It needed but the announcement of the arrival of a Persian army at Herat, and the establishment of Persian dominion in the province, to consummate the completeness of the failure. After a lapse of twenty years from the date of the first siege of Herat, we found that the very event which had stimulated our English statesmen to decree the invasion of Afghanistan, had actually come to pass. The Shah of Persia had conquered Herat, and his viceroy held the key of the “Gate of India” in his hand. It was still believed to be essential to the security of our Indian empire either to maintain the integrity of Herat, as an independent principality, or to attach it to the territories of the _de facto_ ruler of Afghanistan. Dost Mahomed was still that ruler. For some time after his restoration, he had been the enemy of the British Government; but, as years passed, and the memory of his humiliation grew fainter and fainter, he had come to recognise the wisdom of an alliance with his opponents; and, in 1852, a treaty of general alliance between the two states was concluded at Herat, by Hyder Khan and John Lawrence. When, therefore, in 1856, the usurpations of the Shah of Persia again roused England to a sense of the necessity of “doing something” to wrest Herat from his grasp, she found in the Caubul Ameer a willing, because an interested, ally. The very policy which ought to have been pursued in 1837—the policy which was recommended by Sir John M’Neill—is that which then presented itself, but under what altered circumstances, for our adoption. If, instead of expelling Dost Mahomed from his principality, we had advanced him a little money to raise, and lent him a few officers to drill, an army, the Persians would not, twenty years afterwards, have been lining the walls of Herat. When the old difficulty, therefore, presented itself with a new face in 1856, England adopted, in a modified form this once-rejected policy. She supplied money and arms to Dost Mahomed, to enable him to resist the tide of Kujjur invasion. Because Persia was aggressive on one side of the Afghan frontier, she meditated no aggressions on the other. She did not make war upon the ruler of Afghanistan, in revenge for hostile intrigues at the Persian capital, and hostile movements in the Persian camp. But when Persia offended her she struck promptly at Persia. The demonstration was successful. Under a treaty, signed at Paris by the English and Persian ambassadors, Herat was evacuated, and all claims to sovereignty yielded by the Shah; and, whatever may be its results,—whatever may be the verdict of history upon the policy of the Persian War of 1856-1857, it will at least be recorded, that it had not, like the war which I have endeavoured to chronicle, the foul stain of injustice upon it.