views Hastings desirous of some pretext to lay an impost, Asaph ul Dowlah ruminating how he was to avoid payment of what he already owed. In whose mind the tempter first created the suggestion of their uniting to pillage a third party we cannot surmise, but upon that point they both agreed, and the two sagacious statesmen, without appearing to have much repugnance, determined that they should confiscate the wealth of the mother and the grandmother of one of the parties. These two princesses, known under the title of the Begums of Oude, had succeeded to the revenues of the last nabob, and possessed his treasures, which were estimated at three millions. The son had at different periods made attacks upon his mother's property, and had extorted money from her. She had turned with the utmost anxiety to the English Government to protect her, and a treaty under its auspices had been drawn up, in which, under the condition of certain subsidies being paid to her son, he undertook never again to molest her.

Disgraceful as is the fact, the Government that had stood forward as a mediatory power and as a guarantee that no further extortions should occur, became a partner in an atrocious robbery; and in the most discreditable manner plundered and abused the helpless princesses. Under the pretext that these aged ladies had instigated the rebellion at Benares, it was resolved that their entire possessions should be taken from them, and that this wholesale spoliation should be regarded as a set-off against the debt due from the vizier of Oude to Hastings. The palace in which these ladies resided was stormed. The company's troops took possession, and, shameful to relate, the princesses were almost starved into giving up twelve

hundred thousand pounds; whilst two unfortunate beings, who acted as their prime ministers, were thrown into prison, and actually put to the torture. Of the influence of Hastings over the authorities in India there can be no stronger proof than that the chief judge, Sir Elijah Impey, anxious to partake the infamy of the deed, left his judicial seat at Calcutta to obtain anything in the shape of evidence by which to criminate the Begums, rushed to Lucknow, administered oaths to any one ready to swear, and tarnish the purity of his ermine. Here, then, was ample material for the impassioned eloquence of Sheridan. How much is it to be deplored that we have but a meagre outline of that splendid harangue which astonished his contemporaries. A few extracts will show the style in which he treated the subject.

Of the character of Hastings he spoke in the following words: "After having stated his complicated infamy in terms of the severest reprehension, Mr. Sheridan proceeded to observe that he recollected to have heard it advanced by some of those admirers of Mr. Hastings who were not so explicit 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 was indeed another species of greatness, which displayed itself in boldly con

ceiving a bad measure, and undauntedly pursuing it to its accomplishment. But had Mr. Hastings the merit of exhibiting either of these descriptions of greatness-even of the latter? He saw nothing great, nothing magnanimous, nothing open, nothing direct in his measures or in 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 tyrannised 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' 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 everything that concerned his employers. He remembered 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 countinghouse, wielding a truncheon with one hand and picking a pocket with the other."

The speech on the 2nd of April, on the acceptance of various bribes by Hastings, went to prove that corruption had been the leading principle of all his actions in India, and attempted to overthrow the prevailing opinion that, as he did not amass treasures for his own use, he was not corrupt for interested purposes-that he was not mercenary.

"Mr. Sheridan declared he had been among those who, at one time, conceived that Mr. Hastings was not stimulated in his conduct, as Governor-General, by any view to his own emolument, and that his fortune was trifling compared with the advantages which fell within his power. But the more close and minute investigation which it was his duty to apply to the facts contained in the charge had completely altered his opinion, and he scarcely harboured even the slightest doubt of being able to satisfy the committee that Mr. Hastings had all along governed his conduct by corruption as gross and determined as

his oppression and injustice had proved severe and galling. In reviewing his conduct, he had found it to spring from a wild, eccentric, and irregular mind. He had been everything by fits and starts. Now proud and lofty, now mean and insidious, now generous, now just, now artful, now open, now deceitful, now decided-in pride, in passion, in everything changeable, except in corruption. In corruption he had proved uniform, systematic, and methodical; his revenge a tempest, a tornado, blackening, in gusts of pride, the horizon of his dominion, and carrying all before it."

It was on the fourth day that, in the presence of the great historian, Gibbon, he exclaimed, "I do say that if you search the history of the world you will not find an act of tyranny and fraud to surpass this! If you read all past histories, peruse the annals of Tacitus, read the luminous page of Gibbon, and all the ancient or modern writers that have searched into the depravity of former ages, to draw a lesson for the present, you will not find an act of treacherous, deliberate, cool cruelty that could exceed this!" Gibbon, delighted with this compliment, spoke of it in his memoirs. He says: " Before my departure from England I was present at the august spectacle of Mr. Hastings' trial in Westminster Hall. It is not my province to absolve or condemn the Governor of India, but Mr. Sheridan's eloquence demanded my applause; nor could I hear without emotion the personal compliment that he paid me in the presence of the British nation." Little did the innocent man dream that the ever-ready wit of Sheridan had neutralised this elegant encomium; for some one asking him how he could bestow the epithet luminous on