At this moment we consume more of sugar, even excluding Ireland, than all the rest of Europe put together; and I leave it to your Lordships to consider whether it would be possible, under any circumstances whatever, that this country could go on without a supply of that article. How can that supply be furnished, supposing that the production in our colonies should fail, except by the produce of slave labour from the colonies of other countries? _June_ 25, 1833. * * * * * _East India Company; Eulogium on its Administration_. Having been so long a servant of the East India Company, whose interests you are discussing, having served for so many years of my life in that country, having had such opportunities of personally watching the operation of the government of that country, and having had reason to believe, both from what I saw at that time, and from what I have seen since, that the Government of India was at that time, one of the best and most purely administered governments that ever existed, and one which has provided most effectually for the happiness of the people over which it is placed, it is impossible that I should be present when a question of this description is discussed, without asking your Lordships' attention for a very short time whilst I deliver my opinion upon the plan which his Majesty's ministers have brought forward. I will not follow the noble Marquis who opened the debate, into the consideration of whether a chartered company be the best, or not, calculated to carry on the government or the trade of an empire like India, that is not the question to which I wish now to apply myself. But whenever I hear of such discussions as this, I recall to my memory what I have seen in that country--I recall to my memory the history of that country for the last fifty or sixty years. I remember its days of misfortune, and its days of glory, and call to mind the situation in which it now stands. I remember that the government have conducted the affairs of--I will not pretend to say how many millions of people,--they have been calculated at 70,000,000, 80,000,000, 90,000,000, and 100,000,000--but certainly of an immense population, a population returning an annual revenue of 20,000,000 l. sterling, and that notwithstanding all the wars in which the empire has been engaged its debt at this moment amounts only to 40,000,000 l., being no more than the amount of two years revenue. I do not say that such a debt is desirable; but at the same time I contend that it is a delusion on the people of this country to tell them that that is a body unfit for government, and unfit for trade, which has administered the affairs of India with so much success for so many years, and which is at length to be put down,--for I can use no other term,--upon the ground that it is an institution calculated for the purposes neither of government nor trade.