show how fleeting are the labours and triumphs of politicians" what shadows they are, and what shadows they pursue." When we consider the importance which the great actors in that scene attached to it,—the grandeur with which their eloquence invested the cause, as one in which the liberties and rights of the whole human race were interested,-and then think how all that splendid array of Law and of talent has dwindled away, in the view of most persons at present, into an unworthy and harassing persecution of a meritorious and successful statesman ;—how those passionate appeals to justice, those vehement denunciations of crime, which made the halls of Westminster and St. Stephen's ring with their echoes, are now coldly judged, through the medium of disfiguring Reports, and regarded, at the best, but as rhetorical effusions, indebted to temper for their warmth, and to fancy for their details;-while so little was the reputation of the delinquent himself even scorched by the bolts of eloquence thus launched at him, that a subsequent House of Commons thought themselves honoured by his presence, and welcomed him with such cheers* as should reward only the friends and benefactors of freedom;-when we

* When called as a witness before the House, in 1813, on the subject of the renewal of the East India Company's

Charter.

reflect on this thankless result of so much labour and talent, it seems wonderful that there should still be found high and gifted spirits, to waste themselves away in such temporary struggles, and, like that spendthrift of genius, Sheridan, to discount their immortality, for the payment of fame in hand which these triumphs of the day secure to them.

For this direction, however, which the current of opinion has taken, with regard to Mr. Hastings and his eloquent accusers, there are many very obvious reasons to be assigned. Success, as I have already remarked, was the dazzling talisman, which he waved in the eyes of his adversaries from the first, and which his friends have made use of to throw a splendour over his tyranny and injustice ever since. Too often, in the moral logic of this world, it matters but little what the premises of conduct may be, so the conclusion turns out showy and prosperous. There is also,

* In the important article of Finance, however, for which he made so many sacrifices of humanity, even the justification of success was wanting to his measures. The following is the account given by the Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1810, of the state in which India was left by his administration :-"The revenues had been absorbed; the pay and allowances of both the civil and military branches of the service were greatly in arrear; the credit of the Company was extremely depressed; and, added to all, the whole system had fallen into such irregularity and confusion, that the real state of affairs could not be ascertained till the conclusion of the year 1785-6."-Third Report.

it must be owned, among the English (as perhaps, among all free people), a strong taste for the arbitrary, when they themselves are not to be the victims of it, which invariably secures to such accomplished despotisms as that of Lord Strafford in Ireland, and Hastings in India, even a larger share of their admiration than they are, themselves, always willing to allow.

The rhetorical exaggerations, in which the Managers of the prosecution indulged,-Mr. Sheridan, from imagination, luxuriating in its own display, and Burke from the same cause, added to his overpowering autocracy of temper-were but too much calculated to throw suspicion on the cause in which they were employed, and to produce a re-action in favour of the person whom they were meant to overwhelm. "Rogo vos, Judices," Mr. Hastings might well have said," si iste disertus est, ideo me damnari oportet ?”*

There are also, without doubt, considerable allowances to be made, for the difficult situations in which Mr. Hastings was placed, and those impulses to wrong which acted upon him from all sides-allowances which will have more or less weight with the judgment, according as it may be more or less fastidiously disposed, in letting excuses for rapine and oppression pass muster. The incessant and urgent demands of the Directors

* Seneca, Controvers. lib. iii. c. 19.

upon him for money may palliate, perhaps, the violence of those methods which he took to procure it for them; and the obstruction to his policy which would have arisen from a strict observance of Treaties, may be admitted, by the same gentle casuistry, as an apology for his frequent infractions of them.

Another consideration to be taken into account, in our estimate of the character of Mr. Hastings as a ruler, is that strong light of publicity, which the practice in India of carrying on the business of government by written documents threw on all the machinery of his measures, deliberative as well as executive. These Minutes, indeed, form a record of fluctuation and inconsistency-not only on the part of the Governor-General, but of all the members of the government—a sort of weather-cock diary of opinions and principles, shifting with the interests or convenience of the moment,* which entirely takes away our respect

* Instances of this, on the part of Mr. Hastings, are numberless. In remarking upon his corrupt transfer of the management of the Nabob's household in 1778, the Directors say, "It is with equal surprise and concern that we observe this request introduced, and the Nabob's ostensible rights so solemnly asserted at this period by our Governor-General; because, on a late occasion, to serve a very different purpose, he has not scrupled to declare it as visible as the light of the sun, that the Nabob is a mere pageant, and without even the shadow of authority." On another transaction in 1781, Mr. Mill remarks;-"It is a curious moral spectacle to compare

even for success, when issuing out of such a chaos of self-contradiction and shuffling. It cannot be denied, however, that such a system of exposuresubmitted, as it was in this case, to still further scrutiny, under the bold, denuding hands of a Burke and a Sheridan-was a test to which the councils of few rulers could with impunity be brought. Where, indeed, is the statesman that could bear to have his obliquities thus chronicled? or where is the Cabinet that would not shrink from such an inroad of light into its recesses?

sist.

The undefined nature, too, of that power which the Company exercised in India, and the uncertain state of the Law vibrating between the English and Hindoo codes, left such tempting openings for injustice as it was hardly possible to reWith no public opinion to warn off authority from encroachment, and with the precedents set up by former rulers, all pointing the wrong way, it would have been difficult, perhaps, for even more moderate men than Hastings, not occasionally to break bounds and go continually astray.

To all these considerations in his favour is to the minutes and letters of the Governor-General, when, at the beginning of the year 1780, maintaining the propriety of condemning the Nabob to sustain the whole of the burden imposed upon him, and his minutes and letters maintaining the propriety of relieving him from those burthens in 1781. The arguments and facts adduced on the one occasion, as well as the conclusion, are a flat contradiction to those exhibited on the other."