THE LAST OF THE WARLIKE.
" Last of his line ! on battle plain
That cry shall never rise again."
IT is scarcely possible to conceive any thing more pitiful than the position assumed by the followers of PALMERSTON in both Houses of Parliament when thanks were voted to Lord ELLENBOROUGH and the Generals and other officers of the army in Afghanistan. If one tithe of what they and their organs in the press said of Lord Er.- LENBORMIGH'S conduct before the meeting of Parliament had been true, even silent acquiescence in a formal vote of thanks to him would have been treason to the nation. The unblushing exaggera- tion, (to use no stronger phrase,) the reckless calumny, of which they stand convicted by their conduct on Monday evening, attaches a disgrace to them, the impression of which cannot be effaced by such poor and unhilarious jests as that they voted thanks to Lord ELLENBOROUGH not as Governor-General but as Commissary- General of India ! The party were quite aware of the effect of their acquiescence in the vote of thanks. " He was convinced," Mr. MANGLES is reported to have said, "that when Lord EL- LENBOROUGH'S other merits were brought into question, the vote of that evening would be appealed to, and an attempt would be made to throw that over him as a protection and a shield." And yet, with this clear conviction of the consequences of their vote, not one of the old accusers—not even Lord PALMER- STON, who sat opposite Sir ROBERT PEEL, so intent upon correct- ing every inaccurate word that he made the Premier substitute " applied" for " prepared "—ventured to support the motion for postponing the vote of thanks till the House was in possession of fuller information, volunteered with desperate fidelity to the party by Mr. JOSEPH HUME. The picture would be incomplete if the nibbling criticism on Lord ELLENnoriouGH, with which the announcement of the intention not to oppose the vote of thanks was accompanied, were passed unnoticed. The excesses attributed to the retreating army were a fair subject of remark ; but what had they to do with Lord ELLENBOROUGH's conduct ?—nobody says that he ordered them to be perpetrated. It was made a pretext for carping at Lord ELLENDOROUGH, that, being at a distance from the scene of action, he left General NOTT considerable latitude of choice in the course he was to adopt : why, it is acknowledged that the protection which the. Marquis of WELLESLEY and Lord CASTLE- REAGH afforded Sir ARTHUR WELLESLEY from the minute direc- tions of the Cabinet which had paralyzed his predecessors, was a main source of his success in the Peninsula. But a more exquisite cavil still was the insinuation that Lord ELLENBOROUGH deserved no credit, inasmuch as he had merely carried out the intentions of Lord AUCKLAND; that which would have been pusillanimity in the Tory Governor-General becoming wisdom in the Whig. What was said on the occasion, however, was not half so edifying as what was seen. The absence of the effigies of Brutus and Cassius from a solemn procession only made the Roman people think the more about those patriots : the absence of Sir JOHN CAM HOBHOUSE from the debate made him the object of more speculation than has for a long time been wasted upon him. When the Afghan war was on the tapis, why did its Coryphmus skulk on the Continent ? When the policy of the Whig invasion of Afghanistan was tacitly con- demned, and the policy of the Tory retreat from it tacitly ap- proved, and when even Lord PALMERSTON " held his breath for a time"— "Oh where was Roderick then ?
One blast upon his bugle-horn were worth a thousand men t "
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