You hear constantly that woman, the helpmate of man, who adorns,
dignifies, and blesses our lives, that woman in this country is cheap;
that vast numbers whose names ought to be synonyms for purity and
virtue are plunged into profligacy and infamy. But do you not know
that you sent 40,000 men to perish on the bleak heights of the Crimea,
and that the revolt in India, caused, in part at least, by the
grievous iniquity of the seizure of Oude, may tax your country to the
extent of 100,000 lives before it is extinguished; and do you know
that for the 140,000 men thus drafted off and consigned to premature
graves, nature provided in your country 140,000 women? If you have
taken the men who should have been the husbands of these women, and
if you have sacrificed L100,000,000, which as capital reserved in the
country would have been an ample fund for their employment and for the
sustentation of their families, are you not guilty of a great sin
in involving yourselves in such a loss of life and of money in war,
except on grounds and under circumstances which, according to the
opinion of every man in the country, should leave no kind of option
whatever for your choice?
I know perfectly well the kind of observations which a certain class
of critics will make upon this speech. I have been already told by a
very eminent newspaper publisher in Calcutta, who, commenting on
a speech I made at the close of the session, with regard to the
condition of India and our future policy in that country, said, that
the policy I recommended was intended to strike at the root of the
advancement of the British Empire, and that its advancement did not
necessarily involve the calamities which I pointed out as likely to
occur.
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