonably so and if I were still the M inister, and those papers

were called for, I should do the like again . T o have published all that Sir Alexander

Burnes said, would have answered no good purpose. The only object to be shewn

was,

what was the cause of the war. I do not mean to

say

Sir Alexander Burnes did not

maintain opinions different from Lord A,uckland; and , as

I

stated the other night, the

late Government published three of Sir A lexander Burnes's letters, in which he gave

a

decided opinion in preference to Dost Mahomed ;we had no objection, nor did w

make

any

attem pt to conceal Sir Alexander Burnes's opinions.

Hobhouse then quoted from Burnes let ter of 2 June which had argued the

feasibility of Sh ah Shu ja's restoration. ' T h e re is no m istaking his words wo

of our regiments as an honorary escort, a British agent, and an avowal to the

A fgha ns that we had taken up his [Sh ah Shuja 's] cause, would

ensure his

being

fixe fo r ever on his throne

an d this is the au thority w hich Lord Auckland is

charged with having disregarded

'.

Hobhouse quoted other Indian officials o

the sam e effect, corrected Baillie an d D israeli on one or tw o points of fact, and sat

down two-and-a-half hours after he started to great applause from the benches

behind him. It was probably the most powerful speech he ever made and it

sealed the fate of Baillie's m otion . Af ter som e oth er speeches for an d against, Peel,

speaking very quietly, stated

that it will not, under present circumstances,

prom ote the public interests to p roduce th e papers f o r wh ich the hon. Gentle-

man has moved

',

mainly because of the damage it would cause to the present

good relations with Russia. Baillie, probably sensing overwhelming defeat in his

i Hobhouse Diary. 23 Jun e 1842, ibid. fo . 64.

0

Honsord, L X I V , 435-60.

*

Hobhouse's speech is ibid. 46- reprinted, at the suggestion

o

Lord John Russell, in

pamphlet form as The A ghan War (Lon don, 1842).

o Above,

p.

237.

Honrm d, Lxrv. 481. Hobhouse printcd the italicized words in capitals in the ~a rn ph le t ersion.

8

Ibid. pp. 517-13.


17/33


18/33

244

G J ALDER

this was chan ged w he n Buist 's revelations arrived. T h e Morning

Herald

sneered

at the tardiness of

P ri nt in g H o u se Sq ua re's conversion to the belief that deliberate

m isrepresen tation had tak en place an d , w ith several other papers, called for

a

fu l l

parl iamentary inv e~ t iga t ion .~ ' o did Dav id Urqu har t . In a pamphlet Q written

at th is tim e h e de scribed, in a typical piece of g rote squ e and purple prose, how

The [full] documents exhibit the Afghans with bended knees and joined hands,

naked, defenceless, meek, and imploring; and the Protector, before whom they bow,

reproaching them for hostile designs and perfidious alliance with her foes, and then

dashing her mailed fist in the face of the unarm ed suppliant. Having perpetuated

this

dastardly crime, she then submits to her own people, and to the world, falsified docu-

ments, cunningly devised deceit, to vilify the suppliant she had trampled on

as h

kneeled

-

bruised and stabbed as he fell.

W it h th e opp osition g etting shriller an other bid for a fu ll parliamentary inquiry

w as inevitable.

It came on the first day of the 1843 session when the radical M.P. for Bath,

Joseph Roebuck pu t do w n a motion for the appo intm ent of a select committee

to in qu ire into the circumstances w hic h led to th e late hostilities in Afghanistan

.

Pa lm ersto n imm ediately das hed off a letter to Ho bho use, w ho was on holiday

with his daug hters in Italy, urg ing hi m to hur ry hom e an d defend himself. But

he was not back when Roebuck rose on

I

M arch to d eliver w ha t m any believed

wa s th e best speech h e ever m ad e.Q 2 t was certainly a bitter and vituperative

attack on the whigs. M y charg e against the m is, that they have undertaken an

un jus t a n d impolitic wa r on their o w n responsibility, an d that when called upon

by P arl iam en t to justify that responsibility, they have in the most unworthy

manner garbled the evidence upon which their justification is made to rest

And yet Roebuck completely fai led to make

a

case for the second part of his

cha rge , as Lo rd Jo hn Russell w as qu ick to point ou t in reply.04 Roebuck only cited

on e of Burnes's despatches an d on e qu ite trivial exam ple of an omission from

it

in the blue books. Disraeli spoke next and claimed afterwards

@

hat he had

a t

last m ade a grea t speech a t a late ho ur, in a fu ll house, a nd sat do wn amid general

cheering . Perh aps bu t it does not read like that.

Of

garbling there is not a

m ention . Peel was is usual lofty an d dispassionate self. H e admitted

his

doubts

about the policy of the A fgha n w ar b ut argued th at

88 Ibid.. 14 Oct. 1842,

P 4

O 9

Morning Herald 15

Oct.

1842, p. 4; Standard

2

a t . and

14

Oct

1842,

no pagination;

lohn Bull, 15 Oct 1842, p . 49.

Th e Edinburgh Review and the Afghan W ar London, r843), pp. 21-1.

On

3

Feb. 1843, B M dd. MSS 46 ,915 , fo.275.

9 4 R. E. Leader ed.). Lif e and Letters o f lohn Arthur Roebrrct London, 1897). p. 147. See

too p. 179.

93 Hansard LXVII. 121.

9 Ibid. p. 149.

95

In letter to his sister, cited in

W . F.

M o n y m n y , Thr

Life

o/ Be n ja m in ~ i s r a e l i ~ o n d m .

1 9 1 2 ) ~ 1 159-

a

Peel's

s p m h in

Hansord

Lxvrr,

1 R 2 9 r .

The passages quoted are

1843. rR8

and

190-r


19/33

T H E G A R B L E D B L U E B O OK S O F 1 8 3 9 45

i t has

never been the usage for any G overnm ent, o n tak ing possession of office, to use

its power and influence in this House to b rin g u nd er investigation th e acts of its

predecessors. It never has been the custom of th e H ou se an d i t would no t be just now

to establish such a precedent.

He

would, he sa id, have preferred a m otion fo r mo re pap ers to o ne

for

a com-

mittee of inquiry bu t he believed th at en ou gh info rm atio n h ad been laid alrea dy

to give a suffic ient acco un t of

the

motives of th e ind iv idua ls , on w hose opin ion s

the invasion of A k ha n is ta n w as judged to be polit ic an d necessary

'.

Peel repeated

his arguments of 1842 about the d an ge r of d am ag ing re la t ions w ith Russia a n d

concluded in wise w or ds

:

You ought to take care too an d establish no precedents which may be a check up on th e

future usefulness of public servants. It is of th e utm ost im po rtan ce to ob tain from pub-

lic

servants comm unications wh ich they can m ak e with perfect confidence yet

what will be the consequence, if these frank statements are to be revised by a hostile

committee of the House of Com mons. T h e public servant is invited to sta te fra nkly his

views to the Government, and it exercises its judgemen t as to th e pub lication of papers.

You, for instance, call for copies or extracts of these papers. T h u s you ad m it, th at th e

Government may have a discretion; that it may be justified in withholding some from

your

knowledge. Now the committee appointed f or the purpose of cond ucting wh at

h s been called a judicial investigation may consider that no documen ts shou ld

be

withheld. For all these considerations I conclud e by entreat ing of the H ou se not

t o . permit the just prerogatives of the C row n to be transfe rred fro m the E xecutive

to committee of the Ho use of C om mo ns, an d by so do ing , to open new qu arrels , an d

disturb relations which are of the most peaceful an d t ranq ui l character.

There was much m ore f ro m both sides bu t, a s in the Baillie debate, th e issue

was rea l ly se t t led when Peel sa t down. Roebuck made a brave a t tempt in his

summing-up o meet Peel s consti tutional argu me nts , he gav e on e m or e ' pal-

pable instance of falsification ' i n the

1839

b lue book , and end ed wi th an im pas -

sioned appeal in the na m e of ho no ur, i n the n am e of m ercy, fo r G od s sake, to

institute an inquiry on this subject

'.

H e was was t ing h i s b rea th . I n the ea rly

hours of March 1843, 187 m em be rs follow ed Peel a n d Pa lm erst on int o the

lobbies to reject the m otio n a n d on ly 75 could be foun d to supp or t i t.

To Urquhart the conclusion was obvious. ' W h a t i n f e r e n c e c o u l d a n y m a n

draw

f rom this debate , save that the t w o fact ions ha d come t o a com prom ise? , h e

asked in

a

pamphlet

9

published soon af terward s, an d he urged yet m ore motions

to push Peel into a full inqu iry. T o U rq uh ar t , of course, Palm erston e w as a

traitor, and Peel was now con nivin g at his treachery. B u t m an y w h o rejected the

fu l l Urquharti te fantasy were sti l l able to believe that there had been some

liggcry-pokery with the 1839 blue books. H os tile references to th e

'

g a r b l i n g

'

b ~ a m e s tandard pa rt of m an y a tt a cks on P a lm er s ton , whe the r Urq uha r t -

inspired or not . One that pla inly owed nothing to Urquhar t was the widely-

'' Ibid. pp. 206 12.

n Appeal againrr Faction (London, a13), P.

20

He returned to the charge the fol lowing

Year in

h i s magazine The Port olio (ne w series), 1 1 ,

5 3


20/33


21/33

T H E

G A R B L E D B L U E B O O K S

O F

1 8 3 9

247

once transmuted the dross of m ere partisa n criticism in to the p ur e go ld

o

histori-

cal

fact. And of course it gave new heart to those like S ir H e n r y W illoug hby , M .P.

for Evesham, who still wan ted a full publication of Bu rnes's despatche s. W h e n h e

pu t

down a question on the subject, Fox Maule, Hobhouse's newly-appointed

successor at the board, asked his former colleague whether he would have any

objection to publication in e ~ t e n s o .~ ' ' ob hou se, w h o seems to have b een feeling

a

bit sore at the way he had been replaced a m o n th before, rep lied 1 very tartly

that

if Kaye's book gave Burnes's despatches in full, he couldn't quite see why

any further publication wa s necessary.

would add that the rascallity [sic] of the Burnes family and their coadjutator

in

pub-

lishing confidential official papers for the sake of calumniating those who heaped

powers

and emoluments on their kinsman would be rather rewarded, rather than

punished if the Board of Control were compelled by this proceeding to do tha t which

i t

had refused to do before. However, pray look at this matter as a general rather than

a n individual question

-

and trust to your own judgm ent.

Fox Maule did and wh en Willoughb y, qu ot in g Kaye, duly asked for m or e

papers on 17February 1852 he was tu rn ed d o w n flat.'''

Meanwhile ~ r ~ u h a r tas devoting his prodigious energies to extra-parliam en-

ta ry agitation. It was he wh o was m ainly responsible f or t he work ing-class fo reig n

affairscommittees which sprang up in the m idlan ds a n d no rth in th e mid-1850s

to keep watch over the fore ign policy of th e treachero us L or d Palmerston. ' I n

July and August 1855 a great conference of delegates from these committees,

under the still magnetic personality of Urquhart, enthusiastically endorsed most

of the points of his earlier anti -Palm erston cam pa ign s, inc lud ing of course th e

charge that the prime minister had

' deceived the Parliament by falsified and

garbled public papers a nd d ispatches ' . I ' Alth ou gh the foreign affairs comm ittee

movement dwindled away very rapidly after the euphoria of the Birmingham

Conference, the Newcastle branch rem ain ed very active. I n A pr il 1857 it pub -

lished the results of its ow n inv estiga tion in to th e 1839 blue books, based o n

copies of Alexander Burnes's dispatches lent by his brother-in-law. ' T h is rep ort

Was probably the main inspiration for the half-a-dozen petitions for publication

which came before parliament in the sp ring of 18 58 . ~T h e first of these was fro m

' '

ox Maule to Hobhou se, 15 Feb . 18 52 ,

B M

Add. SS 3 6 , 4 7 2 , f o . 8 4 . ~ o b h o u s ewas

Aaron Aroughton in 1851 hut his birthname will be used in the rest of this article to save

confusion.

Inn

n

16

Feb. 1852, ibid. fo.

8 6 .

1 9 Hansa td , c x ~ x 52-3.

' InOn this d e ~ e l o ~ r n r n t ,ec G . Robinson.

Urquhart ,

chs 6-8 and Jenks,

Urquhart ,

pp. 327-39-

I

add re^^ o/ the men o/ Birmingham to the people

o

England unanim ously passed at the

great ublic meeting held at Bingley Hall,

4

August 1855

(no date, reprinted from the

Birmingham

a l l ~

P r e ~ c .

his war carried after hearty cheers for Urquhart, the Queen and the People (in that

concluding with three heavy rounds of groaning for Lord Palmerston .

' I 2 original document is

unobtainable but its conclusions are quoted in G -

Robinson. Urquhort, pp. 114-5.

' I1 R - M.Reports a/ the Select Com mit tee

o f

the ~ o u s e / Com mo ns on Public Petitions, 1857-8,

PP

~ 9 ~

7

519, 625 and 723,


22/33

248 G J

A L D E R

Sheffreld, and on the 13 July 1858 its

M.P.,

George Hadfield, obtained a commons

ord er fo r th e publication of the fu ll correspondence in exactly the words of

Baillie's abortive motion of 1843 . ~Just how this was ob tained so easily after

M

m any battles is som ethin g of a mystery. A commons order on a matter like this

did not, of course, need the form al approval of the com mons; the prior consent

of

the govern m ent was enough . L or d S tanley was president of the board and

he

apparen tly consu lted Disraeli before deciding to publish against the advice of some

of the

professional^. ^

That Disraeli should be in favour after all

his

earlier

effort s is hardly surp rising, an d no d oubt the secretary to the board was

in

favour too. H is nam e was H en ry Baillie.l16 T h e biggest influence on them,

i

Disraeli is to be believed, ' was Kaye's book; and , when the full set of

papers

was laid before the house on 24 March 1859, ' the na m e on the cover was none

other than tha t of John W illiam K aye, who had recently succeeded J. S.

Mill

as

secretary of the political an d secret de pa rtm en t of the new Ind ia Office. Even

so,

the who le m atter is shrouded in mystery a nd the official records are silent. While

the papers were being prep ared , there h ad occurred the transfer of power in India

from Company to Crown. In the resulting upheaval and transfer of the board's

records from C annon Row to temporary accom modation in Victoria Street, there

was apparen tly a wholesale destruction of departm enta l records deemed to be of

n o importance. I t is at least clear th at in m any cases the original dispatches used

to prepare the fair copy were exactly the same as were used in 1839, ~but there

is no evidence as to how fa r Kaye himself was personally responsible for the com-

pilation. T h e ed iting certainly bears evidence of haste and its marking of what

was and was not omitted in 1839 by the use of square brackets is not always

accurate. W ha t is certain is tha t the collection was originally laid in manuscript

and Hadfield, backed by Willoughby, had to fight very hard to ~ersuade

n

apathetic and cost-conscious Hou se to go to the trouble and expense of having

it

printed.

O

T h e printed version

-

he so-called ungarbled blue book of 1859 is about

320 foolscap pages long an d contains ~ ra cti call y ll of Burnes's official correspon-

dence from April 1837 to Augus t 1838 as well

as a

strange ly incomplete selection

lournals of the House of C om m on s

cxrlr, 304.

l I S

Hansard

cLxtr, 80; Hobhouse Diary, 23 Mar. 18 61 , B. M . A dd . MSS 43,763 , fo. 131. There

is n o evidence in the Disraeli papers at Hug hen den nor in the Stanley papers in the ~iv erp ool

Record Office.

Evidence that Baillie

w a s

still interested is

Hansard

cLxrr,

93.

H

bid. p. 80. 11.9

Journals of the House of Co mm ons

cxlv, 131-

l L B

om e of them , marked in red in k, are in 1 Enclosures to Secret Letters from India, xLvII1

and

X L I X .

I z o

Hansard C L I V .

1 8 4 5 Useful background is given by S. Lambert, Th e presentation

of

Parliamentary Papers

by

the Foreign Office ,

Bulletin o f the Institute o{ Historical Research

xxlll

195019

76.

12 East India Cabul and A fghan istan), Cop ies of the correspondence of Sir Alexander Burncs

with the Governor General of India, during his Mission to Cabul, in the years 1837 and 1838 etc.;

Accorrntr and Papers

1859, 2nd session,

xxv,

I


23/33

T H E G A R B L E D B L U E B O O K S

O F

1 8 3 9

49

of

despatches rom India between September 1837 and October 1839. The foreign

affai rs fell on this stout volume with zeal and unleashed on parlia-

ment a well-organized minor flood of petitions in May, June and July 1860 press-

ing for a public inquiry into the discrepancies which had been revealed. 12 Some

committees instituted their own inquiries in anticipation. The most elaborate

was by

the indefatigable Newcastle committee

-

a lengthy pamphlet 13 with

evidence of a great deal of painstaking detective work. Its conclusion, predictably

enough, was that

'

the charge of forgery against the members of the India

Board of 1839 is fully substantiated .lZ4T o the pamphlet s authors, it was bad

enough that Burnes s and Dost Mahomed s true views were suppressed in order

'

o

represent Sir A. Burnes as the author of an expedition undertaken against his

advice and in s~itef his remonstrances . 15 But more sinister to those of

Urquhartite persuasions was the discovery of what they called ' that series of

perversions. . .made to suit the convenience of Russia

'.

They seemed to confirm

what

Urquhart had been arguing ever since the Afghan war began - that the

object of its authors was to serve Russia .I2

For all these reasons, the Newcastle

pamphlet called for legal action against the surviving members of the India board

of

1839 Its authors even had the cheek to send a copy to their chief victim, the

now elderly Hobhouse. He, as he confessed in his diary,12 read it and promptly

forgot about

it

'

being perfectly at ease as to the charge

.

H e may have become a

little more concerned when, apparently with some difficulty, the foreign affairs

committees found someone willing to make another bid for a full parliamentary

inquiry.

On 19 March 1861 Mr

A.

Dunlop M.P.

'

a bitter old Scotch lawyer

'

from Greenock, rose to propose a select committee of inquiry to investigate what

he

called

12

'

one of the grossest acts of falsification of public documents by which

that

House had ever been attempted to be deceived '. H e was not surprised, he

said

tha t his

predecessors had been thwarted, since two successive presidents of

the

board from different political parties had both solemnly declared that there

had been

no garbling. Now Kaye by his history and his blue book had proved

beyond

any

doubt that they were wrong. Dunlop said

13

that he

I z B M

Reports oJ the Select Com mitt ee o f the House of Co m m on s on Public Petit ions 1860,

18, 1173 and 1197;

II,

1220 1246, 1270, 1333, 1359, 1518, 1551 and 1670. There were 22

Petitions

in this period braring

95

signatures and the wording of all of them was practically

identical.

I Z 3

ral~ificationo/ diplomatic do c m ent ~ . Th e Aflghun Papers . Report and peti tion o f the

Nelucostle /oreign afluirs us~ociation

London,

r

860).

I z 4 Ibid. p

i.

1 2 Ibid. p. 11.

]bid. pp. 16-17, 19.

'''

mar 1861, B.M. Add. MSS 43,763, fo. 126.

'

Palmerston to Hobhouse, 19 Mar. 1861, B.M. Add. MSS 46,915, fo. 343. It

of

Palmerrton s energy that he

at the age of

76,

after a long debate and well after midnight,

sit

down and write a letter like this.

ansard ccxrl 37.

1 9 0

Ihid. p,

38.


24/33

250

G . J.

A L D E R

had read this blue book with amazement, indignation, and shame. Amazement, at

the extent an d audacity of the falsifications; indig natio n, at the injustice done

to

poor

Sir Alexander Burnes and Dost M ahom ed, and a t the fraud that had been perpetrated

on the H ouse; an d sham e, that a Departm ent of the Governm ent could be found cap-

able of resorting to such means of screening itself from censure.

D u nl o p expressly disassociated himself from those w ho drew Urquharti te con-

clusions ab ou t the pr im e m inister s treachery f ro m the suppressions involving

Russia. B u t so fa r as Bu rne s desp atches w ere conc erned nd he cited more of

the m tha n any previous speaker in the house ha d ever done he argued that the

supp ressions w ere m otiv ated by deceit a n d by guilt. B urnes s body, he con-

cluded

3

pu tting the prosecution case in a nutshell,

was hacked to pieces by the Afghans But his reputation was mangled still more

cruelly by those w ho should have defended it

.

H e had been falsely held out by the

Government which had employed him . s the instigator and adviser of that unjust

and calam itous war, and this for the dastard ly purpose of screening themselves from

a condemnation which they were conscious that they deserved, and laying on him the

obloquy of a charge of w hich they knew him to be innocent.

Palm erston , no w aged seventy-six a n d a good deal excited lJ2 by what he

9 133

called D un lop s violent vituperations ,

replied at length and with spirit.

It

wa s Ho bho use s defence of

1842

all over again. The prime minister denied that

Burnes s views had been m isrepres ented ; he po inted-o ut that those views were

no t th e only ones to be considered a n d he arg ue d, perhaps unwisely, that Burnes

f o r all his ene rgy w as a political inn oce nt whose confusion of ideas, misconcep-

tions, an d over-credulity was overruled by a n Ind ian government seeing

fu rt h er an d look ing deeper in the m atte r Palrnerston was answered by one

of the mo st dead ly of ninetee nth-ce ntury parliam entary orators, John Bright.I3

Bright rarely raised his voice, but the contrast between the control of his delivery

an d th e s w eepin g torren t of his phrases ma de a pow erful impression on nearly

all wh o hea rd h im .

On

this occasion what he said was neither remarkable nor

even strictly tru e a n d he di d n ot give a single instance of garbling. But his speech

was someh ow rem em bered , alon g w ith Kaye s book, as the final proof that the

1839

blue books were indeed garbled . Br igh t de nied th at Burnes s views were

unimportant .

If

that were the case, he asked, why were such pains taken to con-

ceal them? As if t ha t wa s no t eno ug h, Palrnerston has n ow stooped so low as,

1 3 Ibid. p. 55. Dunlop subsequently reprinted his speech as a pamphlet entitled Aflghan PapcrJ

(London, I861).

Hobhouse Diary,

2

Mar. 1861, B.M. Add. MSS 43,763, fo. 127.

133

Hansard C L X I I , 58.

134 Ibid. pp.

63

and 62.

35

Bright had been developing an interest in Indian affairs in the 185os, G. B. Smith,

The

Life

6

Speeches of ]ohn Bright M.P.

(London, 188r), 1 472 There is no reference to this debate in the

Bright Papers at the B.M. but the speech is reprinted in 1 E. T Rogers (ed.), Speeches on Queftionr

o/

Public Policy by loh n Bright M .P . (London, 1868),

1 I

13.


25/33


26/33

5

G

J

A L D E R

m ons debate. H e ended, several letters later on 27 Ju ne, in face of aggravating

silences a n d delays fr om Palme rston, w ith very stro ng words indeed:

You were a party to the o rig inal falsification of my late brother s despatches. When

taxed in the recent debate with the act, you attempted to cover it by traducing

his

mem ory; an d when furnished by me w ith proofs of the incorrectness of the assertions

on which the calumnies were based, you remained silent. I know what terms would be

applied to such proceedings in private life. It must now rest with the public to apply

those fitting to your Lordship s position in this m atter, since your refusal

of

justice

leaves me no alternative but to publish the correspondence.

A nd publ ish he d id n a pamphle t 14 with a preface which said prophetically,

I have done my duty to my Brother s memory leave the world to decide between

him an d Lord Palm erston, and have no doubt myself of the stamp which history will

place on the part originally taken by his Lordship as to the Kabul Despatches.

A n d there the case for the prosecution rested.

T h e verdict w a s . uilty. M od ern historians of Palmerston s career have,

practically w ith ou t exception, assum ed th at h e wa s som ehow involved in a shady

transaction designed to conceal the true opinions of Alexander Burnes.ld3And

the

1839 blue books alm ost always carry the label garbled

.

There are many

reasons for the virtual unanimity about this interpretation, as this article will

have shown. In the first place, a few able and determined men for different

reasons and over the span

of

a whole generation gave it the support of their

spok en a n d w ritt en wo rds. A journalist like Buist seekin g reputation and circula-

tion fo r his n ew spa per ; relatives like Jam es an d D av id Burnes seeking justice

fo r the rep utation of their de ad b roth er; politicians like Disraeli, Bright and Roe-

bu ck see kin g political we apon s o r a good cause; a dedicated publicist like Urqu-

hart seeking to bring Palmerston to the block and perhaps himself to Downing

Street; a moralist historian like Kaye seeking to demonstrate that the Afghan

war was an evil which spawned evil under the workings of some great natural

law. It is no t, of course, suggested th at any of these m en were insincere or that

these were their only motives. Merely, that if mud is thrown often enough some

of it is bo un d to stick. A nd , as the diarist Charle s Greville put it,ld4 t is always

difficult to tu rn the p ublic w hen once it has received a bias, no matter what

. It

is even more difficult when, as in this case, the bias is reinforced both by its

innate plausibility and by the historical situation which gave it birth. ~lexander

Burnes had, on the strength of his great journey into unknown Central Asia,

acqu ired by the age of twenty-eight both f am e an d authority. W hen he and his

book appeared in London in the winter of 1833-4 they were both given a rap-

I d a Correspondence ~ 1 1 t h ord Palmerston relative t the late Sir Alexander Burnes London,

1861).

143 H . C. F.

Bell, Lord Polmerrton London,

r936),

I

289; D.

Southgate, The Most English

Minister London. 1966), p.

158.

Sir C Webster Palmers ton ,

11, 744

n) denies that the Burnes blue

ooks were exceptionally garbled but does not argue that Palmerston was not responsible for them.

14 In another context, H . Reeve ed.), Greville lournal,

11

,

r49


27/33

T H E ' G A R B L E D ' B L U E B O O K S OF 1 8 3 9

5 3

turous reception.145 ome believed that his association with the Afghan war was

one reason why it was so little criticized at first. But when later it came to be

realized

that he had argued a line of policy which was not followed, and when

the rival policy led to the loss of an army in circumstances of peculiarly com-

pelling and well-publicized horror, and when Burnes himself with so much pro-

mise

before him was cut down with his younger brother as a prelude to all the

disasters which followed, one can see that the situation was ready-made for the

creation of a martyr-myth, with Burnes in the title role as the first victim of the

Afghan war '

14

dying for a policy which he had opposed, and his father in a

supporting role, obliged to step forward on behalf of an injured child, and lay a

memorial at the feet of his sovereign

.I4

The Afghan war has received an almost

unanimously bad press, and so has the weakened and discredited whig govern-

ment which began it. The garbling accusation was of course only one small

side-issue in the great inter-party dispute about the war, but it fitted very neatly

into the general opposition case which was argued so powerfully by Kaye. If the

war

was

monumentally immoral and unjust, one could easily assume that its

authors were not only capable of resorting to small-time deception and forgery

but had a powerful motive as well. Guilty men explanations seem to have an

irresistible appeal in all ages. In this case they were particularly appealing to

those

who believed that Burnes could do no wrong. Had he not described the

blue

books as pure trickery and announced his intention one day to set the

record straight '?His defenders could not know, what is now clear beyond any

doubt

that Burnes s writings are often couched-in a highly excitable style and

littered with exaggeration and overstatement. In this case, his vehemence may

have

owed something to a dash of guilty conscience about his own part in a policy

of

which he disapproved. But Burnes s views apart, the mere fact that a govern-

ment was

in 1858 persuaded to publish in full what a previous government had

on y

published in part was in itself an event so novel, if not unprecedented, that

it

was

enough to convince many people that there had been deliberate deception

when the 1839 blue book was prepared.

But

had there? It must be admitted at once that a painstaking search among the

extant historical evidence gives no clear answer to the question. So far as one can

11 from almost indecipherable pencil markings on the despatches, there were

several changes of plan and several persons were involved he two parliamen-

tary

secretaries Robert Vernon Smith and Robert Gordon, William Cabell and

Hobhouse himself.148Norris is not

by

any means the first to emphasize Cabell s

1 Burnes, Traueis into Boahara

3

vols., London, 1834). Nearly 900 copies were sold on

'he f irs t day and it was smn out of print. ~t was widely and enthusiastically reviewed and French

and German translations soon appeared. See Bontbay Tim e s Jan. 1842,

p.

4 ;

J

H. Gleason. The

G e n e ~ f i ~

R.nophobia in Great Britain (Harvard, 1950). p.

163.

14'

Dunlop (incorrectly) in Hnnrard CLX I I , 55.

1 4 7

Kaye, Afghanis tan I , 204.

4 R

the various pencilled comments in 1 0 Enclosures to Secret Letters from India, XLvIII,

pecially nos. 8 and 105 of no. of 8 F&. 1838; Cabell to Maitland, 1 Mar. 1839 a d other

evidence in

1

1 2 / ~ ~ / 3 / 2


28/33

254

G .

J A L D E R

memorandum of February

1839

as the key to the baffling puzzle as to why the

papers were presented as they were.149And yet, when all is said and done,

the

only new evidence in that memorandum, written by a junior and elderly official

in whom his boss had little confidence, is that the opposition may have been

deliberately provoked into demanding more papers. Apart from that, it only

confirms what is easily deduced from other evidence hat the positive aim of

publication was to explain and justify the decision to invade Afghanistan and the

negative aim was to avoid giving offence to Russia. There is no evidence to show

how much notice Hobhouse took of the memorandum. And it is quite clear

that

the extraordinary confusion of chronology and subject-matter implicit in the

timing and contents of the various published collections, far from being a

deliber

ate smokescreen devised by Cabell or anyone else on the whig side, was largely

the responsibility of the chief opposition spokesman, Lord Ellenborough. just

who it was who decided on the confusing and unnecessary division of Burnes's

despatches into two sections on different subjects and why he did so is completely

unknown. Hobhouse's diary for 29 May

1842

states categorically that ' alterations

and suppressions of the corresponderlce of Burnes as given in the papers presented

to parliament.

.

were proposed by Palmerston but-it seems clear from the con-

text of other entries on the same subject in the diary two days later that the altera-

tions he was referring to were those made to avoid incriminating the Emperor

9

1 5 0

of Russia

Ther

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