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 {111}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. {112}The burning sun, the strange vegetation
of the palm and the cocoa tree, the ricefield, the tank, the huge trees,
older than the Mogul empire, under which the village crowds assemble,
the thatched roof of the peasant’s but, 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 river-side,
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 halls
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 hyænas.
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 {113}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 {114}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,
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 1780, 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 {115}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 satis-tied, 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 {116}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
Rohileund. Dun-das 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 {117}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
{118}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 Rohileund. 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
{119}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 in the morning of the very day on which the debate took
place, Dundas called on {120}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 cany 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 {121}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 mean time, 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 {122}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 Home 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
{123}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.
{124}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 mean time, the preparations for the trial had proceeded rapidly;
and on the thirteenth of February, 1788, the sittings of the Court
commenced. There have been spectacles more dazzling to the eye, more
gorgeous with 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, an imaginative mind. All the various
kinds of interest which belong to the near and to the distant, to the
present and to the past, were collected on one spot and in one hour. All
the talents and all the accomplishments which are developed by liberty
and civilisation were now displayed, with every advantage that could
be derived both from co-operation 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.