"The truth is, that the affairs of the Company stand at present on a footing which can neither last as it is now, or be maintained on the rigid principles of private justice. You must establish your own power, or you must hold it dependent on a superior, which I deem to be impossible." The reply1 of the Secret Committee expresses their "entire approval' of his conduct. The vigour he displayed at the same time in curbing subordinate abuses, and the retrenchments he effected in many quarters, rendered them unwilling to supersede him; and Ministers at home, who wanted to obtain a larger share of patronage, not only left him undisturbed, but by the Act of 1773 raised him to a position of unprecedented power. Thus it was that this singularly able, fearless, and unscrupulous man came to be the first individual who ever filled the post of English Viceroy of the East.

The family of Hastings was of ancient and honourable name, but at the beginning of the century its fortunes had fallen into decay. The last portion of its heritable possessions seems to have been the manor of Daylesford, in Worcestershire. The vicarage was held for many years by the grandfather of Warren Hastings, and under the old man's roof his earlier days were passed. Of his father, who was a runagate, we only know that he married, at fifteen, a lady of the neighbourhood, who died in the infancy of her only son; and that from his birth the portionless boy was virtually left in the condition of an orphan. Of his father, who survived many years, he was never known to speak. The poor old vicar treated the child with tenderness. He was sent to the village school, and in his playhours, as he used afterwards to tell, he would stroll through Daylesford Wood, or lie beside the margin of the stream that rippled through the meadows, pondering in his boyish

1 Despatch, 16th April 1773.

heart how his grandfather had been driven from the pleasantest-looking place in all that country-side, and wondering if he ever should be rich enough to buy it back again. Throughout a long and chequered life, the thought, nurtured in his speculative and romantic brain by the family talk he had overheard in winter nights while sitting in the chimney-corner-that thought exercised an inexorable mastery over his whole fate, spurring his ambition and goading his avarice, reining his fierce passion, and stimulating him in hours of despondency to endurance, enterprise, and crime. By his uncle, a clerk in the Customs, he was put to school at Newington, where he learned little, and was half starved. He used to ascribe his stunted and delicate frame to the treatment he experienced there. Subsequently sent to Westminster, he soon distinguished himself as a scholar, and won the good-will alike of his playfellows and his teachers. There he became known to Lord Shelborne and other men, eminent in after life; there too began his intimacy with Elijah Impey, that fatal friend, whose lifethread was destined so disastrously to be interwoven with his own. At his uncle's death he was offered a cadetship by his guardian, who was a Director of the East India Company. The head-master said-No; India was very far off. Hastings was a very good Grecian, and he was sure to make a distinguished figure at the University: if expense alone was the consideration, he would pay for a couple of years the necessary charge himself, sooner than allow such a pupil to be sent for life beyond the seas. There must have been something really likeable about the boy, to have opened the heart and the purse of the old schoolmaster-something more than his mere proficiency in

classics.

Uncle Chiswick, however, had no faith in Sophocles

or Aristotle; so it ended in the youth's acceptance of a writership at Calcutta. In a brief summary of his early days, found amongst his papers, he mentions how he was the junior of eight young men of respectable middle-class parentage, who went out at the same time. The prospects of such adventure were then held in moderate estimation. They were soon to brighten marvellously, and soon to multiply, so as to form items of household calculation in the contingent resources of a too numerous family. Any one might buy India Stock; the Directors were chosen by the stockholders; and nominations for the Company's service became widely diffused through various sections of the community.

Hastings could never be induced to talk much of his earlier days. Peering, as one tries to do, through the glare of his subsequent career, the circumstances and incidents of that portion of it which was, perhaps, the purest and the best, look indistinct and dim, like objects seen through a telescope turned the wrong way. It is the saddest of sad things, and one of the worst of bad signs, of a man that has fought his own way to greatness, that he should endeavour to ignore the earlier reminiscences of the struggle. There certainly was no lack of courage or persistency in the young cadet. He worked hard at the Factory, as it was called that is, the place where the few English in Bengal resided, and where they had built storehouses for carrying on the export trade of the Company.

When Clive, in 1756, was sent from Madras to retrieve the disaster on the Hooghly, he was looked upon by the outnumbered and desponding English at Calcutta as a Heavensent deliverer. Hastings gazed on the passionate features of Clive with wonder, and was fascinated by the energy and selfreliant daring of the man. On his part, Clive, who was ever

quick in discerning special aptitude for the work he wanted done, saw that there were things of difficulty and moment which the pale and pensive little cadet could do much better than mounting guard, or heading a party of sepoy skirmishers. He was sent to Moorshedabad to keep his eyes about him at the Nawab's court, to insinuate himself into the confidence of his Ministers and followers, to make them believe from time to time whatever Clive thought necessary, and to report all faithfully to him. He drew forty rupees a month at this period, and the only recorded duty he performed was every day to read prayers,-to whom, does not appear. What minor share of the booty fell to Hastings, none now can tell. In 1764 he returned to England a widower, and soon after prematurely lost his only child. The bulk of whatever fortune he had brought home was lost about the same time by the failure of the house in which he had invested it. How he occupied himself during his residence in London must be left to conjecture. Could the periodical literature of the day be thoroughly discriminated, according to its authors, it would probably appear that Hastings was ambitious of literary fame. He had a project for the establishment of a professorship of Oriental languages at Oxford, and he sought the acquaintanceship of Dr Johnson, whose approval he wished to engage on its behalf. The Doctor, a man not easily propitiated, was pleased with his deferential manner towards him, and liked his talk about Persian poetry. But there is little evidence in the mountainous piles of the public and private correspondence of Hastings that he had any original gift of composition; and Burke, when his antipathy grew hot, and he was looking round for missiles of all kinds to fling at him, did not omit, amongst other taunts, to upbraid him with not knowing how to write intelligible English. This was just

the sort of stab, in a tender spot, that was more likely to make the imperturbable culprit wince, uttered as it was in presence of the beauty, fashion, and genius of England assembled in Westminster Hall, than all the fierce political invectives levelled at him.

He had been examined as a witness before the Select Committee of 1766, and the clearness and vigour of the views expounded in his evidence produced a great impression. He continued, nevertheless, some time longer chafing at the want of adequate employment, and wasting his hours in pleasure or literary obscurity. Meanwhile, under the infirm rule of Clive's successors, the affairs of the Company in Bengal went ill, and in the Presidency of Madras they fared little better. Men of greater capacity and nerve were wanted for their retrieval, and Hastings was invited by the Court of Directors to take the place of a Member of Council at Fort St George. He accepted without hesitation. In point of fact, the offer did not come a day too soon. The gains of his former residence in India were well-nigh spent, and he was obliged to borrow a considerable sum of money to provide his new outfit. It deserves to be remembered that during the season of his embarrassment he continued to pay some small annuities which he had granted to straitened relatives and others who he felt had some claims upon him; and in going to the East a second time, he endeavoured to provide to the utmost of his power for their unabridged continuance. Like many other men of a similar cast of mind, he was at once greedy of money, and munificent in its expenditure; he had as little objection as feudal freebooter to rifle or overreach in a public way; any and he was equally ready to lavish what he thus obtained in acts of hospitality and kindness. In the ship that bore him to Madras was Baron Imhoff, who, with his wife, was