Only the opening passages of this speech can be given, made in response to the toast of his health:—
I will not pretend, gentlemen, to that species of pride which apes humility. I will not say that I am wholly unworthy of your regard, but I will tell you something of the position I hold in the East. Your approval of my conduct is no light condemnation of the conduct of those who have sought by every means, fair or unfair, to blast my reputation, even at the risk of injuring their own; who under the pretence of humanity have screened injustice, and on the plea of enquiry, have been unscrupulous enough to charge murder. It is now but a little more than five years since I was the idol of a spurious popularity; it is more than three years that I have been the object, but happily not the victim, of an unprecedented persecution, and it will afford me no light satisfaction if this night a fair and moderate estimate can be formed of my motives and conduct. Praise and blame have been lavished upon me with no sparing hand. I have been accused of every crime from murder to merchandise. I have been held up as a prodigy of perfection, and I have been cast down as a monster of iniquity. These, gentlemen, are the extremes which human folly delights in; these are the distortions which the tribunes of the people represent as Bible truths to the multitude, these the delusions which a hackneyed politician uses lightly, to wound feelings he has long outlived, and to cast a slur upon Her Majesty's servants. The evil, I fear, is inevitable, but it is no less an evil, that public morals, in such hands, should sink like water to its lowest and dirtiest level.
In replying for the Bench, the Hon. Baron Alderson said:—
I am sorry to say that in one respect I differ from Sir James Brooke and the Chairman, in that they expressed something of regret that our distinguished guest had not the approbation of all mankind. I do not think Sir James Brooke would deserve it if he had it; for I have always observed—and I believe history will confirm me—that the greatest benefactors of the human race have been the most abused in their own time, and I therefore think Sir James Brooke ought to be congratulated _because_ he is abused.