Note 114 — Chapter I

Burnes, when in England, had endeavoured to impress the Court of Directors with an idea of the expediency of sending him out as commercial agent to Caubul; but Mr. Tucker, who was then in the chair, could see only the evils of such a measure. “The late Sir Alexander Burnes,” he wrote some years afterwards, “was introduced to me in 1834 as a talented and enterprising young officer, and it was suggested that he might be usefully employed as a commercial agent at Caubul, to encourage our commerce with that country and to aid in opening the river Indus to British industry and enterprise.... I declined then to propose or to concur in the appointment of Lieutenant Burnes to a commercial agency in Caubul, feeling perfectly assured that it must soon degenerate into a political agency, and that we should as a necessary consequence be involved in all the entanglement of Afghan politics.”—[Memoirs of H. St. George Tucker.] Mr. Grant, who was then at the Board of Control, concurred in opinion with Mr. Tucker; Sir Charles Metcalfe also wrote a minute in council, emphatically pointing out the evils of this commercial agency.