FORE:It would be useless to encumber these pages with a detailed narrative of the desultory conflicts that occurred at Candahar, where General Nott commanded, amidst the greatest difficulties, until General England came to his relief on the 10th of May; or at Khelat-i-Ghilzai, a post entrusted to Captain Lawrence; or in the country about Ghuznee, the garrison of which, commanded by Captain Palmer, was compelled to surrender for want of water. He was an officer in General Nott's division, and by his brother officers the fall of the place was regarded as more disgraceful than the loss of Cabul. At length Generals Pollock and Nott were enabled to overawe the Afghans. They were now at the head of two forces in excellent health and spirits, eager to advance on Cabul and avenge the national honour of Great Britain, which had been so grievously insulted. But Lord Ellenborough had come to the resolution that it was no longer necessary to imperil the armies of Great Britain, and with the armies the Indian Empire, by occupying Afghanistan. All that was now required to be done rested solely upon military considerations, and especially upon regard to the safety of the detached bodies of our troops at Jelalabad, at Ghuznee, at Khelat-i-Ghilzai, and Candahar. He was, therefore, feverishly anxious that the troops should retire at the earliest possible moment, and sent orders to that effect to Pollock at Jelalabad and to Nott at Candahar.
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FORE:Fox and his party still maintained a vigorous and persevering endeavour to remain at peace; but he weakened his efforts by professing to believe that we might yet enter into substantial engagements with the French, who had at this moment no permanent settled Government at all, but a set of puppet Ministers, ruled by a Convention, and the Convention ruled by a mob flaming with the ideas of universal conquest and universal plunder. If Fox had advocated the wisdom of maintaining the defensive as much as possible, and confining ourselves to defending our Dutch allies, as we were bound, his words would have had more weight; but his assurance that we might maintain a full and friendly connection with a people that were butchering each other at home, and belying all their most solemn professions of[416] equity and fraternity towards their dupes abroad, only enabled Pitt to ask him with whom he would negotiateWas it with Robespierre, or the monster Marat, then in the ascendant? "But," added Pitt, "it is not merely to the character of Marat, with whom we would now have to treat, that I object; it is not to the horror of those crimes which have stained their legislatorscrimes in every stage rising above one another in enormity,but I object to the consequences of that character, and to the effect of those crimes. They are such as render a negotiation useless, and must entirely deprive of stability any peace which could be concluded in such circumstances. The moment that the mob of Paris comes under a new leader, mature deliberations are reversed, the most solemn engagements are retracted, or free will is altogether controlled by force. All the crimes which disgrace history have occurred in one country, in a space so short, and with circumstances so aggravated, as to outrun thought and exceed imagination." In fact, to have made an alliance with France at that moment, and for long afterwards, would have been to sanction her crimes, and to share the infamy of her violence and lawlessness abroad.
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