forms by itself
a separate class of political phenomena. The laws which regulate its
growth and its decay are still unknown to us. It may be that the public
mind of India may expand under our system till it has outgrown that
system; that by good government we may educate our subjects into a
capacity for better government; that, having become instructed in
European knowledge, they may, in some future age, demand European
institutions. Whether such a day will ever come I know not. But never
will I attempt to avert or to retard it. Whenever it comes, it will be
the proudest day in English history. To have found a great people sunk
in the lowest depths of slavery and superstition, to have so ruled
them as to have made them desirous and capable of all the privileges of
citizens, would indeed be a title to glory all our own. The sceptre may
pass away from us. Unforeseen accidents may derange our most profound
schemes of policy. Victory may be inconstant to our arms. But there are
triumphs which are followed by no reverse. There is an empire exempt
from all natural causes of decay. Those triumphs are the pacific
triumphs of reason over barbarism; that empire is the imperishable
empire of our arts and our morals, our literature and our laws.

*****

EDINBURGH ELECTION, 1839. (MAY 29, 1839) A SPEECH DELIVERED AT EDINBURGH
ON THE 29TH OF MAY 1839.

The elevation of Mr Abercromby to the peerage in May 1839, caused a
vacancy in the representation of the city of Edinburgh. A meeting of
the electors was called to consider of the manner in which the vacancy
should be supplied. At this meeting the following Speech was made.

My Lord Provost and Gentlemen,--At the request of a very large and
respectable portion of your body, I appear before you as a candidate
for a high and solemn trust, which, uninvited, I should have thought
it presumption to solicit, but which, thus invited, I should think it
cowardice to decline. If I had felt myself justified in following my own
inclinations, I am not sure that even a summons so honourable as that
which I have received would have been sufficient to draw me away from
pursuits far better suited to my taste and temper than the turmoil of
political warfare. But I feel that my lot is cast in times in which
no man is free to judge, merely according to his own taste and temper,
whether he will devote himself to active or to contemplative life; in
times in which society has a right to demand, fro