But, it is said, what does it matter if the noble lord has written a foolish rhapsody which is neither prose nor verse? Is affected phraseology a subject for parliamentary censure? What great ruler can be named who has not committed errors much more serious than the penning of a few sentences of turgid nonsense? This, I admit, sounds plausible. It is quite true that very eminent men, Lord Somers, for example, Sir Robert Walpole, Lord Chatham and his son, all committed faults which did much more harm than any fault of style can do. But I beg the House to observe this, that an error which produces the most serious consequences may not necessarily prove that the man who has committed it is not a very wise man; and that, on the other hand, an error which directly produces no important consequences may prove the man who has committed it to be quite unfit for public trust. Walpole committed a ruinous error when he yielded to the public cry for war with Spain. But, notwithstanding that error, he was an eminently wise man. Caligula, on the other hand, when he marched his soldiers to the beach, made them fill their helmets with cockle-shells, and sent the shells to be placed in the Capitol as trophies of his conquests, did no great harm to anybody; but he surely proved that he was quite incapable of governing an empire. Mr Pitt's expedition to Quiberon was most ill judged, and ended in defeat and disgrace. Yet Mr Pitt was a statesman of a very high order. On the other hand, such ukases as those by which the Emperor Paul used to regulate the dress of the people of Petersburg, though they caused much less misery than the slaughter at Quiberon, proved that the Emperor Paul could not safely be trusted with power over his fellow-creatures. One day he forbade the wearing of pantaloons. Another day he forbade his subjects to comb their hair over their foreheads. Then he proscribed round hats. A young Englishman, the son of a merchant, thought to evade this decree by going about the city in a hunting cap. Then came out an edict which made it penal to wear on the head a round thing such as the English merchant's son wore. Now, Sir, I say that, when I examine the substance of Lord Ellenborough's proclamation, and consider all the consequences which that paper is likely to produce, I am forced to say that he has committed a grave moral and political offence. When I examine the style, I see that he has committed an act of eccentric folly, much of the same kind with Caligula's campaign against the cockles, and with the Emperor Paul's ukase against round hats. Consider what an extravagant selfconfidence, what a disdain for the examples of his great predecessors and for the opinions of the ablest and most experienced men who are now to be found in the Indian services, this strange document indicates. Surely it might have occurred to Lord Ellenborough that, if this kind of eloquence had been likely to produce a favourable impression on the minds of Asiatics,