LESSON CXI.

MR. SHERIDAN'S PART IN THE IMPEACHMENT AND TRIAL OF HASTINGS:

I. INCIDENTS OF THE TRIAL.

1. In the impeachment and trial of Hastings, Mr. Burke assigned to Sheridan the management of the charge of plundering the friendly province of Oude, and the exposure of the cruelties inflicted on the native princes to extort from them their treasures.

2. In February, 1787, Mr. Sheridan addressed the House in favor of impeachment. His speech on this occasion was so poorly reported that it is almost wholly lost; but according to the representations of all who heard it, it was an astonishing exhibition of eloquence. The whole assembly, at the conclusion, broke forth into expressions of tumultuous applause. Mr. Pitt followed in a few remarks, and concluded by saying that "an abler speech was probably never delivered."

3. A motion was made to adjourn, that the House might have time to recover their calmness and "collect their reason;" and Mr. Stanhope, in seconding this motion, declared that he had come to the House prepossessed in favor of Mr. Hastings, but that nothing less than a miracle could now prevent him from voting for impeachment. Twenty years later, Mr. Fox and Mr. Windham, two of the severest judges in England, spoke of this speech with undiminished admiration. The former declared it to be "the best speech ever made in the House of Commons ;" and the latter, that it was "the greatest that had been delivered within the memory of man."

4. A curious anecdote concerning this speech is related by the historian Bissett. He says, "The late Mr. Logan, well known for his literary efforts, and author of a masterly defense of Mr. Hastings, went that day to the House, prepossessed for the accused and against the accuser. At the expiration of the first hour he said to a friend, 'All this is

declamatory assertion without proof;' when the second was finished, 'This is a wonderful oration;' at the close of the third, ‘Mr. Hastings has acted unjustifiably;' the fourth, 'Mr. Hastings is a most atrocious criminal;' and at last, 'Of all the monsters of iniquity, the most enormous is Warren Hastings".""

5. When, a year later, Mr. Sheridan had assigned to him, on the trial, the management of this same charge against Hastings, the expectation of the public was wrought up to the highest pitch to hear him. During the four days on which he spoke, the great hall was crowded to suffocation; and such was the eagerness to obtain seats, that fifty guineas were in some instances paid for a single ticket. All who heard his speech agreed in pronouncing it one of astonishing power; but, like most of the speeches of that day, it was poorly reported. From what has been preserved, we give a couple of extracts, no doubt transmitted to us in a very imperfect state.

II. THE PLEA OF STATE NECESSITY.

1. "Driven from every other hold, the prisoner is obliged to resort, as a justification of his enormities, to the stale pretext of State Necessity! Of this last disguise it is my duty to strip him.

2. "I will venture to say, my Lords, that no one instance of real necessity can be adduced. The necessity which the prisoner alleges listens to whispers for the purpose of crimination, and deals in rumor to prove its own existence. His a State Necessity! No, my Lords, that imperial tyrant, genuine State Necessity, is yet a generous despot - and when he acts he is bold in his demeanor, rapid in his decisions, though terrible in his grasp. What he does, my Lords, he dares avow; and avowing, scorns any other justification than the high motives which placed the iron sceptre in his hands.

3. "Even when its rigors are suffered, its apology is also known; and men learn to consider it in its true light, as a power which turns occasionally aside from just government, when its exercise is calculated to prevent greater evils than

it occasions. But a quibbling, prevaricating necessity, which tries to steal a pitiful justification from whispered accusations and fabricated rumors-no, my Lords, that is no State Necessity! Tear off the mask, and you see coarse, vulgar avarice lurking under the disguise.

4. "The State Necessity of Mr. Hastings is a juggle. It is a being that prowls in the dark. It is to be traced in the ravages which it commits, but never in benefits conferred or evils prevented. I can conceive justifiable occasions for the exercise even of outrage, where high public interests demand the sacrifice of private right. If any great man, in bearing the arms of his country-if any admiral, carrying the vengeance and the glory of Britain to distant coasts, should be driven to some rash acts of violence, in order, perhaps, to give food to those who are shedding their blood for their country-there is a State Necessity in such a case, grand, magnanimous, and all-commanding, which goes hand in hand with honor.

5. "If any great general, defending some fortress, barren, perhaps, itself, but a pledge of the pride and power of Britain-if such a man, fixed like an imperial eagle on the summit of a rock, should strip its sides of the verdure and foliage with which it might be clothed, while covered on the top with that cloud from which he was pouring down his thunders on the foe-would he be brought by the House of Commons to your barb? No, my Lords, never would his grateful and admiring countrymen think of questioning actions which, though accompanied by private wrong, yet were warranted by real necessity. But is the State Necessity which is pleaded by the prisoner, in defense of his conduct, of this description? I challenge him to produce a single instance in which any of his private acts were productive of public advantage, or averted impending evil.”

III. THE DESOLATION OF OUDE.

6. "If, my Lords, a stranger had at this time entered the province of Oude, ignorant of what had happened since the death of Sujah Dowlah-if, observing the wide and general desolation of fields unclothed and brown; of vegetation

burned up and extinguished; of villages depopulated and in ruin; of temples unroofed and perishing; of reservoirs broken down and dry-this stranger should ask, 'What has thus laid waste this beautiful and opulent land'; what monstrous madness has ravaged it with wide-spread war'; what desolating foe'; what civil discords'; what disputed succession'; what religious zeal'; what fabled monster has stalked abroad, and, with malice and mortal enmity to man, withered by the grasp of death every growth of nature and humanity, all means of delight, and each original, simple principle of bare existence'?' the answer would have been, not one of these causes.

7. "No wars have ravaged these lands and 'depopulated these villages! No desolating foreign foe! No domestic broils! No disputed succession! No religious zeal! No poisonous monster! No affliction of Providence, which, while it scourged us, cut off the sources of resuscitation ! No! this damp of death is the mere effusion of British amity! We sink under the pressure of its support! We writhe under its perfidious gripe! It has embraced us with its protecting arms, and lo! these are the fruits of the alliance!"

8. The great success of Sheridan, in the part which he took in this famous trial, was celebrated by Byron in the following beautiful lines, the first verse of which, however, is quite as applicable to Burke as to Sheridan.

IV. FROM BYRON'S MONODY ON THE DEATH OF SHERIDAN.
9. When the loud cry of trampled Hindostan
Arose to Heaven, in her appeal to man,

His was the thunder-his the avenging rod-
The wrath-the delegated voice of God,

Which shook the nations through his lips, and blazed
Till vanquished senates trembled as they praised.

10. While Eloquence-Wit-Poesy-and Mirth,
That humble harmonist of care on earth,

Survive within our souls-while lives our sense
Of pride in Merit's proud pre-eminence,

Long shall we seek his likeness-long in vain,
And turn to all of him which may remain,
Sighing that Nature formed but one such man,
And broke the die-in moulding Sheridan.

a A fine example of climax.

b This glowing picture was probably suggested by Sir Gilbert Elliot's noble defense of the Rock of Gibraltar a few years before-in 1781.

A monody, among the Greeks, was a mournful funeral song, sung by a single person. The above monody was spoken at Drury-Lane Theatre, London, soon after the death of Sheridan.

LESSON CXII.

RESULT OF THE TRIAL.

1. Soon after the commencement of the trial, the Lords resolved that they would be guided by the rules of evidence which are received in inferior courts of the realm. A great amount of testimony, which the managers had expected to bring forward, was thereby excluded; and from that moment the acquittal of Hastings was assured. Added to this, "all the members of the House of Lords," as Macaulay says," are politicians; and there is hardly one among them whose vote, on an impeachment, may not be confidently predicted before a witness has been examined." When the final vote was taken, out of twenty-nine peers who voted, only six declared him guilty.

2. But if Mr. Burke failed in the impeachment, he succeeded in the main object which he had in view, that of laying open to the indignant gaze of the public the enormities practiced under the British government in India; and his "long, long labors" in this cause became the means, though not so directly as he intended, of great and lasting benefits to a hundred and fifty millions of people. Of the true character of Hastings, we have the following summing up in the language of Macaulay :

3. "Those who look on his character without favor or malevolence will pronounce that, in the two great elements of all social virtue-in respect for the rights of others, and in sympathy for their sufferings-he was deficient. His