and, at his suggestion, proposed the foundation of a Persian Lectureship at Oxford.

But who will refuse authority, particularly when it conveys a compliment to the understanding? In 1768, Hastings was appointed second in council at the Presidency of Madras, and departed from England without delay. He had scarcely held this dignity a year, before he was removed to the Presidency of Madras, in which he continued until 1773, when an act of Parliament raised him to the fatal supremacy of Governor-general of India.

Three years passed away, and Lord North, to whose influence he owed his elevation, became dissatisfied with his conduct, and desired his deposition.. A question to this effect was entertained by the East India Directors, and thirteen votes, forming the bare majority of the court, supported the proposition. The subject, however, was reconsidered and rejected; and he consequently retained his place. The year 1778 terminated the period to which the act of Parliament limited his commission; but Lord North proposed his re-appointment, and it was carried first for one, and afterwards for ten years. These continued favours appeared to augur well for his prosperity; nevertheless, a happy close of this second administration was a blessing for the enjoyment of which he was not destined. In 1785, he returned to England, to answer charges upon which the House of Commons impeached him before the Lords of high crimes and misde

meanours.

The trial which now ensued is one of the most memorable upon record. Persons undoubtedly have been arraigned before the sword of justice, whose crimes were of a blacker die, whose lives were of greater importance, and whose guilt or innocence involved consequences of deeper concern to the people at whose tribunal they stood; but these and all considerations of a similar nature seem to have been absorbed in the intense interest which was created by the astonishing powers displayed upon the investigation. Burke, who has acquired the reputation of having been the most perfect orator this or any other country ever produced, conducted the inquiry, and pronounced, during the course of it, speeches equal to any of those which he delivered upon other

occasions Sheridan, too, distinguished it by some powerful harangues, of which, one in particular, according to the report of all who heard it, constituted the most noble piece of eloquence that had been heard or recorded by ancient or modern times, whether at the bar, in the senate, on the judgment-seat, or from the pulpit; and Fox, Pitt, and Windham, enlightened its various stages by the additional resources of their uncommon capacities.

The proceedings began in the parliamentary session for 1786, and terminated during the one for 1794-thus including a term of nine years. Unexampled as this appears, the statement only applies to what was strictly the duration of the trial. The conduct of Hastings had been a topic of parliamentary inquiry and animadversion for some time previous. For instance, two committees of the House of Commons, the one open, the other secret, deliberated upon the affairs of India in 1780 and 1781, and reported that Warren Hastings, Esq. Governor-general of Bengal, and William Hornby, Esq. President of the Council at Bombay, having in sundry instances acted in a manner repugnant to the honour and policy of this nation, and thereby brought great calamities on India, and enormous expenses on the East India Company; it is the duty of the directors of the said company to pursue all legal and effectual means for the removal of the said Governor-general and President from their said offices, and recall them to Great Britain.'

That this penal declaration would have been followed up to the extreme which it ultimately reached, if Mr. Fox's India Bill had not supervened, appears very problematical. At least the steps it recommended were not pursued until that celebrated measure came to be discussed. Then it was that Mr. Burke stigmatised Hastings as the Captain-general of iniquity, and resorted to his alleged misconduct as an argument in favour of the act, a line of attack which was challenged by the Lord Chancellor Thurlow, who answered, "if Hastings be the depopulator of provinces, let his crimes be brought forward, but let the question be decided upon its own merits." The gauntlet thus thrown was naturally accepted by one of Burke's ardour, and to this sparring, in all likelihood, the nation stands indebted for the subsequent proceedings. Some time was consumed in acquiring information, and some farther delay was occasioned by the absence of the Gover

nor-general from England. He returned, however, during the recess of 1785; Parliament re-assembled on the 24th of January, 1786; and on the 17th of February following, Burke opened the impeachment in form.

To go over a cause so prolix, stage after stage, must in the repitition weary the reader as heartily as in the original it fatigued the public. A mere knowledge, therefore, of the nature of the offences which were brought against Hastings may be presumed enough to satisfy the reader, and that may be attained by abstracting the marrow from a few of those charges which were most strongly supported by the evidence. First, then, he had not only maintained in doctrine, but in practice also, that the ruling power in India was the absolute proprietor of the soil, and therefore entitled to levy from the landholder every exaction it pleased that ruling power to require.-Secondly, in violation of a positive instruction to engage in no offensive wars, he co-operated with Sujah Dowlah, the Nabob of Oude, in subduing the Rohillahs, an adjoining province. - Thirdly, he expelled from the city of Benares, the Rajah Cheyt Sing, notwithstanding an explicit pledge, under his own sign manual, that no entrenchments should be made upon this same Rajah's rights. Such a breach of faith was culpable enough, but the pretext under which it was effected was enormously criminal. The Rajah had covenanted to pay the Company something about 250,0007. a month, in return for their guarantee that he should live undisturbed in his possessions. But because the man was tributary for one thing, Hastings, in the tyranny of superior power, made him tributary for other, and those most irrelevant, purposes. Three times did the Governor-general extort from him, and with the most unmerciful pertinacity, sums of 50,0007. under the pretext of contributing towards the expenses incurred by the French war. These demands were enforced without a solitary bond, compact, law, or usage, to justify or extenuate the enormity; and yet, in 1781, Hastings called upon the same Rajah to furnish him with a troop of thirteen hundred horse, and when the persecuted victim, after equipping a part of them, stated his utter inability to do more, and remarked upon the hardship of forcing a man to expend sums which he had never stipulated to pay; then did the summary Governor-general march down

to Benares, accuse the Rajah of a conspiracy to stir up a rebellion, and clap him into confinement. The people, naturally fired by so unwarrantable an indignity, rose up in arms, and forcing a passage through the guards with headlong slaughter, rescued away their prince to a place of refuge. In the issue, Hastings overran the whole territory, and the miserable Rajah was forced to exile himself among the Mahrattas.-Fourthly, he not only permitted, but even urged the Nabob of Oude to rob his own mother and grandmother of all the property which had been left to them by his father, a sacrilegious act, by which these princesses were reduced from a state of ample wealth to want the necessaries of life. This constituted the great Begum case, upon which Sheridan pronounced his celebrated oration; and certainly the subject matter was exciting enough. It also appeared that the Governor-general had received presents, although presents were interdicted by his instructions, and his oath -but it is needless to specify any more counts of an impeachment, the nature of which, by this partial recapitulation, must be more than intelligible.

Mr. Hastings was acquitted, but the historian who shall be called to relate the melancholy events of his administration can never, with honour or truth, colour his pages according to the tenor of that verdict: and even the reader of these pages may pause before he reputes him innocent; for the way in which the Lords discharged him was by no means decisive of the fact. The House of Peers only returned him not guilty, because the whole of the evidence, oral and written, before the House of Commons, did not appear to be unquestionably confirmed by the sworn testimony before them--a disparity which the length of time wasted on the affair, and the technicalities of a tedious defence, may, perhaps, not unreasonably be thought to have

occasioned.

Being thus, after a nine years ordeal, recognised an innocent subject in the eye of the law, he received some compensations for the sufferings he had to undergo while his character remained equivocal. The East India Company, who, whatever may have been his moral deserts, were certainly aggrandised by the enterprises he undertook, voted him a grant of money to defray the expenses of his trial, and provided for the ease of his future

life by a pension. He was also permitted to enjoy the honours of a seat in the Privy Council, but he never after interfered much with political matters. The scorched child shuns the fire; and Hastings withdrew to Daylesford, in Worcestershire, where he closed his life in privacy, as has already been stated in his epitaph.

Such was the public life of Warren Hastings; and, perhaps, there have been few men against whom so much has been urged that is egregiously rank, odious, and inhuman. Upon the severe page of history his name will be recorded with no light censures: not only the offences charged against him in the course of his long -trial, but the general policy of his government concur to excite an unfavourable opinion of his mind and character. India Slavery, and the religious disabilities of the Irish, afford instances the most painful, that though the constitution of England, as expounded by political writers, is fair, equitable, and generous, beyond any code ever penned, its principles have been enforced with the narrowest parsimony. As the injudicious agent of such political discrepancies, Hastings can receive but little grace from the judgment of future times; but when followed to his home, and found divested of power, the portrait is very different.

In his private circle he appears, by all accounts, to have been truly amiable, and much respected-so much so, that could the estimate of his life be summed up from the testimonies of numerous personal friends alone, there is scarcely an individual to be described with more interesting qualities.

He was always attached to letters, and is known as an author by some tracts on India, a volume of fugitive poetry, and several speeches, which were pronounced in his own defence, and subsequently printed.