Auckland would thus have secured by peaceful methods all those ends for which, a year later, he rushed into a costly, fruitless, and unrighteous war.
But the Governor-General's mind was being warped by untoward circumstances against the Afghán monarch, who for eleven years had proved in so many ways his right to displace the dynasty of Ahmad Sháh. He was loth to put further pressure on Ranjít Singh, who for his part would have surrendered Pesháwar to any one rather than the rightful claimant. Having no settled policy of his own, and being by this time far removed from his Council, Lord Auckland fell under the influence of his two Secretaries, William Macnaghten and John Colvin; both in their own way able men, and both alike bitten by the prevalent Russophobia. Burnes's letters to Macnaghten, the Foreign Secretary, were forwarded from Ludhiána through Captain Claude Wade, the Governor-General's Agent for the Sutlej frontier. Wade was a warm partisan of the dethroned Saduzai prince, Shujá-ul-Mulk, who, after many wanderings and some strange adventures, had found a home under the British flag at the frontier station of Ludhiána, where he drew his monthly pension of 4,000 rupees; brooding over his long-lost throne, the jewels extracted from him by Ranjít Singh, and his own schemes for driving his Bárakzái supplanters out of Kábul and Kandahár. He talked freely to his English visitors about Afghán affairs, and boasted largely of the hold he still retained on the hearts of his former Afghán subjects.
