the charges relating to Cheyte Sing and to the Begums. On other charges,
the majority in his favor 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 favor. 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 rigor. 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 honors 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 subsidize such allies
largely. The private hoards of Mrs. Hastings had disappeared. It is said
that the banker to whom they had been entrusted 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 for 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 ribbon, 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 vigor. 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 favor 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 honor. 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 entrusted 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 favor. 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 naturalize 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 aways 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 flavor, 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 vigor equal to
the conduct of the greatest affairs, united all the little vanities and
affectations of provincial blue-stockings. 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 sympathize with the general feeling. One
or two of the managers of the impeachment were present. They sat 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 favor.
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
honors 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, fourscore 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 patronized 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 honor after so much obloquy.
Those who look on his character without favor 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 honorable poverty, his fervent zeal for the
interests of the state, his noble equanimity, tried by both extremes of
fortune, and never disturbed by either.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Memoirs of the Life of Warren Hastings, first Governor-General of
Bengal. Compiled from Original Papers, by the Rev. G. R. Gleig, M. A. 3
vols. 8vo. London: 1841.
FREDERIC THE GREAT[6]
_The Edinburgh Review_, April, 1842
This work, which has the high honor of being introduced to the world by
the author of Lochiel and Hohenlinden, is not wholly unworthy of so
distinguished a chaperon. It professes, indeed, to be no more than a
compilation; but it is an exceedingly amusing compilation, and we shall
be glad to have more of it. The narrative comes down at present only to
the commencement of the Seven Years' War, and therefore does not
comprise the most interesting portion of Frederic's reign.
It may not be unacceptable to our readers that we should take this
opportunity of presenting them with a slight sketch of the life of the
greatest king that has, in modern times, succeeded by right of birth to
a throne. It may, we fear, be impossible to compress so long and
eventful a story within the limits which we must prescribe to ourselves.
Should we be compelled to break off, we may perhaps, when the
continuation of this work appears, return to the subject.
The Prussian monarchy, the youngest of the great European states, but in
population and revenue the fifth among them, and in art, science, and
civilization entitled to the third, if not to the second place, sprang
from a humble origin. About the beginning of the fifteenth century, the
marquisate of Brandenburg was bestowed by the Emperor Sigismund on the
noble family of Hohenzollern. In the sixteenth century that family
embraced the Lutheran doctrines. It obtained from the King of Poland,
early in the seventeenth century, the investiture of the Duchy of
Prussia. Even after this accession of territory, the chiefs of the House
of Hohenzollern hardly ranked with the Electors of Saxony and Bavaria.
The soil of Brandenburg was for the most part sterile. Even round
Berlin, the capital of the province, and round Potsdam, the favorite
residence of the Margraves, the country was a desert. In some places,
the deep sand could with difficulty be forced by assiduous tillage to
yield thin crops of rye and oats. In other places, the ancient forests,
from which the conquerors of the Roman empire had descended on the
Danube, remained untouched by the hand of man. Where the soil was rich
it was generally marshy, and its insalubrity repelled the cultivators
whom its fertility attracted. Frederic William, called the Great
Elector, was the prince to whose policy his successors have agreed to
ascribe their greatness. He acquired by the peace of Westphalia several
valuable possessions, and among them the rich city and district of
Magdeburg; and he left to his son Frederic a principality as
considerable as any which was not called a kingdom.
Frederic aspired to the style of royalty. Ostentatious and profuse,
negligent of his true interests and of his high duties, insatiably eager
for frivolous distinctions, he added nothing to the real weight of the
state which he governed: perhaps he transmitted his inheritance to his
children impaired rather than augmented in value; but he succeeded in
gaining the great object of his life, the title of King. In the year
1700 he assumed this new dignity. He had on that occasion to undergo all
the mortifications which fall to the lot of ambitious upstarts. Compared
with the other crowned heads of Europe, he made a figure resembling that
which a Nabob or a Commissary, who had bought a title, would make in the
company of Peers whose ancestors had been attainted for treason against
the Plantagenets. The envy of the class which Frederic quitted, and the
civil scorn of the class into which he intruded himself, were marked in
very significant ways. The Elector of Saxony at first refused to
acknowledge the new Majesty. Louis the Fourteenth looked down on his
brother King with an air not unlike that with which the Count in
Moliere's play regards Monsieur Jourdain, just fresh from the mummery of
being made a gentleman. Austria exacted large sacrifices in return for
her recognition, and at last gave it ungraciously.
Frederic was succeeded by his son, Frederic William, a prince who must
be allowed to have possessed some talents for administration, but whose
character was disfigured by odious vices, and whose eccentricities were
such as had never before been seen out of a madhouse. He was exact and
diligent in the transacting of business; and he was the first who formed
the design of obtaining for Prussia a place among the European powers,
altogether out of proportion to her extent and population, by means of a
strong military organization. Strict economy enabled him to keep up a
peace establishment of sixty thousand troops. These troops were
disciplined in such a manner that, placed beside them, the household
regiments of Versailles and St. James's would have appeared an awkward
squad. The master of such a force could not but be regarded by all his
neighbors as a formidable enemy and a valuable ally.