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CXVIII.

TRIAL OF WARREN HASTINGS.

MACAULAY.

[This description of the trial of Warren Hastings is from the review of Gleig's Life of Hastings. He was governor general of India from 1774 to 1785; and on his return to England was impeached by the House of Commons, and tried by the House of Lords, for numerous acts of injustice and oppression. The trial began in 1788 and dragged on its slow length till 1795, when he was finally acquitted. The judgments of men entitled to respect are still divided as to the amount of blame to be attached to Hastings. He was a man of great abilities, but there can be no doubt that he was often unscrupulous in his conduct, and cruel in his government. He constantly acted upon the dangerous doctrine, that a good end justifies the use of any means to attain it. He was nearly ruined by the expenses of his trial, which are said to have amounted to nearly four hundred thousand dollars.]

THE place was worthy of such a trial. It was the great hall of William Rufus; the hall which had resounded with acclamations at the inauguration of thirty kings; the hall which had witnessed the just sentence of Bacon, and the just absolution of Somers; the hall where the eloquence of Strafford had for a moment awed and melted a victorious party, inflamed with just resentment; the hall where Charles had confronted the high court of justice, with the placid courage that 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 kingat-arms. The judges, in their vestments of state, attended to give advice on points of law. Near a hundred 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 the sons of the king.

• Westminster Hall was built by William Rufus, for a banqueting hall.

Last of all came the Prince of Wales, conspicuous by his fine person and noble bearing.

The gray old walls were hung with scarlet. The long galleries were crowded by 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 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 that still retained some show of freedom, Tacitus thundered against the oppressor of Africa. There were seen, side by side, the greatest scholar and the greatest painter of the age. The spectacle had allured Reynolds from that easel which has preserved to us the thoughtful foreheads of so many writers and statesmen, and the sweet smiles of so many noble 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 injudicious 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

matrons.

* Gibbon.

+ Samuel Parr, a clergyman and man of learning, but hardly the "greatest scholar of the age."

Mrs. Fitzherbert, whom the Prince of Wales was supposed to have secretly married.

§ The first wife of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, a woman remarkable for beauty and musical genius, whom Sir Joshua Reynolds had painted as St Cecilia.

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 brilliant society which quoted, criticised, and exchanged repartees, under the rich peacock hangings of Mrs. Montague. And there the ladies, whose lips, more persuasive than those of Fox himself, had carried the Westminster election against palace and treasury, shone round Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire.

The serjeants made proclamation. Hastings advanced to the bar, and bent his knee. The culprit was indeed not unworthy of that great presence. He had ruled an extensive and populous country, had made laws and treaties, had sent forth armies, had set up and pulled down princes. And in his high place he had so borne himself, that all had feared him, that most had loved him, and that hatred itself could deny him no title to glory, except virtue. He looked like a great man, and not like a bad man. A person small and emaciated, yet deriving dignity from a carriage which, while it indicated deference to the court, indicated also habitual self-possession and self-respect, a high and intellectual forehead, a brow pensive, but not gloomy, a mouth of inflexible decision, a face pale and worn, but serene, -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, afterwards chief justice of the Common Pleas; and Plomer, who, nearly twenty years later, successfully conducted in the same high court the defence of Lord Melville, and subsequently became vice-chancellor and master of the rolls.

But neither the culprit nor his advocates attracted so much notice as his 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 sonorous eloquence was wanting to that great muster of various talents. Age and blindness had unfitted Lord North for the duties of a public prosecutor; and his friends were left without 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 Sheridan, 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 capacity and taste of his hearers, but in amplitude of comprehension and richness of imagination superior to every other orator, ancient or modern. There, with eyes reverently fixed on Burke, appeared the finest gentleman of the age, his form developed by every manly exercise, his face beaming with intelligence and spirit—the ingenious, the chivalrous, the high-souled Windham. Nor, though surrounded by such men, did the youngest manager pass unnoticed. At an age when most of those who distinguish 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 fortune 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

Hyper'ides was an Athenian orator and statesman, contemporary with Demosthenes, whose genius and private life are supposed to have some resemblance to those of Sheridan.

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who appeared as the delegates 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 representative of a great age, which has passed away. But those who, within the last ten years, have listened with delight till the morning sun shone on the tapestries of the House of Lords, to the lofty and animated eloquence of Charles, Earl Grey, are able to form some estimate of the powers of a race of men among whom he was not the foremost.*

The charges and the answers of Hastings were first read. The 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 to 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 satisfied 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 constitution 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 administration of Hastings, as systematically conducted in defiance of morality and public law. The energy and pathos of the great orator extorted expressions of unwonted admiration from the stern and hostile chancellor,† and, for a moment, seemed to pierce the resolute heart of the defendant. The ladies in the galleries, unaccustomed to such displays of eloquence,

• Charles, Earl Grey, an eminent English statesman, was living when this article was written, but has since died.

+ Lord Thurlow, a stern, rough man, and friendly to Hastings.

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