“Ill-weaved ambition! how much art
  thou shrunk!”

It was hard that their Affghan laurels—­the only wreaths of victory that the Whigs had ever won—­should have already withered on their brow.  It was hard that their disasters should have been retrieved under the sway of a political opponent.  But it was intolerable that the plans of conquest which they had fondly cherished, and tried to press upon the country, should be virtually denounced amid the universal approbation of all good men at home and abroad; that the solitary achievement of their administration in military affairs, should be recorded in the page of history, only to be condemned as an act of injustice, inexcusably undertaken, and incompetently executed:  and relinquished by their successors in the very hour of triumph, with a wise self-denial which no one will suspect that a Whig could have ever practised.

The cloven foot has here too plainly been revealed.  It is not this phrase or that procession in particular that has displeased the Whigs.  It is the abandonment of a policy which they dared not proclaim in India, and which they could not justify in England.  They are always hankering after it still.  Mr. Vernon Smith:  “Considered it most absurd for any Governor General to declare publicly that our Indian empire had reached the limits which nature had assigned to it.  Why, what were the limits which nature had assigned to our Indian empire?  In early days, the Mahratta ditch was said to be its natural limit; and why was the Sutlej or the Indus to be more the boundary of our empire than the Himalayas?”

Even Lord John Russell, who now acknowledges the wisdom of surrendering Affghanistan, declares, in almost so many words, that his party have shrunk from a general vote of censure because they could not properly put it, and have chosen this Act as “not the worst,” but the most convenient to attack.  What the other errors of Lord Ellenborough are, or whether there are any, except the exploded story of the incivility to Mr. Amos, is nowhere definitely, discoverable in their discussions, and is not likely for some time to assume a greater degree of consistency than vague Whig calumnies and general Whig dissatisfaction.  Let them come to something definite, and see how they will fare.  If, as their old friend Lord Brougham said, “revelling in defeat, and intoxicated with failure,” they know not when they have had enough—­if they desire a contest on some other issue—­let them name their day and abide the result.

In conclusion, we would only observe, what a contrast the conduct of the Whig party towards Lord Ellenborough exhibits to that of their opponents towards Lord Auckland!  The ex Governor-General is not absent, but here to defend himself; and every one sees how much room there is for assailing his measures.  Their calamitous result would of itself go far to support the charge of imprudence, or something worse.  But not a