the discussions in that House went forth to the Indian public.  He found one Minister of the Crown saying—­’He should like to see the Minister, or the Governor of India, who would dare to withdraw from the position we occupied in Affghanistan.’ (Hear, hear.) He found another noble lord, in another place, stating, ’they took credit for the whole of that measure, and he trusted that at no time would that position in Affghanistan be abandoned.’  These were views of public policy which went forth to India, and it was not inconvenient nor unjust that those who administered the government of India on different principles should proclaim their views.  The noble earl opposite, knew that at that period it was not intended altogether to confine the operations of the army to the westward of the Indus.  It was very well to say, that it was unwise and impolitic, and calculated to destroy the unanimity which was so essential to the Government of India, to issue public information as to the reasons for the withdrawal of an army, although its advance was heralded by a declaration on all these points, because the withdrawal of an army was supposed to terminate the operations; but in the eyes of India and Asia, if the declaration of the noble earl, dated from Simla on the same day of the same month of a preceding year, had remained as a record of British policy after that declaration had been followed by a campaign, brilliant at its commencement, but as delusive as brilliant, and terminated by a most awful tragedy, and by the greatest disaster that ever befell the British forces—­was it unbecoming in a Governor-General to state, that the views and policy of the Government of India had changed, and that the Government no longer wished to interfere in the policy of Affghanistan, its motives for so doing having passed away on finding that the king, represented to be so popular, was unpopular?  But there was another circumstance which called for Lord Ellenborough’s declaration, namely, the necessity of allaying the apprehensions and fears of other states; and it was Lord Ellenborough’s duty to do this.  Had the Sikhs no apprehensions with respect to our intentions on Lahore?  The most serious apprehensions had been stated by the Durbar of Lahore to our political agent there, Mr. Clark, and had been represented by him to the Government of India.—­Other states also had entertained apprehensions of the intentions and motives of the Indian Government, and he had yet to learn that it was a fault in a Governor-General to allay these apprehensions of native states, even if no precedent could be found for such a proceeding.  After the policy of the Indian Government which had been proclaimed, it became Lord Ellenborough’s duty to take the step he had done.”

This, however, is the true gravamen of the quarrel of the Whigs with Lord Ellenborough.  He has thrown overboard their aggressive policy—­that policy which Lord Auckland, indeed, had not in words avowed in India, but which his friends at home had openly declared and gloried in.  It was necessary for Lord Ellenborough, by a frank declaration of his intentions, to exclude the prevalent suspicion—­nay, the universal belief—­of those projects of encroachment which the Whig Government had countenanced.  This was the unkindest cut of all.