es strictly to the subject
before us, rambled far from that subject, I should have refrained from
all digression. For and truth there is abundance to be said touching
both the substance and the style of this Proclamation. I cannot,
however, leave the honourable gentleman's peroration entirely unnoticed.
But I assure him that I do not mean to wander from the question before
us to any great distance or for any long time.

I cannot but wonder, Sir, that he who has, on this, as on former
occasions, exhibited so much ability and acuteness, should have gravely
represented it as a ground of complaint, that my right honourable
friend the Member for Northampton has made this motion in the Governor
General's absence. Does the honourable gentleman mean that this House
is to be interdicted from ever considering in what manner Her Majesty's
Asiatic subjects, a hundred millions in number, are governed? And how
can we consider how they are governed without considering the conduct
of him who is governing them? And how can we consider the conduct of him
who is governing them, except in his absence? For my own part, I can say
for myself, and I may, I doubt not, say for my right honourable friend
the Member for Northampton, that we both of us wish, with all our hearts
and souls, that we were discussing this question in the presence of
Lord Ellenborough. Would to heaven, Sir, for the sake of the credit of
England, and of the interests of India, that the noble lord were at this
moment under our gallery! But, Sir, if there be any Governor who has
no right to complain of remarks made on him in his absence, it is that
Governor who, forgetting all official decorum, forgetting how important
it is that, while the individuals who serve the State are changed, the
State should preserve its identity, inserted in a public proclamation
reflections on his predecessor, a predecessor of whom, on the present
occasion, I will only say that his conduct had deserved a very different
return. I am confident that no enemy of Lord Auckland, if Lord Auckland
has an enemy in the House, will deny that, whatever faults he may
have committed, he was faultless with respect to Lord Ellenborough. No
brother could have laboured more assiduously for the interests and
the honour of a brother than Lord Auckland laboured to facilitate Lord
Ellenborough's arduous task, to prepare for Lord Ellenborough the
means of obtaining success and glory. And what was the requital? A
procl