mistaken; I never said anything of the kind.'] I did not hear it myself,
but I read it, and many of my friends came to the same conclusion. ['Oh!
oh!'] Well, I understand, then, that he did not say it; but what he did
say was, that there was a great deal of sarcasm and invective in the
despatch, and he read a passage to show that such was the case. But the
fact is that a great deal depends upon the reading. I could take a
despatch of the noble Lord himself and read it in a manner that would
perfectly astonish him. He said, if I am not mistaken, that if the House
were to approve of that despatch as a proper despatch, then Lord Canning
was not fit to occupy the meanest political or official situation.
Indian despatches have, to my mind, never been very gentle. I recollect
having read in _Mill's History of British India_, and in other
histories also, despatches that have been sent from the President of the
Board of Control, the Secret Committee, and the Court of Directors, over
and over again; and I have thought that they were written in a tone
rather more authoritative and rather more dictatorial than I should have
been disposed to write, or than I should have been pleased to receive.
It arose from this--that in old times the magnates sitting in
Leadenhall-street were writing, not to Lord Canning and men of that
altitude, but to merchants and agents whom they had sent out, who were
entirely dependent upon them, and to whom they could say just what they
liked; and for 100 years past, as far as I have seen, their despatches
have had a character for severity, and that which men call
'dictatorial,' which I think might be very well dispensed with. But that
is a matter which should certainly be taken into consideration, when a
large portion of this House are disposed not only to censure Lord
Ellenborough, but to overturn the Government, because a despatch is not
written precisely in those gentle terms which some hon. Gentlemen think
to be right when inditing a letter to a Governor-General of India.