the East India Company. Now, I believe that this Proclamation sanctions
this policy; and I believe further that the Resolution which the right
hon. Gentleman asks the House to adopt, sanctions this Proclamation;
that it will be so read in India, and that whatever may be the
influence, unfortunate as I believe it will be, of the Proclamation
itself, when it is known throughout India that this--the highest court
of appeal--has pronounced in favour of Lord Canning's policy, it will be
one of the most unfortunate declarations that ever went forth from the
Parliament of this country to the people of that empire.

Let me then for one minute--and it shall be but for one minute--ask the
attention of the House to our pecuniary dealings with Oude. A friend of
mine has extracted from a book on this subject two or three facts which
I should like to state to the House, as we are now considering the
policy of England towards that afflicted country. It is stated that,
under the government of Warren Hastings, to the arrival of Lord
Cornwallis in 1786, the East India Company obtained from the kingdom of
Oude, and therefore from the Exchequer of the people of Oude, the sum of
9,252,000_l_.; under Lord Cornwallis, 4,290,000_l_.; under
Lord Teignmouth, 1,280,000_l_.; under Lord Wellesley,
10,358,000_l_. This includes, I ought to observe, the Doab, taken
in 1801 in lieu of subsidy, the annual revenue of that district being
1,352,000_l_. Coming down to the year 1814, there was a loan of a
million; in 1815 a loan of a million; in 1825 a loan of a million; in
1826 a loan of a million; in 1829 a loan of 625,000_l_.; and in
1838 a loan of 1,700,000_l_. Some of these sums, the House will
observe, are loans, and in one case the loan was repaid by a portion of
territory which the Company, in a very few years, under an excuse which
I should not like to justify, re-annexed to themselves, and therefore
the debt was virtually never repaid. The whole of these sums comes to