[1782 A.D.]

tinued to apply most strenuously all the men and all the money he could raise. His public-spirited endeavours were well seconded by those of the new governor of Fort St. George, Lord Macartney, who had gained some reputation by negotiating a treaty of commerce with Russia, and who mainly on that ground had been appointed to Madras. Lord Macartney brought out from England the news of the declaration of war against the Dutch; and it became one of his first objects to reduce the settlements which they possessed on the coasts of Coromandel and Ceylon. He was successful with regard to the Dutch factories at Sadras and Pulicat. Next he fitted out a more considerable expedition against the more important settlement of Negapatam. In November, 1781, Negapatam was accordingly besieged and taken, several thousand Dutch troops, after a resolute resistance, being made prisoners on this occasion. Inspirited by that exploit, a body of five hundred men was put on board the fleet, and sent to the attack of Fort Ostenburg and Trincomalee, in the island of Ceylon. This service, also, was no less successfully performed, but was much more than counterbalanced by the disaster which, in February, 1782, befell another British detachment in the district of Tanjore. There Colonel Brathwaite, at the head of one hundred Europeans and eighteen hundred sepoys, found himself surrounded and surprised by an army of Mysore, under Hyder's son Tipu and M. Lally. He and his men. fought most bravely, but at last were overpowered by superior numbers; and all either cut to pieces or taken captive and consigned to the dungeons of Seringapatam.

In the same month of February, 1782, the armament from France, so long expected, appeared off the coast of Coromandel. Its command had devolved on Suffren, one of the best seamen whom his country can boast. Already, on his outward voyage, he had fought a pitched battle with an English squadron at Porto Praya, in one of the Cape Verd islands. By his prompt arrival at the Cape of Good Hope, he had secured that colony against the same squadron for his new allies the Dutch. In India it was one of his first cares to land at Porto Novo two thousand French soldiers whom he had on board, to form, with their countryman already serving, an auxiliary force to the armies of Mysore. These troops being joined by Tipu, flushed as he was then with his triumph over Colonel Brathwaite, they proceeded in conjunction to invest Cuddalore, a seaport town between Porto Novo and Pondicherry. Having to encounter only a feeble garrison of four hundred men, they easily prevailed in their attack; and Cuddalore, thus wrested from the English, became of great importance to the French, both as a place of arms and as a harbour, during the whole remainder of the war.

It so chanced that at the very time when the armament from France appeared in the Indian seas, the British fleet in that quarter was seasonably reinforced by several new ships from England. De Suffren and Sir Edward Hughes, the two admirals here opposed to each other, were antagonists well matched both for skill and intrepidity. In the period between February, 1782, and June, 1783, no less than five pitched battles were fought between them. In these their force was very nearly equal, with only a slight superiority on most occasions on the side of the French. But in none of these was any decisive advantage gained by either party. No ship of war was captured; no overwhelming loss of men was achieved; and, in turning to the best account the results of every action, Suffren showed a far superior skill, especially in retaking Trincomalee and relieving Cuddalore.

The arrival of the French auxiliaries to the forces of Mysore was, in a great measure, counterbalanced by the peace which at this time Hastings con

[1783-1785 A.D.] cluded with the Mahratta estates. Thus, the English could continue to wage, on no unequal terms, the war in the Carnatic until, in December, 1782, it received a new turn from the illness and death of Hyder Ali. This event was concealed as long as possible, to afford time for Tipu, who was then upon the coast of Malabar, to return and claim in person the allegiance of the people and the troops. But when the intelligence did at last reach Calcutta, it fired anew the energies of Sir Eyre Coote. Weak health had compelled the failing veteran, after one more battle with Hyder at Arnee, to withdraw from the field in the Carnatic, and sail back to his council-chambers of Bengal. Now, however, he felt, or he fancied, his strength in some degree restored; and he was eager to measure swords against the new sultan. For this purpose he embarked in an armed vessel which carried out supplies of money to Madras. This, towards the close of its voyage, was chased for two days and two nights by some French ships of the line. During all this time the general's anxiety kept him constantly on deck. The excessive heat by day, the unwholesome dews at night, wrought sad havoc on his already wasted frame; and thus, although the ship escaped from its pursuers, Sir Eyre Coote expired in April, 1783, only two days after he had landed at Madras.

Tipu during this time had returned to the coast of Malabar. There he had to wage war against General Mathews and a body of troops from Bombay set free by the peace with the Mahrattas. The English general at first had great successes, reducing both Bednur and Mangalore. But the appearance of the sultan at the head of fifty thousand men changed the scene. Mathews was besieged in Bednur and taken prisoner with all his Europeans. Being accused, though unjustly, of a breach of faith, he was put in irons, and sent in the strictest duresse with many of his comrades to Seringapatam, there to perish in the dungeons of the tyrant.

At Madras the command of the forces, in the absence of Sir Eyre, had devolved, though far less adequately, on General Stuart. That officer, in the spring of 1783, commenced operations against the French in Cuddalore, who had lately received from Europe some considerable reinforcements under De Bussy. The lines in front of the town, which Bussy had well fortified, were assailed by Stuart with more of intrepidity than skill. The fleets on both sides hastened to the scene of action; but suddenly at the close of June the tidings came that the preliminaries of peace between France and England had been signed at Versailles. By that compact, Pondicherry and the other settlements of France in India, as they stood before the war, were to be restored. The French took possession accordingly, but, on the other hand, they recalled their detachment serving under Tipu in Malabar, and prepared to sail back with their armament to France.

Tipu then remained alone. He had set his heart on adding lustre to his arms by reducing in person the stronghold of Mangalore, but, having achieved that object in the autumn of 1783, he was no longer disinclined to treat with the English upon the footing of a mutual restitution of all conquests made since the commencement of the war. Thus was peace restored through all the wide extent of India, and thus did the administration of Hastings, which endured until the spring of 1785, close, after all its storms, with scarce a cloud upon its sky.c

THE IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS

Francis had returned to Europe, with the wound inflicted by Hastings' pistol fresh on his body, and with the bitterest feelings of animosity rankling

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in his heart. He had made the acquaintance of Burke before he went to the east; he corresponded with him during his residence at Calcutta; and on his return he had full possession of his ear, and filled Burke's generous and excitable mind with false and horrible tales against Hastings, and against all who had supported that governor-general in his struggle with Francis, Clavering, and Monson. From the moment of Francis' arrival in England, by means of pamphlets, books of travels, harangues at public meetings, private discussions, and parliamentary orations, a merciless war was commenced against the great man who was saving, and who in the end did both save and enlarge the Indian Empire of Great Britain. It was soon resolved to impeach Hastings for the means he had employed to effect the great object.

Hastings, however, was not recalled; he resigned. The last two years of his administration in India formed by far the happiest period of his public life. The peace with France, which paralyzed the most powerful of the native princes, enabled him to get the whole country into a state of tranquillity and prosperity which had not been known for many ages. It also enabled him to extend the British influence in several new directions, and to confirm it in others. Having completed his preparations, he embarked on the 8th of February, 1785, attended by demonstrations that certainly did not mark him out as a tyrant and a monster. As soon as it was publicly known that he was really about to quit the government, which he had held for thirteen years, numerous addresses were got up and presented by all classes; by military officers, by the civil servants of the company, by factors and traders, by natives as well as Europeans.

He was most favourably received at court; but his enemies did not leave him long tranquil. Francis had obtained a seat in parliament, ranging himself on the side of the most active and the most eloquent opposition party that the country had yet seen, and through Francis and his too credulous ally, Burke, the prosecution of Hastings was made a party question. It took some time and trouble to convert Charles Fox, but at last that statesman entered into the crusade against the governor-general with his constitutional heat and impetuosity. Sheridan, Sir Gilbert Elliot, Sir John Anstruther, Mr. Windham, Mr., afterwards Earl Grey, and all the great whig orators either preceded or followed Fox; and for many years their efforts were united to effect the ruin and disgrace of Warren Hastings, who was no orator, who had no seat in parliament, and who had to contend with nearly every possible disadvantage. The mere outlines of the proceedings would fill a volume they lasted altogether more than ten years; and without details still more voluminous, an adequate notion could not be conveyed of this unprecedented persecution. We can here do no more than describe the scene and give the results.

On the 4th of April, Burke charged Warren Hastings, Esquire, late governor-general of Bengal, etc., with sundry high crimes and misdemeanours, and delivered at the table nine of his articles of charge. In the course of the following week he presented twelve more articles; and on the 6th of May another charge, being the twenty-second, was added to the long and bewildering list. But the several accusations were finally confined to four heads: The oppression and final expulsion of the rajah of Benares; the maltreatment and robbery of the begums of the house of Oudh; and the charges of receiving presents and conniving at unfair contracts and extravagant expenditure. The sessions of 1786-1787 having been consumed in preliminary proceedings, the house of lords assembled in Westminster Hall, February 13th, 1788, to try the impeachment. 9

[1788 A.D.]

MACAULAY'S PICTURE OF THE TRIAL

There have been spectacles more dazzling to the eye, more gorgeous with jewellery and cloth of gold, more attractive to grown-up children, than that which was then exhibited at Westminster; but, perhaps, there never was a spectacle so well calculated to strike a highly cultivated, a reflecting, an imaginative mind. All the various kinds of interest which belong to the near and to the distant, to the present and to the past, were collected on one spot and in one hour. All the talents and all the accomplishments which are developed by liberty and civilisation were now displayed, with every advantage that could be derived both from co-operation and from contrast. Every step in the proceedings carried the mind either backward, through many troubled centuries, to the days when the foundations of the British constitution were laid; or far away, over boundless seas and deserts, to dusky nations living under strange stars, worshipping strange gods, and writing strange characters from right to left. 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 Oudh.

The place was worthy of such a trial. It was the great hall of William Rufus, the hall which had resounded with acclamations at the inauguration of thirty kings, the hall which had witnessed the just sentence of Bacon and the just absolution of Somers, the hall where the eloquence of Strafford had for a moment awed and melted a victorious party inflamed with just resentment, the hall where Charles had confronted the high court of justice with the placid courage which has half redeemed his fame. Neither military nor civil pomp was wanting. The avenues were lined with grenadiers. The streets were kept clear by cavalry. The peers, robed in gold and ermine, were marshalled by the heralds under garter king-at-arms. The judges in their vestments of state attended to give advice on points of law. Near a hundred and seventy lords, three-fourths of the upper house as the upper house then was, walked in solemn order from their usual place of assembling to the tribunal. The junior baron present led the way, George Eliott, Lord Heathfield, recently ennobled for his memorable defence of Gibraltar against the fleets and armies of France and Spain. The long procession was closed by the duke of Norfolk, earl marshal of the realm, by the great dignitaries, and by the brothers and sons of the king. Last of all came the prince of Wales, conspicuous by his fine person and noble bearing.

The grey old walls were hung with scarlet. The long galleries were crowded by an audience such as has rarely excited the fears or the emulation of an orator. There were gathered together, from all parts of a great, free, enlightened, and prosperous empire, grace and female loveliness, wit and learning, the representatives of every science and of every art. There were seated round the queen the fair-haired young daughters of the house of Brunswick. There the ambassadors of great kings and commonwealths gazed with admiration on a spectacle which no other country in the world could present. There Siddons, in the prime of her majestic beauty, looked with emotion on a scene surpassing all the imitations of the stage. There the historian of the Roman empire thought of the days when Cicero pleaded the cause of Sicily against Verres, and when, before a senate which still retained some show of freedom, Tacitus thundered against the oppressor of Africa. There were seen, side by side, the greatest painter and the greatest scholar of the age. The spectacle had allured Reynolds from that easel which has preserved to us the thoughtful

[1788 A.D.]

foreheads of so many writers and statesmen, and the sweet smiles of so many noble matrons. It had induced Parr to suspend his labours in that dark and profound mine from which he had extracted a vast treasure of erudition, a treasure too often buried in the earth, too often paraded with injudicious and inelegant ostentation, but still precious, massive, and splendid. There appeared the voluptuous charms of her to whom the heir of the throne had in secret plighted his faith. There too was she, the beautiful mother of a beautiful race, the Saint Cecilia, whose delicate features, lighted up by love and music, art has rescued from the common decay. There were the members of that brilliant society which quoted, criticised, and exchanged repartees, under the rich peacock hangings of Mrs. Montague. And there the ladies whose lips, more persuasive than those of Fox himself, had carried the Westminster election against palace and treasury, shone round Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire.

The sergeants made proclamation. Hastings advanced to the bar, and bent his knee. The culprit was indeed not unworthy of that great presence. He had ruled an extensive and populous country; had made laws and treaties, had sent forth armies, had set up and pulled down princes. And in his high place he had so borne himself, that all had feared him, that most had loved him, and that hatred itself could deny him no title to glory, except virtue. He looked like a great man, and not like a bad man. A person small and emaciated, yet deriving dignity from a carriage which, while it indicated deference to the court, indicated also habitual self-possession and self-respect; a high and intellectual forehead; a brow pensive, but not gloomy; a mouth of inflexible decision; a face pale and worn, but serene, on which was written, as legibly as under the picture in the council-chamber at Calcutta, Mens æqua in arduis; such was the aspect with which the great proconsul presented himself to his judges.

But neither the culprit nor his advocates attracted so much notice as the accusers. In the midst of the blaze of red drapery, a space had been fitted up with green benches and tables for the commons. The managers, with Burke at their head, appeared in full dress. The collectors of gossip did not fail to remark that even Fox, generally so regardless of his appearance, had paid to the illustrious tribunal the compliment of wearing a bag and sword. Pitt had refused to be one of the conductors of the impeachment; and his commanding, copious, and sonorous eloquence was wanting to that great muster of various talents. Age and blindness had unfitted Lord North for the duties of a public prosecutor; and his friends were left without the help of his excellent sense, his tact, and his urbanity. But, in spite of the absence of these two distinguished members of the lower house, the box in which the managers stood contained an array of speakers such as perhaps had not appeared together since the great age of Athenian eloquence. There were Fox and Sheridan, the English Demosthenes and the English Hyperides. There was Burke, ignorant, indeed, or negligent of the art of adapting his reasonings and his style to the capacity and taste of his hearers, but in amplitude of comprehension and richness of imagination superior to every orator, ancient or modern. There, with eyes reverentially fixed on Burke, appeared the finest gentleman of the age, his form developed by every manly exercise, his face beaming with intelligence and spirit, the ingenious, the chivalrous, the highsouled Windham.

On the third day Burke rose; four sittings were occupied by his opening speech, which was intended to be a general introduction to all the charges. With an exuberance of thought and a splendour of diction which more than