ich has no parallel in naval history, procured for
Lord Cochrane nothing whatever but shattered health from the
incessant anxiety and exertion he had undergone in the profitless but
high-minded course he adopted to thwart the French in their attempts
to establish a permanent footing in Eastern Spain. His exploits in
Basque Roads procured him nothing but absolute ruin; for, from his
refusal as a Member of Parliament to acquiesce in a vote of thanks to
Lord Gambier, even though the same thanks were promised to himself,
may be dated that active political persecution which commenced by
depriving him of further naval employment and did not cease till it
had accomplished his utter ruin, even to striking his name out of the
_Navy List_.

The animosity of this political partisanship towards one who had
effected so much for his country is an anomaly even in political
history. That amended representation of the people in Parliament, for
which he strove up to 1818, had only fourteen years afterwards become
the law of the land, and the boast of some who had persecuted Lord
Cochrane for no offence beyond having been amongst the first to give
expression to the popular will subsequently adopted by themselves.

The efforts of Lord Cochrane in favour of reforming the abuses of the
Navy and of Greenwich Hospital, which at that time brought upon him
the wrath of the Administration, are at this moment seriously engaging
the attention of parliament, as being of paramount national necessity.
The doctrine then openly laid down, that no naval officer in
parliament had a right to interfere with naval administration, has
long been abrogated, and many of the brightest ornaments of the navy
are now amongst the foremost to denounce naval abuses in the House of
Commons. It is, in fact, to them that the country now looks for
that vigilance which shall preserve the navy in a proper state of
efficiency. Yet for these very things was Lord Cochrane persecuted,
though modern Governments, which have been liberal enough to acquiesce
in popular reforms, of which he was the early advocate, have not been
liberal enough to make him amends for the wrongs he suffered as one of
the indefatigable originators of their now-cherished measures. Still
less have they deemed it inconsistent with the honour of this great
country to refrain from rewarding him in the ordinary manner for his
most important services, rendered when others shrank from them, as was
the case at