1 130 A Short History of the Sikhs.
2 kingdom from which he had already been twice
3 expelled. It is less easy to see what Lord Auckland
4 ought to have done, than it is to see that what he
5 did was the worst thing possible. On paper, the
6 advantages to be gained by the treaty were tremen-
7 dous. British India was to be provided with an
8 effectual and permanent barrier against Russo-
9 Persian intrigue ; Ranjit Singh was to be confirmed
10 as the rightful possessor of Peshawar and everything
11 else he had been able to snatch from the rulers of
12 Afghanistan ; and the Durani exile was to be restored
13 once more to the arms of his loyal and loving
14 subjects. Had Shah Shuja been everything that
15 Lord Auckland took him to be, all these good things
16 might have come to pass. But it was Shah Shuja
17 who was the weak link in the chain. His influence
18 in Afghanistan, on which the success of the enterprise
19 depended, was a myth. He himself was vain, weak-
20 minded, and incapable ; a man unfitted in every
21 particular to establish a strong government in a
22 country like Afghanistan. But this vital flaw in the
23 scheme was only discovered when it had become too
24 late to draw back.
25 The tripartite treaty thus entered into was prac-
26 tically a renewal of that made between Ranjit
27 Singh and Shah Shuja in 1833, the only important
28 difference being the participation in it of the British
29 Government. Ranjit Singh's acquiescence was not
30 obtained without difficulty. At the end of May, Mr.
31 (afterwards Sir William) Macnaghten, Chief Secretary
32 to Lord Auckland's Government, was sent on a special
33 mission to Lahore to explain to him the general plan