justify, beyond all doubt, our commencement of hostilities against China. But this occurred so long ago as the month of March 1839; yet, to the eternal scandal of the then existing Government, no effectual warlike demonstration was made to redress this flagrant unparalleled outrage on the British nation, till better councils, those of the present Government, were had recourse to by her Majesty; and which led to the quick triumphant result with which the world is now ringing. Till the present vigorous Government took the affair in hand, we were _pottering_ about the extremities of the empire, month after month, even year after year, at a ruinous expense, in a way justly calculated to excite the derision of even the Chinese--of the whole world who had heard of our mode of procedure. It will be in vain for the late Government to endeavour meanly to make Captain Elliot their scapegoat. Let them, if they can, satisfy the nation that, in all he appears to have done so ineffectually and disgracefully, he did not act according to the strict orders of the late Government; that in all he would have done, and wished to have done, viz. to carry hostilities at once, with an adequate force, to the right point of attack, he was not either positively overruled, or left without advice and authority. Owing to their own want of forethought, of energy, and of practical knowledge, and their financial mismanagement, even if they had contemplated the plan of operations which led ultimately to the successful enterprize on which we are now justly congratulating ourselves, they _could_ not, they _did not_ act upon them. No, it was left for the present Government, under the auspices of him who told us that "England _could_ not carry on a little war," amidst all the embarrassments and dangers which they had just inherited from their predecessors, to send out the peremptory instructions which have been so ably acted upon; and _above all_, a naval and military force fully adequate for the occasion. This done, China succumbed; and we understand that poor Lord Palmerston is pluming himself on being able to produce, next session, a despatch which he issued to Sir Henry Pottinger, chalking out the very line of operations which was adopted with such supreme success. We, of course, cannot officially know that such is the fact: but even admitting it, why did not Lord Palmerston do this far earlier? What excuse can be offered for this vacillation and procrastination in an affair of such vast urgency? "We had not the means to equip a sufficient force," his lordship may reply, in his usual strain of bitter flippancy. And why had he not the means? The extravagance and profligacy of his Government had deprived him of them; his exchequer was empty; and had he, or they, the boldness or the virtue to propose what has been demonstrated to have been the only mode of meeting the exigency, an income-tax? In vain, therefore, may his lordship and his friends declaim in the ensuing session, and