As soon as the question had been put from the Chair the following
Speech was made.

The motion was rejected, after a debate of three nights, by 271
votes to 261.

Mr Speaker,--If the right honourable Baronet, in rising to make
an attack on the Government, was forced to own that he was
unnerved and overpowered by his sense of the importance of the
question with which he had to deal, one who rises to repel that
attack may, without any shame, confess that he feels similar
emotions. And yet I must say that the anxiety, the natural and
becoming anxiety, with which Her Majesty's Ministers have awaited
the judgment of the House on these papers, was not a little
allayed by the terms of the right honourable Baronet's motion,
and has been still more allayed by his speech. It was impossible
for us to doubt either his inclination or his ability to detect
and to expose any fault which we might have committed, and we may
well congratulate ourselves on finding that, after the closest
examination into a long series of transactions, so extensive, so
complicated, and, in some respects, so disastrous, so keen an
assailant could produce only so futile an accusation.

In the first place, Sir, the resolution which the right
honourable Baronet has moved relates entirely to events which
took place before the rupture with the Chinese Government. That
rupture took place in March, 1839. The right honourable Baronet
therefore does not propose to pass any censure on any step which
has been taken by the Government within the last thirteen months;
and it will, I think, be generally admitted, that when he