and coloured them. Out of darkness, and dul- |cuss any question with calmness, or make ness, and confusion, he drew a rich abun- allowances for honest difference of opinion. dance of ingenious theories and vivid pictures. Those who think that he was more violent and He had, in the highest degree, that noble fa- acrimonious in debates about India than on culty, whereby man is able to live in the past other occasions, are ill-informed respecting the and in the future, in the distant and in the un- last years of his life. In the discussions on real. India and its inhabitants were not to the Commercial Treaty with the court of Verhim, as to most Englishmen, mere names and sailles, on the Regency, on the French Revoabstractions, but a real country and a real peo-¦lution, he showed even more virulence than in ple. The burning sun; the strange vegetation conducting the impeachment. Indeed, it may of the palm and the cocoa trees; the rice-field be remarked, that the very persons who repre and the tank; the huge trees, older than the sented him as a mischievous maniae for conMogul empire, under which the village crowds demning in burning words the Rohilla war and assemble; the thatched roof of the peasant's the spoliation of the Begums, exalted him into hut, and the rich tracery of the mosque, where an inspired prophet as soon as he began to dethe imaum prayed with his face to Mecca; the claim, with greater vehemence, and not with drums, and banners, and gaudy idols; the de- greater reason, against the taking of the Basvotee swinging in the air; the graceful maiden, tile and the insults offered to Marie Antoinette. with the pitcher on her head, descending the To us he appears to have been neither a masteps to the river-side; the black faces, the niac in the former case nor a prophet in the long beards, the yellow streaks of sect; the latter, but in both cases a great and good man turbans and the flowing robes; the spears and led into extravagance by a tempestuous sensisilver maces; the elephants with their cano- bility which domineered over all his faculties pies of state; the gorgeous palanquin of the It may be doubted whether the personal antiprince, and the close litter of the noble lady-pathy of Francis or the nobler indignation of all those things were to him as the objects Burke would have led their party to adopt examidst which his own life had been passed-treme measures against Hastings, if his own as the objects which lay on the road between conduct had been judicious. He should have Beaconsfield and St. James's Street. All In- felt that, great as his public services had been, dia was present to the eye of his mind, from he was not faultless; and should have been the halls where suitors laid gold and perfumes content to make his escape, without aspiring at the feet of sovereigns, to the wild moor to the honours of a triumph. He and his agent where the gipsy-camp was pitched-from the took a different view. They were impatient bazars, humming like beehives with the crowd for the rewards which, as they conceived, were of buyers and sellers, to the jungle where the deferred only till Burke's attack should be over. lonely courier shakes his bunch of iron rings They accordingly resolved to force a decisive to scare away the hyenas. He had just as action with an enemy for whom, had they been lively an idea of the insurrection at Benares as wise, they would have made a bridge of gold. of Lord George Gordon's riots, and of the exe-On the first day of the session of 1796, Major cution of Nuncomar as of the execution of Dr. Scott reminded Burke of the notice given in Dodd. Oppression in Bengal was to him the the preceding year, and asked Burke whether same thing as oppression in the streets of Lon-it was seriously intended to bring any charge don.

so bold a defiance. The leaders of the Oppo sition instantly returned the only answer which they could with honour return, and the whole party wa irrevocably pledged to a prosecu

against the late Governor-General. This chalHe saw that Hastings had been guilty of lenge left no course open to the Opposition exsome most unjustifiable acts. All that followed cept to come forward as accusers or to acknow. was natural and necessary in a mind like ledge themselves calumniators. The adminis Burke's. His imagination and his passions, tration of Hastings had not been so blameless once excited, hurried him beyond the bounds nor was the great party of Fox and North so of justice and good sense. His reason, power-feeble that it could be prudent to venture on ful as it was, was reduced to be 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, notion. redeeming merit. His temper, which, though Buse began his operations by applying for generous and affectionate, had always been papers. Some of the documents for which he irritable, had now been almost savage by asked were refused by the ministers, who, in bodily infirmities and mental vexations. Con- the debate, held language such as strongly conscious of great powers and great virtues, he firmed the prevailing opinion that they intend found himself, in age and poverty, a mark for ed to support Hastings. In April the charges the hatred of a perfidicus court and a deluded were laid on the table. They had been drawn people. In Parliament his eloquence was out up by Burke with great ability, though in a of date. A young generation which knew him form too much resembling that of a pamphlet. not had filled the House. Whenever he rose Hastings was furnished with a copy of the acto speak, his voice was drowned by the un-cusation, and it was intimated to him hat he seemly interruptions of lads who were in their cradles when his orations on the Stamp Act cailed forth the applause of the great Earl Here, again, Hastings was pursued by the of Chatham. These things had produced on same fatality which had attended him ever his proud and sensitive spirit an effect at which since the day when he set foot on English we cannot wonder. He could no longer dis-ground. It seemed to be decreed that this mas,

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

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.

so politic and so successful in the East, should | the House of Lords; and had even said that commit nothing but blunders in Europe. Any if the Chancellor of the Exchequer was afraid 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, but 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 ser-assistance was contumaciously withheld. He geant-at-arms.

But in a very few days these fair prospects were overcast. On the 13th of June, Mr. Fox brought forward, with great ability and elo quence, 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

also thought that the conduct of the GovernorGeneral, 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. 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.

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 moved, and the House had adopted a resolution, condemning, in the most severe terms, the policy followed by Hastings with regard to Rohilcund. Dun-and both the friends and the opponents of the 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 nineteer. 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 the 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 the 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 coffec-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 Piut from calling Hastings to

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 casc of Cheyte Sing were correct, there was no ground at all 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 mulet 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 solemnitya 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 vou d 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.

conscience, to stand any longer by Hastings. The business, he said, was too bad. Mr. Wil berforce, we are bound to add, fully believed that his friend was sincere, and that the suspi cions 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 Nor must it be forgotten, that the principal might become a formidable rival in the cabireason assigned by the ministry for not im- net? It had probably got abroad that very peaching Hastings on account of the Rohilla singular communications had taken place bewar was, that the delinquencies of the early tween Thurlow and Major Scott; and that, if part of his administration had been atoned for the first Lord of the Treasury was afraid to by the excellence of the later part. Was it recommend Hastings for a peerage, the Channot most extraordinary, that men who had held cellor was ready to take the responsibility ef this language could afterwards vote that the that step on himself. Of all ministers, Pitt was later part of his administration furnished mat-the least likely to submit with patience to such ter for no less than twenty articles of impeachment? They first contended that the conduct of Hastings in 1780 and 1781 was 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 Ministry 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 voted 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 nis conduct required some explanation. He left the treasury-bench, sat for some time by Mr. Wilberforce, and very earnestly declared that he had found it impossible, as a man of

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 employ ments, 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 dis cussions 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 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 parlia mentary performances of Sheridan, the greatest 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 sergeantat-arnis, 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 reassemble.

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 in England, the aggrieved party, the very last person who ought to be admitted into the jurybox, is the prosecutor; that what was wanted in a manager was, not that he should be free from bias, but that he should be energetic, able, well-informed, 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.

was a spectacle so well calculated to strike a highly cultivated, a reflecting, an imaginative mind. All the various kinds of interest which belong to the near and to the distant, to the present and to the past, were collected on one spot and in one hour. All the talents and all the accomplishments which are developed by liberty and civilization were now displayed, with every advantage that could be derived both from 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 the 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 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 gre. nadiers. 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, threefourths 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-Lord Heathfield, recently ennobled for his memo rable 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 gray old walls were hung with scarlet. The long galleries were crowded by such au audience 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 realm, grace and female loveliness, wit and learning, the representatives of every science and of every art. were seated around the queen the fair-haired In the mean time, the preparations for the young daughters of the house of Brunswick. trial had proceeded rapidly; and on the 13th There the ambassadors of great kings and of February, 1788, the sittings of the Court commonwealths gazed with admiration on a commenced. There have been spectacles more spectacle which no other country in the world dazzling to the eye, more gorgeous with jewel- could present. There Siddons, in the prime lery and cloth of gold, more attractive to grown- of her majestic beauty, looked with emotion on up children, than that which was then exhi-a scene surpassing all the imitations of the bited at Westminster; but, perhaps, there never stage. There the historian of the Roman Em

There

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 memmanagers stood contained an array of speakers such as perhaps had not appeared together since the great age of Athenian eloquence. There stood Fox and Sheridan, the English Demosthenes and the English Hyperides.

pire thought of the days when Cicero pleaded | Burke at their head, appeared in full dress. the cause of Sicily against Verres; and when, before a senate which had still some show of freedom, Tacitus thundered against the oppressor of Africa. There were seen, side by side, the greatest painter and the greatest scholar of the age. The spectacle had allured Reynolds from that easel which has preserved to us the thoughtful foreheads of so many writers and statesmen, and the sweet smiles of so many noble matrons. It had induced Parr to suspend his 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 inju-bers of the Lower House, the box in which the dicious 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 deli-There was Burke, ignorant, indeed, or negli cate 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 Sergeants made proclamation. Hastings advanced to the bar, and bent his knee. The culprit was indeed not unworthy of that great presence. He had ruled an extensive and populous country, had made laws and treaties, had sent forth armies, had set up and pulled down princes. And in his high place he had so borne himself, that all had feared him, that most had loved him, and that hatred itself could deny him no title to glory, except virtue. He looked like a great man, and not like a bad man. A person small and emaciated, yet deriving dignity from a carriage which, while it indicated deference to the court, indicated also habitual self-possession and self-respect; a high and intellectual forehead; a brow pensive, but not gloomy; a mouth of inflexible decision; a face pale and worn, but serene, on which was written, as legibly as under the great picture in the Council-chamber at Calcutta, Mens æqua in arduis ;such was the aspect with which the great proconsul presented himself to his judges.

gent of the art of adapting his reasonings and his style to the capacity and taste of his hearers; but in aptitude of comprehension and richness of imagination superior to every ora tor, 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 them selves 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 Com mons, 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.

His counsel accompanied him, men all of whom were afterwards raised by their talents and learning to the highest posts in their pro- The charges and the answers of Hastings fession,-the bold and strong-minded Law, were first read. This ceremony occupied two afterwards Chief Justice of the King's Bench; whole days, and was rendered less tedious he more humane and eloquent Dallas, after-than it would otherwise have been, by the wards Chief Justice of the Common Pleas; and Plomer, who, nearly 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.

silver voice and just emphasis of Cowper, the clerk of the court, a near relation of the amia ble poet. On the third day Burke rose. Four sittings of the court were occupied by his opening speech, which was intended to be a general introduction to all the charges. With But neither the culprit nor his advocates at- an exuberance of thought and a splendour of tacted so much notice as the accusers. Indiction which more than satisfied the highly the midst of the blaze of red drapery, a space had been fitted up with green benches and for the Commons. The managers, with

raised expectation of the audience, he described the character and institutions of the natives of India; recounted the circumstances in which