In the mean time, the preparations for the trial had proceeded
rapidly; and on the thirteenth of February, 1788, the sittings of the
Court commenced. There have been spectacles more dazzling to the eye,
more gorgeous with jewelry and cloth of gold, more attractive to
grown-up children, than that which was then exhibited at Westminster;
but perhaps there never was a spectacle so well calculated to strike a
highly cultivated, a reflecting, an imaginative mind. All the various
kinds of interest which belong to the near and to the distant, to the
present and to the past, were collected on one spot and in one hour.
All the talents and all the accomplishments which are developed by
liberty and civilization were now displayed, with every advantage that
could be derived both from cooperation and from contrast. Every step
in the proceedings carried the mind either backward, through many
troubled centuries, to the days when the foundations of our
constitution were laid; or far away, over boundless seas and deserts,
to dusky nations living under strange stars, worshiping strange gods,
and writing strange characters from right to left. The High Court of
Parliament was to sit, according to forms handed down from the days of
the Plantagenets, on an Englishman accused of exercising tyranny over
the lord of the holy city of Benares, and over the ladies of the
princely house of Oude.
The place was worthy of such a trial. It was the great hall of William
Rufus, the hall which had resounded with acclamations at the
inauguration of thirty kings, the hall which had witnessed the just
sentence of Bacon and the just absolution of Somers, the hall where
the eloquence of Strafford had for a moment awed and melted a
victorious party inflamed with just resentment, the hall where Charles
had confronted the High Court of Justice with the placid courage which
has half redeemed his fame. Neither military nor civil pomp was
wanting. The avenues were lined with grenadiers. The streets were kept
clear by cavalry. The peers, robed in gold and ermine, were marshaled
by the heralds under Garter King-at-arms. The judges in their
vestments of state attended to give advice on points of law. Near a
hundred and seventy lords, three-fourths of the Upper House as the
Upper House then was, walked in solemn order from their usual place of
assembling to the tribunal. The junior baron present led the
way--George Elliot, Lord Heathfield, recently ennobled for his
memorable defense of Gibraltar against the fleets and armies of France
and Spain. The long procession was closed by the Duke of Norfolk, Earl
Marshal of the realm, by the great dignitaries, and by the brothers
and sons of the King. Last of all came the Prince of Wales,
conspicuous by his fine person and noble bearing. The gray old walls
were hung with scarlet. The long galleries were crowded by an audience
such as has rarely excited the fears or the emulations of an orator.
There were gathered together, from all parts of a great, free,
enlightened, and prosperous empire, grace and female loveliness, wit
and learning, the representatives of every science and of every art.
There were seated round the Queen the fair-haired young daughters of
the House of Brunswick. There the ambassadors of great kings and
commonwealths gazed with admiration on a spectacle which no other
country in the world could present. There Siddons, in the prime of her
majestic beauty, looked with emotion on a scene surpassing all the
imitations of the stage. There the historian of the Roman Empire
thought of the days when Cicero pleaded the cause of Sicily against
Verres, and when, before a Senate which still retained some show of
freedom, Tacitus thundered against the oppressor of Africa. There were
seen side by side the greatest painter and the greatest scholar of the
age.
The spectacle had allured Reynolds from that easel which has preserved
to us the thoughtful foreheads of so many writers and statesmen, and
the sweet smiles of so many noble matrons. It had induced Parr to
suspend his labors in that dark and profound mine from which he had
extracted a vast treasure of erudition; a treasure too often buried in
the earth, too often paraded with injudicious and inelegant
ostentation, but still precious, massive, and splendid. There appeared
the voluptuous charms of her to whom the heir of the throne had in
secret plighted his faith. There too was she, the beautiful mother of
a beautiful race, the St. Cecilia whose delicate features, lighted up
by love and music, art has rescued from the common decay. There were
the members of that brilliant society which quoted, criticized, and
exchanged repartees under the rich peacock hangings of Mrs. Montague.
And there the ladies whose lips, more persuasive than those of Fox
himself, had carried the Westminster election against palace and
treasury, shone around Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire.
The sergeants made proclamation. Hastings advanced to the bar and bent
his knee. The culprit was indeed not unworthy of that great presence.
He had ruled an extensive and populous country, had made laws and
treaties, had sent forth armies, had set up and pulled down princes.
And in his high place he had so borne himself that all had feared him,
that most had loved him, and that hatred itself could deny him no
title to glory except virtue. He looked like a great man, and not like
a bad man. A person small and emaciated, yet deriving dignity from a
carriage which, while it indicated deference to the court, indicated
also habitual self-possession and self-respect, a high and
intellectual forehead, a brow pensive but not gloomy, a mouth of
inflexible decision, a face pale and worn but serene, on which was
written, as legibly as under the picture in the council-chamber at
Calcutta, _Mens æqua in arduis_: such was the aspect with which the
great proconsul presented himself to his judges.
His counsel accompanied him--men all of whom were afterward raised by
their talents and learning to the highest posts in their profession:
the bold and strong-minded Law, afterward Chief Justice of the King's
Bench; the more humane and eloquent Dallas, afterward Chief Justice of
the Common Pleas; and Plomer, who, near twenty years later,
successfully conducted in the same high court the defense of Lord
Melville, and subsequently became Vice-Chancellor and Master of the
Rolls.
But neither the culprit nor his advocates attracted so much notice as
the accusers. In the midst of the blaze of red drapery, a space had
been fitted up with green benches and tables for the Commons. The
managers, with Burke at their head, appeared in full dress. The
collectors of gossip did not fail to remark that even Fox, generally
so regardless of his appearance, had paid to the illustrious tribunal
the compliment of wearing a bag and sword. Pitt had refused to be one
of the conductors of the impeachment; and his commanding, copious, and
sonorous eloquence was wanting to that great muster of various
talents. Age and blindness had unfitted Lord North for the duties of
a public prosecutor; and his friends were left without the help of his
excellent sense, his tact, and his urbanity. But in spite of the
absence of these two distinguished members of the Lower House, the box
in which the managers stood contained an array of speakers such as
perhaps had not appeared together since the great age of Athenian
eloquence. There were Fox and Sheridan, the English Demosthenes and
the English Hyperides. There was Burke--ignorant indeed, or negligent,
of the art of adapting his reasonings and his style to the capacity
and taste of his hearers, but in amplitude of comprehension and
richness of imagination superior to every orator, ancient or modern.
There, with eyes reverentially fixt on Burke, appeared the finest
gentleman of the age, his form developed by every manly exercise, his
face beaming with intelligence and spirit--the ingenious, the
chivalrous, the high-souled Windham. Nor, tho surrounded by such men,
did the youngest manager pass unnoticed. At an age when most of those
who distinguish themselves in life are still contending for prizes and
fellowships at college he had won for himself a conspicuous place in
Parliament. No advantage of fortune or connection was wanting that
could set off to the height his splendid talents and his unblemished
honor. At twenty-three he had been thought worthy to be ranked with
the veteran statesmen who appeared as the delegates of the British
Commons, at the bar of the British nobility. All who stood at that
bar, save him alone, are gone--culprit, advocates, accusers. To the
generation which is now in the vigor of life, he is the sole
representative of a great age which has passed away. But those who
within the last ten years have listened with delight, till the morning
sun shone on the tapestries of the House of Lords, to the lofty and
animated eloquence of Charles, Earl Grey, are able to form some
estimate of the powers of a race of men among whom he was not the
foremost.