The future Governor-General was in a manner prepared for the consideration of those questions which were likely to come then under his notice by his appointment in June 1793, as a Commissioner for the affairs of India in the new Board of Control under Mr. Pitt's act. This he did not regard as a merely nominal office, but applied himself to the study of the various affairs of Indian interest which presented themselves, with his accustomed zeal and ability. "He acquainted himself," says his biographer, "as far as possible, with the details of every fact bearing upon the commerce, the Government, and the laws of that country (India); and with the instinctive sagacity of great genius, pondered upon the future destiny and the possible exigencies of Hindustan. He appears to have directed his attention to it from the beginning of his career in the English Parliament; and very probably regarded the post of Commissioner for the affairs of India as a stepping-stone to the splendid appointment of Governor-General."

In the following year occurred the celebrated debate on the war with France which ensued on the death of Louis XVI. and in which Lord Mornington as a Ministerialist, supported its policy, whilst Fox and Sheridan vehemently pleaded against it. The battle on this occasion was fought on either side not by the leaders of the two great parties, but by their talented supporters, Mornington and Sheridan. The speech delivered by the former of these two celebrated disputants on that occasion, was certainly the greatest and most memorable of his political life—it had been previously prepared, and was subsequently published, by his Lordship as a separate pamphlet, whilst it was replied to by Sheridan in a continued burst of unpremeditated and passionate eloquence such as the House of Commons has seldom witnessed since. To attempt any thing like a sufficient analysis of the noble Earl's speech on this occasion would much exceed our limit: suffice it to say, that he commenced by shewing the absolute impossibility of receding with honor from the contest in which they had engaged, shewing that the principles which guided revolutionary France in her intercourse with other powers, were those of aggrandizement and ambition, which England was necessitated to submit to or to repel. He then entered upon a review of the acts of revolutionary France to prove the truth of his assertions, exposing in strong and forcible, but still in sufficiently temperate language, the want of faith and scorn of obligations which pervaded every action of the convention. "The seizure,” he exclaimed in the course of this review, "the seizure of the property of the clergy and the nobility was a revolutionary measure; the assassinations of Foulon and Berthier at Paris, and of the King's guards

All

at Versailles in the year 1789 were revolutionary measures. the succeeding outrages, the burning of the title deeds and country houses of all gentlemen of landed property, the numberless confiscations, banishments, proscriptions, and murders, of innocent persons-all these were revolutionary measures:—the massacres of the 10th August and the 2nd September-the attempt to extend the miseries of civil discord over the whole world, the more successful project of involving all Europe in the calamities of a general war were truly revolutionary measures, the insulting mockery of a pretended trial to which they subjected their humane and benevolent sovereign, and the horrid cruelty of his unjust, precipitate, and execrable murder were most revolutionary measures: it has been the art of the ruling faction of the present hour to compound and to consolidate the substance of all these dreadful transactions into one mass, to concentrate all these noxious principles, and by a new process, to extract from them a spirit which combines the malignity of each with the violence of all, and that is the true spirit of a Revolutionary Government!" The system of Finance pursued by that Government, the public renunciation of religion, the worship of reason, and the source whence its revenue was derived, was each then in its turn discussed; this memorable speech being wound up with a peroration worthy of the subject and of the speaker. From this we can only extract a few sentences :—

"All the circumstances of your situation are now before you-you are now to make your option-you are now to decide whether it best becomes the dignity, the wisdom, and the spirit of a great nation, to rely for existence on the arbitrary will of a restless and implacable enemy, or on her own sword: you are now to decide, whether you will entrust to the valor and skill of British fleets and British Armies, to the approved faith and united strength of your numerous and powerful Allies, the defence of the limited monarchy of these realms, of the constitution of Parliament, of all the established ranks and orders of society among us, of the sacred rights of property and of the whole frame of our laws, our liberty and our religion; or whether you will deliver over the guardianship of all these blessings to the justice of Cambon, the plunderer of the Netherlands, who to sustain the baseless fabric of his depreciated assignats, defrauds whole nations of their rights of property, and mortgages the aggregate wealth of Europe;-to the moderation of Danton, who first promulgated that unknown law of nature, which ordains that the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Ocean and the Rhine, should be the only boundaries of the French dominion ;-to the religion of Robespierre, whose practice of piety is to murder his own sovereign; who exhorts all mankind to embrace the same faith, and to assassinate their Kings for the honor of God; to the friendship of Barrère who avows in the face of all Europe, that the fundamental articles of the revolutionary Government of France is the ruin and annihilation of the British empire ;—or finally, to whatever may be the accidental caprice of any new band of malefactors, who, in the last convulsions of their exhausted country, may be destined to drag the present tyrants to their own scaffolds, to seize their lawless power, to emulate the depravity of their example, and to rival the enormity of their crimes!"

The marriage and subsequent separation of the Marquess Wellesley from his wife is a portion of his domestic history

which his Lordship's biographer has left unexplained. The fact is bluntly announced in the commencement of Pearce's fifth chapter, that on the 29th of November 1794, the Earl of Mornington was married, at St. George's Church, HanoverSquare, to Mademoiselle Hyacinthe Gabriel Roland, a native of France”—a lady, he subsequently informs us, whose beauty and accomplishments had for some years exercised a powerful influence over him. The biographer further assures us that they lived together on terms of the utmost affectionate harmony till the period of the noble Lord's appointment as Governor-General, that after his return from India they "did not live long together," and were not again reconciled. This is an unsatisfactory and bald account of a step so important in our hero's life. Why did not Lady Mornington accompany the GovernorGeneral to India? and what was the cause, or what were the causes, of the subsequent disagreement? are questions which suggest themselves to every mind on reading this passage of his life and they are questions which we have no means of answering with certainty, whilst it would serve little for us to endeavour to supply by conjecture, facts which are hidden from us by the veil of intended concealment.

In November 1795, Lord Mornington made his last speech in the House of Commons prior to his appointment as GovernorGeneral. It was in the debate on the Seditious Meetings Bills, and in the course of his remarks he drew rather an alarming picture of the treasonable assemblies which infected London, and of the publications which issued from these associations. In replying to these observations of Lord Mornington, Mr. Sheridan held up his Lordship to ridicule for the anxiety with which he had hunted for plots, and the laborious exertions he had made to scrape together proofs of sedition, with that happy mixture of eloquent satire and malicious irony, of which he was so thoroughly master.

Having thus arrived at the conclusion of the first Parliamentary career of our hero, it may not be amiss to notice the description which Sheridan once incidentally gave of his manner and appearance when speaking; "exactly two years ago" said he, at the opening of the session, he remembered to have seen the noble Lord with the same sonorous voice, the same placid countenance, in the same attitude, leaning gracefully upon the table; and giving an account from shreds and patches of Brissot, that the French republic would last but a few months longer." Lord Mornington appears indeed to have studied much the graces of elocution-his voice, his gestures, and his enunciation were all equally subjects to which he at first devoted

considerable attention; and although he cannot be said to have ever attained greatness as an orator, yet his parliamentary career gave abundant evidence of the solidity and strength of mind, as well as of the sound good sense and unrivalled perspicuity which subsequently distinguished him.

In October 1797 Lord Mornington was appointed GovernorGeneral of India. Lord Teignmouth had resigned that office early in the same year, apparently weary of the cares of government, and anxious to enjoy his newly gained nobility in England. The Marquess Cornwallis had been named to succeed him; but appears to have resigned in consequence of the Lord Lieutenantcy of Ireland having been held out to him as a bait to induce him so to do. However this may be, certain it is that shortly after his nomination, the Directors announced "that various circumstances had induced the Marquess Cornwallis to resign his appointments," and that "under circumstances and for reasons of a peculiar nature," the Earl of Mornington had been appointed to succeed him. This high and most responsible office was one for which the Earl had been in training apparently for three years and upwards, that is, since his appointment to the Board of Control, whilst the first despatches that he sent to India, as we shall subsequently see, prove that he had studied with extraordinary attention, and reflected with no ordinary ability, upon the various questions which, as Governor-General, came under his immediate notice. Before referring to these despatches more particularly, however, it will be well for us to take a glance at the state of India at this period, and at the policy which had been pursued then by the British Government up to the date of Lord Mornington's appointment.

In political questions connected with India there are few sources of fallacies more fertile of evil than the application of principles adapted to the constitution of Europe to the affairs of the East. This is a truth which constantly-recurring experience must have taught to every student of Indian history. Wherever civilization comes in contact with barbarism or semicivilization it must necessarily be, and consequently always has been, aggressive. The dictates of prudence are as little acted upon systematically by barbarous tribes as by semi-civilized states; and if civilization, in its higher developments, is to exist in their vicinity at all, it can only do so by quelling the turbulence and overcoming the aggression of its neighbors. Hence it arose that from the period when the British first set foot in India as governors, their course must have been one of progressive conquest, or else they must have allowed themselves to be driven from the country. Their progress since that period we are all acquainted with, and that it verifies the remarks we have just

made, will not, we conceive, be denied-true, they have been at times, more aggressive than was required; there were periods undoubtedly when a cessation from warlike operations was allowed them, and on some occasions they availed themselves of this advantage, as in the few years of Lord Teignmouth's administration, during which periods any acts of aggression would have been at once impolitic and unjust, but those who imagine the same policy could have been always maintained, must be lamentably ignorant of the state of India, or must be unreasonably biassed against our British rulers. Suppose ever so fixed a purpose to be entertained," says a distinguished statesman writing of India, "that no consideration should tempt us to increase our dominions, no man could maintain such a resolution inflexibly in all circumstances, and indeed least of all in the very event most likely to happen, namely, of some neighbouring state, greatly increasing its force, attacking us or overpowering our allies, or even only menacing us, and endangering our existence, should no measures be adopted of a counteracting tendency. In truth, we had gotten into a position," he continues, writing of the period of Lord Mornington's appointment," from which, as it was impossible to retire, so was it not by any means within our own power to determine whether we should stand still in it or advance; and it might happen that the only choice was a total abandonment of our dominion or an extension of its boundaries."*

These considerations will suffice to shew us the absurdity of that outcry which has been raised, echoed, and re-echoed by a section of politicians in India and England against every war in the former country which has tended to the aggrandisement of the latter. Such aggrandisement was a necessary consequence of the position of the British in India, the state of India itself, and the superior military skill of the Europeans. Advance or retrogression were the only alternatives; to remain at rest, in statu quo, was an impossibility. He who imagines, however, that it is our intention in these remarks to justify every Indian war must strangely misunderstand their import. What we have said proves, we trust, that progress was necessary, and consequently that some wars were necessary, whilst it leaves each individual war to be judged of, as to its justice or injustice, on its own merits.

The system which had been pursued by Sir John Shore (Lord Teignmouth) of non-interference with independent native states had been one of the means whereby he was enabled to maintain peace during his administration; experience may have since left

* Lord Brougham's "Statesmen of the time of George III." Third Series, page 276.