3. Mr. Sheridan, whose suavity of temper ever set at defiance all attempts to ruffle or discompose it, and who never for an instant lost either his presence of mind, his facility of expression, or his good-humor, replied to this insolent language with admirable adroitness, in the following words:

4. "On the particular sort of personality which the right honorable gentleman has thought proper to make use of, I need not comment. The propriety, the taste, and the gentlemanly point of it, must be obvious to this House. But let me assure the right honorable gentleman that I do now, and will, at any time he chooses to repeat this sort of allusion, meet it with the most perfect good-humor. Nay, I will say more. Flattered and encouraged by the right honorable gentleman's panegyric on my talents, if I ever engage again in the composition he alludes to, I may be tempted to an act of presumption, and attempt an improvement on one of Ben Jonson's best characters, that of the Angry Boy, in the Alchemist."

5. The effect of this allusion to a well-known character in one of Jonson's well-known plays, as applicable to Mr. Pitt's youthfulness, was irresistible. The House was convulsed with laughter; and Mr. Pitt came very near having the title of the Angry Boy fastened on him for the remainder of his life.

a "Sui plausu gaudere theatri," as Mr. Pitt spoke it.

LESSON CIX. ·

THE IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS. a

EDMUND BUrke.

[EDMUND BURKE, the son of an Irish attorney, was born in Dublin, January 1, 1730. From early life he was a most diligent student; and it is said of him that he was always working out trains of thought. His Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful early established his reputation as a man of genius and a fine writer. His first entrance on political life was at the age of thirty-one; and five years later being elected to Parliament, he made his maiden speech in opposition to the Stamp Act, for which he was highly complimented by Lord Chatham, the greatest of English orators. Both as a writer and as an orator Burke ranks among the first of modern times. His writings and speeches are comprised in sixteen volumes octavo. He died in 1797.]

1. In the year 1787, Warren Hastings, late Governor General of India, was impeached by the English House of Com

mons for high crimes and misdemeanors in his government of India; and in February, 1788, his trial began before the House of Lords, who held their sittings in Westminster Hall. The leading manager of the impeachment was Mr. Burke, who was assisted by Fox and Sheridan, the former of whom Macaulay designates as the English Demosthenes, and the latter the English Hy per'i des3.

2. Mr. Burke, whom Macaulay describes as being "in aptitude of comprehension and richness of imagination superior to every other orator ancient or modern," opened the case in a speech which lasted four days-a speech which has been characterized as the greatest intellectual effort ever made before the Parliament of Great Britain. "With an exuberance of thought," says Macaulay, "and a splendor of diction which more than satisfied the highly raised expectation of the audience, he described the character and institutions of the natives of India; recounted the circumstances in which the Asiatic empire of Britain had originated; and set forth the constitution of the East India Company and of the English Presidencies.

3. "Having thus attempted to communicate to his hearers. an idea of Eastern society as vivid as that which existed in his own mind, he proceeded to arraign the administration. of Hastings as systematically conducted in defiance of morality and English law. The energy and pathos of the great orator extorted expressions of unwonted admiration even from the stern and hostile Chancellor; and, for a moment, seemed to pierce the resolute heart of the defendant himself."

4. On the third day of his speech, when he described the cruelties inflicted upon the natives by Debi Sing, one of Mr. Hastings's agents, it is recorded that “ a convulsive shudder ran through the whole assembly," and that "his descriptions were more vivid, more harrowing, more horrific, than human utterance, on either fact or fancy, perhaps ever formed before. Mr. Burke himself was so much overpowered at one time that he dropped his head upon his hands, and was unable to proceed. The ladies in the galleries, unaccustomed to such displays of eloquence, were in a state of uncontrollable emotion.

Handkerchiefs were pulled out; smelling-bottles were handed round; hysterical sobs and screams were heard; and Mrs. Sheridan was carried out in a fit."

5. The wonderful power of the orator is farther shown in the fact that even Mr. Hastings himself, who, not having ordered these inflictions, had always claimed that he was not involved in their guilt, was utterly overwhelmed. In describing the scene afterward, he said, "For half an hour I looked up at the orator in a revery of wonder, and actually felt myself to be the most culpable man on earth. But at length I recurred to my own bosom, and there found a consciousness that consoled me under all I heard and all I suffered."

6. Unfortunately, we have no complete copy of this opening speech of Burke, for it was such that no reporter could adequately record it; and Mr. Burke never wrote it out for publication. We present here the closing periods only, as Macaulay sketches them, after the scene above described.

7. "At length the orator concluded. Raising his voice till the old arches of Irish oak resounded-"Therefore,' said he, ‘hath it with all confidence been ordered by the Commons of Great Britain, that I impeach Warren Hastings of high crimes and misdemeanors. I impeach him in the name of the Commons House of Parliament, whose trust he has betrayed. I impeach him in the name of the English nation, whose ancient honor he has sullied. I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose rights he has trodden under foot, and whose country he has turned into a desert. Lastly, in the name of human nature itself, in the name of both sexes, in the name of every age, in the name of every rank, I impeach the common enemy and oppressor of all." "

8. The trial of Hastings, taken up in the House of Lords only in the intervals of other business, extended through a period of seven years; and it was during the darkest period of the French Revolution, in June, 1794, when the British Empire itself was rocked by the contending passions that grew out of that Revolution, that Mr. Burke made his closing speech in this famous trial. The concluding part of his speech on that occasion, wherein he refers to the dangers

which then threatened England, has a grandeur and solemnity every way worthy of the orator and the occasion.

a Under the head of "the Eloquence of Popular Assemblies" we must include those judicial orations that are delivered before the English House of Lords, and the Senate of the United States, in cases of trial by impeachment. Thus, in the important trial of Hastings, managed by the House of Commons, and argued before the House of Lords, and in the impeachment of President Johnson, the nature of the trials admitted a near approach to the eloquence of popular assemblies. In such cases the rules of strict law are inapplicable; the appeals of the speaker are made to the general principles of the constitution; and the decision is trusted, in a great measure, to the equity and common sense of the judges, whose numbers constitute them a popular assembly, although a very intelligent one.

An Athenian orator whom Cicero places immediately after Demosthenes, and almost on the same level.

This verse is one of the finest examples of climax.

LESSON CX.

THE CONCLUSION OF BURKE'S FINAL SPEECH ON THE TRIAL OF WARREN HASTINGS.

1. My Lords, I have done! The part of the Commons is concluded! With a trembling hand, we consign the product of these long, long labors to your charge. Take it! TAKE IT! It is a sacred trust! Never before was a cause of such magnitude submitted to any human tribunal!

2. My Lords, at this awful close, in the name of the Commons, and surrounded by them, I attest the retiring, I attest the advancing generations, between which, as a link in the chain of eternal order, we stand. We call this nation, we call this world to witness, that the Commons have shrunk from no labor; that we have been guilty of no prevarications; that we have made no compromise with crime; that we have not feared any odium whatsoever, in the long warfare which we have carried on with the crimes, the vices, the exorbitant wealth, the enormous and overpowering influence of Eastern corruption..

3. A business which has so long occupied the councils and tribunals of Great Britain can not possibly be hurried over in the course of vulgar, trite, and transitory events. Nothing but some of those great Revolutions that break the traditionary chain of human memory, and alter the very face of nature itself, can possibly obscure it. My Lords, we are all elevated to a degree of importance by it. The mean

est of us will, by means of it, become more or less the concern of posterity.

4. My Lords, your House yet stands; it stands, a great edifice; but, let me say, it stands in the midst of ruins-in the midst of ruins that have been made by the greatest moral earthquake that ever convulsed and shattered this globe of ours. My Lords, it has pleased Providence to place us in that state, that we appear every moment to be on the verge of some great mutation. There is one thing, and one thing only, that defies mutation-that which existed before the world itself. I mean JUSTICE; that justice which, emanating from the Divinity, has a place in the breast of every one of us, given us for our guide with regard to ourselves, and with regard to others; and which will stand after this globe is burned to ashes, our advocate or our accuser before the great Judge, when he comes to call upon us for the tenor of a well-spent life.

5. My Lords, the Commons will share in every fate with your Lordships. There is nothing sinister which can happen to you in which we are not involved. And if it should so happen that your Lordships, stripped of all the decorous distinctions of human society, should, by hands at once base and cruel, be led to those scaffolds and machines of murder upon which great kings and glorious queens have shed their blooda, amid the prelates, the nobles, the magistrates who supported their thrones, may you in those moments feel that consolation which I am persuaded they felt in the critical moments of their dreadful agony.

6. My Lords, if you must fall, may you so fall! But if you stand-and stand I trust you will, together with the fortunes of this ancient monarchy; together with the ancient laws and liberties of this great and illustrious kingdom-may you stand as unimpeached in honor as in power! May you stand, not as a substitute for virtue; may you stand, and long stand, the terror of tyrants; may you stand, the refuge of afflicted nations; may you stand, a sacred temple for the perpetual residence of inviolable JUSTICE.

a In allusion to the atrocities of the French Revolution, and, especially, to the execution of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, King and Queen of France.