1 SSINDE. 227
2 Pottinger was despatched to negotiate for the purpose. After a
3 measure of delay, proportioned to the practice of Eastern courts,
4 a treaty was concluded in April, 1838,.which possessed at least
5 the merit of brevity. It contained only five articles; by the
6 first of which the British Government engaged its good offices to
7 adjust the differences between the Ameers and Runjeet Singh ;
8 by the second, it was stipulated that an accredited British
9 minister should reside at the court of Hyderabad, and that the
10 Ameers should be at liberty to depute a vakeel to reside at the
11 court of the British Government:
12 The British Government was now engaged in a series of
13 measures designed to erect @ barrier to the Anglo-Indian empire,
14 by settling Afghanistan under a prince believed to be friendly to
15 British interests, and an invasion of ‘that country was meditated
16 for the purpose of restoring Shoojah-ool-Moolk to the posses-
17 sion of the dominions then held by Dost Mahomed Khan and his
18 relations. With a view to this, a tripartite treaty was concluded:
19 in July, 1838, ‘the parties thereto being the British Government
20 of India, the exiled Shah Shoojah-ool-Moolk, and the Sikh
21 chieftain Runjeet Singh. Preparatory to carrying out its object, it
22 became necessary to establish some more satisfactory relation with
23 Sinde, and measures were taken accordingly, on which the treaty
24 above mentioned was signed ; a copy of it with other papers, illus.
25 trative of the existing policy of the British Government, was trans-
26 mitted to Colonel Pottinger,? who was instructed to the following 2? Corresp. 1. 49,
27 effect :—-He was to apprize the Ameers of the conviction of the Go- =
28 vernor-General, that a crisis had arrived at which it was essentially
29 requisite to the security of British India that the real friends of.
30 that power should unequivocally manifest their attachment: he
31 was to inform them of the intentions of she British Government
32 with regard to the westward, and to point out articles in the tri-
33 partite treaty, by which that government engaged to arbitrate on
34 the claim of Shoojah-ool-Moolk, as sovereign of Afghanistan,
35 upon the Ameers of Sinde, and proposed to bring also to a final
36 settlement the claims of Runjeet Singh, as connected with the
37 Shah and with the territories along the course of the Indus, for-
38 merly included within the dominions of the Afghan kingdom.
39 Colonel Pottinger was also to intimate the approach of Shah
40 Shoojah, supported by a British force, to express a hope, on the
41 part of the Governor-General, in the friendly dispositions of the
42 Q2