Note 17 — DEATH OF THOMAS HAMILTON, ESQ.
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Footnote 17
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The system, unpalatable as it was to the nation, might, no doubt, have been carried through by an overwhelming military force, if the country had been worth the cost; but if it was not intended to retain permanent possession of Affghanistan, it appears to us that the native government was far too much interfered with—that the British envoy, the British officers employed in the districts and provinces, and the British army, stood too much between the Shah and his subjects—that we were forming a government which it would be impossible to work in our absence, and creating a state of things which, the longer it might endure, would have made more remote the time at which our interference could be dispensed with.