Page:The Earl of Auckland.djvu/64

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58
LORD AUCKLAND

visited; and great was the old man's delight 'at the prospect of being permitted to revisit the land of his ancestors.' On the 17th of July Macnaghten's party set off for Simla, where the treaty was presently ratified by the Governor-General.

This Tripartite Treaty was in fact a revised and enlarged edition of the treaty of 1833. The cardinal difference between the two lay in the coming forward of the British Government to guarantee the due fulfilment of the pledges previously exchanged between Sháh Shujá and Ranjít Singh. The Governor-General bound himself to be thenceforth 'the friend of their friends and the enemy of their enemies.' Ranjít's scruples about signing the treaty had been overcome, partly by the knowledge that all his conquests from the Afgháns, including Kashmír and Pesháwar, would now be guaranteed to him and his heirs by a power on whose good faith and armed strength he could rely; and partly by a threat pretty plainly hinted, that his English friends might carry out their purpose without his aid. As for Shujá, who had stood at first upon his dignity, and wanted only British money and the loan of a few officers to drill his troops, his hesitation was speedily removed by the Envoy's assurances on both these points. Not a word was mentioned in the treaty about any scheme for helping our allies with a contingent of British troops, for Lord Auckland's folly had not yet soared so high. But one article of the treaty condemned the Amírs of Sind to pay Sháh Shujá a large sum of money in quittance