is at this moment, as you know, stricken down with
affliction, and I am unwilling to enter here into any considerable
discussion of the case which he is urging upon the public; but I say
that we have territory enough in India, and if we have not troubles
enough there, if we have not difficulties enough in China, if we have
not taxation enough, by all means gratify your wishes for more; but
I hope that whatever may be the shortcomings of the Government with
regard to any other questions in which we are all interested--and may
they be few!--they will shut their eyes, they will turn their backs
obstinately from adding in this mode, or in any mode, to the English
possessions in the East. I suppose that if any ingenious person were
to prepare a large map of the world, as far as it is known, and
were to mark upon it, in any colour that he liked, the spots where
Englishmen have fought, and English blood has been poured forth, and
the treasure of England squandered, scarcely a country, scarcely a
province of the vast expanse of the habitable globe would be thus
undistinguished.

Perhaps there are in this room, I am sure there are in the country,
many persons who hold a superstitious traditionary belief that,
somehow or other, our vast trade is to be attributed to what we have
done in this way, that it is thus we have opened markets and advanced
commerce, that English greatness depends upon the extent of English
conquests and English military renown. But I am inclined to think
that, with the exception of Australia, there is not a single
dependency of the Crown which, if we come to reckon what it has cost
in war and protection, would not be found to be a positive loss to the
people of this country. Take the United States, with which we have
such an enormous and constantly increasing trade. The wise statesmen
of the last generation, men whom your school histories tell you were
statesmen, serving under a monarch who they tell you was a patriotic
monarch, spent L130,000,000 of the fruits of the industry of the
people in a vain--happily a vain--endeavour to retain the colonies of
the United States in subjection to the Monarchy of England. Add up the
interest of that L130,000,000 for all this time, and how long do you
think it will be before there will be a profit on the trade with the
United States which will repay the enormous sum we invested in a war
to retain those States as colonies of this Empire? It never will
be paid off. Whe