“... But to my mind that is not all that we ought to look to. Even if we do vindicate our authority with complete success--revenge the insults that we have received, rebuild the power that has been destroyed ... although we will assert with the highest hand our authority, although we will not rest until our unquestioned supremacy and predominance are acknowledged, ... it is not merely as avengers that we appear. _I think that the great body of the population of that country ought to know that there is for them a future of hope. I think we ought to temper justice with mercy--justice the most severe with mercy the most indulgent...._ Neither internal nor external peace can in India,” he urged, “be secured by British troops alone. _There must be no more annexation, no more conquest...._ It is totally impossible that you can ever govern 150,000,000 of men in India by merely European agency. You must meet that difficulty boldly and completely.... _You ought at once ... to tell the people of India that the relation between them and their real ruler and sovereign, Queen Victoria, shall be drawn nearer._ You must act upon the opinion of India on that subject immediately; _and you can only act upon the opinion of Eastern nations through their imagination_. You ought to have a Royal Commission sent by the Queen from this country to India immediately, to inquire into the grievances of the various classes of that population. You ought to issue a royal proclamation to the people of India, declaring that the Queen of England is not a sovereign who will countenance the violation of treaties ... that she ... will respect their laws, their usages, their customs, and, above all, their religion. _Do this, and do this not in a corner, but in a mode and manner which will attract universal attention, and excite the general hope of Hindostan in the Queen’s name and with the Queen’s authority._ If that be done, simultaneously with the arrival of your forces, you may depend upon it that your military advance will be facilitated, and, I believe, your ultimate success insured.” I have abstracted this significant speech, which took three hours to deliver, because it shows how his mind grasped such situations, and how his imagination played all around them. In the same way, in 1856, he deprecated the violent interference of Sir J. Bowring (a former secretary of the Peace Society) with the Chinese, and insisted that they were “the nation of etiquette,” and were not to be coerced by “a brutal freedom of manners.” “If you are not,” he then prophetically protested, “cautious and careful of your conduct now in dealing with China, you will find that you are likely not to extend commerce, _but to excite the jealousy of powerful states, and to involve yourselves in hostilities with nations not inferior to yourselves_....”