case he appears in a light in which it
is much to be deplored that a Governor General should appear.

So much for the serious side of this business; and now for the ludicrous
side. Even in our mirth, however, there is sadness; for it is no light
thing that he who represents the British nation in India should be a
jest to the people of India. We have sometimes sent them governors whom
they loved, and sometimes governors whom they feared; but they never
before had a governor at whom they laughed. Now, however, they laugh;
and how can we blame them for laughing, when all Europe and all America
are laughing too? You see, Sir, that the gentlemen opposite cannot keep
their countenances. And no wonder. Was such a State paper ever seen in
our language before? And what is the plea set up for all this bombast?
Why, the honourable gentleman the Secretary of the Board of Control
brings down to the House some translations of Persian letters from
native princes. Such letters, as everybody knows, are written in a most
absurd and turgid style. The honourable gentleman forces us to hear
a good deal of this detestable rhetoric; and then he asks why, if the
secretaries of the Nizam and the King of Oude use all these tropes and
hyperboles, Lord Ellenborough should not indulge in the same sort
of eloquence? The honourable gentleman might as well ask why Lord
Ellenborough should not sit cross-legged, why he should not let his
beard grow to his waist, why he should not wear a turban, why he should
not hang trinkets all about his person, why he should not ride about
Calcutta on a horse jingling with bells and glittering with false
pearls. The native princes do these things; and why should not he? Why,
Sir, simply because he is not a native prince, but an English Governor
General. When the people of India see a Nabob or a Rajah in all his
gaudy finery, they bow to him with a certain respect. They know that
the splendour of his garb indicates superior rank and wealth. But if Sir
Charles Metcalfe had so bedizened himself, they would have thought
that he was out of his wits. They are not such fools as the honourable
gentleman takes them for. Simplicity is not their fashion. But they
understand and respect the simplicity of our fashions. Our plain
clothing commands far more reverence than all the jewels which the most
tawdry Zemindar wears; and our plain language carries with it far more
weight than the florid diction of the most ingenious Persian