occupants have been protected. Garrisons have been reduced, police diminished. The country is so tranquil that an English child might travel from one end of it to the other in safety; so thriving that its people have been the most prompt and liberal of all the natives of India in responding to the cry of their famishing: brethren of the North-West.'
Such was the end of the rash and ill-considered attack, which nearly shipwrecked an English Ministry, cost its author his seat in the Cabinet, and might, but for Lord Canning's calmness, have produced a calamitous disturbance in Indian administration at a moment still sorely beset with difficulty and peril. I have dwelt upon it at length because no other incident in Lord Canning's career displays, so far as I am aware, in more striking colours his characteristic qualities of thoroughness in preparation, wisdom in action, and magnanimity under undeserved attack.
