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Macaulay addressed him- self to none of these, but to the magazine-reading public ; a public which resemble schoolboys at least in this particular, that the first appeal of a new subject to them must be through its broad and striking features, particularly on the personal side ; in short, through human interest. The Notes are meant to supply only such explanations of Macaulay's allusions as will make clearer his main thought; the Introduction, to suggest a method of study directed toward acquaintance with Macaulay as a strong and lovable person- ality, and an appreciation of those elements of his style most worthy of imitation. I wish to acknowledge my especial indebtedness to Mr. H. C. Bowen's edition of Lord Clive and Professor J. V. Denny ^s edition of Warren Hastings, A. A. INTRODUCTION I THE LIFE OF MACAULAY MacaulAt's life, more than the life of almost any other man of letters, was such as to give his readers, as it undoubt- edly gave himself, great satisfaction. In the family, in public life, and in his writings, he had constantly before him certain well marked ideals. Throughout life, he lived up to these in a whole-hearted, ungrudging way ; and he had the reward of devoted friends, high political office, a well-earned fortune, and a large public to whom his writings, like Shakspere's or Scott's, are a chief source of their historical knowledge. Thomas Babington Macaulay was born at Rothley Temple, in Leicestershire, England, October 25, 1800. His boyhood home always meant much to him. His father, Zachary Mac- aulay, was one of the earliest enthusiasts for abolishing slav- ery, and had spent some years as head of a colony for freed negroes on the African coast ; he was a zealous, though rather impractical man ; and long after Macaulay had risen to dis- tinction, his father's opinions had great weight with him. His mother, wise as she was loving, did not spoil him, or even appear to notice the remarkable talents he showed as a boy. His eight brothers and sisters made a merry household ; in- deed, one of the pleasantest things in Macaulay's life is his untiring devotion to them, and especially to his favorite sister Hannah. Of Macaulay's wonderful precociousness many stories are told. At the age of four, when a lady inquired how his legs felt after a scalding with hot coffee, he replied, illcoclous? " Thank you, madam, the agony is abated." When ness. .j-^g maid threw away some oyster shells with which he had marked off a corner of his playground, he exclaimed, " Cursed be Sally : for it is written, * Cursed is he that removeth his neighbor's landmark.' " Before he was eight, he undertook to write a universal history, from the Creation ; he memorized INTRODUCTION v Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel, and most of Marmion, and started to write an imitation. This power of memorizing as rapidly as most people read remained with him; he was able in middle life to recite Paradise Lost throughout, and said that if The PilgriTn/s Progress should ever be completely lost, he would undertake to rewrite it from memory. This un- usual gift stood him in great stead both in his speeches in Par- liament and in his historical and literary writings. After a few years of schooling near home, Macaulay was sent to a private school in the village of Little Shelford, near Cambridge, to prepare for the University. The dean of one of the Cambridge colleges, who saw him at this time, wrote to his father, *^ Your lad is a fine fellow. He shall stand before kings ; he shall not stand before mean men." Whether his schoolmates regarded him so highly is, in spite of his brilliant powers, a question ; owing to marked clumsiness he lacked absolutely the ability to play any game ; and throughout life, though he was a great walker, he was unable to ride, or en- gage in any of the popular sports of Englishmen. Once, when at Windsor Castle, he was informed that a horse was at his disposal. " If . her majesty wishes to see me ride," he said, "she must order out an elephant." At the age of eighteen, he entered Trinity College, Cam- bridge, where he found a more congenial atmosphere. Warm friends were won by his brilliant powers of conversa- At Cam- tion, of which the story is told that Macaulay and ^^^^^' his friend Austin, on a vacation visit, started at breakfast a college talk that held the rapt attention of all the guests the whole day, till dinner time. He was prominent in the famous Cambridge Union, the college debating club. Through a dis- like for mathematics, he failed of winning the highest Uni- versity honors ; but he wrote a prize essay, and in 1824 won a fellowship, the income of which would make him, as he said, " for seven years almost an independent man." This was the more welcome because his father's business affairs had of late years got into very bad condition. Macaulay not only assumed his father's debts, but devoted himself whole- heartedly for many years to the support of his sisters ; and his biographer says, " such was his high and simple nature that it may well be doubted whether it ever crossed his mind that to live wholly for others was a sacrifice at all." In gpite of vi INTRODUCTION his home-loving and affectionate nature, Macaulay never married ; it may well be that his devotion to his sisters, and later in life to their children, filled his heart completely. Macaulay' s personal appearance at this age is described as follows : " There came up a short, manly figure, marvelously upright, who had a bad neckcloth and one hand in appear- his waistcoat pocket. Of regular beauty he had *°°®* little to boast, but in faces where there is an ex- pression of great power, or of great good humor, or both, you do not regret its absence." While still at college, Macaulay had been an ardent debater on political topics, and a contributor of essays and verse to Knight'' s Fictorial Magazine. It was along these two lines, politics and literature, that his life work was to run ; andUtera- for though called to the Bar in 1826, he never made ^^^' the law a serious profession. Politics and litera- ture were united in his life-long connection with the Edin- burgh Review, beginning in 1825 with the publication of his famous Essay on Milton. This essay, brilliantly written and full of youthful enthusiasm, won him immediate and wide- spread fame. It has, in later years, brought on him severe criticism, on the grounds of partisanship, lack of comprehen- sion of the deeper qualities of poetry, and an irritating cock- sureness, — faults not uncommon in talented youth, and faults which Macaulay himself later acknowledged, though in spite of his great genius he was long in wholly outgrowing them. From this time on, Macaulay's articles on literary and histori- cal subjects were eagerly watched for ; they greatly increased the sale of the Review, and were so popular that by 1832 American publishers had issued three unauthorized collections, and so forced Macaulay into republishing them in book form. These essays usually appeared as book reviews ; but Macaulay dismissed the book in a few paragraphs, and turned to a rapid, off-hand discussion of the subject on which the book was written. His aim was popular, rather than scholarly ; not to examine the subject with minute and careful criticism, but to present its striking features, and its moral values, in such a way as to win the reader's enthusiasm. For this popularizing of subjects too often treated dully, Macaulay was peculiarly fitted by his remarkable memory, his love of gossipy personal detail, and his picturesque, somewhat oratorical style. His strong INTRODUCTION vii Whig principles would sometimes lead him into unfairness, especially when writing on eighteenth-century events ; for this reason, we have sometimes to correct, by the study of less im- pulsive writers, the impression Macaulay gives us ; but we might never have heard of the subject at all, except for Macaulay's brilliant and enthusiastic essays. A politician, through and through, in the better sense of the word, Macaulay remained all his life, devoted sincerely to the Liberal principles that he believed to be for the good of his country. His long Parliamentary career began i by his nomination in 1830 by Lord Lansdowne to tary represent Calne, one of the " rotten boroughs '' *"®®'- where the influence of a single nobleman practically deter- mined the election. It is characteristic of Macaulay's political integrity that he threw himself heart and soul into the move- ment for the Eeform Bill, which was to abolish the very sys- tem by which he himself sat in Parliament. Another instance of his conscience in politics was in connection with the bill for freeing the West Indian slaves. The bill was not thorough enough to please the Abolitionists ; and Macaulay, rather than support the inadequate bill, and so injure the cause to which his father's life had been devoted, prepared to resign his office and give up all hopes of political preferment. His resignation, however, was not accepted ; indeed, this was but the beginning of a series of triumphs won by his stanchness of principle and his brilliancy in debate. His speeches for the Reform Bill took the house by storm ; people compared him to Fox, Burke, and other great orators of the past generation. Gladstone said of him, *' Whenever he rose to speak, it was a summons like a trumpet-call to fill the benches." This Parliamentary career was interrupted in 1834 by his appointment as legal adviser to the Supreme Council of India. The post was an important one, and brought him a large income, by which he was able to fulfill his ambi- tion of establishing his family in comfort. During his four years in India he reorganized the system of education, and pre- sided over a commission that rewrote the Penal Code. His favorite sister, Hannah, went to India with him, and was mar- ried there. His years in India gave him much of the pic- turesque knowledge of detail that makes his essays on Clive and Hastings so vivid. viii INTRODUCTION Eeturning to England in 1838, he found himself confronted Return to ^y ^^^^ private and public troubles. His father England. had died, after a trying period of failing health and eyesight. A bitter literary quarrel nearly involved him in a duel. The next few years were filled with intense political conflict, and he was called on to come to the support of a party that was losing public confidence. He entered the Cab- inet as Minister of War in 1839. But affairs had gone too far, and the Ministry was soon dissolved. Macaulay reentered Parliament from Edinburgh, and in a later administration be- came Paymaster General, but in 1847 he returned to private life. For some time, his chief interests had been literary rather than political. In 1842 he had published his always popular Lays of Ancient Borne. He had for years been planning a comprehensive history of England, from the reign of James II History of ^^ *^^ memory of men then living. This was to England. be no mere compilation of dry facts, but a narrative in which all the characters should be drawn as vividly as in a novel. Indeed Macaulay writes to a friend that he hopes his history may * * supersede the last fashionable novel on the table of young ladies." He had read and written much bearing on this period ; many of his essays had dealt with eighteenth- century subjects ; and he spared no pains to verify his impres- sions, by visiting, notebook in hand, the scene of each event, and by wading through countless biographies, journals, and volumes of letters* for a single telling sentence or paragraph. To write an extended history on the scale of a novel was too great a task, even for Macaulay's remarkable powers; such minute detail would have extended the work far beyond a man's lifetime. He was obliged to cut it down to a history of fifteen years ; for that period, it is a most interesting and enjoyable book. The interest is largely gained by the vivid- ness with which he writes of the people of those times ; he takes sides for or against them, with hearty enthusiasm, making you see them as you see people of your own day — with in- tense clearness, if without the calm judgment of strict histor- ical scholarship. Macaulay's last years were full of friendly affection and of public honor. The wide sale of his writings brought Last years. , . tt ^ him a generous income. He was given an honorary degree by Oxford, and was raised to the peerage under the title INTRODUCTION ix of Baron Macaulay. His bachelor quarters at the Albany, where he had lived for fifteen years, he now left for an attrac- tive villa called Holly Lodge. There was a spacious library, and a pleasant lawn surrounded by roses and shrubs, — hollies, hawthorns, and lilacs. Here he spent the remainder of his life, except for short trips, a regular autumn tour to the continent whenever he could have his old friend, Ellis, as a companion. Many stories are told of the sociable side of his nature, especially within the family; how he would take his sister's children on walks about London, with a story for every > street ; or play tiger with them, roaring from a den of news- papers behind the sofa. He still did a little writing, of which the most famous piece is the article on Johnson for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He continued his life-long habit of reading, not merely of new books, but of old favorites which he read over and over. Failing health made him live more and more in retirement, and in 1859 he died, and was buried in the Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey. II SUGGESTIONS FOR THE STUDY OF MACAULAy's ESSAYS The first step to a proper understanding of any piece of writing is to have clearly in mind what the author was at- tempting to do. We are then in a position to discuss whether it was worth doing, whether the attempt succeeded, and, if so, to what its success is due. Macaulay's ostensible object was to review a book : Malcolm's Life of Clive, in one instance, and Gleig's Life of macaulav's Warren Hastings, in the other. But his real pur- aim. pose, he tells us in the first few paragraphs of the essay on Clive, was to popularize a subject, the British conquest of India, that, on account of the tedious style of previous writers, had hitherto been regarded as insipid or even distasteful. Something of his attitude toward his task we learn, too, from his letters to Napier, the editor of the Edinburgh Review. In July, 1839, he writes, " I mean to give you a life of Clive for October. The subject is a grand one, and admits of decorations and em- bellishments innumerable." In November of the following X INTRODUCTION year, " I see that a life of Warren Hastings is just coming out. I mark it for mine. I will try to make as interesting an arti- cle, though I fear not so flashy, as that on Clive.'' In Jan- uary, •' I hardly know a story so interesting, and of such vari- ous interest. And the central figure is in the highest degree striking and majestic. . . . This story has never been told as well as it deserves. Mill's account of Hastings' administration is indeed very able, — the ablest part, in my judgment, of his work, — but it is dry. ... I am not so vain as to think I can do it full justice ; but the success of my paper on Clive has emboldened me." Later, replying to criticism of the style of one of his historical essays as being too familiar and in- formal, he said, ^' I certainly should not, in regular history, use some of the phrases which you censure. But I do not consider a review of this sort as regular history. ... If you judge of it as you would judge of a regular history, your censure ought to go very much deeper than it does, and to be directed against the substance as well as against the diction." In brief, Macau- lay does not claim to be an original authority on history ; ac- cepting the standard works of the day, Orme and Mill, as he finds them, he retells their most efi'ective portions so as to in- terest the magazine-reading public. Modern historical research has shown that these historians were not so well informed or so impartial as Macaulay believed them to be, and that Macau- lay himself cared more for ''decorations and embellishments" than for absolute accuracy. But if we are studying the essays as appeals for popular interest, we can put aside the question of historical accuracy as not to our immediate purpose ; just as we put it aside in discussing the Iliad, or Macbeth, or Ivanhoe. The student should note in some detail how great a range of. knowledge Macaulay drew from ; not only the book he was Choice of reviewing, but the extensive histories of Orme and material. Mill, his own and his brother-in-law's^ personal ex- periences in India, and his astonishingly wide acquaintance with general history and literature, particularly of the eight- eenth century. By means of this, he is able at every turn to bring in a wealth of illustration and comparison, of descriptive detail and characterization, which would be bewildering if he 1**1 have the advantage of being in hourly intercourse with Trevelyan, who is thoroughly acquainted with the languages, manners, and diplomacy of the Indian courts." (Letter to Napier, Jan. 11, 1841.) INTRODUCTION xi did not take pains always to explain to whom and what he al- luded. One member of the class may well take the range of Macaulay^s information as a subject for thorough investigation, on which to report to the class. From this great mass of mate- rial, what does Macaulay select, and why ? Here, again, one of Macaulay's letters will give us a clue. In the letter of Jan. 11, 1841, to Napier, already quoted, he said of Warren Hastings : " I am not quite sure that so vast a sub- ject may not bear two articles. The scene of the first would lie principally in India. The Rohilla war, the disputes of Hastings and his Council, the character of Francis, the death of Nuncomar, the rise and fall of the empire of Hyder, the seizure of Benares, and many other such interesting mat- ters, would furnish out such a paper. In the second, the scene would be changed to Westminster. There we should have the Coalition ; the Indian Bill ; the impeachment ; the char- acters of all the noted men of that time, from Burke, who man- aged the prosecution of Hastings, down to the wretched Tony Pasquin, who first defended and then libeled him." Mac- aulay thought of his subject, it would seem, as a series of splendid cartoons or figure-groups, to be connected by a unify- ing thread of historical narrative, and to be heightened and lighted up by every device of rhetoric. The most obvious way to begin the study of the essays, then, is to make a list of, or write at the top of the page, topical titles for the important sections of both essays. Besides — or before — studying these cartoons separately, the student should consider how Macaulay works General them together into a whole. Attempt to cut each Plan. essay up into five or six main divisions, as, for instance, in the Essay on Clive : — I. Preliminary information. 1. Importance of the subject. 2. Clive' s early life and appointment to India. 3. The confused situation in India. a. Decline of the house of Tamerlane. b. Ambitions of the French. II. French power in the Carnatic broken, etc. At the beginning of each division, can you find paragraphs that block out the plan of the next division ? In such paragraphs, what hints does Macaulay throw out to sharpen curiosity, or to xii INTRODUCTION suggest the kind of judgment he wishes you to pass on people or events ? Is the transition from one important event to an- other clearly marked, and if so, by what means ? Can you find summaries at the end of the larger divisions ? At the end of each essay, what sort of impression does Macaulay wish to leave ? Are you to draw your own moral conclusions, or are they supplied ? Study any one of the specially striking scenes as you would a spirited bit of fiction. To what extent does Macaulay set his Sneclal stage, — do you see the event against a definite scenes. background ? Is this background peopled with by- standers and subordinates, or do the main characters appear alone ? How fully are the chief actors in the scene character- ized ? Does Macaulay get at their real motives, or does he describe them as their motives would appear to an outsider ? What steps does he take to secure swiftness of movement, sus- pense, climax ? Several pupils in a class may apply this scheme of study to difl'erent passages of interest, such as the Black Hole, the Siege of Plassey, the Execution of Nuncomar, the Trial of Hastings, and many others. Turning to the details of Macaulay's style, see if he had any systematic way of composing a paragraph. Attempt to give a Para- *^^^® ^^ every paragraph on any ten pages. Do you graphs. find that his paragraphs have, or lack, unity ? How many of these paragraphs contain, in their first line, a phrase of transition, or a connecting reference to the preceding para- graph ? In how many does the thought progress naturally, without interruption or violent break, from sentence to sen- tence ? In how many does the final sentence sum up, in a gen- • eral statement, the gist of the paragraph ? In how many does the last sentence add a picturesque detail or a striking illustration ? To what extent do Macaulay's sentences vary in length ? Does he seem more fond of short, direct sentences, or of com- plex ones, with carefully subordinated modifiers ? What tone does this give the essay ? Find examples of the following types of sentence : periodic ; partly periodic ; compound, with a series of independent parts parallel in structure. Find examples of antithesis. In a given ten pages, what proportion of the sentences begin with the subject ? Is this a high or a low proportion ? What proportion begin with a phrase of transition ? Sum up the characteristics of Macau- INTRODUCTION xiii lay's sentences. Do they, in the main, set off the subject sharply by itself, or in a more qualified way, in its relations to other things ? Is Macaulay's style literal or figurative ? Specific or general ? On any page, count the abstract words of Latin origin. Are they many or few ? Familiar or strange ? What tone do they give his style ? Where, and why, does Words. he introduce very unfamiliar words ? What pains does he take to make his literary and historical allusions easily understood ? While the class is studying these essays, it would be well to have individual members take certain topics on which to report to the class at the conclusion of the work. The following topics are suited to the interest and nl^^tfy abilities of pupils in the upper years of the high ''^ork. school : — Topics based on Trevelyan's Life and Letters of Macaulay : Macaulay in Parliament. Macaulay's Letters to his Sisters. Macaulay and the Edinburgh Review (Letters to Mac- vey Napier). Macaulay in India. Topics based on other reference books : The Trial of Hastings as described in Mme. d'Arblay's Diary. The Clive of Macaulay, compared with recent biographies (Malleson or Wilson). The Hastings of Macaulay, compared with recent biogra- phies (Lyall or Strachey). Browning's "Clive." Topics based on Macaulay's Writings : The Essay on Machiavelli. Civil Disabilities of the Jews. Frederick the Great. John Bunyan. Samuel Johnson. Madame d'Arblay. The Life and Writings of Addison. Horatius at the Bridge. Virginia. History of England, selected chapters. WAREEN HASTINGS 1 The Edinburgh Eeview, October, 1841 We are inclined to think that we shall best meet the wishes of our readers if, instead of minutely examining this book, we attempt to give, in a way necessarily hasty and imperfect, our own view of the life and character of Mr. Hastings. Our feeling towards him is not exactly that of the House of Commons which impeached him in 1787 ; neither is it that of the House of Commons which uncovered and stood up to receive him in 1813. He had great qualities, and he rendered great services to the state. But to represent him as a man of stainless virtue is to mako him ridiculous; and from a regard for his memory, if from no other feeling, his friends would have done well to lend no countenance to such adulation. We believe that, if he were now living, he would have suffi- cient judgment and sufficient greatness of mind to wish to be shown as he was. He must have known that there were dark spots on his fame. He might also have felt with pride that the splendor of his fame would bear many spots. He would have wished posterity to have a like- ness of him, though an unfavorable likeness, rather than a daub at once insipid and unnatural, resembling neither liim nor anybody else. "Paint me as I am," said Oliver Cromwell, while sitting to young Lely. "If you leave out the scars and wrinkles, I will not pay you a shilling." Even in such a trifle, the great Protector showed both his good sense and his magnanimity. He did not wish 1 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. 96 WARREN HASTINGS all that was characteristic in his countenance to be lost, in the vain attempt to give him the regular features and smooth blooming cheeks of the curl-pated minions of James the First. He was content that his face should go forth marked with all the blemishes which had been put on it by time, by war, by sleepless nights, by anxiety, perhaps by remorse; but with valor, policy, authority, and public care written in all its princely lines. If men truly great knew their own interest, it is thus that they would wish their minds to be portrayed. Warren Hastings sprang from an ancient and illus- trious race. It has been affirmed that his pedigree can be traced back to the great Danish sea-king, whose sails were long the terror of both coasts of the British Chan- nel, and who, after many fierce and doubtful struggles, yielded at last to the valor and genius of Alfred. But the undoubted splendor of the line of Hastings needs no illustration from fable. One branch of that line wore, in the fourteenth century, the coronet of Pembroke. From another branch sprang the renowned Chamberlain, the faithful adherent of the White Rose, whose fate has furnished so striking a theme both to poets and to his- torians. His family received from the Tudor s the earl- dom of Huntingdon, which, after long dispossession, was regained in our time by a series of events scarcely paral- leled in romance. The lords of the manor of Daylesford, in Worcester- shire, claimed to be considered as the heads of this dis- tinguished family. The main stock, indeed, prospered less than some of the younger shoots. But the Dayles- ford family, though not ennobled, was wealthy and highly considered, till, about two hundred years ago, it was overwhelmed by the great ruin of the civil war. The Hastings of that time was a zealous cavalier. He raised monev on his lands, sent his plate to the mint at Oxford, joined the royal army, and, after spending half his pro- perty in the cause of King Charles, was glad to ransom WARREN HASTINGS 97 himself by making over most of the remaining half to Speaker Lenthal. The old seat at Daylesford still re- mained in the family ; but it could no longer be kept up ; and in the following generation it was sold to a merchant of London. Before this transfer took place, the last Hastings of Daylesford had presented his second son to the rectory of the parish in which the ancient residence of the family stood. The living was of little value ; and the situation of the poor clergyman, after the sale of the estate, was deplorable. He was constantly engaged in lawsuits about his tithes with the new lord of the manor, and was at length utterly ruined. His eldest son, Howard, a well conducted young man, obtained a place in the Customs. The second son, Pynaston, an idle, worthless boy, married before he was sixteen, lost his wife in two years, and died in the West Indies, leaving to the care of his unfortunate father a little orphan, destined to strange and memorable vicissitudes of fortune. Warren, the son of Pynaston, was born on the sixth of December, 1732. His mother died a few days later, and he was left dependent on his distressed grandfather. The child was early sent to the village school, where he learned his letters on the same bench with the sons of the peasantry. Nor did anything in his garb or fare indi- cate that his life was to take a widely different course from that of the young rustics with whom he studied and played. But no cloud could overcast the dawn of so much genius and so much ambition. The very plough- men observed, and long remembered, how kindly little Warren took to his book. The daily sight of the lands which his ancestors had possessed, and which had passed into the hands of strangers, filled his young brain with wild fancies and projects. He loved to hear stories of the wealth and greatness of his progenitors, of their splendid housekeeping, their loyalty, and their valor. On one bright summer day, the boy, then just seven 98 ^ WARREN HASTINGS years old, lay on the bank of the rivulet which flows through the old domain of his house to join the Isis. There, as threescore and ten years later he told the tale, rose in his mind a scheme which, through all the turns of his eventful career, was never abandoned. He would re- cover the estate which had belonged to his fathers. He would be Hastings of Daylesford. This purpose, formed in infancy and poverty, grew stronger as his intellect expanded and as his fortune rose. He pursued his plan with that calm but indomitable force of will which was the most striking peculiarity of his character. When, under a tropical sun, he ruled fifty millions of Asiatics, his hopes, amidst all the cares of war, finance, and legis- lation, still pointed to Daylesford. And when his long public life, so singularly checkered with good and evil, with glory and obloquy, had at length closed forever, it was to Daylesford that he retired to die. When he was eight years old, his uncle Howard deter- mined to take charge of him, and to give him a liberal education. The boy went up to London, and was sent to a school at Newington, where he was well taught but ill fed. He always attributed the smallness of his stature to the hard and scanty fare of this seminary. At ten he was removed to Westminster school, then flourishing under the care of Dr. Nichols. Vinny Bourne, as his pupils affectionately called him, was one of the masters. Churchill, Colman, Lloyd, Cumberland, Cowper, were among the students. With Cowper, Hastings formed a friendship which neither the lapse of time, nor a wide dissimilarity of opinions and pursuits, could v/hoUy dis- solve. It does not appear that they ever met after they had grown to manhood. But forty years later, when the voices of many great orators were crying for vengeance on the oppressor of India, the shy and secluded poet could image to himself Hastings the Governor-General only as the Hastings with whom he had rowed on the Thames and played in the cloister, and refused to believe that so WARREN HASTINGS 99 good-tempered a fellow could have done anything very wrong. His own life had been spent in praying, musing, and rhyming among the water-lilies of the Ouse. He had preserved in no common measure the innocence of childhood. His spirit had indeed been severely tried, but not by temptations which impelled him to any gross violation of the rules of social morality. He had never been attacked by combinations of powerful and deadly enemies. He had never been compelled to make a choicp between innocence and greatness, between crime and ruin. Firmly as he held in theory the doctrine of human depravity, his habits were such that he was unable to conceive how far from the path of right even kind and noble natures may be hurried by the rage of conflict and the lust of dominion. Hastings had another associate at Westminster of whom we shall have occasion to make frequent mention, Elijah Impey. We know little about their school-days. But, we think, we may safely venture to guess that, whenever Hastings wished to play any trick more than usually naughty, he hired Impey with a tart or a ball to act as fag in the worst part of the prank. Warren was distinguished among his comrades as an excellent swimmer, boatman, and scholar. At fourteen he was first in the examination for the foundation. His name in gilded letters on the walls of the dormitory still attests his victory over many older competitors. He stayed two years longer at the school, and was looking forward to a studentship at Christ Church, when an event happened which changed the whole course of his life. Howard Hastings died, bequeathing his nephew to the care of a friend and distant relation, named Chiswick. This gentleman, though he did not absolutely refuse the charge, was desirous to rid himself of it as soon as possi- ble. Dr. Nichols made strong remonstrances against the cruelty of interrupting the studies of a youth who seemed likely to be one of the first scholars of the age. He even TOO WARREN HASTINGS offered to bear the expense of sending his favorite pupil to Oxford. But Mr. Chiswick was inflexible. He thought the years which had already been wasted on hexameters and pentameters quite sufficient. He had it in his power to obtain for the lad a writership in the service of the East India Company. Whether the young adventurer, when once shipped off, made a fortune, or died of a liver complaint, he equally ceased to be a burden to anybody. Warren was accordingly removed from Westminster school, and placed for a few months at a commercial academy, to study arithmetic and book-keeping. In January, 1750, a few days after he had completed his seventeenth year, he sailed for Bengal, and arrived at his destination in the October following. He was immediately placed at a desk in the Secretary's office at Calcutta, and labored there during two years. Fort William was then a purely commercial settlement. In the south of India the encroaching policy of Dupleix had transformed the servants of the English Company, against their will, into diplomatists and generals. The war of the succession was raging in the Carnatic; and the tide had been suddenly turned against the French by the genius of young Robert Clive. But in Bengal the European settlers, at peace with the natives and with each other, were wholly occupied with ledgers and bills of lading. After two years passed in keeping accounts at Calcutta, Hastings was sent up the country to Cossimbazar, a town which lies on the Hoogley, about a mile from Moorsheda- bad, and which then bore to Moorshedabad a relation, if we may compare small things with great, such as the city of London bears to Westminster. Moorshedabad was the abode of the prince who, by an authority ostensibly derived from the Mogul, but really independent, ruled the three great provinces of Bengal, Orissa, and Bahar. At Moorshedabad were the court, the haram, and the public offices. Cossimbazar was a port and a place of WARREN HASTINGS loi trade, renowned for the quantity and excellence of the silks which were sold in its marts, and constantly receiv- ing and sending forth fleets of richly laden barges. At this important point, the Company had established a small factory subordinate to that of Fort William. Here, during several years, Hastings was employed in making bargains for stuffs with native brokers. While he was thus engaged. Sura j ah Dowlah succeeded to the gov- ernment, and declared war against the English. The defenceless settlement of Cossimbazar, lying close to the tyrant's capital, was instantly seized. Hastings was sent a prisoner to Moorshedabad, but, in consequence of the humane intervention of the servants of the Dutch Company, was treated with indulgence. Meanwhile the Nabob marched on Calcutta; the governor and the com- mandant fled ; the town and citadel were taken, and most of the English prisoners perished in the Black Hole. In these events originated the greatness of Warren Hastings. The fugitive governor and his companions had taken refuge on the dreary islet of Fulda, near the mouth of the Hoogley. They were naturally desirous to obtain full information respecting the proceedings of the Nabob ; and no person seemed so likely to furnish it as Hastings, who was a prisoner at large in the immedi- ate neighborhood of the court. He thus became a diplo- matic agent, and soon established a high character for ability and resolution. The treason which at a later period was fatal to Surajah Dowlah was already in pro- gress; and Hastings was admitted to the deliberations of the conspirators. But the time for striking had not arrived. It was necessary to postpone the execution of the design; and Hastings, who was now in extreme peril, fled to Fulda. Soon after his arrival at Fulda, the expedition from Madras, commanded by Clive, appeared in the Hoogley. Warren, young, intrepid, and excited probably by the example of the Commander of the Forces, who, having I02 WARREN HASTINGS like himself been a mercantile agent of tlie Company, had been turned by public calamities into a soldier, determined to serve in the ranks. During the early operations of the war he carried a musket. But the quick eye of Clive soon perceived that the head of the young volunteer would be more useful than his arm. When, after the battle of Plassey, Meer Jaffier was pro- claimed Nabob of Bengal, Hastings was appointed to reside at the court of the new prince as agent for the Company. He remained at Moorshedabad till the year 1761, when he became a member of Council, and was conse- quently forced to reside at Calcutta. This was during the interval between Clive 's first and second administra- tion, an interval which has left on the fame of the East India Company a stain, not wholly effaced by many years of just and humane government. Mr. Vansittart, the Governor, was at the head of a new and anomalous empire. On the one side was a band of English func- tionaries, daring, intelligent, eager to be rich. On the other side was a great native population, helpless, timid, accustomed to crouch under oppression. To keep the stronger race from preying on the weaker was an under- taking which tasked to the utmost the talents and energy of Clive. Vansittart, with fair intentions, was a feeble and inefficient ruler. The master caste, as was natural, broke loose from all restraint ; and then was seen what we believe to be the most frightful of all spectacles, the strength of civilization without its mercy. To all other despotism there is a check, imperfect indeed, and liable to gross abuse, but still sufficient to preserve society from the last extreme of misery. A time comes when the evils of submission are obviously greater than those of resistance, when fear itself begets a sort of courage, when a convulsive burst of popular rage and despair warns tyrants not to presume too far on the patience of mankind. But against misgovernment such as then WARREN HASTINGS 103 afflicted Bengal it was impossible to struggle. The supe- rior intelligence and energy of the dominant class made their power irresistible. A war of Bengalese against Englishmen was like a war of sheep against wolves, of men against demons. The only protection which the conquered could find was in the moderation, the clemency, the enlarged policy of the conquerors. That protection, at a later period, they found. But at first English power came among them unaccompanied by English morality. There was an interval between the time at which they became our subjects, and the time at which we began to reflect that we were bound to discharge towards them the duties of rulers. During that interval the business of a servant of the Company was simply to wring out of the natives a hundred or two hundred thousand pounds as speedily as possible, that he might return home before his constitution had suffered from the heat, to marry a peer's daughter, to buy rotten boroughs in Cornwall, and to give balls in St. James's Square. Of the conduct of Hastings at this time little is known ; but the little that is known, and the circumstance that little is known, must be considered as honorable to him. He could not protect the natives : all that he could do was to abstain from plundering and oppressing them ; and this he appears to have done. It is certain that at this time he continued poor ; and it is equally certain, that by cruelty and dis- honesty he might easily have become rich. It is certain that he was never charged with having borne a share in the worst abuses which then prevailed; and it is almost equally certain that, if he had borne a share in those abuses, the able and bitter enemies who afterwards per- secuted him would not have failed to discover and to proclaim his guilt. The keen, severe, and even male- volent scrutiny to which his whole public life was sub- jected, a scrutiny unparalleled, as we believe, in the his- tory of mankind, is in one respect advantageous to his reputation. It brought many lamentable blemishes to I04 WARREN HASTINGS light; but it entitles him to be considered pure from every blemish which has not been brought to light. The truth is that the temptations to which so many- English functionaries yielded in the time of Mr. Vansit- tart were not temptations addressed to the ruling passions of Warren Hastings. He was not squeamish in pecun- iary transactions; but he was neither sordid nor rapa- cious. He was far too enlightened a man to look on a great empire merely as a buccaneer would look on a galleon. Had his heart been much worse than it was, his understanding would have preserved him from that extremity of baseness. He was an unscrupulous, perhaps an unprincipled statesman; but still he was a statesman, and not a freebooter. In 1764 Hastings returned to England. He had realized only a very moderate fortune ; and that moderate fortune was soon reduced to nothing, partly by his praiseworthy liberality, and partly by his mismanagement. Towards his relations he appears to have acted very generously. The greater part of his savings he left in Bengal, hoping probably to obtain the high usury of India. But high usury and bad security generally go together; and Hast- ings lost both interest and principal. He remained four years in England. Of his life at this time very little is known. But it has been asserted, and is highly probable, that liberal studies and the society of men of letters occupied a great part of his time. It is to be remembered to his honor, that in days when the languages of the East were regarded by other servants of the Company merely as the means of communicating with weavers and money-changers, his enlarged and accom- plished mind sought in Asiatic learning for new forms of intellectual enjoyment, and for new views of govern- ment and society. Perhaps, like most persons who have paid much attention to departments of knowledge which lie out of the common track, he was inclined to overrate the value of his favorite studies. He conceived that the WARREN HASTINGS 105 cultivation of Persian literature might with advantage be made a part of the liberal education of an English gen- tleman; and he drew up a plan with that view. It is said that the University of Oxford, in which Oriental learning had never, since the revival of letters, been wholly neglected, was to be the seat of the institution which he contemplated. An endowment was expected from the munificence of the Company; and professors thoroughly competent to interpret Hafiz and Ferdusi were to be engaged in the East. Hastings called on Johnson, with the hope, as it should seem, of interesting in this project a man who enjoyed the highest literary reputation, and who was particularly connected with Oxford. The interview appears to have left on Johnson's mind a most favorable impression of the talents and attainments of his visitor. Long after, when Hastings was ruling the im- mense population of British India, the old philosopher wrote to him, and referred in the most courtly terms, though with great dignity, to their short but agreeable intercourse. Hastings soon began to look again towards India. He had little to attach him to England ; and his pecuniary embarrassments were great. He solicited his old mas- ters the Directors for employment. They acceded to his request, with high compliments both to his abilities and to his integrity, and appointed him a Member of Council at Madras. It would be unjust not to mention that, though forced to borrow money for his outfit, he did not withdraw any portion of the sum which he had appropri- ated to the relief of his distressed relations. In the spring of 1769 he embarked on board of the Duke of Grafton, and commenced a voyage distinguished by inci- dents which might furnish matter for a novel. Among the passengers in the Duke of Grafton was a German of the name of Imhoff. He called himself a baron; but he was in distressed circumstances, and was going out to Madras as a portrait-painter, in the hope of io6 WARREN HASTINGS picking up some of the pagodas which were then lightly got and as lightly spent by the English in India. The baron was accompanied by his wife, a native, we have somewhere read, of Archangel. This young woman who, born under the Arctic circle, was destined to play the part of a Queen under the tropic of Cancer, had an agreeable person, a cultivated mind, and manners in the highest degree engaging. She despised her husband heartily, and, as the story which we have to tell suffi- ciently proves, not without reason. She was interested by the conversation and flattered by the attentions of Hastings. The situation was indeed perilous. No place is so propitious to the formation either of close friend- ships or of deadly enmities as an Indiaman. There are very few people who do not find a voyage which lasts several months insupportably dull. Anything is welcome which may break that long monotony, a sail, a shark, an albatross, a man overboard. Most passengers find some resource in eating twice as many meals as on land. But the great devices for killing the time are quarrelling and flirting. The facilities for both these exciting pursuits are great. The inmates of the ship are thrown together far more than in any country-seat or boarding-house. None can escape from the rest except by imprisoning himself in a cell in which he can hardly turn. All food, all exercise, is taken in company. Ceremony is to a great extent banished. It is every day in the power of a mischievous person to inflict innumerable annoyances; it is every day in the power of an amiable person to confer little services. It not seldom happens that serious dis- tress and danger call forth in genuine beauty and deform- ity heroic virtues and abject vices which, in the ordinary intercourse of good society, might remain during many years unknown even to intimate associates. Under such circumstances met Warren Hastings and the Baroness Imhoff, two persons whose accomplishments would have attracted notice in any court of Europe. The gentleman WARREN HASTINGS 107 had no domestic ties. The lady was tied to a husband for whom she had no regard, and who had no regard for his own honor. An attachment sprang up, which was soon strengthened by events such as could hardly have occurred on land. Hastings fell ill. The baroness nursed him with womanly tenderness, gave him his medi- cines with her own hand, and even sat up in his cabin wliile he slept. Long before the Duke of Grafton reached Madras, Hastings was in love. But his love was of a most characteristic description. Like his hatred, like his ambition, like all his passions, it was strong, but not impetuous. It was calm, deep, earnest, patient of delay, unconquerable by time. Imhoff was called into council by his wife and his wife's lover. It was arranged that the baroness should institute a suit for a divorce in the courts of Franconia, that the baron should afford every facility to the proceeding, and that, during the years which might elapse before the sentence should be pro- nounced, they should continue to live together. It was also agreed that Hastings should bestow some very sub- stantial marks of gratitude on the complaisant husband, and should, when the marriage was dissolved, make the lady his wife, and adopt the children whom she had already borne to Imhoff. At Madras, Hastings found the trade of the Company in a very disorganized state. His own tastes would have led him rather to political than to commercial pur- suits ; but he knew that the favor of his employers de- pended chiefly on their dividends, and that their divi- dends depended chiefly on the investment. He therefore, with great judgment, determined to apply his vigorous mind for a time to this department of business, which had been much neglected, since the servants of the Company had ceased to be clerks, and had become warriors and negotiators. In a very few months he effected an important reform. The Directors notified to him their high approbation, and io8 WARREN HASTINGS were so mucli pleased with his conduct that they deter- mined to place him at the head of the government of Bengal. Early in 1772 he quitted Fort St. George for his new post. The Imhoffs, who were still man and wife, accompanied him, and lived at Calcutta on the same plan which they had already followed during more than two years. When Hastings took his seat at the head of the coun- cil board, Bengal was still governed according to the system which Clive had devised, — a system which was, perhaps, skilfully contrived for the purpose of facilitat- ing and concealing a great revolution, but which, when that revolution was complete and irrevocable, could pro- duce nothing but inconvenience. There were two gov- ernments, the real and the ostensible. The supreme power belonged to the Company, and was in truth the most despotic power that can be conceived. The only restraint on the English masters of the country was that which their own justice and humanity imposed on them. There was no constitutional check on their will, and resistance to them was utterly hopeless. But, though thus absolute in reality, the English had not yet assumed the style of sovereignty. They held their territories as vassals of the throne of Delhi ; they raised their revenues as collectors appointed by the im- perial commission; their public seal was inscribed with the imperial titles; and their mint struck only the imperial coin. There was still a nabob of Bengal, who stood to the English rulers of his country in the same relation in which Augustulus stood to Odoacer, or the last Mero- vingians to Charles Martel and Pepin. He lived at Moorshedabad, surrounded by princely magnificence. He was approached with outward marks of reverence, and his name was used in public instruments. But in the government of the country he had less real share than the youngest writer or cadet in the Company's service. WARREN HASTINGS 109 Tlie Englisli council which represented the Company at Calcutta was constituted on a very different plan from that which has since been adopted. At present the Gov- ernor is, as to all executive measures, absolute. He can declare war, conclude peace, appoint public functionaries or remove them, in opposition to the unanimous sense of those who sit with him in council. They are, indeed, entitled to know all that is done, to discuss all that is done, to advise, to remonstrate, to send protests to Eng^ land. But it is with the Governor that the supreme power resides, and on him that the whole responsibility rests. This system, which was introduced by Mr. Pitt and Mr. Dundas in spite of the strenuous opposition of Mr. Burke, we conceive to be on the whole the best that was ever devised for the government of a country where no materials can be found for a representative constitu- tion. In the time of Hastings the Governor had only one vote in council, and, in case of an equal division, a cast- ing vote. It therefore happened not unfrequently that he was overruled on the gravest questions; and it was possible that he might be wholly excluded, for years to- gether, from the real direction of public affairs. The English functionaries at Fort William had as yet paid little or no attention to the internal government of Bengal. The only branch of politics about which they much busied themselves was negotiation with the native princes. The police, the administration of justice, the details of the collection of revenue, were almost entirely neglected. We may remark that the phraseology of the Company's servants still bears the traces of this state of things. To this day they always use the word "politi- cal" as synonymous with "diplomatic." We could name that gentleman still living, who was described by the highest authority as an invaluable public servant, emi- nently fit to be at the head of the internal administration of a whole presidency, but unfortunately quite ignorant of all political business. no WARREN HASTINGS The internal government of Bengal the English rulers delegated to a great native minister, who was stationed at Moorshedabad. All military affairs, and with the exception of what pertains to mere ceremonial all foreign affairs, were withdrawn from his control; but the other departments of the administration were entirely confided to him. His own stipend amounted to near a hundred thousand pounds sterling a year. The personal allow- ance of the Nabob, amounting to more than three hundred thousand pounds a year, passed through the minister's hands, and was, to a great extent, at his disposal. The collection of the revenue, the administration of justice, the maintenance of order, were left to this high function- ary ; and for the exercise of his immense power he was responsible to none but the British masters of the country. A situation so important, lucrative, and splendid was naturally an object of ambition to the ablest and most powerful natives. Clive had found it difficult to decide between conflicting pretensions. Two candidates stood out prominently from the crowd, each of them the repre- sentative of a race and of a religion. One of these was Mahommed Eeza Khan, a Mussul- man of Persian extraction, able, active, religious after the fashion of his people, and highly esteemed by them. In England he might perhaps have been regarded as a cor- rupt and greedy politician. But, tried by the lower standard of Indian morality, he might be considered as a man of integrity and honor. His competitor was a Hindoo Brahmin whose name has, by a terrible and melancholy event, been inseparably associated with that of Warren Hastings, the Maharajah Nuncomar. This man had played an important part in all the revolutions which, since the time of Surajah Dow- lah, had taken place in Bengal. To the consideration which in that country belongs to high and pure caste, he added the weight which is derived from wealth, talents, and experience. Of his moral character it is difficult to WARREN HASTINGS iii give a notion to those who are acquainted with human nature only as it appears in our island. What the Italian is to the Englishman, what the Hindoo is to the Italian, what the Bengalee is to other Hindoos, that was Nun- comar to other Bengalese. The physical organization of the Bengalee is feeble even to effeminacy. He lives in a constant vapor bath. His pursuits are sedentary, his limbs delicate, his movements languid. During many ages he has been trampled upon by men of bolder and more hardy breeds. Courage, independence, veracity, are qualities to which his constitution and his situation are equally unfavorable. His mind bears a singular analogy to his body. It is weak even to helplessness, for purposes of manly resistance; but its suppleness and its tact move the children of sterner climates to admiration not unmingled with contempt. All those arts which are the natural defence of the weak are more familiar to this subtle race than to the Ionian of the time of Juvenal, or to the Jew of the dark ages. What the horns are to the buffalo, what the paw is to the tiger, what the sting is to the bee, what beauty, according to the old Greek song, is to woman, deceit is to the Bengalee. Large promises, smooth excuses, elaborate tissues of circumstantial false- hood, chicanery, perjury, forgery, are the weapons, offen- sive and defensive, of the people of the Lower Ganges. All those millions do not furnish one sepoy to the armies of the Company. But as usurers, as money-changers, as sharp legal practitioners, no class of human beings can bear a comparison with them. With all his softness, the Bengalee is by no means placable in his enmities or prone to pity. The pertinacity with which he adheres to his purposes yields only to the immediate pressure of fear. Nor does he lack a certain kind of courage which is often wanting to his masters. To inevitable evils he is some- times found to oppose a passive fortitude, such as the Stoics attributed to their ideal sage. A European war- rior who rushes on a battery of cannon with a loud hurrah 112 WARREN HASTINGS will sometimes shriek under the surgeon's knife, and fall into an agony of despair at the sentence of death. But the Bengalee who would see his country overrun, his house laid in ashes, his children murdered or dishonored, without having the spirit to strike one blow, has yet been known to endure torture with the firmness of Mucins, and to mount the scaffold with the steady step and even pulse of Algernon Sydney. In Nuncomar the national character was strongly and with exaggeration personified. The Company's servants had repeatedly detected him in the most criminal in- trigues. On one occasion he brought a false charge against another Hindoo, and tried to substantiate it by producing forged documents. On another occasion it was discovered that, while professing the strongest at- tachment to the English, he was engaged in several con- spiracies against them, and in particular that he was the medium of a correspondence between the court of Delhi and the French authorities in the Carnatic. For these and similar practices he had been long detained in con- finement. But his talents and influence had not only procured his liberation, but had obtained for him a cer- tain degree of consideration even among the British rulers of his country. Clive was extremely unwilling to place a Mussulman at the head of the administration of Bengal. On the other hand, he could not bring himself to confer immense power on a man to whom every sort of villainy had repeatedly been brought home. Therefore, though the Nabob, over whom Nuncomar had by intrigue acquired great influence, begged that the artful Hindoo might be entrusted with the government, Clive, after some hesita- tion, decided honestly and wisely in favor of Mahommed Reza Khan. When Hastings became Governor, Ma- hommed Reza Khan had held power seven years. An infant son of Meer Jaffier was now nabob; and the guardianship of the young prince's person had been con- fided to the minister. WARREN HASTINGS 113 Nuncomar, stimulated at once by cupidity and malice, had been constantly attempting to hurt his successful rival. This was not difficult. The revenues of Bengal, under the administration established by Clive, did not yield such a surplus as had been anticipated by the Com- pany; for at that time, the most absurd notions were entertained in England respecting the wealth of India. Palaces of porphyry, hung with the richest brocade, heaps of pearls and diamonds, vaults from which pagodas and gold mohurs were measured out by the bushel, filled the imagination even of men of business. Nobody seemed to be aware of what nevertheless was most undoubtedly the truth, that India was a poorer country than countries which in Europe are reckoned poor, than Ireland, for example, or than Portugal. It was confidently believed by lords of the treasury and members for the city that Bengal would not only defray its own charges, but would afford an increased dividend to the proprietors of India stock, and large relief to the English finances. These absurd expectations were disappointed ; and the directors, naturally enough, chose to attribute the disappointment rather to the mismanagement of Mahommed Reza Khan than to their own ignorance of the country entrusted to their care. They were confirmed in their error by the agents of Nuncomar; for Nuncomar had agents even in Leadenhall Street. Soon after Hastings reached Cal- cutta, he received a letter addressed by the Court of Directors, not to the council generally, but to himself in particular. He was directed to remove Mahommed Eeza Khan, to arrest him, together with all his family and all his partisans, and to institute a strict inquiry into the whole administration of the province. It was added that the Governor would do well to avail himself of the assist- ance of Nuncomar in the investigation. The vices of Nuncomar were acknowledged. But even from his vices, it was said, much advantage might at such a conjuncture be derived; and, though he could not safely be trusted, 114 WARREN HASTINGS it miglit still be proper to encourage him by hopes of reward. The Governor bore no good will to Nuncomar. Many- years before, they had known each other at Moorsheda- bad ; and then a quarrel had risen between them which all the authority of their superiors could hardly compose. Widely as they differed in most points, they resembled each othef in this, that both were men of unforgiving natures. To Mahommed Reza Khan, on the other hand, Hastings had no feelings of hostility. Nevertheless he proceeded to execute the instructions of the Company with an alacrity which he never showed except when instruc- tions were in perfect conformity with his own views. He had, wisely, as we think, determined to get rid of the system of double government in Bengal. The orders of the Directors furnished him with the means of effecting his purpose, and dispensed him from the necessity of dis- cussing the matter with his council. He took his mea- sures with his usual vigor and dexterity. At midnight, the palace of Mahommed Reza Khan at Moorshedabad was surrounded by a battalion of sepoys. The minister was roused from his slumbers, and informed that he was a prisoner. With the Mussulman gravity, he bent his head and submitted himself to the will of God. He fell not alone. A chief named Schitab Roy had been en- trusted with the government of Bahar. His valor and his attachment to the English had more than once been signally proved. On that memorable day on which the people of Patna saw from their walls the whole army of the Mogul scattered by the little band of Captain Knox, the voice of the British conquerors assigned the palm of gallantry to the brave Asiatic. "I never," said Knox, when he introduced Schitab Roy, covered with blood and dust, to the English functionaries assembled in the fac- tory, — "I never saw a native fight so before." Schitab Roy was involved in the ruin of Mahommed Reza Khan, was removed from office, and was placed under arrest. WARREN HASTINGS 115 The members of the council received no intimation of these measures till the prisoners were on their road to Calcutta. The inquiry into the conduct of the minister was post- poned on different pretences. He was detained in an easy confinement during many months. In the mean- time, the great revolution which Hastings had planned was carried into effect. The office of minister was abol- ished. The internal administration was transferred to the servants of the Company. A system, a very imper- fect system, it is true, of civil and criminal justice, under English superintendence, was established. The Nabob was no longer to have even an ostensible share in the government; but he was still to receive a considerable annual allowance, and to be surrounded with the state of sovereignty. As he was an infant, it was necessary to provide guardians for his person and property. His person was entrusted to a lady of his father's haram, known by the name of the Munny Begum. The office of treasurer of the household was bestowed on a son of Nuncomar, named Goordas. Nuncomar's services were wanted, yet he could not safely be trusted with power; and Hastings thought it a master stroke of policy to reward the able and unprincipled parent by promoting the inoffensive child. The revolution completed, the double government dis- solved, the Company installed in the full sovereignty of Bengal, Hastings had no motive to treat the late minis- ters with rigor. Their trial had been put off on various pleas till the new organization was complete. They were then brought before a committee, over which the Gov- ernor presided. Schitab Roy was speedily acquitted with honor. A formal apology was made to him for the re- straint to which he had been subjected. All the Eastern marks of respect were bestowed on him. He was clothed in a robe of state, presented with jewels and with a richly harnessed elephant, and sent back to his government at ii6 WARREN HASTINGS Patna. But his health had suffered from confinement ; his high spirit had been cruelly wounded; and soon after his liberation he died of a broken heart. The innocence of Mahommed Reza Khan was not so clearly established. But the Governor was not disposed to deal harshly. After a long hearing, in which Nun- comar appeared as the accuser, and displayed both the art and the inveterate rancor which distinguished him, Hastings pronounced that the charges had not been made out, and ordered the fallen minister to be set at liberty. Nuncomar had purposed to destroy the Mussulman ad- ministration, and to rise on its ruin. Both his malevo- lence and his cupidity had been disappointed. Hastings had made him a tool, had used him for the purpose of accomplishing the transfer of the government from Moor- shedabad to Calcutta, from native to European hands. The rival, the enemy, so long envied, so implacably per- secuted, had been dismissed unhurt. The situation so long and ardently desired had been abolished. It was natural that the Governor should be from that time an object of the most intense hatred to the vindictive Brah- min. As yet, however, it was necessary to suppress such feelings. The time was coming when that long animosity was to end in a desperate and deadly struggle. In the meantime, Hastings was compelled to turn his attention to foreign affairs. The object of his diplomacy was at this time simply to get money. The finances of his government were in an embarrassed state; and this embarrassment he was determined to relieve by some means, fair or foul. The principle which directed all his dealings with his neighbors is fully expressed by the old motto of one of the great predatory families of Teviot- dale, "Thou shalt want ere I want." He seems to have laid it down, as a fundamental proposition which could not be disputed, that when he had not as many lacs of rupees as the public service required, he was to take them from anybody who had. One thing, indeed, is to WARREN HASTINGS 117 be said in excuse for him. The pressure applied to him by his employers at home was such as only the highest virtue could have withstood, such as left him no choice except to commit great wrongs, or to resign his high post, and with that post all his hopes of fortune and dis- tinction. The Directors, it is true, never enjoined or applauded any crime. Far from it. Whoever examines their letters written at that time will find there many just and humane sentiments, many excellent precepts, in short, an admirable code of political ethics. But every exhortation is modified or nullified by a demand for money. "Govern leniently, and send more money; prac- tise strict justice and moderation towards neighboring powers, and send more money; " this is in truth the sum of almost all the instructions that Hastings ever received from home. Now these instructions, being interpreted, mean simply, "Be the father and the oppressor of the people; be just and unjust, moderate and rapacious." The Directors dealt with India as the church, in the good old times, dealt with a heretic. They delivered the victim over to the executioners, with an earnest request that all possible tenderness might be shown. We by no means accuse or suspect those who framed these despatches of hypocrisy. It is probable that, writing fifteen thou- sand miles from the place where their orders were to be carried into effect, they never perceived the gross incon- sistency of which they were guilty. But the inconsistency was at once manifest to their vicegerent at Calcutta, who, with an empty treasury, with an unpaid army, with his own salary often in arrear, with deficient crops, with government tenants daily running away, was called upon to remit home another half million without fail. Hast- ings saw that it was absolutely necessary for him to dis- regard either the moral discourses or the pecuniary requi- sitions of his employers. Being forced to disobey them in something, he had to consider what kind of disobedi- ence they would most readily pardon; and he correctly ii8 WARREN HASTINGS judged that the safest course would be to neglect the sermons and to find the rupees. A mind so fertile as his, and so little restrained by conscientious scruples, speedily discovered several modes of relieving the financial embarrassments of the govern- ment. The allowance of the Nabob of Bengal was reduced at a stroke from three hundred and twenty thou- sand pounds a year to half that sum. The Company had bound itself to pay near three hundred thousand pounds a year to the Great Mogul, as a mark of homage for the provinces which he had entrusted to their care ; and they had ceded to him the districts of Corah and Allahabad. On the plea that the Mogul was not really independent, but merely a tool in the hands of others, Hastings deter- mined to retract these concessions. He accordingly de- clared that the English would pay no more tribute, and sent troops to occupy Allahabad and Corah. The situa- tion of these places was such that there would be little advantage and great expense in retaining them. Hast- ings, who wanted money and not territory, determined to sell them. A purchaser was not wanting. The rich province of Oude had, in the general dissolution of the Mogul Empire, fallen to the share of the great Mussul- man house by which it is stiU governed. About twenty years ago, this house, by the permission of the British government, assumed the royal title; but, in the time of Warren Hastings, such an assumption would have been considered by the Mahommedans of India as a monstrous impiety. The Prince of Oude, though he held the power, did not venture to use the style of sovereignty. To the appellation of Nabob or Viceroy, he added that of Vizier of the monarchy of Hindostan, just as in the last century the Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, though independent of the Emperor, and often in arms against him, were proud to style themselves his Grand Chamberlain and Grand Marshal. Sujah Dowlah, then Nabob Vizier, was on excellent terms with the English. WARREN HASTINGS 119 He had a large treasure. Allahabad and Corah were so situated that they might be of use to him and could be of none to the Company. The buyer and seller soon came to an understanding; and the provinces which had been torn from the Mogul were made over to the government of Oude for about half a million sterling. But there was another matter still more important to be settled by the Vizier and the Governor. The fate of a brave people was to be decided. It was decided in a manner which has left a lasting stain on the fame of Hastings and of England. The people of Central Asia had always been to the inhabitants of India what the warriors of the German forests were to the subjects of the decaying monarchy of Kome. The dark, slender, and timid Hindoo shrank from a conflict with the strong muscle and resolute spirit of the fair race, which dwelt beyond the passes. There is reason to believe that, at a period anterior to the dawn of regular history, the people who spoke the rich and flexible Sanskrit came from regions lying far beyond the Hyphasis and the Hystaspes, and imposed their yoke on the children of the soil. It is certain that, during the last ten centuries, a succession of invaders descended from the west on Hindostan; nor was the course of conquest ever turned back towards the setting sun, till that memor- able campaign in which the cross of St. George was planted on the walls of Ghizni. The Emperors of Hindostan themselves came from the other side of the great mountain ridge; and it had always been their practice to recruit their army from the hardy and valiant race from which their own illustrious house sprang. Among the military adventurers who were allured to the Mogul standards from the neighborhood of Cabul and Candahar were conspicuous several gallant bands, known by the name of the Rohillas. Their ser- vices had been rewarded with large tracts of land, fiefs of the spear, if we may use an expression drawn from an I20 WARREN HASTINGS analogous state of things, in that fertile plain through which the Kamgunga flows from the snowy heights of Kumaon to join the Ganges. In the general confusion which followed the death of Aurungzebe, the warlike colony became virtually independent. The Rohillas were distinguished from the other inhabitants of India by a peculiarly fair complexion. They were more honorably distinguished by courage in war, and by skill in the arts of peace. While anarchy raged from Lahore to Cape Comorin, their little territory enjoyed the blessings of repose under the guardianship of valor. Agriculture and commerce flourished among them ; nor were they negli- gent of rhetoric and poetry. Many persons now living have heard aged men talk with regret of the golden days when the Afghan princes ruled in the vale of Rohilcund. Sujah Dowlah had set his heart on adding this rich district to his own principality. Eight, or show of right, he had absolutely none. His claim was in no respect better founded than that of Catherine to Poland, or that of the Bonaparte family to Spain. The Rohillas held their country by exactly the same title by which he held his, and had governed their country far better than his had ever been governed. Nor were they a people whom it was perfectly safe to attack. Their land was indeed an open plain, destitute of natural defences; but their veins were full of the high blood of Afghanistan. As soldiers, they had not the steadiness which is seldom found except in company with strict discipline ; but their impetuous valor had been proved on many fields of bat- tle. It was said that their chiefs, when united by com- mon peril, could bring eighty thousand men into the field. Sujah Dowlah had himself seen them fight, and wisely shrank from a conflict with them. There was in India one army, and only one, against which even those proud Caucasian tribes could not stand. It had been abundantly proved that neither tenfold odds, nor the martial ardor of the boldest Asiatic nations, could avail WARREN HASTINGS 1 2 1 aught against English science and resolution. Was it possible to induce the Governor of Bengal to let out to hire the irresistible energies of the imperial people, the skill against which the ablest chiefs of Hindostan were helpless as infants, the discipline which had so often triumphed over the frantic struggles of fanaticism and despair, the unconquerable British courage which is never so sedate and stubborn as towards the close of a doubtful and murderous day? This was what the Nabob Vizier asked, and what Hastings granted. A bargain was soon struck. Each of the negotiators had what the other wanted. Hastings was in need of funds to carry on the government of Bengal, and to send remittances to London; and Sujah Dowlah had an ample revenue. Sujah Dowlah was bent on subjugating the Eohillas; and Hastings had at his disposal the only force by which the Eohillas could be subjugated. It was agreed that an English army should be lent to the Nabob Vizier, and that, for the loan, he should pay four hundred thousand pounds sterling, be- sides defraying all the charge of the troops while employed in his service. "I really cannot see," says Mr. Gleig, "upon what grounds, either of political or moral justice, this proposi- tion deserves to be stigmatized as infamous." If we un- derstand the meaning of words, it is infamous to commit a wicked action for hire, and it is wicked to engage in war without provocation. In this particular war, scarcely one aggravating circumstance was wanting. The object of the Rohilla war was this, to deprive a large population, who had never done us the least harm, of a good gov- ernment, and to place them, against their will, under an execrably bad one. Nay, even this is not all. England now descended far below the level even of those petty German princes who, about the same time, sold us troops to fight the Americans. The hussar-mongers of Hesse and Anspach had at least the assurance that the expedi- 122 WARREN HASTINGS tions on whicli their soldiers were to be employed would be conducted in conformity with the humane rules of civ- ilized warfare. Was the Kohilla war likely to be so con- ducted? Did the Governor stipulate that it should be so conducted? He well knew what Indian warfare was. He well knew that the power which he covenanted to put into Sujah Dowlah's hands would, in all probability, be atrociously abused; and he required no guarantee, no promise that it should not be so abused. He did not even reserve to himself the right of withdrawing his aid in case of abuse, however gross. We are almost ashamed to notice Major Scott's absurd plea, that Hastings was justified in letting out English troops to slaughter the Rohillas, because the Rohillas were not of Indian race, but a colony from a distant country. What were the English themselves? Was it for them to proclaim a crusade for the expulsion of all intruders from the coun- tries watered by the Ganges? Did it lie in their mouths to contend that a foreign settler who establishes an em- pire in India is a ta'put lupinum f What would they have said if any other power had, on such a ground, attacked Madras or Calcutta, without the slightest provocation? Such a defence was wanting to make the infamy of the transaction complete. The atrocity of the crime, and the hypocrisy of the apology, are worthy of each other. One of the three brigades of which the Bengal army consisted was sent under Colonel Champion to join Sujah Dowlah's forces. The Rohillas expostulated, entreated, offered a large ransom, but in vain. They then resolved to defend themselves to the last. A bloody battle was fought. "The enemy," says Colonel Champion, "gave proof of a good share of military knowledge; and it is impossible to describe a more obstinate firmness of reso- lution than they displayed." The dastardly sovereign of Oude fled from the field. The English were left un- supported ; but their fire and their charge were irresist- ible. It was not, however, till the most distinguished WARREN HASTINGS 123 chiefs had fallen, fighting bravely at the head of their troops, that the Eohilla ranks gave way. Then the Na- bob Vizier and his rabble made their appearance, and hastened to plunder the camp of the valiant enemies, v/hom they had never dared to look in the face. The soldiers of the Company, trained in an exact discipline, kept unbroken order, while the tents were pillaged by these worthless allies. But many voices were heard to exclaim, "We have had all the fighting, and those rogues are to have all the profit! " Then the horrors of Indian war were let loose on the fair valleys and cities of Eohilcund. The whole country was in a blaze. More than a hundred thousand people fled from their homes to pestilential jungles, preferring fam- ine, and fever, and the haunts of tigers, to the tyranny of him to whom an English and a Christian government had, for shameful lucre, sold their substance, and their blood, and the honor of their wives and daughters. Colo- nel Champion remonstrated with the Nabob Vizier, and sent strong representations to Fort William; but the Governor had made no conditions as to the mode in which the war was to be carried on. He had troubled himself about nothing but his forty lacs; and, though he might disapprove of Sujah Dowlah's wanton barbarity, he did not think himself entitled to interfere, except by offering advice. This delicacy excites the admiration of the biographer. "Mr. Hastings," he says, "could not himself dictate to the Nabob, nor permit the commander of the Company's troops to dictate how the war was to be carried on." No, to be sure. Mr. Hastings had only to put down by main force the brave struggles of innocent men fighting for their liberty. Their military resistance crushed, his duties ended; and he had then only to fold his arms and look on, while their villages were burned, their children butchered, and their women violated. Will Mr. Gleig seriously maintain this opinion ? Is any rule more plain than this, that whoever voluntarily gives to 124 WARREN HASTINGS another irresistible power over human beings is bound to take order that such power shall not be barbarously abused? But we beg pardon of our readers for arguing a point so clear. We hasten to the end of this sad and disgraceful story. The war ceased. The finest population in India was sub- jected to a greedy, cowardly, cruel tyrant. Commerce and agriculture languished. The rich province which had tempted the cupidity of Sujah Dowlah became the most miserable part even of his miserable dominions. Yet is the injured nation not extinct. At long intervals gleams of its ancient spirit have flashed forth; and even at this day, valor, and self-respect, and a chivalrous feeling rare among Asiatics, and a bitter remembrance of the great crime of England, distinguish that noble Afghan race. To this day they are regarded as the best of all sepoys at the cold steel; and it was very recently remarked, by one who had enjoyed great opportunities of observation, that the only natives of India to whom the word "gentleman" can with perfect propriety be applied are to be found among the Rohillas. Whatever we may think of the morality of Hastings, it cannot be denied that the financial results of his policy did honor to his talents. In less than two years after he assumed the government, he had, without imposing any additional burdens on the people subject to his authority, added about four hundred and fifty thousand pounds to the annual income of the Company, besides procuring about a million in ready money. He had also relieved the finances of Bengal from military expenditure, amount- ing to near a quarter of a million a year, and had thrown that charge on the Nabob of Oude. There can be no doubt that this was a result which, if it had been obtained by honest means, would have entitled him to the warmest gratitude of his country, and which, by whatever means obtained, proved that he possessed great talents for ad- ministration. WARREN HASTINGS 125 In the meantime, Parliament had been engaged in long and grave discussions on Asiatic affairs. The ministry of Lord North, in the session of 1773, introduced a mea- sure which made a considerable change in the constitu- tion of the Indian government. This law, known by the name of the Eegulating Act, provided that the presidency of Bengal should exercise a control over the other posses- sions of the Company ; that the chief of that presidency should be styled Governor-General; that he should be assisted by four Councillors; and that a supreme court of judicature, consisting of a chief justice and three in- ferior judges, should be established at Calcutta. This court was made independent of the Governor-General and Council, and was entrusted with a civil and criminal jurisdiction of immense and, at the same time, of unde- fined extent. The Governor-General and Councillors were named in the act, and were to hold their situations for five years. Hastings was to be the first Governor-General. One of the four new Councillors, Mr. Barwell, an experienced servant of the Company, was then in India. The other three. General Clavering, Mr. Monson, and Mr. Francis, were sent out from England. The ablest of the new Councillors was, beyond all doubt, Philip Francis. His acknowledged compositions prove that he possessed considerable eloquence and infor- mation. Several years passed in the public offices had formed him to habits of business. His enemies have never denied that he had a fearless and manly spirit; and his friends, we are afraid, must acknowledge that his estimate of himself was extravagantly high, that his tem- per was irritable, that his deportment was often rude and petulant, and that his hatred was of intense bitterness and long duration. It is scarcely possible to mention this eminent man without adverting for a moment to the question which liis name at once suggests to every mind. Was he the author 126 WARREN HASTINGS of the Letters of Junius ? Our own firm belief is that he was. The evidence is, we think, such as would support a verdict in a civil, nay, in a criminal proceeding. The handwriting of Junius is the very peculiar handwriting of Francis, slightly disguised. As to the position, pur- suits, and connections of Junius, the following are the most important facts which can be considered as clearly proved : first, that he was acquainted with the technical forms of the secretary of state's office; secondly, that he was intimately acquainted with the business of the war office; thirdly, that he, during the year 1770, attended debates in the House of Lords, and took notes of speeches, particularly of the speeches of Lord Chatham; fourthly, that he bitterly resented the appointment of Mr. Chamier to the place of deputy secretary-at-war ; fifthly, that he was bound by some strong tie to the first Lord Holland. Now, Francis passed some years in the secretary of state's office. He was subsequently chief clerk of the war office. He repeatedly mentioned that he had himself, in 1770, heard speeches of Lord Chatham; and some of these speeches were actually printed from his notes. He re- signed his clerkship at the war office from resentment at the appointment of Mr. Chamier. It was by Lord Hol- land that he was first introduced into the public service. Now, here are five marks, all of which ought to be found in Junius. They are all five found in Francis. We do not believe that more than two of them can be found in any other person whatever. If this argument does not settle the question, there is an end of all reasoning on circumstantial evidence. The internal evidence seems to us to point the same way. The style of Francis bears a strong resemblance to that of Junius ; nor are we disposed to admit, what is generally taken for granted, that the acknowledged com- positions of Francis are very decidedly inferior to the anonymous letters. The argument from inferiority, at all events, is one which may be urged with at least equal WARREN HASTINGS 127 force against every claimant that has ever been men- tioned, with the single exception of Burke; and it would be a waste of time to prove that Burke was not Junius. And what conclusion, after all, can be drawn from mere inferiority ? Every writer must produce his best work ; and the interval between his best work and his second best work may be very wide indeed. Nobody will say that the best letters of Junius are more decidedly supe- rior to the acknowledged works of Francis than three pr four of Corneille's tragedies to the rest, than three or four of Ben Jonson's comedies to the rest, than the Pil- grim's Progress to the other works of Bunyan, than Don Quixote to the other works of Cervantes. Nay, it is cer- tain that Junius, whoever he may have been, was a most unequal writer. To go no further than the letters which bear the signature of Junius — the letter to the king, and the letters to Home Tooke, have little in common, except the asperity ; and asperity was an ingredient seldom want- ing either in the writings or in the speeches of Francis. Indeed one of the strongest reasons for believing that Francis was Junius is the moral resemblance between the two men. It is not difficult, from the letters which, under various signatures, are known to have been written by Junius, and from his dealings with Woodfall and others, to form a tolerably correct notion of his character. He was clearly a man not destitute of real patriotism and magnanimity, a man whose vices were not of a sordid kind. But he must also have been a man in the highest degree arrogant and insolent, a man prone to malevolence, and prone to the error of mistaking his malevolence for public virtue. "Doest thou well to be angry? " was the question asked in old time of the Hebrew prophet. And he answered, "I do well." This was evidently the tem- per of Junius ; and to this cause we attribute the savage cruelty which disgraces several of his letters. No man is so merciless as he who, under a strong self-delusion, confounds his antipathies with his duties. It may be 128 WARREN HASTINGS added that Junius, though allied with the democratic party by common enmities, was the very opposite of a demo- cratic politician. While attacking individuals with a ferocity which perpetually violated all the laws of literary warfare, he regarded the most defective parts of old insti- tutions with a respect amounting to pedantry, pleaded the cause of Old Sarum with fervor, and contemptuously told the capitalists of Manchester and Leeds that, if they wanted votes, they might buy land and become freehold- ers of Lancashire and Yorkshire. All this, we believe, might stand, with scarcely any change, for a character of Philip Francis. It is not strange that the great anonymous writer should have been willing at that time to leave the country which had been so powerfully stirred by his eloquence. Everything had gone against him. That party which he clearly preferred to every other, the party of George Grenville, had been scattered by the death of its chief; and Lord Suffolk had led the greater part of it over to the ministerial benches. The ferment produced by the Middlesex election had gone down. Every faction must have been alike an object of aversion to Junius. His opinions on domestic affairs separated him from the ministry ; his opinions on colonial affairs from the opposi- tion. Under such circumstances, he had thrown down his pen in misanthropical despair. His farewell letter to Woodfall bears date the nineteenth of January, 1773. In that letter, he declared that he must be an idiot to write again ; that he had meant well by the cause and the public ; that both were given up ; that there were not ten men who would act steadily together on any question. "But it is all alike," he added, "vile and contemptible. You have never flinched that I know of; and I shall always rejoice to hear of your prosperity." These were the hist words of Junius. In a year from that time, Philip Francis was on his voyage to Bengal. With the three new Councillors came out the judges of WARREN HASTINGS 129 the Supreme Court. The chief justice was Sir Elijah Impey. He was an old acquaintance of Hastings; and it is probable that the Governor-General, if he had searched through all the inns of court, could not have found an equally serviceable tool. But the members of Council were by no means in an obsequious mood. Hast- ings greatly disliked the new form of government, and had no very high opinion of his coadjutors. They had heard of this, and were disposed to be suspicious and punctilious. When men are in such a frame of mind, any trifle is sufficient to give occasion for dispute. The members of Council expected a salute of twenty-one guns from the batteries of Fort William. Hastings allowed them only seventeen. They landed in ill-humor. The first civilities were exchanged with cold reserve. On the morrow commenced that long quarrel which, after dis- tracting British India, was renewed in England, and in which all the most eminent statesmen and orators of the age took active part on one or the other side. Hastings was supported by Barwell. They had not always been friends. But the arrival of the new mem- bers of Council from England naturally had the effect of uniting the old servants of the Company. Claver- ing, Monson, and Francis formed the majority. They instantly wrested the government out of the hands of Hastings; condemned, certainly not without justice, his late dealings with the Nabob Vizier; recalled the Eng- lish agent from Oude, and sent thither a creature of their own ; ordered the brigade which had conquered the unhappy Eohillas to return to the Company's territo- ries; and instituted a severe inquiry into the conduct of the war. Next, in spite of the Governor-General's remonstrances, they proceeded to exercise, in the most indiscreet manner, their new authority over the subor- dinate presidencies ; threw all the affairs of Bombay into confusion; and interfered, with an incredible union of rashness and feebleness, in the intestine disputes of the I30 WARREN HASTINGS Mahratta government. At the same time, they fell on the internal administration of Bengal, and attacked the whole fiscal and judicial system, a system which was undoubt- edly defective, but which it was very improbable that gentlemen fresh from England would be competent to amend. The effect of their reforms was that all protec- tion to life and property was withdrawn, and that gangs of robbers plundered and slaughtered with impunity in the very suburbs of Calcutta. Hastings continued to live in the Government House, and to draw the salary of Governor-General. He continued even to take the lead at the council board in the transaction of ordinary busi- ness ; for his opponents could not but feel that he knew much of which they were ignorant, and that he decided, both surely and speedily, many questions which to them would have been holpelessly puzzling. But the higher powers of government and the most valuable patronage had been taken from him. The natives soon found this out. They considered him as a fallen man ; and they acted after their kind. Some of our readers may have seen, in India, a cloud of crows pecking a sick vulture to death, no bad type of what happens in that country as often as fortune deserts one who has been great and dreaded. In an instant, all the sycophants who had lately been ready to lie for him, to forge for him, to pander for him, to poison for him, hasten to purchase the favor of his victorious enemies by accusing him. An Indian government has only to let it be understood that it wishes a particular man to be ruined, and in twenty -four hours it will be furnished with grave charges, supported by depositions so full and circumstan- tial that any person unaccustomed to Asiatic mendacity would regard them as decisive. It is well if the signa- ture of the destined victim is not counterfeited at the foot of some illegal compact, and if some treasonable paper is not slipped into a hiding-place in his house. Hastings was now regarded as helpless. The power to make or WARREN HASTINGS 131 mar the fortune of every man in Bengal had passed, as it seemed, into the hands of the new Councillors. Imme- diately charges against the Governor-General began to pour in. They were eagerly welcomed by the majority, who, to do them justice, were men of too much honor knowingly to countenance false accusations, but who were not sufficiently acquainted with the East to be aware that, in that part of the world, a very little encourage- ment from power will call forth, in a week, more Oateses, and Bedloes, and Dangerfields, than Westminster Hall sees in a century. It would have been strange indeed if, at such a junc- ture, Nuncomar had remained quiet. That bad man was stimulated at once by malignity, by avarice, and by ambition. Now was the time to be avenged on his old enemy, to wreak a grudge of seventeen years, to establish himself in the favor of the majority of the Council, to become the greatest native in Bengal. From the time of the arrival of the new Councillors, he had paid the most marked court to them, and had in consequence been ex- cluded, with all indignity, from the Government House. He now put into the hands of Francis, with great cere- mony, a paper containing several charges of the most serious description. By this document Hastings was accused of putting offices up to sale, and of receiving bribes for suffering offenders to escape. In particular, it was alleged that Mahommed Reza Khan had been dis- missed with impunity, in consideration of a great sum paid to the Governor-General. Francis read the paper in Council. A violent alterca- tion followed. Hastings complained in bitter terms of the way in which he was treated, spoke with contempt of Nuncomar and of Nuncomar' s accusation, and denied the right of the Council to sit in judgment on the Governor. At the next meeting of the board, another communica- tion from Nuncomar was produced. He requested that he might be permitted to attend the Council, and that he 132 WARREN HASTINGS might be heard in support of his assertions. Another tempestuous debate took place. The Governor-General maintained that the council-room was not a propei place for such an investigation; that from persons who were heated by daily conflict with him he could not expect the fairness of judges; and that he could not, without betray- ing the dignity of his post, submit to be confronted with such a man as Nuncomar. The majority, however, re- solved to go into the charges. Hastings rose, declared rhe sitting at an end, and left the room, followed by Bar- well. The other members kept their seats, voted them- selves a council, put Clavering in the chair, and ordered Nuncomar to be called in. Nuncomar not only adhered to the original charges, but, after the fashion of the East, produced a large supplement. He stated that Hastings had received a great sum for appointing Kajah Goordas treasurer of the Nabob's household, and for committing the care of his Highness 's person to the Munny Begum. He put in a letter purporting to bear the seal of the Munny Begum, for the purpose of establishing the truth of his story. The seal, whether forged, as Hastings affirmed, or genuine, as we are rather inclined to believe, proved nothing. Nuncomar, as everybody knows who knows India, had only to tell the Munny Begum that such a letter would give pleasure to the majority of the Council, in order to procure her attestatioUo The major- ity, however, voted that the ctarge was made out; that Hastings had corruptly received between thirty and forty thousand pounds; and that he ought to be compelled to refund. The general feeling among the English in Bengal was strongly in favor of the Governor-General. In talents for business, in knowledge of the country, in general courtesy of demeanor, he was decidedly superior to his persecutors. The servants of the Company were natu- rally disposed to side with the most distinguished member of their own body against a clerk from the war office, WARREN HASTINGS 133 who, profoundly ignorant of the native languages and of the native character, took on himself to regulate every department of the administration. Hastings, however, in spite of the general sympathy of his countrymen, was in a most painful situation. There was still an appeal to higher authority in England. If that authority took part with his enemies, nothing was left to him but to throw up his office. He accordingly placed his resigna- tion in the hands of his agent in London, Colonel Mac- leane. But Macleane was instructed not to produce the resignation, unless it should be fully ascertained that the feeling at the India House was adverse to the Governor- General. The triumph of Nuncomar seemed to be complete. He held a daily levee, to which his countrymen resorted in crowds, and to which, on one occasion, the majority of the Council condescended to repair. His house was an office for the purpose of receiving charges against the Governor-General. It was said that, partly by threats, and partly by wheedling, the villainous Brahmin had induced many of the wealthiest men of the province to send in complaints. But he was playing a perilous game. It was not safe to drive to despair a man of such resources and of such determination as Hastings. Nuncomar, with all his acuteness, did not understand the nature of the institutions under which he lived. He saw that he had with him the majority of the body which made treaties, gave places, raised taxes. The separation between politi- cal and judicial functions was a thing of which he had no conception. It had probably never occurred to him that there was in Bengal an authority perfectly independ- ent of the Council, an authority which could protect one whom the Council wished to destroy, and send to the gibbet one whom the Council wished to protect. Yet such was the fact. The Supreme Court was, within the sphere of its own duties, altogether independent of the Government. Hastings, with his usual sagacity, had seen 134 WARREN HASTINGS how much advantage he might derive from possessing himself of this stronghold; and he had acted accordingly. The Judges, especially the Chief Justice, were hostile to the majority of the Council. The time had now come for putting this formidable machinery into action. On a sudden, Calcutta was astounded by the news that Nuncomar had been taken up on a charge of felony, committed, and thrown into the common jail. The crime imputed to him was that six years before he had forged a bond. The ostensible prosecutor was a native. But it was then, and still is, the opinion of everybody, idiots and biographers excepted, that Hastings was the real mover in the business. The rage of the majority rose to the highest point. They protested against the proceedings of the Supreme Court, and sent several urgent messages to the Judges, demanding that Nuncomar should be admitted to bail. The Judges returned haughty and resolute answers. All that the Council could do was to heap honors and emolu- ments on the family of Nuncomar; and this they did. In the meantime the assizes commenced ; a true bill was found; and Nuncomar was brought before Sir Elijah Impey and a jury composed of Englishmen. A great quantity of contradictory swearing, and the necessity of having every word of the evidence interpreted, protracted the trial to a most unusual length. At last a verdict of guilty was returned, and the Chief Justice pronounced sentence of death on the prisoner. That Impey ought to have respited Nuncomar we hold to be perfectly clear. Whether the whole proceeding was not illegal is a question. But it is certain that, whatever may have been, according to technical rules of construction, the effect of the statute under which the trial took place, it was most unjust to hang a Hindoo for forg^y. The law which made forgery capital in Eng- land was passed without the smallest reference to the state of society in India. It was unknown to the natives WARREN HASTINGS 135 of India. It had never been put in execution among them, certainly not for want of delinquents. It was in the highest degree shocking to all their notions. They were not accustomed to the distinction which many cir- cumstances, peculiar to our own state of society, have led us to make between forgery and other kinds of cheating. The counterfeiting of a seal was, in their estimation, a common act of swindling ; nor had it ever crossed their minds that it was to be punished as severely as gang- robbery or assassination. A just judge would, beyond all doubt, have reserved the case for the consideration of the sovereign. But Impey would not hear of mercy or delay. The excitement among all classes was great. Francis and Francis's few English adherents described the Gov- ernor-General and the Chief Justice as the Worst of mur- derers. Clavering, it was said, swore that, even at the foot of the gallows, Nuncomar should be rescued. The bulk of the European society, though strongly attached to the Governor-General, could not but feel compassion for a man who, with all his crimes, had so long filled so large a space in their sight, who had been great and powerful before the British empire in India began to exist, and to whom, in the old times, governors and members of council, then mere commercial factors, had paid court for protection. The feeling of the Hindoos was infinitely stronger. They were, indeed, not a people to strike one blow for their countryman. But his sen- tence filled them with sorrow and dismay. Tried even by their low standard of morality, he was a bad man. But, bad as he was, he was the head of their race and religion, a Brahmin of the Brahmins. He had inherited the purest and highest caste. He had practised with the greatest punctuality all those ceremonies to which the superstitious Bengalese ascribe far more* importance than to the correct discharge of the social duties. They felt, therefore, as a devout Catholic in the dark ages would have felt at seeing a prelate of the highest dignity sent 136 WARREN HASTINGS to the gallows by a secular tribunal. According to their old national laws, a Brahmin could not be put to death for any crime whatever. And the crime for which Nun- comar was about to die was regarded by them in much the same light in which the selling of an unsound horse for a sound price is regarded by a Yorkshire jockey. The Mussulmans alone appear to have seen with exul- tation the fate of the powerful Hindoo, who had at- tempted to rise by means of the ruin of Mahommed Reza Khan. The Mahommedan historian of those times takes delight in aggravating the charge. He assures us that in Nuncomar's house a casket was found containing coun- terfeits of the seals of all the richest men of the province. We have never fallen in with any other authority for this story, which in itself is by no means improbable. The day drew near; and Nuncomar prepared himself to die with that quiet fortitude with which the Bengalee, so effeminately timid in personal conflict, often encoun- ters calamities for which there is no remedy. The sheriff, with the humanity which is seldom wanting in an English gentleman, visited the prisoner on the eve of the execu- tion, and assured him that no indulgence, consistent with the law, should be refused to him. Nuncomar expressed his gratitude with great politeness and unaltered compo- sure. Not a muscle of his face moved. Not a sigh broke from him. He put his finger to his forehead, and calmly said that fate would have its way, and that there was no resisting the pleasure of God. He sent his compliments to Francis, Clavering, and Monson, and charged them to protect Rajah Goordas, who was about to become the head of the Brahmins of Bengal. The sheriff withdrew, greatly as^itated by what had passed, and Nuncomar sat composedly down to write notes and examine accounts. The next morning, before the sun was in his power, an immense concourse assembled round the place where the gallows had been set up. Grief and horror were on every face ; yet to the last the multitude could hardly believe WARREN HASTINGS 137 that the English really purposed to take the life of the great Brahmin. At length the mournful procession came through the crowd. Nuncomar sat up in his palanquin, and looked round him with unaltered serenity. He had just parted from those who were most nearly connected with him. Their cries and contortions had appalled the European ministers of justice, but had not produced the smallest effect on the iron stoicism of the prisoner. The only anxiety which he expressed was that men of his own priestly caste might be in attendance to take charge of his corpse. He again desired to be remembered to his friends in the Council, mounted the scaffold with firm- ness, and gave the signal to the executioner. The mo- ment that the drop fell, a howl of sorrow and despair rose from the innumerable spectators. Hundreds turned away their faces from the polluting sight, fled with loud wailings towards the Hoogley, and plunged into its holy waters, as if to purify themselves from the guilt of hav- ing looked on such a crime. These feelings were not confined to Calcutta. The whole province was greatly excited ; and the population of Dacca, in particular, gave strong signs of grief and dismay. Of Impey's conduct it is impossible to speak too severely. We have already said that, in our opinion, he acted unjustly in refusing to respite Nuncomar. No rational man can doubt that he took this course in order to gratify the Governor-General. If we had ever had any doubts on that point, they would have been dispelled by a letter which Mr. Gleig has published. Hastings, three or four years later, described Impey as the man "to whose support he was at one time indebted for the safety of his fortune, honor, and reputation." These strong words can refer only to the case of Nuncomar ; and they must mean that Impey hanged Nuncomar in order to support Hastings. It is, therefore, our deliberate opinion that Impey, sitting as a judge, put a man un- justly to death in order to serve a political purpose. 138 WARREN HASTINGS But we look on the conduct of Hastings in a somewhat different light. He was struggling for fortune, honor, liberty, all that makes life valuable. He was beset by rancorous and unprincipled enemies. From his col- leagues he could expect no justice. He cannot be blamed for wishing to crush his accusers. He was indeed bound to use only legitimate means for that end. But it was not strange that he should have thought any means legiti- mate which were pronounced legitimate by the sages of the law, by men whose peculiar duty it was to deal justly between adversaries, and whose education might be sup- posed to have peculiarly qualified them for the discharge of that duty. Nobody demands from a party the unbend- ing equity of a judge. The reason that judges are ap- pointed is, that even a good man cannot be trusted to decide a cause in which he is himself concerned. Not a day passes on which an honest prosecutor does not ask for what none but a dishonest tribunal would grant. It is too much to expect that any man, when his dearest inter- ests are at stake, and his strongest passions excited, will, as against himself, be more just than the sworn dispensers of justice. To take an analogous case from the history of our own island : suppose that Lord Stafford, when in the Tower on suspicion of being concerned in the Popish Plot, had been apprised that Titus Oates had done some- thing which might, by a questionable construction, be brought under the head of felony. Should we severely blame Lord Stafford, in the supposed case, for causing a prosecution to be instituted, for furnishing funds, for using all his influence to intercept the mercy of the Crown? We think not. If a judge, indeed, from favor to the Catholic lords, were to strain the law in order to hang Oates, such a judge would richly deserve impeach- ment. But it does not appear to us that the Catholic lord, by bringing the case before the judge for decision, would materially overstep the limits of a just self-defence. While, therefore, we have not the least doubt that this WARREN HASTINGS 139 memorable execution is to be attributed to Hastings, we doubt whether it can with justice be reckoned among his crimes. That his conduct was dictated by a profound policy is evident. He was in a minority in Council. It was possible that he might long be in a minority. He knew the native character well. He knew in what abun- dance accusations are certain to flow in against the most innocent inhabitant of India who is under the frown of power. There was not in the whole black population of Bengal a place-holder, a place-hunter, a government tenant, who did not think that he might better himself by sending up a deposition against the Governor-General. Under these circumstances, the persecuted statesman re- solved to teach the whole crew of accusers and witnesses that, though in a minority at the council board, he was still to be feared. The lesson which he gave them was indeed a lesson not to be forgotten. The head of the combination which had been formed against him, the richest, the most powerful, the most artful of the Hin- doos, distinguished by the favor of those who then held the government, fenced round by the superstitious rever- ence of millions, was hanged in broad day before many thousands of people. Everything that could make the warning impressive, dignity in the sufferer, solemnity in the proceeding, was found in this case. The helpless rage and vain struggles of the Council made the triumph more signal. From that moment the conviction of every native was that it was safer to take the part of Hastings in a minority than that of Francis in a majority, and that he who was so venturous as to join in running down the Governor-General might chance, in the phrase of the Eastern poet, to find a tiger, while beating the jungle for a deer. The voices of a thousand informers were silenced in an instant. From that time, whatever diffi- culties Hastings might have to encounter, he was never molested by accusations from natives of India. It is a remarkable circumstance that one of the letters I40 WARREN HASTINGS of Hastings to Dr. Jolmson bears date a very few hours after the death of Nuncomar. While the whole settle- ment was in commotion, while a mighty and ancient priesthood were weeping over the remains of their chief, the conqueror in that deadly grapple sat down, with characteristic self-possession, to write about the Tour to the Hebrides, Jones's Persian Grammar, and the history, traditions, arts, and natural productions of India. In the meantime, intelligence of the Rohilla war, and of the first disputes between Hastings and his colleagues, had reached London. The Directors took part with the majority, and sent out a letter filled with severe reflec- tions on the conduct of Hastings. They condemned, in strong but just terms, the iniquity of undertaking offen- sive wars merely for the sake of pecuniary advantages. But they utterly forgot that, if Hastings had by illicit means obtained pecuniary advantages, he had done so, not for his own benefit, but in order to meet their de- mands. To enjoin honesty, and to insist on having what could not be honestly got, was then the constant practice of the Company. As Lady Macbeth says of her husband, they "would not play false, and yet would wrongly win." The Regulating Act, by which Hastings had been appointed Governor-General for five years, empowered the Crown to remove him on an address from the Com- pany. Lord North was desirous to procure such an ad- dress. The three members of Council who had been sent out from England were men of his own choice. General Clavering, in particular, was supported by a large parlia- mentary connection, such as no cabinet could be inclined to disoblige. The wish of the Minister was to displace Hastings, and to put Clavering at the head of the govern- ment. In the Court of Directors parties were very nearly balanced. Eleven voted against Hastings ; ten for him. The Court of Proprietors was then convened. The great saleroom presented a singular appearance. Letters had been sent by the Secretary of the Treasury, exhorting all WARREN HASTINGS 141 the supporters of government who held India stock to be in attendance. Lord Sandwich marshalled the friends of the administration with his usual dexterity and alertness. Fifty peers and privy councillors, seldom seen so far east- ward, were counted in the crowd. The debate lasted till midnight. The opponents of Hastings had a small supe- riority on the division ; but a ballot was demanded ; and the result was that the Governor-General triumphed by a majority of above a hundred votes over the combined efforts of the Directors and the Cabinet. The ministers were greatly exasperated by this defeat. Even Lord North lost his temper, no ordinary occurrence with him, and threatened to convoke Parliament before Christmas, and to bring in a bill for depriving the Company of all political power, and for restricting it to its old business of trading in silks and teas. Colonel Macleane, who through all this conflict had zealously supported the cause of Hastings, now thought that his employer was in imminent danger of being turned out, branded with parliamentary censure, perhaps pro- secuted. The opinion of the crown lawyers had already been taken respecting some parts of the Governor-Gen- eral's conduct. It seemed to be high time to think of securing an honorable retreat. Under these circum- stances, Macleane thought himself justified in producing the resignation with which he had been entrusted. The instrument was not in very accurate form ; but the Direc- tors were too eager to be scrupulous. They accepted the resignation, fixed on Mr. Wheler, one of their own body, to succeed Hastings, and sent out orders that General Clavering, as senior member of Council, should exercise the functions of Governor-General till Mr. Wheler should arrive. But, while these things were passing in England, a great change had taken place in Bengal. Monson was no more. Only four members of the government were left. Clavering and Francis were on one side, Barwell 142 WARREN HASTINGS and the Governor-General on the other; and the Gov- ernor-General had the casting vote. Hastings, who had been during two years destitute of all power and patron- age, became at once absolute. He instantly proceeded to retaliate on his adversaries. Their measures were reversed, their creatures vv^ere displaced. A new valua- tion of the lands of Bengal, for the purposes of taxation, was ordered; and it was provided that the whole inquiry should be conducted by the Governor-General, and that all the letters relating to it should run in his name. He began, at the same time, to revolve vast plans of conquest and dominion, plans which he lived to see realized, though not by himself. His project was to form subsidiary alli- ances with the native princes, particularly with those of Oude and Berar, and thus to make Britain the para- mount power in India. While he was meditating these great designs, arrived the intelligence that he had ceased to be Governor-General, that his resignation had been accepted, that Wheler was coming out immediately, and that, till Wheler arrived, the chair was to be filled by Clavering. Had Hastings still been in a minority, he would prob- ably have retired without a struggle ; but he was now the real master of British India, and he was not disposed to quit his high place. He asserted that he had never given any instructions which could warrant the steps taken at home. What his instructions had been, he owned he had forgotten. If he had kept a copy of them he had mislaid it. But he was certain that he had re- peatedly declared to the Directors that he would not resign. He could not see how the court, possessed of that declaration from himself, could receive his resigna- tion from the doubtful hands of an agent. If the resig- nation were invalid, all the proceedings which were founded on that resignation were null, and Hastings was still Governor-General. He afterwards affirmed that, though his agents had WARREN HASTINGS 143 not acted in conformity with his instructions, he would nevertheless have held himself bound by their acts, if Clavering had not attempted to seize the supreme power by violence. Whether this assertion were or were not true, it cannot be doubted that the imprudence of Claver- ing gave Hastings an advantage. The General sent for the keys of the fort and of the treasury, took possession of the records, and held a council at which Francis at- tended. Hastings took the chair in another apartment, and Barwell sat with him. Each of the two parties had a plausible show of right. There was no authority entitled to their obedience within fifteen thousand miles. It seemed that there remained no way of settling the dis- pute except an appeal to arms; and from such an appeal Hastings, confident of his influence over his countrymen in India, was not inclined to shrink. He directed the officers of the garrison of Fort William and of all the neighboring stations to obey no orders but his. At the same time, with admirable judgment, he offered to sub- mit the case to the Supreme Court, and to abide by its decision. By making this proposition he risked nothing; yet it was a proposition which his opponents could hardly reject. Nobody could be treated as a criminal for obey- ing what the judges should solemnly pronounce to be the lawful government. The boldest man would shrink from taking arms in defence of what the judges should pro- nounce to be usurpation. Clavering and Francis, after some delay, unwillingly consented to abide by the award of the court. The court pronounced that the resignation was invalid, and that therefore Hastings was still Gov- ernor-General under the Eegulating Act ; and the defeated members of the Council, finding that the sense of the whole settlement was against them, acquiesced in the decision. About this time arrived the news that, after a suit which had lasted several years, the Franconian courts had decreed a divorce between Imhoff and his wife. The 144 WARREN HASTINGS Baron left Calcutta, carrying with him the means of buying an estate in Saxony. The lady became Mrs. Hastings. The event was celebrated by great festivities; and all the most conspicuous persons at Calcutta, without distinction of parties, were invited to the Government House. Clavering, as the Mahommedan chronicler tells the story, was sick in mind and body, and excused him- self from joining the splendid assembly. But Hastings, whom, as it should seem, success in ambition and in love had put into high good-humor, would take no denial. He went himself to the General's house, and at length brought his vanquished rival in triumph to the gay circle which surrounded the bride. The exertion was too much for a frame broken by mortification as well as by disease. Clavering died a few days later. Wheler, who came out expecting to be Governor- General, and was forced to content himself with a seat at the council board, generally voted with Francis. But the Governor-General, with Barwell's help and his own casting vote, was still the master. Some change took place at this time in the feeling both of the Court of Directors and of the Ministers of the Crown. All designs against Hastings were dropped; and, when his original term of five years expired, he was quietly reappointed. The truth is that the fearful dangers to which the public interests in every quarter were now exposed made both Lord North and the Company unwilling to part with a Governor whose talents, experience, and resolution en- mity itself was compelled to acknowledge. The crisis was indeed formidable. That great and victorious empire, on the throne of which George the Third had taken his seat eighteen years before, with brighter hopes than had attended the accession of any of the long line of English sovereigns, had, by the most senseless misgovernment, been brought to the verge of ruin. In America millions of Englishmen were at war with the country from which their blood, their language, WARREN HASTINGS 145 their religion, and their institutions were derived, and to which, but a short time before, they had been as strongly attached as the inhabitants of Norfolk and Leicestershire. The great powers of Europe, humbled to the dust by the vigor and genius which had guided the councils of George the Second, now rejoiced in the prospect of a signal revenge. The time was approaching when our island, while struggling to keep down the United States of America, and pressed with a still nearer danger by the too just discontents of Ireland, was to be assailed by France, Spain, and Holland, and to be threatened by the armed neutrality of the Baltic ; when even our maritime supremacy was to be in jeopardy; when hostile fleets were to command the Straits of Calpe and the Mexican Sea ; when the British flag was to be scarcely able to pro- tect the British Channel. Great as were the faults of Hastings, it was happy for our country that at that con- juncture, the most terrible through which she has ever passed, he was the ruler of her Indian dominions. An attack by sea on Bengal was little to be appre- hended. The danger was that the European enemies of England might form an alliance with some native power, might furnish that power with troops, arms, and ammu- nition, and might thus assail our possessions on the side of the land. It was chiefly from the Mahrattas that Hastings anticipated danger. The original seat of that singular people was the wild range of hills which runs along the western coast of India. In the reign of Au- rungzebe the inhabitants of those regions, led by the great Sevajee, began to descend on the possessions of their wealthier and less warlike neighbors. The energy, ferocity, and cunning of the Mahrattas soon made them the most conspicuous among the new powers which were generated by the corruption of the decaying monarchy. At first they were only robbers. They soon rose to the dignity of conquerors. Half the provinces of the empire were turned into Mahratta principalities. Freebooters, 146 WARREN HASTINGS sprung from low castes, and accustomed to menial employ- ments, became mighty Rajahs. The Bonslas, at the head of a band of plunderers, occupied the vast region of Berar. The Guieowar, which is, being interpreted, the Herdsman, founded that dynasty which still reigns in Guzerat. The houses of Scindia and Holkar waxed great in Malwa. One adventurous captain made his nest on the impregnable rock of Gooti. Another became the lord of the thousand villages which are scattered among the green rice-fields of Tan j ore. That was the time, throughout India, of double gov- ernment. The form and the power were everywhere separated. The Mussulman nabobs who had become sovereign princes, the Vizier in Oude, and the Nizam at Hyderabad, still called themselves the viceroys of the house of Tamerlane. In the same manner the Mahratta states, though really independent of each other, pretended to be members of one empire. They all acknowledged, by words and ceremonies, the suj)remacy of the heir of Sevajee, a roi faineant who chewed bhang and toyed with dancing girls in a state prison at Sattara, and of his Peshwa or mayor of the palace, a great hereditary magis- trate, who kept a court with kingly state at Poonah, and whose authority was obeyed in the spacious provinces of Aurungabad and Bejapoor. Some months before war was declared in Europe the government of Bengal was alarmed by the news that a French adventurer, who passed for a man of quality, had arrived at Poonah. It was said that he had been received there with great distinction, that he had delivered to the Peshwa letters and presents from Louis the Sixteenth, and that a treaty, hostile to England, had been concluded between Prance and the Mahrattas. Hastings immediately resolved to strike the first blow. The title of the Peshwa was not undisputed. A portion of the Mahratta nation was favorable to a pretender. The Governor-General determined to espouse this pre- WARREN HASTINGS 147 tender's interest, to move an army across the peninsula of India, and to form a close alliance with the chief of the house of Bonsla, who ruled Berar, and who, in power and dignity, was inferior to none of the Mahratta princes. The army had marched, and the negotiations with Berar were in progress, when a letter from the English consul at Cairo brought the news that war had been pro- claimed both in London and Paris. All the measures which the crisis required were adopted by Hastings with- out a moment's delay. The French factories in Bengal were seized. Orders were sent to Madras that Pon- dicherry should instantly be occupied. Near Calcutta, works were thrown up which were thought to render the approach of a hostile force impossible. A maritime estab- lishment was formed for the defence of the river. Nine new battalions of sepoys were raised, and a corps of native artillery was formed out of the hardy Lascars of the Bay of Bengal. Having made these arrangements, the Governor- General with calm confidence pronounced his presidency secure from all attack, unless the Mahrattas should march against it in conjunction with the French. The expedition which Hastings had sent westward was not so speedily or completely successful as most of his undertakings. The commanding officer procrastinated. The authorities at Bombay blundered. But the Gov- ernor-General persevered. A new commander repaired the errors of his predecessor. Several brilliant actions spread the military renown of the English through regions where no European flag had ever been seen. It is probable that, if a new and more formidable danger had not com- pelled Hastings to change his whole policy, his plans respecting the Mahratta empire would have been carried into complete effect. The authorities in England had wisely sent out to Bengal, as commander of the forces and member of the Council, one of the most distinguished soldiers of that time. Sir Eyre Coote had, many years before, been 148 WARREN HASTINGS conspicuous among the founders of the British empire in the East. At the council of war which preceded the battle of Plassey, he earnestly recommended, in opposi- tion to the majority, that daring course which, after some hesitation, was adopted, and which was crowned with such splendid success. He subsequently commanded in the south of India against the brave and unfortunate Lally, gained the decisive battle of Wandewash over the French and their native allies, took Pondicherry, and made the English power supreme in the Carnatic. Since those great exploits near twenty years had elapsed. Coote had no longer the bodily activity which he had shown in earlier days ; nor was the vigor of his mind altogether un- impaired. He was capricious and fretful, and required much coaxing to keep him in good-humor. It must, we fear, be added, that the love of money had grown upon him, and that he thought more about his allowances, and less about his duties, than might have been expected from so eminent a member of so noble a profession. Still he was perhaps the ablest officer that was then to be found in the British army. Among the native soldiers his name was great and his influence unrivalled. Nor is he yet forgotten by them. Now and then a white-bearded old sepoy may still be found, who loves to talk of Porto Novo and PoUilore. It is but a short time since one of those aged men came to present a memorial to an English officer, who holds one of the highest employments in India. A print of Coote hung in the room. The veteran recognized at once that face and figure which he had not seen for more than half a century, and, forgetting his salam to the living, halted, drew himself up, lifted his hand, and with solemn reverence paid his military obei- sance to the dead. Coote, though he did not, like Barwell, vote constantly with the Governor-General, was by no means inclined to join in systematic opposition, and on most questions con- curred with Hastings, who did his best, by assiduous WARREN HASTINGS 149 courtship, and by readily granting the most exorbitant allowances, to gratify the strongest passions o£ the old soldier. It seemed likely at this time that a general reconcilia- tion would put an end to the quarrels which had, during some years, weakened and disgraced the government of Bengal. The dangers of the empire might well induce men of patriotic feeling — and of patriotic feeling neither Hastings nor Francis was destitute — to forget private enmities, and to cooperate heartily for the general good. Coote had never been concerned in faction. Wheler was thoroughly tired of it. Barwell had made an ample fortune, and, though he had promised that he would not leave Calcutta while his help was needed in Council, was most desirous to return to England, and exerted himseK to promote an arrangement which would set him at liberty. A compact was made, by which Francis agreed to desist from opposition, and Hastings engaged that the friends of Francis should be admitted to a fair share of the honors and emoluments of the service. During a few months after this treaty there was apparent harmony at the council board. Harmony, indeed, was never more necessary; for at this moment internal calamities, more formidable than war itself, menaced Bengal. The authors of the Reg- ulating Act of 1773 had established two independent powers, the one judicial, the other political; and, with a carelessness scandalously common in English legislation, had omitted to define the limits of either. The judges took advantage of the indistinctness, and attempted to draw to themselves supreme authority, not only within Calcutta, but through the whole of the great territory subject to the presidency of Fort William. There are few Englishmen who will not admit that the English law, in spite of modern improvements, is neither so cheap nor so speedy as might be wished. Still, it is a system which has grown up among us. In some points, it has been I50 WARREN HASTINGS fashioned to suit our feelings; in others, it has gradually fashioned our feelings to suit itself. Even to its worst evils we are accustomed; and therefore, though we may complain of them, they do not strike us with the horror and dismay which would be produced by a new grievance of smaller severity. In India the case is widely different. English law, transplanted to that country, has all the vices from which we suffer here; it has them all in a far higher degree ; and it has other vices, compared with which the worst vices from which we suffer are trifles. Dilatory here, it is far more dilatory in a land where the help of an interpreter is needed by every judge and by every advocate. Costly here, it is far more costly in a land into which the legal practitioners must be imported from an immense distance. All English labor in India, from the labor of the Governor-General and the Com- mander-in-Chief, down to that of a groom or a watch- maker, must be paid for at a higher rate than at home. No man will be banished, and banished to the torrid zone, for nothing. The rule holds good with respect to the legal profession. No English barrister will work, fifteen thousand miles from all his friends, with the thermometer at ninety-six in the shade, for the emolu- ments which will content him in chambers that overlook the Thames. Accordingly, the fees at Calcutta are about three times as great as the fees of Westminster Hall; and this, though the people of India are, beyond all comparison, poorer than the people of England. Yet the delay and the expense, grievous as they are, form the smallest part of the evil which English law, imported without modifications into India, could not fail to pro- duce. The strongest feelings of our nature, honor, re- ligion, female modesty, rose up against the innovation. Arrest on mesne process was the first step in most civil proceedings; and to a native of rank arrest was not merely a restraint, but a foul personal indignity. Oaths were required in every stage of every suit; and the feel- WARREN HASTINGS 151 ing of a Quaker about an oath is hardly stronger than that of a respectable native. That the apartments of a woman of quality should be entered by strange men, or that her face should be seen by them, are, in the East, intolerable outrages, — outrages which are more dreaded than death, and which can be expiated only by the shed- ding of blood. To these outrages the most distinguished families of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, were now exposed. Imagine what the state of our own country would be, if a jurisprudence were on a sudden introduced among us, which should be to us what our jurisprudence was to our Asiatic subjects. Imagine what the state of our country would be, if it were enacted that any man, by merely swearing that a debt was due to him, should acquire a right to insult the persons of men of the most honorable and sacred callings and of women of the most shrinking delicacy, to horsewhip a general officer, to put a bishop in the stocks, to treat ladies in the way which called forth the blow of Wat Tyler. Something like this was the effect of the attempt which the Supreme Court made to extend its jurisprudence over the whole of the Company's territory. A reign of terror began, of terror heightened by mys- tery : for even that which was endured was less horrible than that which was anticipated. No man knew what was next to be expected from this strange tribunal. It came from beyond the black water, as the people of India, with mysterious horror, call the sea. It consisted of judges not one of whom was familiar with the usages of the millions over whom they claimed boundless author- ity. Its records were kept in unknown characters; its sentences were pronounced in unknown sounds. It had already collected round itself an army of the worst part of the native population, informers, and false witnesses, and common barrators, and agents of chicane, and, above all, a banditti of bailiffs' followers, compared with whom the retainers of the worst English sponging-houses, in 152 WARREN HASTINGS the worst times, might be considered as upright and ten- der-hearted. Many natives, highly considered among their countrymen, were seized, hurried up to Calcutta, flung into the common jail, not for any crime even imputed, not for any debt that had been proved, but merely as a precaution till their cause should come to trial. There were instances in which men of the most venerable dis:- nity, persecuted without a cause by extortioners, died of rage and shame in the gripe of the vile alguazils of Impey. The harams of noble Mahommedans, sanctuaries respected in the East by governments which respected nothing else, were burst open by gangs of bailiffs. The Mussulmans, braver and less accustomed to submission than the Hindoos, sometimes stood on their defence; and there were instances in which they shed their blood in the doorway, while defending, sword in hand, the sacred apartments of their women. Nay, it seemed as if even the faint-hearted Bengalee, who had crouched at the feet of Surajah Dowlah, who had been mute during the ad- ministration of Vansittart, would at length find courage in despair. No Mahratta invasion had ever spread through the province such dismay as this inroad of Eng- lish lawyers. All the injustice of former oppressors, Asiatic and European, appeared as a blessing when com- pared with the justice of the Supreme Court. Every class of the population, English and native, with the exception of the ravenous pettifoggers who fat- tened on the misery and terror of an immense community, cried out loudly against this fearful oppression. But the judges were immovable. If a bailiff was resisted, they ordered the soldiers to be called out. If a servant of the Company, in conformity with the orders of the gov- ernment, withstood the miserable catchpoles who, with Impey' s writs in their hands, exceeded the insolence and rapacity of gang-robbers, he was flung into prison for a contempt. The lapse of sixty years, the virtue and wis- dom of many eminent magistrates who have during that WARREN HASTINGS 153 time administered justice in the Supreme Court, Lave not effaced from the minds of the people of Bengal the recol- lection of those evil days. The members of the government were, on this subject, united as one man. Hastings had courted the judges; he had found them useful instruments. But he was not disposed to make them his own masters, or the masters of India. His mind was large; his knowledge of the native character most accurate. He saw that the sy stern pursued by the Supreme Court was degrading to the government and ruinous to the people ; and he resolved to oppose it manfully. The consequence was, that the friendship, if that be the proper word for such a connec- tion, which had existed between him and Impey, was for a time completely dissolved. The government placed it- self firmly between the tyrannical tribunal and the peo- ple. The Chief Justice proceeded to the wildest excesses. The Governor-General and all the members of Council were served with writs, calling on them to appear before the King's justices, and to answer for their public acts. This was too much. Hastings, with just scorn, refused to obey the call, set at liberty the persons wrongfully detained by the Court, and took measures for resisting the outrageous proceedings of the sheriffs' officers, if ne- cessary, by the sword. But he had in view another device which might prevent the necessity of an appeal to arms. He was seldom at a loss for an expedient; and he knew Impey well. The expedient, in this case, was a very simple one, neither more nor less than a bribe. Impey was, by act of Parliament, a judge, independent of the government of Bengal, and entitled to a salary of eight thousand a year. Hastings proposed to make him also a judge in the Company's service, removable at the plea- sure of the government of Bengal ; and to give him, in that capacity, about eight thousand a year more. It was understood that, in consideration of this new salary, Impey would desist from urging the high pretensions of 154 WARREN HASTINGS his court. If lie did urge these pretensions, the govern- ment could, at a moment's notice, eject him from the new place which had been created for him. The bargain was struck; Bengal was saved; an appeal to force was averted; and the Chief Justice was rich, quiet, and infamous. Of Impey's conduct it is unnecessary to speak. It was of a piece with almost every part of his conduct that comes under the notice of history. No other such judge has dishonored the English ermine, since Jeffreys drank himself to death in the Tower. But we cannot agree with those who have blamed Hastings for this transac- tion. The case stood thus. The negligent manner in which the Regulating Act had been framed put it in the power of the Chief Justice to throw a great country into the most dreadful confusion. He was determined to use his power to the utmost, unless he was paid to be still; and Hastings consented to pay him. The necessity was to be deplored. It is also to be deplored that pirates should be able to exact ransom by threatening to make their captives walk the plank. But to ransom a captive from pirates has always been held a humane and Chris- tian act; and it would be absurd to charge the payer of the ransom with corrupting the virtue of the corsair. This, we seriously think, is a not unfair illustration of the relative position of Impey, Hastings, and the people of India. Whether it was right in Impey to demand or to accept a price for powers which, if they really be- longed to him, he could not abdicate, which, if they did not belong to him, he ought never to have usurped, and which in neither case he could honestly sell, is one ques- tion. It is quite another question, whether Hastings was not right to give any sum, however large, to any man, however worthless, rather than either surrender millions of human beings to pillage, or rescue them by civil war. Francis strongly opposed this arrangement. It may, WARREN HASTINGS 155 indeed, be suspected tliat personal aversion to Impey was as strong a motive with Francis as regard for the welfare of the province. To a mind burning with resentment, it might seem better to leave Bengal to the oppressors than to redeem it by enriching them. It is not improbable, on the other hand, that Hastings may have been the more willing to resort to an expedient agreeable to the Chief Justice, because that high functionary had already been so serviceable, and might, when existing dissensions were composed, be serviceable again. But it was not on this point alone that Francis was now opposed to Hastings. The peace between them proved to be only a short and hollow truce, during which their mutual aversion was constantly becoming stronger. At length an explosion took place. Hastings publicly charged Francis with having deceived him, and with having induced Barwell to quit the service by insincere promises. Then came a dispute, such as frequently arises even between honorable men, when they may make important agreements by mere verbal communication. An impartial historian will probably be of opinion that they had misunderstood each other ; but their minds were so much embittered that they imputed to each other nothing less than deliberate villainy. "I do not," said Hastings, in a minute recorded on the Consultations of the Government, "I do not trust to Mr. Francis's pro- mises of candor, convinced that he is incapable of it. I judge of his public conduct by his private, which I have found to be void of truth and honor." After the Council had risen, Francis put a challenge into the Governor- General's hand. It was instantly accepted. They met, and fired. Francis was shot through the body. He was carried to a neighboring house, where it appeared that the wound, though severe, was not mortal. Hastings inquired repeatedly after his enemy's health, and pro- posed to call on him; but Francis coldly declined the visit. He had a proper sense, he said, of the Governor- 156 WARREN HASTINGS General's politeness, but could not consent to any private interview. They could meet only at the council board. In a very short time it was made signally manifest to how great a danger the Governor-General had, on this occasion, exposed his country. A crisis arrived with which he, and he alone, was competent to deal. It is not too much to say that, if he had been taken from the head of affairs, the years 1780 and 1781 would have been as fatal to our power in Asia as to our power in America. The Mahrattas had been the chief objects of apprehen- sion to Hastings. The measures which he had adopted for the purpose of breaking their power had at first been frustrated by the errors of those whom he was compelled to employ ; but his perseverance and ability seemed likely to be crowned with success, when a far more formidable danger showed itself in a distant quarter. About thirty years before this time, a Mahommedan soldier had begun to distinguish himself in the wars of Southern India. His education had been neglected; his extraction was humble. His father had been a petty officer of revenue ; his grandfather a wandering dervise. But though thus meanly descended, though ignorant even of the alphabet, the adventurer had no sooner been placed at the head of a body of troops than he approved himself a man born for conquest and command. Among the crowd of chiefs who were struggling for a share of India, none could compare with him in the qualities of the cap- tain and the statesman. He became a general; he be- came a sovereign. Out of the fragments of old princi- palities, which had gone to pieces in the general wreck, he formed for himself a great, compact, and vigorous empire. That empire he ruled with the ability, severity, and vigi- lance of Louis the Eleventh. Licentious in his pleasures, implacable in his revenge, he had yet enlargement of mind enough to perceive how much the prosperity of sub- jects adds to the strength of governments. He was an oppressor ; but he had at least the merit of protecting his WARREN HASTINGS 157 people against all oppression except his own. He was now in extreme old age; but his intellect was as clear, and his spirit as high, as in the prime of manhood. Such was the great Hyder Ali, the founder of the Ma- hommedan kingdom of Mysore, and the most formidable enemy with whom the English conquerors of India have ever had to contend. Had Hastings been governor of Madras, Hyder would have been either made a friend, or vigorously encoun- tered as an enemy. Unhappily the English authorities in the south provoked their powerful neighbor's hostility, without being prepared to repel it. On a sudden, an army of ninety thousand men, far superior in discipline and efficiency to any other native force that could be found in India, came pouring through those wild passes which, worn by mountain torrents, and dark with jungle, lead down from the table-land of Mysore to the plains of the Carnatic. This great army was accompanied by a hundred pieces of cannon ; and its movements were guided by many French officers, trained in the best military schools of Europe. Hyder was everywhere triumphant. The sepoys in many British garrisons flung down their arms. Some forts were surrendered by treachery, and some by despair. In a few days the whole open country north of the Cole- roon had submitted. The English inhabitants of Madras could already see by night, from the top of Mount St. Thomas, the eastern sky reddened by a vast semicircle of blazing villages. The white villas, to which our coun- trymen retire after the daily labors of government and of trade, when the cool evening breeze springs up from the bay, were now left without inhabitants; for bands of the fierce horsemen of Mysore had already been seen prowling among the tulip trees, and near the gay verandas. Even the town was not thought secure, and the British mer- chants and public functionaries made haste to crowd themselves behind the cannon of Fort St. George. 158 WARREN HASTINGS There were the means indeed of assembling an army which might have defended the presidency, and even driven the invader back to his mountains. Sir Hector Munro was at the head of one considerable force; Baillie was advan- cing with another. United, they might have presented a formidable front even to such an enemy as Hyder. But the English commanders, neglecting those fundamental rules of the military art of which the propriety is obvious even to men who had never received a military education, deferred their junction, and were separately attacked. Baillie 's detachment was destroyed. Munro was forced to abandon his baggage, to fling his guns into the tanks, and to save himself by a retreat which might be called a fliofht. In three weeks from the commencement of the war, the British empire in Southern India had been brought to the verge of ruin. Only a few fortified places remained to us. The glory of our arms had de- parted. It was known that a great French expedition might soon be expected on the coast of Coromandel. England, beset by enemies on every side, was in no con- dition to protect such remote dependencies. Then it was that the fertile genius and serene courage of Hastings achieved their most signal triumph. A swift ship, flying before the southwest monsoon, brought the evil tidings in a few days to Calcutta. In twenty -four hours the Governor-General had framed a complete plan of policy adapted to the altered state of affairs. The struggle with Hyder was a struggle for life and death. All minor objects must be sacrificed to the preservation of the Carnatic. The disputes with the Mahrattas must be accommodated. A large military force and a supply of money must be instantly sent to Madras. But even these measures would be insufficient, unless the war, hitherto so grossly mismanaged, were placed under the direction of a vigorous mind. It was no time for tri- fling. Hastings determined to resort to an extreme exer- cise of power, to suspend the incapable governor of Fort WARREN HASTINGS 159 St. George, to send Sir Eyre Coote to oppose Hyder, and to entrust that distinguished general with the whole administration of the war. In spite of the sullen opposition of Francis, who had now recovered from his wound, and had returned to the Council, the Governor-General's wise and firm policy was approved by the majority of the board. The re- inforcements were sent off with great expedition, and reached Madras before the French armament arrived in the Indian seas. Coote, broken by age and disease, was no longer the Coote of Wandewash; but he was still a resolute and skilful commander. The progress of Hyder was arrested; and in a few months the great victory of Porto Novo retrieved the honor of the English arms. In the meantime Francis had returned to England, and Hastings was now left perfectly unfettered. Wheler had gradually been relaxing in his opposition, and, after the departure of his vehement and implacable colleague, cooperated heartily with the Governor-General, whose influence over the British in India, always great, had, by the vigor and success of his recent measures, been con- siderably increased. But, though the difficulties arising from factions within the Council were at an end, another class of difficulties had become more pressing than ever. The financial em- barrassment was extreme. Hastings had to find the means, not only of carrying on the government of Bengal, but of maintaining a most costly war against both Indian and European enemies in the Carnatic, and of making remittances to England. A few years before this time he had obtained relief by plundering the Mogul and en- slaving the Kohillas ; nor were the resources of his fruit- ful mind by any means exhausted. His first design was on Benares, a city which in wealth, population, dignity, and sanctity, was among the fore- most of Asia. It was commonly believed that half a million of human beings was crowded into that labyrinth i6o WARREN HASTINGS of lofty alleys, rich witli shrines, and minarets, and bal- conies, and carved oriels, to which the sacred apes clung by hundreds. The traveller could scarcely make his way through the press of holy mendicants and not less holy bulls. The broad and stately flights of steps which descended from these swarming haunts to the bathing- places along the Ganges were worn every day by the foot- steps of an innumerable multitude of worshippers. The schools and temples drew crowds of pious Hindoos from every province where the Brahminical faith was known. Hundreds of devotees came thither every month to die : for it was believed that a peculiarly happy fate awaited the man who should pass from the sacred city into the sacred river. Nor was superstition the only motive which allured strangers to that great metropolis. Commerce had as many pilgrims as religion. All along the shores of the venerable stream lay great fleets of vessels laden with rich merchandise. From the looms of Benares went forth the most delicate silks that adorned the balls of St. James's and of Versailles; and, in the bazaars, the muslins of Bengal and the sabres of Oude were mingled with the jewels of Golconda and the shawls of Cashmere. This rich capital, and the surrounding tract, had long been under the immediate rule of a Hindoo Prince, who ren- dered homage to the Mogul emperors. During the great anarchy of India, the lords of Benares became independ- ent of the court of Delhi, but were compelled to submit to the authority of the Nabob of Oude. Oppressed by this formidable neighbor, they invoked the protection of the English. The English protection was given; and at length the Nabob Vizier, by a solemn treaty, ceded all his rights over Benares to the Company. From that time the Rajah was the vassal of the government of Bengal, acknowledged its supremacy, and engaged to send an annual tribute to Fort William. This tribute Cheyte Sing, the reigning prince, had paid with strict punctuality. WARREN HASTINGS i6i About the precise nature of the legal relation between the Company and the Rajah of Benares there has been much warm and acute controversy. On the one side, it has been maintained that Cheyte Sing was merely a great subject on whom the superior power had a right to call for aid in the necessities of the empire. On the other side, it has been contended that he was an independent prince, that the only claim which the Company had upon him was for a fixed tribute, and that while the fixed tribute was regularly paid, as it assuredly was, the Eng- lish had no more right to exact any further contribu- tion from him than to demand subsidies from Holland or Denmark. Nothing is easier than to find precedents and analogies in favor of either view. Our own impression is that neither view is correct. It was too much the habit of English politicians to take it for granted that there was in India a known and definite constitution by which questions of this kind were to be decided. The truth is that, during the interval which elapsed between the fall of the house of Tamerlane and the establishment of the British ascendency, there was no such constitution. The old order of things had passed away ; the new order of things was not yet formed. All was transition, confusion, obscurity. Everybody kept his head as he best might, and scrambled for whatever he could get. There have been similar seasons in Europe. The time of the dissolution of the Carlovingian empire is an instance. Who would think of seriously discussing the question, What extent of pecuniary aid and of obedi- ence Hugh Capet had a constitutional right to demand from the Duke of Brittany or the Duke of Normandy ? The words "constitutional right" had, in that state of society, no meaning. If Hugh Capet laid hands on all the possessions of the Duke of Normandy, this might be unjust and immoral; but it would not be illegal, in the sense in which the ordinances of Charles the Tenth were illegal. If, on the other hand, the Duke of Normandy 1 62 WARREN HASTINGS made war on Hugh Capet, this might be unjust and im- moral; but it would not be illegal, in the sense in which the expedition of Prince Louis Bonaparte was illegal. Very similar to this was the state of India sixty years ago. Of the existing governments not a single one could lay claim to legitimacy, or could plead any other title than recent occupation. There was scarcely a province in which the real sovereignty and the nominal sovereignty were not disjoined. Titles and forms were still retained which implied that the heir of Tamerlane was an absolute ruler, and that the Nabobs of the provinces were his lieutenants. In reality, he was a captive. The Nabobs were in some places independent princes. In other places, as in Bengal and the Carnatic, they had, like their mas- ter, become mere phantoms, and the Company was su- preme. Among the Mahrattas, again, the heir of Sevajee still kept the title of Kajah; but he was a prisoner, and his prime minister, the Peshwa, had become the heredi- tary cbief of the state. The Peshwa, in his turn, was fast sinking into the same degraded situation to which he had reduced the Kajah. It was, we believe, impossible to find, from the Himalayas to Mysore, a single govern- ment which was at once a government de facto and a government dejure^ which possessed the physical means of making itseK feared by its neighbors and subjects, and which had at the same time the authority derived from law and long prescription. Hastings clearly discerned, what was hidden from most of his contemporaries, that such a state of things gave immense advantages to a ruler of great talents and few scruples. In every international question that could arise, he had his option between the de facto ground and the dejure ground; and the probability was that one of those grounds would sustain any claim that it might be convenient for him to make, and enable him to resist any claim made by others. In every controversy, accord- ingly, he resorted to the plea which suited his immediate WARREN HASTINGS 163 purpose, without troubling himself in the least about consistency ; and thus he scarcely ever failed to find what, to persons of short memories and scanty information, seemed to be a justification for what he wanted to do. Sometimes the Nabob of Bengal is a shadow, sometimes a monarch. Sometimes the Vizier is a mere deputy, sometimes an independent potentate. If it is expedient for the Company to show some legal title to the revenues of Bengal, the grant under the seal of the Mogul is brought forward as an instrument of the highest author- ity. When the Mogul asks for the rents which were reserved to him by that very grant, he is told that he is a mere pageant, that the English power rests on a very different foundation from a charter given by him, that he is welcome to play at royalty as long as he likes, but that he must expect no tribute from the real masters of India. It is true that it was in the power of others, as well as of Hastings, to practise this legerdemain ; but in the con- troversies of governments, sophistry is of little use unless it be backed by power. There is a principle which Has- tings was fond of asserting in the strongest terms, and on which he acted with undeviating steadiness. It is a principle which, we must own, though it may be grossly abused, can hardly be disputed in the present state of public law. It is this, that where an ambiguous question arises between two governments, there is, if they cannot agree, no appeal except to force, and that the opinion of the stronger must prevail. Almost every question was ambiguous in India. The English government was the strongest in India. The consequences are obvious. The English government might do exactly what it chose. The English government now chose to wring money out of Cheyte Sing. It had formerly been convenient to treat him as a sovereign prince ; it was now convenient to treat him as a subject. Dexterity inferior to that of Hastings could easily find, in the general chaos of laws and customs, arguments for either course. Hastings 1 64 WARREN HASTINGS wanted a great supply. It was known that Cheyte Sing had a large revenue, and it was suspected that he had ac- cumulated a treasure. Nor was he a favorite at Calcutta. He had, when the Governor-General was in great diffi- culties, courted the favor of Francis and Clavering. Hastings, who, less, perhaps, from evil passions than from policy, seldom left an injury unpunished, was not sorry that the fate of Cheyte Sing should teach neighboring princes the same lesson which the fate of Nuncomar had already impressed on the inhabitants of Bengal. In 1778, on the first breaking out of the war with France, Cheyte Sing was called upon to pay, in addition to his fixed tribute, an extraordinary contribution of fifty thousand pounds. In 1779 an equal sum was exacted. In 1780 the demand was renewed. Cheyte Sing, in the hope of obtaining some indulgence, secretly offered the Governor-General a bribe of twenty thousand pounds. Hastings took the money, and his enemies have main- tained that he took it intending to keep it. He certainly concealed the transaction, for a time, both from the Council in Bengal and from the Directors at home; nor did he ever give any satisfactory reason for the conceal- ment. Public spirit, or the fear of detection, at last, determined him to withstand the temptation. He paid over the bribe to the Company's treasury, and insisted that the Rajah should instantly comply with the demands of the English government. The Rajah, after the fashion of his countrymen, shuffled, solicited, and pleaded pov- erty. The grasp of Hastings was not to be so eluded. He added to the requisition another ten thousand pounds as a fine for delay, and sent troops to exact the money. The money was paid. But this was not enough. The late events in the south of India had increased the finan- cial embarrassments of the Company. Hastings was de- termined to plunder Cheyte Sing, and, for that end, to fasten a quarrel on him. Accordingly, the Rajah was now required to keep a body of cavalry for the service of WARREN HASTINGS 165 the British government. He objected and evaded. This was exactly what the Governor-General wanted. He had now a pretext for treating the wealthiest of his vassals as a criminal. "I resolved" — these are the words of Hastings himself — " to draw from his guilt the means of relief of the Company's distresses, to make him pay largely for his pardon, or to exact a severe vengeance for past delinquency." The plan was simply this, to demand larger and larger contributions till the Kajah should be driven to remonstrate, then to call his remonstrance a crime, and to punish him by confiscating all his pos- sessions. Cheyte Sing was in the greatest dismay. He offered two hundred thousand pounds to propitiate the British government. But Hastings replied that nothing less than half a million would be accepted. Nay, he began to think of selling Benares to Oude, as he had formerly sold Allahabad and Rohilcund. The matter was one which could not be well managed at a distance; and Hastings resolved to visit Benares. Cheyte Sing received his liege lord with every mark of reverence, came near sixty miles, with his guards, to meet and escort the illustrious visitor, and expressed his deep concern at the displeasure of the English. He even took off his turban, and laid it in the lap of Hastings, a gesture which in India marks the most profound sub- mission and devotion. Hastings behaved with cold and repulsive severity. Having arrived at Benares, he sent to the Rajah a paper containing the demands of the gov- ernment of Bengal. The Rajah, in reply, attempted to clear himself from the accusations brought against him. Hastings, who wanted money and not excuses, was not to be put off by the ordinary artifices of Eastern negotia- tion. He instantly ordered the Rajah to be arrested and placed under the custody of two companies of sepoys. In taking these strong measures, Hastings scarcely showed his usual judgment. It is possible that, having 1 66 WARREN HASTINGS had little opportunity of personally observing any part of the population of India, except the Bengalese, he was not fully aware of the difference between their -character and that of iiie tribes which inhabit the upper provinces. He was now in a land far more favorable to the vigor of the human frame than the Delta of the Ganges ; in a land fruitful of soldiers, who have been found worthy to fol- low English battalions to the charge and into the breach. The Eajah was popular among his subjects. His admin- istration had been mild ; and the prosperity of the district which he governed presented a striking contrast to the depressed state of Bahar under our rule, and a still more striking contrast to the misery of the provinces which were cursed by the tyranny of the Nabob Vizier. The national and religious prejudices with which the English were regarded throughout India were peculiarly intense in the metropolis of the Brahminical superstition. It can therefore scarcely be doubted that the Governor-General before he outraged the dignity of Cheyte Sing by an arrest, ought to have assembled a force capable of bear- ing down all opposition. This had not been done. The handful of sepoys who attended Hastings would probably have been sufficient to overawe Moorshedabad, or the Black Town of Calcutta. But they were unequal to a conflict with the hardy rabble of Benares. The streets surrounding the palace were filled by an immense multi-- tude, of whom a large proportion, as is usual in Upper India, wore arms. The tumult became a fight, and the fight a massacre. The English officers defended them- selves with desperate courage against overwhelming num- bers, and fell, as became them, sword in hand. The sepoys were butchered. The gates were forced. The captive prince, neglected by his jailers during the con- fusion, discovered an outlet which opened on the precipi- tous bank of the Ganges, let himself down to the water by a string made of the turbans of his attendants, found a boat, and escaped to the opposite shore. WARREN HASTINGS 167 If Hastings had, by indiscreet violence, brought him- self into a difficult and perilous situation, it is only just to acknowledge that he extricated himself with even more than his usual ability and presence of mind. He had only fifty men with him. The building in which he had taken up his residence was on every side blockaded by the insurgents. But his fortitude remained unshaken. The Rajah from the other side of the river sent apologies and liberal offers. They were not even answered. Some subtle and enterprising men were found who undertook to pass through the throng of enemies, and to convey the intelligence of the late events to the English cantonments. It is the fashion of the natives of India to wear large ear- rings of gold. When they travel, the rings are laid aside, lest the precious metal should tempt some gang of robbers; and, in place of the ring, a quill or a roll of paper is inserted in the orifice to prevent it from closing. Hastings placed in the ears of his messengers letters rolled up in the smallest compass. Some of these letters were addressed to the commanders of the English troops. One was written to assure his wife of his safety. One was to the envoy whom he had sent to negotiate with the Mahrattas. Instructions for the negotiation were needed ; and the Governor-General framed them in that situation of extreme danger with as much composure as if he had been writing in his palace at Calcutta. Things, however, were not yet at the worst. An Eng- lish officer of more spirit than judgment, eager to dis- tinguish himself, made a premature attack on the insur- gents beyond the river. His troops were entangled in narrow streets, and assailed by a furious poptilation. He fell, with many of his men; and the survivors were forced to retire. This event produced the effect which has never failed to follow every check, however slight, sustained in India by the English arms. For hundreds of miles round, the whole country was in commotion. The entire population 1 68 WARREN HASTINGS of the district of Benares took arms. The fields were abandoned by the husbandmen, who thronged to defend their prince. The infection spread to Oude. The op- pressed people of that province rose up against the Nabob Vizier, refused to pay their imposts, and put the revenue officers to flight. Even Bahar was ripe for revolt. The hopes of Cheyte Sing began to rise. Instead of implor- ing mercy in the humble style of a vassal, he began to talk the language of a conqueror, and threatened, it was said, to sweep the white usurpers out of the land. But the English troops were now assembling fast. The officers, and even the private men, regarded the Gover- nor-General with enthusiastic attachment, and flew to his aid with an alacrity which, as he boasted, had never been shown on any other occasion. Major Popham, a brave and skilful soldier, who had highly distinguished himself in the Mahratta war, and in whom the Governor-General reposed the greatest confidence, took the command. The tumultuary army of the Rajah was put to rout. His fastnesses were stormed. In a few hours, above thirty thousand men left his standard, and returned to their ordinary avocations. The unhappy prince fled from his country forever. His fair domain was added to the British dominions. One of his relations indeed was ap- pointed rajah; but the Rajah of Benares was henceforth to be, like the Nabob of Bengal, a mere pensioner. By this revolution, an addition of two hundred thou- sand pounds a year was made to the revenues of the Company. But the immediate relief was not as great as had been expected. The treasure laid up by Cheyte Sing had been popularly estimated at a million sterling. It turned out to be about a fourth part of that sum ; and, such as it was, it was seized by the army, and divided as prize-money. Disappointed in his expectations from Benares, Has- tings was more violent than he would otherwise have been, in his dealings with Oude. Sujah Dowlah had WARREN HASTINGS 169 long been dead. His son and successor, Asaph-ul-Dow- lah, was one of the weakest and most vicious even of Eastern princes. His life was divided between torpid repose and the most odious forms of sensuality. In his court there was boundless waste, throughout his dominions wretchedness and disorder. He had been, under the skilful management of the English government, gradually sinking from the rank of an independent prince to that of a vassal of the Company. It was only by the help of a British brigade that he could be secure from the aggres- sions of neighbors who despised his weakness, and from the vengeance of subjects who detested his tyranny. A brigade was furnished; and he engaged to defray the charge of paying and maintaining it. From that time his independence was at an end. Hastings was not a man to lose the advantage which he had thus gained. The Nabob soon began to complain of the burden which he had undertaken to bear. His revenues, he said, were falling off; his servants were unpaid; he could no longer support the expense of the arrangement which he had sanctioned. Hastings would not listen to these represen- tations. The Vizier, he said, had invited the govern- ment of Bengal to send him troops, and had promised to pay for them. The troops had been sent. How long the troops were to remain in Oude was a matter not set- tled by the treaty. It remained, therefore, . to be settled between the contracting parties. But the contracting parties differed. Who then must decide? The stronger. Hastings also argued that, if the English force was withdrawn, Oude would certainly become a prey to an- archy, and would probably be overrun by a Mahratta army. That the finances of Oude were embarrassed he admitted. But he contended, not without reason, that the embarrassment was to be attributed to the incapacity and vices of Asaph-ul-Dowlah himself, and that, if less were spent on the troops, the only effect would be that more would be squandered on worthless favorites. lyo WARREN HASTINGS Hastings had intended, after settling the affairs of Benares, to visit Lucknow, and there to confer with Asaph-ul-Dowlah. But the obsequious courtesy of the Nabob Vizier prevented this visit. With a small train he hastened to meet the Governor-General. An inter- view took place in the fortress which, from the crest of the precipitous rock of Chunar, looks down on the waters of the Ganges. At first sight it might appear impossible that the nego- tiation should come to an amicable close. Hastings wanted an extraordinary supply of money. Asaph-ul- Dowlah wanted to obtain a remission of what he already owed. Such a difference seemed to admit of no compro- mise. There was, however, one course satisfactory to both sides, one course by which it was possible to relieve the finances both of Oude and of Bengal ; and that course was adopted. It was simply this, that the Governor- General and the Nabob Vizier should join to rob a third party; and the third party whom they determined to rob was the parent of one of the robbers. The mother of the late Nabob, and his wife, who was the mother of the present Nabob, were known as the Begums or Princesses of Oude. They had possessed great influence over Sujah Dowlah, and had, at his death, been left in possession of a splendid dotation. The domains of which they received the rents and adminis- tered the government were of wide extent. The treasure hoarded by the late Nabob, a treasure which was popu- larly estimated at near three millions sterling, was in their hands. They continued to occupy his favorite palace at Fyzabad, the Beautiful Dwelling ; while Asaph- ul-Dowlah held his court in the stately Lucknow, which he had built for himself on the shores of the Goomti, and had adorned with noble mosques and colleges. Asaph-ul-Dowlah had already extorted considerable sums from his mother. She had at length appealed to the English; and the English had interfered. A solemn WARREN HASTINGS 171 compact had been made, by which she consented to give her son some pecuniary assistance, and he in his turn promised never to commit any further invasion of her rights. This compact was formally guaranteed by the government of Bengal. But times had changed; money was wanted ; and the power which had given the guarantee was not ashamed to instigate the spoiler to excesses such that even he shrank from them. It was necessary to find some pretext for a confiscation inconsistent, not merely with plighted faith, not merely with the ordinary rules of humanity and justice, but also with that great law of filial piety which, even in the wild- est tribes of savages, even in those more degraded com- munities which wither under the influence of a corrupt half civilization, retains a certain authority over the human mind. A pretext was the last thing that Has- tings was likely to want. The insurrection at Benares had produced disturbances in Oude. These disturbances it was convenient to impute to the Princesses. Evidence for the imputation there was scarcely any; unless reports wandering from one mouth to another, and gaining some- thing by every transmission, may be called evidence. The accused were furnished with no charge ; they were permitted to make no defence; for the Governor-General wisely considered that, if he tried them, he might not be able to find a ground for plundering them. It was agreed between him and the Nabob Vizier that the noble ladies should, by a sweeping act of confiscation, be stripped of their domains and treasures for the benefit of the Com- pany, and that the sums thus obtained should be accepted by the government of Bengal in satisfaction of its claims on the government of Oude. While Asaph-ul-Dowlah was at Chunar, he was com- pletely subjugated by the clear and commanding intellect of the English statesman. But when they had separated, the Vizier began to reflect with uneasiness on the engage- ment into which he had entered. His mother and grand- 172 WARREN HASTINGS mother protested and implored. His heart, deeply cor- rupted by absolute power and licentious pleasures, yet not naturally unfeeling, failed him in this crisis. Even the English resident at Lucknow, though hitherto devoted to Hastings, shrank from extreme measures. But the Governor-General was inexorable. He wrote to the resi- dent in terms of the greatest severity, and declared that, if the spoliation which had been agreed upon were not instantly carried into effect, he would himself go to Luck- now, and do that from which feebler minds recoil with dismay. The resident, thus menaced, waited on His Highness and insisted that the treaty of Chunar should be carried into full and immediate effect. Asaph-ul- Dowlah yielded, making at the same time a solemn pro- testation that he yielded to compulsion. The lands were resumed; but the treasure was not so easily obtained. It was necessary to use violence. A body of the Com- pany's troops marched to Fyzabad, and forced the gates of the palace. The Princesses were confined to their own apartments. But still they refused to submit. Some more stringent mode of coercion was to be found. A mode was found of which, even at this distance of time, we cannot speak without shame and sorrow. There were at Fyzabad two ancient men, belonging to that unhappy class which a practice, of immemorial anti- quity in the East, has excluded from the pleasures of love and from the hope of posterity. It has always been held in Asiatic courts that beings thus estranged from sympathy with their kind are those whom princes may most safely trust. Sujah Dowlah had been of this opin- ion. He had given his entire confidence to the two eunuchs ; and after his death they remained at the head of the household of his widow. These men were, by the orders of the British govern- ment, seized, imprisoned, ironed, starved almost to death, in order to extort money from the Princesses. After they had been two months in confinement, their health WARREN HASTINGS 173 gave way. They implored permission to take a little exercise in the garden of their prison. The officer who was in charge of them stated that, if they were allowed this indulgence, there was not the smallest chance of their escaping, and that their irons really added nothing to the security of the custody in which they were kept. He did not understand the plan of his superiors. Their object in these inflictions was not security but torture ; and all mitigation was refused. Yet this was not the worst. It was resolved by an English government that these two infirm old men should be delivered to the tormentors. For that purpose they were removed to Lucknow. What horrors their dungeon there witnessed can only be guessed. But there remains on the records of Parliament this let- ter, written by a British resident to a British soldier : — " Sir, the Nabob having determined to inflict corporal punishment upon the prisoners under your guard, this is to desire that his officers, when they shall come, may have free access to the prisoners, and be permitted to do with them as they shall see proper." While these barbarities were perpetrated at Luck- now, the Princesses were still under duress at Fyzabad. Food was allowed to enter their apartments only in such scanty quantities that their female attendants were in danger of perishing with hunger. Month after month this cruelty continued, till at length, after twelve hun- dred thousand pounds had been wrung out of the Prin- cesses, Hastings began to think that he had really got to the bottom of their coffers, and that no rigor could extort more. Then at length the wretched men who were de- tained at Lucknow regained their liberty. When their irons were knocked off and the doors of their prison opened, their quivering lips, the tears which ran down their cheeks, and the thanksgivings which they poured forth to the common Father of Mussulmans and Chris- tians, melted even the stout hearts of the English warriors who stood by. 174 WARREN HASTINGS But we must not forget to do justice to Sir Elijah Impey's conduct on this occasion. It was not indeed easy for him to intrude himself into a business so entirely alien from all his official duties. But there was some- thing inexpressibly alluring, we must suppose, in the peculiar rankness of the infamy which was then to be got at Lucknow. He hurried thither as fast as relays of palanquin-bearers could carry him. A crowd of people came before him with affidavits against the Begums, ready drawn in their hands. Those affidavits he did not read. Some of them, indeed, he could not read; for they were in the dialects of Northern India, and no interpreter was employed. He administered the oath to the deponents, with all possible expedition, and asked not a single ques- tion, not even whether they had perused the statements to which they swore. This work performed, he got again into his palanquin, and posted back to Calcutta, to be in time for the opening of term. The cause was one which, by his own confession, lay altogether out of his jurisdic- tion. Under the charter of justice, he had no more right to inquire into crimes committed by Asiatics in Oude than the Lord President of the Court of Session of Scotland to hold an assize at Exeter. He had no right to try the Begums, nor did he pretend to try them. With what object, then, did he undertake so long a journey? Evidently in order that he might give, in an irregular manner, that sanction which in a regular man- ner he could not give, to the crimes of those who had recently hired him ; and in order that a confused mass of testimony which he did not sift, which he did not even read, might acquire an authority not properly belonging to it, from the signature of the highest judicial function- ary in India. The time was approaching, however, when he was to be stripped of that robe which has never, since the Re- volution, been disgraced so foully as by him. The state of India had for some time occupied much of the atten- WARREN HASTINGS 175 tion of the British Parliament. Towards the close of the American war, two committees of the Commons sat on Eastern affairs. In one Edmund Burke took the lead. The other was under the presidency of the able and ver- satile Henry Dundas, then Lord Advocate of Scotland. Great as are the changes which, during the last sixty years, have taken place in our Asiatic dominions, the reports which those committees laid on the table of the House will still be found most interesting and instructive. There was as yet no connection between the Company and either of the great parties in the state. The minis- ters had no motive to defend Indian abuses. On the contrary, it was for their interest to show, if possible, that the government and patronage of our Oriental empire might, with advantage, be transferred to themselves. The votes, therefore, which, in consequence of the reports made by the two committees, were passed by the Com- mons, breathed the spirit of stern and indignant justice. The severest epithets were applied to several of the mea- sures of Hastings, especially to the Eohilla war ; and it was resolved, on the motion of Mr. Dundas, that the Company ought to recall a Governor-General who had brought such calamities on the Indian people, and such dishonor on the British name. An act was passed for limiting the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. The bargain which Hastings had made with the Chief Justice was condemned in the strongest terms ; and an address was presented to the King, praying that Impey might be ordered home to answer for his misdeeds. Impey was recalled by a letter from the Secretary of State. But the proprietors of India Stock resolutely refused to dismiss Hastings from their service, and passed a resolution affirming, what was undeniably true, that they were entrusted by law with the right of naming and removing their Governor-General, and that they were not bound to obey the directions of a single branch of the legislature with respect to such nomination or removal. 176 WARREN HASTINGS Thus supported by his employers, Hastings remained at the head of the government of Bengal till the spring of 1785. His administration, so eventful and stormy, closed in almost perfect quiet. In the Council there was no regular opposition to his measures. Peace was re- stored to India. The Mahratta war had ceased. Hyder was no more. A treaty had been concluded with his son Tippoo; and the Carnatic had been evacuated by the armies of Mysore. Since the termination of the Ameri- can war, England had no European enemy or rival in the Eastern seas. On a general review of the long administration of Hastings, it is impossible to deny that, against the great crimes by which it is blemished, we have to set off great public services. England had passed through a perilous crisis. She still, indeed, maintained her place in the foremost rank of European powers ; and the manner in which she had defended herself against fearful odds had inspired surrounding nations with a high opinion both of her spirit and of her strength. Nevertheless, in every part of the world, except one, she had been a loser. Not only had she been compelled to acknowledge the inde- pendence of thirteen colonies peopled by her children, and to conciliate the Irish by giving up the right of legislating for them ; but, in the Mediterranean, in the Gulf of Mexico, on the coast of Africa, on the continent of America, she had been compelled to cede the fruits of her victories in former wars. Spain regained Minorca and Florida; France regained Senegal, Goree, and sev- eral West Indian Islands. The only quarter of the world in which Britain had lost nothing was the quarter in which her interests had been committed to the care of Hastings, In spite of the utmost exertions both of European and Asiatic enemies, the power of our country in the East had been greatly augmented. Benares was subjected; the Nabob Vizier reduced to vassalage. That our influence had been thus extended, nay, that Fort WARREN HASTINGS 177 William and Fort St. George had not been occupied by- hostile armies, was owing, if we may trust the general voice of the English in India, to the skill and resolution of Hastings. His internal administration, with all its blemishes, gives him a title to be considered as one of the most re- markable men in our history. He dissolved the double government. He transferred the direction of affairs to English hands. Out of a frightful anarchy, he educed at least a rude and imperfect order. The whole organi- zation by which justice was dispensed, revenue collected, peace maintained throughout a territory not inferior in population to the dominions of Louis the Sixteenth or of the Emperor Joseph, was formed and superintended by him. He boasted that every public office, without excep- tion, which existed when he left Bengal was his creation. It is quite true that this system, after all the improve- ments suggested by the experience of sixty years, still needs improvement, and that it was at first far more defective than it now is. But whoever seriously con- siders what it is to construct from the beginning the whole of a machine so vast and complex as a government will allow that what Hastings effected deserves high admiration. To compare the most celebrated European ministers to him seems to us as unjust as it would be to compare the best baker in London with Eobinson Crusoe, who, before he could bake a single loaf, had to make his plough and his harrow, his fences and his scarecrows, his sickle and his flail, his mill and his oven. The just fame of Hastings rises still higher when we reflect that he was not bred a statesman; that he was sent from school to a counting-house; and that he was employed during the prime of his manhood as a commer- cial agent, far from all intellectual society. Nor must we forget that all, or almost all, to whom, when placed at the head of affairs, he could apply for assistance were persons who owed as little as himself, or 178 WARREN HASTINGS less than himself, to education. A minister in Europe finds himself, on the first day on which he commences his functions, surrounded by experienced public servants, the depositaries of official traditions. Hastings had no such help. His own reflection, his own energy, were to supply the place of all Downing Street and Somerset House. Having had no facilities for learning, he was forced to teach. He had first to form himself, and then to form his instruments; and this not in a single department, but in all the departments of the administration. It must be added that, while engaged in this most arduous task, he was constantly trammelled by orders from home, and frequently borne down by a majority in Council. The preservation of an empire from a formid- able combination of foreign enemies, the construction of a government in all its parts, were accomplished by him, while every ship brought out bales of censure from his employers, and while the records of every consultation were filled with acrimonious minutes by his colleagues. We believe that there never was a public man whose tejjjrper was so severely tried; not Marlborough, when thwarted by the Dutch Deputies; not Wellington, when he had to deal at once with the Portuguese Regency, the Spanish Juntas, and Mr. Perceval. But the temper of Hastings was equal to almost any trial. It was not sweet; but it was calm. Quick and vigorous as his in- tellect was, the patience with which he endured the most cruel vexations, till a remedy could be found, resembled the patience of stupidity. He seems to have been capable of resentment, bitter and long-enduring ; yet his resent- ment so seldom hurried him into any blunder that it may be doubted whether what appeared to be revenge was anything but policy. The effect of this singular equanimity was that he always had the full command of all the resources of one of the most fertile minds that ever existed. Accordingly no complication of perils and embarrassments could per- WARREN HASTINGS 179 plex him. For every difficulty he had a contr,ivance ready; and, whatever may be thought of the justice and humanity of some of his contrivances, it is certain that they seldom failed to serve the purpose for which they were designed. Together with this extraordinary talent for devising expedients, Hastings possessed, in a very high degree, another talent scarcely less necessary to a man in his situation, we mean the talent for conducting political controversy. It is as necessary to an English statesman in the East that he should be able to write, as it is to a minister in this country that he should be able to speak. It is chiefly by the oratory of a public man here that the nation judges of his powers. It is from the letters and reports of a public man in India that the dispensers of patronage form their estimate of him. In each case, the talent which receives peculiar encouragement is developed, perhaps at the expense of the other powers. In this country, we sometimes hear men speak above their abili- ties. It is not very unusual to find gentlemen in the Indian service who write above their abilities. The English politician is a little too much of a debater; the Indian politician a little too much of an essayist. Of the numerous servants of the Company who have distino:uished themselves as framers of minutes and dis- patches, Hastings stands at the head. He was indeed the person who gave to the official writing of the Indian governments the character which it still retains. He was matched against no common antagonist. But even Francis was forced to acknowledge, with sullen and re- sentful candor, that there was no contending against the pen of Hastings. And, in truth, the Governor-General's power of making out a case, of perplexing what it was inconvenient that people should understand, and of setting in the clearest point of view whatever would bear the light, was incomparable. His style must be praised with some reservation. It was in general forcible, pure, and i8o WARREN HASTINGS polislied; but it was sometimes, thougli not often, turgid, and, on one or two occasions, even bombastic. Perhaps the fondness of Hastings for Persian literature may have tended to corrupt his taste. And since we have referred to his literary tastes, it would be most unjust not to praise the judicious encour- agement 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 introdu- cing 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 sur- gery of Europe for the dotages of the Brahminical super- stition, 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 busi- ness, surrounded by people as busy as himself, and sepa- rated by thousands of leagues from almost all literary society, gave, both by his example and by his munifi- cence, a great impulse to learning. In Persian and Arabic literature he was deeply skilled. With the San- skrit he was not himself acquainted; but those who first brought that language to the knowledge of European stu- dents owed much to his encouragement. It was under his protection that the Asiatic Society commenced its honorable career. That distinguished body selected him to be its first president; but, with excellent taste and feeling, he declined the honor in favor 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 WARREN HASTINGS i8: 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 ap- prehension, the wisdom and moderation of Hastings re- moved. 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 Bengalese to extortion and oppression, or if, on the other hand, he had conciliated the Bengalese and alien- ated 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 him- self beloved both by the subject many and by the domi- nant 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 stead- fast 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 dis- tinguished 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 gover- nor 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 gen- 1 82 WARREN HASTINGS eral, he carefully avoided all that could shock their na- tional or religious prejudices. His administration was indeed in many respects faulty; but the Bengalee stan- dard 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 rice 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 Mahrat- tas ; 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 recol- lect 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 good will. 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 splendor 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 offences of which Hastings was guilty did not affect his popularity with the people of Bengal ; for those offences were committed against neighboring states. Those offences, as our readers must have perceived, we are not disposed to vindicate; yet, in order that the cen- sure 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 WARREN HASTINGS 183 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 recognize a distinc- tion between crimes which originate in an inordinate zeal for the commonwealth, and crimes which originate in sel- fish 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 rich- est subject in EuropCo We speak within compass when we say that, without applying any extraordinary pres- sure, he might easily have obtained from the zemindars of the Company's provinces and from neighboring princes, in the course of thirteen years, more than three millions sterling, and might have outshone the splendor of Carl- ton 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 1 84 WARREN HASTINGS 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 man- ner 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 com- panion during the voyage. We ma.y remark here that the letters of Hastings to his wife are exceedingly char- acteristic. 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 parlor. 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 WARREN HASTINGS 185 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 honor 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. Has- tings 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 favor which, in spite of the ordinary severity of her vir- tue, 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 writ- ten about a quarter of a year after his arrival in Eng- land, — "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 1 86 WARREN HASTINGS preparation. Within a week after he landed at Ply- mouth, 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 ad- vanced 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 Water- loo, or Themistocles at Trafalgar. His very acuteness deludes him. His very vigor 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, WARREN HASTINGS 187 had made a singularly happy selection. He put himself into the hands of Wedderburn, afterwards Lord Lough- borough, 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 learn- ing nor knowledge of the world, neither forensic acute- ness nor that eloquence which charms political assemblies. Hastings entrusted his interests to a very different per- son, 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 rumored 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 author- ity 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. Every- body 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 con- fined 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 trunk-makers and the pastry-cooks. As to this gentleman's capacity for con- ducting a delicate question through Parliament, our read- ers 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 1 88 WARREN HASTINGS designated the greatest man then living as "that reptile Mr. Burke." In spite, however, of this unfortunate choice, the gen- eral aspect of affairs was favorable 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 vigor 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 favorable to the late Governor- General. They owed their power to the clamor 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 Consti- tution, had defended themselves by pointing to the crimes of Hastings, and by arguing that abuses so extraordinary justified extraordinary measures. Those who, by oppos- ing 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 re- mained on the Journals of the House of Commons. That resolution was, indeed, unjust; but, till it was rescinded. WARREN HASTINGS 189 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 adminis- tration 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 appre- hended. 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 rea- son to expect support; and the ministry was very power- ful. 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 outnum- bered 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 impeach- ment must last for years. It must impose on the chiefs of the party an immense load of labor. Yet it could scarcely, in any manner, affect the event of the great political game. The followers of the coalition were there- fore 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 his- tory 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 rumored, to the royal family, and a certain richly carved ivory bed which the Queen had done him the I90 WARREN HASTINGS honor to accept from him, were favorite subjects of ridi- cule. One lively poet proposed that the great acts of the fair Marian's present husband should be immortalized by the pencil of his predecessor; and that Imhoff should be employed to embellish the House of Commons with paint- ings of the bleeding Rohillas, of Nuncomar swinging, of Cheyte Sing letting himself down to the Ganges. An- other, 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 headdress, her neck- lace gleaming with future votes, and the depending ques- tions 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 labored indeed under one most unfor- tunate defect, want of fluency. But he occasionally ex- pressed himself with a dignity and energy worthy of the greatest orators. Before he had been many days in Par- liament, he incurred the bitter dislike of Pitt, who con- stantly 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 disposi- tions, 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 WARREN HASTINGS 191 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 favors of the Crown, died, preaching a crusade against the French republic. We surely can- not 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 con- duct 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 labor to the service of a people with whom he had neither blood nor language, neither religion nor manners, in common, and 192 WARREN HASTINGS 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 some- thing to instruct or to delight. His reason analyzed and digested those vast and shapeless masses; his imagina- tion animated and colored them. Out of darkness, and dulness, and confusion, he formed a multitude of ingen- ious 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 un- real. 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, WARREN HASTINGS 193 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 per- fumes at the feet of sovereigns to the wild moor where the gypsy camp was pitched, from the bazaar, humming like a beehive with the crowd of buyers and sellers, to the jungle where the lonely courier shakes his bunch of iron rings to scare away the hyenas. 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, ac- quired too much of the character of personal aversion. He could see no mitigating circumstance, no redeeming merit. His temper, which, though generous and affec- tionate, 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 194 WARREN HASTINGS on his proud and sensitive spirit an effect at which we cannot wonder. He could no longer discuss any ques- tion with calmness, or make allowance for honest differ- ences 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 Eegency, on the French Revolution, he showed even more virulence than in conducting the impeachment. Indeed, it may be re- marked that the very persons who called him a mischie- vous 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 extra- vagance 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 Has- tings, 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 honors 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 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- WARREN HASTINGS 19S General. This challenge left no course open to the Opposition, except to come forward as accusers, or to acknowledge themselves calumniators. The administra- tion 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 honor 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 composi- tions. 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 196 WARREN HASTINGS now out of place. It fell flat, as the best written defence must Jiave 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 demeanor 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 Sergeant-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 pla- cing this accusation in the van; for Dundas had formerly moved, and the House had adopted, a resolution con- demning, in the most severe terms, the policy followed by Hastings with regard to Kohilcund. Dundas had lit- tle, or rather nothing, to say in defence of his own con- sistency; 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 unjustifi- able, he considered the services which Hastings had sub- sequently 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 rumored 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 WARREN HASTINGS 197 against impeachment, the Opposition would let the mat- ter 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 call- ing 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 over- cast. On the thirteenth of June, Mr. Fox brought for- ward, with great ability and eloquence, the charge re- specting 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 Eajah 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 insurrec- tion 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 honorably acquitted; and both the friends and the op- ponents of the Minister expected from him a declaration to that effect. To the astonishment of all parties, he 198 WARREN HASTINGS concluded by saying that, thougli 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 favor 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 high- est 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 the national honor, 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 WARREN HASTINGS 199 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 ac- quitted 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 as- signed by the ministry for not impeaching Hastings on account of the Kohilla war was this, that the delinquen- cies 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 lan- guage could afterwards vote that the later part of his administration furnished matter for no less than twenty articles of impeachment ? They first represented the con- duct of Hastings in 1780 and 1781 as so highly merito- rious 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 Op- position. 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 aoo WARREN HASTINGS 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 Wilber- force, 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 Minis- ter 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 busi- ness, 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 favorite with the King. He was the idol of the East India Company and of its ser- vants. 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 Thur- low, 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 responsi- bility of that step on himself. Of all ministers, Pitt was WARREN HASTINGS 201 the least likely to submit with patience to such an en- croachment 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 honors 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 re- specting Hastings. In the following year, those discus- sions 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 stran- gers 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, Sheri- dan 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 elo- quence on severe and experienced critics, whose discern- ment may be supposed to have been quickened by emula- tion, 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 parliamen- tary 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 202 . WARREN HASTINGS 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 #as 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 sup- ported by the public sympathy, proceeded to bring for- ward 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 im- peachment, 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 Misdemeanors. Hastings was at the same time arrested by the Sergeant-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 ad- mitted 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 indeli- cate to select a private enemy to be a public accuser. It was urged on the other side with great force, particularly WARREN HASTINGS 203 by Mr. Windliam, that impartiality, though the first duty of a judge, had never been reckoned among the qualities of an advocate ; that in the ordinary administra- tion 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 jewelry and cloth of gold, more attractive to grown-up children, than that which was then exhibited at Westminster; but, perhaps, there never was a spec- tacle 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 accomplish- ments which are developed by liberty and civilization 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 writ- ing strange characters from right to left. The High ao4 WARREN HASTINGS Court of Parliament was to sit, according to forms handed down from the days of the Plantagenets, on an English- man 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 Eufus, 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 elo- quence 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 hun- dred 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, conspic- uous by his fine person and noble bearing. The gray 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 WARREN HASTINGS 205 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 spec- tacle 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 labors 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 injudi- cious 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 St. Cecilia whose delicate features, lighted up by love and music, art has rescued from the common decay. There were the members of that bril- liant society which quoted, criticised, and exchanged re- partees, under the rich peacock hangings of Mrs. Mon- tague. And there the ladies whose lips, more persuasive than those of Fox himself, had carried the Westminster election against palace and treasury shone round Geor- giana. 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 trea- ao6 WARREN HASTINGS ties, 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 cequa 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, after- wards 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 EoUs. 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 sono- rous 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 WARREN HASTINGS 207 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 Sheri- dan, 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 capa- city and taste of his hearers, but in amplitude of compre- hension and richness of imagination superior to every orator, ancient or modern. There, with eyes reveren- tially 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 sur- rounded by such men, did the youngest manager pass unnoticed. At an age when most of those who distin- guished 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 for- tune or connection was wanting that could set off to the height his splendid talents and his unblemished honor. At twenty -three he had been thought worthy to be ranked with the veteran statesmen who appeared as the dele- gates 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 vigor of life, he is the sole represent- ative of a great age which has passed away. But those who, within the last ten years, have listened with de- light, 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 2o8 WARREN HASTINGS read. Tlie 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 splendor of diction which more than sat- isfied 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 con- stitution 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 administra- tion of Hastings as systematically conducted in defiance of morality and public law. The energy and pathos of the great orator extorted expressions of unwonted admi- ration 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-bot- tles 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 he, "hath it with all confidence been ordered by the Com- mons of Great Britain, that I impeach Warren Hastings of high crimes and misdemeanors. 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 honor he has sullied. I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose WARREN HASTINGS 209 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 sub- sided, 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 pro- duce 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 favor 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 sev- eral days were spent in reading papers and hearing wit- nesses. The next article was that relating to the Prin- cesses of Oude. The conduct of this part of the case was entrusted 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 know- ledge 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 2IO WARREN HASTINGS 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 perwannahs, jaghires and nuzzurs. There remained bickerings, not always carried on with the best taste or with the best temper, between the managers of the impeachment and the counsel for the defence, par- ticularly between Mr. Burke and Mr. Law. There re- mained the endless marches and countermarches 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 domes- tic or foreign policy, occupied the public mind. The proceeding in Westminster Hall, therefore, naturally at- tracted most of the attention of Parliament and of the public. It was the one great event of that season. But in the following year the King's illness, the debates on the Kegency, the expectation of a change of Ministry, completely diverted public attention from Indian affairs; and within a fortnight after George the Third had WARREN HASTINGS 211 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 ses- sion 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 im- peachment. 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 proceed- ing from which much good can now be expected. What- ever 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 cbnfidently 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 trans- act 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 212 WARREN HASTINGS 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, sit- ting 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, ex- clude 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 api3lied to offences com- mitted many years before, at the distance of many thou- sands of miles, conviction was, of course, out of the ques- tion. 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 Eegency 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 WARREN HASTINGS 213 was deeply hurt. But his zeal for what he considered as the cause of justice and mercy triumphed over his per- sonal 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 de- feated 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 pro- nounced, 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 himseK said, the arraignment had taken place before one generation, and the judgment was pro- nounced 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, 214 WARREN HASTINGS 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 govern- ment, 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 to- gether 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 vigor 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 pur- pose 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 major- ity in his favor was still greater. On some, he was unan- imously 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 respect- fully and retired. We have said that the decision had been fully ex- pected. It was also generally approved. At the com- mencement of the trial there had been a strong and in- deed unreasonable feeling against Hastings. At the WARREN HASTINGS 215 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 indi- viduals and in masses violent excitement is always fol- lowed 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 with- out 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 defend- ant 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 repre- hensible things, and yet might be on the whole deserving of rewards and honors rather than of fine and imprison- ment. The press, an instrument neglected by the pro- secutors, 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, unan- imously 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 2i6 WARREN HASTINGS liis 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 gov- erned 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 com- mitted, 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 inci- dent 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 small- pox 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 ex- cept 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 WARREN HASTINGS 217 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, re- turned 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 2i8 WARREN HASTINGS 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 thou- sand 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 j)ounds, 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 lux- ury, if he had been a skilful manager. But he was care- less and profuse, and was more than once under the ne- cessity 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 receiv- ing 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 pre- vent 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 WARREN HASTINGS 219 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 de- cidedly opposed to Addington. Religious intolerance has never been the vice of the Indian service, and cer- tainly 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 Has- tings, 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 embel- lishing his grounds, riding fine Arab horses, fattening prize-cattle, and trying to rear Indian animals and vege- tables 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 AUipore. He tried also to naturalize in Worcestershire the deli- cious 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 Hindo- stan 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 (220 WARREN HASTINGS 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 omis- sion 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 pre- served 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-stock- ings. 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 WARREN HASTINGS 221 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 un- dergone a complete change ; the nation had now forgotten his faults, and remembered only his services. The reap- pearance, 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 accla- mations, 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 kej)t 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. 222 WARREN HASTINGS 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 ad- miration. 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 deco- rous 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 re- mains. 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 WARREN HASTINGS 223 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 dwell- ing. 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 ele- ments 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 com- mand, for administration, and for controversy, his daunt- less 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. NOTES Page 95 uncovered : See page 221. Members wear their hats in the House of Commons. young Lely : Sir Peter Lely (1618-1680) came to England from Holland with the Prince of Orange, in 1641, and remained there the rest of his life, painting many of the prominent people of the day, and becoming court painter to Charles II. Page 96 the great Danish sea-king : Hasting (Danish Hasten) was a ninth-century viking, defeated by King Alfred in 894. the renovrned Chamberlain : William, Lord Hastings, was a leader on the Yorkist side in the Wars of the Poses. Under Richard III, he was accused of treason at a council in the Tower, and beheaded at once. The story is told by Sir Thomas More, whose account was dramatized by Shakspere. See King Rich- ard III, Act III, sc. iv. a series of events scarcely paralleled : The earldom lapsed, in 1789, as it was supposed there were no male heirs. After thirty years, it was proved that a certain Captain Hastings by tracing his line back two hundred and fifty years to the second earl, could justify a claim to the title. The romance consisted in the unexpected revival of a great title, and in the fact that the claim was not brought up by Captain Hastings, but by a lawyer, Mr. Bell, at his own risk and expense, the mint at Oxford : The University of Oxford has always been a centre of conservatism and royalism; it was especially so during the Cromweliian wars. Page 97 Speaker Lenthal : William Lenthall, as the name is usually spelled (1591-1602), was the speaker of the famous Long Par- liament that resisted Charles I. Page 98 the Isis : a name by which the upper Thames is known, espe- cially about Oxford. "Westminster school : founded by Queen Elizabeth ; it oc- cupies the buildings of the former monastery attached to West- minster Abbey. Churchill, Colman, Lloyd, Cumberland, Cowper: Of these eighteenth-century writers, the only one now much read is Cow- per, whose " John Gilpin " is familiar to most boys. Cowper led a retired life, in the little village of Olney, writing hymns and descriptive poetry. Page 99 foundation, studentship : what we should call in America scholarships. Three pupils are sent yearly from the Westmin- xiv NOTES ster School to Christ Church, one of the most famous Oxford colleges, with a " studentship " of ^400 a year. Page 100 hexameters and pentameters : The writing of Latin verse is a very important element of the traditional English schooling, writership : position as clerk. East India Company : founded for purposes of trade, under Queen Elizabeth, in 1600, it gradually acquired privileges of holding property, and assumed functions of government, which it finally relinquished to the crown in 1858. At the time Hastings entered it, the East India Company was the source of great revenues, and was beginning under Clive to exercise important political powers. See Macaulay's Essay on Clive. Calcutta : the chief city of Bengal, at the mouth of the Hoog- ley, the southernmost branch of the Ganges ; about a thousand miles northeast of Madras, where Clive had won his fame. See map. Dupleix : Marquis Joseph Frangois, governor-general of the French East Indies, 1742-54. Macaulay's Essay on Clive gives an account of the struggle between Dupleix and Clive to win control of India for their respective governments, such as the city of London bears to Westminster : The part of London called *'the City," within the line of the former city wall, is now the heart of the business district. Westminster, where the Houses of Parliament and other gov- ernment offices are, was formerly separated from London by a stretch of open country, now, of course, built up by the expan- sion of the city. Mogul: the emperor of all India ; formerly of great power, but now exercising only a nominal control. Page 101 Nabob : Surajah Dowlah. A nabob was governor of a province, as Bengal, or the Carnatic. Page 103 rotten boroughs : districts which had, by ancient custom, the riglit to send representatives to Parliament, although their in- habitants had become so few that one man of wealth or influ- ence could control the election. He could not protect the natives : Hastings was the only one who heartily supported Vansittart in measures to reform the government and protect the natives from injustice. See Ly all's Warren Hastings, p. 17. Page 105 Hafiz : a famous Persian poet of the fourteenth century. Ferdusi : a tenth-century epic poet, who sang the deeds of the early Persian kings and heroes. Johnson : Samuel Johnson, the literary dictator of London in the last half of the eighteenth century. The letter, referred to below, begins: "Sir: Though I have had but little per- sonal knowledge of you, I have had enough to make me wish XV NOTES for more ; and though it be now a long time since I was hon- oured by your visit, I had too much pleasure from it to fqrget it." This letter, and two others from Johnson to Hastings, may be found in Boswell's Life of Johnson. Page 106 pagodas : The pagoda was a gold coin bearing the image of a pagoda or temple. Its value was not quite two dollars. Archangel: the chief town of northern Russia, on the Dwiua River. Page 108 the system -which Clive had devised : This system was, in brief, that certain vast provinces were restored to native rule, on condition that the English should be '* diwan," or fiscal ad- ministrators, paying from the sums collected a certain income to the native rulers. For details, see Macaulay's Clive. Augustulus : the last Roman Emperor of the West (ruled 475-6 A. D.). Odoacer, a barbarian chieftain who had en- tered the Roman army, dethroned him, abolished the title, and ruled the western world under the title of Patrician, nominally subject to the Emperor of the East but actually independent. the last Merovingians : The Merovingian line of Fraukish kings came, in the beginning of the eighth century, completely under the control of their mayors of the palace, who were the real rulers. The last of them, Childeric, was deposed by his mayor of the palace, Pepin, son of Charles the Hammer. Page 109 At present : This essay was written in 1841. In 1858, these governmental powers were transferred to the Crown, and have since been administered by the Secretary of State for India. See Lowell, Government of England, vol. i, p. 89 and vol. ii, p. 420. Page 111 that "was Nuncomar : Denny comments that this could not have been true of his physical organization, for he is described as of " an excessively strong constitution," and " tall and majestic." Ionian : The Greek colonists of Ionia, in Asia Minor, who devoted themselves largely to the arts of peace, became the prey of more warlike nations, and were held in contempt by the Romans. Juvenal (60-140 a. d.) : a noted Roman satiric poet. Sepoy : a native soldier of the British army in India. Stoics : Their main principle was, that as joy and sorrow are alike unavoidable, one should meet them both without giving way to emotion, and devote one's self to the performance of duty. ideal sage : Zeno, the founder of the Stoic sect. Page 112 Mucins : C. Mucins Scsevola, a legendary Roman hero, who, being threatened with death for his attempt to assassinate Lars Porsena, thrust his hand into the fire to show what a Roman could endure. xvi NOTES Algernon Sidney : beheaded in 1683, on insufficient evidence, for complicity iu the Rye House Plot to kill Charles II. Page 113 gold mohurs : coins worth about $7.25. Leadenhall Street : where the offices of the East India Com- pany were, in London. Page 116 The object of his diplomacy was ... to get money : Ma- caulay's account of the causes and the conduct of the Rohilla war has been investigated by modern historians, and found to be unjust to Hastings. His chief object was not to get money, but to establish a strong and responsible government to stand between the British possessions and the fierce tribes of the Marattas, who terrorized India. (See Essay on Clive, p. 12.) The Rohillas were not " the finest population in India," who were driven by the hundred thousand from their well-ordered ances- tral homes. They were, as Macaulay himself calls them in the Essay on Clive (p. 12), " a band of mercenary soldiers" of Afghan race, who sixty years before had imposed their rule on the peace- loving inhabitants of Rohilcund. Their number has been vari- ously estimated at from fifteen to forty thousand. The " exter- mination " of the Rohillas, which, again, Macaulay takes from Mill's history and Burke's speeches, is purely fictitious ; there is no evidence that any were killed except in battle, and the " ex- ile " of the survivors merely amounted to requiring those who had borne arms to move a few miles across the Ganges to the lands of their kinsmen. The charge of atrocity in the conduct of the war, committed by the Vizier, but permitted or excused by Hastings, has been investigated, and shown to be largely false with regard to the alleged cruelty, and wholly so with re- gard to Hastings, who took every step in his power to prevent it. (See Strachey, Sir John, Hastings and the Rohilla War, Ox- ford, 1892.) Teviotdale : a popular name, in tradition, for Roxburghshire, a southern county of Scotland, embracing the valleys of the Tweed and the Teviot, and famous for many border forays. lacs of rupees : A rupee is a silver coin worth about half a dol- lar. A lac is a hundred thousand. Page 118 a tool in the hands of others : The " others " were the dreaded Marattas, who had captured Delhi and compelled the Emperor to grant them these two provinces, clearly as a step to the conquest of Rohilcund and Oude. From the first, it had been the object of Hastings in strengthening the Nabob of Oude, and the Emperor was as a protection against the Marattas. Page 119 Sanskrit : the earliest of the family of languages from which the languages of Europe are derived. cross of St. George : the vertical cross in the British flag. Ghizni : Macaulay refers to a recent battle (two years before xvii NOTES the essay was written) in which the British had taken by storm a chief town of Afghanistan. Page 120 Aurungzebe : Emperor of India, 1658-1707. See Essay on Clive, page 11. Catherine : Empress of Russia, 1762-96. Famous for her ex- tensive additions to the Empire, in part through the three Par- titions of Poland (between Russia, Prussia, and Austria). the Bonaparte family : Napoleon, in his ambition to control all of Europe, made his brother Joseph king of Spain in 1808. Page 122 caput lupinum : wolf's head. Page 126 Letters of Junius : a series of very brilliant and daring attacks on the government of England, published anonymously between 1769 and 1772 in the Public Advertiser, a London paper. Their authorship is one of the famous puzzles of literature ; Macau- lay's solution is not generally accepted. Page 127 "Woodfall : publisher of the Public Advertiser, in which the Ju- nius letters appeared, the Hebrew prophet : See Jonah iv, 9. Page 128 Old Sarum : The reference is to the great political struggle of Macaulay's younger days, for the Reform Bill. Old Sarum was one of the " rotten boroughs " abolished by the bill ; Manches- ter and Leeds were great manufacturing cities, of recent growth, that were given representation. George Grenville (1712-1770) : prominent in English politics during the reign of George III. He was premier from April, 1763, to July, 1765 ; he upheld the Stamp Tax, and began the prosecution of Wilkes. Page 131 Oateses, and Bedloes, and Dangerfields : Titus Oates, in 1678, brought forward forged papers to prove the existence of a " Popish Plot " to murder Charles II and make England a Roman Catholic country. Many innocent persons were con- victed on this false testimony. Bedloe and Dangerfield were his accomplices. Page 132 the Munny Begum : the queen mother. Page 134 Hastings was the real mover : In the following account of the trial of Nuncomar, as in that of the Rohilla war, Macaulay is misled by Mill and other partisan writers into very unjust misstatements. The attack on Impey was answered in 1846 by his son (Memoirs of Sir Elijah Impey). It has also been thoroughly investigated by J. F. Stephen (The Story of Nunco- mar and the Impeachment of Sir Elijah Impey, London, 1885), who proves that the lawsuit, instead of being commenced " on a xviii NOTES sudden," had been dragging on for three years ; that Hastings has not been shown to be the prosecutor; that Impey was not alone, but one of four judges, who were unanimous ; that Nun- comar's crime was of a kind recognized as such by his own people, namely, robbing a friend's widow of half her estate ; that a rea- sonable delay (of six weeks) was granted before the execution ; and that Impey, when summoned to England to face impeach- ment proceedings, was cleared by a vote of 73 to 55. Page 135 as a devout Catholic : The mediaeval church claimed for all priests the " benefit of clergy," which meant the right to be tried, for any offense, in their own ecclesiastical courts, rather than the civil courts of the land. Page 137 the Hoogley : the westernmost channel in the delta of the Ganges, the sacred river (" Mother Gunga," in Kipling's story of The Bridge Builders). Page 138 Lord Stafford : See note on Titus Gates, page xviii. Page 140 Jones's Persian Grammar : Hastings had encouraged Orien- tal studies at Oxford, and in 1774 Johnson sent him Joneses Per- sian Grammar^ by a recent Oxford graduate, together with his own latest book, the Tour to the Hebrides. Lady Macbeth : See her soliloquy, in Macbeth, Act I, sc. V. Lord North : Prime Minister from 1770 to 1782. Page 141 so far eastward : The fashionable residence section of London, as well as the government offices and the houses of Parliament, lie well to the west of the " City," where the great business offices are. Page 145 vigor and genius : The reference is to the elder Pitt; see Ma- caulay's two essays on the Earl of Chatham. Straits of Calpe : the ancient name of Gibraltar, the Mahrattas : Those who are interested in learning more of the leaders, tribes, and localities mentioned in this paragraph and the next, may look them up in the Century Cyclopedia of names, or in Hunter's Brief History of the Indian Peoples. Is this necessary to get the force of the paragraph ? Page 146 Tamerlane : a corrupted form of Timur, a Tater conqueror of the fourteenth century, who conquered Persia, Central Asia, and much of India, founding the Empire which still nominally con- trolled India in the time of Hastings. roi faineant : " do-nothing king," a nickname originally given to the Merovingian kings, to whom Macaulay so frequently refers. bhang : hemp, the leaves of which, when chewed, produce in- toxication. xix NOTES Page 147 war had been proclaimed : In February, 1778, France es- poused the cause of the American colonists, and declared war on England. Lascars : East Indian sailors; the name is also used locally for an inferior grade of artillerymen. Page 148 Wandewash (Vandiv^su) : a fortified camp on which depended the control of the Carnatic. Porto Novo and Pollilore : Macaulay is anticipating, here, his account of the defeat of the English by Hyder Ali at Polli- lore (p. 158), and their victory under Coote at Porto Novo (p. 159). but a short time since, etc. : Note the effectiveness of this personal reminiscence, undoubtedly based on Macaulay's own experience in India or that of his son-in-law. salam : the reverential bow, or greeting, among Orientals; it signifies " Peace be with you." Page 150 mesne process : used to include all the process issuing be- tween the beginning and end of the suit. Page 151 Wat Tyler : leader of the Peasants' Revolt in England, 1381. According to tradition, he struck dead a tax-gatherer who in- sulted his daughter A reign of terror : The charges against the Supreme Court, in this and the following paragraphs, have been carefully inves- tigated by J. F. Stephen ( The Story of Nuncomar and The Impeachment of Sir Elijah Impey). He finds that the Court claimed jurisdiction not over the territory, but only over the servants of the company ; that the acts of oppression Macaulay greatly exaggerates. For instance, " the men of the most ven- erable dignity, persecuted without a cause " (p. 152), turn out to be a single Cazi, arrested for oppressing a widow; the men who "shed their blood defending the sacred apartments of the women," one Mohammedan who thought his friend's zenana was likely to be broken open, and stood in the doorway sword in hand ready to defend it. The chief accusation, that of the bribe (p. 153), has been answered on the grounds that the Council had already won its point, and had nothing to gain by offering a bribe; and that on accepting the new office, Impey wrote to the Council that he would not use any part of the salary until he had been notified by the authorities in England that it was proper to do so. barrators : in law, men who maliciously or for profit incite others to quarrel. bailiffs' followers, sponging-houses : A bailiff was a sheriff's officer empowered to serve writs and make arrests. In the days when men were imprisoned for debt, the bailiff would keep his prisoner for twenty-four hours in a private house of detention XX NOTES (" sponging-house "), so that friends might pay the debt and charges. Page 152 alguazils : a Spanish term for bailiff or petty officer of the courts, for a contempt : for contempt of court. Page 154 Jeffreys : an English judge noted for his brutality and injustice in the so-called " Bloody Assizes " ; he was imprisoned, on the death of James II, and died in the Tower. Page 156 dervise : Mohammedan friar, sworn to poverty and austere living: usually spelled dervish. Louis the Eleventh : king of France, 1461-1483. He laid the foundation for the absolute monarchy, in France, by destroy- ing the power of Burgundy and the other great dukedoms, and uniting them to the crown. Page 157. extreme old age : nearly seventy-eight years. Keene. provoked their powerful neighbor's hostility : by repeat- edly taking the part of the Nabob of Arcot against Hyder Ali, in a series of campaigns ending in the capture of Mahd, a station claimed both by Hyder and the French. (See Keene's History of India, vol. i, p. 210.) Page 158 the tanks : irrigation reservoirs. Page 160 St. James's : the palace in London which is officially the seat of the English court. Versailles : during the eighteenth century, the seat of the French court. Page 161 Carlovingian empire : the successors of Charlemagne, whose empire fell into great disorganization under their hands ; so that when Hugh Capet succeeded the last Carlovingian (Louis le Faineant) there was no law but the law of the strongest to de- fine his relations to the great dukedoms. Charles the Tenth : king of France, 1824-30 ; expelled from the throne by the " Revolution of July " for tyranny. Page 162 Prince Louis Bonaparte : son of the king of Holland, and nephew of Napoleon. Macaulay's reference may be to his at- tempt to organize a rebellion among the French soldiers at Strasburg (1836) or his unsuccessful invasion of France at Bou- logne (1840). de facto . . . de jure : in fact ... by legal right. Page 166 Black Town of Calcutta : the part of the town where the natives live, as distinguished from the European quarter. Page 170 Lucknow : the capital city of Oude. xxi NOTES Page 172 two ancient men : The adjective is misleading ; Lyall says they were " certainly not infirm effeminate guardians of the harem, but the chief advisers and agents of the Begums, men of great wealth and influence in the palace, and in command of the armed forces." The story that they were tortured has been shown to be untrue. Page 174 stripped of that robe : As previously shown, though he was summoned to England by his enemies for impeachment pro- ceedings, he was not found guilty. Page 177 Louis the Sixteenth : king of France at this period (1754- 1793). the Emperor Joseph : German Emperor, 1765-1790. Page 178 Downing Street : a street in London on which stand many of the administration buildings, including the Home Office, the Foreign Office, and the East India Office. Somerset House : originally, the palace of the Protector Somerset, in London; now, in its rebuilt form, used for various government offices. Marlborough : The reference is to the difficulties the great Duke had in managing his Dutch allies in the War of the Spanish Succession. Wellington : In the Napoleonic wars, Wellington led the " Peninsular Campaign " in Spain and Portugal. Mr. Percival was Premier of England, and opposed Wellington's policy. Page 180 Pundits : learned Brahmans. Page 183 Carlton House : occupied, at the time this was written, by the Prince Regent. Palais Royal : a large palace in Paris, built by the great Car- dinal Richelieu, presented by him to the king, and occupied, at the time this essay was written, by the Duke of Orleans. Page 184 Sir Charles Grandison : the courtly hero of Richardson's novel, of the same name (published 1753). Page 185 Horace : Quintus Horatius Flaccus, a Roman poet (65 B. c- 8 a. d.). Otium Divos rogat : The sixteenth ode of the second book of Horace begins: — otium divos rogat in patent! Prensus Aegaeo, eimul atque nubes Condidit Innam, neque certa fulgent Sidera nautis. (For quiet one prays the gods, if caught in the open ^gean, when a cloud has hidden the moon, and no fixed stars shine for sailors.) xxii NOTES Page 186 Grattan, Henry (1746-1820) : an Irish orator of Burke's gen- eration. Page 187 the trunk-makers : Waste paper was formerly used for lining trunks. Page 188 " that reptile, Mr. Burke " : Abuse was common, on both sides; Burke had called Scott a jackal. Page 189 coalition : Fox and Burke, representing the radical and the conservative wings of the Whig party, had, with Lord North, formed the " Coalition Ministry," which, driven from office in 1783, was now the Opposition. Brooks's : a London political club, at that time frequented by Burke and his friends. Page 191 Las Casas : a Dominican of the fifteenth century, famous for defending the Indians against the oppression of the Spanish. Clarkson : a noted English abolitionist. Page 192 imaum : Mohammedan priest. Mecca : the birthplace of Mohammed, and consequently the sacred city of the Mohammedans, who always face towards it, in praying. Page 193 Beaconsfield : a town twenty-five miles out of London, where Burke had his home. Lord George Gordon's riots : an uprising in London, 1780, against the Roman Catholics ; occasioned by the attempt of Lord George Gordon and the Protestant Association, of which he was president, to induce Parliament to repeal the Act of Toleration. Dr. Dodd : a prominent English clergyman, who forged Lord Chesterfield's name, and was executed in 1777. The compari- son with Nuncomar is very apt. Page 195 pamphlet : campaign document. Page 197 star of the Bath : the Order of the Bath, revived by George I in 1725, was, in the times of Hastings, a purely military order, limited to the sovereign, a grand master, and thirty-six companions. The badge is an eight-pointed golden Maltese cross, with various patriotic emblems. Privy Council : " At present, it is mainly an honorary body; . . . indeed of late years membership in the Council has been conferred as a sort of decoration for services in politics, litera- ture, science, war, or administration." (Lowell, Government of England, vol. i, p. 79.) Chancellor of the Exchequer : Pitt, who had just become xxiii NOTES prime minister, retained his position in the Cabinet as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Keeper of the Great Seal — as Chancel- lor, he was responsible primarily to Parliament ; as Keeper, to the kings, at least nominally. Page 199 ■works of supererogation: "voluntary works besides, over and above, God's Commandments." {Articles of Religion^ Epis- copal Prayer Book.) Page 200 ■William Wilberforce : the leader of the struggle to abolish slavery. Macaulay, loyal to his father, never misses a chance to honor the Abolitionists. Page 201 The prorogation : the annual vacation. the Lords below the bar : The seats in the House of Com- mons are arranged facing each other, on either side of a broad aisle. Near the entrance is the seat of the Sergeant-at-Arms ; the Bar is an imaginary line which extends from his seat across the aisle, and beyond which non-members are not supposed to pass. Page 202 go before the Lords, and to impeach : Until within the last hundred years, officers high in public employment could be im- peached, or accused, by the Commons, before the Lords, who acted as judges. "The evolution of the political responsibility of ministers has made impeachment a clumsy and useless de- vice for getting rid of an official, while the greater efficiency of the criminal law has made it needless for punishing an offender." (Lowell, Government of England, vol. i, p. 399.) Page 203 Mr. "Windham : William Windham (1750-1810), a prominent Whig statesman and a follower of Burke ; he was one of the members charged with the impeachment of Hastings. Page 204 Hall of William Rufus : part of the ancient palace of West- minster, begun by William II, in the thirteenth century ; it forms the vestibule to the present houses of Parliament, built since the trial of Hastings. Bacon : Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam, a noted philosopher, Lord Chancellor of England, was convicted in 1621 of bribery. Somers: John, Baron Somers, also a Lord Chancellor, was im- peached and acquitted in 1701. Strafford : Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, the chief adviser of Charles I, was attainted of treason and executed in 1641. Charles : King Charles I, tried for treason Jan. 20-27, 1649, and executed. Page 205 Siddons: Mrs. Sarah Kemble. A great tragic actress; famous for her acting of Lady Macbeth. historian of the Roman empire : Edward Gibbon, whose xxiv NOTES Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is one of the great histo- ries in the language. Reynolds, Sir Joshua, " the greatest painter," was founder and first president of the Royal Academy. Parr, Samuel, " the greatest scholar " : a man who, like Macau- lay, had a remarkable mind from early boyhood, having learned Latin grammar when he was four years old. her to "whom, etc. : Mrs. Fitzherbert, privately married to the Prince in 1785, could not be acknowledged as his wife be- cause she was a Roman Catholic. the beautiful mother, etc. : The wife of Sheridan (Miss Linley), noted for her beauty, had before her marriage been a professional singer. Sir Joshua Reynolds painted her as Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music. Mrs. Montague : a woman of wealth and learning, who made her house the centre of a literary circle. Her followers were the first to be called blue-stockings. ladies -whose lips : an allusion to the beautiful Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, who is said to have bought a vote for Fox, in the Parliamentary election of 1784, by a kiss. Page 206 Mens aequa in arduis : a mind tranquil in troubles. Lord Melville : Henry Dundas, who had supported the attack on Hastings, was made Viscount Melville in 1802. Appointed first lord of the admiralty two years later, he was accused in 1806 of appropriating public money, but was acquitted. full dress : full court dress ; with knee breeches, white wigs, and small-swords. bag : a wig with the hair brought together behind in a bag, as was the fashion of the day. Page 207 till the morning sun shone : The sessions of Parliament for- merly began at four in the afternoon, and lasted " until long after the chimes announce that a new day has begun." (Escott : Eng- land, Its People, Polity, and Pursuits, p. 381.) The rules were revised in 1888, so that Parliament should meet at three, and sit not later than one a. m., unless a minister moved to continue de- bate. (Smith, History of the English Parliament, vol. ii, p. 591.) Page 210 the King's illness : George III became temporarily insane ; and a pressing political question was how to provide legally for the appointment of ao-egent. Page 211 the States-General of Prance met : This meeting of the French popular assembly, after a long period of absolute mon- archy, led within a year to the outbreak of the French Revo- lution. Page 213 woolsack : the seat of the Lord Chancellor, who presides in the House of Lords. XXV NOTES , Page 215 cuddy : cabin. Page 216 pundits : Brahman men of learning. zemindars : landlords, responsible for the collection of local taxes. apotheosis : raising to the level of a god. Page 217 Anthony Pasquin : a nickname derived from a sharp-tongued Roman tailor of the fifteenth century. Page 218 red ribbon : part of the insignia of the Bath. Mr. Addington : The " important question " was the granting of full civil rights to Roman Catholics. Pitt, who was Prime Minister, resigned (1801) because the king refused to grant these rights ; Addington, who succeeded him, opposed them. Page 219 Covent Garden : the great London fruit market ; originally Convent Garden, the garden of the monks of Westminster Abbey. Page 220 Trissotin : a pedantic poet in Moliere's play, Les Femmes Savantes. Hayleys and Sewards : William Hayley and Anna Seward (the " Swan of Lichfield "), writers of indifferent verse in the period of Hastings. Page 223 Richelieu : the great French cardinal, chief minister of Louis XIII. He greatly increased the power of the French crown, both at home and abroad. Cosmo : Cosmo de' Medici, a great Florentine banker and statesman of the fifteenth century ; noted for his liberality to art and literature, and particularly to the Greek scholars exiled from Constantinople. XXVl A. Companion Volume to the Mastempiecbs of Amebiga» LlTEBATUBja. iKiaisterpfecegi of Xtimi^ literature* Crown 8vo, 480 pages, $1.00, net, postpaid. With a portrait of each author. CONTENTS. RusKiN : Biographical Sketch ; The King of the Golden Kive:?. Macaulay : Biographical Sketch ; Horatius Dk. John Brown : BiograpMcal Sketch ; Rab and his Friends ; Om Dogs. Tennyson: Biographicpl Sketch ; Enoch Arden ,• The Charge of th« Light Brigade ; The D ath of the Old Year ; Crossing the Bar. Dickens : Biographical Sketch ; The Seven Poor Travellers. Wordsworth : Biographical Sketch ; We are Seven ; The Pp.t Lamb ; The Reverie of Poor Susan ; To a Skylark ; To the Cuckoo ; She wa£ a Phantom of Delight j Three Years she Grew ; She Dwelt among the Un- trodden Ways ; Daffodils ; To the Daisy ; Yarrow Unvisited ; Stepping Westward ; Sonnet, composed upon Westminster Bridge ; I'o bleep ; It is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free ; Extempore Effusion upon thf Death of James Hogg ; Resolution and independence. Burns : Biographical Sketch ; The Cotter's Saturday Night ; To a Mouse ; To a Mountain Daisy ; A Bard's Epitaph ; Songs : For A' That and A' That ; Auld Lang Syne ; My Father was a Farmer ; John Anderson J Flow Gently, Sweat Afton : Highland Mary ; To Mary in Heaven ; I Love my Jean ; Oh, Wert Tnou in the Cauld Blast ; A Red» Red Rose ; Mary Morison ; Wandering Willie ; My Nannie 's Awa' ; Bonnie Doon ; My Heart 's in the Highlands. Lamb : Biographical Sketch ; Essays of Elia : Dream Children, A Rev- erie ; A Dissertation upon Roast Pig ; Barbara S ; Old China. Coleridge: Biographical Sketch ; The Rime oi the Ancient Mari-* ner ; Kubla Khan, or, A Vision in a Dream. Byron : Biogr aph ical Sketch ; The Prisoner of Chillon ; Sonnet ; Fare Thee Well ; She Walks in Beauty ; The Destruction of Sennacherib. Oowper: Biographical Sketch ; The Diverting History of John Gilpin ; On the Receipt of my Mother's Picture ; On the Loss of tlie Royal George J Verses supposed to be Written by Alexander Selkirk : Epitaph on a Hare ; The Ireatment of his Hares. Gray : Biographical Sketch ; Elegy, written in a Country Churchyard , On a Distant Prospect of Eton College. Goldsmith : Biographical Sketch ; The Deserted Village. Sir Roger db Covejslby Paper>^ : Introduction ; The Spectator's, Account of Himself ; The Club ; Sir Roger at his Country House ; Th« Coverley Household ; Will Wimble ; Death of Sir Roger de Coverley. Milton : Biographical Sketch ; L' Allegro ; II Penseroso ; Lycidas- Bacon: Biographical Sketch; Bacon's Essays: Of Travel; oi ^Jtudies ; of Suspicion ; of Negotiating ; of Masques and Triumphs. HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 4 Park Street, Boston; 85 Fifth Avenue, New York 378-388 Wabash Avenue, Chicago SEP S& i LARNED'S HISTORIES A HISTORY OF ENGLAND FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS AND ACADEMIES BY J. N. LARNED WITH TOPICAL ANALYSES, RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES BY HOMER P. LEWIS Crown 8vo, half leather, $1.25, net, postpaid. Larned's History of England contains 144 Illustrations (includ* ing Maps not colored) 4 full-page colored Maps and 4 double page colored Maps. The book is divided as follows : — Britain and Early England, to 1066; The Norman- English Nation, 1066-1199; The Decline of Feudalism, 11Q9-1450; Renaissance and Reformation, 1450-1603; The Century of Revolution, 1603-1688; The Period of Aristocratic Governmenl^ X688-1820; The Democratic Era, 1820-1902; Appendix. 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