BURKE'S OPENING SPEECH.

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sovereign and the subject, offering a pledge in that situation for the support of the rights of the Crown, and the liberties of the people, both whose extremities they touch. My Lords, we have a great hereditary peerage here. Those who have their own honour, the honour of their ancestors, and of their posterity to guard, and who will justify, as they have always justified, that provision in the constitution by which justice is made a hereditary office. My Lords, we have here a new Nobility, who have risen, exalted by various merits, by great military services, which have extended the fame of this country from the rising to the setting sun. We have those who, by various civil merits and talents, have been exalted to a situation which they well deserve, and in which they will justify the favour of their Sovereign.

"My Lords, you have here also the lights of our religion, you have the Bishops of England, you have that true image of the primitive Church in its ancient form, in its ancient ordinances, purified from the superstitions and the vices which a long succession of ages will bring upon the best institutions. . . My Lords, those are the securities which we have in all the constituent parts of the body of the House. We know them, we reckon upon them, we rest upon them, and commit safely the interests of India and humanity into your hands. Therefore, it is with confidence, that, ordered by the Commons,

"I impeach Warren Hastings, Esquire, of high crimes and misdemeanours.

"I impeach him in the name of the Commons of

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A FINE PERORATION.

Great Britain, in Parliament assembled, whose parliamentary trust he has betrayed.

"I impeach him in the name of all the Commons of Great Britain, whose national character he has dishonoured.

"I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose laws, rights, and liberties he has subverted, whose properties he has destroyed, whose country he has laid waste and desolate.

"I impeach him in the name, and by virtue, of those eternal laws of justice, which he has violated. I impeach him in the name of human nature itself, which he has cruelly outraged, injured, and oppressed, in both sexes, in every age, rank, situation, and condition."

Owing to the delays which took place, principally through the King's illness, Burke did not speak again until April, 1789, when he opened the sixth charge, that of bribery and corruption. Postponement after postponement took place, until until the the public grew thoroughly weary of the trial, and would certainly have broken out into a demonstration against the irregular manner in which it was conducted, but for the very general belief that it was a gigantic pretence. The only person really in earnest was Burke; but Burke had ceased to occupy the commanding position he once had held, and the virulence and violence of his speeches in the debates on the Regency Bill had provoked a

*The Regency Bill was introduced on the occasion of George the Third's illness towards the close of 1788. It gave the Regency to the

ACQUITTAL OF HASTINGS.

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wide-spread feeling of disgust. Still he persevered; bearing all the labour, and all the responsibility, and contending with the various interests which were engaged on the side of Hastings. In June, 1794, the nine years' trial-it lasted almost as long as the siege of Troy-was brought to a close by the general summing up of the charges of the successive managers, Burke's reply, extending over nine days, forming an appropriate finale. Then Law (afterwards Lord Ellenborough), the prisoner's counsel, replied. Eventually Hastings was acquitted by a large majority, who in this did but confirm the acquittal already pronounced by public opinion. As for the chief prosecutor, the highest compliment paid to the force and splendour of his eloquence was paid by Hastings himself, who, speaking of his opening address, said: "For the first half-hour I

Prince of Wales, but under the severe conditions which his conduct and character necessitated. The Whigs, oblivious of their old principles, and anxious to overthrow Pitt, proposed to give the Regency to the Prince without conditions. Burke pursued the Government measure with unmitigated hostility, and with a vehemence and an exaggeration which cannot be defended or excused. He described it as intended to degrade the Prince of Wales, and to outlaw, excommunicate, and attaint the whole house of Brunswick. On another occasion, he so far abandoned every restraint of decency and humanity as to speak of the unfortunate monarch as "having been hurled from his throne, and plunged into a condition that drew down upon him the pity of the meanest peasant in his kingdom." A cry was raised throughout the House to take down these words; and Burke, staggered by the storm of indignation, attempted to explain, but the agitation hardly subsided before the close of the debate.MASSEY, History of England during the reign of George the Third,' iii. 204, 205. The Bill never became law, owing to the King's recovery in February, 1789.

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MORAL EFFECT OF THE TRIAL.

looked up to the Orator in a reverie of wonder, and during that time, I felt myself the most culpable man on earth. But, then, I recurred to my own bosom, and there found a consciousness that consoled me under all I heard and all I suffered." It was well that a man who had rendered unquestionable services to his country should escape the punishment of the law; and it was felt that the object of the impeachment had already been obtained. It had conveyed a warning, that could not be misunderstood, to future rulers of India. It had taught "the great lesson that Asiatics have rights, and that Europeans have obligations; and that the authority of the English legislature is not more entirely a trust for the benefit of this country, than the dominion of the English in India is a trust for the benefit of the inhabitants of India." Macaulay, in a wellknown passage, comments on the striking changes which had taken place in the long period between the opening and the close of the great trial. But no change was more melancholy than that which had affected the relations of Burke and his former colleagues. Their friendship was at an end. It had been violently and publicly dissolved, with tears and reproaches and angry outbursts. Fox had gone in one direction, followed by Sheridan and Charles Grey; Burke, in another, followed by Windham.* The causes of

this disunion we are now called upon to trace.

*William Windham, born in 1750, died in 1810. He was a member of the famous Literary Club, an accomplished gentleman, and an effective debater. His speeches were full of wise observations and profound remarks, instinct with classical allusion, elevated by philosophic and learned reflection, and vivid with the most polished wit.

It was in July, 1789, that the Bastille of Paris, so long the stronghold and symbol of arbitrary power, was stormed by an infuriated multitude. The event was one which every lover of freedom hailed with delight, and it might have been supposed that in England all adherents to Whig principles would have rejoiced at so signal a blow to the cause of tyranny. There were many, however, who, to use Burke's own language, looked on with astonishment, not knowing whether to blame or applause. "Whenever a separation," he wrote, "is made between liberty and justice, neither is safe." As the French Revolution went on its way, gathering force and fury, like an avalanche, the generous heart of Fox burned with enthusiasm, while the vivid imagination of Burke was filled with alarm. It was in a transport of horror that he denounced the night of the fourth of August, when the privileges of every class were abolished, and the Revolution, instead of remaining a movement towards constitutional liberty, seemed to threaten an attack on all law and order, a revolt against society. His apprehension, quickened by his hatred of uncontrolled power, whether democratic or oligarchical, professed to detect the drift of the current, and to see that it was carrying the nation onwards to an abyss of blood. While even Pitt was extolling