§ Dr. Bowring,seeing the right hon. Baronet had just entered the House, hoped he would allow him (Dr. Bowring) to put the question of which he had given notice whether the Government had received any official account of the murder of Colonel Stoddart and Mr. Conolly at Bokhara?
§ Sir R. Peelsaid that the latest accounts the Government had received on the subject to which the hon. Gentleman had called the attention of the House, were contained in a dispatch from Colonel Sheil, dated Teheran, the 12th of November. In that despatch Colonel Sheil stated several grounds that made it almost impossible to draw any other conclusion than that Colonel Stoddart and Mr. Conolly had been murdered by the Ameer of Bokhara. There was to the despatch a postscript dated the 23rd, in which Colonel Sheil said, that he had seen an Affghan gentleman, commonly called Koomsedda, who had been formerly attached to Mr. Conolly, and who had arrived direct from Bokhara. The information brought by this person confirmed the report of the murder. All the interest that the representative of the Emperor of Russia possessed was exercised to save Colonel Stoddart and Mr. Conolly, but in vain. He feared there was every reason to believe that the report was but too well founded.