The far, and but too deeply, widely, and unfortunately famed Warren
Hastings was now amongst the persons of high renown, who courteously
sought the acquaintance of Dr. Burney.
The tremendous attack upon the character and conduct of Governor
Hastings, which terminated, through his own dauntless appeal for
justice, in the memorable trial at Westminster Hall, hung then
suspended over his head: and, as Mr. Burke was his principal accuser,
it would strongly have prejudiced the Doctor against the accused, had
not some of the most respectable connexions of the Governor, who had
known him through the successive series of his several governments,
and through the whole display of his almost unprecedented power, been
particularly of the Doctor’s acquaintance; and these all agreed, that
the uniform tenor of the actions of Mr. Hastings, while he was Governor
General of India, spoke humanity, moderation, and liberality.
His demeanour and converse were perfectly corroboratory with this
praise; and he appeared to Dr. Burney to be one of the greatest
men then living as a public character; while as a private man, his
gentleness, candour, and openness of discourse, made him one of the
most pleasing. He talked with the utmost frankness upon his situation
and affairs; and with a perfect reliance of victory over his enemies,
from a fearless consciousness of probity and honour.
That Mr. Burke, the high-minded Mr. Burke, with a zeal nearly frantic
in the belief of popular rumours, could so impetuously, so wildly, so
imperiously be his prosecutor, was a true grief to the Doctor; and
seemed an enigma inexplicable.
But Mr. Burke, with all the depth and sagacity of the rarest wisdom
where he had time for consideration, and opportunity for research, had
still not only the ardour, but the irreflection of ingenuous juvenile
credulity, where tales of horror, of cruelty, or of woe, were placed
before him with a cry for redress.
Dr. Burney was painfully and doubly disturbed at this terrific trial,
through his esteem and admiration for both parties; and he kept
as aloof from the scene of action during the whole of its Trojan
endurance, as he would have done from a bull fight, to which both
antagonists had been mercilessly exposed. For though, through his
transcendent merit, joined to a longer and more grateful connexion, he
had an infinitely warmer personal regard for Mr. Burke, he held Mr.
Hastings, in this case, to be innocent, and, consequently, injured: on
him, therefore, every wish of victory devolved; yet so high was the
reliance of the Doctor on the character of intentional integrity in
the prosecutor, that he always beheld him as a man under a generous,
however fanatical delusion of avenging imputed wrongs; and he forgave
what he could not justify.[11]