man
of fortune. You, whom malevolence itself could never accuse of coveting
office for the sake of pecuniary gain, and whom your salary very poorly
compensates for the sacrifice of ease, and of your tastes, to the public
service, cannot estimate rightly the feelings of a man who knows that
his circumstances lay him open to the suspicion of being actuated in his
public conduct by the lowest motives. Once or twice, when I have been
defending unpopular measures in the House of Commons, that thought has
disordered my ideas, and deprived me of my presence of mind.

If this were all, I should feel that, for the sake of my own happiness
and of my public utility, a few years would be well spent in obtaining
an independence. But this is not all. I am not alone in the world. A
family which I love most fondly is dependent on me. Unless I would see
my father left in his old age to the charity of less near relations;
my youngest brother unable to obtain a good professional education; my
sisters, who are more to me than any sisters ever were to a brother,
forced to turn governesses or humble companions,--I must do something,
I must make some effort. An opportunity has offered itself. It is in
my power to make the last days of my father comfortable, to educate my
brother, to provide for my sisters, to procure a competence for myself.
I may hope, by the time I am thirty-nine or forty, to return to England
with a fortune of thirty thousand pounds. To me that would be affluence.
I never wished for more.

As far as English politics are concerned, I lose, it is true, a few
years. But, if your kindness had not introduced me very early to
Parliament,--if I had been left to climb up the regular path of my
profession, and to rise by my own efforts,--I should have had very
little chance of being in the House of Commons at forty. If I have
gained any distinction in the eyes of my countrymen,--if I have acquired
any knowledge of Parliamentary and official business, and any habitude
for the management of great affairs,--I ought to consider these things
as clear gain.

Then, too, the years of my absence, though lost, as far as English
politics are concerned, will not, I hope, be wholly lost, as respects
either my own mind or the happiness of my fellow-creatures. I can
scarcely conceive a nobler field than that which our Indian Empire now
presents to a statesman. While some of my partial friends are blaming
me for stooping to accept a share in t