to defend it, his friends pretend
that he believed the temple to have been already restored, and that he
had no thought of being himself the restorer. How can I believe this?
How can I believe that, when he issued this proclamation, he knew
nothing about the state of the temple to which he proposed to make an
offering of such importance? He evidently knew that it had once been in
ruins; or he would not have called it the restored temple. Why am I to
suppose that he imagined it to have been rebuilt? He had people about
him who knew it well, and who could have told him that it was in ruins
still. To say that he was not aware that it was in ruins is to say that
he put forth his proclamation without taking the trouble to ask a single
question of those who were close at hand and were perfectly competent to
give him information. Why, Sir, this defence is itself an accusation. I
defy the honourable gentleman the Secretary of the Board of Control, I
defy all human ingenuity, to get his lordship clear off from both the
horns of this dilemma. Either way, he richly deserves a parliamentary
censure. Either he published this proclamation in the recklessness of
utter ignorance without making the smallest inquiry; or else he, an
English and a Christian Governor, meant to build a temple to a heathen
god at the public charge, in direct defiance of the commands of his
official superiors. Turn and twist the matter which way you will, you
can make nothing else of it. The stain is like the stain of Blue Beard's
key, in the nursery tale. As soon as you have scoured one side clean,
the spot comes out on the other.

So much for the first charge, the charge of disobedience. It is fully
made out: but it is not the heaviest charge which I bring against Lord
Ellenborough. I charge him with having done that which, even if it had
not been, as it was, strictly forbidden by the Home authorities, it
would still have been a high crime to do. He ought to have known,
without any instructions from home, that it was his duty not to take
part in disputes among the false religions of the East; that it was his
duty, in his official character, to show no marked preference for any of
those religions, and to offer no marked insult to any. But, Sir, he has
paid unseemly homage to one of those religions; he has grossly insulted
another; and he has selected as the object of his homage the very worst
and most degrading of those religions, and as the object of his ins