morning were the first day, and the second was like unto it. Finally, however, the Chancellor rose and made a brief speech, and gave great offense to “the managers" by the use of the word "mere." "Mere allegations," he called the rhetoric inscribed upon the immense rolls of parchment, the reading of which had consumed two entire days-and these words were to prove prophetic. On the third day the trial really began. Burke as Manager-in-chief rose and, making a profound bow to the Court, stood forth as the accuser of Warren Hastings, and in his opening address accused him of every crime in the calendar. A famous judge, in Polonius-manner, not long since summed up his advice to a young advocate in these words: "Above all, avoid eloquence as you would the very devil"; but in those days eloquence, or what passed for it, was the delight of Lords and Commons alike, and Burke was admittedly the greatest speaker of his time. The man who did not know how to indict a whole people had no difficulty whatever in indicting one man of offenses enough to damn an entire nation. He accused Hastings of all the crimes that have their rise in the wicked dispositions of men-avarice, rapacity, pride, cruelty, malignity of temper, haughtiness, insolence; in short, everything that manifests a heart blackened and gangrened to the core. With this as an introduction, he proceeded to charge him with having stolen the lands of widows and orphans, with having wasted the country and destroyed the inhabitants, after cruelly harassing them. He ac TRIAL OF WARREN HASTINGS IN WESTMINSTER HALL cused him of never dining without creating a famine, of feeding on the indigent, the dying, and the dead. His cruelty, he said, was more revolting than his corruption; and finally he ridiculed him as a swindler who had obtained honor under false pretenses. Low, mean, and contemptible as was his origin, bred in vulgar and ignoble habits, he became more proud than persons born to the imperial purple. Tyrant, thief, robber, cheat, swindler, sharper, a spider in Hell all these he was, and more; and finally the orator expressed his regret that the English language did not afford terms adequate to the enormity of his offenses. The speech lasted four days, and affected different people in different ways. Those who were against Hastings thought it magnificent, said so, and hailed Burke as the modern Demosthenes. "Females" fainted at hearing of so hideous a monster, and had to be carried from the scene. Not all were of this opinion, however: honest Jim Burney, Fanny's brother, the sea-captain, protested that it was not eloquence at all, that it was mere rant, stuff, and nonsense, and that the whole thing was a comedynay, rather, a farce; and Fanny, who agreed with him, told him to hush lest he should be overheard by Burke's son, who stood near them. If the Lord Chancellor had called the formal charges "mere allegations," we can imagine with what scorn he listened to Burke's vituperations. It was at one of the sittings of this court, when Lord Thurlow was presiding, that Fox, struck by the solemnity of the Lord Chancellor's appearance, made his oft-quoted remark to a friend: "I wonder whether anyone ever was as wise as Thurlow looks?" If the law were, as it is sometimes said to be, that which is vehemently asserted and forcibly maintained, or if eloquence were evidence, the trial might well have been brought to an end then and there; but in point of fact the curtain had just been raised on a performance that was destined to continue for years, until the audience finally grew tired and went home, leaving the actors playing to empty benches. But it must be confessed that there never had been a more brilliant first act, and never had play a greater cast. The next day, when Sheridan took the centre of the stage, it must have been quite obvious to him that, if he were to live up to his reputation as the greatest wit of the day, he would have to speak briefly and to the point. He did not dare attempt to outdo Burke in length, but he thought that perhaps he might be more forceful; he compressed, therefore, his speech into two days, and employed what was described at the time as something between poetry and prose and better than either. It was in this speech that Sheridan made his famous remark about the "luminous," which he subsequently corrected to "voluminous," page of Gibbon. And one may be quite sure that he, the great dramatist, the creator of the screen scene in the "School for Scandal," lost no opportunity for dramatic effect. In closing, he gathered himself up for a mighty effort, and pouring out his wrath and scorn |