Edward Law, 1st Earl of Ellenborough
He was impressed with the growing importance of a knowledge of central Asia, in the event of a Russian advance towards the Indian frontier, and despatched Alexander Burnes to explore the district.His own letters sent monthly to the Queen, and his correspondence with the Duke of Wellington, published in 1874, afford material for an intelligent and impartial judgment of his meteoric career.On his arrival there the news that greeted him was that of the massacre of Kabul, and the sieges of Ghazni and Jalalabad, while the sepoys of Madras were on the verge of open rebellion.In his proclamation of 15 March 1842, as in his memorandum for the queen, dated the 18th, he stated with characteristic clearness and eloquence the duty of first inflicting some signal and decisive blow on the Afghans, and then leaving them to govern themselves under the sovereign of their own choice.Unhappily, when he left for upper India and learned of the failure of General England, he instructed George Pollock and William Nott, who were advancing triumphantly with their avenging columns to rescue the British captives, to fall back.[1] Dost Mahommed Khan was quietly released from a prison in Calcutta to the throne in the Bala Hissar, and Ellenborough presided over the painting of the elephants for an unprecedented military spectacle at Ferozepur, on the south bank of the Satluj.In vain had Major (afterwards Sir Henry) Rawlinson proved that they were only reproductions of the original gates, to which the Ghazni moulvies[check spelling] clung merely as a source of offerings from the faithful who visited the old conqueror's tomb.He reported some opposition, and Ellenborough ordered an inquiry, but entrusted the duty to Sir Charles Napier, with full political as well as military powers.In Gwalior to the south, the feudatory Mahratta state, there were a large rebellious army, a Ranee only twelve years of age, an adopted chief of eight, and factions in the council of ministers.He wrote a caustic despatch censuring Lord Canning for the Oudh proclamation, and allowed it to be published in The Times without consulting his colleagues, who disavowed his action in this respect.[4] But for this act of rashness, he might have enjoyed the task of carrying into effect the home constitution for the government of India which he sketched in his evidence before the select committee of the House of Commons on Indian territories on 8 June 1852.