And, since we have referred to his literary tastes, it would be most

unjust not to praise the judicious encouragement which, as a ruler,

he gave to liberal studies and curious researches. His patronage was

extended, with prudent generosity, to voyages, travels, experiments,

publications. He did little, it is true, towards introducing into India

the learning of the West. To make the young natives of Bengal familiar

with Milton and Adam Smith, to substitute the geography, astronomy, and

surgery of Europe for the dotages of the Brahminical superstition, or

for the imperfect science of ancient Greece transfused through Arabian

expositions, this was a scheme reserved to crown the beneficent

administration of a far more virtuous ruler. Still it is impossible to

refuse high commendation to a man who, taken from a ledger to govern an

empire, overwhelmed by public business, surrounded by people as busy as

himself and separated by thousands of leagues from almost all literary

society, gave, both by his example and by his munificence, a great

impulse to learning. In Persian and Arabic literature he was deeply

skilled. With the Sanscrit he was not himself acquainted; but those who

first brought that language to the knowledge of European students owed

much to his encouragement. It was under his protection that the Asiatic

Society commenced its honourable career. That distinguished body

selected him to be its first president; but, with excellent taste and

feeling, he declined the honour in favour of Sir William Jones. But the

chief advantage which the students of Oriental letters derived from

his patronage remains to be mentioned. The Pundits of Bengal had always

looked with great jealousy on the attempts of foreigners to pry

into those mysteries which were locked up in the sacred dialect. The

Brahminical religion had been persecuted by the Mahommedans. What the

Hindoos knew of the spirit of the Portuguese Government might warrant

them in apprehending persecution from Christians. That apprehension,

the wisdom and moderation of Hastings removed. He was the first foreign

ruler who succeeded in gaining the confidence of the hereditary priests

of India, and who induced them to lay open to English scholars the

secrets of the old Brahminical theology and jurisprudence.

It is indeed impossible to deny that, in the great art of inspiring

large masses of human beings with confidence and attachment, no ruler

ever surpassed Hastings. If he had made himself popular with the English

by giving up the Bengalees to extortion and oppression, or if, on the

other hand, he had conciliated the Bengalees and alienated the English,

there would have been no cause for wonder. What is peculiar to him

is that, being the chief of a small band of strangers, who exercised

boundless power over a great indigenous population, he made himself

beloved both by the subject many and by the dominant few. The affection

felt for him by the civil service was singularly ardent and constant.

Through all his disasters and perils, his brethren stood by him with

steadfast loyalty. The army, at the same time, loved him as armies have

seldom loved any but the greatest chiefs who have led them to victory.

Even in his disputes with distinguished military men, he could always

count on the support of the military profession. While such was his

empire over the hearts of his countrymen, he enjoyed among the natives

a popularity, such as other governors have perhaps better merited,

but such as no other governor has been able to attain. He spoke their

vernacular dialects with facility and precision. He was intimately

acquainted with their feelings and usages. On one or two occasions, for

great ends, he deliberately acted in defiance of their opinion; but on

such occasions he gained more in their respect than he lost in their

love, In general, he carefully avoided all that could shock their

national or religious prejudices. His administration was indeed in many

respects faulty; but the Bengalee standard of good government was not

high. Under the Nabobs, the hurricane of Mahratta cavalry had passed

annually over the rich alluvial plain. But even the Mahratta shrank from

a conflict with the mighty children of the sea; and the immense

rich harvests of the Lower Ganges were safely gathered in under the

protection of the English sword. The first English conquerors had

been more rapacious and merciless even than the Mahrattas--but that

generation had passed away. Defective as was the police, heavy as were

the public burdens, it is probable that the oldest man in Bengal could

not recollect a season of equal security and prosperity. For the first

time within living memory, the province was placed under a government

strong enough to prevent others from robbing, and not inclined to play

the robber itself. These things inspired goodwill. At the same time,

the constant success of Hastings and the manner in which he extricated

himself from every difficulty made him an object of superstitious

admiration; and the more than regal splendour which he sometimes

displayed dazzled a people who have much in common with children. Even

now, after the lapse of more than fifty years, the natives of India

still talk of him as the greatest of the English; and nurses sing

children to sleep with a jingling ballad about the fleet horses and

richly caparisoned elephants of Sahib Warren Hostein.

The gravest offence of which Hastings was guilty did not affect his

popularity with the people of Bengal; for those offences were committed

against neighbouring states. Those offences, as our readers must have

perceived, we are not disposed to vindicate; yet, in order that the

censure may be justly apportioned to the transgression, it is fit that

the motive of the criminal should be taken into consideration. The

motive which prompted the worst acts of Hastings was misdirected and

ill-regulated public spirit. The rules of justice, the sentiments of

humanity, the plighted faith of treaties, were in his view as nothing,

when opposed to the immediate interest of the State. This is no

justification, according to the principles either of morality, or of

what we believe to be identical with morality, namely, far-sighted

policy. Nevertheless the common sense of mankind, which in questions

of this sort seldom goes far wrong, will always recognise a distinction

between crimes which originate in an inordinate zeal for the

commonwealth, and crimes which originate in selfish cupidity. To the

benefit of this distinction Hastings is fairly entitled. There is, we

conceive, no reason to suspect that the Rohilla war, the revolution of

Benares, or the spoliation of the Princesses of Oude, added a rupee

to his fortune. We will not affirm that, in all pecuniary dealings, he

showed that punctilious integrity, that dread of the faintest appearance

of evil, which is now the glory of the Indian civil service. But when

the school in which he had been trained, and the temptations to which he

was exposed are considered, we are more inclined to praise him for his

general uprightness with respect to money, than rigidly to blame him for

a few transactions which would now be called indelicate and irregular,

but which even now would hardly be designated as corrupt. A rapacious

man he certainly was not. Had he been so, he would infallibly have

returned to his country the richest subject in Europe. We speak within

compass, when we say that, without applying any extraordinary pressure,

he might easily have obtained from the zemindars of the Company’s

provinces and from neighbouring princes, in the course of thirteen

years, more than three millions sterling, and might have outshone the

splendour of Carlton House and of the Palais Royal. He brought home

a fortune such as a Governor-General, fond of state, and careless of

thrift, might easily, during so long a tenure of office, save out of his

legal salary. Mrs. Hastings, we are afraid, was less scrupulous. It was

generally believed that she accepted presents with great alacrity, and

that she thus formed, without the connivance of her husband, a private

hoard amounting to several lacs of rupees. We are the more inclined to

give credit to this story, because Mr. Gleig, who cannot but have heard

it, does not, as far as we have observed, notice or contradict it.

The influence of Mrs. Hastings over her husband was indeed such that she

might easily have obtained much larger sums than she was ever accused

of receiving. At length her health began to give way; and the

Governor-General, much against his will, was compelled to send her to

England. He seems to have loved her with that love which is peculiar to

men of strong minds, to men whose affection is not easily won or widely

diffused. The talk of Calcutta ran for some time on the luxurious

manner in which he fitted up the round-house of an Indiaman for her

accommodation, on the profusion of sandal-wood and carved ivory

which adorned her cabin, and on the thousands of rupees which had been

expended in order to procure for her the society of an agreeable female

companion during the voyage. We may remark here that the letters of

Hastings to his wife are exceedingly characteristic. They are tender,

and full of indications of esteem and confidence; but, at the same time,

a little more ceremonious than is usual in so intimate a relation. The

solemn courtesy with which he compliments “his elegant Marian” reminds

us now and then of the dignified air with which Sir Charles Grandison

bowed over Miss Byron’s hand in the cedar parlour.

After some months, Hastings prepared to follow his wife to England. When

it was announced that he was about to quit his office, the feeling of

the society which he had so long governed manifested itself by many

signs. Addresses poured in from Europeans and Asiatics, from civil

functionaries, soldiers, and traders. On the day on which he delivered

up the keys of office, a crowd of friends and admirers formed a lane

to the quay where he embarked. Several barges escorted him far down the

river; and some attached friends refused to quit him till the low coast

of Bengal was fading from the view, and till the pilot was leaving the

ship.

Of his voyage little is known, except that he amused himself with books

and with his pen; and that, among the compositions by which he beguiled

the tediousness of that long leisure, was a pleasing imitation of

Horace’s Otium Divos Rogat. This little poem was inscribed to Mr. Shore,

afterwards Lord Teignmouth, a man of whose integrity, humanity, and

honour, it is impossible to speak too highly, but who, like some other

excellent members of the civil service, extended to the conduct of his

friend Hastings an indulgence of which his own conduct never stood in

need.

The voyage was, for those times, very speedy. Hastings was little more

than four months on the sea. In June 1785, he landed at Plymouth, posted

to London, appeared at Court, paid his respects in Leadenhall Street,

and then retired with his wife to Cheltenham.

He was greatly pleased with his reception. The King treated him with

marked distinction. The Queen, who had already incurred much censure on

account of the favour which, in spite of the ordinary severity of her

virtue, she had shown to the “elegant Marian,” was not less gracious

to Hastings. The Directors received him in a solemn sitting; and their

chairman read to him a vote of thanks which they had passed without one

dissentient voice. “I find myself,” said Hastings, in a letter written

about a quarter of a year after his arrival in England, “I find myself

everywhere, and universally, treated with evidences, apparent even to my

own observation, that I possess the good opinion of my country.”

The confident and exulting tone of his correspondence about this time is

the more remarkable, because he had already received ample notice of

the attack which was in preparation. Within a week after he landed

at Plymouth, Burke gave notice in the House of Commons of a motion

seriously affecting a gentleman lately returned from India. The Session,

however, was then so far advanced, that it was impossible to enter on so

extensive and important a subject.

Hastings, it is clear, was not sensible of the danger of his position.

Indeed that sagacity, that judgment, that readiness in devising

expedients, which had distinguished him in the East, seemed now to have

forsaken him; not that his abilities were at all impaired; not that he

was not still the same man who had triumphed over Francis and Nuncomar,

who had made the Chief justice and the Nabob Vizier his tools, who had

deposed Cheyte Sing, and repelled Hyder Ali. But an oak, as Mr. Grattan

finely said, should not be transplanted at fifty. A man who having left

England when a boy, returns to it after thirty or forty years passed in

India, will find, be his talents what they may, that he has much both to

learn and to unlearn before he can take a place among English statesmen.

The working of a representative system, the war of parties, the arts

of debate, the influence of the press, are startling novelties to him.

Surrounded on every side by new machines and new tactics, he is as much

bewildered as Hannibal would have been at Waterloo, or Themistocles at

Trafalgar. His very acuteness deludes him. His very vigour causes him

to stumble. The more correct his maxims, when applied to the state of

society to which he is accustomed, the more certain they are to lead him

astray. This was strikingly the case with Hastings. In India he had

a bad hand; but he was master of the game, and he won every stake. In

England he held excellent cards, if he had known how to play them; and

it was chiefly by his own errors that he was brought to the verge of

ruin.

Of all his errors the most serious was perhaps the choice of a champion.

Clive, in similar circumstances, had made a singularly happy

selection. He put himself into the hands of Wedderburn, afterwards Lord

Loughborough, one of the few great advocates who have also been great

in the House of Commons. To the defence of Clive, therefore, nothing was

wanting, neither learning nor knowledge of the world, neither forensic

acuteness nor that eloquence which charms political assemblies. Hastings

intrusted his interests to a very different person, a Major in the

Bengal army, named Scott. This gentleman had been sent over from India

some time before as the agent of the Governor-General. It was rumoured

that his services were rewarded with Oriental munificence; and we

believe that he received much more than Hastings could conveniently

spare. The Major obtained a seat in Parliament, and was there regarded

as the organ of his employer. It was evidently impossible that a

gentleman so situated could speak with the authority which belongs to

an independent position. Nor had the agent of Hastings the talents

necessary for obtaining the ear of an assembly which, accustomed to

listen to great orators, had naturally become fastidious. He was always

on his legs; he was very tedious; and he had only one topic, the merits

and wrongs of Hastings. Everybody who knows the House of Commons

will easily guess what followed. The Major was soon considered as

the greatest bore of his time. His exertions were not confined to

Parliament. There was hardly a day on which the newspapers did not

contain some puff upon Hastings, signed Asiaticus or Bengalensis, but

known to be written by the indefatigable Scott; and hardly a month in

which some bulky pamphlet on the same subject, and from the same

pen, did not pass to the trunkmakers and the pastry-cooks. As to

this gentleman’s capacity for conducting a delicate question through

Parliament, our readers will want no evidence beyond that which they

will find in letters preserved in these volumes. We will give a single

specimen of his temper and judgment. He designated the greatest man then

living as “that reptile Mr. Burke.”

In spite, however, of this unfortunate choice, the general aspect

of affairs was favourable to Hastings. The King was on his side. The

Company and its servants were zealous in his cause. Among public men he

had many ardent friends. Such were Lord Mansfield, who had outlived the

vigour of his body, but not that of his mind; and Lord Lansdowne, who,

though unconnected with any party, retained the importance which belongs

to great talents and knowledge. The ministers were generally believed to

be favourable to the late Governor-General. They owed their power to

the clamour which had been raised against Mr. Fox’s East India Bill.

The authors of that bill, when accused of invading vested rights, and of

setting up powers unknown to the constitution, had defended themselves

by pointing to the crimes of Hastings, and by arguing that abuses so

extraordinary justified extraordinary measures. Those who, by opposing

that bill, had raised themselves to the head of affairs, would naturally

be inclined to extenuate the evils which had been made the plea for

administering so violent a remedy; and such, in fact, was their general

disposition. The Lord Chancellor Thurlow, in particular, whose great

place and force of intellect gave him a weight in the Government

inferior only to that of Mr. Pitt, espoused the cause of Hastings with

indecorous violence. Mr. Pitt, though he had censured many parts of the

Indian system, had studiously abstained from saying a word against the

late chief of the Indian Government. To Major Scott, indeed, the young

minister had in private extolled Hastings as a great, a wonderful

man, who had the highest claims on the Government. There was only one

objection to granting all that so eminent a servant of the public could

ask. The resolution of censure still remained on the journals of the

House of Commons. That resolution was, indeed, unjust; but, till it

was rescinded, could the minister advise the King to bestow any mark of

approbation on the person censured? If Major Scott is to be trusted, Mr.

Pitt declared that this was the only reason which prevented the advisers

of the Crown from conferring a peerage on the late Governor-General.

Mr. Dundas was the only important member of the administration who was

deeply committed to a different view of the subject. He had moved the

resolution which created the difficulty; but even from him little was

to be apprehended. Since he had presided over the committee on Eastern

affairs, great changes had taken place. He was surrounded by new allies;

he had fixed his hopes on new objects; and whatever may have been his

good qualities,--and he had many,--flattery itself never reckoned rigid

consistency in the number.

From the Ministry, therefore, Hastings had every reason to expect

support; and the Ministry was very powerful. The Opposition was loud

and vehement against him. But the Opposition, though formidable from

the wealth and influence of some of its members, and from the admirable

talents and eloquence of others, was outnumbered in Parliament, and

odious throughout the country. Nor, as far as we can judge, was the

Opposition generally desirous to engage in so serious an undertaking as

the impeachment of an Indian Governor. Such an impeachment must last

for years. It must impose on the chiefs of the party an immense load of

labour. Yet it could scarcely, in any manner, affect the event of the

great political game. The followers of the coalition were therefore

more inclined to revile Hastings than to prosecute him. They lost no

opportunity of coupling his name with the names of the most hateful

tyrants of whom history makes mention. The wits of Brooks’s aimed their

keenest sarcasms both at his public and at his domestic life. Some

fine diamonds which he had presented, as it was rumoured, to the royal

family, and a certain richly-carved ivory bed which the Queen had done

him the honour to accept from him, were favourite subjects of ridicule.

One lively poet proposed, that the great acts of the fair Marian’s

present husband should be immortalised by the pencil of his predecessor;

and that Imhoff should be employed to embellish the House of Commons

with paintings of the bleeding Rohillas, of Nuncomar swinging, of Cheyte

Sing letting himself down to the Ganges. Another, in an exquisitely

humorous parody of Virgil’s third eclogue, propounded the question,

what that mineral could be of which the rays had power to make the most

austere of princesses the friend of a wanton. A third described,

with gay malevolence, the gorgeous appearance of Mrs. Hastings at St.

James’s, the galaxy of jewels, torn from Indian Begums, which adorned

her head-dress, her necklace gleaming with future votes, and the

depending questions that shone upon her ears. Satirical attacks of this

description, and perhaps a motion for a vote of censure, would have

satisfied the great body of the Opposition. But there were two men whose

indignation was not to be so appeased, Philip Francis and Edmund Burke.

Francis had recently entered the House of Commons, and had already

established a character there for industry and ability. He laboured

indeed under one most unfortunate defect, want of fluency. But he

occasionally expressed himself with a dignity and energy worthy of

the greatest orators, Before he had been many days in Parliament, he

incurred the bitter dislike of Pitt, who constantly treated him with as

much asperity as the laws of debate would allow. Neither lapse of years

nor change of scene had mitigated the enmities which Francis had brought

back from the East. After his usual fashion, he mistook his malevolence

for virtue, nursed it, as preachers tell us that we ought to nurse our

good dispositions, and paraded it, on all occasions, with Pharisaical

ostentation.

The zeal of Burke was still fiercer; but it was far purer. Men unable

to understand the elevation of his mind, have tried to find out some

discreditable motive for the vehemence and pertinacity which he showed

on this occasion. But they have altogether failed. The idle story that

he had some private slight to revenge has long been given up, even by

the advocates of Hastings. Mr. Gleig supposes that Burke was actuated by

party spirit, that he retained a bitter remembrance of the fall of the

coalition, that he attributed that fall to the exertions of the East

India interest, and that he considered Hastings as the head and

the representative of that interest. This explanation seems to be

sufficiently refuted by a reference to dates. The hostility of Burke

to Hastings commenced long before the coalition; and lasted long after

Burke had become a strenuous supporter of those by whom the coalition

had been defeated. It began when Burke and Fox, closely allied together,

were attacking the influence of the Crown, and calling for peace with

the American republic. It continued till Burke, alienated from Fox, and

loaded with the favours of the Crown, died, preaching a crusade against

the French republic. We surely cannot attribute to the events of 1784 an

enmity which began in 1781, and which retained undiminished force long

after persons far more deeply implicated than Hastings in the events of

1784 had been cordially forgiven. And why should we look for any other

explanation of Burke’s conduct than that which we find on the surface?

The plain truth is that Hastings had committed some great crimes, and

that the thought of those crimes made the blood of Burke boil in his

veins. For Burke was a man in whom compassion for suffering, and hatred

of injustice and tyranny, were as strong as in Las Casas or Clarkson.

And although in him, as in Las Casas and in Clarkson, these noble

feelings were alloyed with the infirmity which belongs to human nature,

he is, like them, entitled to this great praise, that he devoted years

of intense labour to the service of a people with whom he had neither

blood nor language, neither religion nor manners in common, and from

whom no requital, no thanks, no applause could be expected.

His knowledge of India was such as few, even of those Europeans who have

passed many years in that country have attained, and such as certainly

was never attained by any public man who had not quitted Europe. He

had studied the history, the laws, and the usages of the East with an

industry, such as is seldom found united to so much genius and so

much sensibility. Others have perhaps been equally laborious, and have

collected an equal mass of materials. But the manner in which Burke

brought his higher powers of intellect to work on statements of facts,

and on tables of figures, was peculiar to himself. In every part of

those huge bales of Indian information which repelled almost all other

readers, his mind, at once philosophical and poetical, found something

to instruct or to delight. His reason analysed and digested those vast

and shapeless masses; his imagination animated and coloured them. Out of

darkness, and dulness, and confusion, he formed a multitude of ingenious

theories and vivid pictures. He had, in the highest degree, that noble

faculty whereby man is able to live in the past and in the future, in

the distant and in the unreal. India and its inhabitants were not to

him, as to most Englishmen, mere names and abstractions, but a real

country and a real people. The burning sun, the strange vegetation of

the palm and the cocoa-tree, the rice-field, the tank, the huge trees,

older than the Mogul empire, under which the village crowds assemble,

the thatched roof of the peasant’s hut, the rich tracery of the mosque

where the imaum prays with his face to Mecca, the drums, and banners,

and gaudy idols, the devotee swinging in the air, the graceful maiden,

with the pitcher on her head, descending the steps to the riverside, the

black faces, the long beards, the yellow streaks of sect, the turbans

and the flowing robes, the spears and the silver maces, the elephants

with their canopies of state, the gorgeous palanquin of the prince, and

the close litter of the noble lady, all these things were to him as the

objects amidst which his own life had been passed, as the objects which

lay on the road between Beaconsfield and St. James’s Street. All India

was present to the eye of his mind, from the hall where suitors laid

gold and perfumes at the feet of sovereigns to the wild moor where the

gipsy camp was pitched, from the bazar, humming like a bee-hive with

the crowd of buyers and sellers, to the jungle where the lonely courier

shakes his bunch of iron rings to scare away the hyaenas. He had just as

lively an idea of the insurrection at Benares as of Lord George Gordon’s

riots, and of the execution of Nuncomar as of the execution of Dr. Dodd.

Oppression in Bengal was to him the same thing as oppression in the

streets of London.

He saw that Hastings had been guilty of some most unjustifiable acts.

All that followed was natural and necessary in a mind like Burke’s.

His imagination and his passions, once excited, hurried him beyond the

bounds of justice and good sense. His reason, powerful as it was, became

the slave of feelings which it should have controlled. His indignation,

virtuous in its origin, acquired too much of the character of personal

aversion. He could see no mitigating circumstance, no redeeming merit.

His temper, which, though generous and affectionate, had always been

irritable, had now been made almost savage by bodily infirmities and

mental vexations, Conscious of great powers and great virtues, he found

himself, in age and poverty, a mark for the hatred of a perfidious Court

and a deluded people. In Parliament his eloquence was out of date. A

young generation, which knew him not, had filled the House. Whenever

he rose to speak, his voice was drowned by the unseemly interruption of

lads who were in their cradles when his orations on the Stamp Act

called forth the applause of the great Earl of Chatham. These things had

produced on his proud and sensitive spirit an effect at which we cannot

wonder. He could no longer discuss any question with calmness, or make

allowance for honest differences of opinion. Those who think that he

was more violent and acrimonious in debates about India than on other

occasions, are ill-informed respecting the last years of his life. In

the discussions on the Commercial Treaty with the Court of Versailles,

on the Regency, on the French Revolution, he showed even more virulence

than in conducting the impeachment. Indeed it may be remarked that the

very persons who called him a mischievous maniac, for condemning in

burning words the Rohilla war and the spoliation of the Begums,

exalted him into a prophet as soon as he began to declaim, with greater

vehemence, and not with greater reason, against the taking of the

Bastile and the insults offered to Marie Antoinette. To us he appears

to have been neither a maniac in the former case, nor a prophet in the

latter, but in both cases a great and good man, led into extravagance by

a sensibility which domineered over all his faculties.

It may be doubted whether the personal antipathy of Francis, or the

nobler indignation of Burke, would have led their party to adopt extreme

measures against Hastings, if his own conduct had been judicious. He

should have felt that, great as his public services had been, he was

not faultless, and should have been content to make his escape, without

aspiring to the honours of a triumph. He and his agent took a different

view. They were impatient for the rewards which, as they conceived, it

were deferred only till Burke’s attack should be over. They accordingly

resolved to force on a decisive action with an enemy for whom, if they

had been wise, they would have made a bridge of gold. On the first day

of the session of 1786, Major Scott reminded Burke of the notice given

in the preceding year, and asked whether it was seriously intended to

bring any charge against the late Governor-General. This challenge left

no course open to the Opposition, except to come forward as accusers, or

to acknowledge themselves calumniators. The administration of Hastings

had not been so blameless, nor was the great party of Fox and North so

feeble, that it could be prudent to venture on so bold a defiance. The

leaders of the Opposition instantly returned the only answer which they

could with honour return; and the whole party was irrevocably pledged to

a prosecution.

Burke began his operations by applying for Papers. Some of the documents

for which he asked were refused by the ministers, who, in the debate,

held language such as strongly confirmed the prevailing opinion, that

they intended to support Hastings. In April, the charges were laid on

the table. They had been drawn by Burke with great ability, though in a

form too much resembling that of a pamphlet. Hastings was furnished with

a copy of the accusation; and it was intimated to him that he might, if

he thought fit, be heard in his own defence at the bar of the Commons.

Here again Hastings was pursued by the same fatality which had attended

him ever since the day when he set foot on English ground. It seemed

to be decreed that this man, so politic and so successful in the East,

should commit nothing but blunders in Europe. Any judicious adviser

would have told him that the best thing which he could do would be to

make an eloquent, forcible, and affecting oration at the bar of the

House; but that, if he could not trust himself to speak, and found it

necessary to read, he ought to be as concise as possible. Audiences

accustomed to extemporaneous debating of the highest excellence are

always impatient of long written compositions. Hastings, however,

sat down as he would have done at the Government-house in Bengal, and

prepared a paper of immense length. That paper, if recorded on the

consultations of an Indian administration, would have been justly

praised as a very able minute. But it was now out of place. It fell

flat, as the best written defence must have fallen flat, on an assembly

accustomed to the animated and strenuous conflicts of Pitt and Fox. The

members, as soon as their curiosity about the face and demeanour of

so eminent a stranger was satisfied, walked away to dinner, and

left Hastings to tell his story till midnight to the clerks and the

Serjeant-at-Arms.

All preliminary steps having been duly taken, Burke, in the beginning of

June, brought forward the charge relating to the Rohilla war. He

acted discreetly in placing this accusation in the van; for Dundas had

formerly moved, and the House had adopted, a resolution condemning, in

the most severe terms, the policy followed by Hastings with regard to

Rohilcund, Dundas had little, or rather nothing, to say in defence of

his own consistency; but he put a bold face on the matter, and opposed

the motion. Among other things, he declared that, though he still

thought the Rohilla war unjustifiable, he considered the services which

Hastings had subsequently rendered to the State as sufficient to atone

even for so great an offence Pitt did not speak, but voted with Dundas;

and Hastings was absolved by a hundred and nineteen votes against

sixty-seven.

Hastings was now confident of victory. It seemed, indeed, that he had

reason to be so. The Rohilla war was, of all his measures, that which

his accusers might with greatest advantage assail. It had been condemned

by the Court of Directors. It had been condemned by the House of

Commons. It had been condemned by Mr. Dundas, who had since become the

chief minister of the Crown for Indian affairs. Yet Burke, having chosen

this strong ground, had been completely defeated on it. That, having

failed here, he should succeed on any point, was generally thought

impossible. It was rumoured at the clubs and coffee-houses that one or

perhaps two more charges would be brought forward, that if, on

those charges, the sense of the House of Commons should be against

impeachment, the Opposition would let the matter drop, that Hastings

would be immediately raised to the peerage, decorated with the star of

the Bath, sworn of the Privy Council, and invited to lend the assistance

of his talents and experience to the India Board. Lord Thurlow, indeed,

some months before, had spoken with contempt of the scruples which

prevented Pitt from calling Hastings to the House of Lords; and had even

said that, if the Chancellor of the Exchequer was afraid of the Commons,

there was nothing to prevent the Keeper of the Great Seal from taking

the royal pleasure about a patent of peerage. The very title was chosen.

Hastings was to be Lord Daylesford. For, through all changes of scene

and changes of fortune, remained unchanged his attachment to the spot

which had witnessed the greatness and the fall of his family, and which

had borne so great a part in the first dreams of his young ambition.

But in a very few days these fair prospects were overcast. On the

thirteenth of June, Mr. Fox brought forward, with great ability and

eloquence, the charge respecting the treatment of Cheyte Sing. Francis

followed on the same side. The friends of Hastings were in high spirits

when Pitt rose. With his usual abundance and felicity of language,

the Minister gave his opinion on the case. He maintained that the

Governor-General was justified in calling on the Rajah of Benares for

pecuniary assistance, and in imposing a fine when that assistance

was contumaciously withheld. He also thought that the conduct of the

Governor-General during the insurrection had been distinguished by

ability and presence of mind. He censured, with great bitterness, the

conduct of Francis, both in India and in Parliament, as most dishonest

and malignant. The necessary inference from Pitt’s arguments seemed to

be that Hastings ought to be honourably acquitted; and both the friends

and the opponents of the Minister expected from him a declaration to

that effect. To the astonishment of all parties, he concluded by saying

that, though he thought it right in Hastings to fine Cheyte Sing for

contumacy, yet the amount of the fine was too great for the occasion.

On this ground, and on this ground alone, did Mr. Pitt, applauding every

other part of the conduct of Hastings with regard to Benares, declare

that he should vote in favour of Mr. Fox’s motion.

The House was thunderstruck; and it well might be so. For the wrong

done to Cheyte Sing, even had it been as flagitious as Fox and Francis

contended, was a trifle when compared with the horrors which had been

inflicted on Rohilcund. But if Mr. Pitt’s view of the case of Cheyte

Sing were correct, there was no ground for an impeachment, or even for

a vote of censure. If the offence of Hastings was really no more than

this, that, having a right to impose a mulct, the amount of which mulct

was not defined, but was left to be settled by his discretion, he had,

not for his own advantage, but for that of the State, demanded too much,

was this an offence which required a criminal proceeding of the highest

solemnity, a criminal proceeding, to which during sixty years, no public

functionary had been subjected? We can see, we think, in what way a

man of sense and integrity might have been induced to take any course

respecting Hastings, except the course which Mr. Pitt took. Such a man

might have thought a great example necessary, for the preventing of

injustice, and for the vindicating of the national honour, and might, on

that ground, have voted for impeachment both on the Rohilla charge, and

on the Benares charge. Such a man might have thought that the offences

of Hastings had been atoned for by great services, and might, on that

ground, have voted against the impeachment, on both charges. With great

diffidence, we give it as our opinion that the most correct course

would, on the whole, have been to impeach on the Rohilla charge, and to

acquit on the Benares charge. Had the Benares charge appeared to us

in the same light in which it appeared to Mr. Pitt, we should, without

hesitation, have voted for acquittal on that charge. The one course

which it is inconceivable that any man of a tenth part of Mr. Pitt’s

abilities can have honestly taken was the course which he took. He

acquitted Hastings on the Rohilla charge. He softened down the Benares

charge till it became no charge at all; and then he pronounced that it

contained matter for impeachment.

Nor must it be forgotten that the principal reason assigned by the

ministry for not impeaching Hastings on account of the Rohilla war was

this, that the delinquencies of the early part of his administration

had been atoned for by the excellence of the later part. Was it not most

extraordinary that men who had held this language could afterwards vote

that the later part of his administration furnished matter for no less

than twenty articles of impeachment? They first represented the conduct

of Hastings in 1780 and 1781 as so highly meritorious that, like works

of supererogation in the Catholic theology, it ought to be efficacious

for the cancelling of former offences; and they then prosecuted him for

his conduct in 1780 and 1781.

The general astonishment was the greater, because, only twenty-four

hours before, the members on whom the minister could depend had received

the usual notes from the Treasury, begging them to be in their places

and to vote against Mr. Fox’s motion. It was asserted by Mr. Hastings,

that, early on the morning of the very day on which the debate took

place, Dundas called on Pitt, woke him, and was, closeted with him many

hours. The result of this conference was a determination to give up

the late Governor-General to the vengeance of the Opposition. It

was impossible even for the most powerful minister to carry all his

followers with him in so strange a course. Several persons high in

office, the Attorney-General, Mr. Grenville, and Lord Mulgrave, divided

against Mr. Pitt. But the devoted adherents who stood by the head of the

Government without asking questions, were sufficiently numerous to turn

the scale. A hundred and nineteen members voted for Mr. Fox’s motion;

seventy-nine against it. Dundas silently followed Pitt.

That good and great man, the late William Wilberforce, often related

the events of this remarkable night. He described the amazement of the

House, and the bitter reflections which were muttered against the Prime

Minister by some of the habitual supporters of Government. Pitt himself

appeared to feel that his conduct required some explanation. He left

the treasury bench, sat for some time next to Mr. Wilberforce, and

very earnestly declared that he had found it impossible, as a man of

conscience, to stand any longer by Hastings. The business, he said, was

too bad. Mr. Wilberforce, we are bound to add, fully believed that his

friend was sincere, and that the suspicions to which this mysterious

affair gave rise were altogether unfounded.

Those suspicions, indeed, were such as it is painful to mention. The

friends of Hastings, most of whom, it is to be observed, generally

supported the administration, affirmed that the motive of Pitt and

Dundas was jealousy. Hastings was personally a favourite with the King.

He was the idol of the East India Company and of its servants. If he

were absolved by the Commons, seated among the Lords, admitted to the

Board of Control, closely allied with the strong-minded and imperious

Thurlow, was it not almost certain that he would soon draw to himself

the entire management of Eastern affairs?

Was it not possible that he might become a formidable rival in the

Cabinet? It had probably got abroad that very singular communications

had taken place between Thurlow and Major Scott, and that, if the First

Lord of the Treasury was afraid to recommend Hastings for a peerage, the

Chancellor was ready to take the responsibility of that step on himself.

Of all ministers, Pitt was the least likely to submit with patience

to such an encroachment on his functions. If the Commons impeached

Hastings, all danger was at an end. The proceeding, however it might

terminate, would probably last some years. In the meantime, the accused

person would be excluded from honours and public employments, and could

scarcely venture even to pay his duty at Court. Such were the motives

attributed by a great part of the public to the young minister, whose

ruling passion was generally believed to be avarice of power.

The prorogation soon interrupted the discussions respecting Hastings. In

the following year, those discussions were resumed. The charge touching

the spoliation of the Begums was brought forward by Sheridan, in a

speech which was so imperfectly reported that it may be said to be

wholly lost, but which was without doubt, the most elaborately brilliant

of all the productions of his ingenious mind. The impression which it

produced was such as has never been equalled. He sat down, not merely

amidst cheering, but amidst the loud clapping of hands, in which

the Lords below the bar and the strangers in the gallery joined. The

excitement of the House was such that no other speaker could obtain a

hearing; and the debate was adjourned. The ferment spread fast through

the town. Within four and twenty hours, Sheridan was offered a thousand

pounds for the copyright of the speech, if he would himself correct

it for the press. The impression made by this remarkable display of

eloquence on severe and experienced critics, whose discernment may be

supposed to have been quickened by emulation, was deep and permanent.

Mr. Windham, twenty years later, said that the speech deserved all its

fame, and was, in spite of some faults of taste, such as were seldom

wanting either in the literary or in the parliamentary performances of

Sheridan, the finest that had been delivered within the memory of man.

Mr. Fox, about the same time, being asked by the late Lord Holland what

was the best speech ever made in the House of Commons, assigned the

first place, without hesitation, to the great oration of Sheridan on the

Oude charge.

When the debate was resumed, the tide ran so strongly against the

accused that his friends were coughed and scraped down. Pitt declared

himself for Sheridan’s motion; and the question was carried by a hundred

and seventy-five votes against sixty-eight.

The Opposition, flushed with victory and strongly supported by the

public sympathy, proceeded to bring forward a succession of charges

relating chiefly to pecuniary transactions. The friends of Hastings

were discouraged, and, having now no hope of being able to avert an

impeachment, were not very strenuous in their exertions. At length the

House, having agreed to twenty articles of charge, directed Burke to

go before the Lords, and to impeach the late Governor-General of High

Crimes and Misdemeanours. Hastings was at the same time arrested by the

Serjeant-at-Arms, and carried to the bar of the Peers.

The session was now within ten days of its close. It was, therefore,

impossible that any progress could be made in the trial till the next

year. Hastings was admitted to bail; and further proceedings were

postponed till the Houses should re-assemble.

When Parliament met in the following winter, the Commons proceeded to

elect a Committee for managing the impeachment. Burke stood at the

head; and with him were associated most of the leading members of the

Opposition. But when the name of Francis was read a fierce contention

arose. It was said that Francis and Hastings were notoriously on

bad terms, that they had been at feud during many years, that on one

occasion their mutual aversion had impelled them to seek each other’s

lives, and that it would be improper and indelicate to select a private

enemy to be a public accuser. It was urged on the other side with great

force, particularly by Mr. Windham, that impartiality, though the first

duty of a judge, had never been reckoned among the qualities of an

advocate; that in the ordinary administration of criminal justice among

the English, the aggrieved party, the very last person who ought to be

admitted into the jury-box, is the prosecutor; that what was wanted in a

manager was, not that he should be free from bias, but that he should be

able, well informed, energetic, and active. The ability and information

of Francis were admitted; and the very animosity with which he was

reproached, whether a virtue or a vice, was at least a pledge for his

energy and activity. It seems difficult to refute these arguments. But

the inveterate hatred borne by Francis to Hastings had excited general

disgust. The House decided that Francis should not be a manager. Pitt

voted with the majority, Dundas with the minority.

In the meantime, 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 jewellery 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, and 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 civilisation 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, worshipping 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 marshalled 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 Eliott, Lord

Heathfield, recently ennobled for his memorable defence 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 grey old walls were hung with scarlet. The long galleries

were crowded by an audience such as has rarely excited the fears or the

emulation 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 to many noble matrons. It had induced Parr to suspend his

labours 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 Saint 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,

criticised, 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 round Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire.

The Serjeants 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 aequa 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 afterwards raised by

their talents and learning to the highest posts in their profession,

the bold and strong-minded Law, afterwards Chief Justice of the King’s

Bench; the more humane and eloquent Dallas, afterwards Chief Justice of

the Common Pleas; and Plomer, who, near twenty years later, successfully

conducted in the same high court the defence 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 fixed 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, though

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 honour. 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 vigour 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.

The charges and the answers of Hastings were first read. The ceremony

occupied two whole days, and was rendered less tedious than it would

otherwise have been by the silver voice and just emphasis of Cowper, the

clerk of the court, a near relation of the amiable poet. On the third

day Burke rose. Four sittings were occupied by his opening speech, which

was intended to be a general introduction to all the charges. With

an exuberance of thought and a splendour of diction which more than

satisfied the highly raised expectation of the audience, he described

the character and institutions of the natives of India, recounted the

circumstances in which the Asiatic empire of Britain had originated,

and set forth the constitution of the Company and of the English

Presidencies. Having thus attempted to communicate to his hearers an

idea of Eastern society, as vivid as that which existed in his own mind,

he proceeded to arraign the administration of Hastings as systematically

conducted in defiance of morality and public law. The energy and pathos

of the great orator extorted expressions of unwonted admiration from the

stern and hostile Chancellor, and, for a moment, seemed to pierce

even the resolute heart of the defendant. The ladies in the galleries,

unaccustomed to such displays of eloquence, excited by the solemnity

of the occasion, and perhaps not unwilling to display their taste and

sensibility, were in a state of uncontrollable emotion. Handkerchiefs

were pulled out; smelling bottles were handed round; hysterical sobs

and screams were heard: and Mrs. Sheridan was carried out in a fit. At

length the orator concluded. Raising his voice till the old arches of

Irish oak resounded, “Therefore,” said be, “hath it with all confidence

been ordered, by the Commons of Great Britain, that I impeach Warren

Hastings of high crimes and misdemeanours. I impeach him in the name of

the Commons’ House of Parliament, whose trust he has betrayed. I impeach

him in the name of the English nation, whose ancient honour he has

sullied. I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose rights

he has trodden under foot, and whose country he has turned into a

desert. Lastly, in the name of human nature itself, in the name of both

sexes, in the name of every age, in the name of every rank, I impeach

the common enemy and oppressor of all!”

When the deep murmur of various emotions had subsided, Mr. Fox rose to

address the Lords respecting the course of proceeding to be followed.

The wish of the accusers was that the Court would bring to a close the

investigation of the first charge before the second was opened. The wish

of Hastings and of his counsel was that the managers should open all the

charges, and produce all the evidence for the prosecution, before the

defence began. The Lords retired to their own House to consider the

question. The Chancellor took the side of Hastings. Lord Loughborough,

who was now in opposition, supported the demand of the managers. The

division showed which way the inclination of the tribunal leaned. A

majority of near three to one decided in favour of the course for which

Hastings contended.

When the Court sat again, Mr. Fox, assisted by Mr. Grey, opened the

charge respecting Cheyte Sing, and several days were spent in reading

papers and hearing witnesses. The next article was that relating to the

Princesses of Oude. The conduct of this part of the case was intrusted

to Sheridan. The curiosity of the public to hear him was unbounded. His

sparkling and highly finished declamation lasted two days; but the Hall

was crowded to suffocation during the whole time. It was said that fifty

guineas had been paid for a single ticket. Sheridan, when he concluded,

contrived, with a knowledge of stage effect which his father might

have envied, to sink back, as if exhausted, into the arms of Burke, who

hugged him with the energy of generous admiration.

June was now far advanced. The session could not last much longer;

and the progress which had been made in the impeachment was not very

satisfactory. There were twenty charges. On two only of these had even

the case for the prosecution been heard; and it was now a year since

Hastings had been admitted to bail.

The interest taken by the public in the trial was great when the Court

began to sit, and rose to the height when Sheridan spoke on the charge

relating to the Begums. From that time the excitement went down fast.

The spectacle had lost the attraction of novelty. The great displays of

rhetoric were over. What was behind was not of a nature to entice men of

letters from their books in the morning, or to tempt ladies who had

left the masquerade at two to be out of bed before eight There remained

examinations and cross-examinations. There remained statements of

accounts. There remained the reading of papers, filled with words

unintelligible to English ears, with lacs and crores, zemindars and

aumils, sunnuds and perwarmahs, jaghires and nuzzurs. There remained

bickerings, not always carried on with the best taste or the best

temper, between the managers of the impeachment and the counsel for the

defence, particularly between Mr. Burke and Mr. Law. There remained the

endless marches and counter-marches of the Peers between their House

and the Hall: for as often as a point of law was to be discussed, their

Lordships retired to discuss it apart; and the consequence was, as a

Peer wittily said, that the judges walked and the trial stood still.

It is to be added that, in the spring of 1788, when the trial commenced,

no important question, either of domestic or foreign policy, occupied

the public mind. The proceeding in Westminster Hall, therefore,

naturally attracted most of the attention of Parliament and of the

country. It was the one great event of that season. But in the following

year the King’s illness, the debates on the Regency, the expectation of

a change of ministry, completely diverted public attention from Indian

affairs; and within a fortnight after George the Third had returned

thanks in St. Paul’s for his recovery, the States General of France met

at Versailles. In the midst of the agitation produced by these events,

the impeachment was for a time almost forgotten.

The trial in the Hall went on languidly. In the session of 1788, when

the proceedings had the interest of novelty, and when the Peers had

little other business before them, only thirty-five days were given to

the impeachment. In 1789, the Regency Bill occupied the Upper House till

the session was far advanced. When the King recovered the circuits were

beginning. The judges left town; the Lords waited for the return of the

oracles of jurisprudence; and the consequence was that during the whole

year only seventeen days were given to the case of Hastings. It was

clear that the matter would be protracted to a length unprecedented in

the annals of criminal law.

In truth, it is impossible to deny that impeachment, though it is a fine

ceremony, and though it may have been useful in the seventeenth century,

is not a proceeding from which much good can now be expected. Whatever

confidence may be placed in the decision of the Peers on an appeal

arising out of ordinary litigation, it is certain that no man has the

least confidence in their impartiality, when a great public functionary,

charged with a great state crime, is brought to their bar. They are all

politicians. There is hardly one among them whose vote on an impeachment

may not be confidently predicted before a witness has been examined;

and, even if it were possible to rely on their justice, they would still

be quite unfit to try such a cause as that of Hastings. They sit only

during half the year. They have to transact much legislative and much

judicial business. The law-lords, whose advice is required to guide

the unlearned majority, are employed daily in administering justice

elsewhere. It is impossible, therefore, that during a busy session,

the Upper House should give more than a few days to an impeachment. To

expect that their Lordships would give up partridge-shooting, in

order to bring the greatest delinquent to speedy justice, or to relieve

accused innocence by speedy acquittal, would be unreasonable indeed. A

well-constituted tribunal, sitting regularly six days in the week, and

nine hours in the day, would have brought the trial of Hastings to a

close in less than three months. The Lords had not finished their work

in seven years.

The result ceased to be matter of doubt, from the time when the Lords

resolved that they would be guided by the rules of evidence which are

received in the inferior courts of the realm. Those rules, it is well

known, exclude much information which would be quite sufficient to

determine the conduct of any reasonable man, in the most important

transactions of private life. These rules, at every assizes, save scores

of culprits whom judges, jury, and spectators, firmly believe to be

guilty. But when those rules were rigidly applied to offences committed

many years before, at the distance of many thousands of miles,

conviction was, of course, out of the question. We do not blame the

accused and his counsel for availing themselves of every legal advantage

in order to obtain an acquittal. But it is clear that an acquittal so

obtained cannot be pleaded in bar of the judgment of history.

Several attempts were made by the friends of Hastings to put a stop to

the trial. In 1789 they proposed a vote of censure upon Burke, for some

violent language which he had used respecting the death of Nuncomar and

the connection between Hastings and Impey. Burke was then unpopular in

the last degree both with the House and with the country. The asperity

and indecency of some expressions which he had used during the debates

on the Regency had annoyed even his warmest friends. The vote of censure

was carried; and those who had moved it hoped that the managers would

resign in disgust. Burke was deeply hurt. But his zeal for what he

considered as the cause of justice and mercy triumphed over his

personal feelings. He received the censure of the House with dignity

and meekness, and declared that no personal mortification or humiliation

should induce him to flinch from the sacred duty which he had

undertaken.

In the following year the Parliament was dissolved; and the friends of

Hastings entertained a hope that the new House of Commons might not be

disposed to go on with the impeachment. They began by maintaining that

the whole proceeding was terminated by the dissolution. Defeated on this

point, they made a direct motion that the impeachment should be dropped;

but they were defeated by the combined forces of the Government and the

Opposition. It was, however, resolved that, for the sake of expedition,

many of the articles should be withdrawn. In truth, had not some such

measure been adopted, the trial would have lasted till the defendant was

in his grave.

At length, in the spring of 1795, the decision was pronounced, near

eight years after Hastings had been brought by the Sergeant-at-Arms

of the Commons to the bar of the Lords. On the last day of this great

procedure the public curiosity, long suspended, seemed to be revived.

Anxiety about the judgment there could be none; for it had been

fully ascertained that there was a great majority for the defendant.

Nevertheless many wished to see the pageant, and the Hall was as much

crowded as on the first day. But those who, having been present on the

first day, now bore a part in the proceedings of the last, were few; and

most of those few were altered men.

As Hastings himself said, the arraignment had taken place before one

generation, and the judgment was pronounced by another. The spectator

could not look at the woolsack, or at the red benches of the Peers,

or at the green benches of the Commons, without seeing something that

reminded him of the instability of all human things, of the instability

of power and fame and life, of the more lamentable instability of

friendship. The great seal was borne before Lord Loughborough, who, when

the trial commenced, was a fierce opponent of Mr. Pitt’s Government, and

who was now a member of that Government, while Thurlow, who presided

in the court when it first sat, estranged from all his old allies, sat

scowling among the junior barons. Of about a hundred and sixty nobles

who walked in the procession on the first day, sixty had been laid in

their family vaults. Still more affecting must have been the sight of

the managers’ box. What had become of that fair fellowship, so closely

bound together by public and private ties, so resplendent with every

talent and accomplishment? It had been scattered by calamities more

bitter than the bitterness of death. The great chiefs were still living,

and still in the full vigour of their genius. But their friendship was

at an end. It had been violently and publicly dissolved, with tears and

stormy reproaches. If those men, once so dear to each other, were now

compelled to meet for the purpose of managing the impeachment, they met

as strangers whom public business had brought together, and behaved

to each other with cold and distant civility. Burke had in his vortex

whirled away Windham. Fox had been followed by Sheridan and Grey.

Only twenty-nine Peers voted. Of these only six found Hastings guilty on

the charges relating to Cheyte Sing and to the Begums. On other charges,

the majority in his favour was still greater. On some he was unanimously

absolved. He was then called to the bar, was informed from the woolsack

that the Lords had acquitted him, and was solemnly discharged. He bowed

respectfully and retired.

We have said that the decision had been fully expected. It was also

generally approved. At the commencement of the trial there had been a

strong and indeed unreasonable feeling against Hastings. At the close of

the trial there was a feeling equally strong and equally unreasonable

in his favour. One cause of the change was, no doubt, what is commonly

called the fickleness of the multitude, but what seems to us to be

merely the general law of human nature. Both in individuals and in

masses violent excitement is always followed by remission, and often

by reaction. We are all inclined to depreciate whatever we have

overpraised, and, on the other hand, to show undue indulgence where we

have shown undue rigour. It was thus in the case of Hastings. The

length of his trial, moreover, made him an object of compassion. It was

thought, and not without reason, that, even if he was guilty, he was

still an ill-used man, and that an impeachment of eight years was more

than a sufficient punishment. It was also felt that, though, in the

ordinary course of criminal law, a defendant is not allowed to set off

his good actions against his crimes, a great political cause should be

tried on different principles, and that a man who had governed an empire

during thirteen years might have done some very reprehensible things,

and yet might be on the whole deserving of rewards and honours rather

than of fine and imprisonment. The press, an instrument neglected by

the prosecutors, was used by Hastings and his friends with great effect.

Every ship, too, that arrived from Madras or Bengal, brought a cuddy

full of his admirers. Every gentleman from India spoke of the late

Governor-General as having deserved better, and having been treated

worse, than any man living. The effect of this testimony unanimously

given by all persons who knew the East, was naturally very great.

Retired members of the Indian services, civil and military, were settled

in all corners of the kingdom. Each of them was, of course, in his own

little circle, regarded as an oracle on an Indian question; and they

were, with scarcely one exception, the zealous advocates of Hastings.

It is to be added, that the numerous addresses to the late

Governor-General, which his friends in Bengal obtained from the natives

and transmitted to England, made a considerable impression. To these

addresses we attach little or no importance. That Hastings was beloved

by the people whom he governed is true; but the eulogies of pundits,

zemindars, Mahommedan doctors, do not prove it to be true. For an

English collector or judge would have found it easy to induce any native

who could write to sign a panegyric on the most odious ruler that ever

was in India. It was said that at Benares, the very place at which the

acts set forth in the first article of impeachment had been committed,

the natives had erected a temple to Hastings; and this story excited a

strong sensation in England. Burke’s observations on the apotheosis were

admirable. He saw no reason for astonishment, he said, in the incident

which had been represented as so striking. He knew something of the

mythology of the Brahmins. He knew that as they worshipped some gods

from love, so they worshipped others from fear. He knew that they

erected shrines, not only to the benignant deities of light and plenty,

but also to the fiends who preside over smallpox and murder; nor did he

at all dispute the claim of Mr. Hastings to be admitted into such a

Pantheon. This reply has always struck us as one of the finest that ever

was made in Parliament. It is a grave and forcible argument, decorated

by the most brilliant wit and fancy.

Hastings was, however, safe. But in everything except character, he

would have been far better off if, when first impeached, he had at

once pleaded guilty, and paid a fine of fifty thousand pounds. He was

a ruined man. The legal expenses of his defence had been enormous. The

expenses which did not appear in his attorney’s bill were perhaps larger

still. Great sums had been paid to Major Scott. Great sums had been

laid out in bribing newspapers, rewarding pamphleteers, and circulating

tracts. Burke, so early as 1790, declared in the House of Commons that

twenty thousand pounds had been employed in corrupting the press. It is

certain that no controversial weapon, from the gravest reasoning to

the coarsest ribaldry, was left unemployed. Logan defended the accused

Governor with great ability in prose. For the lovers of verse, the

speeches of the managers were burlesqued in Simpkin’s letters. It is,

we are afraid, indisputable that Hastings stooped so low as to court

the aid of that malignant and filthy baboon John Williams, who called

himself Anthony Pasquin. It was necessary to subsidise such allies

largely. The private boards of Mrs. Hastings had disappeared. It is said

that the banker to whom they had been intrusted had failed. Still if

Hastings had practised strict economy, he would, after all his losses,

have had a moderate competence; but in the management of his private

affairs he was imprudent. The dearest wish of his heart had always been

to regain Daylesford. At length, in the very year in which his trial

commenced, the wish was accomplished; and the domain, alienated more

than seventy years before, returned to the descendant of its old lords.

But the manor-house was a ruin; and the grounds round it had, during

many years, been utterly neglected. Hastings proceeded to build, to

plant, to form a sheet of water, to excavate a grotto; and, before he

was dismissed from the bar of the House of Lords, he had expended more

than forty thousand pounds in adorning his seat.

The general feeling both of the Directors and of the proprietors of

the East India Company was that he had great claims on them, that his

services to them had been eminent, and that his misfortunes had been the

effect of his zeal for their interest. His friends in Leadenhall Street

proposed to reimburse him the costs of his trial, and to settle on him

an annuity of five thousand pounds a year. But the consent of the Board

of Control was necessary; and at the head of the Board of Control was

Mr. Dundas, who had himself been a party to the impeachment, who had,

on, that account, been reviled with great bitterness by the adherents

of Hastings, and who, therefore, was not in a very complying mood.

He refused to consent to what the Directors suggested. The Directors

remonstrated. A long controversy followed. Hastings, in the meantime,

was reduced to such distress that he could hardly pay his weekly bills.

At length a compromise was made. An annuity for life of four thousand

pounds was settled on Hastings; and in order to enable him to meet

pressing demands, he was to receive ten years’ annuity in advance. The

Company was also permitted to lend him fifty thousand pounds, to be

repaid by instalments without interest. This relief, though given in

the most absurd manner, was sufficient to enable the retired Governor to

live in comfort, and even in luxury, if he had been a skilful manager.

But he was careless and profuse, and was more than once under the

necessity of applying to the Company for assistance, which was liberally

given.

He had security and affluence, but not the power and dignity which,

when he landed from India, he had reason to expect. He had then looked

forward to a coronet, a red riband, a seat at the Council Board, an

office at Whitehall. He was then only fifty-two, and might hope for many

years of bodily and mental vigour. The case was widely different when he

left the bar of the Lords. He was now too old a man to turn his mind

to a new class of studies and duties. He had no chance of receiving any

mark of royal favour while Mr. Pitt remained in power; and, when Mr.

Pitt retired, Hastings was approaching his seventieth year.

Once, and only once, after his acquittal, he interfered in politics; and

that interference was not much to his honour. In 1804 he exerted himself

strenuously to prevent Mr. Addington, against whom Fox and Pitt had

combined, from resigning the Treasury. It is difficult to believe that

a man, so able and energetic as Hastings, can have thought that, when

Bonaparte was at Boulogne with a great army, the defence of our island

could safely be intrusted to a ministry which did not contain a single

person whom flattery could describe as a great statesman. It is also

certain that, on the important question which had raised Mr. Addington

to power, and on which he differed from both Fox and Pitt, Hastings, as

might have been expected, agreed with Fox and Pitt, and was decidedly

opposed to Addington. Religious intolerance has never been the vice of

the Indian service, and certainly was not the vice of Hastings. But Mr.

Addington had treated him with marked favour. Fox had been a principal

manager of the impeachment. To Pitt it was owing that there had been

an impeachment; and Hastings, we fear, was on this occasion guided by

personal considerations, rather than by a regard to the public interest.

The last twenty-four years of his life were chiefly passed at

Daylesford. He amused himself with embellishing his grounds, riding fine

Arab horses, fattening prize-cattle, and trying to rear Indian

animals and vegetables in England. He sent for seeds of a very fine

custard-apple, from the garden of what had once been his own villa,

among the green hedgerows of Allipore. He tried also to naturalise in

Worcestershire the delicious leechee, almost the only fruit of Bengal

which deserves to be regretted even amidst the plenty of Covent

Garden. The Mogul emperors, in the time of their greatness, had in vain

attempted to introduce into Hindostan the goat of the table-land of

Thibet, whose down supplies the looms of Cashmere with the materials

of the finest shawls. Hastings tried, with no better fortune, to rear a

breed at Daylesford; nor does he seem to have succeeded better with the

cattle of Bootan, whose tails are in high esteem as the best fans for

brushing away the mosquitoes.

Literature divided his attention with his conservatories and his

menagerie. He had always loved books, and they were now necessary to

him. Though not a poet, in any high sense of the word, he wrote neat

and polished lines with great facility, and was fond of exercising this

talent. Indeed, if we must speak out, he seems to have been more of a

Trissotin than was to be expected from the powers of his mind, and from

the great part which he had played in life. We are assured in these

Memoirs that the first thing which he did in the morning was to write a

copy of verses. When the family and guests assembled, the poem made its

appearance as regularly as the eggs and rolls; and Mr. Gleig requires

us to believe that, if from any accident Hastings came to the

breakfast-table without one of his charming performances in his hand,

the omission was felt by all as a grievous disappointment. Tastes differ

widely. For ourselves, we must say that, however good the breakfasts at

Daylesford may have been,--and we are assured that the tea was of the

most aromatic flavour, and that neither tongue nor venison-pasty was

wanting,--we should have thought the reckoning high if we had been

forced to earn our repast by listening every day to a new madrigal or

sonnet composed by our host. We are glad, however, that Mr. Gleig has

preserved this little feature of character, though we think it by no

means a beauty. It is good to be often reminded of the inconsistency

of human nature, and to learn to look without wonder or disgust on the

weaknesses which are found in the strongest minds. Dionysius in old

times, Frederic in the last century, with capacity and vigour equal to

the conduct of the greatest affairs, united all the little vanities

and affectations of provincial bluestockings. These great examples

may console the admirers of Hastings for the affliction of seeing him

reduced to the level of the Hayleys and Sewards.

When Hastings had passed many years in retirement, and had long outlived

the common age of men, he again became for a short time an object of

general attention. In 1813 the charter of the East India Company

was renewed; and much discussion about Indian affairs took place in

Parliament. It was determined to examine witnesses at the bar of the

Commons; and Hastings was ordered to attend. He had appeared at that bar

once before. It was when he read his answer to the charges which Burke

had laid on the table. Since that time twenty-seven years had elapsed;

public feeling had undergone a complete change; the nation had

now forgotten his faults, and remembered only his services. The

reappearance, too, of a man who had been among the most distinguished of

a generation that had passed away, who now belonged to history, and who

seemed to have risen from the dead, could not but produce a solemn and

pathetic effect. The Commons received him with acclamations, ordered a

chair to be set for him, and, when he retired, rose and uncovered. There

were, indeed, a few who did not sympathise with the general feeling. One

or two of the managers of the impeachment were present. They sate in the

same seats which they had occupied when they had been thanked for

the services which they had rendered in Westminster Hall: for, by the

courtesy of the House, a member who has been thanked in his place

is considered as having a right always to occupy that place. These

gentlemen were not disposed to admit that they had employed several

of the best years of their lives in persecuting an innocent man. They

accordingly kept their seats, and pulled their hats over their brows;

but the exceptions only made the prevailing enthusiasm more remarkable.

The Lords received the old man with similar tokens of respect. The

University of Oxford conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Laws;

and, in the Sheldonian Theatre, the undergraduates welcomed him with

tumultuous cheering.

These marks of public esteem were soon followed by marks of royal

favour. Hastings was sworn of the Privy Council, and was admitted to

a long private audience of the Prince Regent, who treated him very

graciously. When the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia visited

England, Hastings appeared in their train both at Oxford and in the

Guildhall of London, and, though surrounded by a crowd of princes

and great warriors, was everywhere received with marks of respect and

admiration. He was presented by the Prince Regent both to Alexander and

to Frederic William; and his Royal Highness went so far as to declare

in public that honours far higher than a seat in the Privy Council

were due, and would soon be paid, to the man who had saved the British

dominions in Asia. Hastings now confidently expected a peerage; but,

from some unexplained cause, he was again disappointed.

He lived about four years longer, in the enjoyment of good spirits, of

faculties not impaired to any painful or degrading extent, and of health

such as is rarely enjoyed by those who attain such an age. At length, on

the twenty-second of August, 1818, in the eighty-sixth year of his age,

he met death with the same tranquil and decorous fortitude which he had

opposed to all the trials of his various and eventful life.

With all his faults,--and they were neither few nor small--only one

cemetery was worthy to contain his remains. In that temple of silence

and reconciliation where the enmities of twenty generations lie

buried, in the Great Abbey which has during many ages afforded a quiet

resting-place to those whose minds and bodies have been shattered by

the contentions of the Great Hall, the dust of the illustrious accused

should have mingled with the dust of the illustrious accusers. This was

not to be. Yet the place of interment was not ill chosen. Behind the

chancel of the parish church of Daylesford, in earth which already held

the bones of many chiefs of the house of Hastings, was laid the coffin

of the greatest man who has ever borne that ancient and widely extended

name. On that very spot probably, four-score years before, the little

Warren, meanly clad and scantily fed, had played with the children of

ploughmen. Even then his young mind had revolved plans which might be

called romantic. Yet, however romantic, it is not likely that they had

been so strange as the truth. Not only had the poor orphan retrieved the

fallen fortunes of his line--not only had he repurchased the old lands,

and rebuilt the old dwelling--he had preserved and extended an empire.

He had founded a polity. He had administered government and war with

more than the capacity of Richelieu. He had patronised learning with

the judicious liberality of Cosmo. He had been attacked by the most

formidable combination of enemies that ever sought the destruction of a

single victim; and over that combination, after a struggle of ten years,

he had triumphed. He had at length gone down to his grave in the fulness

of age, in peace, after so many troubles, in honour, after so much

obloquy.

Those who look on his character without favour or malevolence will

pronounce that, in the two great elements of all social virtue, in

respect for the rights of others, and in sympathy for the sufferings of

others, he was deficient. His principles were somewhat lax. His heart

was somewhat hard. But though we cannot with truth describe him

either as a righteous or as a merciful ruler, we cannot regard without

admiration the amplitude and fertility of his intellect, his rare

talents for command, for administration, and for controversy, his

dauntless courage, his honourable poverty, his fervent zeal for the

interests of the State, his noble equanimity, tried by both extremes of

fortune, and never disturbed by either.