But, under whatever Government achieved, these results would have filled the minds of patriotic men with unmingled gratitude to all who had contributed to their accomplishment.  India had been in danger, and was safe.  The British arms had been stained by defeat, and were again glancing brightly in the light of victory.  Our countrymen and countrywomen had been almost hopeless captives, and were now restored to freedom and their friends.  In such a scene and season of rejoicing, we might have thought that none but a Whig of the very oldest school of all, could have entertained any feelings but those of generous sympathy and unrepining satisfaction.  But limits cannot easily be put to human perverseness.  The party whose policy had caused the evils from which we and they have been delivered, felt nothing but intense hatred to him who had been most prominent in that deliverance; and, heedless of the good that he had done, they fastened on what seemed to their malignant and microscopic vision some specks that chequered his otherwise unblemished administration of affairs.

The idea of discussing in Parliament, as we have lately witnessed, the literary style of a Government state paper at a crisis so momentous, implies a levity that would be hateful if it were not ludicrous.  But there is something peculiarly laughable in the pedantry of such criticism.  When other men are thinking of what has been done, the reviewers and poetasters of the Whig Opposition can think only of what has been said.  The facts that are before them have no value in their eyes; they see nothing but the phraseology.  From men who had themselves done nothing but what was mischievous, this is perhaps natural.  They are content, possibly, if they have never said a foolish thing, to have never done a wise one; though we are doubtful if a taunt about simplicity of composition, either comes well from the noble leader of the Whigs, or his friends, when we remember some of their old achievements in addressing their supporters.  But in the peculiar position of the Whigs, with ignominy and impeachment suspended over their heads for their Affghan errors, we think that such a course is as becoming as if a condemned criminal were to carp at the literary composition of his own reprieve.

The tactics of the Whigs in their move against Lord Ellenborough, had all the craft of conscious weakness.  First, they postponed their motion from time to time, till they were rescued by their opponents from Mr. Roebuck’s assault upon them.  Then they arranged their attack for the same night in both Houses of Parliament, lest explanations in any high quarter in the one might damage a future discussion in the other; and lastly, though thus acting by simultaneous and concerted movements in both, they framed their motions differently in each place; and in the Commons, where they had some dream of better success, confined themselves to the religious question under the letter on the Somnauth gates, omitting the Simla proclamation of the 1st October, which they knew neither Conservative nor Radical would join them to condemn.