-- TOPICS OF THE DAY.
LORD AUCKLAND'S RETURN: EX-OFFICIAL WHIG MANCEUVRES.
Tux long-winded and laboured eulogiums on Lord AUCKLAND, and the special-pleading in defence of his conduct as Governor of India, with which the Morning Chronicle has overflowed since it received (express by the Southampton Railway) information that he had arrived off the Isle of Wight, would almost lead one to suspect that his Lordship's friends expected he was going to be impeached. The articles in question are not brief spontaneous exclamation; "Here is a great man come home! "—they look more like uncon- scious confessions that some trouble must be taken to insure him a civil reception. It would be unjust to Lord AUCKLAND LO mix up the question of his government in India with those articles. He will doubtless be called upon to explain and justify his policy in Parliament next session—to tell how much of it was his own, how much forced upon him by the home authorities—to explain, palliate, or defend it, at a time when the objects and results of the Afghan campaign have become more fully known. These topics, however important to Lord AUCKLAND and the country, have but a secondary interest in the estimation of the writer of the articles in question.
His object is to create a favourable impression regarding Lord AUCKLAND, and then to turn it to account in securing public ap- probation for the Whig invasion of the Afghan hill-country. Lord AUCKLAND is lauded to the skies, in the hope that Lord PALMER- STON and Sir JOHN CAM HOBHOUSE may be benefited by the re- flection of his popularity. Great stress is laid upon Lord AUCIL.. LAND'S pacific inclinations. " The bias of his mind, and the con- sequent tendency of his policy, when left by circumstances free to take his own line, are emphatically pacific." It is true that it is found convenient to preserve a judicious vagueness in describing the great services he has rendered to India. "It would be tedious to the great majority of our readers, and scarcely intelligible when done, to recapitulate the acts of the Legislature by which this im- provement has been wrought." But this is followed by a long list of the great things done by Lord AUCKLAND; which may be thus summed up—he did not undo what Lord WILLIAM BENTINCK (or, if credit is to be given where it is most justly due, Sir CHARLES METCALFE) had done before him. All this boastful panegyric is meant to lead to the conclusion that the war in which such a benevolent and philosophical Governor en- gaged must have been unavoidable. And it is upon the war, thus indirectly recommended to the approbation of the reader, that the scribe in the Chronicle lavishes his most profuse and heartfelt praises. "It is the expedition into Afghanistan, the greatest po- litical measure which for many years past has been undertaken by the Indian Government, that will perpetuate the military portion of Lord Auckland's administration." And again—" Our recent mails have brought intelligence of gallant exploits, crowned with such success that no one doubts, if Government be so willed, there is nothing to prevent our armies from again advancing, our power from being again asserted, and the same guarantee again possessed for the security of our North-western frontier from attack." The praise bestowed upon Lord AUCKLAND, the encomiums passed upon his pacific disposition, are only introduced as garnish to a re- commendation of aggression and conquest. It would be ungenerous to prejudge Lord AUCKLAND; although certainly the Governor who found India at peace and possessed of a surplus revenue, and leaves it engaged in a war by which nothing can be gained, (much has been and more may be lost,) and with a surplus of expenditure over income, is called upon to account for these circumstances. But even if they are satisfactorily explained, the Afghan war will remain a question quite distinct from the general character of Lord AUCKLAND'S government : he may have been right in eyery other respect and wrong in that. It must be judged by its own merits. It is a political fault which must not be allowed to be palliated by a recapitulation of his estimable quali- ties. The Ex-Ministers, who have taken upon themselves the responsibility of that war, must not be allowed to escape because Lord AUCKLAND is on the whole a good sort of man. Those who put themselves forward as leaders of the Liberal party are not to be allowed either tacitly or expressly to countenance the false and mischievous principles upon which that expedition is defended, because an ex-official, who coquets with them, thinks it may fur- nish a fine theme of declamation against Ministers if they recall our troops from Afghanistan. Men are not to be allowed to play fast and loose with those great principles of humanity, equity, and expediency in the high and true sense of the word, which are the basis of civil and international justice, merely because it may serve the ends of a party.
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