THE INDIA BILL.

In the Sessions of 1783 and 1784, Burke took a leading part in the discussion of the affairs of India, of which he knew more than any public man who had not quitted Europe. To stop the popular cry against them, the East India Company directors proposed to send him on his own terms, at the head of a commission, to reform the abuses of the East; but he refused the appointment. The concoction of the India Bill has been attributed in part to Burke, but without success; it was Mr. Fox's measure, and was not projected by Burke; although he assisted in its formation by his voluminous reports, and by his opinion and revision; and he urged its success with all his powers. On Dec. 1, 1783, on the second reading, he delivered an oration of great vigour, ingenuity, and grasp, maintaining that the present bill would guard against future robberies and oppressions; and its highest honour and title would be that of "securing the rice in his pot to every man in India." He was next seen along with Mr. Fox, standing on the steps of the throne in the House of Lords, there anxiously watching the progress of the Bill; but the King, influencing the Peers, caused the measure to be thrown out, and the Ministry soon followed it. Mr. Burke was dismissed from office, with the rest of his party; and he never was again a member of the Government.*

THE TRIAL OF WARREN HASTINGS.

For some years after the rejection of the India Bill, the affairs of India engaged Burke's whole "heart, and soul, and

*It is not perhaps generally known, (says Mr. Prior,) that this plan for seizing upon India as a direct possession of the Crown, was originally suggested by Lord Chatham. Mr. Burke said that more than once, to his personal knowledge, his Lordship, in 1766 and 1777, seriously contemplated the total dissolution of the territorial power of the East India Company as a government in India, and the assumption of it by the executive authority at home, leaving to the Company only a right to the trade of the country.

mind, and strength," "at all hours and seasons, in the retirements of summer, in the avocations of winter, and even amid the snows, (alluding to the ill reception in the preceding session,) that had lately been showering on my head."

The command which Burke possessed over this great subject-his study of the history, the laws, and usages of the East-his higher powers of intellect, to work on statements of facts and on tables of figures-his analysis and digestionand the skill with which his imagination animated and coloured shapeless masses into vivid pictures-were high qualifications for this mighty work. "He had, in the highest degree, that noble faculty whereby man is able to live in the past, in the future, in the distant, and in the unreal. India and its inhabitants were not to him, as to most Englishmen, mere names and abstractions, but a real country and a real people. The burning sun, the strange vegetation of the palm and the cocoa-tree, the rice-field, the tank, the huge trees, older than the Mogul empire, under which the village crowds assemble, the thatched roof of the peasant's hut, the rich tracery of the mosque where the Imaum prays with his face to Mecca, the drums, and banners, and gaudy idols, the devotee swinging in the air, the graceful maiden with the pitcher on her head, descending the steps to the river-side, the black faces, the long beards, the yellow streaks of sect, the turbans and the flowing robes, the spears and the silver maces, the elephants with their canopies of state, the gorgeous palanquin of the prince, and the close litter of the noble lady, all these things were to him as the objects which lay on the road between Beaconsfield and St. James's-street. All India was present to the eye of his mind, from the halls where suitors laid gold and perfumes at the feet of sovereigns, to the wild moor where the gipsy camp was pitched; from the bazaar, humming like a beehive with the crowd of buyers and sellers, to the jungle where the lonely courier shakes his bunch of iron rings to scare away the hyænas. He had just as lively an idea of the insurrection at Benares as of Lord George Gordon's riots, and of the execution of Nuncomar as of the execution of Dr.

Dodd. Oppression in Bengal was to him the same thing as oppression in the streets of London."

His next great effort was his masterly speech on the debts of the Nabob of Arcot, in which he boldly stigmatized the chief agent and counsellor of his Highness as "the old betrayer, insulter, oppressor, and scourge, of a country which has, for years, been an object of an unremitted, but unhappily an unequal, struggle between the bounties of Providence to renovate and the wickedness of man to destroy."

This was followed by what has been justly called his "Herculean labours" in the prosecution of Warren Hastings, who, Burke saw, had been guilty of some most unjustifiable acts. On April 4, 1786, he presented to the House the articles of charge against the ex-governor general; they fill two volumes of the octavo edition of his works.

It was not, however, till February, 1788, that the trial began in Westminster Hall, "where the High Court of Parliament was to sit, according to forms handed down from the days of the Plantagenets, on an Englishman accused of exercising tyranny over the lord of the holy city of Benares, and over the ladies of the princely house of Oude." The impeachment was opened by Mr. Burke in a speech which lasted four days, and was unparalleled for exuberance of thought and splendour of diction; while the energy and pathos of the great orator moved the sternest and gentlest of his auditors. At length, Mr. Burke concluded. Raising his voice till the old oaken arches resounded; "Therefore," said he, "hath it with all confidence been ordered by the Commons of Great Britain, that I impeach Warren Hastings of high crimes and misdemeanours. I impeach him in the name of the Commons House of Parliament, whose trust he has betrayed. I impeach him in the name of the English nation, whose eminent honour he has sullied. I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose rights he has trodden underfoot, and whose country he has turned into a desert. Lastly, in the name of human nature itself, in the name of both sexes, in

* Macaulay; Edinburgh Review, 1841.

the name of every age, in the name of every rank, I impeach the common enemy and oppressor of all!"

At the second sitting of the Court, Sheridan spoke on the charge relative to the Begums of Oude: his sparkling and highly finished declamation lasted two days: the Hall was crowded to suffocation, and it was said that fifty guineas had been paid for a single ticket. Sheridan, when he concluded, contrived to sink back, as if exhausted, into the arms of Burke, who hugged him with the energy of generous admiration.*

Among the auditors sat Hannah More, who says of this powerful oration: "The recapitulation of the dreadful cruelties in India was worked up to the highest pitch of eloquence and passion, so that the orator was seized with a spasm which made him incapable of speaking another word. I think I never felt such indignation as when Burke, with Sheridan standing on one side of him and Fox on the other, said, 'Vice incapacitates a man from all public duty, it withers the powers of his understanding, and makes his mind paralytic.' I looked at his two neighbours, and saw they were quite free from symptoms of palsy."

We pass over a series of orations and an elaborate Report, by Burke, until finally on May 28, 1794, he commenced his concluding address on the impeachment, which continued for nine days. All these speeches have been published since his death, from notes which he spent the leisure of the last years of his life in preparing, and which he enjoined his executors to give to the world.

At length, in the spring of 1795, the decision was pronounced, near eight years after Hastings had been brought to the bar of the Lords (the 148th day). Hastings was acquitted by a large majority on every separate article charged against him. During the slow progress of the trial, the feeling changed from being strong against him to equal vio

* No notes worthy of credit have been discovered of this great speech, for a copy of which, corrected by himself, Sheridan was offered a thousand pounds, but he declined to give it.

lence in his favour. Among the testimonies to the latter, it was said that at Benares, the very place at which the acts set forth in the first article of impeachment had been committed, the natives had erected a temple to Hastings. Burke's observations on this apotheosis were admirable. He saw no reason for astonishment, he said, in the incident which had been represented as so striking. He knew something of the mythology of the Brahmins. He knew that as they worshipped some gods from love, so they worshipped others from fear. He knew that they erected shrines, not only to the benignant deities of light and plenty, but also to the fiends who preside over small-pox and murder; nor did he at all dispute the claim of Mr. Hastings to be admitted into such a Pantheon. "This reply," (says Macaulay) "has always struck us as one of the finest that ever was made in Parliament. It is a grave and forcible argument, decorated by the most brilliant wit and fancy."

His labours in what he called "The Indian Field" were, to the close of his existence, regarded by Burke as those by which he had deserved best of his country. In 1796, he wrote: "If I were to call for a reward (which I have never done) it should be for those services in which, for fourteen

Of this celebrated Trial it is right the public should have the most accurate account: accordingly, the Speeches of the Managers and Counsel, upon the suggestion of Sir George Cornewall Lewis, are now (1860) in course of publication by Authority.

This first volume contains the four great opening speeches of Burke in February, 1788, and single addresses from Fox, Grey, Anstruther, Pelham, and Adam, along with the four orations delivered by Sheridan in the month of June in the same year. All these speeches are printed from the original notes taken verbatim, and even the errors, and slips of grammar, and want of connexion incidental to oral delivery, are carefully preserved in these transcripts. A short-hand writer, from the office of Mr. Gurney, was commissioned at the trial to take the exact notes of the proceedings; a nearly complete set of them is preserved at Lincoln's Inn. The late Mr. Adolphus had used it for his History of England from the Accession of George III. Mr. Burke revised his own speech for publication; and by comparison between Burke's own publication and the notes of the reporter, it is plain that after speaking it Burke actually remodelled his speech to a great extent. The Editor (Mr. E. A. Bond,) observes that in the revised form there is more condensation of language, than in the oration, as actually spoken.-Athenæum review.