Excerpt from Speech of the Right Hon. George Canning: President of the Board of Controul, in the House of Commons, on Thursday, March 4, 1819, in Proposing Votes of Thanks to the Marquis of Hastings, and the British Army in India Haps rather assumed than defined, that the war is likely to have been provoked on our part, with motives very different from those Of self-defence. Notions of this sort have undoubtedly taken deep root in the public mind: but I am con fident that in the present instance (and I verily believe on former occasions which are gone by, and with which it is no business of mine to meddle at present) a case is to be made out as clear for the justice of the British cause, as for the prowess of the British arms. Neither, however, do I accuse of want of can dour those who entertain such notions; nor do I pretend to deny that the course of Indian history, since our first acquaintance with that country, furnishes some apparent foundation for them. It is not unnatural that, in surveying that vast Continent, presenting as it does - from the Boorampooter to the Indus, and from the Northern Mountains to the Sea - an area of somewhere about one million of square miles, and containing not less than one hundred mil lions Of inhabitants - in looking back to the. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.