"You see how Truth--empowered by that will which gives a giant's nerve to
an infant's arm--has burst the monstrous mass of fraud that has
endeavored to suppress it.--It calls now to Your Lordships, in the weak
but clear tone of that Cherub, Innocence, whose voice is more persuasive
than eloquence, more convincing than argument, whose look is
supplication, whose tone is conviction,--it calls upon you for redress,
it calls upon you for vengeance upon the oppressor, and points its
heaven-directed hand to the detested, but unrepenting author of its
wrongs!"

His description of the desolation brought upon some provinces of Oude by
the misgovernment of Colonel Hannay, and of the insurrection at
Goruckpore against that officer in consequence, is, perhaps, the most
masterly portion of the whole speech:--

"If we could suppose a person to have come suddenly into the country
unacquainted with any circumstances that had passed since the days of
Sujah ul Dowlah, he would naturally ask--what cruel hand has wrought this
wide desolation, what barbarian foe has invaded the country, has
desolated its fields, depopulated its villages? He would ask, what
disputed succession, civil rage, or frenzy of the inhabitants, had
induced them to act in hostility to the words of God, and the beauteous
works of man? He would ask what religious zeal or frenzy had added to the
mad despair and horrors of war? The ruin is unlike any thing that appears
recorded in any age; it looks like neither the barbarities of men, nor
the judgments of vindictive heaven. There is a waste of desolation, as if
caused by fell destroyers, never meaning to return and making but a short
period of their rapacity. It looks as if some fabled monster had made its
passage through the country, whose pestiferous breath had blasted more