text:  Since the day when Lord Auckland by his famous proclamation in October 1838 "directed the assemblage of a British force for service across the Indus " we have never ceased to denounce the invasion and continued occupation of Affghanistan as equally unjust and impolitic[25]--unjust as directed against a people whose conduct had afforded us no legitimate grounds of hostility and against a ruler whose only offence was that he had accepted[26] the proffer from another quarter of that support and alliance which we had denied to his earnest entreaty--and impolitic as tending not only to plunge us into an endless succession of ruinous and unprofitable warfare but to rouse against us an implacable spirit of enmity in a nation which had hitherto shown every disposition to cultivate amicable relations with our Anglo-Indian Government