Hastings, with much art, proposed a question of opinion, involving an unsubstantiated fact, in order to obtain even a surreptitious approbation of the measure he had predetermined to adopt. "The Begums being in actual rebellion, might not the nabob confiscate their property?" "Most undoubtedly," was the ready answer of the friendly judge. Not a syllable of inquiry intervened as to the existence of the imputed rebellion; nor a moment's pause as to the ill purposes to which the decision of a chief justice might be perverted. It was not the office of a friend to mix the grave caution and cold circumspection of a judge with an opinion taken in such circumstances; and Sir Elijah had previously declared, that he gave his advice, not as a judge, but as a friend; a character he equally preferred in the strange office which he undertook, of collecting defensive affidavits on the subject of Benares.

It is curious to reflect on the whole of Sir Elijah's circuit at that perilous time. Sir Elijah had stated his desire of relaxing from the fatigues of office, and unbending his mind in a party of health and pleasure: yet, wisely apprehending that very sudden relaxation might defeat its object, he had contrived to mix some matters of business to be interspersed with his amusements. He had, therefore, in his little airing of nine hundred miles, great part of which he went post, escorted by an army, selected those very situations where insurrection subsisted and rebellion was threatened; and had not only delivered his deep and curious researches into the laws and rights of nations and of treaties, in the capacity of the oriental Grotius, whom Warren Hastings was to study; but likewise in the humble and more practical situation of a collector of ex parte evidence. In the former quality, his opinion was the premature sanction for plundering the Begums; in the latter character, he became the posthumous supporter of the expulsion and pillage of the Rajah Cheit Sing. Acting on an unproved fact, on a position as a datum of the Duke of Richmond's fabrication, he had not hesitated, in the first instance, to lend his authority as a licence for unlimited persecution. In the latter, he did not disdain to scud about India, like an itinerant informer, with a pedlar's pack of garbled evidence and surreptitious affidavits. What pure friendship! what a voucher of unequivocal attachment from a British judge to such a character as Warren Hastings! With a generous oblivion

of duty and honour; with a proud sense of having authorized all future rapacity, and sanctioned all past oppression; this friendly judge proceeded on his circuit of health and ease; and, whilst the governor-general, sanctioned by this solemn opinion, issued his orders to plunder the Begums of their treasure, Sir Elijah pursued his progress; and, passing through a wide region of distress and misery, explored a country that presented a speaking picture of hunger and nakedness, in quest of objects best suited to his feelings, in anxious search of calamities most kindred to his invalid imagination.

Thus, whilst the executive power in India was perverted to the most disgraceful inhumanities, the judicial authority, also, became its close and confidential associate: at the same moment that the sword of government was turned to an assassin's dagger, the pure ermine of justice was stained and soiled with the basest and meanest contamination. Under such circumstances did Mr. Hastings complete the treaty of Chunar; a treaty which might challenge all the treaties that ever subsisted, for containing, in the smallest compass, the most extensive treachery. Mr. Hastings did not conclude that treaty till he had received from the nabob a present, or rather a bribe, of £100,000.

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The circumstances of this present were as extraordinary as the thing itself. Four months afterwards, and not till then, Mr. Hastings communicated the matter to the Company. Unfortunately for himself, however, this tardy disclosure was conveyed in words which betrayed his original meaning; for, with no common incaution, he admits the present was of a magnitude not to be concealed." For what was the consideration for this extraordinary bribe? No less than the withdrawing from Oude, not only all the English gentlemen in official situations, but the whole, also, of the English army; and that, too, at the very moment when he himself had stated the whole country of Oude to be in open revolt and rebellion. Other very strange articles were contained in the same treaty, which nothing but this infamous bribe could have occasioned, together with the reserve which he had in his own mind of treachery to the nabob; for the only part of the treaty which he ever attempted to carry into execution was to withdraw the English gentlemen from Oude. The nabob, indeed, considered this as essential to his deliverance: and his observation on the circumstance

was curious; for, "Though Major Palmer," said he, "has not yet asked any thing, I observe it is the custom of the English gentlemen constantly to ask for something from me before they go." This imputation on the English, Mr. Hastings was most ready, most rejoiced, to countenance, as a screen and shelter for his own abandoned profligacy; and, therefore, at the very moment that he pocketed the extorted spoils of the nabob, with his usual grave hypocrisy and cant, "Go," he said to the English gentlemen, "go, you oppressive rascals, go from this worthy and unhappy man, whom you have plundered, and leave him to my protection. You have robbed him, you have plundered him, you have taken advantage of his accumulated distresses; but, please God, he shall in future be at rest; for I have promised him he shall never see the face of an Englishman again." This, however, was the only part of the treaty which he even affected to fulfil; and, in all its other parts, we learn from himself that, at the very moment he made it, he intended to deceive the nabob: and, accordingly, he advised general, instead of partial, resumption, for the express purpose of defeating the first views of the nabob; and, instead of giving instant and unqualified assent to all the articles of the treaty, he perpetually qualified, explained, and varied them with new diminutions and reservations. I call upon gentlemen to say, if there is any theory in Machiavel, any treachery upon record, if they ever heard of any cold Italian fraud, which can, in any degree, be put in comparison with the disgusting hypocrisy, and unequalled baseness, which Mr. Hastings showed on that occasion.

I recollect to have heard it advanced by some of those admirers of Mr. Hastings, who were not so implicit as to give unqualified applause to his crimes, that they found an apology for the atrocity of them in the greatness of his mind. To estimate the solidity of such a defence, it would be sufficient merely to consider in what consisted this prepossessing distinction, this captivating characteristic of greatness of mind. Is it not solely to be traced in great actions directed to great ends? In them, and them alone, we are to search for true estimable magnanimity. To them only can we justly affix the splendid title and honours of real greatness. There is, indeed, another species of greatness, which displayed itself in boldly conceiving a bad measure, and undauntedly pursuing it to its

or in

accomplishment. But had Mr. Hastings the merit of exhibiting either of these descriptions of greatness,-even the latter? I see nothing great, nothing magnanimous, nothing open, nothing direct in his measures his mind; on the contrary, he had too often pursued the worst objects by the worst means. His course was an eternal deviation from rectitude. He either tyrannized or deceived; and was, by turns, a Dionysius and a Scapin. As well might the writhing obliquity of the serpent be compared to the swift directness of the arrow, as the duplicity of Mr. Hastings's ambition to the simple steadiness of genuine magnanimity. In his mind all was shuffling, ambiguous, dark, insidious, and little; nothing simple, nothing unmixed; all affected plainness, and actual dissimulation; a heterogeneous mass of contradictory qualities, with nothing.great but his crimes; and even those contrasted by the littleness of his motives, which at once denoted both his baseness and his meanness, and marked him for a traitor and a trickster. Nay, in his style and writing there was the same mixture of vicious contrarieties; the most grovelling ideas were conveyed in the most inflated language, giving mock consequence to low cavils, and uttering quibbles in heroics; so that his compositions disgusted the mind's taste, as much as his actions excited the soul's abhorrence. Indeed, this mixture of character seemed, by some unaccountable, but inherent, quality, to be appropriated, though in inferior degrees, to every thing that concerned his employers. I remember to have heard an honourable and learned gentleman (Mr. Dundas) remark, that there was something in the first frame and constitution of the Company, which extended the sordid principles of their origin over all their successive operations; connecting with their civil policy, and even with their boldest achievements, the meanness of a pedlar, and the profligacy of pirates. Alike in the political and the military line could be observed auctioneering ambassadors and trading generals: and thus we saw a revolution brought about by affidavits; an army employed in executing an arrest; a town besieged on “a note of hand;" a prince dethroned for the "balance of an account." Thus it was they exhibited a government which united the mock majesty of a bloody sceptre, and the little traffic of a merchant's counting-house; wielding a truncheon with one hand, and picking a pocket with the other.

The documents on the table would bear incontrovertible testimony that insurrections had constantly taken place in Oude. To ascribe it to the Begums was wandering even beyond the improbabilities of fiction. It were not less absurd to affirm, that famine would not have pinched, nor thirst have parched, nor extermination have depopulated -but for the interference of these old women. To use a strong expression of Mr. Hastings on another occasion, "The good which those women did was certain,—the ill was precarious." But Mr. Hastings had found it more suitable to his purpose to reverse the proposition; yet, wanting a motive for his rapacity, he could find it only in fiction. The simple fact was, their treasure was their treason. But "they complained of the injustice." God of heaven! had they not a right to complain? After a solemn treaty violated, plundered of all their property, and on the eve of the last extremity of wretchedness, were they to be deprived of the last resource of impotent wretchedness,-complaint and lamentation? Was it a crime that they should crowd together in fluttering trepidation like a flock of resistless birds on seeing the felon kite, who, having darted at one devoted bird, and missed his aim, singled out a new object, and was springing on his prey with redoubled vigour in his wing, and keener vengeance in his eye? The fact with Mr. Hastings was precisely this:Having failed in the case of Cheit Sing, he saw his fate; he felt the necessity of procuring a sum of money somewhere, for he knew that to be the neverfailing receipt to make his peace with the directors at home. Such were the true substantial motives of the horrid excesses perpetrated against the Begums!-excesses, in every part of the description of which I feel myself accompanied by the vigorous support of the most unanswerable evidence; and upon this test would I place my whole cause. Let gentlemen lay their hands upon their hearts, and, with truth issuing in all its purity from their lips, solemnly declare whether they were or were not convinced that the real spring of the conduct of Mr. Hastings, far from being a desire to crush a rebellion, (an ideal, fabulous rebellion!) was a malignantly rapacious determination to seize, with lawless hands, upon the treasures of devoted, miserable, yet unoffending, victims.

The God of justice forbid that any man in this House should make up his mind to accuse Mr. Hastings on the