wonder then, that the Governor-General of India in those days held the position — to speak plainly — of a despotic Emperor. He could say and nnsay, or do and undo what he pleased, and when, and how, and where he pleased. And if any proof should be deemed necessary to confirm the accuracy of these remarks, all we have to do is to call up the recollection of Lord Dalhousie’s great absorption — within five years — of territory, which in area was more than double the extent of Great Britain and Ireland.
Unpleasant though it is for me to go back to the recollection of those wholesale annexations, and to speak of them in plain language, they must be so spoken of; for there is nothing like plain language, asserted and pronounced in sweeping terms, when plain language is thus needed, and if ever it was needed it is in speaking of the scandalous annexation under notice. And I am speaking, I repeat, as an eye-witness of all that occurred on the occasion, and asking whether any civilised government ever perpetrated a more unwarrantable act of tyranny and injustice, than that hidden from the world in the criminal seizure of Oudh; and whether its proud, susceptible, and deeply aggrieved people, numbering at least ten millions, could patiently bear, and contemplate with indifference, such grossly wrongful deeds, and yet in the bitterness of their feelings refrain from the relentless and barbarous vengeance which, in retaliation, they subsequently inflicted when the opportunity came.
We now come to that fatal day of the annexation,
