ed by the most eminent public men of the last
hundred years, and early associated with Pitt, the greatest of them all;
he enjoyed the highest advantages of example, intellectual exercise, and
public excitement, until he was placed in the government of India.
There, the career of every governor has exactly that portion of
difficulties which gives an administrator a claim on public applause;
with that assurance of success which stimulates the feeblest to
exertion. All our Indian wars have finished by the overthrow of the
enemy, the possession of territory, and the increase of British
power--with the single exception of the Affghan war, an expedition
wholly beyond the natural limits of our policy, and as rashly undertaken
as it was rashly carried on. The Marquess returned to Europe loaded with
honours, conspicuous in the public eye, and in the vigour of life. No
man had a fairer prospect of assuming the very highest position in the
national councils. He had the taste and sumptuousness which would have
made him popular with the first rank of nobility, the literature which
gratified the learned and intelligent, the practical experience of
public life which qualified him for the conduct of cabinets and
councils, and the gallantry and spirit which made him a favourite with
general society. He had, above all, a tower of strength in the talents
of his illustrious brother. Those two men might have naturally guided
the councils of an empire. That a man so gifted, so public, and so
ambitious of eminent distinction, should ever have been the subordinate
of the Liverpools, the Cannings, or the Greys, would be wholly
incomprehensible, but for one reason.

In the commencement of his career, he rashly involved himself in the
Catholic question. It was a showy topic for a young orator; it was an
easy exhibition of cheap patriotism; it gave an opportunity for
boundless metaphor--and it meant nothing. But, no politician has ever
sinned with Popery but under a penalty--the question hung about his neck
through every hour of his political existence. It encumbered his English
popularity, it alienated the royal favour, it flung him into the rear
rank of politicians. It made his English ambition fruitless and
secondary; and his Irish government unstable and unpopular. It
disqualified him for the noblest use of a statesman's powers, the power
of pronouncing an unfettered opinion; and it suffered a man to
degenerate into the antiquated appendage to