Note 15 — Chapter I

“Immediately consequent on his Majesty’s accession, certain feelings began to take root among the Douranees, in connexion with the presence of British troops, which promised ill for the future tranquillity of the country. Several of the most influential chiefs accompanied the Court from Candahar to Caubul and Jellalabad; and although it must have been with feelings of gratified pride that they beheld the leader of their order—their Shah Baba, or Father King, as he was familiarly named—seated upon the throne of his ancestors, yet it is also not unreasonable to suppose that their mortification must have been great at finding that they no longer possessed a dominant voice in the royal councils, or the ability, as formerly, to render the sovereign the victim of their intrigues, and that this conviction of their political influence being for ever superseded, must have led them to value the many personal advantages they had gained by the restoration, and to regard with peculiar hostility the intruders upon their fancied rights. At Candahar the progress of events had the same tendency to render the Douranees discontented, if not actually inimical. The chiefs who had remained with the tribes were of inconsiderable influence; but they still looked, under the revived Suddozye monarchy, to be admitted to the share of power which they deemed their right, and from which they had been jealously excluded by the Sirdars. No such participation whatever was extended to them. The present governor of the province, being altogether disqualified by his youth and inexperience to take an active part in the administration, the executive power was vested almost entirely in the hands of Wullee Mahomed Khan, the revenue manager, and the direction of the government was to the same extent dependent upon British guidance.”—[Major Rawlinson’s Report on the Assessment of the Douranee Tribes.—MS. Records.] I have met with no abler official paper than this in the whole course of my enquiries.