read my printed speech on that subject, at least what is contained from page 230 to page 241 in the second volume of the collection[16] which a friend has given himself the trouble to make of my publications.  Be this as it may, these two bills (though achieved with the greatest labor, and management of every sort, both within and without the House) were only a part, and but a small part, of a very large system, comprehending all the objects I stated in opening my proposition, and, indeed, many more, which I just hinted at in my speech to the electors of Bristol, when I was put out of that representation.  All these, in some state or other of forwardness, I have long had by me.

But do I justify his Majesty’s grace on these grounds?  I think them the least of my services.  The time gave them an occasional value.  What I have done in the way of political economy was far from confined to this body of measures.  I did not come into Parliament to con my lesson.  I had earned my pension before I set my foot in St. Stephen’s Chapel.  I was prepared and disciplined to this political warfare.  The first session I sat in Parliament, I found it necessary to analyze the whole commercial, financial, constitutional, and foreign interests of Great Britain and its empire.  A great deal was then done; and more, far more, would have been done, if more had been permitted by events.  Then, in the vigor of my manhood, my constitution sunk under my labor.  Had I then died, (and I seemed to myself very near death,) I had then earned for those who belonged to me more than the Duke of Bedford’s ideas of service are of power to estimate.  But, in truth, these services I am called to account for are not those on which I value myself the most.  If I were to call for a reward, (which I have never done,) it should be for those in which for fourteen years without intermission I showed the most industry and had the least success:  I mean in the affairs of India.  They are those on which I value myself the most:  most for the importance, most for the labor, most for the judgment, most for constancy and perseverance in the pursuit.  Others may value them most for the intention.  In that, surely, they are not mistaken.

Does his Grace think that they who advised the crown to make my retreat easy considered me only as an economist?  That, well understood, however, is a good deal.  If I had not deemed it of some value, I should not have made political economy an object of my humble studies from my very early youth to near the end of my service in Parliament, even before (at least to any knowledge of mine) it had employed the thoughts of speculative men in other parts of Europe.  At that time it was still in its infancy in England, where, in the last century, it had its origin.  Great and learned men thought my studies were not wholly thrown away, and deigned to communicate with me now and then on some particulars of their immortal works.  Something of these studies may appear incidentally in some of the earliest things I published.  The House has been witness to their effect, and has profited of them, more or less, for above eight-and-twenty years.