to efface, by the mild influence of a parental government, the fearful traces which have been left by the misrule of ages. ***** WAR WITH CHINA. (APRIL 7, 1840) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 7TH OF APRIL, 1840. On the seventh of April, 1840, Sir James Graham moved the following resolution: "That it appears to this House, on consideration of the papers relating to China presented to this House by command of Her Majesty, that the interruption in our commercial and friendly intercourse with that country, and the hostilities which have since taken place, are mainly to be attributed to the want of foresight and precaution on the part of Her Majesty's present advisers, in respect to our relations with China, and especially to their neglect to furnish the Superintendent at Canton with powers and instructions calculated to provide against the growing evils connected with the contraband trade in opium, and adapted to the novel and difficult situation in which the Superintendent was placed." As soon as the question had been put from the Chair the following Speech was made. The motion was rejected, after a debate of three nights, by 271 votes to 261. Mr Speaker,--If the right honourable Baronet, in rising to make an attack on the Government, was forced to own that he was unnerved and overpowered by his sense of the importance of the question with which he had to deal, one who rises to repel that attack may, without any shame, confess that he feels similar emotions. And yet I must say that the anxiety, the natural and becoming anxiety, with which Her Majesty's Ministers have awaited the judgment of the House on these papers, was not a little allayed by the terms of the right honourable Baronet's motion, and has been still more allayed by his speech. It was impossible for us to doubt either his inclination or his ability to detect and to expose any fault which we might have committed, and we may well congratulate ourselves on finding that, after the closest examination into a long series of transactions, so extensive, so complicated, and, in some respects, so disastrous, so keen an assailant could produce only so futile an accusation.