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possessions there consisted only of a simple factory on the coast for the purposes of a permitted trade, and in comparing that period with the present, when that factory has swelled into an empire; when about one-third in point of extent, and about three-fifths in point of population, of those immense territories are subject immediately to British Government; when not less than 'another fourth of the land, and another fifth of the inhabitants, are under rulers either tributary to the British power or connected with it by close alliance; it is not unnatural that, upon such survey and comparison, prejudices should have arisen against the rapid growth of our Indian establishment; that its increase should have been ascribed, not only by enemies or rivals, but by sober reflection and by impartial philosophy, to a spirit of systematic encroachment and ambition.

On the other hand, in a power so situated as ours, a power planted in a foreign soil, and without natural root in the habits or affections of the people; compelled to struggle, first for its existence, and then for its security, and, in process of time, for the defence of allies from whom it might have derived encouragement and aid, against nations in the habit of changing f changing their masters on every turn of fortune, and, the greater part already reduced under governments founded by successful invasion; in a power so situated, it can hardly be matter of surprise that there should

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have been found an irrepressible tendency to expansion. It may be a mitigation, if not a justification, of such a tendency, that the inroads which it has occasioned have grown out of circumstances hard to be controlled; that the alternative has been, in each successive instance, conquest or extinction; and that, in consequence, we have prevailed for the most part over preceding conquerors, and have usurped, if usurped, upon older usurpations.

But, with all that may be said in excuse for this disposition of our Indian empire to stretch its limits wider every day, far am I, very far, from describing it as a disposition to be fostered and indulged; or from undervaluing the constant and laudable exertions of the British Parliament to check its progress, and, if possible, to counteract its impulse. Would to God that we could find, or rather that we could long ago have found, the point, the resting-place, at which it was possible to stand! But the finding of that point has not depended upon ourselves alone.

I state these considerations rather as qualifying generally the popular and sweeping condemnations of Indian warfare, than as necessary or applicable in the case of the present. war. I refer to the wise and sober enactments of the British Parliament, not to dispute their authority or to set aside their operation; but because I can with confidence assert, that at no period of our Indian

history, have the recorded Acts and Votes of Parliament been made more faithfully the basis of instructions to the Government in India than at the period when the Marquis of Hastings assumed the supreme authority. It is but justice to the executive body of the East India Company to say, that the whole course and tenour of their instructions has been uniformly and steadily adverse to schemes of aggrandizement, and to any war which could safely and honourably be avoided. It is but justice to the memory of the noble person, whom I succeeded in the office which I have the honour to hold, to say, that he uniformly inculcated the same forbearing policy, and laboured to turn the attention of the Indian Governments from the extension of external acquisitions or connections to the promotion of internal improvement. And having said this, it may not be an unpardonable degree of presumption in me to add that I have continued to walk in the path of my predecessor; that I have omitted no occasion of adding my exhortations to those which I found recorded in my office, against enterprizes of ambition and wars of conquest. So strongly and so recently had the pacific system been recommended, that upon the eve of the breaking out of the late hostilities, the hands of the Supreme Government were absolutely tied up from any foreign undertakings, except in a case of the most pressing exigency. Such an exigency alone

produced, or could justify, the war, the glorious result of which the House is now called upon to mark by its vote.

That war takes its denomination from the power against which it was in the first instance exclusively directed, the Pindarries a power so singular and anomalous, that perhaps no exact resemblance could be found for it in history; a power without recognized government or national existence; the force of which, as developed in the papers upon the table, is numerically so small, that many persons have, naturally enough, found themselves at a loss to conceive how it could be necessary for the suppression of such a force to make preparations so extensive. It is true that the Pindarries consisted only of from thirty thousand to forty thousand regular and irregular horse; capable, however, of receiving continual reinforcements, and of eluding, by the celerity of their movements, the attack of regular armies. Remnants of former wars-the refuse of a disbanded soldiery-they constituted a nucleus round which might assemble all that was vagabond and disaffected-all that was incapable of honest industry and peaceful occupation-all that was opposed in habit and in interest to a system of settled tranquillity in Hindostan. Hostilities against them could, therefore, be undertaken only at the risk of bringing into action all the elements of a restless and dissatisfied population; and the

hazards to be calculated were not merely those arising from their positive strength, but those also which might arise from the contagion of their excitement and example.

It was not, however, from mere speculation as to the danger to be apprehended from such a body collecting and bringing into activity the unquiet and dissolute of all manner of casts and tongues and religions; it was not from theoretical conviction of the incompatibility of the existence of such a power in central India, with the maintenance of social order and general peace, that the late war was undertaken. The Indian Government, however confident its persuasion upon these points might be-however keen its sense of the perils to which the peace of India was exposed-were too fast bound by their instructions to strike the first blow, or to engage in war upon any less provocation than that of positive aggression, either against the British power itself, or against allies whom its faith was pledged to defend. The war was provoked by actual aggressions, such as no government could endure without the neglect of a sacred duty. The native population would, without doubt, have had just reason to complain if the British Government, having superseded those who would have sympathized with their sufferings, had omitted to. avenge injuries which the awe of the British name ought perhaps to have been sufficient to