SOME NOTES ON THE ESSAY.

Lord Macaulay's essay on Warren Hastings is one of his most notable contributions to the Edinburgh Review, where it appeared in October, 1841. Early in the previous year its writer had contributed to the same periodical his hardly less famous essay on Lord Clive, which should be read in connection with that on Warren Hastings, that the student may be familiar with the military achievements which in part precede, and in part run contemporary with, Hastings' lengthy and brilliant rule in India. The two men who were to become the founders of Britain's greatness in the East, and who, despite the stains on their character, figure grandly in the Anglo-Indian history of the eighteenth century, were, for the space of some seventeen years, actors together in the civil and military administration of India. How their careers for a time interlace will best be seen by reproducing the dates in connection with the lives of both men. Clive was born in 1725; he made his first voyage to India in 1743; and finally quitted the East in 1767. He died in England by his own hand in 1774. Warren Hastings was Clive's junior by only seven years; he made his first voyage to India in 1750; and, with a visit of four years' duration to England, was for thirty-five years in the East India Company's service, during thirteen of which he had charge of the affairs of the Indian Empire. Returning to England in 1785, he spent there the remainder of a long and chequered life, dying in the year 1818.

Macaulay's personal knowledge of India, and his vast fund of historical and literary research, were, no doubt inducing motives in his taking up the Malcolm and Gleig biographies of these heroes of Indian history as themes for an historical essay and studies of portraiture for the pages of the great Whig Quarterly. Britain's Indian Empire, with its barbaric wealth and glitter, the splendour of its temples, courts and palaces, the pageantry and stately ceremonial by which the native princes were surrounded, together with all the glamour of the East, formed a group of subjects well fitted to attract Macaulay's love of the picturesque and give scope for graphic writing. The achievements of the British arms, the successive conquests over the native tribes, the thrilling stories of peril and daring, the knavery of Indian intrigue, and the counter-diplomacy of the English military chiefs, were further subjects well calculated to enlist the ardour of a patriotic historian and

хі

furnish material for brilliant literary effects. It is just here that the student needs to be on his guard against Macaulay, and to take care that the fascination of his style and the brilliance of his stately sentences do not lead him astray in the estimate he desires to form of the events described in his pages, and falsify his judgment of the chief actors who play their part in the narrative. This is particularly necessary in reading the essay on Warren Hastings, where Macaulay delights in marked contrasts, and glorifies his hero by throwing into the deepest shade those who were either his tools or who opposed him in the questionable methods by which he won success. It is this love for startling antitheses, combined at times with a too pronounced partisanship, that detracts from Macaulay's merits as a portrait painter and historian, however spirited may be his narrative, dazzling his eloquence, and great the wealth of the historical and literary illustration he lavishes upon his work. Few, however, will fail to be captivated by the polish of the language, the vigour and perspicuity of statement, the telling turns of argument, and the succession and rhythmic flow of the glowing periods. Nor, despite what we have said of Macaulay's partisanship, and the artificial graces and noisy brilliance of many of his sentences, will the reader fail to note the essayist's manifest desire to mete out justice to the figures on his canvas, or remain unstirred while he vigorously applies the lash to meanness and deceit. The value he sets upon uprightness of character, straightforwardness of action, purity of living, and all that is noble and unselfish in human nature, is indeed a high one; though at times he sadly qualifies his ideal by an ingenuity of defence and a sophistry of language when dealing with crime that too often reveals the advocate and throws a cloud over the moral sense. But this is at once the weakness and the strength of Macaulay; and our estimate of his work, like our estimate of such a character as Warren Hastings, must not be upon a single trait of the man, but upon the individual as a whole, and upon the completed work he has left behind him

It is fifty years since Macaulay's Essay was written, and we now see a little more clearly the difficulties of the position in which Warren Hastings was placed. Historical research has meanwhile also brought to light much that hitherto was mere conjecture in regard to the transactions of the period, or are the animadversions of a partisan judgment India a hundred years ago was deemed more emphatically than it is to-day a distant, alien, and usurped dominion," and the theory then, and perhaps truthfully held, was that "only the force wielded and the fear inspired by arbitrary rule could maintain it.”

66

"In the eighteenth century," says Sir Alfred Lyall in his admirable monograph on Warren Hastings, in the English Men of Action Series, "the question of governing India from London presented in the highest degree all the difficulties and enigmas inherent in the administration of dependencies that are separated from the sovereign State by distance, by differences of religion, race, climate, and by the strongest possible contrast of social ideas and political traditions." This the essayist not only saw, but he gave Hastings the benefit of the impression it made upon his mind, in the portraiture he has left us of the great AngloIndian Proconsul. Not only does he recognise the fact that when Hastings first came upon the scene English rule in the East was characterised by all kinds of extortion, and that the sordid company, whose servant he was, looked upon India only as a field to poach in ; but he at the same time places the Governor-General in the midst of his difficult and entangling surroundings, having, figuratively, to make bricks without straw, and administer the affairs of a great trust, fighting, for the most part, with his back to the wall, with a Council Board which, so far from helping him, was a constant perplexity and menace. Macaulay, however, is not careful to give Hastings the full benefit of this view of the case when he comes to deal with the impeachment and the overcharged rhetoric of the impassioned orators for the prosecution. The national inquisition gives him the opportunity, which he evidently coveted, for indulging in picturesque writing, in unison, as he thought, with the tragic declamation of Burke, Fox, and Sheridan; though a soberer judgment to-day deems the whole proceedings of the trial vexatious, and the language of the prosecution what Pitt at the time censured it for being-"violent and unfair.” A great modern legal authority speaks of the impeachment as a blot on the judicial history of the country." "It is monstrous," writes Sir James Stephen, in his History of Criminal Law, "that a man should be tortured at irregular intervals for seven years in order that a singularly incompetent tribunal might be addressed before an excited audience by Burke and Sheridan, in language far removed from the calmness with which an advocate for the prosecution ought to address a criminal court." More open still to criticism is the Essay when its author comes to consider the relations between Hastings and some of the personages with whom he was in alliance.

66

Towards Sir Elijah Impey, Macaulay is now known to have been grossly unfair. He deems him a mere tool of the GovernorGeneral, and in the Essay he has loaded him with reproach and obloquy. In treating of the alleged compact with Hastings, by which Impey, as

he affirms, became rich and infamous, the historian steeps his pen in
gall and writes of the Chief Justice as if he were the greatest, felon
unhung. Nor is he a whit more lenient when he comes to deal with the
plundering of the Begums of Oude, for he again charges the Chief
Justice with crimes that stain the robes of his office "by the peculiar
rankness of their infamy." The extravagant and partisan judgment of
the brilliant essayist is only equalled by Burke's biting invective when
he impeached Hastings at the Bar of the House of Commons. There
the impassioned orator flung at the incriminated Governor-General
every epithet of contumely and scorn. It is now, however, very certain
that many counts in the indictment of both Hastings and Impey were
cruelly unjust, as well as malignantly aspersive. The alleged compact
between them for what was termed the judicial murder of Nuncomar
had really no existence; and most of the charges brought against them
by their sleepless enemy, Sir Philip Francis, are now believed to be
virulently untrue. The whole Nuncomar case has recently been probed
to the bottom, and the exoneration of the Governor-General and the
Chief Justice is deemed both explicit and complete. Sir James Fitz-
james Stephens has made the most searching and exhaustive inquiry
into the matter, and has examined every document and fact relating to
it. His conviction is that Nuncomar's trial was perfectly fair, and that
there was no sort of conspiracy or understanding between Hastings and
the Chief Justice to get rid of the Bengalee; nor, as he believes, had
Hastings anything whatever to do with the prosecution. Sir James
makes this further statement exonerating the Chief Justice :-"I have
read everything," he says, "I could find throwing light on Impey's
character, and it appears to me that he was neither much blacker nor
much whiter, in whole or in part, than his neighbours. I have read
through all his letters and private papers, and I can find in them no
trace of corruption.
When his conduct in the different matters

objected to is fully examined I think it will appear that, if the whole of
his conduct is not fully justified, he at least is to be honourably
acquitted of the tremendous charges which Macaulay has brought
against him."

Thus is conclusively disposed of, we venture to think, not only the odious imputation on Impey as a judge, but the dishonour cast on Hastings by the charge of complicity with the Chief Justice, in taking foul means to get rid of an influential native dignitary who was obnoxious to both. Macaulay's indictment in the case would seem to fall completely to the ground, and a controversy is thus set at rest which has raged intermittently for close upon a hundred years. In

regard to other matters in Hastings' career there was, no doubt, cause for impeachment; but it must now, we think, be said that the mode and manner of it were inconsistent with fair play and with proper consideration for the resplendent services of the whilom Master of all India. Many of Hastings' acts no one would venture to defend; but though despotic and often unscrupulous, he was neither a political gamester nor a brigand. Whatever he was, Macaulay does not fail, on the whole, to do him justice. His administration reduced chaos to order, gave some measure of security to life and property, widened the area of British jurisdiction, and implanted in the breasts of a restive people the fear of English prowess, and in the hearts of knaves a wholesome dread of the English name.