it would soon have been known; the Irish might have sung universal jubilations and lit bonfires on every hill; but it would have been no real triumph, and the value of a moral conviction in the eyes of the people of England would have been unappreciable. All this has been overlooked in a stupid, narrow-minded, shortsighted, professional eagerness to ensure a conviction. [Sidenote: O'CONNELL'S TRIAL.] Yesterday Lord Wharncliffe showed me a despatch from Lord Ellenborough to Lord Ripon, on the subject of his position with respect to the Secret Committee of the Directors, which is admirable, both in sentiment and expression. I knew already that the Court and the Government were at variance about his Indian policy, and that the Duke of Wellington not only strongly supported him, but wrote to him (I saw one of his letters) in cordial terms of approval and encouragement; but I did not know that the differences between Ellenborough and the Court were so serious as it appears they were, and I suppose are. The Secret Committee passed a resolution condemnatory of his proceedings in Scinde, couched in very strong and even offensive language, and to this resolution he responds in terms full of dignity and determination. He tells them that ever since he took the Government in India, which was at a time of unparalleled difficulty, they had thrown every obstacle in his way, and embarrassed his course by their want of co-operation and encouragement. He asks why, if such was their opinion, they did not exercise the power with which they are invested, censure and recall him; that he should not be provoked to resign, because he believed that his doing so at this moment would be productive of more evil than his endeavouring to administer the Government with such crippled means as they left to him, and he should therefore cast upon them the whole responsibility of withdrawing him if they pleased, and continue to discharge his duty, fully relying upon his possessing the confidence of the Crown, though he might not possess theirs. I believe he is doing well in India now. How, by the by, in all his letters, the Duke of Wellington inveighs against 'the licentious Press' both in India and here! He hates the press everywhere, but he knows that here it is, if an evil, a necessary and unavoidable evil; but in such a country as India, he cannot forgive those who introduced the pernicious anomaly of a free press, and in this I entirely agree with him. It was done by Sir Charles Metcalfe, a man of extraordinary ability, and considered as one of the greatest authorities, if not the greatest, on Indian affairs. [Sidenote: O'CONNELL'S ADVICE ON IRELAND.]