The National Register.
London, England, 1809-12-10 00:00:00

77S

test, which wiii be, perhaps, unparalleled in duration, ran-
cour, sufferings, and illegitimate hostility ; which requires
from all her members the most cordial union of will and
effort,—mildness, conciliation, and the controul of reason,
on the part of government ; on that of the people, zeal,
confidence, and submission to the law. The country, under
these circumstances, must consider that Ministers, as con-
spiring against her existence, as leagued with her most in-
veterate enemy, who attempts, from a spirit of petty fog-

ging litigation, a bias for former professional habits, and a
waspish irritability, to create disunion in her bosom, a civil
war of legal prosecutions, fines, imprisonment, when every
nerve, every mind, and every heart, from the cottage to the
palace, should throb and think in unison.
Government, of late years, has discovered a manifest in-
competency to meet, to their full extent, the perils of our
situation ; to obviate, even check, an accumulating torrent
of difficulties. It has, in like manner, been greatly deficient
in that happy versatility of talent, which accommodates
itself instantly to mutations in the political world ; and in
that firmness and perspicuity which seizes the right mode
of conduct, and then adheres to it with unyielding pertina-
city. Balancing between principle and expedient, plan and
visual suggestion, vigour and prudence, the advantages of
a bold and comprehensive system of hostility, and the ter-
rors of failure ; it exhibited alternately the ardour and
restlessness of hope, the uneasiness of doubt, and the lan-
gubr of disappointment. Hence that deplorable vacillation
in our council ; those gigantic demonstrations, and puny
efforts; the language of men, with the little passions and
caprice of women. Every nation is said to possess a dis-
tinct character, and some of its members are said to exhibit,
in a very marked degree, the qualities which constitute it.
Ours is extremely ardent in pursuit, naturally addicted to
what is great, splendid and hazardous, bat easily disgusted
and relaxed by disappointuaent. Such has been the feature,
of our late policy,
It was necessary to prefix this review, to be able to ap-
pretiate the merits of Lord WELLESLICT2I nomination. This
nobleman possesses a very different character from what we

have just described. He displayed, upon a distant theatre,
the very reverse of that policy, which has been found so in-
jurious and disgraceful at home. Comprehensiveness of
view, boldness of conception, energy, rapidity, decision in
the execution, marked his administration in the East. The
means he employed have been represented rather as expe-
dient than moral,—striding directly and boldly to the goal ;
towering vastly above the surrounding crowd, with his
eve fixed unalterably upon the object of attainment, he is
said to have brushed down, in his gigantic and rapid ca.
rc.cr, the frail fences of Indian law. 'His object, it is true,
vas aklays great; and even those, who disapproved the

weans, were forced to admire the genius, hardihood, and in-
variable success which characterised the executicn. Such
are the sentiments of his opponeas. His friends, on the
contrary, admitting some points of the above state-
pent, describe his Lordship's measures, as not only advan-
tageous to the interests but the honour of his country—as
baying estolighed a vast system pf power, and likewise of:
legislation g—as having consolidated the edifice of British
greatness with the props of law, and upon the basis of In4ian
order and happineu. His Lordship is represented by the
'ame party to have traversed the vast regions of India, not
014 m a couttwor, but.to hate (mph:4W it as a philoso-