for in endurance of toil and gallantry of spirit they were conspicuous amongst the nations-but the bounty of nature was rendered unavailable from the tyranny of man. In the twelfth century this fair country was a conquered province; the nineteenth found it a conquered province still. During the interval many great changes took place in other parts of the empire, conducing in the highest degree to the happiness and welfare of mankind; but to Ireland they brought only aggravation and misery. The Reformation came, bringing with it the blessings of divine truth and intellectual liberty. To Ireland it brought only religious animosity, to add flame and fuel to the heats of national animosity, and to give, in the name of " Papist," another war-cry to animate the struggle between England and Ireland. The Revolution came, bringing to England and Scotland civil and religious liberty-to Ireland it brought only persecution and degradation. In 1829 came Catholic Emancipation; but it came too late, and came too ungraciously-it came as a concession made to fear; it was not followed nor accompanied by a suitable line of policy. It had excited many hopes-it was followed by disappointment. Then came irritation and a host of perils on both sides. If agitation produced coercion, coercion gave rise to fresh agitation: the difficulties and danger of the country thickened on every hand, until at length arose a Government which, all other means having failed, determined to try the only means that have never yet been fairly and fully applied to Ireland-humanity and justice. The State, so long the stepmother of the many, and the mother only of the few, became now the common parent of all the great family. The great body of the people began to look upon the Government as a kind and beneficent parent. Battalion after battalion, squadron after squadron, was withdrawn from the shores of Ireland; yet every day property became more secure, and order more manifest. Such symptoms as cannot be counterfeited, such as cannot be disguised, began to appear; and those who once despaired of that great portion of the Commonwealth began to entertain a confident hope that it would at length take its place among the nations of Europe, and assume that position to which it is entitled by its own natural resources, and by the wit and talent of its children.

This, I feel, the history of the present government of Ireland will one day prove. Let it thus go on; and then, as far as I am concerned, I care not what the end of this debate may be, or whether we stand or fall. That question it remains with the House to decide. Whether the result will be victory or defeat I know not; but I know that there are defeats not less glorious than even victory itself; and yet I have seen and shared in some glorious victories. Those were proud and happy days-even my right hon. friend (Sir J. Graham) who last addressed you will remember them—those were proud and happy days when, amidst the praises and blessings of millions, my noble friend (Lord J. Russell) led us on in the great struggle for the Reform Bill-when hundreds waited around our doors till sunrise to hear the tidings. of our success—and when the great cities of the empire poured forth their populations on the highways to meet the mails that were bringing from the capital the tidings whether the battle of the people was lost or won. Those days were such days as my noble friend cannot hope to see again. Two such triumphs would be too much for one life. But, perhaps, there still awaits him a less pleasing, a less exhilarating, but not a less honourable task-the task of contending against superior numbers, through years of discomfiture, to maintain those civil liberties-those rights of conscience which are inseparably associated with the name of his illustrious house. At his side will not be wanting men who, against all odds, and through all the turns of fortune, amidst evil days and evil tongues, will defend to the last, with unabated spirit, the noble principles of Milton and Locke. He may be driven from office-he may be doomed to a life of opposition he may be made the mark for all the rancour of sects which may hate each other with a deadly hate, yet hate his toleration more he may be exposed to the fury of a Laud on one side, and to the fanaticism of a Praisegod Barebones on the other— but a portion of the praise which we bestow on the old martyrs and champions of freedom will not be refused by posterity to those who have, in these our days, endeavoured to bind together, in real union, sects and races too long hostile to each other, and to efface, by the mild influence of a parental Government, the fearful traces which have been left by the misrule of ages.

THE ARMY OF THE INDUS.

FEBRUARY 6, 1840.

On Sir J. C. Hobhouse's Motion for a Vote of Thanks of the House to the Governor-General of India, and to the officers and men of the Army of the Indus.

He could not refrain from expressing his high gratification at the unanimity of the House on this very interesting occasion, and at the manner especially in which the right hon. baronet (Sir R. Peel) had expressed himself in reference to the conduct of the British army in India. It was not his intention to enter into any of the political questions which might be considered in connexion with this expedition; but he wished to make a remark upon what had fallen from the right hon. baronet in reference to Lord Auckland. The right hon. gentleman had omitted all mention of a case of the highest importance-the case of Lord Mintoto whom, after the reduction of Java, the thanks of the House were awarded for the part which he had taken in superintending the military arrangements; nor was the right hon. baronet correct in supposing that Lord Wellesley had only received the thanks of Parliament as Captain-general, since he also received the thanks of the House in connexion with the taking of Seringapatam, when he did not act as Captain-general. He quite conceded to the right hon. baronet the right, and he fully admitted the propriety, of reserving his opinion as to the general policy under which the expedition took place, till the results were known; but his own conviction was, that this great event would be found, in its results, highly conducive to the prosperous state of our finances in India, and that, as a measure of economy, it would be found not less deserving of praise than it confessedly was in a military point of view. He could bear witness to some of the circumstances to which his right hon. friend had alluded. Among

many peculiarities of our Indian Empire there was no one more remarkable than this: that the people whom we governed there were a people whose estimate of our power sometimes far exceeded the truth, and sometimes fell far short of it. They knew nothing of our resources; they were ignorant of our geographical position; they knew nothing of the political condition of the relative power of any of the European states. They saw us come and go; but it was upon an element with which they were not acquainted, and which they held in horror. It was no exaggeration to state that not merely the common people, but the upper class-nay, even the ministers of the native provinces-were, almost without exception, so profoundly ignorant of European affairs that they could not tell whether the King of the French or the Duke of Modena was the greatest potentate. Further, he could tell the House this: when he was in India there was a restless, unquiet feeling existing in the minds of our subjects, neighbours, and subsidiary allies-a disposition to look forward to some great change, to some approaching revolution; to think that the power of England was no longer what it had been proved to be in former times. There was a disposition to war on the part of Ava and other states; on every side, in short, there had prevailed a feeling in the public mind in India, which, unchecked, might have led the way to great calamities; but this great event, this great triumph at Ghuznee, acted so signally by the British troops, had put down, with a rapidity hardly ever known in history, this restless and uneasy feeling; and there never was a period at which the opinion of our valour and skill, and, what was of equal importance, the confidence in our "star," was higher than it now was in India.

He believed that the right hon. baronet opposite would find reason to think that all the expense incurred by these thousands of camels and thousands of troops was sound and profitable economy. He had seen something of the brave men who defended our Indian Empire; and it had been matter of great delight to him to see the warm attachment to their country and their countrymen which animated them in that distant land, and which added a tenfold force to the zeal and vigour

with which they performed their arduous duties. While he was on this point, let him remark that there was a disposition in that gallant service to imagine that they were not sufficiently appreciated at home; to think that the Indian service was not so highly considered in England as other services less able, and performed with less jeopardy, in other countries. It was extraordinary to see the interest, with what gratification, the smallest scrap, the merest line, in an English newspaper, conveying any praise on this service, was received by them; and their delight would be extreme when they came to read the vote of thanks which had been conferred on them unanimously by the House of Lords, and which he trusted would be passed as unanimously by the House of Commons, the more especially accompanied as it was by the testimony to their merits borne by the greatest general that England ever produced. At the same time that this well-merited tribute conferred the highest pleasure on the brave men who shared in the expedition, it would serve as a powerful inducement to every other man in that gallant service to expose himself to every peril and every privation when the interests of the empire required it.