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Title: Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3)

Author: Baron Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay

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CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL
ESSAYS
BY

LORD MACAULAY
IN THREE VOLUMES

VOLUME III

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge

COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
Ranke's History of the Popes 1
Leigh Hunt's Comic Dramatists of the Restoration 47
Lord Holland 101
Warren Hastings 114
Frederic the Great 243
Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay 331
The Life and Writings of Addison 396
Barère 487
The Earl of Chatham 591
Index to the Essays 689

CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL
ESSAYS
III

RANKE'S HISTORY OF THE POPES[1]
The Edinburgh Review, October, 1840
It is hardly necessary for us to say that this is an excellent book excellently
translated. The original work of Professor Ranke is known and esteemed
wherever German literature is studied, and has been found interesting even
in a most inaccurate and dishonest French version. It is, indeed, the work of
a mind fitted both for minute researches and for large speculations. It is
written also in an admirable spirit, equally remote from levity and bigotry,
serious and earnest, yet tolerant and impartial. It is, therefore, with the
greatest pleasure that we now see this book take its place among the English
classics. Of the translation we need only say that it is such as might be
expected from the skill, the taste, and the scrupulous integrity of the
accomplished lady who, as an interpreter between the mind of Germany and
the mind of Britain, has already deserved so well of both countries.
The subject of this book has always appeared to us singularly interesting.
How it was that Protestantism did so much, yet did no more, how it was that
the Church of Rome, having lost a large part of Europe, not only ceased to
lose, but actually regained nearly half of what she had lost, is certainly a
most curious and important question; and on this question Professor Ranke
has thrown far more light than any other person who has written on it.
There is not, and there never was on this earth, a work of human policy so
well deserving of examination as the Roman Catholic Church. The history
of that Church joins together the two great ages of human civilization. No
other institution is left standing which carries the mind back to the times
when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, and when camelopards
and tigers bounded in the Flavian amphitheatre. The proudest royal houses
are but of yesterday, when compared with the line of the Supreme Pontiffs.
That line we trace back in an unbroken series, from the Pope who crowned

Napoleon in the nineteenth century to the Pope who crowned Pepin in the
eighth; and far beyond the time of Pepin the august dynasty extends, till it is
lost in the twilight of fable. The republic of Venice came next in antiquity.
But the republic of Venice was modern when compared with the Papacy;
and the republic of Venice is gone, and the Papacy remains. The Papacy
remains, not in decay, not a mere antique, but full of life and youthful vigor.
The Catholic Church is still sending forth to the farthest ends of the world
missionaries as zealous as those who landed in Kent with Augustine, and
still confronting hostile kings with the same spirit with which she
confronted Attila. The number of her children is greater than in any former
age. Her acquisitions in the New World have more than compensated for
what she has lost in the Old. Her spiritual ascendency extends over the vast
countries which lie between the plains of the Missouri and Cape Horn,
countries which, a century hence, may not improbably contain a population
as large as that which now inhabits Europe. The members of her
communion are certainly not fewer than a hundred and fifty millions; and it
will be difficult to show that all other Christian sects united amount to a
hundred and twenty millions. Nor do we see any sign which indicates that
the term of her long dominion is approaching. She saw the commencement
of all the governments and of all the ecclesiastical establishments that now
exist in the world; and we feel no assurance that she is not destined to see
the end of them all. She was great and respected before the Saxon had set
foot on Britain, before the Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian
eloquence still flourished in Antioch, when idols were still worshipped in
the temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigor when
some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take
his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St.
Paul's.
We often hear it said that the world is constantly becoming more and more
enlightened, and that this enlightening must be favorable to Protestantism
and unfavorable to Catholicism. We wish that we could think so. But we see
great reason to doubt whether this be a well-founded expectation. We see
that during the last two hundred and fifty years the human mind has been in
the highest degree active, that it has made great advances in every branch of
natural philosophy, that it has produced innumerable inventions tending to
promote the convenience of life, that medicine, surgery, chemistry,

engineering, have been very greatly improved, that government, police, and
law have been improved, though not to so great an extent as the physical
sciences. But we see that, during these two hundred and fifty years,
Protestantism has made no conquests worth speaking of. Nay, we believe
that, as far as there has been a change, that change has, on the whole, been
in favor of the Church of Rome. We cannot, therefore, feel confident that
the progress of knowledge will necessarily be fatal to a system which has,
to say the least, stood its ground in spite of the immense progress made by
the human race in knowledge since the days of Queen Elizabeth.
Indeed, the argument which we are considering seems to us to be founded
on an entire mistake. There are branches of knowledge with respect to
which the law of the human mind is progress. In mathematics, when once a
proposition has been demonstrated, it is never afterwards contested. Every
fresh story is as solid a basis for a new superstructure as the original
foundation was. Here, therefore, there is a constant addition to the stock of
truth. In the inductive sciences again, the law is progress. Every day
furnishes new facts, and thus brings theory nearer and nearer to perfection.
There is no chance that, either in the purely demonstrative or in the purely
experimental sciences, the world will ever go back or even remain
stationary. Nobody ever heard of a reaction against Taylor's theorem, or of a
reaction against Harvey's doctrine of the circulation of the blood.
But with theology the case is very different. As respects natural religion,—
revelation being for the present altogether left out of the question,—it is not
easy to see that a philosopher of the present day is more favorably situated
than Thales or Simonides. He has before him just the same evidences of
design in the structure of the universe which the early Greeks had. We say
just the same; for the discoveries of modern astronomers and anatomists
have really added nothing to the force of that argument which a reflecting
mind finds in every beast, bird, insect, fish, leaf, flower, and shell. The
reasoning by which Socrates, in Xenophon's hearing, confuted the little
atheist Aristodemus, is exactly the reasoning of Paley's Natural Theology.
Socrates makes precisely the same use of the statues of Polycletus and the
pictures of Zeuxis which Paley makes of the watch. As to the other great
question, the question what becomes of man after death, we do not see that
a highly educated European, left to his unassisted reason, is more likely to
be in the right than a Blackfoot Indian. Not a single one of the many

sciences in which we surpass the Blackfoot Indians throws the smallest
light on the state of the soul after the animal life is extinct. In truth all the
philosophers, ancient and modern, who have attempted, without the help of
revelation, to prove the immortality of man, from Plato down to Franklin,
appear to us to have failed deplorably.
Then, again, all the great enigmas which perplex the natural theologian are
the same in all ages. The ingenuity of a people just emerging from
barbarism is quite sufficient to propound those enigmas. The genius of
Locke or Clarke is quite unable to solve them. It is a mistake to imagine
that subtle speculations touching the divine attributes, the origin of evil, the
necessity of human actions, the foundation of moral obligation, imply any
high degree of intellectual culture. Such speculations, on the contrary, are in
a peculiar manner the delight of intelligent children and of half-civilized
men. The number of boys is not small who, at fourteen, have thought
enough on these questions to be fully entitled to the praise which Voltaire
gives to Zadig. "Il en savait ce qu'on en a su dans tous les âges; c'est-à-dire,
fort peu de chose." The Book of Job shows that, long before letters and arts
were known to Ionia, these vexing questions were debated with no common
skill and eloquence, under the tents of the Idumean Emirs; nor has human
reason, in the course of three thousand years, discovered any satisfactory
solution of the riddles which perplexed Eliphaz and Zophar.
Natural theology, then, is not a progressive science. That knowledge of our
origin and of our destiny which we derive from revelation is indeed of very
different clearness, and of very different importance. But neither is revealed
religion of the nature of a progressive science. All divine truth is, according
to the doctrine of the Protestant churches, recorded in certain books. It is
equally open to all who, in any age, can read those books; nor can all the
discoveries of all the philosophers in the world add a single verse to any of
those books. It is plain, therefore, that in divinity there cannot be a progress
analogous to that which is constantly taking place in pharmacy, geology,
and navigation. A Christian of the fifth century with a Bible is neither better
nor worse situated than a Christian of the nineteenth century with a Bible,
candor and natural acuteness being, of course, supposed equal. It matters
not at all that the compass, printing, gunpowder, steam, gas, vaccination,
and a thousand other discoveries and inventions, which were unknown in
the fifth century, are familiar to the nineteenth. None of these discoveries

and inventions has the smallest bearing on the question whether man is
justified by faith alone, or whether the invocation of saints is an orthodox
practice. It seems to us, therefore, that we have no security for the future
against the prevalence of any theological error that ever has prevailed in
time past among Christian men. We are confident that the world will never
go back to the solar system of Ptolemy; nor is our confidence in the least
shaken by the circumstance that even so great a man as Bacon rejected the
theory of Galileo with scorn; for Bacon had not all the means of arriving at
a sound conclusion which are within our reach, and which secure people
who would not have been worthy to mend his pens from falling into his
mistakes. But when we reflect that Sir Thomas More was ready to die for
the doctrine of transubstantiation, we cannot but feel some doubt whether
the doctrine of transubstantiation may not triumph over all opposition. More
was a man of eminent talents. He had all the information on the subject that
we have, or that, while the world lasts, any human being will have. The
text, "This is my body," was in his New Testament as it is in ours. The
absurdity of the literal interpretation was as great and as obvious in the
sixteenth century as it is now. No progress that science has made, or will
make, can add to what seems to us the overwhelming force of the argument
against the real presence. We are, therefore, unable to understand why what
Sir Thomas More believed respecting transubstantiation may not be
believed to the end of time by men equal in abilities and honesty to Sir
Thomas More. But Sir Thomas More is one of the choice specimens of
human wisdom and virtue; and the doctrine of transubstantiation is a kind
of proof charge. A faith which stands that test will stand any test. The
prophecies of Brothers and the miracles of Prince Hohenlohe sink to trifles
in the comparison.
One reservation, indeed, must be made. The books and traditions of a sect
may contain, mingled with propositions strictly theological, other
propositions, purporting to rest on the same authority, which relate to
physics. If new discoveries should throw discredit on the physical
propositions, the theological propositions, unless they can be separated
from the physical propositions, will share in that discredit. In this way,
undoubtedly, the progress of science may indirectly serve the cause of
religious truth. The Hindoo mythology, for example, is bound up with a
most absurd geography. Every young Brahmin, therefore, who learns

geography in our colleges learns to smile at the Hindoo mythology. If
Catholicism has not suffered to an equal degree from the papal decision that
the sun goes round the earth, this is because all intelligent Catholics now
hold, with Pascal, that, in deciding the point at all, the Church exceeded her
powers, and was, therefore, justly left destitute of that supernatural
assistance which, in the exercise of her legitimate functions, the promise of
her Founder authorized her to expect.
This reservation affects not at all the truth of our proposition, that divinity,
properly so called, is not a progressive science. A very common knowledge
of history, a very little observation of life, will suffice to prove that no
learning, no sagacity, affords a security against the greatest errors on
subjects relating to the invisible world. Bayle and Chillingworth, two of the
most skeptical of mankind, turned Catholics from sincere conviction.
Johnson, incredulous on all other points, was a ready believer in miracles
and apparitions. He would not believe in Ossian; but he was willing to
believe in the second sight. He would not believe in the earthquake of
Lisbon; but he was willing to believe in the Cock Lane ghost.
For these reasons we have ceased to wonder at any vagaries of superstition.
We have seen men, not of mean intellect or neglected education, but
qualified by their talents and acquirements to attain eminence either in
active or speculative pursuits, well-read scholars, expert logicians, keen
observers of life and manners, prophesying, interpreting, talking unknown
tongues, working miraculous cures, coming down with messages from God
to the House of Commons. We have seen an old woman, with no talents
beyond the cunning of a fortuneteller, and with the education of a scullion,
exalted into a prophetess, and surrounded by tens of thousands of devoted
followers, many of whom were, in station and knowledge, immeasurably
her superiors; and all this in the nineteenth century; and all this in London.
Yet why not? For of the dealings of God with man no more has been
revealed to the nineteenth century than to the first, or to London than to the
wildest parish in the Hebrides. It is true that, in those things which concern
this life and this world, man constantly becomes wiser and wiser. But it is
no less true that, as respects a higher power and a future state, man, in the
language of Goethe's scoffing fiend,

"bleibt stets von gleichem Schlag,

Und ist so wunderlich als wie am ersten Tag."
The history of Catholicism strikingly illustrates these observations. During
the last seven centuries the public mind of Europe has made constant
progress in every department of secular knowledge. But in religion we can
trace no constant progress. The ecclesiastical history of that long period is a
history of movement to and fro. Four times, since the authority of the
Church of Rome was established in Western Christendom, has the human
intellect risen up against her yoke. Twice that Church remained completely
victorious. Twice she came forth from the conflict bearing the marks of
cruel wounds, but with the principle of life still strong within her. When we
reflect on the tremendous assaults which she has survived, we find it
difficult to conceive in what way she is to perish.
The first of these insurrections broke out in the region where the beautiful
language of Oc was spoken. That country, singularly favored by nature,
was, in the twelfth century, the most flourishing and civilized portion of
Western Europe. It was in no wise a part of France. It had a distinct political
existence, a distinct national character, distinct usages, and a distinct
speech. The soil was fruitful and well cultivated; and amidst the cornfields
and vineyards rose many rich cities, each of which was a little republic, and
many stately castles, each of which contained a miniature of an imperial
court. It was there that the spirit of chivalry first laid aside its terrors, first
took a humane and graceful form, first appeared as the inseparable associate
of art and literature, of courtesy and love. The other vernacular dialects
which, since the fifth century, had sprung up in the ancient provinces of the
Roman empire, were still rude and imperfect. The sweet Tuscan, the rich
and energetic English, were abandoned to artisans and shepherds. No clerk
had ever condescended to use such barbarous jargon for the teaching of
science, for the recording of great events, or for the painting of life and
manners. But the language of Provence was already the language of the
learned and polite, and was employed by numerous writers, studious of all
the arts of composition and versification. A literature rich in ballads, in war-
songs, in satire, and, above all, in amatory poetry, amused the leisure of the
knights and ladies whose fortified mansions adorned the banks of the Rhone
and Garonne. With civilization had come freedom of thought. Use had
taken away the horror with which misbelievers were elsewhere regarded.
No Norman or Breton ever saw a Mussulman, except to give and receive

blows on some Syrian field of battle. But the people of the rich countries
which lay under the Pyrenees lived in habits of courteous and profitable
intercourse with the Moorish kingdoms of Spain, and gave a hospitable
welcome to skilful leeches and mathematicians who, in the schools of
Cordova and Granada, had become versed in all the learning of the
Arabians. The Greek, still preserving, in the midst of political degradation,
the ready wit and the inquiring spirit of his fathers, still able to read the
most perfect of human compositions, still speaking the most powerful and
flexible of human languages, brought to the marts of Narbonne and
Toulouse, together with the drugs and silks of remote climates, bold and
subtle theories long unknown to the ignorant and credulous West. The
Paulician theology, a theology in which, as it should seem, many of the
doctrines of the modern Calvinists were mingled with some doctrines
derived from the ancient Manichees, spread rapidly through Provence and
Languedoc. The clergy of the Catholic Church were regarded with loathing
and contempt. "Viler than a priest," "I would as soon be a priest," became
proverbial expressions. The Papacy had lost all authority with all classes,
from the great feudal princes down to the cultivators of the soil.
The danger to the hierarchy was indeed formidable. Only one transalpine
nation had emerged from barbarism; and that nation had thrown off all
respect for Rome. Only one of the vernacular languages of Europe had yet
been extensively employed for literary purposes; and that language was a
machine in the hands of heretics. The geographical position of the sectaries
made the danger peculiarly formidable. They occupied a central region
communicating directly with France, with Italy, and with Spain. The
provinces which were still untainted were separated from each other by this
infected district. Under these circumstances, it seemed probable that a
single generation would suffice to spread the reformed doctrine to Lisbon,
to London, and to Naples. But this was not to be. Rome cried for help to the
warriors of northern France. She appealed at once to their superstition and
to their cupidity. To the devout believer she promised pardons as ample as
those with which she had rewarded the deliverers of the Holy Sepulchre. To
the rapacious and profligate she offered the plunder of fertile plains and
wealthy cities. Unhappily, the ingenious and polished inhabitants of the
Languedocian provinces were far better qualified to enrich and embellish
their country than to defend it. Eminent in the arts of peace, unrivalled in

the "gay science," elevated above many vulgar superstitions, they wanted
that iron courage, and that skill in martial exercises, which distinguished the
chivalry of the region beyond the Loire, and were ill fitted to face enemies
who, in every country from Ireland to Palestine, had been victorious against
tenfold odds. A war, distinguished even among wars of religion by
merciless atrocity, destroyed the Albigensian heresy, and with that heresy
the prosperity, the civilization, the literature, the national existence, of what
was once the most opulent and enlightened part of the great European
family. Rome, in the meantime, warned by that fearful danger from which
the exterminating swords of her crusaders had narrowly saved her,
proceeded to revise and to strengthen her whole system of polity. At this
period were instituted the Order of Francis, the Order of Dominic, the
Tribunal of the Inquisition. The new spiritual police was everywhere. No
alley in a great city, no hamlet on a remote mountain, was unvisited by the
begging friar. The simple Catholic, who was content to be no wiser than his
fathers, found, wherever he turned, a friendly voice to encourage him. The
path of the heretic was beset by innumerable spies; and the Church, lately in
danger of utter subversion, now appeared to be impregnably fortified by the
love, the reverence, and the terror of mankind.
A century and a half passed away; and then came the second great rising up
of the human intellect against the spiritual domination of Rome. During the
two generations which followed the Albigensian crusade, the power of the
Papacy had been at the height. Frederic the Second, the ablest and most
accomplished of the long line of German Cæsars, had in vain exhausted all
the resources of military and political skill in the attempt to defend the
rights of the civil power against the encroachments of the Church. The
vengeance of the priesthood had pursued his house to the third generation.
Manfred had perished on the field of battle, Conradin on the scaffold. Then
a turn took place. The secular authority, long unduly depressed, regained the
ascendant with startling rapidity. The change is doubtless to be ascribed
chiefly to the general disgust excited by the way in which the Church had
abused its power and its success. But something must be attributed to the
character and situation of individuals. The man who bore the chief part in
effecting this revolution was Philip the Fourth of France, surnamed the
Beautiful, a despot by position, a despot by temperament, stern, implacable,
and unscrupulous, equally prepared for violence and for chicanery, and

surrounded by a devoted band of men of the sword and of men of law. The
fiercest and most high-minded of the Roman Pontiffs, while bestowing
kingdoms and citing great princes to his judgment-seat, was seized in his
palace by armed men, and so foully outraged that he died mad with rage
and terror. "Thus," sang the great Florentine poet, "was Christ, in the person
of his vicar, a second time seized by ruffians, a second time mocked, a
second time drenched with the vinegar and the gall." The seat of the papal
court was carried beyond the Alps, and the Bishops of Rome became
dependents of France. Then came the great schism of the West. Two Popes,
each with a doubtful title, made all Europe ring with their mutual invectives
and anathemas. Rome cried out against the corruptions of Avignon; and
Avignon, with equal justice, recriminated on Rome. The plain Christian
people, brought up in the belief that it was a sacred duty to be in
communion with the head of the Church, were unable to discover, amidst
conflicting testimonies and conflicting arguments, to which of the two
worthless priests, who were cursing and reviling each other, the headship of
the Church rightfully belonged. It was nearly at this juncture that the voice
of John Wickliffe began to make itself heard. The public mind of England
was soon stirred to its inmost depths; and the influence of the new doctrines
was soon felt, even in the distant kingdom of Bohemia. In Bohemia, indeed,
there had long been a predisposition to heresy. Merchants from the Lower
Danube were often seen in the fairs of Prague; and the Lower Danube was
peculiarly the seat of the Paulician theology. The Church, torn by schism,
and fiercely assailed at once in England and in the German empire, was in a
situation scarcely less perilous than at the crisis which preceded the
Albigensian crusade.
But this danger also passed by. The civil power gave its strenuous support
to the Church; and the Church made some show of reforming itself. The
Council of Constance put an end to the schism. The whole Catholic world
was again united under a single chief; and rules were laid down which
seemed to make it improbable that the power of that chief would be grossly
abused. The most distinguished teachers of the new doctrine were
slaughtered. The English government put down the Lollards with merciless
rigor; and, in the next generation, scarcely one trace of the second great
revolt against the Papacy could be found, except among the rude population
of the mountains of Bohemia.

Another century went by; and then began the third and the most memorable
struggle for spiritual freedom. The times were changed. The great remains
of Athenian and Roman genius were studied by thousands. The Church had
no longer a monopoly of learning. The powers of the modern languages had
at length been developed. The invention of printing had given new facilities
to the intercourse of mind with mind. With such auspices commenced the
great Reformation.
We will attempt to lay before our readers, in a short compass, what appears
to us to be the real history of the contest which began with the preaching of
Luther against the Indulgences, and which may, in one sense, be said to
have been terminated, a hundred and thirty years later, by the treaty of
Westphalia.
In the northern parts of Europe, the victory of Protestantism was rapid and
decisive. The dominion of the Papacy was felt by the nations of Teutonic
blood as the dominion of Italians, of foreigners, of men who were aliens in
language, manners, and intellectual constitution. The large jurisdiction
exercised by the spiritual tribunals of Rome seemed to be a degrading
badge of servitude. The sums which, under a thousand pretexts, were
exacted by a distant court, were regarded both as a humiliating and as a
ruinous tribute. The character of that court excited the scorn and disgust of a
grave, earnest, sincere, and devout people. The new theology spread with a
rapidity never known before. All ranks, all varieties of character, joined the
ranks of the innovators. Sovereigns impatient to appropriate to themselves
the prerogatives of the Pope, nobles desirous to share the plunder of abbeys,
suitors exasperated by the extortions of the Roman Camera, patriots
impatient of a foreign rule, good men scandalized by the corruptions of the
Church, bad men desirous of the license inseparable from great moral
revolutions, wise men eager in the pursuit of truth, weak men allured by the
glitter of novelty, all were found on one side. Alone among the northern
nations the Irish adhered to the ancient faith: and the cause of this seems to
have been that the national feeling which, in happier countries, was directed
against Rome, was in Ireland directed against England. Within fifty years
from the day on which Luther publicly renounced communion with the
Papacy, and burned the bull of Leo before the gates of Wittenberg,
Protestantism attained its highest ascendency, an ascendency which it soon
lost, and which it has never regained. Hundreds, who could well remember

Brother Martin a devout Catholic, lived to see the revolution of which he
was the chief author, victorious in half the states of Europe. In England,
Scotland, Denmark, Sweden, Livonia, Prussia, Saxony, Hesse, Wurtemburg,
the Palatinate, in several cantons of Switzerland, in the Northern
Netherlands, the Reformation had completely triumphed; and in all the
other countries on this side of the Alps and the Pyrenees, it seemed on the
point of triumphing.
But while this mighty work was proceeding in the north of Europe, a
revolution of a very different kind had taken place in the south. The temper
of Italy and Spain was widely different from that of Germany and England.
As the national feeling of the Teutonic nations impelled them to throw off
the Italian supremacy, so the national feeling of the Italians impelled them
to resist any change which might deprive their country of the honors and
advantages which she enjoyed as the seat of the government of the
Universal Church. It was in Italy that the tributes were spent of which
foreign nations so bitterly complained. It was to adorn Italy that the traffic
in Indulgences had been carried to that scandalous excess which had roused
the indignation of Luther. There was among the Italians both much piety
and much impiety; but, with very few exceptions, neither the piety nor the
impiety took the turn of Protestantism. The religious Italians desired a
reform of morals and discipline, but not a reform of doctrine, and least of
all a schism. The irreligious Italians simply disbelieved Christianity,
without hating it. They looked at it as artists or as statesmen; and, so
looking at it, they liked it better in the established form than in any other. It
was to them what the old Pagan worship was to Trajan and Pliny. Neither
the spirit of Savonarola nor the spirit of Machiavelli had anything in
common with the spirit of the religious or political Protestants of the North.
Spain again was, with respect to the Catholic Church, in a situation very
different from that of the Teutonic nations. Italy was, in truth, a part of the
empire of Charles the Fifth; and the Court of Rome was, on many important
occasions, his tool. He had not, therefore, like the distant princes of the
North, a strong selfish motive for attacking the Papacy. In fact, the very
measures which provoked the Sovereign of England to renounce all
connection with Rome were dictated by the Sovereign of Spain. The feeling
of the Spanish people concurred with the interest of the Spanish
government. The attachment of the Castilian to the faith of his ancestors

was peculiarly strong and ardent. With that faith were inseparably bound up
the institutions, the independence, and the glory of his country. Between the
day when the last Gothic King was vanquished on the banks of the Xeres,
and the day when Ferdinand and Isabella entered Granada in triumph, near
eight hundred years had elapsed; and during those years the Spanish nation
had been engaged in a desperate struggle against misbelievers. The
Crusades had been merely an episode in the history of other nations. The
existence of Spain had been one long Crusade. After fighting Mussulmans
in the Old World, she began to fight heathens in the New. It was under the
authority of a papal bull that her children steered into unknown seas. It was
under the standard of the cross that they marched fearlessly into the heart of
great kingdoms. It was with the cry of "St. James for Spain" that they
charged armies which outnumbered them a hundredfold. And men said that
the Saint had heard the call, and had himself, in arms, on a gray war-horse,
led the onset before which the worshippers of false gods had given way.
After the battle, every excess of rapacity or cruelty was sufficiently
vindicated by the plea that the sufferers were unbaptized. Avarice stimulated
zeal. Zeal consecrated avarice. Proselytes and gold mines were sought with
equal ardor. In the very year in which the Saxons, maddened by the
exactions of Rome, broke loose from her yoke, the Spaniards, under the
authority of Rome, made themselves masters of the empire and of the
treasures of Montezuma. Thus Catholicism which, in the public mind of
Northern Europe, was associated with spoliation and oppression, was in the
public mind of Spain associated with liberty, victory, dominion, wealth, and
glory.
It is not, therefore, strange that the effect of the great outbreak of
Protestantism in one part of Christendom should have been to produce an
equally violent outbreak of Catholic zeal in another. Two reformations were
pushed on at once with equal energy and effect, a reformation of doctrine in
the North, a reformation of manners and discipline in the South. In the
course of a single generation, the whole spirit of the Church of Rome
underwent a change. From the halls of the Vatican to the most secluded
hermitage of the Apennines, the great revival was everywhere felt and seen.
All the institutions anciently devised for the propagation and defence of the
faith were furbished up and made efficient. Fresh engines of still more
formidable power were constructed. Everywhere old religious communities

were remodelled and new religious communities called into existence.
Within a year after the death of Leo, the order of Camaldoli was purified.
The Capuchins restored the old Franciscan discipline, the midnight prayer
and the life of silence. The Barnabites and the society of Somasca devoted
themselves to the relief and education of the poor. To the Theatine order a
still higher interest belongs. Its great object was the same with that of our
early Methodists, namely, to supply the deficiencies of the parochial clergy.
The Church of Rome, wiser than the Church of England, gave every
countenance to the good work. The members of the new brotherhood
preached to great multitudes in the streets and in the fields, prayed by the
beds of the sick, and administered the last sacraments to the dying.
Foremost among them in zeal and devotion was Gian Pietro Caraffa,
afterwards Pope Paul the Fourth. In the convent of the Theatines at Venice,
under the eye of Caraffa, a Spanish gentleman took up his abode, tended the
poor in the hospitals, went about in rags, starved himself almost to death,
and often sallied into the streets, mounted on stones, and, waving his hat to
invite the passers-by, began to preach in a strange jargon of mingled
Castilian and Tuscan. The Theatines were among the most zealous and rigid
of men; but to this enthusiastic neophyte their discipline seemed lax, and
their movements sluggish; for his own mind, naturally passionate and
imaginative, had passed through a training which had given to all its
peculiarities a morbid intensity and energy. In his early life he had been the
very prototype of the hero of Cervantes. The single study of the young
Hidalgo had been chivalrous romance; and his existence had been one
gorgeous day-dream of princesses rescued and infidels subdued. He had
chosen a Dulcinea, "no countess, no duchess,"—these are his own words,
—"but one of far higher station;" and he flattered himself with the hope of
laying at her feet the keys of Moorish castles and the jewelled turbans of
Asiatic kings. In the midst of these visions of martial glory and prosperous
love, a severe wound stretched him on a bed of sickness. His constitution
was shattered and he was doomed to be a cripple for life. The palm of
strength, grace, and skill in knightly exercises was no longer for him. He
could no longer hope to strike down gigantic soldans, or to find favor in the
sight of beautiful women. A new vision then arose in his mind, and mingled
itself with his old delusions in a manner which to most Englishmen must
seem singular, but which those who know how close was the union between
religion and chivalry in Spain will be at no loss to understand. He would

still be a soldier, he would still be a knight errant; but the soldier and knight
errant of the spouse of Christ. He would smite the Great Red Dragon. He
would be the champion of the Woman clothed with the Sun. He would
break the charm under which false prophets held the souls of men in
bondage. His restless spirit led him to the Syrian deserts, and to the chapel
of the Holy Sepulchre. Thence he wandered back to the farthest West, and
astonished the convents of Spain and the schools of France by his penances
and vigils. The same lively imagination which had been employed in
picturing the tumult of unreal battles, and the charms of unreal queens, now
peopled his solitude with saints and angels. The Holy Virgin descended to
commune with him. He saw the Saviour face to face with the eye of flesh.
Even those mysteries of religion which are the hardest trial of faith were in
his case palpable to sight. It is difficult to relate without a pitying smile that,
in the sacrifice of the mass, he saw transubstantiation take place, and that,
as he stood praying on the steps of the Church of St. Dominic, he saw the
Trinity in Unity, and wept aloud with joy and wonder. Such was the
celebrated Ignatius Loyola, who, in the great Catholic reaction, bore the
same part which Luther bore in the great Protestant movement.
Dissatisfied with the system of the Theatines, the enthusiastic Spaniard
turned his face towards Rome. Poor, obscure, without a patron, without
recommendations, he entered the city where now two princely temples, rich
with painting and many-colored marble, commemorate his great services to
the Church; where his form stands sculptured in massive silver; where his
bones, enshrined amidst jewels, are placed beneath the altar of God. His
activity and zeal bore down all opposition; and under his rule the Order of
Jesuits began to exist, and grew rapidly to the full measure of his gigantic
powers. With what vehemence, with what policy, with what exact
discipline, with what dauntless courage, with what self-denial, with what
forgetfulness of the dearest private ties, with what intense and stubborn
devotion to a single end, with what unscrupulous laxity and versatility in
the choice of means, the Jesuits fought the battle of their Church, is written
in every page of the annals of Europe during several generations. In the
Order of Jesus was concentrated the quintessence of the Catholic spirit; and
the history of the Order of Jesus is the history of the great Catholic reaction.
That order possessed itself at once of all the strongholds which command
the public mind, of the pulpit, of the press, of the confessional, of the

academies. Wherever the Jesuit preached, the church was too small for the
audience. The name of Jesuit on a title-page secured the circulation of a
book. It was in the ears of the Jesuit that the powerful, the noble, and the
beautiful, breathed the secret history of their lives. It was at the feet of the
Jesuit that the youth of the higher and middle classes were brought up from
childhood to manhood, from the first rudiments to the courses of rhetoric
and philosophy. Literature and science, lately associated with infidelity or
with heresy, now became the allies of orthodoxy. Dominant in the south of
Europe, the great order soon went forth conquering and to conquer. In spite
of oceans and deserts, of hunger and pestilence, of spies and penal laws, of
dungeons and racks, of gibbets and quartering blocks, Jesuits were to be
found under every disguise, and in every country; scholars, physicians,
merchants, serving-men; in the hostile court of Sweden, in the old manor
houses of Cheshire, among the hovels of Connaught; arguing, instructing,
consoling, stealing away the hearts of the young, animating the courage of
the timid, holding up the crucifix before the eyes of the dying. Nor was it
less their office to plot against the thrones and lives of apostate kings, to
spread evil rumors, to raise tumults, to inflame civil wars, to arm the hand
of the assassin. Inflexible in nothing but in their fidelity to the Church, they
were equally ready to appeal in her cause to the spirit of loyalty and to the
spirit of freedom. Extreme doctrines of obedience and extreme doctrines of
liberty, the right of rulers to misgovern the people, the right of every one of
the people to plunge his knife in the heart of a bad ruler, were inculcated by
the same man, according as he addressed himself to the subject of Philip or
to the subject of Elizabeth. Some described these divines as the most rigid,
others as the most indulgent of spiritual directors; and both descriptions
were correct. The truly devout listened with awe to the high and saintly
morality of the Jesuit. The gay cavalier who had run his rival through the
body, the frail beauty who had forgotten her marriage-vow, found in the
Jesuit an easy, well-bred man of the world, who knew how to make
allowance for the little irregularities of people of fashion. The confessor
was strict or lax, according to the temper of the penitent. The first object
was to drive no person out of the pale of the Church. Since there were bad
people, it was better that they should be bad Catholics than bad Protestants.
If a person was so unfortunate as to be a bravo, a libertine, or a gambler,
that was no reason for making him a heretic too.

The Old World was not wide enough for this strange activity. The Jesuits
invaded all the countries which the great maritime discoveries of the
preceding age had laid open to European enterprise. They were to be found
in the depths of the Peruvian mines, at the marts of the African slave-
caravans, on the shores of the Spice Islands, in the observatories of China.
They made converts in regions which neither avarice nor curiosity had
tempted any of their countrymen to enter; and preached and disputed in
tongues of which no other native of the West understood a word.
The spirit which appeared so eminently in this order animated the whole
Catholic world. The Court of Rome itself was purified. During the
generation which preceded the Reformation, that court had been a scandal
to the Christian name. Its annals are black with treason, murder, and incest.
Even its more respectable members were utterly unfit to be ministers of
religion. They were men like Leo the Tenth; men who, with the Latinity of
the Augustan age, had acquired its atheistical and scoffing spirit. They
regarded those Christian mysteries, of which they were stewards, just as the
Augur Cicero and the High Pontiff Cæsar regarded the Sibylline books and
the pecking of the sacred chickens. Among themselves, they spoke of the
Incarnation, the Eucharist, and the Trinity, in the same tone in which Cotta
and Velleius talked of the oracle of Delphi or of the voice of Faunus in the
mountains. Their years glided by in a soft dream of sensual and intellectual
voluptuousness. Choice cookery, delicious wines, lovely women, hounds,
falcons, horses, newly discovered manuscripts of the classics, sonnets and
burlesque romances in the sweetest Tuscan, just as licentious as a fine sense
of the graceful would permit, plate from the hand of Benvenuto, designs for
palaces by Michael Angelo, frescoes by Raphael, busts, mosaics, and gems
just dug up from among the ruins of ancient temples and villas, these things
were the delight and even the serious business of their lives. Letters and the
fine arts undoubtedly owe much to this not inelegant sloth. But when the
great stirring of the mind of Europe began, when doctrine after doctrine was
assailed, when nation after nation withdrew from communion with the
successor of St. Peter, it was felt that the Church could not be safely
confided to chiefs whose highest praise was that they were good judges of
Latin compositions, of paintings, and of statues, whose severest studies had
a Pagan character, and who were suspected of laughing in secret at the
sacraments which they administered, and of believing no more of the

Gospel than of the Morgante Maggiore. Men of a very different class now
rose to the direction of ecclesiastical affairs, men whose spirit resembled
that of Dunstan and of Becket. The Roman Pontiffs exhibited in their own
persons all the austerity of the early anchorites of Syria. Paul the Fourth
brought to the papal throne the same fervent zeal which had carried him
into the Theatine convent. Pius the Fifth, under his gorgeous vestments,
wore day and night the hair shirt of a simple friar, walked barefoot in the
streets at the head of processions, found, even in the midst of his most
pressing avocations, time for private prayer, often regretted that the public
duties of his station were unfavorable to growth in holiness, and edified his
flock by innumerable instances of humility, charity, and forgiveness of
personal injuries, while, at the same time, he upheld the authority of his see,
and the unadulterated doctrines of his Church, with all the stubbornness and
vehemence of Hildebrand. Gregory the Thirteenth exerted himself not only
to imitate but to surpass Pius in the severe virtues of his sacred profession.
As was the head, such were the members. The change in the spirit of the
Catholic world may be traced in every walk of literature and of art. It will
be at once perceived by every person who compares the poem of Tasso with
that of Ariosto, or the monuments of Sixtus the Fifth with those of Leo the
Tenth.
But it was not on moral influence alone that the Catholic Church relied. The
civil sword in Spain and Italy was unsparingly employed in her support.
The Inquisition was armed with new powers and inspired with a new
energy. If Protestantism, or the semblance of Protestantism, showed itself in
any quarter, it was instantly met, not by petty, teasing persecution, but by
persecution of that sort which bows down and crushes all but a very few
select spirits. Whoever was suspected of heresy, whatever his rank, his
learning, or his reputation, knew that he must purge himself to the
satisfaction of a severe and vigilant tribunal, or die by fire. Heretical books
were sought out and destroyed with similar rigor. Works which were once in
every house were so effectually suppressed that no copy of them is now to
be found in the most extensive libraries. One book in particular, entitled Of
the Benefits of the Death of Christ, had this fate. It was written in Tuscan,
was many times reprinted, and was eagerly read in every part of Italy. But
the inquisitors detected in it the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith

alone. They proscribed it; and it is now as hopelessly lost as the second
decade of Livy.
Thus, while the Protestant reformation proceeded rapidly at one extremity
of Europe, the Catholic revival went on as rapidly at the other. About half a
century after the great separation, there were throughout the North
Protestant governments and Protestant nations. In the South were
governments and nations actuated by the most intense zeal for the ancient
church. Between these two hostile regions lay, morally as well as
geographically, a great debatable land. In France, Belgium, Southern
Germany, Hungary, and Poland, the contest was still undecided. The
governments of those countries had not renounced their connection with
Rome; but the Protestants were numerous, powerful, bold, and active. In
France, they formed a commonwealth within the realm, held fortresses,
were able to bring great armies into the field, and had treated with their
sovereign on terms of equality. In Poland, the King was still a Catholic; but
the Protestants had the upper hand in the Diet, filled the chief offices in the
administration, and, in the large towns, took possession of the parish
churches. "It appeared," says the papal nuncio, "that in Poland,
Protestantism would completely supersede Catholicism." In Bavaria, the
state of things was nearly the same. The Protestants had a majority in the
Assembly of the States, and demanded from the duke concessions in favor
of their religion, as the price of their subsidies. In Transylvania, the House
of Austria was unable to prevent the Diet from confiscating, by one
sweeping decree, the estates of the Church. In Austria proper it was
generally said that only one thirtieth part of the population could be counted
on as good Catholics. In Belgium the adherents of the new opinions were
reckoned by hundreds of thousands.
The history of the two succeeding generations is the history of the struggle
between Protestantism possessed of the North of Europe, and Catholicism
possessed of the South, for the doubtful territory which lay between. All the
weapons of carnal and of spiritual warfare were employed. Both sides may
boast of great talents and of great virtues. Both have to blush for many
follies and crimes. At first, the chances seemed to be decidedly in favor of
Protestantism; but the victory remained with the Church of Rome. On every
point she was successful. If we overleap another half century, we find her
victorious and dominant in France, Belgium, Bavaria, Bohemia, Austria,

Poland, and Hungary. Nor has Protestantism, in the course of two hundred
years, been able to reconquer any portion of what was then lost.
It is, moreover, not to be dissembled that this triumph of the Papacy is to be
chiefly attributed, not to the force of arms, but to a great reflux in public
opinion. During the first half century after the commencement of the
Reformation, the current of feeling, in the countries on this side of the Alps
and of the Pyrenees, ran impetuously towards the new doctrines. Then the
tide turned, and rushed as fiercely in the opposite direction. Neither during
the one period, nor during the other, did much depend upon the event of
battles or sieges. The Protestant movement was hardly checked for an
instant by the defeat at Muhlberg. The Catholic reaction went on at full
speed in spite of the destruction of the Armada. It is difficult to say whether
the violence of the first blow or of the recoil was the greater. Fifty years
after the Lutheran separation, Catholicism could scarcely maintain itself on
the shores of the Mediterranean. A hundred years after the separation,
Protestantism could scarcely maintain itself on the shores of the Baltic. The
causes of this memorable turn in human affairs well deserve to be
investigated.
The contest between the two parties bore some resemblance to the fencing-
match in Shakespeare: "Laertes wounds Hamlet; then, in scuffling, they
change rapiers, and Hamlet wounds Laertes." The war between Luther and
Leo was a war between firm faith and unbelief, between zeal and apathy,
between energy and indolence, between seriousness and frivolity, between a
pure morality and vice. Very different was the war which degenerate
Protestantism had to wage against regenerate Catholicism. To the
debauchees, the poisoners, the atheists, who had worn the tiara during the
generation which preceded the Reformation, had succeeded Popes who, in
religious fervor and severe sanctity of manners, might bear a comparison
with Cyprian or Ambrose. The Order of Jesuits alone could show many men
not inferior in sincerity, constancy, courage, and austerity of life, to the
Apostles of the Reformation. But, while danger had thus called forth in the
bosom of the Church of Rome many of the highest qualities of the
Reformers, the Reformers had contracted some of the corruptions which
had been justly censured in the Church of Rome. They had become
lukewarm and worldly. Their great old leaders had been borne to the grave,
and had left no successors. Among the Protestant princes there was little or

no hearty Protestant feeling. Elizabeth herself was a Protestant rather from
policy than from firm conviction. James the First, in order to effect his
favorite object of marrying his son into one of the great Continental houses,
was ready to make immense concessions to Rome, and even to admit a
modified primacy in the Pope. Henry the Fourth twice abjured the reformed
doctrines from interested motives. The Elector of Saxony, the natural head
of the Protestant party in Germany, submitted to become, at the most
important crisis of the struggle, a tool in the hands of the Papists. Among
the Catholic sovereigns, on the other hand, we find a religious zeal often
amounting to fanaticism. Philip the Second was a Papist in a very different
sense from that in which Elizabeth was a Protestant. Maximilian of Bavaria,
brought up under the teaching of the Jesuits, was a fervent missionary
wielding the powers of a prince. The Emperor Ferdinand the Second
deliberately put his throne to hazard over and over again, rather than make
the smallest concession to the spirit of religious innovation. Sigismund of
Sweden lost a crown which he might have preserved if he would have
renounced the Catholic faith. In short, everywhere on the Protestant side we
see languor; everywhere on the Catholic side we see ardor and devotion.
Not only was there, at this time, a much more intense zeal among the
Catholics than among the Protestants; but the whole zeal of the Catholics
was directed against the Protestants, while almost the whole zeal of the
Protestants was directed against each other. Within the Catholic Church
there were no serious disputes on points of doctrine. The decisions of the
Council of Trent were received; and the Jansenian controversy had not yet
arisen. The whole force of Rome was, therefore, effective for the purpose of
carrying on the war against the Reformation. On the other hand, the force
which ought to have fought the battle of the Reformation was exhausted in
civil conflict. While Jesuit preachers, Jesuit confessors, Jesuit teachers of
youth, overspread Europe, eager to expend every faculty of their minds and
every drop of their blood in the cause of their Church, Protestant doctors
were confuting, and Protestant rulers were punishing, sectaries who were
just as good Protestants as themselves:—

"Cumque superba foret Babylon spolianda tropæis,
Bella geri placuit nullos habitura triumphos."

In the Palatinate, a Calvinistic prince persecuted the Lutherans. In Saxony, a
Lutheran prince persecuted the Calvinists. Everybody who objected to any
of the articles of the Confession of Augsburg was banished from Sweden. In
Scotland, Melville was disputing with other Protestants on questions of
ecclesiastical government. In England, the jails were filled with men who,
though zealous for the Reformation, did not exactly agree with the Court on
all points of discipline and doctrine. Some were persecuted for denying the
tenet of reprobation; some for not wearing surplices. The Irish people might
at that time have been, in all probability, reclaimed from Popery, at the
expense of half the zeal and activity which Whitgift employed in oppressing
Puritans, and Martin Marprelate in reviling bishops.
As the Catholics in zeal and in union had a great advantage over the
Protestants, so had they also an infinitely superior organization. In truth
Protestantism, for aggressive purposes, had no organization at all. The
Reformed Churches were mere national Churches. The Church of England
existed for England alone. It was an institution as purely local as the Court
of Common Pleas, and was utterly without any machinery for foreign
operations. The Church of Scotland, in the same manner, existed for
Scotland alone. The operations of the Catholic Church, on the other hand,
took in the whole world. Nobody at Lambeth or at Edinburgh troubled
himself about what was doing in Poland or Bavaria. But Cracow and
Munich were at Rome objects of as much interest as the purlieus of St. John
Lateran. Our island, the head of the Protestant interest, did not send out a
single missionary or a single instructor of youth to the scene of the great
spiritual war. Not a single seminary was established here for the purpose of
furnishing a supply of such persons to foreign countries. On the other hand,
Germany, Hungary, and Poland were filled with able and active Catholic
emissaries of Spanish or Italian birth; and colleges for the instruction of the
northern youth were founded at Rome. The spiritual force of Protestantism
was a mere local militia, which might be useful in case of an invasion, but
could not be sent abroad, and could therefore make no conquests. Rome had
such a local militia; but she had also a force disposable at a moment's notice
for foreign service, however dangerous or disagreeable. If it was thought at
headquarters that a Jesuit at Palermo was qualified by his talents and
character to withstand the Reformers in Lithuania, the order was instantly

given and instantly obeyed. In a month, the faithful servant of the Church
was preaching, catechising, confessing, beyond the Niemen.
It is impossible to deny that the polity of the Church of Rome is the very
masterpiece of human wisdom. In truth, nothing but such a polity could,
against such assaults, have borne up such doctrines. The experience of
twelve hundred eventful years, the ingenuity and patient care of forty
generations of statesmen, have improved that polity to such perfection that,
among the contrivances which have been devised for deceiving and
oppressing mankind, it occupies the highest place. The stronger our
conviction that reason and Scripture were decidedly on the side of
Protestantism, the greater is the reluctant admiration with which we regard
that system of tactics against which reason and Scripture were employed in
vain.
If we went at large into this most interesting subject we should fill volumes.
We will, therefore, at present, advert to only one important part of the
policy of the Church of Rome. She thoroughly understands, what no other
church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts. In some sects,
particularly in infant sects, enthusiasm is suffered to be rampant. In other
sects, particularly in sects long established and richly endowed, it is
regarded with aversion. The Catholic Church neither submits to enthusiasm
nor proscribes it, but uses it. She considers it as a great moving force which
in itself, like the muscular powers of a fine horse, is neither good nor evil,
but which may be so directed as to produce great good or great evil; and she
assumes the direction to herself. It would be absurd to run down a horse like
a wolf. It would be still more absurd to let him run wild, breaking fences
and trampling down passengers. The rational course is to subjugate his will
without impairing his vigor, to teach him to obey the rein, and then to urge
him to full speed. When once he knows his master, he is valuable in
proportion to his strength and spirit. Just such has been the system of the
Church of Rome with regard to enthusiasts. She knows that, when religious
feelings have obtained the complete empire of the mind, they impart a
strange energy, that they raise men above the dominion of pain and
pleasure, that obloquy becomes glory, that death itself is contemplated only
as the beginning of a higher and happier life. She knows that a person in
this state is no object of contempt. He may be vulgar, ignorant, visionary,
extravagant; but he will do and suffer things which it is for her interest that

somebody should do and suffer, yet from which calm and sober-minded
men would shrink. She accordingly enlists him in her service, assigns to
him some forlorn hope, in which intrepidity and impetuosity are more
wanted than judgment and self-command, and sends him forth with her
benedictions and her applause.
In England it not unfrequently happens that a tinker or coal heaver hears a
sermon or falls in with a tract which alarms him about the state of his soul.
If he be a man of excitable nerves and strong imagination, he thinks himself
given over to the Evil Power. He doubts whether he has not committed the
unpardonable sin. He imputes every wild fancy that springs up in his mind
to the whisper of a fiend. His sleep is broken by dreams of the great
judgment-seat, the open books, and the unquenchable fire. If, in order to
escape from these vexing thoughts, he flies to amusement or to licentious
indulgence, the delusive relief only makes his misery darker and more
hopeless. At length a turn takes place. He is reconciled to his offended
Maker. To borrow the fine imagery of one who had himself been thus tried,
he emerges from the Valley of the Shadow of Death, from the dark land of
gins and snares, of quagmires and precipices, of evil spirits and ravenous
beasts. The sunshine is on his path. He ascends the Delectable Mountains,
and catches from their summit a distant view of the shining city which is
the end of his pilgrimage. Then arises in his mind a natural and surely not a
censurable desire, to impart to others the thoughts of which his own heart is
full, to warn the careless, to comfort those who are troubled in spirit. The
impulse which urges him to devote his whole life to the teaching of religion
is a strong passion in the guise of a duty. He exhorts his neighbors; and, if
he be a man of strong parts, he often does so with great effect. He pleads as
if he were pleading for his life, with tears, and pathetic gestures, and
burning words; and he soon finds with delight, not perhaps wholly unmixed
with the alloy of human infirmity, that his rude eloquence rouses and melts
hearers who sleep very composedly while the rector preaches on the
apostolical succession. Zeal for God, love for his fellow creatures, pleasure
in the exercise of his newly discovered powers, impel him to become a
preacher. He has no quarrel with the establishment, no objection to its
formularies, its government, or its vestments. He would gladly be admitted
among its humblest ministers. But, admitted or rejected, he feels that his
vocation is determined. His orders have come down to him, not through a

long and doubtful series of Arian and popish bishops, but direct from on
high. His commission is the same that on the Mountain of Ascension was
given to the Eleven. Nor will he, for lack of human credentials, spare to
deliver the glorious message with which he is charged by the true Head of
the Church. For a man thus minded, there is within the pale of the
establishment no place. He has been at no college; he cannot construe a
Greek author or write a Latin theme; and he is told that, if he remains in the
communion of the Church, he must do so as a hearer, and that, if he is
resolved to be a teacher, he must begin by being a schismatic. His choice is
soon made. He harangues on Tower Hill or in Smithfield. A congregation is
formed. A license is obtained. A plain brick building, with a desk and
benches, is run up, and named Ebenezer or Bethel. In a few weeks the
Church has lost forever a hundred families, not one of which entertained the
least scruple about her articles, her liturgy, her government, or her
ceremonies.
Far different is the policy of Rome. The ignorant enthusiast whom the
Anglican Church makes an enemy, and, whatever the polite and learned
may think, a most dangerous enemy, the Catholic Church makes a
champion. She bids him nurse his beard, covers him with a gown and hood
of coarse dark stuff, ties a rope round his waist, and sends him forth to teach
in her name. He costs her nothing. He takes not a ducat away from the
revenues of her beneficed clergy. He lives by the alms of those who respect
his spiritual character, and are grateful for his instructions. He preaches, not
exactly in the style of Massillon, but in a way which moves the passions of
uneducated hearers; and all his influence is employed to strengthen the
Church of which he is a minister. To that Church he becomes as strongly
attached as any of the cardinals whose scarlet carriages and liveries crowd
the entrance of the palace on the Quirinal. In this way the Church of Rome
unites in herself all the strength of establishment, and all the strength of
dissent. With the utmost pomp of a dominant hierarchy above, she has all
the energy of the voluntary system below. It would be easy to mention very
recent instances in which the hearts of hundreds of thousands, estranged
from her by the selfishness, sloth, and cowardice of the beneficed clergy,
have been brought back by the zeal of the begging friars.
Even for female agency there is a place in her system. To devout women
she assigns spiritual functions, dignities, and magistracies. In our country, if

a noble lady is moved by more than ordinary zeal for the propagation of
religion, the chance is that, though she may disapprove of no doctrine or
ceremony of the Established Church, she will end by giving her name to a
new schism. If a pious and benevolent woman enters the cells of a prison to
pray with the most unhappy and degraded of her own sex, she does so
without any authority from the Church. No line of action is traced out for
her, and it is well if the Ordinary does not complain of her intrusion, and if
the Bishop does not shake his head at such irregular benevolence. At Rome,
the Countess of Huntingdon would have a place in the calendar as St.
Selina, and Mrs. Fry would be foundress and first Superior of the Blessed
Order of Sisters of the Jails.
Place Ignatius Loyola at Oxford. He is certain to become the head of a
formidable secession. Place John Wesley at Rome. He is certain to be the
first General of a new society devoted to the interests and honor of the
Church. Place St. Theresa in London. Her restless enthusiasm ferments into
madness, not untinctured with craft. She becomes the prophetess, the
mother of the faithful, holds disputations with the devil, issues sealed
pardons to her adorers, and lies in of the Shiloh. Place Joanna Southcote at
Rome. She founds an order of barefooted Carmelites, every one of whom is
ready to suffer martyrdom for the Church: a solemn service is consecrated
to her memory; and her statue, placed over the holy water, strikes the eye of
every stranger who enters St. Peter's.
We have dwelt long on this subject, because we believe that, of the many
causes to which the Church of Rome owed her safety and her triumph at the
close of the sixteenth century, the chief was the profound policy with which
she used the fanaticism of such persons as St. Ignatius and St. Theresa.
The Protestant party was now indeed vanquished and humbled. In France,
so strong had been the Catholic reaction that Henry the Fourth found it
necessary to choose between his religion and his crown. In spite of his clear
hereditary right, in spite of his eminent personal qualities, he saw that,
unless he reconciled himself to the Church of Rome, he could not count on
the fidelity even of those gallant gentlemen whose impetuous valor had
turned the tide of battle at Ivry. In Belgium, Poland, and Southern Germany,
Catholicism had obtained complete ascendency. The resistance of Bohemia
was put down. The Palatinate was conquered. Upper and Lower Saxony

were overflowed by Catholic invaders. The King of Denmark stood forth as
the Protector of the Reformed Churches: he was defeated, driven out of the
empire, and attacked in his own possessions. The armies of the House of
Austria pressed on, subjugated Pomerania, and were stopped in their
progress only by the ramparts of Stralsund.
And now again the tide turned. Two violent outbreaks of religious feeling in
opposite directions had given a character to the history of a whole century.
Protestantism had at first driven back Catholicism to the Alps and the
Pyrenees. Catholicism had rallied, and had driven back Protestantism even
to the German Ocean. Then the great southern reaction began to slacken, as
the great northern movement had slackened before. The zeal of the
Catholics waxed cool. Their union was dissolved. The paroxysm of
religious excitement was over on both sides. One party had degenerated as
far from the spirit of Loyola as the other from the spirit of Luther. During
three generations religion had been the mainspring of politics. The
revolutions and civil wars of France, Scotland, Holland, Sweden, the long
struggle between Philip and Elizabeth, the bloody competition for the
Bohemian crown, had all originated in theological disputes. But a great
change now took place. The contest which was raging in Germany lost its
religious character. It was now, on one side, less a contest for the spiritual
ascendency of the Church of Rome than for the temporal ascendency of the
House of Austria. On the other side, it was less a contest for the reformed
doctrines than for national independence. Governments began to form
themselves into new combinations, in which community of political interest
was far more regarded than community of religious belief. Even at Rome
the progress of the Catholic arms was observed with mixed feelings. The
Supreme Pontiff was a sovereign prince of the second rank, and was
anxious about the balance of power as well as about the propagation of
truth. It was known that he dreaded the rise of a universal monarchy even
more than he desired the prosperity of the Universal Church. At length a
great event announced to the world that the war of sects had ceased, and
that the war of states had succeeded. A coalition, including Calvinists,
Lutherans, and Catholics, was formed against the House of Austria. At the
head of that coalition were the first statesman and the first warrior of the
age; the former a prince of the Catholic Church, distinguished by the vigor
and success with which he had put down the Huguenots; the latter a

Protestant king who owed his throne to a revolution caused by hatred of
Popery. The alliance of Richelieu and Gustavus marks the time at which the
great religious struggle terminated. The war which followed was a war for
the equilibrium of Europe. When, at length, the peace of Westphalia was
concluded, it appeared that the Church of Rome remained in full possession
of a vast dominion which in the middle of the preceding century she seemed
to be on the point of losing. No part of Europe remained Protestant, except
that part which had become thoroughly Protestant before the generation
which heard Luther preach had passed away.
Since that time there has been no religious war between Catholics and
Protestants as such. In the time of Cromwell, Protestant England was united
with Catholic France, then governed by a priest, against Catholic Spain.
William the Third, the eminently Protestant hero, was at the head of a
coalition which included many Catholic powers, and which was secretly
favored even by Rome, against the Catholic Lewis. In the time of Anne,
Protestant England and Protestant Holland joined with Catholic Savoy and
Catholic Portugal, for the purpose of transferring the crown of Spain from
one bigoted Catholic to another.
The geographical frontier between the two religions has continued to run
almost precisely where it ran at the close of the Thirty Years' War; nor has
Protestantism given any proofs of that "expansive power" which has been
ascribed to it. But the Protestant boasts, and boasts most justly, that wealth,
civilization, and intelligence have increased far more on the northern than
on the southern side of the boundary, and that countries so little favored by
nature as Scotland and Prussia are now among the most flourishing and best
governed portions of the world, while the marble palaces of Genoa are
deserted, while banditti infest the beautiful shores of Campania, while the
fertile seacoast of the Pontifical State is abandoned to buffaloes and wild
boars. It cannot be doubted that, since the sixteenth century, the Protestant
nations have made decidedly greater progress than their neighbors. The
progress made by those nations in which Protestantism, though not finally
successful, yet maintained a long struggle, and left permanent traces, has
generally been considerable. But when we come to the Catholic Land, to
the part of Europe in which the first spark of reformation was trodden out as
soon as it appeared, and from which proceeded the impulse which drove
Protestantism back, we find, at best, a very slow progress, and on the whole

a retrogression. Compare Denmark and Portugal. When Luther began to
preach, the superiority of the Portuguese was unquestionable. At present,
the superiority of the Danes is no less so. Compare Edinburgh and Florence.
Edinburgh has owed less to climate, to soil, and to the fostering care of
rulers than any capital, Protestant or Catholic. In all these respects, Florence
has been singularly happy. Yet whoever knows what Florence and
Edinburgh were in the generation preceding the Reformation, and what they
are now, will acknowledge that some great cause has, during the last three
centuries, operated to raise one part of the European family, and to depress
the other. Compare the history of England and that of Spain during the last
century. In arms, arts, sciences, letters, commerce, agriculture, the contrast
is most striking. The distinction is not confined to this side of the Atlantic.
The colonies planted by England in America have immeasurably outgrown
in power those planted by Spain. Yet we have no reason to believe that, at
the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Castilian was in any respect
inferior to the Englishman. Our firm belief is, that the North owes its great
civilization and prosperity chiefly to the moral effect of the Protestant
Reformation, and that the decay of the Southern countries of Europe is to be
mainly ascribed to the great Catholic revival.
About a hundred years after the final settlement of the boundary line
between Protestantism and Catholicism, began to appear the signs of the
fourth great peril of the Church of Rome. The storm which was now rising
against her was of a very different kind from those which had preceded it.
Those who had formerly attacked her had questioned only a part of her
doctrines. A school was now growing up which rejected the whole. The
Albigenses, the Lollards, the Lutherans, the Calvinists, had a positive
religious system, and were strongly attached to it. The creed of the new
sectaries was altogether negative. They took one of their premises from the
Protestants, and one from the Catholics. From the latter they borrowed the
principle, that Catholicism was the only pure and genuine Christianity. With
the former, they held that some parts of the Catholic system were contrary
to reason. The conclusion was obvious. Two propositions, each of which
separately is compatible with the most exalted piety, formed, when held in
conjunction, the groundwork of a system of irreligion. The doctrine of
Bossuet, that transubstantiation is affirmed in the Gospel, and the doctrine

of Tillotson, that transubstantiation is an absurdity, when put together,
produced by logical necessity the inferences of Voltaire.
Had the sect which was rising at Paris been a sect of mere scoffers, it is
very improbable that it would have left deep traces of its existence in the
institutions and manners of Europe. Mere negation, mere Epicurean
infidelity, as Lord Bacon most justly observes, has never disturbed the
peace of the world. It furnishes no motive for action. It inspires no
enthusiasm. It has no missionaries, no crusaders, no martyrs. If the Patriarch
of the Holy Philosophical Church had contented himself with making jokes
about Saul's asses and David's wives, and with criticising the poetry of
Ezekiel in the same narrow spirit in which he criticised that of Shakespeare,
Rome would have had little to fear. But it is due to him and to his compeers
to say that the real secret of their strength lay in the truth which was
mingled with their errors, and in the generous enthusiasm which was hidden
under their flippancy. They were men who, with all their faults, moral and
intellectual, sincerely and earnestly desired the improvement of the
condition of the human race, whose blood boiled at the sight of cruelty and
injustice, who made manful war, with every faculty which they possessed,
on what they considered as abuses, and who on many signal occasions
placed themselves gallantly between the powerful and the oppressed. While
they assailed Christianity with a rancor and unfairness disgraceful to men
who called themselves philosophers, they yet had, in far greater measure
than their opponents, that charity towards men of all classes and races
which Christianity enjoins. Religious persecution, judicial torture, arbitrary
imprisonment, the unnecessary multiplication of capital punishments, the
delay and chicanery of tribunals, the exactions of farmers of the revenue,
slavery, the slave trade, were the constant subjects of their lively satire and
eloquent disquisitions. When an innocent man was broken on the wheel at
Toulouse, when a youth, guilty only of an indiscretion, was beheaded at
Abbeville, when a brave officer, borne down by public injustice, was
dragged, with a gag in his mouth, to die on the Place de Grêve, a voice
instantly went forth from the banks of Lake Leman, which made itself heard
from Moscow to Cadiz, and which sentenced the unjust judges to the
contempt and detestation of all Europe. The really efficient weapons with
which the philosophers assailed the evangelical faith were borrowed from
the evangelical morality. The ethical and dogmatical parts of the Gospel

were unhappily turned against each other. On one side was a church
boasting of the purity of a doctrine derived from the Apostles, but disgraced
by the massacre of St. Bartholomew, by the murder of the best of kings, by
the war of Cevennes, by the destruction of Port Royal. On the other side
was a sect laughing at the Scriptures, shooting out the tongue at the
sacraments, but ready to encounter principalities and powers in the cause of
justice, mercy, and toleration.
Irreligion, accidentally associated with philanthropy, triumphed for a time
over religion accidentally associated with political and social abuses.
Everything gave way to the zeal and activity of the new reformers. In
France, every man distinguished in letters was found in their ranks. Every
year gave birth to works in which the fundamental principles of the Church
were attacked with argument, invective, and ridicule. The Church made no
defence, except by acts of power. Censures were pronounced; books were
seized; insults were offered to the remains of infidel writers; but no
Bossuet, no Pascal, came forth to encounter Voltaire. There appeared not a
single defence of the Catholic doctrine which produced any considerable
effect, or which is now even remembered. A bloody and unsparing
persecution, like that which put down the Albigenses, might have put down
the philosophers. But the time for De Montforts and Dominics had gone by.
The punishments which the priests were still able to inflict were sufficient
to irritate, but not sufficient to destroy. The war was between power on one
side and wit on the other; and the power was under far more restraint than
the wit. Orthodoxy soon became a synonym for ignorance and stupidity. It
was as necessary to the character of an accomplished man that he should
despise the religion of his country, as that he should know his letters. The
new doctrines spread rapidly through Christendom. Paris was the capital of
the whole Continent. French was everywhere the language of polite circles.
The literary glory of Italy and Spain had departed. That of Germany had not
dawned. That of England shone, as yet, for the English alone. The teachers
of France were the teachers of Europe. The Parisian opinions spread fast
among the educated classes beyond the Alps; nor could the vigilance of the
Inquisition prevent the contraband importation of the new heresy into
Castile and Portugal. Governments, even arbitrary governments, saw with
pleasure the progress of this philosophy. Numerous reforms, generally
laudable, sometimes hurried on without sufficient regard to time, to place,

and to public feeling, showed the extent of its influence. The rulers of
Prussia, of Russia, of Austria, and of many smaller states, were supposed to
be among the initiated.
The Church of Rome was still, in outward show, as stately and splendid as
ever; but her foundation was undermined. No state had quitted her
communion or confiscated her revenues, but the reverence of the people
was everywhere departing from her.
The first great warning stroke was the fall of that society which, in the
conflict with Protestantism, had saved the Catholic Church from
destruction. The Order of Jesus had never recovered from the injury
received in the struggle with Port Royal. It was now still more rudely
assailed by the philosophers. Its spirit was broken; its reputation was
tainted. Insulted by all the men of genius in Europe, condemned by the civil
magistrate, feebly defended by the chiefs of the hierarchy, it fell: and great
was the fall of it.
The movement went on with increasing speed. The first generation of the
new sect passed away. The doctrines of Voltaire were inherited and
exaggerated by successors who bore to him the same relation which the
Anabaptists bore to Luther, or the Fifth Monarchy men to Pym. At length
the Revolution came. Down went the old Church of France, with all its
pomp and wealth. Some of its priests purchased a maintenance by
separating themselves from Rome, and by becoming the authors of a fresh
schism. Some, rejoicing in the new license, flung away their sacred
vestments, proclaimed that their whole life had been an imposture, insulted
and persecuted the religion of which they had been ministers, and
distinguished themselves, even in the Jacobin Club and the Commune of
Paris, by the excess of their impudence and ferocity. Others, more faithful
to their principles, were butchered by scores without a trial, drowned, shot,
hung on lamp-posts. Thousands fled from their country to take sanctuary
under the shade of hostile altars. The churches were closed; the bells were
silent; the shrines were plundered; the silver crucifixes were melted down.
Buffoons, dressed in copes and surplices, came dancing the carmagnole
even to the bar of the Convention. The bust of Marat was substituted for the
statues of the martyrs of Christianity. A prostitute, seated on a chair of state
in the chancel of Nôtre Dame, received the adoration of thousands, who

exclaimed that at length, for the first time, those ancient Gothic arches had
resounded with the accents of truth. The new unbelief was as intolerant as
the old superstition. To show reverence for religion was to incur the
suspicion of disaffection. It was not without imminent danger that the priest
baptized the infant, joined the hands of lovers, or listened to the confession
of the dying. The absurd worship of the Goddess of Reason was, indeed, of
short duration; but the deism of Robespierre and Lepaux was not less
hostile to the Catholic faith than the atheism of Clootz and Chaumette.
Nor were the calamities of the Church confined to France. The
revolutionary spirit, attacked by all Europe, beat all Europe back, became
conqueror in its turn, and, not satisfied with the Belgian cities and the rich
domains of the spiritual electors, went raging over the Rhine and through
the passes of the Alps. Throughout the whole of the great war against
Protestantism, Italy and Spain had been the base of the Catholic operations.
Spain was now the obsequious vassal of the infidels. Italy was subjugated
by them. To her ancient principalities succeeded the Cisalpine republic, and
the Ligurian republic, and the Parthenopean republic. The shrine of Loretto
was stripped of the treasures piled up by the devotion of six hundred years.
The convents of Rome were pillaged. The tricolored flag floated on the top
of the Castle of St. Angelo. The successor of St. Peter was carried away
captive by the unbelievers. He died a prisoner in their hands; and even the
honors of sepulture were long withheld from his remains.
It is not strange that, in the year 1799, even sagacious observers should
have thought that, at length, the hour of the Church of Rome was come. An
infidel power ascendant, the Pope dying in captivity, the most illustrious
prelates of France living in a foreign country on Protestant alms, the noblest
edifices which the munificence of former ages had consecrated to the
worship of God turned into temples of Victory, or into banqueting-houses
for political societies, or into Theophilanthropic chapels,—such signs might
well be supposed to indicate the approaching end of that long domination.
But the end was not yet. Again doomed to death, the milk-white hind was
still fated not to die. Even before the funeral rites had been performed over
the ashes of Pius the Sixth, a great reaction had commenced, which, after
the lapse of more than forty years, appears to be still in progress. Anarchy
had had its day. A new order of things rose out of the confusion, new

dynasties, new laws, new titles; and amidst them emerged the ancient
religion. The Arabs have a fable that the Great Pyramid was built by
antediluvian kings, and alone, of all the works of men, bore the weight of
the Flood. Such as this was the fate of the Papacy. It had been buried under
the great inundation; but its deep foundations had remained unshaken; and,
when the waters abated, it appeared alone amidst the ruins of a world which
had passed away. The republic of Holland was gone, and the empire of
Germany, and the Great Council of Venice, and the old Helvetian League,
and the House of Bourbon, and the parliaments and aristocracy of France.
Europe was full of young creations, a French empire, a kingdom of Italy, a
Confederation of the Rhine. Nor had the late events affected only territorial
limits and political institutions. The distribution of property, the
composition and spirit of society, had, through great part of Catholic
Europe, undergone a complete change. But the unchangeable Church was
still there.
Some future historian, as able and temperate as Professor Ranke, will, we
hope, trace the progress of the Catholic revival of the nineteenth century.
We feel that we are drawing too near our own time, and that, if we go on,
we shall be in danger of saying much which may be supposed to indicate,
and which will certainly excite, angry feelings. We will, therefore, make
only one more observation, which, in our opinion, is deserving of serious
attention.
During the eighteenth century, the influence of the Church of Rome was
constantly on the decline. Unbelief made extensive conquests in all the
Catholic countries of Europe, and in some countries obtained a complete
ascendency. The Papacy was at length brought so low as to be an object of
derision to infidels, and of pity rather than of hatred to Protestants. During
the nineteenth century, this fallen Church has been gradually rising from her
depressed state and reconquering her old dominion. No person who calmly
reflects on what, within the last few years, has passed in Spain, in Italy, in
South America, in Ireland, in the Netherlands, in Prussia, even in France,
can doubt that the power of this Church over the hearts and minds of men is
now greater far than it was when the Encyclopædia and the Philosophical
Dictionary appeared. It is surely remarkable that neither the moral
revolution of the eighteenth century nor the moral counter-revolution of the
nineteenth should, in any perceptible degree, have added to the domain of

Protestantism. During the former period, whatever was lost to Catholicism
was lost also to Christianity; during the latter, whatever was regained by
Christianity in Catholic countries was regained also by Catholicism. We
should naturally have expected that many minds, on the way from
superstition to infidelity, or on the way back from infidelity to superstition,
would have stopped at an intermediate point. Between the doctrines taught
in the schools of the Jesuits and those which were maintained at the little
supper parties of the Baron Holbach there is a vast interval, in which the
human mind, it should seem, might find for itself some resting-place more
satisfactory than either of the two extremes. And, at the time of the
Reformation, millions found such a resting-place. Whole nations then
renounced Popery without ceasing to believe in a first cause, in a future life,
or in the divine mission of Jesus. In the last century, on the other hand,
when a Catholic renounced his belief in the real presence, it was a thousand
to one that he renounced his belief in the Gospel too; and, when the reaction
took place, with belief in the Gospel came back belief in the real presence.
We by no means venture to deduce from these phenomena any general law;
but we think it a most remarkable fact that no Christian nation which did
not adopt the principles of the Reformation before the end of the sixteenth
century, should ever have adopted them. Catholic communities have, since
that time, become infidel and become Catholic again; but none has become
Protestant.
Here we close this hasty sketch of one of the most important portions of the
history of mankind. Our readers will have great reason to feel obliged to us
if we have interested them sufficiently to induce them to peruse Professor
Ranke's book. We will only caution them against the French translation, a
performance which, in our opinion, is just as discreditable to the moral
character of the person from whom it proceeds as a false affidavit or a
forged bill of exchange would have been, and advise them to study either
the original, or the English version in which the sense and spirit of the
original are admirably preserved.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The Ecclesiastical and Political History of the Popes of Rome, during the
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. By Leopold Ranke, Professor in the
University of Berlin. Translated from the German by Sarah Austin. 3 vols. 8vo.
London: 1840.

LEIGH HUNT'S COMIC DRAMATISTS OF
THE RESTORATION[2]
The Edinburgh Review, January, 1841
We have a kindness for Mr. Leigh Hunt. We form our judgment of him,
indeed, only from events of universal notoriety, from his own works, and
from the works of other writers, who have generally abused him in the most
rancorous manner. But unless we are greatly mistaken, he is a very clever, a
very honest, and a very good-natured man. We can clearly discern, together
with many merits, many faults both in his writings and in his conduct. But
we really think that there is hardly a man living whose merits have been so
grudgingly allowed, and whose faults have been so cruelly expiated.
In some respects Mr. Leigh Hunt is excellently qualified for the task which
he has now undertaken. His style, in spite of its mannerism, nay, partly by
reason of its mannerism, is well suited for light, garrulous, desultory ana,
half critical, half biographical. We do not always agree with his literary
judgments; but we find in him what is very rare in our time, the power of
justly appreciating and heartily enjoying good things of very different
kinds. He can adore Shakespeare and Spenser without denying poetical
genius to the author of Alexander's Feast, or fine observation, rich fancy,
and exquisite humor to him who imagined Will Honeycomb and Sir Roger
de Coverley. He has paid particular attention to the history of the English
drama, from the age of Elizabeth down to our own time, and has every right
to be heard with respect on that subject.
The plays to which he now acts as introducer are, with few exceptions, such
as, in the opinion of many very respectable people, ought not to be
reprinted. In this opinion we can by no means concur. We cannot wish that
any work or class of works which has exercised a great influence on the
human mind, and which illustrates the character of an important epoch in

letters, politics, and morals, should disappear from the world. If we err in
this matter, we err with the gravest men and bodies of men in the empire,
and especially with the Church of England, and with the great schools of
learning which are connected with her. The whole liberal education of our
countrymen is conducted on the principle that no book which is valuable,
either by reason of the excellence of its style, or by reason of the light
which it throws on the history, polity, and manners of nations, should be
withheld from the student on account of its impurity. The Athenian
Comedies, in which there are scarcely a hundred lines together without
some passage of which Rochester would have been ashamed, have been
reprinted at the Pitt Press and the Clarendon Press, under the direction of
syndics and delegates appointed by the Universities, and have been
illustrated with notes by reverend, very reverend, and right reverend
commentators. Every year the most distinguished young men in the
kingdom are examined by bishops and professors of divinity in such works
as the Lysistrata of Aristophanes and the Sixth Satire of Juvenal. There is
certainly something a little ludicrous in the idea, of a conclave of venerable
fathers of the church praising and rewarding a lad on account of his intimate
acquaintance with writings compared with which the loosest tale in Prior is
modest. But, for our own part, we have no doubt that the great societies
which direct the education of the English gentry have herein judged wisely.
It is unquestionable that an extensive acquaintance with ancient literature
enlarges and enriches the mind. It is unquestionable that a man whose mind
has been thus enlarged and enriched is likely to be far more useful to the
state and to the church than one who is unskilled, or little skilled, in
classical learning. On the other hand, we find it difficult to believe that, in a
world so full of temptation as this, any gentleman whose life would have
been virtuous if he had not read Aristophanes and Juvenal will be made
vicious by reading them. A man who, exposed to all the influences of such a
state of society as that in which we live, is yet afraid of exposing himself to
the influences of a few Greek or Latin verses, acts, we think, much like the
felon who begged the sheriffs to let him have an umbrella held over his
head from the door of Newgate to the gallows, because it was a drizzling
morning, and he was apt to take cold.
The virtue which the world wants is a healthful virtue, not a valetudinarian
virtue, a virtue which can expose itself to the risks inseparable from all

spirited exertion, not a virtue which keeps out of the common air for fear of
infection, and eschews the common food as too stimulating. It would be
indeed absurd to attempt to keep men from acquiring those qualifications
which fit them to play their part in life with honor to themselves and
advantage to their country, for the sake of preserving a delicacy which
cannot be preserved, a delicacy which a walk from Westminster to the
Temple is sufficient to destroy.
But we should be justly chargeable with gross inconsistency if, while we
defend the policy which invites the youth of our country to study such
writers as Theocritus and Catullus, we were to set up a cry against a new
edition of the Country Wife or the Way of the World. The immoral English
writers of the seventeenth century are indeed much less excusable than
those of Greece and Rome. But the worst English writings of the
seventeenth century are decent, compared with much that has been
bequeathed to us by Greece and Rome. Plato, we have little doubt, was a
much better man than Sir George Etherege. But Plato has written things at
which Sir George Etherege would have shuddered. Buckhurst and Sedley,
even in those wild orgies at the Cock in Bow Street for which they were
pelted by the rabble and fined by the Court of King's Bench, would never
have dared to hold such discourse as passed between Socrates and Phædrus
on that fine summer day under the plane tree, while the fountain warbled at
their feet, and the cicadas chirped overhead. If it be, as we think it is,
desirable that an English gentleman should be well informed touching the
government and the manners of little commonwealths which both in place
and time are far removed from us, whose independence has been more than
two thousand years extinguished, whose language has not been spoken for
ages, and whose ancient magnificence is attested only by a few broken
columns and friezes, much more must it be desirable that he should be
intimately acquainted with the history of the public mind of his own
country, and with the causes, the nature, and the extent of those revolutions
of opinion and feeling which, during the last two centuries, have alternately
raised and depressed the standard of our national morality. And knowledge
of this sort is to be very sparingly gleaned from parliamentary debates, from
state papers, and from the works of grave historians. It must either not be
acquired at all, or it must be acquired by the perusal of the light literature
which has at various periods been fashionable. We are therefore by no

means disposed to condemn this publication, though we certainly cannot
recommend the handsome volume before us as an appropriate Christmas
present for young ladies.
We have said that we think the present publication perfectly justifiable. But
we can by no means agree with Mr. Leigh Hunt, who seems to hold that
there is little or no ground for the charge of immorality so often brought
against the literature of the Restoration. We do not blame him for not
bringing to the judgment-seat the merciless rigor of Lord Angelo; but we
really think that such flagitious and impudent offenders as those who are
now at the bar deserved at least the gentle rebuke of Escalus. Mr. Leigh
Hunt treats the whole matter a little too much in the easy style of Lucio; and
perhaps his exceeding lenity disposes us to be somewhat too severe.
And yet it is not easy to be too severe. For in truth this part of our literature
is a disgrace to our language and our national character. It is clever, indeed,
and very entertaining; but it is, in the most emphatic sense of the words,
"earthly, sensual, devilish." Its indecency, though perpetually such as is
condemned not less by the rules of good taste than by those of morality, is
not, in our opinion, so disgraceful a fault as its singularly inhuman spirit.
We have here Belial, not as when he inspired Ovid and Ariosto, "graceful
and humane," but with the iron eye and cruel sneer of Mephistopheles. We
find ourselves in a world, in which the ladies are like very profligate,
impudent, and unfeeling men, and in which the men are too bad for any
place but Pandæmonium or Norfolk Island. We are surrounded by foreheads
of bronze, hearts like the nether millstone, and tongues set on fire of hell.
Dryden defended or excused his own offences and those of his
contemporaries by pleading the example of the earlier English dramatists;
and Mr. Leigh Hunt seems to think that there is force in the plea. We
altogether differ from this opinion. The crime charged is not mere
coarseness of expression. The terms which are delicate in one age become
gross in the next. The diction of the English version of the Pentateuch is
sometimes such as Addison would not have ventured to imitate; and
Addison, the standard of moral purity in his own age, used many phrases
which are now proscribed. Whether a thing shall be designated by a plain
noun substantive or by a circumlocution is mere matter of fashion. Morality
is not at all interested in the question. But morality is deeply interested in

this, that what is immoral shall not be presented to the imagination of the
young and susceptible in constant connection with what is attractive. For
every person who has observed the operation of the law of association in his
own mind and in the minds of others knows that whatever is constantly
presented to the imagination in connection with what is attractive will itself
become attractive. There is undoubtedly a great deal of indelicate writing in
Fletcher and Massinger, and more than might be wished even in Ben Jonson
and Shakespeare, who are comparatively pure. But it is impossible to trace
in their plays any systematic attempt to associate vice with those things
which men value most and desire most, and virtue with everything
ridiculous and degrading. And such a systematic attempt we find in the
whole dramatic literature of the generation which followed the return of
Charles the Second. We will take as an instance of what we mean, a single
subject of the highest importance to the happiness of mankind, conjugal
fidelity. We can at present hardly call to mind a single English play, written
before the Civil War, in which the character of a seducer of married women
is represented in a favorable light. We remember many plays in which such
persons are baffled, exposed, covered with derision, and insulted by
triumphant husbands. Such is the fate of Falstaff, with all his wit and
knowledge of the world. Such is the fate of Brisac in Fletcher's Elder
Brother, and of Ricardo and Ubaldo in Massinger's Picture. Sometimes, as
in the Fatal Dowry and Love's Cruelty, the outraged honor of families is
repaired by a bloody revenge. If now and then the lover is represented as an
accomplished man, and the husband as a person of weak or odious
character, this only makes the triumph of female virtue the more signal, as
in Jonson's Celia and Mrs. Fitzdottrel, and in Fletcher's Maria. In general
we will venture to say that the dramatists of the age of Elizabeth and James
the First either treat the breach of the marriage vow as a serious crime, or, if
they treat it as matter for laughter, turn the laugh against the gallant.
On the contrary, during the forty years which followed the Restoration, the
whole body of the dramatists invariably represent adultery, we do not say as
a peccadillo, we do not say as an error which the violence of passion may
excuse, but as the calling of a fine gentleman, as a grace without which his
character would be imperfect. It is as essential to his breeding and to his
place in society that he should make love to the wives of his neighbors as
that he should know French, or that he should have a sword at his side. In

all this there is no passion, and scarcely anything that can be called
preference. The hero intrigues just as he wears a wig; because, if he did not,
he would be a queer fellow, a city prig, perhaps a Puritan. All the agreeable
qualities are always given to the gallant. All the contempt and aversion are
the portion of the unfortunate husband. Take Dryden for example; and
compare Woodall with Brainsick, or Lorenzo with Gomez. Take Wycherley;
and compare Horner with Pinchwife. Take Vanbrugh; and compare
Constant with Sir John Brute. Take Farquhar; and compare Archer with
Squire Sullen. Take Congreve; and compare Bellmour with Fondlewife,
Careless with Sir Paul Plyant, or Scandal with Foresight. In all these cases,
and in many more which might be named, the dramatist evidently does his
best to make the person who commits the injury graceful, sensible, and
spirited, and the person who suffers it a fool, or a tyrant, or both.
Mr. Charles Lamb, indeed, attempted to set up a defence for this way of
writing. The dramatists of the latter part of the seventeenth century are not,
according to him, to be tried by the standard of morality which exists, and
ought to exist, in real life. Their world is a conventional world. Their heroes
and heroines belong, not to England, not to Christendom, but to an Utopia
of gallantry, to a Fairyland, where the Bible and Burn's Justice are
unknown, where a prank which on this earth would be rewarded with the
pillory is merely matter for a peal of elvish laughter. A real Horner, a real
Careless, would, it is admitted, be exceedingly bad men. But to predicate
morality or immorality of the Horner of Wycherley and the Careless of
Congreve is as absurd as it would be to arraign a sleeper for his dreams.
"They belong to the regions of pure comedy, where no cold moral reigns.
When we are among them we are among a chaotic people. We are not to
judge them by our usages. No reverend institutions are insulted by their
proceedings, for they have none among them. No peace of families is
violated, for no family ties exist among them. There is neither right nor
wrong, gratitude or its opposite, claim or duty, paternity or sonship."
This is, we believe, a fair summary of Mr. Lamb's doctrine. We are sure that
we do not wish to represent him unfairly. For we admire his genius; we love
the kind nature which appears in all his writings; and we cherish his
memory as much as if we had known him personally. But we must plainly
say that his argument, though ingenious, is altogether sophistical.

Of course we perfectly understand that it is possible for a writer to create a
conventional world in which things forbidden by the Decalogue and the
Statute Book shall be lawful, and yet that the exhibition may be harmless,
or even edifying. For example, we suppose, that the most austere critics
would not accuse Fénelon of impiety and immorality on account of his
Telemachus and his Dialogues of the Dead. In Telemachus and the
Dialogues of the Dead we have a false religion, and consequently a morality
which is in some points incorrect. We have a right and a wrong differing
from the right and the wrong of real life. It is represented as the first duty of
men to pay honor to Jove and Minerva. Philocles, who employs his leisure
in making graven images of these deities, is extolled for his piety in a way
which contrasts singularly with the expressions of Isaiah on the same
subject. The dead are judged by Minos, and rewarded with lasting
happiness for actions which Fénelon would have been the first to pronounce
splendid sins. The same may be said of Mr. Southey's Mahommedan and
Hindoo heroes and heroines. In Thalaba, to speak in derogation of the
Arabian impostor is blasphemy; to drink wine is a crime; to perform
ablutions and to pay honor to the holy cities are works of merit. In the
Curse of Kehama, Kailyal is commended for her devotion to the statue of
Mariataly, the goddess of the poor. But certainly no person will accuse Mr.
Southey of having promoted or intended to promote either Islamism or
Brahminism.
It is easy to see why the conventional worlds of Fénelon and Mr. Southey
are unobjectionable. In the first place, they are utterly unlike the real world
in which we live. The state of society, the laws even of the physical world,
are so different from those with which we are familiar, that we cannot be
shocked at finding the morality also very different. But in truth the morality
of these conventional worlds differs from the morality of the real world
only in points where there is no danger that the real world will ever go
wrong. The generosity and docility of Telemachus, the fortitude, the
modesty, the filial tenderness of Kailyal, are virtues of all ages and nations.
And there was very little danger that the Dauphin would worship Minerva,
or that an English damsel would dance, with a bucket on her head, before
the statue of Mariataly.
The case is widely different with what Mr. Charles Lamb calls the
conventional world of Wycherley and Congreve. Here the garb, the

manners, the topics of conversation, are those of the real town and of the
passing day. The hero is in all superficial accomplishments exactly the fine
gentleman whom every youth in the pit would gladly resemble. The heroine
is the fine lady whom every youth in the pit would gladly marry. The scene
is laid in some place which is as well known to the audience as their own
houses, in St. James's Park, or Hyde Park, or Westminster Hall. The lawyer
bustles about with his bag, between the Common Pleas and the Exchequer.
The Peer calls for his carriage to go to the House of Lords on a private bill.
A hundred little touches are employed to make the fictitious world appear
like the actual world. And the immorality is of a sort which never can be out
of date, and which all the force of religion, law, and public opinion united
can but imperfectly restrain.
In the name of art, as well as in the name of virtue, we protest against the
principle that the world of pure comedy is one into which no moral enters.
If comedy be an imitation, under whatever conventions, of real life, how is
it possible that it can have no reference to the great rule which directs life,
and to feelings which are called forth by every incident of life? If what Mr.
Charles Lamb says were correct, the inference would be that these
dramatists did not in the least understand the very first principles of their
craft. Pure landscape-painting into which no light or shade enters, pure
portrait-painting into which no expression enters, are phrases less at
variance with sound criticism than pure comedy into which no moral enters.
But it is not the fact that the world of these dramatists is a world into which
no moral enters. Morality constantly enters into that world, a sound
morality and an unsound morality: the sound morality to be insulted,
derided, associated with everything mean and hateful; the unsound morality
to be set off to every advantage, and inculcated by all methods, direct and
indirect. It is not the fact that none of the inhabitants of this conventional
world feel reverence for sacred institutions and family ties. Fondlewife,
Pinchwife, every person in short of narrow understanding and disgusting
manners, expresses that reverence strongly. The heroes and heroines, too,
have a moral code of their own, an exceedingly bad one, but not, as Mr.
Charles Lamb seems to think, a code existing only in the imagination of
dramatists. It is, on the contrary, a code actually received and obeyed by
great numbers of people. We need not go to Utopia or Fairyland to find
them. They are near at hand. Every night some of them cheat at the hells in

the Quadrant, and others pace the Piazza in Covent Garden. Without flying
to Nephelococcygia or to the Court of Queen Mab, we can meet with
sharpers, bullies, hardhearted impudent debauchees, and women worthy of
such paramours. The morality of the Country Wife and the Old Bachelor is
the morality, not, as Mr. Charles Lamb maintains, of an unreal world, but of
a world which is a great deal too real. It is the morality, not of a chaotic
people, but of low town-rakes, and of those ladies whom the newspapers
call "dashing Cyprians." And the question is simply this, whether a man of
genius who constantly and systematically endeavors to make this sort of
character attractive, by uniting it with beauty, grace, dignity, spirit, a high
social position, popularity, literature, wit, taste, knowledge of the world,
brilliant success in every undertaking, does or does not make an ill use of
his powers. We own that we are unable to understand how this question can
be answered in any way but one.
It must, indeed, be acknowledged, in justice to the writers of whom we have
spoken thus severely, that they were, to a great extent, the creatures of their
age. And if it be asked why that age encouraged immorality which no other
age would have tolerated, we have no hesitation in answering that this great
depravation of the national taste was the effect of the prevalence of
Puritanism under the Commonwealth.
To punish public outrages on morals and religion is unquestionably within
the competence of rulers. But when a government, not content with
requiring decency, requires sanctity, it oversteps the bounds which mark its
proper functions. And it may be laid down as a universal rule that a
government which attempts more than it ought will reform less. A lawgiver
who, in order to protect distressed borrowers, limits the rate of interest,
either makes it impossible for the objects of his care to borrow at all, or
places them at the mercy of the worst class of usurers. A lawgiver who,
from tenderness for laboring men, fixes the hours of their work and the
amount of their wages, is certain to make them far more wretched than he
found them. And so a government which, not content with repressing
scandalous excesses, demands from its subjects fervent and austere piety,
will soon discover that, while attempting to render an impossible service to
the cause of virtue, it has in truth only promoted vice.

For what are the means by which a government can effect its ends? Two
only, reward and punishment; powerful means, indeed, for influencing the
exterior act, but altogether impotent for the purpose of touching the heart. A
public functionary who is told that he will be promoted if he is a devout
Catholic, and turned out of his place if he is not, will probably go to mass
every morning, exclude meat from his table on Fridays, shrive himself
regularly, and perhaps let his superiors know that he wears a hair shirt next
his skin. Under a Puritan government, a person who is apprised that piety is
essential to thriving in the world will be strict in the observance of the
Sunday, or, as he will call it, Sabbath, and will avoid a theatre as if it were
plague-stricken. Such a show of religion as this the hope of gain and the
fear of loss will produce, at a week's notice, in any abundance which a
government may require. But under this show, sensuality, ambition, avarice,
and hatred retain unimpaired power, and the seeming convert has only
added to the vices of a man of the world all the still darker vices which are
engendered by the constant practice of dissimulation. The truth cannot be
long concealed. The public discovers that the grave persons who are
proposed to it as patterns are more utterly destitute of moral principle and of
moral sensibility than avowed libertines. It sees that these Pharisees are
farther removed from real goodness than publicans and harlots. And, as
usual, it rushes to the extreme opposite to that which it quits. It considers a
high religious profession as a sure mark of meanness and depravity. On the
very first day on which the restraint of fear is taken away, and on which
men can venture to say what they think, a frightful peal of blasphemy and
ribaldry proclaims that the short-sighted policy which aimed at making a
nation of saints has made a nation of scoffers.
It was thus in France about the beginning of the eighteenth century. Louis
the Fourteenth in his old age became religious: he determined that his
subjects should be religious, too: he shrugged his shoulders and knitted his
brows if he observed at his levee or near his dinner-table any gentleman
who neglected the duties enjoined by the Church, and rewarded piety with
blue ribbons, invitations to Marli, governments, pensions, and regiments.
Forthwith Versailles became, in everything but dress, a convent. The pulpits
and confessionals were surrounded by swords and embroidery. The
Marshals of France were much in prayer; and there was hardly one among
the Dukes and Peers who did not carry good little books in his pocket, fast

during Lent, and communicate at Easter. Madame de Maintenon, who had a
great share in the blessed work, boasted that devotion had become quite the
fashion. A fashion indeed it was; and like a fashion it passed away. No
sooner had the old king been carried to St. Denis than the whole court
unmasked. Every man hastened to indemnify himself, by the excess of
licentiousness and impudence, for years of mortification. The same persons
who, a few months before, with meek voices and demure looks, had
consulted divines about the state of their souls now surrounded the midnight
table, where, amidst the bounding of champagne corks, a drunken prince,
enthroned between Dubois and Madame de Parabère, hiccoughed out
atheistical arguments and obscene jests. The early part of the reign of Louis
the Fourteenth had been a time of license; but the most dissolute men of
that generation would have blushed at the orgies of the Regency.
It was the same with our fathers in the time of the Great Civil War. We are
by no means unmindful of the great debt which mankind owes to the
Puritans of that time, the deliverers of England, the founders of the
American commonwealths. But in the day of their power, those men
committed one great fault, which left deep and lasting traces in the national
character and manners. They mistook the end and overrated the force of
government. They determined, not merely to protect religion and public
morals from insult,—an object for which the civil sword, in discreet hands,
may be beneficially employed,—but to make the people committed to their
rule truly devout. Yet, if they had only reflected on events which they had
themselves witnessed and in which they had themselves borne a great part,
they would have seen what was likely to be the result of their enterprise.
They had lived under a government which, during a long course of years,
did all that could be done, by lavish bounty and by rigorous punishment, to
enforce conformity to the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England.
No person suspected of hostility to that church had the smallest chance of
obtaining favor at the court of Charles. Avowed dissent was punished by
imprisonment, by ignominious exposure, by cruel mutilations, and by
ruinous fines. And the event had been that the Church had fallen, and had,
in its fall, dragged down with it a monarchy which had stood six hundred
years. The Puritan might have learned, if from nothing else, yet from his
own recent victory, that governments which attempt things beyond their

reach are likely not merely to fail, but to produce an effect directly the
opposite of that which they contemplate as desirable.
All this was overlooked. The saints were to inherit the earth. The theatres
were closed. The fine arts were placed under absurd restraints. Vices which
had never before been even misdemeanors were made capital felonies. It
was solemnly resolved by Parliament "that no person shall be employed but
such as the House shall be satisfied of his real godliness." The pious
assembly had a Bible lying on the table for reference. If they had consulted
it they might have learned that the wheat and the tares grow together
inseparably, and must either be spared together or rooted up together. To
know whether a man was really godly was impossible. But it was easy to
know whether he had a plain dress, lank hair, no starch in his linen, no gay
furniture in his house; whether he talked through his nose, and showed the
whites of his eyes; whether he named his children Assurance, Tribulation,
and Maher-shalal-hash-baz; whether he avoided Spring Garden when in
town, and abstained from hunting and hawking when in the country;
whether he expounded hard scriptures to his troop of dragoons, and talked
in a committee of ways and means about seeking the Lord. These were tests
which could easily be applied. The misfortune was that they were tests
which proved nothing. Such as they were, they were employed by the
dominant party. And the consequence was that a crowd of impostors, in
every walk of life, began to mimic and to caricature what were then
regarded as the outward signs of sanctity. The nation was not duped. The
restraints of that gloomy time were such as would have been impatiently
borne, if imposed by men who were universally believed to be saints. Those
restraints became altogether insupportable when they were known to be
kept up for the profit of hypocrites. It is quite certain that, even if the royal
family had never returned, even if Richard Cromwell or Henry Cromwell
had been at the head of the administration, there would have been a great
relaxation of manners. Before the Restoration many signs indicated that a
period of license was at hand. The Restoration crushed for a time the
Puritan party, and placed supreme power in the hands of a libertine. The
political counter-revolution assisted the moral counter-revolution, and was
in turn assisted by it. A period of wild and desperate dissoluteness followed.
Even in remote manor-houses and hamlets the change was in some degree
felt; but in London the outbreak of debauchery was appalling; and in

London the places most deeply infected were the Palace, the quarters
inhabited by the aristocracy, and the Inns of Court. It was on the support of
these parts of the town that the playhouses depended. The character of the
drama became conformed to the character of its patrons. The comic poet
was the mouthpiece of the most deeply corrupted part of a corrupted
society. And in the plays before us we find, distilled and condensed, the
essential spirit of the fashionable world during the anti-Puritan reaction.
The Puritan had affected formality; the comic poet laughed at decorum. The
Puritan had frowned at innocent diversions; the comic poet took under his
patronage the most flagitious excesses. The Puritan had canted; the comic
poet blasphemed. The Puritan had made an affair of gallantry felony
without benefit of clergy; the comic poet represented it as an honorable
distinction. The Puritan spoke with disdain of the low standard of popular
morality; his life was regulated by a far more rigid code; his virtue was
sustained by motives unknown to men of the world. Unhappily it had been
amply proved in many cases, and might well be suspected in many more,
that these high pretensions were unfounded. Accordingly, the fashionable
circles, and the comic poets who were the spokesmen of those circles, took
up the notion that all professions of piety and integrity were to be construed
by the rule of contrary; that it might well be doubted whether there was
such a thing as virtue in the world; but that, at all events, a person who
affected to be better than his neighbors was sure to be a knave.
In the old drama there had been much that was reprehensible. But whoever
compares even the least decorous plays of Fletcher with those contained in
the volume before us will see how much the profligacy which follows a
period of overstrained austerity goes beyond the profligacy which precedes
such a period. The nation resembled the demoniac in the New Testament.
The Puritans boasted that the unclean spirit was cast out. The house was
empty, swept, and garnished; and for a time the expelled tenant wandered
through dry places seeking rest and finding none. But the force of the
exorcism was spent. The fiend returned to his abode; and returned not
alone. He took to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself. They
entered in, and dwelt together: and the second possession was worse than
the first.

We will now, as far as our limits will permit, pass in review the writers to
whom Mr. Leigh Hunt has introduced us. Of the four, Wycherley stands, we
think, last in literary merit, but first in order of time, and first, beyond all
doubt, in immorality.
William Wycherley was born in 1640. He was the son of a Shropshire
gentleman of old family, and of what was then accounted a good estate. The
property was estimated at six hundred a year, a fortune which, among the
fortunes at that time, probably ranked as a fortune of two thousand a year
would rank in our days.
William was an infant when the Civil War broke out: and while he was still
in his rudiments, a Presbyterian hierarchy and a republican government
were established on the ruins of the ancient church and throne. Old Mr.
Wycherley was attached to the royal cause, and was not disposed to entrust
the education of his heir to the solemn Puritans who now ruled the
universities and public schools. Accordingly the young gentleman was sent
at fifteen to France. He resided some time in the neighborhood of the Duke
of Montausier, chief of one of the noblest families of Touraine. The Duke's
wife, a daughter of the house of Rambouillet, was a finished specimen of
those talents and accomplishments for which her race was celebrated. The
young foreigner was introduced to the splendid circle which surrounded the
duchess, and there he appears to have learned some good and some evil. In
a few years he returned to his country a fine gentleman and a Papist. His
conversion, it may safely be affirmed, was the effect, not of any strong
impression on his understanding or feelings, but partly of intercourse with
an agreeable society in which the Church of Rome was the fashion, and
partly of that aversion to Calvinistic austerities which was then almost
universal among young Englishmen of parts and spirit, and which, at one
time, seemed likely to make one half of them Catholics and the other half
Atheists.
But the Restoration came. The universities were again in loyal hands; and
there was reason to hope that there would be again a national church fit for
a gentleman. Wycherley became a member of Queen's College, Oxford, and
abjured the errors of the Church of Rome. The somewhat equivocal glory of
turning, for a short time, a good-for-nothing Papist into a good-for-nothing
Protestant is ascribed to Bishop Barlow.

Wycherley left Oxford without taking a degree, and entered at the Temple,
where he lived gayly for some years, observing the humors of the town,
enjoying its pleasures, and picking up just as much law as was necessary to
make the character of a pettifogging attorney or of a litigious client
entertaining in a comedy.
From an early age he had been in the habit of amusing himself by writing.
Some wretched lines of his on the Restoration are still extant. Had he
devoted himself to the making of verses, he would have been nearly as far
below Tate and Blackmore as Tate and Blackmore are below Dryden. His
only chance for renown would have been that he might have occupied a
niche in a satire, between Flecknoe and Settle. There was, however, another
kind of composition in which his talents and acquirements qualified him to
succeed; and to that he judiciously betook himself.
In his old age he used to say that he wrote Love in a Wood at nineteen, the
Gentleman Dancing-Master at twenty-one, the Plain Dealer at twenty-five,
and the Country Wife at one or two and thirty. We are incredulous, we own,
as to the truth of this story. Nothing that we know of Wycherley leads us to
think him incapable of sacrificing truth to vanity. And his memory in the
decline of his life played him such strange tricks that we might question the
correctness of his assertion without throwing any imputation on his
veracity. It is certain that none of his plays was acted till 1672, when he
gave Love in a Wood to the public. It seems improbable that he should
resolve on so important an occasion as that of a first appearance before the
world, to run his chance with a feeble piece, written before his talents were
ripe, before his style was formed, before he had looked abroad into the
world; and this when he had actually in his desk two highly finished plays,
the fruit of his matured powers. When we look minutely at the pieces
themselves, we find in every part of them reason to suspect the accuracy of
Wycherley's statement. In the first scene of Love in a Wood, to go no
further, we find many passages which he could not have written when he
was nineteen. There is an allusion to gentlemen's periwigs, which first came
into fashion in 1663; an allusion to guineas, which were first struck in 1663;
an allusion to the vests which Charles ordered to be worn at court in 1666;
an allusion to the fire of 1666; and several political allusions which must be
assigned to times later than the year of the Restoration, to times when the
government and the city were opposed to each other, and when the

Presbyterian ministers had been driven from the parish churches to the
conventicles. But it is needless to dwell on particular expressions. The
whole air and spirit of the piece belong to a period subsequent to that
mentioned by Wycherley. As to the Plain Dealer, which is said to have been
written when he was twenty-five, it contains one scene unquestionably
written after 1675, several which are later than 1668, and scarcely a line
which can have been composed before the end of 1666.
Whatever may have been the age at which Wycherley composed his plays,
it is certain that he did not bring them before the public till he was upwards
of thirty. In 1672 Love in a Wood was acted with more success than it
deserved, and this event produced a great change in the fortunes of the
author. The Duchess of Cleveland cast her eyes upon him, and was pleased
with his appearance. This abandoned woman, not content with her
complaisant husband and her royal keeper, lavished her fondness on a
crowd of paramours of all ranks, from dukes to rope-dancers. In the time of
the Commonwealth she commenced her career of gallantry, and terminated
it under Anne, by marrying, when a great-grandmother, that worthless fop,
Beau Fielding. It is not strange that she should have regarded Wycherley
with favor. His figure was commanding, his countenance strikingly
handsome, his look and deportment full of grace and dignity. He had, as
Pope said long after, "the true nobleman look," the look which seems to
indicate superiority, and a not unbecoming consciousness of superiority. His
hair indeed, as he says in one of his poems, was prematurely gray. But in
that age of periwigs this misfortune was of little importance. The Duchess
admired him, and proceeded to make love to him, after the fashion of the
coarse-minded and shameless circle to which she belonged. In the Ring,
when the crowd of beauties and fine gentlemen was thickest, she put her
head out of her coach-window, and bawled to him, "Sir, you are a rascal;
you are a villain;" and, if she is not belied, she added another phrase of
abuse which we will not quote, but of which we may say that it might most
justly have been applied to her own children. Wycherley called on her
Grace the next day, and with great humility begged to know in what way he
had been so unfortunate as to disoblige her. Thus began an intimacy from
which the poet probably expected wealth and honors. Nor were such
expectations unreasonable. A handsome young fellow about the court,
known by the name of Jack Churchill, was, about the same time, so lucky as

to become the object of a short-lived fancy of the Duchess. She had
presented him with five thousand pounds, the price, in all probability, of
some title or pardon. The prudent youth had lent the money on high interest
and on landed security; and this-judicious investment was the beginning of
the most splendid private fortune in Europe. Wycherley was not so lucky.
The partiality with which the great lady regarded him was indeed the talk of
the whole town; and sixty years later old men who remembered those days
told Voltaire that she often stole from the court to her lover's chambers in
the Temple, disguised like a country girl, with a straw hat on her head,
pattens on her feet, and a basket in her hand. The poet was indeed too happy
and proud to be discreet. He dedicated to the Duchess the play which had
led to their acquaintance, and in the dedication expressed himself in terms
which could not but confirm the reports which had gone abroad. But at
Whitehall such an affair was regarded in no serious light. The lady was not
afraid to bring Wycherley to court, and to introduce him to a splendid
society with which, as far as appears, he had never before mixed. The easy
king, who allowed to his mistresses the same liberty which he claimed for
himself, was pleased with the conversation and manners of his new rival.
So high did Wycherley stand in the royal favor that once, when he was
confined by a fever to his lodgings in Bow Street, Charles, who, with all his
faults, was certainly a man of social and affable disposition, called on him,
sat by his bed, advised him to try change of air, and gave him a handsome
sum of money to defray the expense of a journey. Buckingham, then Master
of the Horse, and one of that infamous ministry known by the name of the
Cabal, had been one of the Duchess's innumerable paramours. He at first
showed some symptoms of jealousy; but he soon, after his fashion, veered
round from anger to fondness, and gave Wycherley a commission in his
own regiment and a place in the royal household.
It would be unjust to Wycherley's memory not to mention here the only
good action, as far as we know, of his whole life. He is said to have made
great exertions to obtain the patronage of Buckingham for the illustrious
author of Hudibras, who was now sinking into an obscure grave, neglected
by a nation proud of his genius, and by a court which he had served too
well. His Grace consented to see poor Butler; and an appointment was
made. But unhappily two pretty women passed by; the volatile Duke ran
after them; the opportunity was lost, and could never be regained.

The second Dutch war, the most disgraceful war in the whole history of
England, was now raging. It was not in that age considered as by any means
necessary that a naval officer should receive a professional education.
Young men of rank, who were hardly able to keep their feet in a breeze,
served on board of the King's ships, sometimes with commissions, and
sometimes as volunteers. Mulgrave, Dorset, Rochester, and many others,
left the playhouses and the Mall for hammocks and salt pork, and, ignorant
as they were of the rudiments of naval service, showed, at least, on the day
of battle, the courage which is seldom wanting in an English gentleman. All
good judges of maritime affairs complained that, under this system, the
ships were grossly mismanaged, and that the tarpaulins contracted the vices,
without acquiring the graces, of the court. But on this subject, as on every
other where the interests or whims of favorites were concerned, the
government of Charles was deaf to all remonstrances. Wycherley did not
choose to be out of the fashion. He embarked, was present at a battle, and
celebrated it, on his return, in a copy of verses too bad for the bellman.[3]
About the same time, he brought on the stage his second piece, the
Gentleman Dancing-Master. The biographers say nothing, as far as we
remember, about the fate of this play. There is, however, reason to believe
that, though certainly far superior to Love in a Wood, it was not equally
successful. It was first tried at the west end of the town, and, as the poet
confessed, "would scarce do there." It was then performed in Salisbury
Court, but, as it should seem, with no better event. For, in the prologue to
the Country Wife, Wycherley described himself as "the late so baffled
scribbler."
In 1675 the Country Wife was performed with brilliant success, which, in a
literary point of view, was not wholly unmerited. For, though one of the
most profligate and heartless of human compositions, it is the elaborate
production of a mind, not indeed rich, original, or imaginative, but
ingenious, observant, quick to seize hints, and patient of the toil of
polishing.
The Plain Dealer, equally immoral and equally well written, appeared in
1677. At first this piece pleased the people less than the critics; but after a
time its unquestionable merits and the zealous support of Lord Dorset,

whose influence in literary and fashionable society was unbounded,
established it in the public favor.
The fortune of Wycherley was now in the zenith, and began to decline. A
long life was still before him. But it was destined to be filled with nothing
but shame and wretchedness, domestic dissensions, literary failures, and
pecuniary embarrassments.
The King, who was looking about for an accomplished man to conduct the
education of his natural son, the young Duke of Richmond, at length fixed
on Wycherley. The poet, exulting in his good luck, went down to amuse
himself at Tunbridge Wells, looked into a bookseller's shop on the Pantiles,
and, to his great delight, heard a handsome woman ask for the Plain Dealer,
which had just been published. He made acquaintance with the lady, who
proved to be the Countess of Drogheda, a gay young widow, with an ample
jointure. She was charmed with his person and his wit, and, after a short
flirtation, agreed to become his wife. Wycherley seems to have been
apprehensive that this connection might not suit well with the King's plans
respecting the Duke of Richmond. He accordingly prevailed on the lady to
consent to a private marriage. All came out. Charles thought the conduct of
Wycherley both disrespectful and disingenuous. Other causes probably
assisted to alienate the sovereign from the subject who had lately been so
highly favored. Buckingham was now in opposition, and had been
committed to the Tower; not, as Mr. Leigh Hunt supposes, on a charge of
treason, but by an order of the House of Lords for some expressions which
he had used in debate. Wycherley wrote some bad lines in praise of his
imprisoned patron, which, if they came to the knowledge of the King,
would certainly have made His Majesty very angry. The favor of the court
was completely withdrawn from the poet. An amiable woman with a large
fortune might indeed have been an ample compensation for the loss. But
Lady Drogheda was ill-tempered, imperious, and extravagantly jealous. She
had herself been a maid of honor at Whitehall. She well knew in what
estimation conjugal fidelity was held among the fine gentlemen there, and
watched her town husband as assiduously as Mr. Pinchwife watched his
country wife. The unfortunate wit was, indeed, allowed to meet his friends
at a tavern opposite to his own house. But on such occasions the windows
were always open, in order that her Ladyship, who was posted on the other
side of the street, might be satisfied that no woman was of the party.

The death of Lady Drogheda released the poet from this distress; but a
series of disasters, in rapid succession, broke down his health, his spirits,
and his fortune. His wife meant to leave him a good property, and left him
only a lawsuit. His father could not or would not assist him. Wycherley was
at length thrown into the Fleet, and languished there during seven years,
utterly forgotten, as it should seem, by the gay and lively circle of which he
had been a distinguished ornament. In the extremity of his distress he
implored the publisher who had been enriched by the sale of his works to
lend him twenty pounds, and was refused. His comedies, however, still kept
possession of the stage, and drew great audiences which troubled
themselves little about the situation of the author. At length James the
Second, who had now succeeded to the throne, happened to go to the
theatre on an evening when the Plain Dealer was acted. He was pleased by
the performance, and touched by the fate of the writer, whom he probably
remembered as one of the gayest and handsomest of his brother's courtiers.
The King determined to pay Wycherley's debts, and to settle on the
unfortunate poet a pension of two hundred pounds a year. This munificence
on the part of a prince who was little in the habit of rewarding literary
merit, and whose whole soul was devoted to the interests of his church,
raises in us a surmise which Mr. Leigh Hunt will, we fear, pronounce very
uncharitable. We cannot help suspecting that it was at this time that
Wycherley returned to the communion of the Church of Rome. That he did
return to the communion of the Church of Rome is certain. The date of his
reconversion, as far as we know, has never been mentioned by any
biographer. We believe that, if we place it at this time, we do no injustice to
the character either of Wycherley or James.
Not long after, old Mr. Wycherley died; and his son, now past the middle of
life, came to the family estate. Still, however, he was not at his ease. His
embarrassments were great; his property was strictly tied up; and he was on
very bad terms with the heir-at-law. He appears to have led, during a long
course of years, that most wretched life, the life of a vicious old boy about
town. Expensive tastes with little money, and licentious appetites with
declining vigor, were the just penance for his early irregularities. A severe
illness had produced a singular effect on his intellect. His memory played
him pranks stranger than almost any that are to be found in the history of
that strange faculty. It seemed to be at once preternaturally strong and

preternaturally weak. If a book was read to him before he went to bed, he
would wake the next morning with his mind full of the thoughts and
expressions which he had heard overnight; and he would write them down,
without in the least suspecting that they were not his own. In his verses the
same ideas, and even the same words, came over and over again several
times in a short composition. His fine person bore the marks of age,
sickness, and sorrow; and he mourned for his departed beauty with an
effeminate regret. He could not look without a sigh at the portrait which
Lely had painted of him when he was only twenty-eight, and often
murmured, Quantum mutatus ab illo. He was still nervously anxious about
his literary reputation, and not content with the fame which he still
possessed as a dramatist, was determined to be renowned as a satirist and an
amatory poet. In 1704, after twenty-seven years of silence, he again
appeared as an author. He put forth a large folio of miscellaneous verses,
which, we believe, has never been reprinted. Some of these pieces had
probably circulated through the town in manuscript. For, before the volume
appeared, the critics at the coffee-houses very confidently predicted that it
would be utterly worthless, and were in consequence bitterly reviled by the
poet in an ill-written, foolish, and egotistical preface. The book amply
vindicated the most unfavorable prophecies that had been hazarded. The
style and versification are beneath criticism; the morals are those of
Rochester. For Rochester, indeed, there was some excuse. When his
offences against decorum were committed, he was a very young man,
misled by a prevailing fashion. Wycherley was sixty-four. He had long
outlived the times when libertinism was regarded as essential to the
character of a wit and a gentleman. Most of the rising poets, Addison, for
example, John Philips, and Rowe, were studious of decency. We can hardly
conceive anything more miserable than the figure which the ribald old man
makes in the midst of so many sober and well-conducted youths.
In the very year in which this bulky volume of obscene doggerel was
published, Wycherley formed an acquaintance of a very singular kind. A
little, pale, crooked, sickly, bright-eyed urchin, just turned of sixteen, had
written some copies of verses in which discerning judges could detect the
promise of future eminence. There was, indeed, as yet nothing very striking
or original in the conceptions of the young poet. But he was already skilled
in the art of metrical composition. His diction and his music were not those

of the great old masters; but that which his ablest contemporaries were
laboring to do he already did best. His style was not richly poetical; but it
was always neat, compact, and pointed. His verse wanted variety of pause,
of swell, and of cadence, but never grated harshly on the ear, or
disappointed it by a feeble close. The youth was already free of the
company of wits, and was greatly elated at being introduced to the author of
the Plain Dealer and the Country Wife.
It is curious to trace the history of the intercourse which took place between
Wycherley and Pope, between the representative of the age that was going
out and the representative of the age that was coming in, between the friend
of Rochester and Buckingham and the friend of Lyttelton and Mansfield. At
first the boy was enchanted by the kindness and condescension of so
eminent a writer, haunted his door, and followed him about like a spaniel
from coffee-house to coffee-house. Letters full of affection, humility, and
fulsome flattery were interchanged between the friends. But the first ardor
of affection could not last. Pope, though at no time scrupulously delicate in
his writings or fastidious as to the morals of his associates, was shocked by
the indecency of a rake who, at seventy, was still the representative of the
monstrous profligacy of the Restoration. As the youth grew older, as his
mind expanded and his fame rose, he appreciated both himself and
Wycherley more correctly. He felt a just contempt for the old gentleman's
verses, and was at no great pains to conceal his opinion. Wycherley, on the
other hand, though blinded by self-love to the imperfections of what he
called his poetry, could not but see that there was an immense difference
between his young companion's rhymes and his own. He was divided
between two feelings. He wished to have the assistance of so skilful a hand
to polish his lines; and yet he shrank from the humiliation of being
beholden for literary assistance to a lad who might have been his grandson.
Pope was willing to give assistance, but was by no means disposed to give
assistance and flattery too. He took the trouble to retouch whole reams of
feeble stumbling verses, and inserted many vigorous lines which the least
skilful reader will distinguish in an instant. But he thought that by these
services he acquired a right to express himself in terms which would not,
under ordinary circumstances, become one who was addressing a man of
four times his age. In one letter, he tells Wycherley that "the worst pieces
are such as, to render them very good, would require almost the entire new

writing of them." In another, he gives the following account of his
corrections: "Though the whole be as short again as at first, there is not one
thought omitted but what is a repetition of something in your first volume,
or in this very paper; and the versification throughout is, I believe, such as
nobody can be shocked at. The repeated permission you give me of dealing
freely with you will, I hope, excuse what I have done; for, if I have not
spared you when I thought severity would do you a kindness, I have not
mangled you where I thought there was no absolute need of amputation."
Wycherley continued to return thanks for all this hacking and hewing,
which was, indeed, of inestimable service to his compositions. But at last
his thanks began to sound very like reproaches. In private, he is said to have
described Pope as a person who could not cut out a suit, but who had some
skill in turning old coats. In his letters to Pope, while he acknowledged that
the versification of the poems had been greatly improved, he spoke of the
whole art of versification with scorn, and sneered at those who preferred
sound to sense. Pope revenged himself for this outbreak of spleen by return
of post. He had in his hands a volume of Wycherley's rhymes, and he wrote
to say that this volume was so full of faults that he could not correct it
without completely defacing the manuscript. "I am," he said, "equally afraid
of sparing you, and of offending you by too impudent a correction." This
was more than flesh and blood could bear. Wycherley reclaimed his papers,
in a letter in which resentment shows itself plainly through the thin disguise
of civility. Pope, glad to be rid of a troublesome and inglorious task, sent
back the deposit, and, by way of a parting courtesy, advised the old man to
turn his poetry into prose, and assured him that the public would like his
thoughts much better without his versification. Thus ended this memorable
correspondence.
Wycherley lived some years after the termination of the strange friendship
which we have described. The last scene of his life was, perhaps, the most
scandalous. Ten days before his death, at seventy-five, he married a young
girl merely in order to injure his nephew, an act which proves that neither
years, nor adversity, nor what he called his philosophy, nor either of the
religions which he had at different times professed, had taught him the
rudiments of morality. He died in December, 1715, and lies in the vault
under the church of St. Paul in Covent Garden.

His bride soon after married a Captain Shrimpton, who thus became
possessed of a large collection of manuscripts. These were sold to a
bookseller. They were so full of erasures and interlineations that no printer
could decipher them. It was necessary to call in the aid of a professed critic;
and Theobald, the editor of Shakespeare, and the hero of the first Dunciad,
was employed to ascertain the true reading. In this way a volume of
miscellanies in verse and prose was got up for the market. The collection
derives all its value from the traces of Pope's hand, which are everywhere
discernible.
Of the moral character of Wycherley it can hardly be necessary for us to say
more. His fame as a writer rests wholly on his comedies, and chiefly on the
last two. Even as a comic writer, he was neither of the best school, nor
highest in his school. He was in truth a worse Congreve. His chief merit,
like Congreve's, lies in the style of his dialogue. But the wit which lights up
the Plain Dealer and the Country Wife is pale and flickering, when
compared with the gorgeous blaze which dazzles us almost to blindness in
Love for Love and the Way of the World. Like Congreve, and, indeed, even
more than Congreve, Wycherley is ready to sacrifice dramatic propriety to
the liveliness of his dialogue. The poet speaks out of the mouths of all his
dunces and coxcombs, and makes them describe themselves with a good
sense and acuteness which puts them on a level with the wits and heroes.
We will give two instances, the first which occur to us, from the Country
Wife. There are in the world fools who find the society of old friends
insipid, and who are always running after new companions. Such a
character is a fair subject for comedy. But nothing can be more absurd than
to introduce a man of this sort saying to his comrade, "I can deny you
nothing: for though I have known thee a great while, never go if I do not
love thee as well as a new acquaintance." That town wits, again, have
always been rather a heartless class, is true. But none of them, we will
answer for it, ever said to a young lady to whom he was making love, "We
wits rail and make love often, but to show our parts: as we have no
affections, so we have no malice."
Wycherley's plays are said to have been the produce of long and patient
labor. The epithet of "slow" was early given to him by Rochester, and was
frequently repeated. In truth his mind, unless we are greatly mistaken, was
naturally a very meagre soil, and was forced only by great labor and outlay

to bear fruit which, after all, was not of the highest flavor. He has scarcely
more claim to originality than Terence. It is not too much to say that there is
hardly anything of the least value in his plays of which the hint is not to be
found elsewhere. The best scenes in the Gentleman Dancing-Master were
suggested by Calderon's Maestro de Danzar, not by any means one of the
happiest comedies of the great Castilian poet. The Country Wife is
borrowed from the École des Maris and the École des Femmes. The
groundwork of the Plain Dealer is taken from the Misanthrope of Molière.
One whole scene is almost translated from the Critique de l'École des
Femmes. Fidelia is Shakespeare's Viola stolen, and marred in the stealing;
and the Widow Blackacre, beyond comparison Wycherley's best comic
character, is the Countess in Racine's Plaideurs, talking the jargon of
English instead of that of French chicane.
The only thing original about Wycherley, the only thing which he could
furnish from his own mind in inexhaustible abundance, was profligacy. It is
curious to observe how everything that he touched, however pure and
noble, took in an instant the color of his own mind. Compare the École des
Femmes with the Country Wife. Agnes is a simple and amiable girl, whose
heart is indeed full of love, but of love sanctioned by honor, morality, and
religion. Her natural talents are great. They have been hidden, and, as it
might appear, destroyed by an education elaborately bad. But they are
called forth into full energy by a virtuous passion. Her lover, while he
adores her beauty, is too honest a man to abuse the confiding tenderness of
a creature so charming and inexperienced. Wycherley takes this plot into his
hands; and forthwith this sweet and graceful courtship becomes a licentious
intrigue of the lowest and least sentimental kind, between an impudent
London rake and the idiot wife of a country squire. We will not go into
details. In truth, Wycherley's indecency is protected against the critics as a
skunk is protected against the hunters. It is safe, because it is too filthy to
handle, and too noisome even to approach.
It is the same with the Plain Dealer. How careful has Shakespeare been in
Twelfth Night to preserve the dignity and delicacy of Viola under her
disguise! Even when wearing a page's doublet and hose, she is never mixed
up with any transaction which the most fastidious mind could regard as
leaving a stain on her. She is employed by the Duke on an embassy of love
to Olivia, but on an embassy of the most honorable kind. Wycherley

borrows Viola; and Viola forthwith becomes a pandar of the basest sort. But
the character of Manly is the best illustration of our meaning. Molière
exhibited in his misanthrope a pure and noble mind, which had been sorely
vexed by the sight of perfidy and malevolence, disguised under the forms of
politeness. As every extreme naturally generates its contrary, Alceste adopts
a standard of good and evil directly opposed to that of the society which
surrounds him. Courtesy seems to him a vice; and those stern virtues which
are neglected by the fops and coquettes of Paris become too exclusively the
objects of his veneration. He is often to blame; he is often ridiculous; but he
is always a good man; and the feeling which he inspires is regret that a
person so estimable should be so unamiable. Wycherley borrowed Alceste,
and turned him—we quote the words of so lenient a critic as Mr. Leigh
Hunt—into "a ferocious sensualist, who believed himself as great a rascal
as he thought everybody else." The surliness of Molière's hero is copied and
caricatured. But the most nauseous libertinism and the most dastardly fraud
are substituted for the purity and integrity of the original. And, to make the
whole complete, Wycherley does not seem to have been aware that he was
not drawing the portrait of an eminently honest man. So depraved was his
moral taste that, while he firmly believed that he was producing a picture of
virtue too exalted for the commerce of this world, he was really delineating
the greatest rascal that is to be found, even in his own writings.
We pass a very severe censure on Wycherley, when we say that it is a relief
to turn from him to Congreve. Congreve's writings, indeed, are by no means
pure; nor was he, as far as we are able to judge, a warm-hearted or high-
minded man. Yet, in coming to him, we feel that the worst is over, that we
are one remove further from the Restoration, that we are past the Nadir of
national taste and morality.
William Congreve was born in 1670, at Bardsey, in the neighborhood of
Leeds. His father, a younger son of a very ancient Staffordshire family, had
distinguished himself among the Cavaliers in the Civil War, was set down
after the Restoration for the Order of the Royal Oak, and subsequently
settled in Ireland, under the patronage of the Earl of Burlington.
Congreve passed his childhood and youth in Ireland. He was sent to school
at Kilkenny, and thence went to the University of Dublin. His learning does
great honor to his instructors. From his writings it appears, not only that he

was well acquainted with Latin literature, but that his knowledge of the
Greek poets was such as was not, in his time, common even in a college.
When he had completed his academical studies, he was sent to London to
study the law, and was entered of the Middle Temple. He troubled himself,
however, very little about pleading or conveyancing, and gave himself up to
literature and society. Two kinds of ambition early took possession of his
mind, and often pulled it in opposite directions. He was conscious of great
fertility of thought and power of ingenious combination. His lively
conversation, his polished manners, and his highly respectable connections
had obtained for him ready access to the best company. He longed to be a
great writer. He longed to be a man of fashion. Either object was within his
reach. But could he secure both? Was there not something vulgar in letters,
something inconsistent with the easy apathetic graces of a man of the
mode? Was it aristocratical to be confounded with creatures who lived in
the cocklofts of Grub Street, to bargain with publishers, to hurry printers'
devils and be hurried by them, to squabble with managers, to be applauded
or hissed by pit, boxes, and galleries? Could he forego the renown of being
the first wit of his age? Could he attain that renown without sullying what
he valued quite as much, his character for gentility? The history of his life is
the history of a conflict between these two impulses. In his youth the desire
of literary fame had the mastery; but soon the meaner ambition
overpowered the higher, and obtained supreme dominion over his mind.
His first work, a novel of no great value, he published under the assumed
name of Cleophil. His second was the Old Bachelor, acted in 1693, a play
inferior indeed to his other comedies, but, in its own line, inferior to them
alone. The plot is equally destitute of interest and of probability. The
characters are either not distinguishable, or are distinguished only by
peculiarities of the most glaring kind. But the dialogue is resplendent with
wit and eloquence, which indeed are so abundant that the fool comes in for
an ample share, and yet preserves a certain colloquial air, a certain
indescribable ease, of which Wycherley had given no example, and which
Sheridan in vain attempted to imitate. The author, divided between pride
and shame,—pride at having written a good play, and shame at having done
an ungentlemanlike thing,—pretended that he had merely scribbled a few
scenes for his own amusement, and affected to yield unwillingly to the
importunities of those who pressed him to try his fortune on the stage. The

Old Bachelor was seen in manuscript by Dryden, one of whose best
qualities was a hearty and generous admiration for the talents of others. He
declared that he had never read such a first play, and lent his services to
bring it into a form fit for representation. Nothing was wanting to the
success of the piece. It was so cast as to bring into play all the comic talent,
and to exhibit on the boards in one view all the beauty, which Drury-Lane
Theatre, then the only theatre in London, could assemble. The result was a
complete triumph; and the author was gratified with rewards more
substantial than the applauses of the pit. Montagu, then a lord of the
treasury, immediately gave him a place, and, in a short time, added the
reversion of another place of much greater value, which, however, did not
become vacant till many years had elapsed.
In 1694 Congreve brought out the Double Dealer, a comedy in which all the
powers which had produced the Old Bachelor showed themselves, matured
by time and improved by exercise. But the audience was shocked by the
characters of Maskwell and Lady Touchwood. And, indeed, there is
something strangely revolting in the way in which a group that seems to
belong to the house of Laius or of Pelops is introduced into the midst of the
Brisks, Froths, Carelesses, and Plyants. The play was unfavorably received.
Yet, if the praise of distinguished men could compensate an author for the
disapprobation of the multitude, Congreve had no reason to repine. Dryden,
in one of the most ingenious, magnificent, and pathetic pieces that he ever
wrote, extolled the author of the Double Dealer in terms which now appear
extravagantly hyperbolical. Till Congreve came forth,—so ran this exquisite
flattery,—the superiority of the poets who preceded the civil wars was
acknowledged:—

"Theirs was the giant race before the flood."

Since the return of the Royal house, much art and ability had been exerted,
but the old masters had been still unrivalled:—

"Our builders were with want of genius curst.
The second temple was not like the first."

At length a writer had arisen who, just emerging from boyhood, had
surpassed the authors of the Knight of the Burning Pestle and of the Silent
Woman, and who had only one rival left to contend with:—

"Heaven, that but once was prodigal before,
To Shakespeare gave as much, she could not give him
more."

Some lines near the end of the poem are singularly graceful and touching,
and sank deep into the heart of Congreve:—

"Already am I worn with cares and age,
And just abandoning the ungrateful stage;
But you, whom every Muse and Grace adorn,
Whom I foresee to better fortune horn,
Be kind to my remains; and, oh, defend
Against your judgment your departed friend.
Let not the insulting foe my fame pursue,
But guard those laurels which descend to you."

The crowd, as usual, gradually came over to the opinion of the men of note;
and the Double Dealer was before long quite as much admired, though
perhaps never so much liked, as the Old Bachelor.
In 1695 appeared Love for Love, superior both in wit and in scenic effect to
either of the preceding plays. It was performed at a new theatre which
Betterton and some other actors, disgusted by the treatment which they had
received in Drury-Lane, had just opened in a tennis-court near Lincoln's
Inn. Scarcely any comedy within the memory of the oldest man had been

equally successful. The actors were so elated that they gave Congreve a
share in their theatre; and he promised in return to furnish them with a play
every year, if his health would permit. Two years passed, however, before
he produced the Mourning Bride, a play which, paltry as it is when
compared, we do not say, with Lear or Macbeth, but with the best dramas of
Massinger and Ford, stands very high among the tragedies of the age in
which it was written. To find anything so good we must go twelve years
back to Venice Preserved, or six years forward to the Fair Penitent. The
noble passage which Johnson, both in writing and in conversation, extolled
above any other in the English drama, had suffered greatly in the public
estimation from the extravagance of his praise. Had he contented himself
with saying that it was finer than anything in the tragedies of Dryden,
Otway, Lee, Rowe, Southern, Hughes, and Addison, than anything, in short,
that had been written for the stage since the days of Charles the First, he
would not have been in the wrong.
The success of the Mourning Bride was even greater than that of Love for
Love. Congreve was now allowed to be the first tragic as well as the first
comic dramatist of his time; and all this at twenty-seven. We believe that no
English writer except Lord Byron has, at so early an age, stood so high in
the estimation of his contemporaries.
At this time took place an event which deserves, in our opinion, a very
different sort of notice from that which has been bestowed on it by Mr.
Leigh Hunt. The nation had now nearly recovered from the demoralizing
effect of the Puritan austerity. The gloomy follies of the reign of the saints
were but faintly remembered. The evils produced by profaneness and
debauchery were recent and glaring. The Court, since the Revolution, had
ceased to patronize licentiousness. Mary was strictly pious; and the vices of
the cold, stern, and silent William were not obtruded on the public eye.
Discountenanced by the government, and falling in the favor of the people,
the profligacy of the Restoration still maintained its ground in some parts of
society. Its strongholds were the places where men of wit and fashion
congregated, and above all, the theatres. At this conjuncture arose a great
reformer whom, widely as we differ from him in many important points, we
can never mention without respect.

Jeremy Collier was a clergyman of the Church of England, bred at
Cambridge. His talents and attainments were such as might have been
expected to raise him to the highest honors of his profession. He had an
extensive knowledge of books; yet he had mingled much with polite
society, and is said not to have wanted either grace or vivacity in
conversation. There were few branches of literature to which he had not
paid some attention. But ecclesiastical antiquity was his favorite study. In
religious opinions he belonged to that section of the Church of England
which lies furthest from Geneva and nearest to home. His notions touching
Episcopal government, holy orders, the efficacy of the sacraments, the
authority of the Fathers, the guilt of schism, the importance of vestments,
ceremonies, and solemn days, differed little from those which are now held
by Dr. Pusey and Mr. Newman. Towards the close of his life, indeed,
Collier took some steps which brought him still nearer to Popery, mixed
water with the wine in the Eucharist, made the sign of the cross in
confirmation, employed oil in the visitation of the sick, and offered up
prayers for the dead. His politics were of a piece with his divinity. He was a
Tory of the highest sort, such as in the cant of his age was called a Tantivy.
Not even the persecution of the bishops and the spoliation of the
universities could shake his steady loyalty. While the Convention was
sitting, he wrote with vehemence in defence of the fugitive king, and was in
consequence arrested. But his dauntless spirit was not to be so tamed. He
refused to take the oaths, renounced all his preferments, and, in a succession
of pamphlets written with much violence and with some ability, attempted
to excite the nation against its new masters. In 1692 he was again arrested
on suspicion of having been concerned in a treasonable plot. So unbending
were his principles that his friends could hardly persuade him to let them
bail him; and he afterwards expressed his remorse for having been induced
thus to acknowledge, by implication, the authority of a usurping
government. He was soon in trouble again. Sir John Friend and Sir William
Parkins were tried and convicted of high treason for planning the murder of
King William. Collier administered spiritual consolation to them, attended
them to Tyburn, and, just before they were turned off, laid his hands on their
heads, and by the authority which he derived from Christ solemnly
absolved them. This scene gave indescribable scandal. Tories joined with
Whigs in blaming the conduct of the daring priest. Some acts, it was said,
which fall under the definition of treason are such that a good man may, in

troubled times, be led into them even by his virtues. It may be necessary for
the protection of society to punish such a man. But even in punishing him
we consider him as legally rather than morally guilty, and hope that his
honest error, though it cannot be pardoned here, will not be counted to him
for sin hereafter. But such was not the case of Collier's penitents. They were
concerned in a plot for waylaying and butchering in an hour of security, one
who, whether he were or were not their king, was at all events their fellow
creature. Whether the Jacobite theory about the rights of governments and
the duties of subjects were or were not well founded, assassination must
always be considered as a great crime. It is condemned even by the maxims
of worldly honor and morality. Much more must it be an object of
abhorrence to the pure Spouse of Christ. The Church cannot surely, without
the saddest and most mournful forbodings, see one of her children who has
been guilty of this great wickedness pass into eternity without any sign of
repentance. That these traitors had given any sign of repentance was not
alleged. It might be that they had privately declared their contrition; and, if
so, the minister of religion might be justified in privately assuring them of
the Divine forgiveness. But a public remission ought to have been preceded
by a public atonement. The regret of these men, if expressed at all, had been
expressed in secret. The hands of Collier had been laid on them in the
presence of thousands. The inference which his enemies drew from his
conduct was that he did not consider the conspiracy against the life of
William as sinful. But this inference he very vehemently, and, we doubt not,
very sincerely denied.
The storm raged. The bishops put forth a solemn censure of the absolution.
The Attorney-General brought the matter before the Court of King's Bench.
Collier had now made up his mind not to give bail for his appearance before
any court which derived its authority from the usurper. He accordingly
absconded and was outlawed. He survived these events about thirty years.
The prosecution was not pressed; and he was soon suffered to resume his
literary pursuits in quiet. At a later period, many attempts were made to
shake his perverse integrity by offers of wealth and dignity, but in vain.
When he died, towards the end of the reign of George the First, he was still
under the ban of the law.
We shall not be suspected of regarding either the politics or the theology of
Collier with partiality; but we believe him to have been as honest and

courageous a man as ever lived. We will go further, and say that, though
passionate and often wrongheaded, he was a singularly fair controversialist,
candid, generous, too high-spirited to take mean advantages even in the
most exciting disputes, and pure from all taint of personal malevolence. It
must also be admitted that his opinions on ecclesiastical and political
affairs, though in themselves absurd and pernicious, eminently qualified
him to be the reformer of our lighter literature. The libertinism of the press
and of the stage was, as we have said, the effect of a reaction against the
Puritan strictness. Profligacy was, like the oak leaf on the twenty-ninth of
May, the badge of a cavalier and a high churchman. Decency was
associated with conventicles and calves' heads. Grave prelates were too
much disposed to wink at the excesses of a body of zealous and able allies
who covered Roundheads and Presbyterians with ridicule. If a Whig raised
his voice against the impiety and licentiousness of the fashionable writers,
his mouth was instantly stopped by the retort, You are one of those who
groan at a light quotation from Scripture, and raise estates out of the
plunder of the Church, who shudder at a double entendre, and chop off the
heads of kings. A Baxter, a Burnet, even a Tillotson, would have done little
to purify our literature. But when a man fanatical in the cause of
episcopacy, and actually under outlawry for his attachment to hereditary
right, came forward as the champion of decency, the battle was already half
won.
In 1698 Collier published his Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality
of the English Stage, a book which threw the whole literary world into
commotion, but which is now much less read than it deserves. The faults of
the work, indeed, are neither few nor small. The dissertations on the Greek
and Latin drama do not at all help the argument, and, whatever may have
been thought of them by the generation which fancied that Christ Church
had refuted Bentley, are such as, in the present day, a scholar of very
humble pretensions may venture to pronounce boyish, or rather babyish.
The censures are not sufficiently discriminating. The authors whom Collier
accused had been guilty of such gross sins against decency that he was
certain to weaken instead of strengthening his case, by introducing into his
charge against them any matter about which there could be the smallest
dispute. He was, however, so injudicious as to place among the outrageous
offences which he justly arraigned some things which are really quite

innocent, and some slight instances of levity which, though not perhaps
strictly correct, could easily be paralleled from the works of writers who
had rendered great services to morality and religion. Thus he blames
Congreve, the number and gravity of whose real transgressions made it
quite unnecessary to tax him with any that were not real, for using the
words "martyr" and "inspiration" in a light sense; as if an archbishop might
not say that a speech was inspired by claret, or that an alderman was a
martyr to the gout. Sometimes, again, Collier does not sufficiently
distinguish between the dramatist and the persons of the drama. Thus he
blames Vanbrugh for putting into Lord Foppington's mouth some
contemptuous expressions respecting the church service; though it is
obvious that Vanbrugh could not better express reverence than by making
Lord Foppington express contempt. There is also throughout the Short View
too strong a display of professional feeling. Collier is not content with
claiming for his order an immunity from indiscriminate scurrility; he will
not allow that, in any case, any word or act of a divine can be a proper
subject for ridicule: Nor does he confine this benefit of clergy to the
ministers of the Established Church. He extends the privilege to Catholic
priests, and, what in him is more surprising, to Dissenting preachers. This,
however, is a mere trifle. Imaums, Brahmins, priests of Jupiter, priests of
Baal, are all to be held sacred. Dryden is blamed for making the Mufti in
Don Sebastian talk nonsense. Lee is called to a severe account for his
incivility to Tiresias. But the most curious passage is that in which Collier
resents some uncivil reflections thrown by Cassandra, in Dryden's
Cleomenes, on the calf Apis and his hierophants. The words "grass-eating,
foddered god," words which really are much in the style of several passages
in the Old Testament, give as much offence to this Christian divine as they
could have given to the priests of Memphis.
But, when all deductions have been made, great merit must be allowed to
this work. There is hardly any book of that time from which it would be
possible to select specimens of writing so excellent and so various. To
compare Collier with Pascal would indeed be absurd. Yet we hardly know
where, except in the Provincial Letters, we can find mirth so harmoniously
and becomingly blended with solemnity as in the Short View. In truth, all
the modes of ridicule, from broad fun to polished and antithetical sarcasm,
were at Collier's command. On the other hand, he was complete master of

the rhetoric of honest indignation. We scarcely know any volume which
contains so many bursts of that peculiar eloquence which comes from the
heart and goes to the heart. Indeed the spirit of the book is truly heroic. In
order fairly to appreciate it, we must remember the situation in which the
writer stood. He was under the frown of power. His name was already a
mark for the invectives of one half of the writers of the age, when, in the
cause of good taste, good sense, and good morals, he gave battle to the
other half. Strong as his political prejudices were, he seems on this occasion
to have entirely laid them aside. He has forgotten that he is a Jacobite, and
remembers only that he is a citizen and a Christian. Some of his sharpest
censures are directed against poetry which had been hailed with delight by
the Tory party, and had inflicted a deep wound on the Whigs. It is
inspiriting to see how gallantly the solitary outlaw advances to attack
enemies, formidable separately, and, it might have been thought, irresistible
when combined, distributes his swashing blows right and left among
Wycherley, Congreve, and Vanbrugh, treads the wretched D'Urfey down in
the dirt beneath his feet, and strikes with all his strength full at the towering
crest of Dryden.
The effect produced by the Short View was immense. The nation was on the
side of Collier. But it could not be doubted that, in the great host which he
had defied, some champion would be found to lift the gauntlet. The general
belief was that Dryden would take the field; and all the wits anticipated a
sharp contest between two well-paired combatants. The great poet had been
singled out in the most marked manner. It was well known that he was
deeply hurt, that much smaller provocations had formerly roused him to
violent resentment, and that there was no literary weapon, offensive or
defensive, of which he was not master. But his conscience smote him; he
stood abashed, like the fallen archangel at the rebuke of Zephon,—

"And felt how awful goodness is, and saw
Virtue in her shape how lovely; saw and pined
His loss."

At a later period he mentioned the Short View in the preface to his Fables.
He complained, with some asperity, of the harshness with which he had
been treated, and urged some matters in mitigation. But, on the whole, he
frankly acknowledged that he had been justly reproved. "If," said he, "Mr.

Collier be my enemy, let him triumph. If he be my friend, as I have given
him no personal occasion to be otherwise, he will be glad of my
repentance."
It would have been wise in Congreve to follow his master's example. He
was precisely in that situation in which it is madness to attempt a
vindication; for his guilt was so clear that no address or eloquence could
obtain an acquittal. On the other hand, there were in his case many
extenuating circumstances which, if he had acknowledged his error and
promised amendment, would have procured his pardon. The most rigid
censor could not but make great allowances for the faults into which so
young a man had been seduced by evil example, by the luxuriance of a
vigorous fancy, and by the inebriating effect of popular applause. The
esteem, as well as the admiration, of the public was still within his reach.
He might easily have effaced all memory of his transgressions, and have
shared with Addison the glory of showing that the most brilliant wit may be
the ally of virtue. But, in any case, prudence should have restrained him
from encountering Collier. The nonjuror was a man thoroughly fitted by
nature, education, and habit for polemical dispute. Congreve's mind, though
a mind of no common fertility and vigor, was of a different class. No man
understood so well the art of polishing epigrams and repartees into the
clearest effulgence, and setting them neatly in easy and familiar dialogue. In
this sort of jewelry he attained to a mastery unprecedented and inimitable.
But he was altogether rude in the art of controversy; and he had a cause to
defend which scarcely any art could have rendered victorious.
The event was such as might have been foreseen. Congreve's answer was a
complete failure. He was angry, obscure, and dull. Even the green-room and
Will's Coffee-House were compelled to acknowledge that in wit, as well as
in argument, the parson had a decided advantage over the poet. Not only
was Congreve unable to make any show of a case where he was in the
wrong; but he succeeded in putting himself completely in the wrong where
he was in the right. Collier had taxed him with profaneness for calling a
clergyman Mr. Prig, and for introducing a coachman named Jehu, in
allusion to the King of Israel, who was known at a distance by his furious
driving. Had there been nothing worse in the Old Bachelor and Double
Dealer, Congreve might pass for as pure a writer as Cowper himself, who,
in poems revised by so austere a censor as John Newton, calls a fox-hunting

squire Nimrod, and gives to a chaplain the disrespectful name of Smug.
Congreve might with good effect have appealed to the public whether it
might not be fairly presumed that, when such frivolous charges were made,
there were no very serious charges to make. Instead of doing this, he
pretended that he meant no allusion to the Bible by the name of Jehu, and
no reflection by the name of Prig. Strange, that a man of such parts should,
in order to defend himself against imputations which nobody could regard
as important, tell untruths which it was certain that nobody would believe!
One of the pleas which Congreve set up for himself and his brethren was
that, though they might be guilty of a little levity here and there, they were
careful to inculcate a moral, packed close into two or three lines, at the end
of every play. Had the fact been as he stated it, the defence would be worth
very little. For no man acquainted with human nature could think that a
sententious couplet would undo all the mischief that five profligate acts had
done. But it would have been wise in Congreve to have looked again at his
own comedies before he used this argument. Collier did so, and found that
the moral of the Old Bachelor, the grave apophthegm which is to be a set-
off against all the libertinism of the piece, is contained in the following
triplet:—

"What rugged ways attend the noon of life!
Our sun declines, and with what anxious strife,
What pain, we tug that galling load—a wife."

"Love for Love," says Collier, "may have a somewhat better farewell, but it
would do a man little service should he remember it to his dying day:"—

"The miracle to-day is, that we find
A lover true, not that a woman's kind."

Collier's reply was severe and triumphant. One of his repartees we will
quote, not as a favorable specimen of his manner, but because it was called
forth by Congreve's characteristic affectation. The poet spoke of the Old
Bachelor as a trifle to which he attached no value, and which had become
public by a sort of accident. "I wrote it," he said, "to amuse myself in a slow
recovery from a fit of sickness." "What his disease was," replied Collier, "I
am not to inquire: but it must be a very ill one to be worse than the remedy."

All that Congreve gained by coming forward on this occasion was that he
completely deprived himself of the excuse which he might with justice have
pleaded for his early offences. "Why," asked Collier, "should the man laugh
at the mischief of the boy, and make the disorders of his nonage his own, by
an after approbation?"
Congreve was not Collier's only opponent. Vanbrugh, Dennis, and Settle
took the field. And, from a passage in a contemporary satire, we are
inclined to think that among the answers to the Short View was one written,
or supposed to be written, by Wycherley. The victory remained with Collier.
A great and rapid reform in almost all the departments of our lighter
literature was the effect of his labors. A new race of wits and poets arose,
who generally treated with reverence the great ties which bind society
together, and whose very indecencies were decent when compared with
those of the school which flourished during the last forty years of the
seventeenth century.
This controversy probably prevented Congreve from fulfilling the
engagements into which he had entered with the actors. It was not till 1700
that he produced the Way of the World, the most deeply meditated and the
most brilliantly written of all his works. It wants, perhaps, the constant
movement, the effervescence of animal spirits, which we find in Love for
Love. But the hysterical rants of Lady Wishfort, the meeting of Witwould
and his brother, the country knight's courtship and his subsequent revel,
and, above all, the chase and surrender of Millamant, are superior to
anything that is to be found in the whole range of English comedy from the
civil war downwards. It is quite inexplicable to us that this play should have
failed on the stage. Yet so it was; and the author, already sore with the
wounds which Collier had inflicted, was galled past endurance by this new
stroke. He resolved never again to expose himself to the rudeness of a
tasteless audience, and took leave of the theatre forever.
He lived twenty-eight years longer, without adding to the high literary
reputation which he had attained. He read much while he retained his
eyesight, and now and then wrote a short essay, or put an idle tale into
verse; but he appears never to have planned any considerable work. The
miscellaneous pieces which he published in 1710 are of little value, and
have long been forgotten.

The stock of fame which he had acquired by his comedies was sufficient,
assisted by the graces of his manner and conversation, to secure for him a
high place in the estimation of the world. During the winter he lived among
the most distinguished and agreeable people in London. His summers were
passed at the splendid country-seats of ministers and peers. Literary envy
and political faction, which in that age respected nothing else, respected his
repose. He professed to be one of the party of which his patron Montagu,
now Lord Halifax, was the head. But he had civil words and small good
offices for men of every shade of opinion. And men of every shade of
opinion spoke well of him in return.
His means were for a long time scanty. The place which he had in
possession barely enabled him to live with comfort. And, when the Tories
came into power, some thought that he would lose even this moderate
provision. But Harley, who was by no means disposed to adopt the
exterminating policy of the October club, and who, with all his faults of
understanding and temper, had a sincere kindness for men of genius,
reassured the anxious poet by quoting very gracefully and happily the lines
of Virgil,—

"Non obtusa adeo gestamus pectora Pœni,
Nec tam aversus equos Tyria Sol jungit ab urbe."

The indulgence with which Congreve was treated by the Tories was not
purchased by any concession on his part which could justly offend the
Whigs. It was his rare good fortune to share the triumph of his friends
without having shared their proscription. When the House of Hanover came
to the throne, he partook largely of the prosperity of those with whom he
was connected. The reversion to which he had been nominated twenty years
before fell in. He was made secretary to the island of Jamaica; and his
whole income amounted to twelve hundred a year, a fortune which, for a
single man, was in that age not only easy, but splendid. He continued,
however, to practise the frugality which he had learned when he could
scarce spare, as Swift tells us, a shilling to pay the chairmen who carried
him to Lord Halifax's. Though he had nobody to save for, he laid up at least
as much as he spent.

The infirmities of age came early upon him. His habits had been
intemperate; he suffered much from gout; and, when confined to his
chamber, he had no longer the solace of literature. Blindness, the most cruel
misfortune that can befall the lonely student, made his books useless to him.
He was thrown on society for all his amusement; and in society his good
breeding and vivacity made him always welcome.
By the rising men of letters he was considered not as a rival, but as a
classic. He had left their arena; he never measured his strength with them;
and he was always loud in applause of their exertions. They could,
therefore, entertain no jealousy of him, and thought no more of detracting
from his fame than of carping at the great men who had been lying a
hundred years in Poets' Corner. Even the inmates of Grub Street, even the
heroes of the Dunciad, were for once just to living merit. There can be no
stronger illustration of the estimation in which Congreve was held than the
fact that the English Iliad, a work which appeared with more splendid
auspices than any other in our language, was dedicated to him. There was
not a duke in the kingdom who would not have been proud of such a
compliment. Dr. Johnson expresses great admiration for the independence
of spirit which Pope showed on this occasion. "He passed over peers and
statesmen to inscribe his Iliad to Congreve, with a magnanimity of which
the praise had been complete, had his friend's virtue been equal to his wit.
Why he was chosen for so great an honor, it is not now possible to know." It
is certainly impossible to know; yet we think it is possible to guess. The
translation of the Iliad had been zealously befriended by men of all political
opinions. The poet who, at an early age, had been raised to affluence by the
emulous liberality of Whigs and Tories, could not with propriety inscribe to
a chief of either party a work which had been munificently patronized by
both. It was necessary to find some person who was at once eminent and
neutral. It was therefore necessary to pass over peers and statesmen.
Congreve had a high name in letters. He had a high name in aristocratic
circles. He lived on terms of civility with men of all parties. By a courtesy
paid to him, neither the ministers nor the leaders of the opposition could be
offended.
The singular affectation which had from the first been characteristic of
Congreve grew stronger and stronger as he advanced in life. At last it
became disagreeable to him to hear his own comedies praised. Voltaire,

whose soul was burned up by the raging desire for literary renown, was half
puzzled and half disgusted by what he saw, during his visit to England, of
this extraordinary whim. Congreve disclaimed the character of a poet,
declared that his plays were trifles produced in an idle hour, and begged that
Voltaire would consider him merely as a gentleman. "If you had been
merely a gentleman," said Voltaire, "I should not have come to see you."
Congreve was not a man of warm affections. Domestic ties he had none;
and in the temporary connections which he formed with a succession of
beauties from the green-room his heart does not appear to have been
interested. Of all his attachments that to Mrs. Bracegirdle lasted the longest
and was the most celebrated. This charming actress, who was, during many
years, the idol of all London, whose face caused the fatal broil in which
Mountfort fell, and for which Lord Mohun was tried by the peers, and to
whom the Earl of Scarsdale was said to have made honorable addresses,
had conducted herself, in very trying circumstances, with extraordinary
discretion. Congreve at length became her confidential friend. They
constantly rode out together and dined together. Some people said that she
was his mistress, and others that she would soon be his wife. He was at last
drawn away from her by the influence of a wealthier and haughtier beauty.
Henrietta, daughter of the great Marlborough, and Countess of Godolphin,
had, on her father's death, succeeded to his dukedom, and to the greater part
of his immense property. Her husband was an insignificant man, of whom
Lord Chesterfield said that he came to the House of Peers only to sleep, and
that he might as well sleep on the right as on the left of the woolsack.
Between the Duchess and Congreve sprang up a most eccentric friendship.
He had a seat every day at her table, and assisted in the direction of her
concerts. That malignant old beldame, the Dowager Duchess Sarah, who
had quarrelled with her daughter as she had quarrelled with everybody else,
affected to suspect that there was something wrong. But the world in
general appears to have thought that a great lady might, without any
imputation on her character, pay marked attention to a man of eminent
genius who was near sixty years old, who was still older in appearance and
in constitution, who was confined to his chair by gout, and who was unable
to read from blindness.
In the summer of 1728, Congreve was ordered to try the Bath waters.
During his excursion he was overturned in his chariot, and received some

severe internal injury from which he never recovered. He came back to
London in a dangerous state, complained constantly of a pain in his side,
and continued to sink, till in the following January he expired.
He left ten thousand pounds, saved out of the emoluments of his lucrative
places. Johnson says that this money ought to have gone to the Congreve
family, which was then in great distress. Dr. Young and Mr. Leigh Hunt,
two gentlemen who seldom agree with each other, but with whom, on this
occasion, we are happy to agree, think that it ought to have gone to Mrs.
Bracegirdle. Congreve bequeathed two hundred pounds to Mrs.
Bracegirdle, and an equal sum to a certain Mrs. Jellat; but the bulk of his
accumulations went to the Duchess of Marlborough, in whose immense
wealth such a legacy was as a drop in the bucket. It might have raised the
fallen fortunes of a Staffordshire squire; it might have enabled a retired
actress to enjoy every comfort, and, in her sense, every luxury; but it was
hardly sufficient to defray the Duchess's establishment for three months.
The great lady buried her friend with a pomp seldom seen at the funerals of
poets. The corpse lay in state under the ancient roof of the Jerusalem
Chamber, and was interred in Westminster Abbey. The pall was borne by
the Duke of Bridgewater, Lord Cobham, the Earl of Wilmington, who had
been Speaker, and was afterwards First Lord of the Treasury, and other men
of high consideration. Her Grace laid out her friend's bequest in a superb
diamond necklace, which she wore in honor of him, and, if report is to be
believed, showed her regard in ways much more extraordinary. It is said
that a statue of him in ivory, which moved by clockwork, was placed daily
at her table, that she had a wax doll made in imitation of him, and that the
feet of the doll were regularly blistered and anointed by the doctors, as poor
Congreve's feet had been when he suffered from the gout. A monument was
erected to the poet in Westminster Abbey, with an inscription written by the
Duchess; and Lord Cobham honored him with a cenotaph, which seems to
us, though that is a bold word, the ugliest and most absurd of the buildings
at Stowe.
We have said that Wycherley was a worse Congreve. There was, indeed, a
remarkable analogy between the writings and lives of these two men. Both
were gentleman liberally educated. Both led town lives, and knew human
nature only as it appears between Hyde Park and the Tower. Both were men

of wit. Neither had much imagination. Both at an early age produced lively
and profligate comedies. Both retired from the field while still in early
manhood, and owed to their youthful achievements in literature whatever
consideration they enjoyed in later life. Both, after they had ceased to write
for the stage, published volumes of miscellanies which did little credit
either to their talents or to their morals. Both, during their declining years,
hung loose upon society; and both, in their last moments, made eccentric
and unjustifiable dispositions of their estates.
But in every point Congreve maintained his superiority to Wycherley.
Wycherley had wit; but the wit of Congreve far outshines that of every
comic writer, except Sheridan, who has arisen within the last two centuries.
Congreve had not, in a large measure, the poetical faculty; but compared
with Wycherley he might be called a great poet. Wycherley had some
knowledge of books; but Congreve was a man of real learning. Congreve's
offences against decorum, though highly culpable, were not so gross as
those of Wycherley; nor did Congreve, like Wycherley, exhibit to the world
the deplorable spectacle of a licentious dotage. Congreve died in the
enjoyment of high consideration; Wycherley forgotten or despised.
Congreve's will was absurd and capricious; but Wycherley's last actions
appear to have been prompted by obdurate malignity.
Here, at least for the present, we must stop. Vanbrugh and Farquhar are not
men to be hastily dismissed, and we have not left ourselves space to do
them justice.

FOOTNOTES:
[2] The Dramatic Works of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, with
Biographical and Critical Notices. By Leigh Hunt. 8vo. London: 1840.
[3] Mr. Leigh Hunt supposes that the battle at which Wycherley was present was
that which the Duke of York gained over Opdam, in 1665. We believe that it was
one of the battles between Rupert and De Ruyter, in 1673.
The point is of no importance; and there cannot be said to be much evidence
either way. We offer, however, to Mr. Leigh Hunt's consideration three
arguments, of no great weight certainly, yet such as ought, we think, to prevail in
the absence of better. First, it is not very likely that a young Templar, quite
unknown in the world,—and Wycherley was such in 1665,—should have quitted
his chambers to go to sea. On the other hand, it would be in the regular course of

things, that, when a courtier and an equerry, he should offer his services.
Secondly, his verses appear to have been written after a drawn battle, like those
of 1673, and not after a complete victory, like that of 1605. Thirdly, in the
epilogue to the Gentleman Dancing-Master, written in 1673, he says that "all
gentlemen must pack to sea;" an expression which makes it probable that he did
not himself mean to stay behind.

LORD HOLLAND[4]
The Edinburgh Review, July, 1841
Many reasons make it impossible for us to lay before our readers, at the
present moment, a complete view of the character and public career of the
late Lord Holland. But we feel that we have already deferred too long the
duty of paying some tribute to his memory. We feel that it is more becoming
to bring without further delay an offering, though intrinsically of little
value, than to leave his tomb longer without some token of our reverence
and love.
We shall say very little of the book which lies on our table. And yet it is a
book which, even if it had been the work of a less distinguished man, or had
appeared under circumstances less interesting, would have well repaid an
attentive perusal. It is valuable, both as a record of principles and as a
model of composition. We find in it all the great maxims which, during
more than forty years, guided Lord Holland's public conduct, and the chief
reasons on which those maxims rest, condensed into the smallest possible
space, and set forth with admirable perspicuity, dignity, and precision. To
his opinions on foreign policy we for the most part cordially assent; but
now and then we are inclined to think them imprudently generous. We
could not have signed the protest against the detention of Napoleon. The
Protest respecting the course which England pursued at the Congress of
Verona, though it contains much that is excellent, contains also positions
which, we are inclined to think, Lord Holland would, at a later period, have
admitted to be unsound. But to all his doctrines on constitutional questions
we give our hearty approbation; and we firmly believe that no British
Government has ever deviated from that line of internal policy which he has
traced, without detriment to the public.

We will give, as a specimen of this little volume, a single passage, in which
a chief article of the political creed of the Whigs is stated and explained,
with singular clearness, force, and brevity. Our readers will remember that,
in 1825, the Catholic Association raised the cry of emancipation with most
formidable effect. The Tories acted after their kind. Instead of removing the
grievance they tried to put down the agitation, and brought in a law,
apparently sharp and stringent, but in truth utterly impotent, for restraining
the right of petition. Lord Holland's Protest on that occasion is excellent.
"We are," says he, "well aware that the privileges of the people,
the rights of free discussion, and the spirit and letter of our
popular institutions must render—and they are intended to
render—the continuance of an extensive grievance, and of the
dissatisfaction consequent thereupon, dangerous to the
tranquillity of the country, and ultimately subversive of the
authority of the state. Experience and theory alike forbid us to
deny that effect of a free constitution; a sense of justice and a
love of liberty equally deter us from lamenting it. But we have
always been taught to look for the remedy of such disorders in
the redress of the grievances which justify them, and in the
removal of the dissatisfaction from which they flow—not in
restraints on ancient privileges, not in inroads on the right of
public discussion, nor in violations of the principles of a free
government. If, therefore, the legal method of seeking redress,
which has been resorted to by persons laboring under grievous
disabilities, be fraught with immediate or remote danger to the
state, we draw from that circumstance a conclusion long since
foretold by great authority—namely, that the British
constitution, and large exclusions, cannot subsist together; that
the constitution must destroy them, or they will destroy the
constitution."
It was not, however, of this little book, valuable and interesting as it is, but
of the author, that we meant to speak; and we will try to do so with
calmness and impartiality.
In order to fully appreciate the character of Lord Holland, it is necessary to
go far back into the history of his family; for he had inherited something

more than a coronet and an estate. To the house of which he was the head
belongs one distinction which we believe to be without a parallel in our
annals. During more than a century, there has never been a time at which a
Fox has not stood in a prominent station among public men. Scarcely had
the checkered career of the first Lord Holland closed, when his son,
Charles, rose to the head of the Opposition, and to the first rank among
English debaters. And before Charles was borne to Westminster Abbey a
third Fox had already become one of the most conspicuous politicians in the
kingdom.
It is impossible not to be struck by the strong family likeness which, in spite
of diversities arising from education and position, appears in these three
distinguished persons. In their faces and figures there was a resemblance,
such as is common enough in novels, where one picture is good for ten
generations, but such as in real life is seldom found. The ample person, the
massy and thoughtful forehead, the large eyebrows, the full cheek and lip,
the expression, so singularly compounded of sense, humor, courage,
openness, a strong will and a sweet temper, were common to all. But the
features of the founder of the house, as the pencil of Reynolds and the
chisel of Nollekens have handed them down to us, were disagreeably harsh
and exaggerated. In his descendants the aspect was preserved, but it was
softened, till it became, in the late lord, the most gracious and interesting
countenance that was ever lighted up by the mingled lustre of intelligence
and benevolence.
As it was with the faces of the men of this noble family, so was it also with
their minds. Nature had done much for them all. She had moulded them all
of that clay of which she is most sparing. To all she had given strong reason
and sharp wit, a quick relish for every physical and intellectual enjoyment,
constitutional intrepidity, and that frankness by which constitutional
intrepidity is generally accompanied, spirits which nothing could depress,
tempers easy, generous, and placable, and that genial courtesy which has its
seat in the heart, and of which artificial politeness is only a faint and cold
imitation. Such a disposition is the richest inheritance that ever was entailed
on any family.
But training and situation greatly modified the fine qualities which nature
lavished with such profusion on three generations of the house of Fox. The

first Lord Holland was a needy political adventurer. He entered public life
at a time when the standard of integrity among statesmen was low. He
started as the adherent of a minister who had indeed many titles to respect,
who possessed eminent talents both for administration and for debate, who
understood the public interest well, and who meant fairly by the country,
but who had seen so much perfidy and meanness that he had become
skeptical as to the existence of probity. Weary of the cant of patriotism,
Walpole had learned to talk a cant of a different kind. Disgusted by that sort
of hypocrisy which is at least a homage to virtue, he was too much in the
habit of practising the less respectable hypocrisy which ostentatiously
displays, and sometimes even simulates vice. To Walpole Fox attached
himself, politically and personally, with the ardor which belonged to his
temperament. And it is not to be denied that in the school of Walpole he
contracted faults which destroyed the value of his many great endowments.
He raised himself, indeed, to the first consideration in the House of
Commons; he became a consummate master of the art of debate; he attained
honors and immense wealth; but the public esteem and confidence were
withheld from him. His private friends, indeed, justly extolled his
generosity and good-nature. They maintained that in those parts of his
conduct which they could least defend there was nothing sordid, and that, if
he was misled, he was misled by amiable feelings, by a desire to serve his
friends, and by anxious tenderness for his children. But by the nation he
was regarded as a man of insatiable rapacity and desperate ambition; as a
man ready to adopt, without scruple, the most immoral and the most
unconstitutional manners; as a man perfectly fitted, by all his opinions and
feelings, for the work of managing the Parliament by means of secret-
service money, and of keeping down the people with the bayonet. Many of
his contemporaries had a morality quite as lax as his: but very few among
them had his talents, and none had his hardihood and energy. He could not,
like Sandys and Doddington, find safety in contempt. He therefore became
an object of such general aversion as no statesman since the fall of Strafford
has incurred, of such general aversion as was probably never in any country
incurred by a man of so kind and cordial a disposition. A weak mind would
have sunk under such a load of unpopularity. But that resolute spirit seemed
to derive new firmness from the public hatred. The only effect which
reproaches appeared to produce on him was to sour, in some degree, his
naturally sweet temper. The last acts of his public life were marked, not

only by that audacity which he had derived from nature, not only by that
immorality which he had learned in the school of Walpole, but by a
harshness which almost amounted to cruelty, and which had never been
supposed to belong to his character. His severity increased the unpopularity
from which it had sprung. The well-known lampoon of Gray may serve as a
specimen of the feeling of the country. All the images are taken from
shipwrecks, quicksands, and cormorants. Lord Holland is represented as
complaining that the cowardice of his accomplices had prevented him from
putting down the free spirit of the city of London by sword and fire, and as
pining for the time when birds of prey should make their nests in
Westminster Abbey, and unclean beasts burrow in St. Paul's.
Within a few months after the death of this remarkable man, his second son
Charles appeared at the head of the party opposed to the American War.
Charles had inherited the bodily and mental constitution of his father, and
had been much, far too much, under his father's influence. It was indeed
impossible that a son of so affectionate and noble a nature should not have
been warmly attached to a parent who possessed many fine qualities, and
who carried his indulgence and liberality towards his children even to a
culpable extent. Charles saw that the person to whom he was bound by the
strongest ties was, in the highest degree, odious to the nation; and the effect
was what might have been expected from the strong passions and
constitutional boldness of so high-spirited a youth. He cast in his lot with
his father, and took, while still a boy, a deep part in the most unjustifiable
and unpopular measures that had been adopted since the reign of James the
Second. In the debates on the Middlesex election, he distinguished himself,
not only by his precocious powers of eloquence, but by the vehement and
scornful manner in which he bade defiance to public opinion. He was at that
time regarded as a man likely to be the most formidable champion of
arbitrary government that had appeared since the Revolution, to be a Bute
with far greater powers, a Mansfield with far greater courage. Happily his
father's death liberated him early from the pernicious influence by which he
had been misled. His mind expanded. His range of observation became
wider. His genius broke through early prejudices. His natural benevolence
and magnanimity had fair play. In a very short time he appeared in a
situation worthy of his understanding and of his heart. From a family whose
name was associated in the public mind with tyranny and corruption, from a

party of which the theory and the practice were equally servile, from the
midst of the Luttrells, the Dysons, the Barringtons, came forth the greatest
parliamentary defender of civil and religious liberty.
The late Lord Holland succeeded to the talents and to the fine natural
dispositions of his house. But his situation was very different from that of
the two eminent men of whom we have spoken. In some important respects
it was better, in some it was worse than theirs. He had one great advantage
over them. He received a good political education. The first lord was
educated by Sir Robert Walpole. Mr. Fox was educated by his father. The
late lord was educated by Mr. Fox. The pernicious maxims early imbibed by
the first Lord Holland made his great talents useless, and worse than
useless, to the state. The pernicious maxims early imbibed by Mr. Fox led
him, at the commencement of his public life, into great faults which, though
afterwards nobly expiated, were never forgotten. To the very end of his
career, small men, when they had nothing else to say in defence of their
own tyranny, bigotry, and imbecility, could always raise a cheer by some
paltry taunt about the election of Colonel Luttrell, the imprisonment of the
lord mayor, and other measures in which the great Whig leader had borne a
part at the age of one or two and twenty. On Lord Holland no such slur
could be thrown. Those who most dissent from his opinions must
acknowledge that a public life more consistent is not to be found in our
annals. Every part of it is in perfect harmony with every other part; and the
whole is in perfect harmony with the great principles of toleration and civil
freedom. This rare felicity is in a great measure to be attributed to the
influence of Mr. Fox. Lord Holland, as was natural in a person of his talents
and expectations, began at a very early age to take the keenest interest in
politics, and Mr. Fox found the greatest pleasure in forming the mind of so
hopeful a pupil. They corresponded largely on political subjects when the
young lord was only sixteen; and their friendship and mutual confidence
continued to the day of that mournful separation at Chiswick. Under such
training such a man as Lord Holland was in no danger of falling into those
faults which threw a dark shade over the whole career of his grandfather,
and from which the youth of his uncle was not wholly free.
On the other hand, the late Lord Holland, as compared with his grandfather
and his uncle, labored under one great disadvantage. They were members of
the House of Commons. He became a Peer while still an infant. When he

entered public life, the House of Lords was a very small and a very
decorous assembly. The minority to which he belonged was scarcely able to
muster five or six votes on the most important nights, when eighty or ninety
lords were present. Debate had accordingly become a mere form, as it was
in the Irish House of Peers before the Union. This was a great misfortune to
a man like Lord Holland. It was not by occasionally addressing fifteen or
twenty solemn and unfriendly auditors, that his grandfather and his uncle
attained their unrivalled parliamentary skill. The former had learned his art
in "the great Walpolean battles," on nights when Onslow was in the chair
seventeen hours without intermission, when the thick ranks on both sides
kept unbroken order till long after the winter sun had risen upon them,
when the blind were led out by the hand into the lobby and the paralytic laid
down in their bedclothes on the benches. The powers of Charles Fox were,
from the first, exercised in conflicts not less exciting. The great talents of
the late Lord Holland had no such advantage. This was the more
unfortunate, because the peculiar species of eloquence which belonged to
him in common with his family required much practice to develop it. With
strong sense, and the greatest readiness of wit, a certain tendency to
hesitation was hereditary in the line of Fox. This hesitation arose, not from
the poverty, but from the wealth of their vocabulary. They paused, not from
the difficulty of finding one expression, but from the difficulty of choosing
between several. It was only by slow degrees and constant exercise that the
first Lord Holland and his son overcame the defect. Indeed neither of them
overcame it completely.
In statement, the late Lord Holland was not successful; his chief excellence
lay in reply. He had the quick eye of his house for the unsound parts of an
argument, and a great felicity in exposing them. He was decidedly more
distinguished in debate than any peer of his time who had not sat in the
House of Commons. Nay, to find his equal among persons similarly
situated, we must go back eighty years to Earl Granville. For Mansfield,
Thurlow, Loughborough, Grey, Grenville, Brougham, Plunkett, and other
eminent men, living and dead, whom we will not stop to enumerate, carried
to the Upper House an eloquence formed and matured in the Lower. The
opinion of the most discerning judges was that Lord Holland's oratorical
performances, though sometimes most successful, afforded no fair measure
of his oratorical powers, and that, in an assembly of which the debates were

frequent and animated, he would have attained a very high order of
excellence. It was, indeed, impossible to listen to his conversation without
seeing that he was born a debater. To him, as to his uncle, the exercise of
the mind in discussion was a positive pleasure. With the greatest good
nature and good breeding, he was the very opposite to an assenter. The
word "disputatious" is generally used as a word of reproach; but we can
express our meaning only by saying that Lord Holland was most
courteously and pleasantly disputatious. In truth, his quickness in
discovering and apprehending distinctions and analogies was such as a
veteran judge might envy. The lawyers of the Duchy of Lancaster were
astonished to find in an unprofessional man so strong a relish for the
esoteric parts of their science, and complained that as soon as they had split
a hair, Lord Holland proceeded to split the filaments into filaments still
finer. In a mind less happily constituted, there might have been a risk that
this turn for subtilty would have produced serious evil. But in the heart and
understanding of Lord Holland there was ample security against all such
danger. He was not a man to be the dupe of his own ingenuity. He put his
logic to its proper use; and in him the dialectician was always subordinate
to the statesman.
His political life is written in the chronicles of his country. Perhaps, as we
have already intimated, his opinions on two or three great questions of
foreign policy were open to just objection. Yet even his errors, if he erred,
were amiable and respectable. We are not sure that we do not love and
admire him the more because he was now and then seduced from what we
regard as a wise policy by sympathy with the oppressed, by generosity
towards the fallen, by a philanthropy so enlarged that it took in all nations,
by love of peace,—a love which in him was second only to the love of
freedom,—and by the magnanimous credulity of a mind which was as
incapable of suspecting as of devising mischief.
To his views on questions of domestic policy the voice of his countrymen
does ample justice. They revere the memory of the man who was, during
forty years, the constant protector of all oppressed races and persecuted
sects; of the man whom neither the prejudices nor the interests belonging to
his station could seduce from the path of right; of the noble, who in every
great crisis cast in his lot with the commons; of the planter, who made

manful war on the slave trade; of the landowner, whose whole heart was in
the struggle against the corn-laws.
We have hitherto touched almost exclusively on those parts of Lord
Holland's character which were open to the observation of millions. How
shall we express the feelings with which his memory is cherished by those
who were honored with his friendship? Or in what language shall we speak
of that house, once celebrated for its rare attractions to the furthest ends of
the civilized world, and now silent and desolate as the grave? To that house,
a hundred and twenty years ago, a poet addressed those tender and graceful
lines, which have now acquired a new meaning not less sad than that which
they originally bore.

"Thou hill, whose brow the antique structures grace,
Reared by bold chiefs of Warwick's noble race,
Why, once so loved, whene'er thy bower appears,
O'er my dim eyeballs glance the sudden tears?
How sweet were once thy prospects fresh and fair,
Thy sloping walks and unpolluted air?
How sweet the glooms beneath thine aged trees,
Thy noon-tide shadow and thine evening breeze!
His image thy forsaken bowers restore;
Thy walks and airy prospects charm no more;
No more the summer in thy glooms allayed,
Thine evening breezes, and thy noon-day shade."

Yet a few years, and the shades and structures may follow their illustrious
masters. The wonderful city which, ancient and gigantic as it is, still
continues to grow as fast as a young town of logwood by a water-privilege
in Michigan, may soon displace those turrets and gardens which are
associated with so much that is interesting and noble, with the courtly
magnificence of Rich, with the loves of Ormond, with the counsels of
Cromwell, with the death of Addison. The time is coming when, perhaps, a
few old men, the last survivors of our generation, will in vain seek, amidst
new streets, and squares, and railway stations, for the site of that dwelling
which was in their youth the favorite resort of wits and beauties, of painters
and poets, of scholars, philosophers, and statesmen. They will then
remember, with strange tenderness, many objects once familiar to them, the

avenue and the terrace, the busts and the paintings, the carving, the
grotesque gilding, and the enigmatical mottoes. With peculiar fondness they
will recall that venerable chamber, in which all the antique gravity of a
college library was so singularly blended with all that female grace and wit
could devise to embellish a drawing-room. They will recollect, not
unmoved, those shelves loaded with the varied learning of many lands and
many ages, and those portraits in which were preserved the features of the
best and wisest Englishmen of two generations. They will recollect how
many men who have guided the politics of Europe, who have moved great
assemblies by reason and eloquence, who have put life into bronze and
canvas, or who have left to posterity things so written as it shall not
willingly let them die, were there mixed with all that was loveliest and
gayest in the society of the most splendid of capitals. They will remember
the peculiar character which belonged to that circle, in which every talent
and accomplishment, every art and science, had its place. They will
remember how the last debate was discussed in one corner, and the last
comedy of Scribe in another; while Wilkie gazed with modest admiration
on Sir Joshua's Baretti; while Mackintosh turned over Thomas Aquinas to
verify a quotation; while Talleyrand related his conversations with Barras at
the Luxembourg, or his ride with Lannes over the field of Austerlitz. They
will remember, above all, the grace, and the kindness, far more admirable
than grace, with which the princely hospitality of that ancient mansion was
dispensed. They will remember the venerable and benignant countenance
and the cordial voice of him who bade them welcome. They will remember
that temper which years of pain, of sickness, of lameness, of confinement,
seemed only to make sweeter and sweeter, and that frank politeness, which
at once relieved all the embarrassment of the youngest and most timid
writer or artist, who found himself for the first time among ambassadors
and earls. They will remember that constant flow of conversation, so
natural, so animated, so various, so rich with observation and anecdote; that
wit which never gave a wound; that exquisite mimicry which ennobled,
instead of degrading; that goodness of heart which appeared in every look
and accent, and gave additional value to every talent and acquirement. They
will remember, too, that he whose name they hold in reverence was not less
distinguished by the inflexible uprightness of his political conduct than by
his loving disposition and his winning manners. They will remember that in
the last lines which he traced, he expressed his joy that he had done nothing

unworthy of the friend of Fox and Grey; and they will have reason to feel
similar joy if, in looking back on many troubled years, they cannot accuse
themselves of having done anything unworthy of men who were
distinguished by the friendship of Lord Holland.

FOOTNOTES:
[4] The Opinions of Lord Holland, as recorded in the Journals of the House of
Lords, from 1797 to 1841. Collected and edited by D. C. Moylan, of Lincoln's
Inn, Barrister-at-Law. 8vo. London: 1841.

WARREN HASTINGS[5]
The Edinburgh Review, October, 1841
We are inclined to think that we shall best meet the wishes of our readers if,
instead of minutely examining this book, we attempt to give, in a way
necessarily hasty and imperfect, our own view of the life and character of
Mr. Hastings. Our feeling towards him is not exactly that of the House of
Commons which impeached him in 1787; neither is it that of the House of
Commons which uncovered and stood up to receive him in 1813. He had
great qualities, and he rendered great services to the state. But to represent
him as a man of stainless virtue is to make him ridiculous; and from a
regard for his memory, if from no other feeling, his friends would have
done well to lend no countenance to such adulation. We believe that, if he
were now living, he would have sufficient judgment and sufficient
greatness of mind to wish to be shown as he was. He must have known that
there were dark spots on his fame. He might also have felt with pride that
the splendor of his fame would bear many spots. He would have wished
posterity to have a likeness of him, though an unfavorable likeness, rather
than a daub at once insipid and unnatural, resembling neither him nor
anybody else. "Paint me as I am," said Oliver Cromwell, while sitting to
young Lely. "If you leave out the scars and wrinkles, I will not pay you a
shilling." Even in such a trifle, the great Protector showed both his good
sense and his magnanimity. He did not wish all that was characteristic in his
countenance to be lost, in the vain attempt to give him the regular features
and smooth blooming cheeks of the curl-pated minions of James the First.
He was content that his face should go forth marked with all the blemishes
which had been put on it by time, by war, by sleepless nights, by anxiety,
perhaps by remorse; but with valor, policy, authority, ind public care written
in all its princely lines. If men truly great knew their own interest, it is thus
that they would wish their minds to be portrayed.

Warren Hastings sprang from an ancient and illustrious race. It has been
affirmed that his pedigree can be traced back to the great Danish sea-king,
whose sails were long the terror of both coasts of the British Channel, and
who, after many fierce and doubtful struggles, yielded at last to the valor
and genius of Alfred. But the undoubted splendor of the line of Hastings
needs no illustration from fable. One branch of that line wore, in the
fourteenth century, the coronet of Pembroke. From another branch sprang
the renowned Chamberlain, the faithful adherent of the White Rose, whose
fate has furnished so striking a theme both to poets and to historians. His
family received from the Tudors the earldom of Huntingdon, which, after
long dispossession, was regained in our time by a series of events scarcely
paralleled in romance.
The lords of the manor of Daylesford, in Worcestershire, claimed to be
considered as the heads of this distinguished family. The main stock,
indeed, prospered less than some of the younger shoots. But the Daylesford
family, though not ennobled, was wealthy and highly considered, till, about
two hundred years ago, it was overwhelmed by the great ruin of the civil
war. The Hastings of that time was a zealous cavalier. He raised money on
his lands, sent his plate to the mint at Oxford, joined the royal army, and,
after spending half his property in the cause of King Charles, was glad to
ransom himself by making over most of the remaining half to Speaker
Lenthal. The old seat at Daylesford still remained in the family; but it could
no longer be kept up; and in the following generation it was sold to a
merchant of London.
Before this transfer took place, the last Hastings of Daylesford had
presented his second son to the rectory of the parish in which the ancient
residence of the family stood. The living was of little value; and the
situation of the poor clergyman, after the sale of the estate, was deplorable.
He was constantly engaged in lawsuits about his tithes with the new lord of
the manor, and was at length utterly ruined. His eldest son, Howard, a well
conducted young man, obtained a place in the Customs. The second son,
Pynaston, an idle, worthless boy, married before he was sixteen, lost his
wife in two years, and died in the West Indies, leaving to the care of his
unfortunate father a little orphan, destined to strange and memorable
vicissitudes of fortune.

Warren, the son of Pynaston, was born on the sixth of December, 1732. His
mother died a few days later, and he was left dependent on his distressed
grandfather. The child was early sent to the village school, where he learned
his letters on the same bench with the sons of the peasantry. Nor did
anything in his garb or fare indicate that his life was to take a widely
different course from that of the young rustics with whom he studied and
played. But no cloud could overcast the dawn of so much genius and so
much ambition. The very ploughmen observed, and long remembered, how
kindly little Warren took to his book. The daily sight of the lands which his
ancestors had possessed, and which had passed into the hands of strangers,
filled his young brain with wild fancies and projects. He loved to hear
stories of the wealth and greatness of his progenitors, of their splendid
housekeeping, their loyalty, and their valor. On one bright summer day, the
boy, then just seven years old, lay on the bank of the rivulet which flows
through the old domain of his house to join the Isis. There, as threescore
and ten years later he told the tale, rose in his mind a scheme which,
through all the turns of his eventful career, was never abandoned. He would
recover the estate which had belonged to his fathers. He would be Hastings
of Daylesford. This purpose, formed in infancy and poverty, grew stronger
as his intellect expanded and as his fortune rose. He pursued his plan with
that calm but indomitable force of will which was the most striking
peculiarity of his character. When, under a tropical sun, he ruled fifty
millions of Asiatics, his hopes, amidst all the cares of war, finance, and
legislation, still pointed to Daylesford. And when his long public life, so
singularly checkered with good and evil, with glory and obloquy, had at
length closed forever, it was to Daylesford that he retired to die.
When he was eight years old, his uncle Howard determined to take charge
of him, and to give him a liberal education. The boy went up to London,
and was sent to a school at Newington, where he was well taught but ill fed.
He always attributed the smallness of his stature to the hard and scanty fare
of this seminary. At ten he was removed to Westminster school, then
flourishing under the care of Dr. Nichols. Vinny Bourne, as his pupils
affectionately called him, was one of the masters. Churchill, Colman,
Lloyd, Cumberland, Cowper, were among the students. With Cowper,
Hastings formed a friendship which neither the lapse of time, nor a wide
dissimilarity of opinions and pursuits, could wholly dissolve. It does not

appear that they ever met after they had grown to manhood. But forty years
later, when the voices of many great orators were crying for vengeance on
the oppressor of India, the shy and secluded poet could image to himself
Hastings the Governor-General only as the Hastings with whom he had
rowed on the Thames and played in the cloister, and refused to believe that
so good-tempered a fellow could have done anything very wrong. His own
life had been spent in praying, musing, and rhyming among the water-lilies
of the Ouse. He had preserved in no common measure the innocence of
childhood. His spirit had indeed been severely tried, but not by temptations
which impelled him to any gross violation of the rules of social morality.
He had never been attacked by combinations of powerful and deadly
enemies. He had never been compelled to make a choice between
innocence and greatness, between crime and ruin. Firmly as he held in
theory the doctrine of human depravity, his habits were such that he was
unable to conceive how far from the path of right even kind and noble
natures may be hurried by the rage of conflict and the lust of dominion.
Hastings had another associate at Westminster of whom we shall have
occasion to make frequent mention, Elijah Impey. We know little about
their school-days. But, we think, we may safely venture to guess that,
whenever Hastings wished to play any trick more than usually naughty, he
hired Impey with a tart or a ball to act as fag in the worst part of the prank.
Warren was distinguished among his comrades as an excellent swimmer,
boatman, and scholar. At fourteen he was first in the examination for the
foundation. His name in gilded letters on the walls of the dormitory still
attests his victory over many older competitors. He stayed two years longer
at the school, and was looking forward to a studentship at Christ Church,
when an event happened which changed the whole course of his life.
Howard Hastings died, bequeathing his nephew to the care of a friend and
distant relation, named Chiswick. This gentleman, though he did not
absolutely refuse the charge, was desirous to rid himself of it as soon as
possible. Dr. Nichols made strong remonstrances against the cruelty of
interrupting the studies of a youth who seemed likely to be one of the first
scholars of the age. He even offered to bear the expense of sending his
favorite pupil to Oxford. But Mr. Chiswick was inflexible. He thought the
years which had already been wasted on hexameters and pentameters quite
sufficient. He had it in his power to obtain for the lad a writership in the

service of the East India Company. Whether the young adventurer, when
once shipped off, made a fortune, or died of a liver complaint, he equally
ceased to be a burden to anybody. Warren was accordingly removed from
Westminster school, and placed for a few months at a commercial academy,
to study arithmetic and book-keeping. In January, 1750, a few days after he
had completed his seventeenth year, he sailed for Bengal, and arrived at his
destination in the October following.
He was immediately placed at a desk in the Secretary's office at Calcutta,
and labored there during two years. Fort William was then a purely
commercial settlement. In the south of India the encroaching policy of
Dupleix had transformed the servants of the English Company, against their
will, into diplomatists and generals. The war of the succession was raging in
the Carnatic; and the tide had been suddenly turned against the French by
the genius of young Robert Clive. But in Bengal the European settlers, at
peace with the natives and with each other, were wholly occupied with
ledgers and bills of lading.
After two years passed in keeping accounts at Calcutta, Hastings was sent
up the country to Cossimbazar, a town which lies on the Hoogley, about a
mile from Moorshedabad, and which then bore to Moorshedabad a relation,
if we may compare small things with great, such as the city of London bears
to Westminster. Moorshedabad was the abode of the prince who, by an
authority ostensibly derived from the Mogul, but really independent, ruled
the three great provinces of Bengal, Orissa, and Bahar. At Moorshedabad
were the court, the haram, and the public offices. Cossimbazar was a port
and a place of trade, renowned for the quantity and excellence of the silks
which were sold in its marts, and constantly receiving and sending forth
fleets of richly laden barges. At this important point, the Company had
established a small factory subordinate to that of Fort William. Here, during
several years, Hastings was employed in making bargains for stuffs with
native brokers. While he was thus engaged, Surajah Dowlah succeeded to
the government, and declared war against the English. The defenceless
settlement of Cossimbazar, lying close to the tyrant's capital, was instantly
seized. Hastings was sent a prisoner to Moorshedabad, but, in consequence
of the humane intervention of the servants of the Dutch Company, was
treated with indulgence. Meanwhile the Nabob marched on Calcutta; the

governor and the commandant fled; the town and citadel were taken, and
most of the English prisoners perished in the Black Hole.
In these events originated the greatness of Warren Hastings. The fugitive
governor and his companions had taken refuge on the dreary islet of Fulda,
near the mouth of the Hoogley. They were naturally desirous to obtain full
information respecting the proceedings of the Nabob; and no person seemed
so likely to furnish it as Hastings, who was a prisoner at large in the
immediate neighborhood of the court. He thus became a diplomatic agent,
and soon established a high character for ability and resolution. The treason
which at a later period was fatal to Surajah Dowlah was already in progress;
and Hastings was admitted to the deliberations of the conspirators. But the
time for striking had not arrived. It was necessary to postpone the execution
of the design; and Hastings, who was now in extreme peril, fled to Fulda.
Soon after his arrival at Fulda, the expedition from Madras, commanded by
Clive, appeared in the Hoogley. Warren, young, intrepid, and excited
probably by the example of the Commander of the Forces, who, having like
himself been a mercantile agent of the Company, had been turned by public
calamities into a soldier, determined to serve in the ranks. During the early
operations of the war he carried a musket. But the quick eye of Clive soon
perceived that the head of the young volunteer would be more useful than
his arm. When, after the battle of Plassey, Meer Jaffier was proclaimed
Nabob of Bengal, Hastings was appointed to reside at the court of the new
prince as agent for the Company.
He remained at Moorshedabad till the year 1761, when he became a
member of Council, and was consequently forced to reside at Calcutta. This
was during the interval between Clive's first and second administration, an
interval which has left on the fame of the East India Company a stain, not
wholly effaced by many years of just and humane government. Mr.
Vansittart, the Governor, was at the head of a new and anomalous empire.
On the one side was a band of English functionaries, daring, intelligent,
eager to be rich. On the other side was a great native population, helpless,
timid, accustomed to crouch under oppression. To keep the stronger race
from preying on the weaker was an undertaking which tasked to the utmost
the talents and energy of Clive. Vansittart, with fair intentions, was a feeble
and inefficient ruler. The master caste, as was natural, broke loose from all

restraint; and then was seen what we believe to be the most frightful of all
spectacles, the strength of civilization without its mercy. To all other
despotism there is a check, imperfect indeed, and liable to gross abuse, but
still sufficient to preserve society from the last extreme of misery. A time
comes when the evils of submission are obviously greater than those of
resistance, when fear itself begets a sort of courage, when a convulsive
burst of popular rage and despair warns tyrants not to presume too far on
the patience of mankind. But against misgovernment such as then afflicted
Bengal it was impossible to struggle. The superior intelligence and energy
of the dominant class made their power irresistible. A war of Bengalese
against Englishmen was like a war of sheep against wolves, of men against
demons. The only protection which the conquered could find was in the
moderation, the clemency, the enlarged policy of the conquerors. That
protection, at a later period, they found. But at first English power came
among them unaccompanied by English morality. There was an interval
between the time at which they became our subjects, and the time at which
we began to reflect that we were bound to discharge towards them the
duties of rulers. During that interval the business of a servant of the
Company was simply to wring out of the natives a hundred or two hundred
thousand pounds as speedily as possible, that he might return home before
his constitution had suffered from the heat, to marry a peer's daughter, to
buy rotten boroughs in Cornwall, and to give balls in St. James's Square. Of
the conduct of Hastings at this time little is known; but the little that is
known, and the circumstance that little is known, must be considered as
honorable to him. He could not protect the natives: all that he could do was
to abstain from plundering and oppressing them; and this he appears to have
done. It is certain that at this time he continued poor; and it is equally
certain, that by cruelty and dishonesty he might easily have become rich. It
is certain that he was never charged with having borne a share in the worst
abuses which then prevailed; and it is almost equally certain that, if he had
borne a share in those abuses, the able and bitter enemies who afterwards
persecuted him would not have failed to discover and to proclaim his guilt.
The keen, severe, and even malevolent scrutiny to which his whole public
life was subjected, a scrutiny unparalleled, as we believe, in the history of
mankind, is in one respect advantageous to his reputation. It brought many
lamentable blemishes to light; but it entitles him to be considered pure from
every blemish which has not been brought to light.

The truth is that the temptations to which so many English functionaries
yielded in the time of Mr. Vansittart were not temptations addressed to the
ruling passions of Warren Hastings. He was not squeamish in pecuniary
transactions; but he was neither sordid nor rapacious. He was far too
enlightened a man to look on a great empire merely as a buccaneer would
look on a galleon. Had his heart been much worse than it was, his
understanding would have preserved him from that extremity of baseness.
He was an unscrupulous, perhaps an unprincipled statesman; but still he
was a statesman, and not a freebooter.
In 1764 Hastings returned to England. He had realized only a very moderate
fortune; and that moderate fortune was soon reduced to nothing, partly by
his praiseworthy liberality, and partly by his mismanagement. Towards his
relations he appears to have acted very generously. The greater part of his
savings he left in Bengal, hoping probably to obtain the high usury of India.
But high usury and bad security generally go together; and Hastings lost
both interest and principal.
He remained four years in England. Of his life at this time very little is
known. But it has been asserted, and is highly probable, that liberal studies
and the society of men of letters occupied a great part of his time. It is to be
remembered to his honor, that in days when the languages of the East were
regarded by other servants of the Company merely as the means of
communicating with weavers and money-changers, his enlarged and
accomplished mind sought in Asiatic learning for new forms of intellectual
enjoyment, and for new views of government and society. Perhaps, like
most persons who have paid much attention to departments of knowledge
which lie out of the common track, he was inclined to overrate the value of
his favorite studies. He conceived that the cultivation of Persian literature
might with advantage be made a part of the liberal education of an English
gentleman; and he drew up a plan with that view. It is said that the
University of Oxford, in which Oriental learning had never, since the
revival of letters, been wholly neglected, was to be the seat of the institution
which he contemplated. An endowment was expected from the munificence
of the Company; and professors thoroughly competent to interpret Hafiz
and Ferdusi were to be engaged in the East. Hastings called on Johnson,
with the hope, as it should seem, of interesting in this project a man who
enjoyed the highest literary reputation, and who was particularly connected

with Oxford. The interview appears to have left on Johnson's mind a most
favorable impression of the talents and attainments of his visitor. Long
after, when Hastings was ruling the immense population of British India,
the old philosopher wrote to him, and referred in the most courtly terms,
though with great dignity, to their short but agreeable intercourse.
Hastings soon began to look again towards India. He had little to attach him
to England; and his pecuniary embarrassments were great. He solicited his
old masters the Directors for employment. They acceded to his request,
with high compliments both to his abilities and to his integrity, and
appointed him a Member of Council at Madras. It would be unjust not to
mention that, though forced to borrow money for his outfit, he did not
withdraw any portion of the sum which he had appropriated to the relief of
his distressed relations. In the spring of 1769 he embarked on board of the
Duke of Grafton, and commenced a voyage distinguished by incidents
which might furnish matter for a novel.
Among the passengers in the Duke of Grafton was a German of the name of
Imhoff. He called himself a baron; but he was in distressed circumstances,
and was going out to Madras as a portrait-painter, in the hope of picking up
some of the pagodas which were then lightly got and as lightly spent by the
English in India. The baron was accompanied by his wife, a native, we have
somewhere read, of Archangel. This young woman who, born under the
Arctic circle, was destined to play the part of a Queen under the tropic of
Cancer, had an agreeable person, a cultivated mind, and manners in the
highest degree engaging. She despised her husband heartily, and, as the
story which we have to tell sufficiently proves, not without reason. She was
interested by the conversation and flattered by the attentions of Hastings.
The situation was indeed perilous. No place is so propitious to the
formation either of close friendships or of deadly enmities as an Indiaman.
There are very few people who do not find a voyage which lasts several
months insupportably dull. Anything is welcome which may break that long
monotony, a sail, a shark, an albatross, a man overboard. Most passengers
find some resource in eating twice as many meals as on land. But the great
devices for killing the time are quarrelling and flirting. The facilities for
both these exciting pursuits are great. The inmates of the ship are thrown
together far more than in any country-seat or boarding-house. None can
escape from the rest except by imprisoning himself in a cell in which he can

hardly turn. All food, all exercise, is taken in company. Ceremony is to a
great extent banished. It is every day in the power of a mischievous person
to inflict innumerable annoyances; it is every day in the power of an
amiable person to confer little services. It not seldom happens that serious
distress and danger call forth in genuine beauty and deformity heroic virtues
and abject vices which, in the ordinary intercourse of good society, might
remain during many years unknown even to intimate associates. Under such
circumstances met Warren Hastings and the Baroness Imhoff, two persons
whose accomplishments would have attracted notice in any court of Europe.
The gentleman had no domestic ties. The lady was tied to a husband for
whom she had no regard, and who had no regard for his own honor. An
attachment sprang up, which was soon strengthened by events such as could
hardly have occurred on land. Hastings fell ill. The baroness nursed him
with womanly tenderness, gave him his medicines with her own hand, and
even sat up in his cabin while he slept. Long before the Duke of Grafton
reached Madras, Hastings was in love. But his love was of a most
characteristic description. Like his hatred, like his ambition, like all his
passions, it was strong, but not impetuous. It was calm, deep, earnest,
patient of delay, unconquerable by time. Imhoff was called into council by
his wife and his wife's lover. It was arranged that the baroness should
institute a suit for a divorce in the courts of Franconia, that the baron should
afford every facility to the proceeding, and that, during the years which
might elapse before the sentence should be pronounced, they should
continue to live together. It was also agreed that Hastings should bestow
some very substantial marks of gratitude on the complaisant husband, and
should, when the marriage was dissolved, make the lady his wife, and adopt
the children whom she had already borne to Imhoff.
At Madras, Hastings found the trade of the Company in a very disorganized
state. His own tastes would have led him rather to political than to
commercial pursuits; but he knew that the favor of his employers depended
chiefly on their dividends, and that their dividends depended chiefly on the
investment. He therefore, with great judgment, determined to apply his
vigorous mind for a time to this department of business, which had been
much neglected, since the servants of the Company had ceased to be clerks,
and had become warriors and negotiators.

In a very few months he effected an important reform. The Directors
notified to him their high approbation, and were so much pleased with his
conduct that they determined to place him at the head of the government of
Bengal. Early in 1772 he quitted Fort St. George for his new post. The
Imhoffs, who were still man and wife, accompanied him, and lived at
Calcutta on the same plan which they had already followed during more
than two years.
When Hastings took his seat at the head of the council board, Bengal was
still governed according to the system which Clive had devised,—a system
which was, perhaps, skilfully contrived for the purpose of facilitating and
concealing a great revolution, but which, when that revolution was
complete and irrevocable, could produce nothing but inconvenience. There
were two governments, the real and the ostensible. The supreme power
belonged to the Company, and was in truth the most despotic power that
can be conceived. The only restraint on the English masters of the country
was that which their own justice and humanity imposed on them. There was
no constitutional check on their will, and resistance to them was utterly
hopeless.
But, though thus absolute in reality, the English had not yet assumed the
style of sovereignty. They held their territories as vassals of the throne of
Delhi; they raised their revenues as collectors appointed by the imperial
commission; their public seal was inscribed with the imperial titles; and
their mint struck only the imperial coin.
There was still a nabob of Bengal, who stood to the English rulers of his
country in the same relation in which Augustulus stood to Odoacer, or the
last Merovingians to Charles Martel and Pepin. He lived at Moorshedabad,
surrounded by princely magnificence. He was approached with outward
marks of reverence, and his name was used in public instruments. But in the
government of the country he had less real share than the youngest writer or
cadet in the Company's service.
The English council which represented the Company at Calcutta was
constituted on a very different plan from that which has since been adopted.
At present the Governor is, as to all executive measures, absolute. He can
declare war, conclude peace, appoint public functionaries or remove them,

in opposition to the unanimous sense of those who sit with him in council.
They are, indeed, entitled to know all that is done, to discuss all that is
done, to advise, to remonstrate, to send protests to England. But it is with
the Governor that the supreme power resides, and on him that the whole
responsibility rests. This system, which was introduced by Mr. Pitt and Mr.
Dundas in spite of the strenuous opposition of Mr. Burke, we conceive to be
on the whole the best that was ever devised for the government of a country
where no materials can be found for a representative constitution. In the
time of Hastings the Governor had only one vote in council, and, in case of
an equal division, a casting vote. It therefore happened not unfrequently that
he was overruled on the gravest questions; and it was possible that he might
be wholly excluded, for years together, from the real direction of public
affairs.
The English functionaries at Fort William had as yet paid little or no
attention to the internal government of Bengal. The only branch of politics
about which they much busied themselves was negotiation with the native
princes. The police, the administration of justice, the details of the
collection of revenue, were almost entirely neglected. We may remark that
the phraseology of the Company's servants still bears the traces of this state
of things. To this day they always use the word "political" as synonymous
with "diplomatic." We could name that gentleman still living, who was
described by the highest authority as an invaluable public servant,
eminently fit to be at the head of the internal administration of a whole
presidency, but unfortunately quite ignorant of all political business.
The internal government of Bengal the English rulers delegated to a great
native minister, who was stationed at Moorshedabad. All military affairs,
and with the exception of what pertains to mere ceremonial all foreign
affairs, were withdrawn from his control; but the other departments of the
administration were entirely confided to him. His own stipend amounted to
near a hundred thousand pounds sterling a year. The personal allowance of
the Nabob, amounting to more than three hundred thousand pounds a year,
passed through the minister's hands, and was, to a great extent, at his
disposal. The collection of the revenue, the administration of justice, the
maintenance of order, were left to this high functionary; and for the exercise
of his immense power he was responsible to none but the British masters of
the country.

A situation so important, lucrative, and splendid was naturally an object of
ambition to the ablest and most powerful natives. Clive had found it
difficult to decide between conflicting pretensions. Two candidates stood
out prominently from the crowd, each of them the representative of a race
and of a religion.
One of these was Mahommed Reza Khan, a Mussulman of Persian
extraction, able, active, religious after the fashion of his people, and highly
esteemed by them. In England he might perhaps have been regarded as a
corrupt and greedy politician. But, tried by the lower standard of Indian
morality, he might be considered as a man of integrity and honor.
His competitor was a Hindoo Brahmin whose name has, by a terrible and
melancholy event, been inseparably associated with that of Warren
Hastings, the Maharajah Nuncomar. This man had played an important part
in all the revolutions which, since the time of Surajah Dowlah, had taken
place in Bengal. To the consideration which in that country belongs to high
and pure caste, he added the weight which is derived from wealth, talents,
and experience. Of his moral character it is difficult to give a notion to
those who are acquainted with human nature only as it appears in our
island. What the Italian is to the Englishman, what the Hindoo is to the
Italian, what the Bengalee is to other Hindoos, that was Nuncomar to other
Bengalese. The physical organization of the Bengalee is feeble even to
effeminacy. He lives in a constant vapor bath. His pursuits are sedentary, his
limbs delicate, his movements languid. During many ages he has been
trampled upon by men of bolder and more hardy breeds. Courage,
independence, veracity, are qualities to which his constitution and his
situation are equally unfavorable. His mind bears a singular analogy to his
body. It is weak even to helplessness, for purposes of manly resistance; but
its suppleness and its tact move the children of sterner climates to
admiration not unmingled with contempt. All those arts which are the
natural defence of the weak are more familiar to this subtle race than to the
Ionian of the time of Juvenal, or to the Jew of the dark ages. What the horns
are to the buffalo, what the paw is to the tiger, what the sting is to the bee,
what beauty, according to the old Greek song, is to woman, deceit is to the
Bengalee. Large promises, smooth excuses, elaborate tissues of
circumstantial falsehood, chicanery, perjury, forgery, are the weapons,
offensive and defensive, of the people of the Lower Ganges. All those

millions do not furnish one sepoy to the armies of the Company. But as
usurers, as money-changers, as sharp legal practitioners, no class of human
beings can bear a comparison with them. With all his softness, the Bengalee
is by no means placable in his enmities or prone to pity. The pertinacity
with which he adheres to his purposes yields only to the immediate pressure
of fear. Nor does he lack a certain kind of courage which is often wanting to
his masters. To inevitable evils he is sometimes found to oppose a passive
fortitude, such as the Stoics attributed to their ideal sage. A European
warrior who rushes on a battery of cannon with a loud hurrah will
sometimes shriek under the surgeon's knife, and fall into an agony of
despair at the sentence of death. But the Bengalee who would see his
country overrun, his house laid in ashes, his children murdered or
dishonored, without having the spirit to strike one blow, has yet been
known to endure torture with the firmness of Mucius, and to mount the
scaffold with the steady step and even pulse of Algernon Sydney.
In Nuncomar the national character was strongly and with exaggeration
personified. The Company's servants had repeatedly detected him in the
most criminal intrigues. On one occasion he brought a false charge against
another Hindoo, and tried to substantiate it by producing forged documents.
On another occasion it was discovered that, while professing the strongest
attachment to the English, he was engaged in several conspiracies against
them, and in particular that he was the medium of a correspondence
between the court of Delhi and the French authorities in the Carnatic. For
these and similar practices he had been long detained in confinement. But
his talents and influence had not only procured his liberation, but had
obtained for him a certain degree of consideration even among the British
rulers of his country.
Clive was extremely unwilling to place a Mussulman at the head of the
administration of Bengal. On the other hand, he could not bring himself to
confer immense power on a man to whom every sort of villainy had
repeatedly been brought home. Therefore, though the Nabob, over whom
Nuncomar had by intrigue acquired great influence, begged that the artful
Hindoo might be entrusted with the government, Clive, after some
hesitation, decided honestly and wisely in favor of Mahommed Reza Khan.
When Hastings became Governor, Mahommed Reza Khan had held power

seven years. An infant son of Meer Jaffier was now nabob; and the
guardianship of the young prince's person had been confided to the minister.
Nuncomar, stimulated at once by cupidity and malice, had been constantly
attempting to hurt his successful rival. This was not difficult. The revenues
of Bengal, under the administration established by Clive, did not yield such
a surplus as had been anticipated by the Company; for at that time, the most
absurd notions were entertained in England respecting the wealth of India.
Palaces of porphyry, hung with the richest brocade, heaps of pearls and
diamonds, vaults from which pagodas and gold mohurs were measured out
by the bushel, filled the imagination even of men of business. Nobody
seemed to be aware of what nevertheless was most undoubtedly the truth,
that India was a poorer country than countries which in Europe are
reckoned poor, than Ireland, for example, or than Portugal. It was
confidently believed by lords of the treasury and members for the city that
Bengal would not only defray its own charges, but would afford an
increased dividend to the proprietors of India stock, and large relief to the
English finances. These absurd expectations were disappointed; and the
directors, naturally enough, chose to attribute the disappointment rather to
the mismanagement of Mahommed Reza Khan than to their own ignorance
of the country entrusted to their care. They were confirmed in their error by
the agents of Nuncomar; for Nuncomar had agents even in Leadenhall
Street. Soon after Hastings reached Calcutta, he received a letter addressed
by the Court of Directors, not to the council generally, but to himself in
particular. He was directed to remove Mahommed Reza Khan, to arrest
him, together with all his family and all his partisans, and to institute a strict
inquiry into the whole administration of the province. It was added that the
Governor would do well to avail himself of the assistance of Nuncomar in
the investigation. The vices of Nuncomar were acknowledged. But even
from his vices, it was said, much advantage might at such a conjuncture be
derived; and, though he could not safely be trusted, it; might still be proper
to encourage him by hopes of reward.
The Governor bore no good will to Nuncomar. Many years before, they had
known each other at Moorshedabad; and then a quarrel had risen between
them which all the authority of their superiors could hardly compose.
Widely as they differed in most points, they resembled each other in this,
that both were men of unforgiving natures. To Mahommed Reza Khan, on

the other hand, Hastings had no feelings of hostility. Nevertheless he
proceeded to execute the instructions of the Company with an alacrity
which he never showed except when instructions were in perfect
conformity with his own views. He had, wisely, as we think, determined to
get rid of the system of double government in Bengal. The orders of the
Directors furnished him with the means of effecting his purpose, and
dispensed him from the necessity of discussing the matter with his council.
He took his measures with his usual vigor and dexterity. At midnight, the
palace of Mahommed Reza Khan at Moorshedabad was surrounded by a
battalion of sepoys. The minister was roused from his slumbers, and
informed that he was a prisoner. With the Mussulman gravity, he bent his
head and submitted himself to the will of God. He fell not alone. A chief
named Schitab Roy had been entrusted with the government of Bahar. His
valor and his attachment to the English had more than once been signally
proved. On that memorable day on which the people of Patna saw from
their walls the whole army of the Mogul scattered by the little band of
Captain Knox, the voice of the British conquerors assigned the palm of
gallantry to the brave Asiatic. "I never," said Knox, when he introduced
Schitab Roy, covered with blood and dust, to the English functionaries
assembled in the factory,—"I never saw a native fight so before." Schitab
Roy was involved in the ruin of Mahommed Reza Khan, was removed from
office, and was placed under arrest. The members of the council received no
intimation of these measures till the prisoners were on their road to
Calcutta.
The inquiry into the conduct of the minister was postponed on different
pretences. He was detained in an easy confinement during many months. In
the meantime, the great revolution which Hastings had planned was carried
into effect. The office of minister was abolished. The internal administration
was transferred to the servants of the Company. A system, a very imperfect
system, it is true, of civil and criminal justice, under English
superintendence, was established. The Nabob was no longer to have even
an ostensible share in the government; but he was still to receive a
considerable annual allowance, and to be surrounded with the state of
sovereignty. As he was an infant, it was necessary to provide guardians for
his person and property. His person was entrusted to a lady of his father's
haram, known by the name of the Munny Begum. The office of treasurer of

the household was bestowed on a son of Nuncomar, named Goordas.
Nuncomar's services were wanted, yet he could not safely be trusted with
power; and Hastings thought it a master stroke of policy to reward the able
and unprincipled parent by promoting the inoffensive child.
The revolution completed, the double government dissolved, the Company
installed in the full sovereignty of Bengal, Hastings had no motive to treat
the late ministers with rigor. Their trial had been put off on various pleas till
the new organization was complete. They were then brought before a
committee, over which the Governor presided. Schitab Roy was speedily
acquitted with honor. A formal apology was made to him for the restraint to
which he had been subjected. All the Eastern marks of respect were
bestowed on him. He was clothed in a robe of state, presented with jewels
and with a richly harnessed elephant, and sent back to his government at
Patna. But his health had suffered from confinement; his high spirit had
been cruelly wounded; and soon after his liberation he died of a broken
heart.
The innocence of Mahommed Reza Khan was not so clearly established.
But the Governor was not disposed to deal harshly. After a long hearing, in
which Nuncomar appeared as the accuser, and displayed both the art and the
inveterate rancor which distinguished him, Hastings pronounced that the
charges had not been made out, and ordered the fallen minister to be set at
liberty.
Nuncomar had purposed to destroy the Mussulman administration, and to
rise on its ruin. Both his malevolence and his cupidity had been
disappointed. Hastings had made him a tool, had used him for the purpose
of accomplishing the transfer of the government from Moorshedabad to
Calcutta, from native to European hands. The rival, the enemy, so long
envied, so implacably persecuted, had been dismissed unhurt. The situation
so long and ardently desired had been abolished. It was natural that the
Governor should be from that time an object of the most intense hatred to
the vindictive Brahmin. As yet, however, it was necessary to suppress such
feelings. The time was coming when that long animosity was to end in a
desperate and deadly struggle.

In the meantime, Hastings was compelled to turn his attention to foreign
affairs. The object of his diplomacy was at this time simply to get money.
The finances of his government were in an embarrassed state; and this
embarrassment he was determined to relieve by some means, fair or foul.
The principle which directed all his dealings with his neighbors is fully
expressed by the old motto of one of the great predatory families of
Teviotdale, "Thou shalt want ere I want." He seems to have laid it down, as
a fundamental proposition which could not be disputed, that when he had
not as many lacs of rupees as the public service required, he was to take
them from anybody who had. One thing, indeed, is to be said in excuse for
him. The pressure applied to him by his employers at home was such as
only the highest virtue could have withstood, such as left him no choice
except to commit great wrongs, or to resign his high post, and with that post
all his hopes of fortune and distinction. The Directors, it is true, never
enjoined or applauded any crime. Far from it. Whoever examines their
letters written at that time will find there many just and humane sentiments,
many excellent precepts, in short, an admirable code of political ethics. But
every exhortation is modified or nullified by a demand for money. "Govern
leniently, and send more money; practise strict justice and moderation
towards neighboring powers, and send more money;" this is in truth the
sum of almost all the instructions that Hastings ever received from home.
Now these instructions, being interpreted, mean simply, "Be the father and
the oppressor of the people; be just and unjust, moderate and rapacious."
The Directors dealt with India as the church, in the good old times, dealt
with a heretic. They delivered the victim over to the executioners, with an
earnest request that all possible tenderness might be shown. We by no
means accuse or suspect those who framed these despatches of hypocrisy. It
is probable that, writing fifteen thousand miles from the place where their
orders were to be carried into effect, they never perceived the gross
inconsistency of which they were guilty. But the inconsistency was at once
manifest to their vicegerent at Calcutta, who, with an empty treasury, with
an unpaid army, with his own salary often in arrear, with deficient crops,
with government tenants daily running away, was called upon to remit
home another half million without fail. Hastings saw that it was absolutely
necessary for him to disregard either the moral discourses or the pecuniary
requisitions of his employers. Being forced to disobey them in something,
he had to consider what kind of disobedience they would most readily

pardon; and he correctly judged that the safest course would be to neglect
the sermons and to find the rupees.
A mind so fertile as his, and so little restrained by conscientious scruples,
speedily discovered several modes of relieving the financial
embarrassments of the government. The allowance of the Nabob of Bengal
was reduced at a stroke from three hundred and twenty thousand pounds a
year to half that sum. The Company had bound itself to pay near three
hundred thousand pounds a year to the Great Mogul, as a mark of homage
for the provinces which he had entrusted to their care; and they had ceded
to him the districts of Corah and Allahabad. On the plea that the Mogul was
not really independent, but merely a tool in the hands of others, Hastings
determined to retract these concessions. He accordingly declared that the
English would pay no more tribute, and sent troops to occupy Allahabad
and Corah. The situation of these places was such that there would be little
advantage and great expense in retaining them. Hastings, who wanted
money and not territory, determined to sell them. A purchaser was not
wanting. The rich province of Oude had, in the general dissolution of the
Mogul Empire, fallen to the share of the great Mussulman house by which
it is still governed. About twenty years ago, this house, by the permission of
the British government, assumed the royal title; but, in the time of Warren
Hastings, such an assumption would have been considered by the
Mahommedans of India as a monstrous impiety. The Prince of Oude,
though he held the power, did not venture to use the style of sovereignty. To
the appellation of Nabob or Viceroy, he added that of Vizier of the
monarchy of Hindostan, just as in the last century the Electors of Saxony
and Brandenburg, though independent of the Emperor, and often in arms
against him, were proud to style themselves his Grand Chamberlain and
Grand Marshal. Sujah Dowlah, then Nabob Vizier, was on excellent terms
with the English. He had a large treasure. Allahabad and Corah were so
situated that they might be of use to him and could be of none to the
Company. The buyer and seller soon came to an understanding; and the
provinces which had been torn from the Mogul were made over to the
government of Oude for about half a million sterling.
But there was another matter still more important to be settled by the Vizier
and the Governor. The fate of a brave people was to be decided. It was

decided in a manner which has left a lasting stain on the fame of Hastings
and of England.
The people of Central Asia had always been to the inhabitants of India what
the warriors of the German forests were to the subjects of the decaying
monarchy of Rome. The dark, slender, and timid Hindoo shrank from a
conflict with the strong muscle and resolute spirit of the fair race, which
dwelt beyond the passes. There is reason to believe that, at a period anterior
to the dawn of regular history, the people who spoke the rich and flexible
Sanskrit came from regions lying far beyond the Hyphasis and the
Hystaspes, and imposed their yoke on the children of the soil. It is certain
that, during the last ten centuries, a succession of invaders descended from
the west on Hindostan; nor was the course of conquest ever turned back
towards the setting sun, till that memorable campaign in which the cross of
St. George was planted on the walls of Ghizni.
The Emperors of Hindostan themselves came from the other side of the
great mountain ridge; and it had always been their practice to recruit their
army from the hardy and valiant race from which their own illustrious
house sprang. Among the military adventurers who were allured to the
Mogul standards from the neighborhood of Cabul and Candahar were
conspicuous several gallant bands, known by the name of the Rohillas.
Their services had been rewarded with large tracts of land, fiefs of the
spear, if we may use an expression drawn from an analogous state of things,
in that fertile plain through which the Ramgunga flows from the snowy
heights of Kumaon to join the Ganges. In the general confusion which
followed the death of Aurungzebe, the warlike colony became virtually
independent. The Rohillas were distinguished from the other inhabitants of
India by a peculiarly fair complexion. They were more honorably
distinguished by courage in war, and by skill in the arts of peace. While
anarchy raged from Lahore to Cape Comorin, their little territory enjoyed
the blessings of repose under the guardianship of valor. Agriculture and
commerce nourished among them; nor were they negligent of rhetoric and
poetry. Many persons now living have heard aged men talk with regret of
the golden days when the Afghan princes ruled in the vale of Rohilcund.
Sujah Dowlah had set his heart on adding this rich district to his own
principality. Right, or show of right, he had absolutely none. His claim was

in no respect better founded than that of Catherine to Poland, or that of the
Bonaparte family to Spain. The Rohillas held their country by exactly the
same title by which he held his, and had governed their country far better
than his had ever been governed. Nor were they a people whom it was
perfectly safe to attack. Their land was indeed an open plain, destitute of
natural defences; but their veins were full of the high blood of Afghanistan.
As soldiers, they had not the steadiness which is seldom found except in
company with strict discipline; but their impetuous valor had been proved
on many fields of battle. It was said that their chiefs, when united by
common peril, could bring eighty thousand men into the field. Sujah
Dowlah had himself seen them fight, and wisely shrank from a conflict with
them. There was in India one army, and only one, against which even those
proud Caucasian tribes could not stand. It had been abundantly proved that
neither tenfold odds, nor the martial ardor of the boldest Asiatic nations,
could avail aught against English science and resolution. Was it possible to
induce the Governor of Bengal to let out to hire the irresistible energies of
the imperial people, the skill against which the ablest chiefs of Hindostan
were helpless as infants, the discipline which had so often triumphed over
the frantic struggles of fanaticism and despair, the unconquerable British
courage which is never so sedate and stubborn as towards the close of a
doubtful and murderous day?
This was what the Nabob Vizier asked, and what Hastings granted. A
bargain was soon struck. Each of the negotiators had what the other wanted.
Hastings was in need of funds to carry on the government of Bengal, and to
send remittances to London; and Sujah Dowlah had an ample revenue.
Sujah Dowlah was bent on subjugating the Rohillas; and Hastings had at his
disposal the only force by which the Rohillas could be subjugated. It was
agreed that an English army should be lent to the Nabob Vizier, and that, for
the loan, he should pay four hundred thousand pounds sterling, besides
defraying all the charge of the troops while employed in his service.
"I really cannot see," says Mr. Gleig, "upon what grounds, either of political
or moral justice, this proposition deserves to be stigmatized as infamous." If
we understand the meaning of words, it is infamous to commit a wicked
action for hire, and it is wicked to engage in war without provocation. In
this particular war, scarcely one aggravating circumstance was wanting. The
object of the Rohilla war was this, to deprive a large population, who had

never done us the least harm, of a good government, and to place them,
against their will, under an execrably bad one. Nay, even this is not all.
England now descended far below the level even of those petty German
princes who, about the same time, sold us troops to fight the Americans.
The hussar-mongers of Hesse and Anspach had at least the assurance that
the expeditions on which their soldiers were to be employed would be
conducted in conformity with the humane rules of civilized warfare. Was
the Rohilla war likely to be so conducted? Did the Governor stipulate that it
should be so conducted? He well knew what Indian warfare was. He well
knew that the power which he covenanted to put into Sujah Dowlah's hands
would, in all probability, be atrociously abused; and he required no
guarantee, no promise that it should not be so abused. He did not even
reserve to himself the right of withdrawing his aid in case of abuse,
however gross. We are almost ashamed to notice Major Scott's absurd plea,
that Hastings was justified in letting out English troops to slaughter the
Rohillas, because the Rohillas were not of Indian race, but a colony from a
distant country. What were the English themselves? Was it for them to
proclaim a crusade for the expulsion of all intruders from the countries
watered by the Ganges? Did it lie in their mouths to contend that a foreign
settler who establishes an empire in India is a caput lupinum? What would
they have said if any other power had, on such a ground, attacked Madras
or Calcutta, without the slightest provocation? Such a defence was wanting
to make the infamy of the transaction complete. The atrocity of the crime,
and the hypocrisy of the apology, are worthy of each other.
One of the three brigades of which the Bengal army consisted was sent
under Colonel Champion to join Sujah Dowlah's forces. The Rohillas
expostulated, entreated, offered a large ransom, but in vain. They then
resolved to defend themselves to the last. A bloody battle was fought. "The
enemy," says Colonel Champion, "gave proof of a good share of military
knowledge; and it is impossible to describe a more obstinate firmness of
resolution than they displayed." The dastardly sovereign of Oude fled from
the field. The English were left unsupported; but their fire and their charge
were irresistible. It was not, however, till the most distinguished chiefs had
fallen, fighting bravely at the head of their troops, that the Rohilla ranks
gave way. Then the Nabob Vizier and his rabble made their appearance, and
hastened to plunder the camp of the valiant enemies, whom they had never

dared to look in the face. The soldiers of the Company, trained in an exact
discipline, kept unbroken order, while the tents were pillaged by these
worthless allies. But many voices were heard to exclaim, "We have had all
the fighting, and those rogues are to have all the profit!"
Then the horrors of Indian war were let loose on the fair valleys and cities
of Rohilcund. The whole country was in a blaze. More than a hundred
thousand people fled from their homes to pestilential jungles, preferring
famine, and fever, and the haunts of tigers, to the tyranny of him to whom
an English and a Christian government had, for shameful lucre, sold their
substance, and their blood, and the honor of their wives and daughters.
Colonel Champion remonstrated with the Nabob Vizier, and sent strong
representations to Fort William; but the Governor had made no conditions
as to the mode in which the war was to be carried on. He had troubled
himself about nothing but his forty lacs; and, though he might disapprove of
Sujah Dowlah's wanton barbarity, he did not think himself entitled to
interfere, except by offering advice. This delicacy excites the admiration of
the biographer. "Mr. Hastings," he says, "could not himself dictate to the
Nabob, nor permit the commander of the Company's troops to dictate how
the war was to be carried on." No, to be sure. Mr. Hastings had only to put
down by main force the brave struggles of innocent men fighting for their
liberty. Their military resistance crushed, his duties ended; and he had then
only to fold his arms and look on, while their villages were burned, their
children butchered, and their women violated. Will Mr. Gleig seriously
maintain this opinion? Is any rule more plain than this, that whoever
voluntarily gives to another irresistible power over human beings is bound
to take order that such power shall not be barbarously abused? But we beg
pardon of our readers for arguing a point so clear.
We hasten to the end of this sad and disgraceful story. The war ceased. The
finest population in India was subjected to a greedy, cowardly, cruel tyrant.
Commerce and agriculture languished. The rich province which had
tempted the cupidity of Sujah Dowlah became the most miserable part even
of his miserable dominions. Yet is the injured nation not extinct. At long
intervals gleams of its ancient spirit have flashed forth; and even at this day,
valor, and self-respect, and a chivalrous feeling rare among Asiatics, and a
bitter remembrance of the great crime of England, distinguish that noble
Afghan race. To this day they are regarded as the best of all sepoys at the

cold steel; and it was very recently remarked, by one who had enjoyed great
opportunities of observation, that the only natives of India to whom the
word "gentleman" can with perfect propriety be applied are to be found
among the Rohillas.
Whatever we may think of the morality of Hastings, it cannot be denied that
the financial results of his policy did honor to his talents. In less than two
years after he assumed the government, he had, without imposing any
additional burdens on the people subject to his authority, added about four
hundred and fifty thousand pounds to the annual income of the Company,
besides procuring about a million in ready money. He had also relieved the
finances of Bengal from military expenditure, amounting to near a quarter
of a million a year, and had thrown that charge on the Nabob of Oude.
There can be no doubt that this was a result which, if it had been obtained
by honest means, would have entitled him to the warmest gratitude of his
country, and which, by whatever means obtained, proved that he possessed
great talents for administration.
In the meantime, Parliament had been engaged in long and grave
discussions on Asiatic affairs. The ministry of Lord North, in the session of
1773, introduced a measure which made a considerable change in the
constitution of the Indian government. This law, known by the name of the
Regulating Act, provided that the presidency of Bengal should exercise a
control over the other possessions of the Company; that the chief of that
presidency should be styled Governor-General; that he should be assisted
by four Councillors; and that a supreme court of judicature, consisting of a
chief justice and three inferior judges, should be established at Calcutta.
This court was made independent of the Governor-General and Council,
and was entrusted with a civil and criminal jurisdiction of immense and, at
the same time, of undefined extent.
The Governor-General and Councillors were named in the act, and were to
hold their situations for five years. Hastings was to be the first Governor-
General. One of the four new Councillors, Mr. Barwell, an experienced
servant of the Company, was then in India. The other three, General
Clavering, Mr. Monson, and Mr. Francis, were sent out from England.

The ablest of the new Councillors was, beyond all doubt, Philip Francis. His
acknowledged compositions prove that he possessed considerable
eloquence and information. Several years passed in the public offices had
formed him to habits of business. His enemies have never denied that he
had a fearless and manly spirit; and his friends, we are afraid, must
acknowledge that his estimate of himself was extravagantly high, that his
temper was irritable, that his deportment was often rude and petulant, and
that his hatred was of intense bitterness and long duration.
It is scarcely possible to mention this eminent man without adverting for a
moment to the question which his name at once suggests to every mind.
Was he the author of the Letters of Junius? Our own firm belief is that he
was. The evidence is, we think, such as would support a verdict in a civil,
nay, in a criminal proceeding. The handwriting of Junius is the very peculiar
handwriting of Francis, slightly disguised. As to the position, pursuits, and
connections of Junius, the following are the most important facts which can
be considered as clearly proved: first, that he was acquainted with the
technical forms of the secretary of state's office; secondly, that he was
intimately acquainted with the business of the war office; thirdly, that he,
during the year 1770, attended debates in the House of Lords, and took
notes of speeches, particularly of the speeches of Lord Chatham; fourthly,
that he bitterly resented the appointment of Mr. Chamier to the place of
deputy secretary-at-war; fifthly, that he was bound by some strong tie to the
first Lord Holland. Now, Francis passed some years in the secretary of
state's office. He was subsequently chief clerk of the war office. He
repeatedly mentioned that he had himself, in 1770, heard speeches of Lord
Chatham; and some of these speeches were actually printed from his notes.
He resigned his clerkship at the war office from resentment at the
appointment of Mr. Chamier. It was by Lord Holland that he was first
introduced into the public service. Now, here are five marks, all of which
ought to be found in Junius. They are all five found in Francis. We do not
believe that more than two of them can be found in any other person
whatever. If this argument does not settle the question, there is an end of all
reasoning on circumstantial evidence.
The internal evidence seems to us to point the same way. The style of
Francis bears a strong resemblance to that of Junius; nor are we disposed to
admit, what is generally taken for granted, that the acknowledged

compositions of Francis are very decidedly inferior to the anonymous
letters. The argument from inferiority, at all events, is one which may be
urged with at least equal force against every claimant that has ever been
mentioned, with the single exception of Burke; and it would be a waste of
time to prove that Burke was not Junius. And what conclusion, after all, can
be drawn from mere inferiority? Every writer must produce his best work;
and the interval between his best work and his second best work may be
very wide indeed. Nobody will say that the best letters of Junius are more
decidedly superior to the acknowledged works of Francis than three or four
of Corneille's tragedies to the rest, than three or four of Ben Jonson's
comedies to the rest, than the Pilgrim's Progress to the other works of
Bunyan, than Don Quixote to the other works of Cervantes. Nay, it is
certain that Junius, whoever he may have been, was a most unequal writer.
To go no further than the letters which bear the signature of Junius—the
letter to the king, and the letters to Horne Tooke, have little in common,
except the asperity; and asperity was an ingredient seldom wanting either in
the writings or in the speeches of Francis.
Indeed one of the strongest reasons for believing that Francis was Junius is
the moral resemblance between the two men. It is not difficult, from the
letters which, under various signatures, are known to have been written by
Junius, and from his dealings with Woodfall and others, to form a tolerably
correct notion of his character. He was clearly a man not destitute of real
patriotism and magnanimity, a man whose vices were not of a sordid kind.
But he must also have been a man in the highest degree arrogant and
insolent, a man prone to malevolence, and prone to the error of mistaking
his malevolence for public virtue. "Doest thou well to be angry?" was the
question asked in old time of the Hebrew prophet. And he answered, "I do
well." This was evidently the temper of Junius; and to this cause we
attribute the savage cruelty which disgraces several of his letters. No man is
so merciless as he who, under a strong self-delusion, confounds his
antipathies with his duties. It may be added that Junius, though allied with
the democratic party by common enmities, was the very opposite of a
democratic politician. While attacking individuals with a ferocity which
perpetually violated all the laws of literary warfare, he regarded the most
defective parts of old institutions with a respect amounting to pedantry,
pleaded the cause of Old Sarum with fervor, and contemptuously told the

capitalists of Manchester and Leeds that, if they wanted votes, they might
buy land and become freeholders of Lancashire and Yorkshire. All this, we
believe, might stand, with scarcely any change, for a character of Philip
Francis.
It is not strange that the great anonymous writer should have been willing at
that time to leave the country which had been so powerfully stirred by his
eloquence. Everything had gone against him. That party which he clearly
preferred to every other, the party of George Grenville, had been scattered
by the death of its chief; and Lord Suffolk had led the greater part of it over
to the ministerial benches. The ferment produced by the Middlesex election
had gone down. Every faction must have been alike an object of aversion to
Junius. His opinions on domestic affairs separated him from the ministry;
his opinions on colonial affairs from the opposition. Under such
circumstances, he had thrown down his pen in misanthropical despair. His
farewell letter to Woodfall bears date the nineteenth of January, 1773. In
that letter, he declared that he must be an idiot to write again; that he had
meant well by the cause and the public; that both were given up; that there
were not ten men who would act steadily together on any question. "But it
is all alike," he added, "vile and contemptible. You have never flinched that
I know of; and I shall always rejoice to hear of your prosperity." These were
the last words of Junius. In a year from that time, Philip Francis was on his
voyage to Bengal.
With the three new Councillors came out the judges of the Supreme Court.
The chief justice was Sir Elijah Impey. He was an old acquaintance of
Hastings; and it is probable that the Governor-General, if he had searched
through all the inns of court, could not have found an equally serviceable
tool. But the members of Council were by no means in an obsequious
mood. Hastings greatly disliked the new form of government, and had no
very high opinion of his coadjutors. They had heard of this, and were
disposed to be suspicious and punctilious. When men are in such a frame of
mind, any trifle is sufficient to give occasion for dispute. The members of
Council expected a salute of twenty-one guns from the batteries of Fort
William. Hastings allowed them only seventeen. They landed in ill-humor.
The first civilities were exchanged with cold reserve. On the morrow
commenced that long quarrel which, after distracting British India, was

renewed in England, and in which all the most eminent statesmen and
orators of the age took active part on one or the other side.
Hastings was supported by Barwell. They had not always been friends. But
the arrival of the new members of Council from England naturally had the
effect of uniting the old servants of the Company. Clavering, Monson, and
Francis formed the majority. They instantly wrested the government out of
the hands of Hastings; condemned, certainly not without justice, his late
dealings with the Nabob Vizier; recalled the English agent from Oude, and
sent thither a creature of their own; ordered the brigade which had
conquered the unhappy Rohillas to return to the Company's territories; and
instituted a severe inquiry into the conduct of the war. Next, in spite of the
Governor-General's remonstrances, they proceeded to exercise, in the most
indiscreet manner, their new authority over the subordinate presidencies;
threw all the affairs of Bombay into confusion; and interfered, with an
incredible union of rashness and feebleness, in the intestine disputes of the
Mahratta government. At the same time, they fell on the internal
administration of Bengal, and attacked the whole fiscal and judicial system,
a system which was undoubtedly defective, but which it was very
improbable that gentlemen fresh from England would be competent to
amend. The effect of their reforms was that all protection to life and
property was withdrawn, and that gangs of robbers plundered and
slaughtered with impunity in the very suburbs of Calcutta. Hastings
continued to live in the Government House, and to draw the salary of
Governor-General. He continued even to take the lead at the council board
in the transaction of ordinary business; for his opponents could not but feel
that he knew much of which they were ignorant, and that he decided, both
surely and speedily, many questions which to them would have been
hopelessly puzzling. But the higher powers of government and the most
valuable patronage had been taken from him.
The natives soon found this out. They considered him as a fallen man; and
they acted after their kind. Some of our readers may have seen, in India, a
cloud of crows pecking a sick vulture to death, no bad type of what happens
in that country as often as fortune deserts one who has been great and
dreaded. In an instant, all the sycophants who had lately been ready to lie
for him, to forge for him, to pander for him, to poison for him, hasten to
purchase the favor of his victorious enemies by accusing him. An Indian

government has only to let it be understood that it wishes a particular man
to be ruined, and in twenty-four hours it will be furnished with grave
charges, supported by depositions so full and circumstantial that any person
unaccustomed to Asiatic mendacity would regard them as decisive. It is
well if the signature of the destined victim is not counterfeited at the foot of
some illegal compact, and if some treasonable paper is not slipped into a
hiding-place in his house. Hastings was now regarded as helpless. The
power to make or mar the fortune of every man in Bengal had passed, as it
seemed, into the hands of the new Councillors. Immediately charges against
the Governor-General began to pour in. They were eagerly welcomed by
the majority, who, to do them justice, were men of too much honor
knowingly to countenance false accusations, but who were not sufficiently
acquainted with the East to be aware that, in that part of the world, a very
little encouragement from power will call forth, in a week, more Oateses,
and Bedloes, and Dangerfields, than Westminster Hall sees in a century.
It would have been strange indeed if, at such a juncture, Nuncomar had
remained quiet. That bad man was stimulated at once by malignity, by
avarice, and by ambition. Now was the time to be avenged on his old
enemy, to wreak a grudge of seventeen years, to establish himself in the
favor of the majority of the Council, to become the greatest native in
Bengal. From the time of the arrival of the new Councillors, he had paid the
most marked court to them, and had in consequence been excluded, with all
indignity, from the Government House. He now put into the hands of
Francis, with great ceremony, a paper containing several charges of the
most serious description. By this document Hastings was accused of putting
offices up to sale, and of receiving bribes for suffering offenders to escape.
In particular, it was alleged that Mahommed Reza Khan had been dismissed
with impunity, in consideration of a great sum paid to the Governor-
General.
Francis read the paper in Council. A violent altercation followed. Hastings
complained in bitter terms of the way in which he was treated, spoke with
contempt of Nuncomar and of Nuncomar's accusation, and denied the right
of the Council to sit in judgment on the Governor. At the next meeting of
the board, another communication from Nuncomar was produced. He
requested that he might be permitted to attend the Council, and that he
might be heard in support of his assertions. Another tempestuous debate

took place. The Governor-General maintained that the council-room was
not a proper place for such an investigation; that from persons who were
heated by daily conflict with him he could not expect the fairness of judges;
and that he could not, without betraying the dignity of his post, submit to be
confronted with such a man as Nuncomar. The majority, however, resolved
to go into the charges. Hastings rose, declared the sitting at an end, and left
the room, followed by Barwell. The other members kept their seats, voted
themselves a council, put Clavering in the chair, and ordered Nuncomar to
be called in. Nuncomar not only adhered to the original charges, but, after
the fashion of the East, produced a large supplement. He stated that
Hastings had received a great sum for appointing Rajah Goordas treasurer
of the Nabob's household, and for committing the care of his Highness's
person to the Munny Begum. He put in a letter purporting to bear the seal of
the Munny Begum, for the purpose of establishing the truth of his story. The
seal, whether forged, as Hastings affirmed, or genuine, as we are rather
inclined to believe, proved nothing. Nuncomar, as everybody knows who
knows India, had only to tell the Munny Begum that such a letter would
give pleasure to the majority of the Council, in order to procure her
attestation. The majority, however, voted that the charge was made out; that
Hastings had corruptly received between thirty and forty thousand pounds;
and that he ought to be compelled to refund.
The general feeling among the English in Bengal was strongly in favor of
the Governor-General. In talents for business, in knowledge of the country,
in general courtesy of demeanor, he was decidedly superior to his
persecutors. The servants of the Company were naturally disposed to side
with the most distinguished member of their own body against a clerk from
the war office, who, profoundly ignorant of the native languages and of the
native character, took on himself to regulate every department of the
administration. Hastings, however, in spite of the general sympathy of his
countrymen, was in a most painful situation. There was still an appeal to
higher authority in England. If that authority took part with his enemies,
nothing was left to him but to throw up his office. He accordingly placed
his resignation in the hands of his agent in London, Colonel Macleane. But
Macleane was instructed not to produce the resignation, unless it should be
fully ascertained that the feeling at the India House was adverse to the
Governor-General.

The triumph of Nuncomar seemed to be complete. He held a daily levee, to
which his countrymen resorted in crowds, and to which, on one occasion,
the majority of the Council condescended to repair. His house was an office
for the purpose of receiving charges against the Governor-General. It was
said that, partly by threats, and partly by wheedling, the villainous Brahmin
had induced many of the wealthiest men of the province to send in
complaints. But he was playing a perilous game. It was not safe to drive to
despair a man of such resources and of such determination as Hastings.
Nuncomar, with all his acuteness, did not understand the nature of the
institutions under which he lived. He saw that he had with him the majority
of the body which made treaties, gave places, raised taxes. The separation
between political and judicial functions was a thing of which he had no
conception. It had probably never occurred to him that there was in Bengal
an authority perfectly independent of the Council, an authority which could
protect one whom the Council wished to destroy, and send to the gibbet one
whom the Council wished to protect. Yet such was the fact. The Supreme
Court was, within the sphere of its own duties, altogether independent of
the Government. Hastings, with his usual sagacity, had seen how much
advantage he might derive from possessing himself of this stronghold; and
he had acted accordingly. The Judges, especially the Chief Justice, were
hostile to the majority of the Council. The time had now come for putting
this formidable machinery into action.
On a sudden, Calcutta was astounded by the news that Nuncomar had been
taken up on a charge of felony, committed, and thrown into the common
jail. The crime imputed to him was that six years before he had forged a
bond. The ostensible prosecutor was a native. But it was then, and still is,
the opinion of everybody, idiots and biographers excepted, that Hastings
was the real mover in the business.
The rage of the majority rose to the highest point. They protested against
the proceedings of the Supreme Court, and sent several urgent messages to
the Judges, demanding that Nuncomar should be admitted to bail. The
Judges returned haughty and resolute answers. All that the Council could do
was to heap honors and emoluments on the family of Nuncomar; and this
they did. In the meantime the assizes commenced; a true bill was found;
and Nuncomar was brought before Sir Elijah Impey and a jury composed of
Englishmen. A great quantity of contradictory swearing, and the necessity

of having every word of the evidence interpreted, protracted the trial to a
most unusual length. At last a verdict of guilty was returned, and the Chief
Justice pronounced sentence of death on the prisoner.
That Impey ought to have respited Nuncomar we hold to be perfectly clear.
Whether the whole proceeding was not illegal is a question. But it is certain
that, whatever may have been, according to technical rules of construction,
the effect of the statute under which the trial took place, it was most unjust
to hang a Hindoo for forgery. The law which made forgery capital in
England was passed without the smallest reference to the state of society in
India. It was unknown to the natives of India. It had never been put in
execution among them, certainly not for want of delinquents. It was in the
highest degree shocking to all their notions. They were not accustomed to
the distinction which many circumstances, peculiar to our own state of
society, have led us to make between forgery and other kinds of cheating.
The counterfeiting of a seal was, in their estimation, a common act of
swindling; nor had it ever crossed their minds that it was to be punished as
severely as gang-robbery or assassination. A just judge would, beyond all
doubt, have reserved the case for the consideration of the sovereign. But
Impey would not hear of mercy or delay.
The excitement among all classes was great. Francis and Francis's few
English adherents described the Governor-General and the Chief Justice as
the worst of murderers. Clavering, it was said, swore that, even at the foot
of the gallows, Nuncomar should be rescued. The bulk of the European
society, though strongly attached to the Governor-General, could not but
feel compassion for a man who, with all his crimes, had so long filled so
large a space in their sight, who had been great and powerful before the
British empire in India began to exist, and to whom, in the old times,
governors and members of council, then mere commercial factors, had paid
court for protection. The feeling of the Hindoos was infinitely stronger.
They were, indeed, not a people to strike one blow for their countryman.
But his sentence filled them with sorrow and dismay. Tried even by their
low standard of morality, he was a bad man. But, bad as he was, he was the
head of their race and religion, a Brahmin of the Brahmins. He had
inherited the purest and highest caste. He had practised with the greatest
punctuality all those ceremonies to which the superstitious Bengalese
ascribe far more importance than to the correct discharge of the social

duties. They felt, therefore, as a devout Catholic in the dark ages would
have felt at seeing a prelate of the highest dignity sent to the gallows by a
secular tribunal. According to their old national laws, a Brahmin could not
be put to death for any crime whatever. And the crime for which Nuncomar
was about to die was regarded by them in much the same light in which the
selling of an unsound horse for a sound price is regarded by a Yorkshire
jockey.
The Mussulmans alone appear to have seen with exultation the fate of the
powerful Hindoo, who had attempted to rise by means of the ruin of
Mahommed Reza Khan. The Mahommedan historian of those times takes
delight in aggravating the charge. He assures us that in Nuncomar's house a
casket was found containing counterfeits of the seals of all the richest men
of the province. We have never fallen in with any other authority for this
story, which in itself is by no means improbable.
The day drew near; and Nuncomar prepared himself to die with that quiet
fortitude with which the Bengalee, so effeminately timid in personal
conflict, often encounters calamities for which there is no remedy. The
sheriff, with the humanity which is seldom wanting in an English
gentleman, visited the prisoner on the eve of the execution, and assured him
that no indulgence, consistent with the law, should be refused to him.
Nuncomar expressed his gratitude with great politeness and unaltered
composure. Not a muscle of his face moved. Not a sigh broke from him. He
put his finger to his forehead, and calmly said that fate would have its way,
and that there was no resisting the pleasure of God. He sent his
compliments to Francis, Clavering, and Monson, and charged them to
protect Rajah Goordas, who was about to become the head of the Brahmins
of Bengal. The sheriff withdrew, greatly agitated by what had passed, and
Nuncomar sat composedly down to write notes and examine accounts.
The next morning, before the sun was in his power, an immense concourse
assembled round the place where the gallows had been set up. Grief and
horror were on every face; yet to the last the multitude could hardly believe
that the English really purposed to take the life of the great Brahmin. At
length the mournful procession came through the crowd. Nuncomar sat up
in his palanquin, and looked round him with unaltered serenity. He had just
parted from those who were most nearly connected with him. Their cries

and contortions had appalled the European ministers of justice, but had not
produced the smallest effect on the iron stoicism of the prisoner. The only
anxiety which he expressed was that men of his own priestly caste might be
in attendance to take charge of his corpse. He again desired to be
remembered to his friends in the Council, mounted the scaffold with
firmness, and gave the signal to the executioner. The moment that the drop
fell, a howl of sorrow and despair rose from the innumerable spectators.
Hundreds turned away their faces from the polluting sight, fled with loud
wailings towards the Hoogley, and plunged into its holy waters, as if to
purify themselves from the guilt of having looked on such a crime. These
feelings were not confined to Calcutta. The whole province was greatly
excited; and the population of Dacca, in particular, gave strong signs of
grief and dismay.
Of Impey's conduct it is impossible to speak too severely. We have already
said that, in our opinion, he acted unjustly in refusing to respite Nuncomar.
No rational man can doubt that he took this course in order to gratify the
Governor-General. If we had ever had any doubts on that point, they would
have been dispelled by a letter which Mr. Gleig has published. Hastings,
three or four years later, described Impey as the man "to whose support he
was at one time indebted for the safety of his fortune, honor, and
reputation." These strong words can refer only to the case of Nuncomar;
and they must mean that Impey hanged Nuncomar in order to support
Hastings. It is, therefore, our deliberate opinion that Impey, sitting as a
judge, put a man unjustly to death in order to serve a political purpose.
But we look on the conduct of Hastings in a somewhat different light. He
was struggling for fortune, honor, liberty, all that makes life valuable. He
was beset by rancorous and unprincipled enemies. From his colleagues he
could expect no justice. He cannot be blamed for wishing to crush his
accusers. He was indeed bound to use only legitimate means for that end.
But it was not strange that he should have thought any means legitimate
which were pronounced legitimate by the sages of the law, by men whose
peculiar duty it was to deal justly between adversaries, and whose education
might be supposed to have peculiarly qualified them for the discharge of
that duty. Nobody demands from a party the unbending equity of a judge.
The reason that judges are appointed is, that even a good man cannot be
trusted to decide a cause in which he is himself concerned. Not a day passes

on which an honest prosecutor does not ask for what none but a dishonest
tribunal would grant. It is too much to expect that any man, when his
dearest interests are at stake, and his strongest passions excited, will, as
against himself, be more just than the sworn dispensers of justice. To take
an analogous case from the history of our own island: suppose that Lord
Stafford, when in the Tower on suspicion of being concerned in the Popish
Plot, had been apprised that Titus Oates had done something which might,
by a questionable construction, be brought under the head of felony. Should
we severely blame Lord Stafford, in the supposed case, for causing a
prosecution to be instituted, for furnishing funds, for using all his influence
to intercept the mercy of the Crown? We think not. If a judge, indeed, from
favor to the Catholic lords, were to strain the law in order to hang Oates,
such a judge would richly deserve impeachment. But it does not appear to
us that the Catholic lord, by bringing the case before the judge for decision,
would materially overstep the limits of a just self-defence.
While, therefore, we have not the least doubt that this memorable execution
is to be attributed to Hastings, we doubt whether it can with justice be
reckoned among his crimes. That his conduct was dictated by a profound
policy is evident. He was in a minority in Council. It was possible that he
might long be in a minority. He knew the native character well. He knew in
what abundance accusations are certain to flow in against the most innocent
inhabitant of India who is under the frown of power. There was not in the
whole black population of Bengal a place-holder, a place-hunter, a
government tenant, who did not think that he might better himself by
sending up a deposition against the Governor-General. Under these
circumstances, the persecuted statesman resolved to teach the whole crew
of accusers and witnesses that, though in a minority at the council board, he
was still to be feared. The lesson which he gave them was indeed a lesson
not to be forgotten. The head of the combination which had been formed
against him, the richest, the most powerful, the most artful of the Hindoos,
distinguished by the favor of those who then held the government, fenced
round by the superstitious reverence of millions, was hanged in broad day
before many thousands of people. Everything that could make the warning
impressive, dignity in the sufferer, solemnity in the proceeding, was found
in this case. The helpless rage and vain struggles of the Council made the
triumph more signal. From that moment the conviction of every native was

that it was safer to take the part of Hastings in a minority than that of
Francis in a majority, and that he who was so venturous as to join in
running down the Governor-General might chance, in the phrase of the
Eastern poet, to find a tiger, while beating the jungle for a deer. The voices
of a thousand informers were silenced in an instant. From that time,
whatever difficulties Hastings might have to encounter, he was never
molested by accusations from natives of India.
It is a remarkable circumstance that one of the letters of Hastings to Dr.
Johnson bears date a very few hours after the death of Nuncomar. While the
whole settlement was in commotion, while a mighty and ancient priesthood
were weeping over the remains of their chief, the conqueror in that deadly
grapple sat down, with characteristic self-possession, to write about the
Tour to the Hebrides, Jones's Persian Grammar, and the history, traditions,
arts, and natural productions of India.
In the meantime, intelligence of the Rohilla war, and of the first disputes
between Hastings and his colleagues, had reached London. The Directors
took part with the majority, and sent out a letter filled with severe
reflections on the conduct of Hastings. They condemned, in strong but just
terms, the iniquity of undertaking offensive wars merely for the sake of
pecuniary advantages. But they utterly forgot that, if Hastings had by illicit
means obtained pecuniary advantages, he had done so, not for his own
benefit, but in order to meet their demands. To enjoin honesty, and to insist
on having what could not be honestly got, was then the constant practice of
the Company. As Lady Macbeth says of her husband, they "would not play
false, and yet would wrongly win."
The Regulating Act, by which Hastings had been appointed Governor-
General for five years, empowered the Crown to remove him on an address
from the Company. Lord North was desirous to procure such an address.
The three members of Council who had been sent out from England were
men of his own choice. General Clavering, in particular, was supported by a
large parliamentary connection, such as no cabinet could be inclined to
disoblige. The wish of the Minister was to displace Hastings, and to put
Clavering at the head of the government. In the Court of Directors parties
were very nearly balanced. Eleven voted against Hastings; ten for him. The
Court of Proprietors was then convened. The great saleroom presented a

singular appearance. Letters had been sent by the Secretary of the Treasury,
exhorting all the supporters of government who held India stock to be in
attendance. Lord Sandwich marshalled the friends of the administration
with his usual dexterity and alertness. Fifty peers and privy councillors,
seldom seen so far eastward, were counted in the crowd. The debate lasted
till midnight. The opponents of Hastings had a small superiority on the
division; but a ballot was demanded; and the result was that the Governor-
General triumphed by a majority of above a hundred votes over the
combined efforts of the Directors and the Cabinet. The ministers were
greatly exasperated by this defeat. Even Lord North lost his temper, no
ordinary occurrence with him, and threatened to convoke Parliament before
Christmas, and to bring in a bill for depriving the Company of all political
power, and for restricting it to its old business of trading in silks and teas.
Colonel Macleane, who through all this conflict had zealously supported the
cause of Hastings, now thought that his employer was in imminent danger
of being turned out, branded with parliamentary censure, perhaps
prosecuted. The opinion of the crown lawyers had already been taken
respecting some parts of the Governor-General's conduct. It seemed to be
high time to think of securing an honorable retreat. Under these
circumstances, Macleane thought himself justified in producing the
resignation with which he had been entrusted. The instrument was not in
very accurate form; but the Directors were too eager to be scrupulous. They
accepted the resignation, fixed on Mr. Wheler, one of their own body, to
succeed Hastings, and sent out orders that General Clavering, as senior
member of Council, should exercise the functions of Governor-General till
Mr. Wheler should arrive.
But, while these things were passing in England, a great change had taken
place in Bengal. Monson was no more. Only four members of the
government were left. Clavering and Francis were on one side, Barwell and
the Governor-General on the other; and the Governor-General had the
casting vote. Hastings, who had been during two years destitute of all
power and patronage, became at once absolute. He instantly proceeded to
retaliate on his adversaries. Their measures were reversed, their creatures
were displaced. A new valuation of the lands of Bengal, for the purposes of
taxation, was ordered; and it was provided that the whole inquiry should be
conducted by the Governor-General, and that all the letters relating to it

should run in his name. He began, at the same time, to revolve vast plans of
conquest and dominion, plans which he lived to see realized, though not by
himself. His project was to form subsidiary alliances with the native
princes, particularly with those of Oude and Berar, and thus to make Britain
the paramount power in India. While he was meditating these great designs,
arrived the intelligence that he had ceased to be Governor-General, that his
resignation had been accepted, that Wheler was coming out immediately,
and that, till Wheler arrived, the chair was to be filled by Clavering.
Had Hastings still been in a minority, he would probably have retired
without a struggle; but he was now the real master of British India, and he
was not disposed to quit his high place. He asserted that he had never given
any instructions which could warrant the steps taken at home. What his
instructions had been, he owned he had forgotten. If he had kept a copy of
them he had mislaid it. But he was certain that he had repeatedly declared to
the Directors that he would not resign. He could not see how the court,
possessed of that declaration from himself, could receive his resignation
from the doubtful hands of an agent. If the resignation were invalid, all the
proceedings which were founded on that resignation were null, and
Hastings was still Governor-General.
He afterwards affirmed that, though his agents had not acted in conformity
with his instructions, he would nevertheless have held himself bound by
their acts, if Clavering had not attempted to seize the supreme power by
violence. Whether this assertion were or were not true, it cannot be doubted
that the imprudence of Clavering gave Hastings an advantage. The General
sent for the keys of the fort and of the treasury, took possession of the
records, and held a council at which Francis attended. Hastings took the
chair in another apartment, and Barwell sat with him. Each of the two
parties had a plausible show of right. There was no authority entitled to
their obedience within fifteen thousand miles. It seemed that there remained
no way of settling the dispute except an appeal to arms; and from such an
appeal Hastings, confident of his influence over his countrymen in India,
was not inclined to shrink. He directed the officers of the garrison of Fort
William and of all the neighboring stations to obey no orders but his. At the
same time, with admirable judgment, he offered to submit the case to the
Supreme Court, and to abide by its decision. By making this proposition he
risked nothing; yet it was a proposition which his opponents could hardly

reject. Nobody could be treated as a criminal for obeying what the judges
should solemnly pronounce to be the lawful government. The boldest man
would shrink from taking arms in defence of what the judges should
pronounce to be usurpation. Clavering and Francis, after some delay,
unwillingly consented to abide by the award of the court. The court
pronounced that the resignation was invalid, and that therefore Hastings
was still Governor-General under the Regulating Act; and the defeated
members of the Council, finding that the sense of the whole settlement was
against them, acquiesced in the decision.
About this time arrived the news that, after a suit which had lasted several
years, the Franconian courts had decreed a divorce between Imhoff and his
wife. The Baron left Calcutta, carrying with him the means of buying an
estate in Saxony. The lady became Mrs. Hastings. The event was celebrated
by great festivities; and all the most conspicuous persons at Calcutta,
without distinction of parties, were invited to the Government House.
Clavering, as the Mahommedan chronicler tells the story, was sick in mind
and body, and excused himself from joining the splendid assembly. But
Hastings, whom, as it should seem, success in ambition and in love had put
into high good-humor, would take no denial. He went himself to the
General's house, and at length brought his vanquished rival in triumph to
the gay circle which surrounded the bride. The exertion was too much for a
frame broken by mortification as well as by disease. Clavering died a few
days later.
Wheler, who came out expecting to be Governor-General, and was forced to
content himself with a seat at the council board, generally voted with
Francis. But the Governor-General, with Barwell's help and his own casting
vote, was still the master. Some change took place at this time in the feeling
both of the Court of Directors and of the Ministers of the Crown. All
designs against Hastings were dropped; and, when his original term of five
years expired, he was quietly reappointed. The truth is that the fearful
dangers to which the public interests in every quarter were now exposed
made both Lord North and the Company unwilling to part with a Governor
whose talents, experience, and resolution enmity itself was compelled to
acknowledge.

The crisis was indeed formidable. That great and victorious empire, on the
throne of which George the Third had taken his seat eighteen years before,
with brighter hopes than had attended the accession of any of the long line
of English sovereigns, had, by the most senseless misgovernment, been
brought to the verge of ruin. In America millions of Englishmen were at war
with the country from which their blood, their language, their religion, and
their institutions were derived, and to which, but a short time before, they
had been as strongly attached as the inhabitants of Norfolk and
Leicestershire. The great powers of Europe, humbled to the dust by the
vigor and genius which had guided the councils of George the Second, now
rejoiced in the prospect of a signal revenge. The time was approaching
when our island, while struggling to keep down the United States of
America, and pressed with a still nearer danger by the too just discontents
of Ireland, was to be assailed by France, Spain, and Holland, and to be
threatened by the armed neutrality of the Baltic; when even our maritime
supremacy was to be in jeopardy; when hostile fleets were to command the
Straits of Calpe and the Mexican Sea; when the British flag was to be
scarcely able to protect the British Channel. Great as were the faults of
Hastings, it was happy for our country that at that conjuncture, the most
terrible through which she has ever passed, he was the ruler of her Indian
dominions.
An attack by sea on Bengal was little to be apprehended. The danger was
that the European enemies of England might form an alliance with some
native power, might furnish that power with troops, arms, and ammunition,
and might thus assail our possessions on the side of the land. It was chiefly
from the Mahrattas that Hastings anticipated danger. The original seat of
that singular people was the wild range of hills which runs along the
western coast of India. In the reign of Aurungzebe the inhabitants of those
regions, led by the great Sevajee, began to descend on the possessions of
their wealthier and less warlike neighbors. The energy, ferocity, and
cunning of the Mahrattas soon made them the most conspicuous among the
new powers which were generated by the corruption of the decaying
monarchy. At first they were only robbers. They soon rose to the dignity of
conquerors. Half the provinces of the empire were turned into Mahratta
principalities. Freebooters, sprung from low castes, and accustomed to
menial employments, became mighty Rajahs. The Bonslas, at the head of a

band of plunderers, occupied the vast region of Berar. The Guicowar, which
is, being interpreted, the Herdsman, founded that dynasty which still reigns
in Guzerat. The houses of Scindia and Holkar waxed great in Malwa. One
adventurous captain made his nest on the impregnable rock of Gooti.
Another became the lord of the thousand villages which are scattered
among the green rice-fields of Tanjore.
That was the time, throughout India, of double government. The form and
the power were everywhere separated. The Mussulman nabobs who had
become sovereign princes, the Vizier in Oude, and the Nizam at Hyderabad,
still called themselves the viceroys of the house of Tamerlane. In the same
manner the Mahratta states, though really independent of each other,
pretended to be members of one empire. They all acknowledged, by words
and ceremonies, the supremacy of the heir of Sevajee, a roi fainéant who
chewed bhang and toyed with dancing girls in a state prison at Sattara, and
of his Peshwa or mayor of the palace, a great hereditary magistrate, who
kept a court with kingly state at Poonah, and whose authority was obeyed in
the spacious provinces of Aurungabad and Bejapoor.
Some months before war was declared in Europe the government of Bengal
was alarmed by the news that a French adventurer, who passed for a man of
quality, had arrived at Poonah. It was said that he had been received there
with great distinction, that he had delivered to the Peshwa letters and
presents from Louis the Sixteenth, and that a treaty, hostile to England, had
been concluded between France and the Mahrattas.
Hastings immediately resolved to strike the first blow. The title of the
Peshwa was not undisputed. A portion of the Mahratta nation was favorable
to a pretender. The Governor-General determined to espouse this pretender's
interest, to move an army across the peninsula of India, and to form a close
alliance with the chief of the house of Bonsla, who ruled Berar, and who, in
power and dignity, was inferior to none of the Mahratta princes.
The army had marched, and the negotiations with Berar were in progress,
when a letter from the English consul at Cairo brought the news that war
had been proclaimed both in London and Paris. All the measures which the
crisis required were adopted by Hastings without a moment's delay. The
French factories in Bengal were seized. Orders were sent to Madras that

Pondicherry should instantly be occupied. Near Calcutta, works were
thrown up which were thought to render the approach of a hostile force
impossible. A maritime establishment was formed for the defence of the
river. Nine new battalions of sepoys were raised, and a corps of native
artillery was formed out of the hardy Lascars of the Bay of Bengal. Having
made these arrangements, the Governor-General with calm confidence
pronounced his presidency secure from all attack, unless the Mahrattas
should march against it in conjunction with the French.
The expedition which Hastings had sent westward was not so speedily or
completely successful as most of his undertakings. The commanding officer
procrastinated. The authorities at Bombay blundered. But the Governor-
General persevered. A new commander repaired the errors of his
predecessor. Several brilliant actions spread the military renown of the
English through regions where no European flag had ever been seen. It is
probable that, if a new and more formidable danger had not compelled
Hastings to change his whole policy, his plans respecting the Mahratta
empire would have been carried into complete effect.
The authorities in England had wisely sent out to Bengal, as commander of
the forces and member of the Council, one of the most distinguished
soldiers of that time. Sir Eyre Coote had, many years before, been
conspicuous among the founders of the British empire in the East. At the
council of war which preceded the battle of Plassey, he earnestly
recommended, in opposition to the majority, that daring course which, after
some hesitation, was adopted, and which was crowned with such splendid
success. He subsequently commanded in the south of India against the
brave and unfortunate Lally, gained the decisive battle of Wandewash over
the French and their native allies, took Pondicherry, and made the English
power supreme in the Carnatic. Since those great exploits near twenty years
had elapsed. Coote had no longer the bodily activity which he had shown in
earlier days; nor was the vigor of his mind altogether unimpaired. He was
capricious and fretful, and required much coaxing to keep him in good-
humor. It must, we fear, be added, that the love of money had grown upon
him, and that he thought more about his allowances, and less about his
duties, than might have been expected from so eminent a member of so
noble a profession. Still he was perhaps the ablest officer that was then to
be found in the British army. Among the native soldiers his name was great

and his influence unrivalled. Nor is he yet forgotten by them. Now and then
a white-bearded old sepoy may still be found, who loves to talk of Porto
Novo and Pollilore. It is but a short time since one of those aged men came
to present a memorial to an English officer, who holds one of the highest
employments in India. A print of Coote hung in the room. The veteran
recognized at once that face and figure which he had not seen for more than
half a century, and, forgetting his salam to the living, halted, drew himself
up, lifted his hand, and with solemn reverence paid his military obeisance to
the dead.
Coote, though he did not, like Barwell, vote constantly with the Governor-
General, was by no means inclined to join in systematic opposition, and on
most questions concurred with Hastings, who did his best, by assiduous
courtship, and by readily granting the most exorbitant allowances, to gratify
the strongest passions of the old soldier.
It seemed likely at this time that a general reconciliation would put an end
to the quarrels which had, during some years, weakened and disgraced the
government of Bengal. The dangers of the empire might well induce men of
patriotic feeling—and of patriotic feeling neither Hastings nor Francis was
destitute—to forget private enmities, and to coöperate heartily for the
general good. Coote had never been concerned in faction. Wheler was
thoroughly tired of it. Barwell had made an ample fortune, and, though he
had promised that he would not leave Calcutta while his help was needed in
Council, was most desirous to return to England, and exerted himself to
promote an arrangement which would set him at liberty. A compact was
made, by which Francis agreed to desist from opposition, and Hastings
engaged that the friends of Francis should be admitted to a fair share of the
honors and emoluments of the service. During a few months after this treaty
there was apparent harmony at the council board.
Harmony, indeed, was never more necessary; for at this moment internal
calamities, more formidable than war itself, menaced Bengal. The authors
of the Regulating Act of 1773 had established two independent powers, the
one judicial, the other political; and, with a carelessness scandalously
common in English legislation, had omitted to define the limits of either.
The judges took advantage of the indistinctness, and attempted to draw to
themselves supreme authority, not only within Calcutta, but through the

whole of the great territory subject to the presidency of Fort William. There
are few Englishmen who will not admit that the English law, in spite of
modern improvements, is neither so cheap nor so speedy as might be
wished. Still, it is a system which has grown up among us. In some points,
it has been fashioned to suit our feelings; in others, it has gradually
fashioned our feelings to suit itself. Even to its worst evils we are
accustomed; and therefore, though we may complain of them, they do not
strike us with the horror and dismay which would be produced by a new
grievance of smaller severity. In India the case is widely different. English
law, transplanted to that country, has all the vices from which we suffer
here; it has them all in a far higher degree; and it has other vices, compared
with which the worst vices from which we suffer are trifles. Dilatory here, it
is far more dilatory in a land where the help of an interpreter is needed by
every judge and by every advocate. Costly here, it is far more costly in a
land into which the legal practitioners must be imported from an immense
distance. All English labor in India, from the labor of the Governor-General
and the Commander-in-Chief, down to that of a groom or a watchmaker,
must be paid for at a higher rate than at home. No man will be banished,
and banished to the torrid zone, for nothing. The rule holds good with
respect to the legal profession. No English barrister will work, fifteen
thousand miles from all his friends, with the thermometer at ninety-six in
the shade, for the emoluments which will content him in chambers that
overlook the Thames. Accordingly, the fees at Calcutta are about three
times as great as the fees of Westminster Hall; and this, though the people
of India are, beyond all comparison, poorer than the people of England. Yet
the delay and the expense, grievous as they are, form the smallest part of
the evil which English law, imported without modifications into India,
could not fail to produce. The strongest feelings of our nature, honor,
religion, female modesty, rose up against the innovation. Arrest on mesne
process was the first step in most civil proceedings; and to a native of rank
arrest was not merely a restraint, but a foul personal indignity. Oaths were
required in every stage of every suit; and the feeling of a Quaker about an
oath is hardly stronger than that of a respectable native. That the apartments
of a woman of quality should be entered by strange men, or that her face
should be seen by them, are, in the East, intolerable outrages,—outrages
which are more dreaded than death, and which can be expiated only by the
shedding of blood. To these outrages the most distinguished families of

Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, were now exposed. Imagine what the state of
our own country would be, if a jurisprudence were on a sudden introduced
among us, which should be to us what our jurisprudence was to our Asiatic
subjects. Imagine what the state of our country would be, if it were enacted
that any man, by merely swearing that a debt was due to him, should
acquire a right to insult the persons of men of the most honorable and
sacred callings and of women of the most shrinking delicacy, to horsewhip
a general officer, to put a bishop in the stocks, to treat ladies in the way
which called forth the blow of Wat Tyler. Something like this was the effect
of the attempt which the Supreme Court made to extend its jurisprudence
over the whole of the Company's territory.
A reign of terror began, of terror heightened by mystery: for even that
which was endured was less horrible than that which was anticipated. No
man knew what was next to be expected from this strange tribunal. It came
from beyond the black water, as the people of India, with mysterious horror,
call the sea. It consisted of judges not one of whom was familiar with the
usages of the millions over whom they claimed boundless authority. Its
records were kept in unknown characters; its sentences were pronounced in
unknown sounds. It had already collected round itself an army of the worst
part of the native population, informers, and false witnesses, and common
barrators, and agents of chicane, and, above all, a banditti of bailiffs'
followers, compared with whom the retainers of the worst English
sponging-houses, in the worst times, might be considered as upright and
tender-hearted. Many natives, highly considered among their countrymen,
were seized, hurried up to Calcutta, flung into the common jail, not for any
crime even imputed, not for any debt that had been proved, but merely as a
precaution till their cause should come to trial. There were instances in
which men of the most venerable dignity, persecuted without a cause by
extortioners, died of rage and shame in the gripe of the vile alguazils of
Impey. The harams of noble Mahommedans, sanctuaries respected in the
East by governments which respected nothing else, were burst open by
gangs of bailiffs. The Mussulmans, braver and less accustomed to
submission than the Hindoos, sometimes stood on their defence; and there
were instances in which they shed their blood in the doorway, while
defending, sword in hand, the sacred apartments of their women. Nay, it
seemed as if even the faint-hearted Bengalee, who had crouched at the feet

of Surajah Dowlah, who had been mute during the administration of
Vansittart, would at length find courage in despair. No Mahratta invasion
had ever spread through the province such dismay as this inroad of English
lawyers. All the injustice of former oppressors, Asiatic and European,
appeared as a blessing when compared with the justice of the Supreme
Court.
Every class of the population, English and native, with the exception of the
ravenous pettifoggers who fattened on the misery and terror of an immense
community, cried out loudly against this fearful oppression. But the judges
were immovable. If a bailiff was resisted, they ordered the soldiers to be
called out. If a servant of the Company, in conformity with the orders of the
government, withstood the miserable catchpoles who, with Impey's writs in
their hands, exceeded the insolence and rapacity of gang-robbers, he was
flung into prison for a contempt. The lapse of sixty years, the virtue and
wisdom of many eminent magistrates who have during that time
administered justice in the Supreme Court, have not effaced from the minds
of the people of Bengal the recollection of those evil days.
The members of the government were, on this subject, united as one man.
Hastings had courted the judges; he had found them useful instruments. But
he was not disposed to make them his own masters, or the masters of India.
His mind was large; his knowledge of the native character most accurate.
He saw that the system pursued by the Supreme Court was degrading to the
government and ruinous to the people; and he resolved to oppose it
manfully. The consequence was, that the friendship, if that be the proper
word for such a connection, which had existed between him and Impey, was
for a time completely dissolved. The government placed itself firmly
between the tyrannical tribunal and the people. The Chief Justice proceeded
to the wildest excesses. The Governor-General and all the members of
Council were served with writs, calling on them to appear before the King's
justices, and to answer for their public acts. This was too much. Hastings,
with just scorn, refused to obey the call, set at liberty the persons
wrongfully detained by the Court, and took measures for resisting the
outrageous proceedings of the sheriffs' officers, if necessary, by the sword.
But he had in view another device which might prevent the necessity of an
appeal to arms. He was seldom at a loss for an expedient; and he knew
Impey well. The expedient, in this case, was a very simple one, neither

more nor less than a bribe. Impey was, by act of Parliament, a judge,
independent of the government of Bengal, and entitled to a salary of eight
thousand a year. Hastings proposed to make him also a judge in the
Company's service, removable at the pleasure of the government of Bengal;
and to give him, in that capacity, about eight thousand a year more. It was
understood that, in consideration of this new salary, Impey would desist
from urging the high pretensions of his court. If he did urge these
pretensions, the government could, at a moment's notice, eject him from the
new place which had been created for him. The bargain was struck; Bengal
was saved; an appeal to force was averted; and the Chief Justice was rich,
quiet, and infamous.
Of Impey's conduct it is unnecessary to speak. It was of a piece with almost
every part of his conduct that comes under the notice of history. No other
such judge has dishonored the English ermine, since Jeffreys drank himself
to death in the Tower. But we cannot agree with those who have blamed
Hastings for this transaction. The case stood thus. The negligent manner in
which the Regulating Act had been framed put it in the power of the Chief
Justice to throw a great country into the most dreadful confusion. He was
determined to use his power to the utmost, unless he was paid to be still;
and Hastings consented to pay him. The necessity was to be deplored. It is
also to be deplored that pirates should be able to exact ransom by
threatening to make their captives walk the plank. But to ransom a captive
from pirates has always been held a humane and Christian act; and it would
be absurd to charge the payer of the ransom with corrupting the virtue of the
corsair. This, we seriously think, is a not unfair illustration of the relative
position of Impey, Hastings, and the people of India. Whether it was right in
Impey to demand or to accept a price for powers which, if they really
belonged to him, he could not abdicate, which, if they did not belong to
him, he ought never to have usurped, and which in neither case he could
honestly sell, is one question. It is quite another question, whether Hastings
was not right to give any sum, however large, to any man, however
worthless, rather than either surrender millions of human beings to pillage,
or rescue them by civil war.
Francis strongly opposed this arrangement. It may, indeed, be suspected that
personal aversion to Impey was as strong a motive with Francis as regard
for the welfare of the province. To a mind burning with resentment, it might

seem better to leave Bengal to the oppressors than to redeem it by enriching
them. It is not improbable, on the other hand, that Hastings may have been
the more willing to resort to an expedient agreeable to the Chief Justice,
because that high functionary had already been so serviceable, and might,
when existing dissensions were composed, be serviceable again.
But it was not on this point alone that Francis was now opposed to
Hastings. The peace between them proved to be only a short and hollow
truce, during which their mutual aversion was constantly becoming
stronger. At length an explosion took place. Hastings publicly charged
Francis with having deceived him, and with having induced Barwell to quit
the service by insincere promises. Then came a dispute, such as frequently
arises even between honorable men, when they may make important
agreements by mere verbal communication. An impartial historian will
probably be of opinion that they had misunderstood each other; but their
minds were so much embittered that they imputed to each other nothing less
than deliberate villainy. "I do not," said Hastings, in a minute recorded on
the Consultations of the Government, "I do not trust to Mr. Francis's
promises of candor, convinced that he is incapable of it. I judge of his
public conduct by his private, which I have found to be void of truth and
honor." After the Council had risen, Francis put a challenge into the
Governor-General's hand. It was instantly accepted. They met, and fired.
Francis was shot through the body. He was carried to a neighboring house,
where it appeared that the wound, though severe, was not mortal. Hastings
inquired repeatedly after his enemy's health, and proposed to call on him;
but Francis coldly declined the visit. He had a proper sense, he said, of the
Governor-General's politeness, but could not consent to any private
interview. They could meet only at the council board.
In a very short time it was made signally manifest to how great a danger the
Governor-General had, on this occasion, exposed his country. A crisis
arrived with which he, and he alone, was competent to deal. It is not too
much to say that, if he had been taken from the head of affairs, the years
1780 and 1781 would have been as fatal to our power in Asia as to our
power in America.
The Mahrattas had been the chief objects of apprehension to Hastings. The
measures which he had adopted for the purpose of breaking their power had

at first been frustrated by the errors of those whom he was compelled to
employ; but his perseverance and ability seemed likely to be crowned with
success, when a far more formidable danger showed itself in a distant
quarter.
About thirty years before this time, a Mahommedan soldier had begun to
distinguish himself in the wars of Southern India. His education had been
neglected; his extraction was humble. His father had been a petty officer of
revenue; his grandfather a wandering dervise. But though thus meanly
descended, though ignorant even of the alphabet, the adventurer had no
sooner been placed at the head of a body of troops than he approved himself
a man born for conquest and command. Among the crowd of chiefs who
were struggling for a share of India, none could compare with him in the
qualities of the captain and the statesman. He became a general; he became
a sovereign. Out of the fragments of old principalities, which had gone to
pieces in the general wreck, he formed for himself a great, compact, and
vigorous empire. That empire he ruled with the ability, severity, and
vigilance of Louis the Eleventh. Licentious in his pleasures, implacable in
his revenge, he had yet enlargement of mind enough to perceive how much
the prosperity of subjects adds to the strength of governments. He was an
oppressor; but he had at least the merit of protecting his people against all
oppression except his own. He was now in extreme old age; but his intellect
was as clear, and his spirit as high, as in the prime of manhood. Such was
the great Hyder Ali, the founder of the Mahommedan kingdom of Mysore,
and the most formidable enemy with whom the English conquerors of India
have ever had to contend.
Had Hastings been governor of Madras, Hyder would have been either
made a friend, or vigorously encountered as an enemy. Unhappily the
English authorities in the south provoked their powerful neighbor's hostility,
without being prepared to repel it. On a sudden, an army of ninety thousand
men, far superior in discipline and efficiency to any other native force that
could be found in India, came pouring through those wild passes which,
worn by mountain torrents, and dark with jungle, lead down from the table-
land of Mysore to the plains of the Carnatic. This great army was
accompanied by a hundred pieces of cannon; and its movements were
guided by many French officers, trained in the best military schools of
Europe.

Hyder was everywhere triumphant. The sepoys in many British garrisons
flung down their arms. Some forts were surrendered by treachery, and some
by despair. In a few days the whole open country north of the Coleroon had
submitted. The English inhabitants of Madras could already see by night,
from the top of Mount St. Thomas, the eastern sky reddened by a vast
semicircle of blazing villages. The white villas, to which our countrymen
retire after the daily labors of government and of trade, when the cool
evening breeze springs up from the bay, were now left without inhabitants;
for bands of the fierce horsemen of Mysore had already been seen prowling
among the tulip trees, and near the gay verandas. Even the town was not
thought secure, and the British merchants and public functionaries made
haste to crowd themselves behind the cannon of Fort St. George.
There were the means indeed of assembling an army which might have
defended the presidency, and even driven the invader back to his mountains.
Sir Hector Munro was at the head of one considerable force; Baillie was
advancing with another. United, they might have presented a formidable
front even to such an enemy as Hyder. But the English commanders,
neglecting those fundamental rules of the military art of which the propriety
is obvious even to men who had never received a military education,
deferred their junction, and were separately attacked. Baillie's detachment
was destroyed. Munro was forced to abandon his baggage, to fling his guns
into the tanks, and to save himself by a retreat which might be called a
flight. In three weeks from the commencement of the war, the British
empire in Southern India had been brought to the verge of ruin. Only a few
fortified places remained to us. The glory of our arms had departed. It was
known that a great French expedition might soon be expected on the coast
of Coromandel. England, beset by enemies on every side, was in no
condition to protect such remote dependencies.
Then it was that the fertile genius and serene courage of Hastings achieved
their most signal triumph. A swift ship, flying before the southwest
monsoon, brought the evil tidings in a few days to Calcutta. In twenty-four
hours the Governor-General had framed a complete plan of policy adapted
to the altered state of affairs. The struggle with Hyder was a struggle, for
life and death. All minor objects must be sacrificed to the preservation of
the Carnatic. The disputes with the Mahrattas must be accommodated. A
large military force and a supply of money must be instantly sent to Madras.

But even these measures would be insufficient, unless the war, hitherto so
grossly mismanaged, were placed under the direction of a vigorous mind. It
was no time for trifling. Hastings determined to resort to an extreme
exercise of power, to suspend the incapable governor of Fort St. George, to
send Sir Eyre Coote to oppose Hyder, and to entrust that distinguished
general with the whole administration of the war.
In spite of the sullen opposition of Francis, who had now recovered from
his wound, and had returned to the Council, the Governor-General's wise
and firm policy was approved by the majority of the board. The
reinforcements were sent off with great expedition, and reached Madras
before the French armament arrived in the Indian seas. Coote, broken by
age and disease, was no longer the Coote of Wandewash; but he was still a
resolute and skilful commander. The progress of Hyder was arrested; and in
a few months the great victory of Porto Novo retrieved the honor of the
English arms.
In the meantime Francis had returned to England, and Hastings was now
left perfectly unfettered. Wheler had gradually been relaxing in his
opposition, and, after the departure of his vehement and implacable
colleague, coöperated heartily with the Governor-General, whose influence
over the British in India, always great, had, by the vigor and success of his
recent measures, been considerably increased.
But, though the difficulties arising from factions within the Council were at
an end, another class of difficulties had become more pressing than ever.
The financial embarrassment was extreme. Hastings had to find the means,
not only of carrying on the government of Bengal, but of maintaining a
most costly war against both Indian and European enemies in the Carnatic,
and of making remittances to England. A few years before this time he had
obtained relief by plundering the Mogul and enslaving the Rohillas; nor
were the resources of his fruitful mind by any means exhausted.
His first design was on Benares, a city which in wealth, population, dignity,
and sanctity, was among the foremost of Asia. It was commonly believed
that half a million of human beings was crowded into that labyrinth of lofty
alleys, rich with shrines, and minarets, and balconies, and carved oriels, to
which the sacred apes clung by hundreds. The traveller could scarcely make

his way through the press of holy mendicants and not less holy bulls. The
broad and stately flights of steps which descended from these swarming
haunts to the bathing-places along the Ganges were worn every day by the
footsteps of an innumerable multitude of worshippers. The schools and
temples drew crowds of pious Hindoos from every province where the
Brahminical faith was known. Hundreds of devotees came thither every
month to die: for it was believed that a peculiarly happy fate awaited the
man who should pass from the sacred city into the sacred river. Nor was
superstition the only motive which allured strangers to that great
metropolis. Commerce had as many pilgrims as religion. All along the
shores of the venerable stream lay great fleets of vessels laden with rich
merchandise. From the looms of Benares went forth the most delicate silks
that adorned the balls of St. James's and of Versailles; and, in the bazaars,
the muslins of Bengal and the sabres of Oude were mingled with the jewels
of Golconda and the shawls of Cashmere. This rich capital, and the
surrounding tract, had long been under the immediate rule of a Hindoo
Prince, who rendered homage to the Mogul emperors. During the great
anarchy of India, the lords of Benares became independent of the court of
Delhi, but were compelled to submit to the authority of the Nabob of Oude.
Oppressed by this formidable neighbor, they invoked the protection of the
English. The English protection was given; and at length the Nabob Vizier,
by a solemn treaty, ceded all his rights over Benares to the Company. From
that time the Rajah was the vassal of the government of Bengal,
acknowledged its supremacy, and engaged to send an annual tribute to Fort
William. This tribute Cheyte Sing, the reigning prince, had paid with strict
punctuality.
About the precise nature of the legal relation between the Company and the
Rajah of Benares there has been much warm and acute controversy. On the
one side, it has been maintained that Cheyte Sing was merely a great
subject on whom the superior power had a right to call for aid in the
necessities of the empire. On the other side, it has been contended that he
was an independent prince, that the only claim which the Company had
upon him was for a fixed tribute, and that while the fixed tribute was
regularly paid, as it assuredly was, the English had no more right to exact
any further contribution from him than to demand subsidies from Holland

or Denmark. Nothing is easier than to find precedents and analogies in
favor of either view.
Our own impression is that neither view is correct. It was too much the
habit of English politicians to take it for granted that there was in India a
known and definite constitution by which questions of this kind were to be
decided. The truth is that, during the interval which elapsed between the fall
of the house of Tamerlane and the establishment of the British ascendency,
there was no such constitution. The old order of things had passed away; the
new order of things was not yet formed. All was transition, confusion,
obscurity. Everybody kept his head as he best might, and scrambled for
whatever he could get. There have been similar seasons in Europe. The time
of the dissolution of the Carlovingian empire is an instance. Who would
think of seriously discussing the question, What extent of pecuniary aid and
of obedience Hugh Capet had a constitutional right to demand from the
Duke of Brittany or the Duke of Normandy? The words "constitutional
right" had, in that state of society, no meaning. If Hugh Capet laid hands on
all the possessions of the Duke of Normandy, this might be unjust and
immoral; but it would not be illegal, in the sense in which the ordinances of
Charles the Tenth were illegal. If, on the other hand, the Duke of Normandy
made war on Hugh Capet, this might be unjust and immoral; but it would
not be illegal, in the sense in which the expedition of Prince Louis
Bonaparte was illegal.
Very similar to this was the state of India sixty years ago. Of the existing
governments not a single one could lay claim to legitimacy, or could plead
any other title than recent occupation. There was scarcely a province in
which the real sovereignty and the nominal sovereignty were not disjoined.
Titles and forms were still retained which implied that the heir of Tamerlane
was an absolute ruler, and that the Nabobs of the provinces were his
lieutenants. In reality, he was a captive. The Nabobs were in some places
independent princes. In other places, as in Bengal and the Carnatic, they
had, like their master, become mere phantoms, and the Company was
supreme. Among the Mahrattas, again, the heir of Sevajee still kept the title
of Rajah; but he was a prisoner, and his prime minister, the Peshwa, had
become the hereditary chief of the state. The Peshwa, in his turn, was fast
sinking into the same degraded situation to which he had reduced the Rajah.
It was, we believe, impossible to find, from the Himalayas to Mysore, a

single government which was at once a government de facto and a
government de jure, which possessed the physical means of making itself
feared by its neighbors and subjects, and which had at the same time the
authority derived from law and long prescription.
Hastings clearly discerned, what was hidden from most of his
contemporaries, that such a state of things gave immense advantages to a
ruler of great talents and few scruples. In every international question that
could arise, he had his option between the de facto ground and the de jure
ground; and the probability was that one of those grounds would sustain
any claim that it might be convenient for him to make, and enable him to
resist any claim made by others. In every controversy, accordingly, he
resorted to the plea which suited his immediate purpose, without troubling
himself in the least about consistency; and thus he scarcely ever failed to
find what, to persons of short memories and scanty information, seemed to
be a justification for what he wanted to do. Sometimes the Nabob of Bengal
is a shadow, sometimes a monarch. Sometimes the Vizier is a mere deputy,
sometimes an independent potentate. If it is expedient for the Company to
show some legal title to the revenues of Bengal, the grant under the seal of
the Mogul is brought forward as an instrument of the highest authority.
When the Mogul asks for the rents which were reserved to him by that very
grant, he is told that he is a mere pageant, that the English power rests on a
very different foundation from a charter given by him, that he is welcome to
play at royalty as long as he likes, but that he must expect no tribute from
the real masters of India.
It is true that it was in the power of others, as well as of Hastings, to
practise this legerdemain; but in the controversies of governments,
sophistry is of little use unless it be backed by power. There is a principle
which Hastings was fond of asserting in the strongest terms, and on which
he acted with undeviating steadiness. It is a principle which, we must own,
though it may be grossly abused, can hardly be disputed in the present state
of public law. It is this, that where an ambiguous question arises between
two governments, there is, if they cannot agree, no appeal except to force,
and that the opinion of the stronger must prevail. Almost every question
was ambiguous in India. The English government was the strongest in
India. The consequences are obvious. The English government might do
exactly what it chose.

The English government now chose to wring money out of Cheyte Sing. It
had formerly been convenient to treat him as a sovereign prince; it was now
convenient to treat him as a subject. Dexterity inferior to that of Hastings
could easily find, in the general chaos of laws and customs, arguments for
either course. Hastings wanted a great supply. It was known that Cheyte
Sing had a large revenue, and it was suspected that he had accumulated a
treasure. Nor was he a favorite at Calcutta. He had, when the Governor-
General was in great difficulties, courted the favor of Francis and
Clavering. Hastings, who, less, perhaps, from evil passions than from
policy, seldom left an injury unpunished, was not sorry that the fate of
Cheyte Sing should teach neighboring princes the same lesson which the
fate of Nuncomar had already impressed on the inhabitants of Bengal.
In 1778, on the first breaking out of the war with France, Cheyte Sing was
called upon to pay, in addition to his fixed tribute, an extraordinary
contribution of fifty thousand pounds. In 1779 an equal sum was exacted. In
1780 the demand was renewed. Cheyte Sing, in the hope of obtaining some
indulgence, secretly offered the Governor-General a bribe of twenty
thousand pounds. Hastings took the money, and his enemies have
maintained that he took it intending to keep it. He certainly concealed the
transaction, for a time, both from the Council in Bengal and from the
Directors at home; nor did he ever give any satisfactory reason for the
concealment. Public spirit, or the fear of detection, at last, determined him
to withstand the temptation. He paid over the bribe to the Company's
treasury, and insisted that the Rajah should instantly comply with the
demands of the English government. The Rajah, after the fashion of his
countrymen, shuffled, solicited, and pleaded poverty. The grasp of Hastings
was not to be so eluded. He added to the requisition another ten thousand
pounds as a fine for delay, and sent troops to exact the money.
The money was paid. But this was not enough. The late events in the south
of India had increased the financial embarrassments of the Company.
Hastings was determined to plunder Cheyte Sing, and, for that end, to fasten
a quarrel on him. Accordingly, the Rajah was now required to keep a body
of cavalry for the service of the British government. He objected and
evaded. This was exactly what the Governor-General wanted. He had now a
pretext for treating the wealthiest of his vassals as a criminal. "I resolved"—
these are the words of Hastings himself—"to draw from his guilt the means

of relief of the Company's distresses, to make him pay largely for his
pardon, or to exact a severe vengeance for past delinquency." The plan was
simply this, to demand larger and larger contributions till the Rajah should
be driven to remonstrate, then to call his remonstrance a crime, and to
punish him by confiscating all his possessions.
Cheyte Sing was in the greatest dismay. He offered two hundred thousand
pounds to propitiate the British government. But Hastings replied that
nothing less than half a million would be accepted. Nay, he began to think
of selling Benares to Oude, as he had formerly sold Allahabad and
Rohilcund. The matter was one which could not be well managed at a
distance; and Hastings resolved to visit Benares.
Cheyte Sing received his liege lord with every mark of reverence, came
near sixty miles, with his guards, to meet and escort the illustrious visitor,
and expressed his deep concern at the displeasure of the English. He even
took off his turban, and laid it in the lap of Hastings, a gesture which in
India marks the most profound submission and devotion. Hastings behaved
with cold and repulsive severity. Having arrived at Benares, he sent to the
Rajah a paper containing the demands of the government of Bengal. The
Rajah, in reply, attempted to clear himself from the accusations brought
against him. Hastings, who wanted money and not excuses, was not to be
put off by the ordinary artifices of Eastern negotiation. He instantly ordered
the Rajah to be arrested and placed under the custody of two companies of
sepoys.
In taking these strong measures, Hastings scarcely showed his usual
judgment. It is possible that, having had little opportunity of personally
observing any part of the population of India, except the Bengalese, he was
not fully aware of the difference between their character and that of the
tribes which inhabit the upper provinces. He was now in a land far more
favorable to the vigor of the human frame than the Delta of the Ganges; in a
land fruitful of soldiers, who have been found worthy to follow English
battalions to the charge and into the breach. The Rajah was popular among
his subjects. His administration had been mild; and the prosperity of the
district which he governed presented a striking contrast to the depressed
state of Bahar under our rule, and a still more striking contrast to the misery
of the provinces which were cursed by the tyranny of the Nabob Vizier. The

national and religious prejudices with which the English were regarded
throughout India were peculiarly intense in the metropolis of the
Brahminical superstition. It can therefore scarcely be doubted that the
Governor-General before he outraged the dignity of Cheyte Sing by an
arrest, ought to have assembled a force capable of bearing down all
opposition. This had not been done. The handful of sepoys who attended
Hastings would probably have been sufficient to overawe Moorshedabad, or
the Black Town of Calcutta. But they were unequal to a conflict with the
hardy rabble of Benares. The streets surrounding the palace were filled by
an immense multitude, of whom a large proportion, as is usual in Upper
India, wore arms. The tumult became a fight, and the fight a massacre. The
English officers defended themselves with desperate courage against
overwhelming numbers, and fell, as became them, sword in hand. The
sepoys were butchered. The gates were forced. The captive prince,
neglected by his jailers during the confusion, discovered an outlet which
opened on the precipitous bank of the Ganges, let himself down to the water
by a string made of the turbans of his attendants, found a boat, and escaped
to the opposite shore.
If Hastings had, by indiscreet violence, brought himself into a difficult and
perilous situation, it is only just to acknowledge that he extricated himself
with even more than his usual ability and presence of mind. He had only
fifty men with him. The building in which he had taken up his residence
was on every side blockaded by the insurgents. But his fortitude remained
unshaken. The Rajah from the other side of the river sent apologies and
liberal offers. They were not even answered. Some subtle and enterprising
men were found who undertook to pass through the throng of enemies, and
to convey the intelligence of the late events to the English cantonments. It is
the fashion of the natives of India to wear large earrings of gold. When they
travel, the rings are laid aside, lest the precious metal should tempt some
gang of robbers; and, in place of the ring, a quill or a roll of paper is
inserted in the orifice to prevent it from closing. Hastings placed in the ears
of his messengers letters rolled up in the smallest compass. Some of these
letters were addressed to the commanders of the English troops. One was
written to assure his wife of his safety. One was to the envoy whom he had
sent to negotiate with the Mahrattas. Instructions for the negotiation were
needed; and the Governor-General framed them in that situation of extreme

danger with as much composure as if he had been writing in his palace at
Calcutta.
Things, however, were not yet at the worst. An English officer of more
spirit than judgment, eager to distinguish himself, made a premature attack
on the insurgents beyond the river. His troops were entangled in narrow
streets, and assailed by a furious population. He fell, with many of his men;
and the survivors were forced to retire.
This event produced the effect which has never failed to follow every
check, however slight, sustained in India by the English arms. For hundreds
of miles round, the whole country was in commotion. The entire population
of the district of Benares took arms. The fields were abandoned by the
husbandmen, who thronged to defend their prince. The infection spread to
Oude. The oppressed people of that province rose up against the Nabob
Vizier, refused to pay their imposts, and put the revenue officers to flight.
Even Bahar was ripe for revolt. The hopes of Cheyte Sing began to rise.
Instead of imploring mercy in the humble style of a vassal, he began to talk
the language of a conqueror, and threatened, it was said, to sweep the white
usurpers out of the land. But the English troops were now assembling fast.
The officers, and even the private men, regarded the Governor-General with
enthusiastic attachment, and flew to his aid with an alacrity which, as he
boasted, had never been shown on any other occasion. Major Popham, a
brave and skilful soldier, who had highly distinguished himself in the
Mahratta war, and in whom the Governor-General reposed the greatest
confidence, took the command. The tumultuary army of the Rajah was put
to rout. His fastnesses were stormed. In a few hours, above thirty thousand
men left his standard, and returned to their ordinary avocations. The
unhappy prince fled from his country forever. His fair domain was added to
the British dominions. One of his relations indeed was appointed rajah; but
the Rajah of Benares was henceforth to be, like the Nabob of Bengal, a
mere pensioner.
By this revolution, an addition of two hundred thousand pounds a year was
made to the revenues of the Company. But the immediate relief was not as
great as had been expected. The treasure laid up by Cheyte Sing had been
popularly estimated at a million sterling. It turned out to be about a fourth

part of that sum; and, such as it was, it was seized by the army, and divided
as prize-money.
Disappointed in his expectations from Benares, Hastings was more violent
than he would otherwise have been, in his dealings with Oude. Sujah
Dowlah had long been dead. His son and successor, Asaph-ul-Dowlah, was
one of the weakest and most vicious even of Eastern princes. His life was
divided between torpid repose and the most odious forms of sensuality. In
his court there was boundless waste, throughout his dominions
wretchedness and disorder. He had been, under the skilful management of
the English government, gradually sinking from the rank of an independent
prince to that of a vassal of the Company. It was only by the help of a
British brigade that he could be secure from the aggressions of neighbors
who despised his weakness, and from the vengeance of subjects who
detested his tyranny. A brigade was furnished; and he engaged to defray the
charge of paying and maintaining it. From that time his independence was
at an end. Hastings was not a man to lose the advantage which he had thus
gained. The Nabob soon began to complain of the burden which he had
undertaken to bear. His revenues, he said, were falling off; his servants were
unpaid; he could no longer support the expense of the arrangement which
he had sanctioned. Hastings would not listen to these representations. The
Vizier, he said, had invited the government of Bengal to send him troops,
and had promised to pay for them. The troops had been sent. How long the
troops were to remain in Oude was a matter not settled by the treaty. It
remained, therefore, to be settled between the contracting parties. But the
contracting parties differed. Who then must decide? The stronger.
Hastings also argued that, if the English force was withdrawn, Oude would
certainly become a prey to anarchy, and would probably be overrun by a
Mahratta army. That the finances of Oude were embarrassed he admitted.
But he contended, not without reason, that the embarrassment was to be
attributed to the incapacity and vices of Asaph-ul-Dowlah himself, and that,
if less were spent on the troops, the only effect would be that more would
be squandered on worthless favorites.
Hastings had intended, after settling the affairs of Benares, to visit
Lucknow, and there to confer with Asaph-ul-Dowlah. But the obsequious
courtesy of the Nabob Vizier prevented this visit. With a small train he

hastened to meet the Governor-General. An interview took place in the
fortress which, from the crest of the precipitous rock of Chunar, looks down
on the waters of the Ganges.
At first sight it might appear impossible that the negotiation should come to
an amicable close. Hastings wanted an extraordinary supply of money.
Asaph-ul-Dowlah wanted to obtain a remission of what he already owed.
Such a difference seemed to admit of no compromise. There was, however,
one course satisfactory to both sides, one course by which it was possible to
relieve the finances both of Oude and of Bengal; and that course was
adopted. It was simply this, that the Governor-General and the Nabob Vizier
should join to rob a third party; and the third party whom they determined
to rob was the parent of one of the robbers.
The mother of the late Nabob, and his wife, who was the mother of the
present Nabob, were known as the Begums or Princesses of Oude. They had
possessed great influence over Sujah Dowlah, and had, at his death, been
left in possession of a splendid dotation. The domains of which they
received the rents and administered the government were of wide extent.
The treasure hoarded by the late Nabob, a treasure which was popularly
estimated at near three millions sterling, was in their hands. They continued
to occupy his favorite palace at Fyzabad, the Beautiful Dwelling; while
Asaph-ul-Dowlah held his court in the stately Lucknow, which he had built
for himself on the shores of the Goomti, and had adorned with noble
mosques and colleges.
Asaph-ul-Dowlah had already extorted considerable sums from his mother.
She had at length appealed to the English; and the English had interfered. A
solemn compact had been made, by which she consented to give her son
some pecuniary assistance, and he in his turn promised never to commit any
further invasion of her rights. This compact was formally guaranteed by the
government of Bengal. But times had changed; money was wanted; and the
power which had given the guarantee was not ashamed to instigate the
spoiler to excesses such that even he shrank from them.
It was necessary to find some pretext for a confiscation inconsistent, not
merely with plighted faith, not merely with the ordinary rules of humanity
and justice, but also with that great law of filial piety which, even in the

wildest tribes of savages, even in those more degraded communities which
wither under the influence of a corrupt half civilization, retains a certain
authority over the human mind. A pretext was the last thing that Hastings
was likely to want. The insurrection at Benares had produced disturbances
in Oude. These disturbances it was convenient to impute to the Princesses.
Evidence for the imputation there was scarcely any; unless reports
wandering from one mouth to another, and gaining something by every
transmission, may be called evidence. The accused were furnished with no
charge; they were permitted to make no defence; for the Governor-General
wisely considered that, if he tried them, he might not be able to find a
ground for plundering them. It was agreed between him and the Nabob
Vizier that the noble ladies should, by a sweeping act of confiscation, be
stripped of their domains and treasures for the benefit of the Company, and
that the sums thus obtained should be accepted by the government of
Bengal in satisfaction of its claims on the government of Oude.
While Asaph-ul-Dowlah was at Chunar, he was completely subjugated by
the clear and commanding intellect of the English statesman. But when they
had separated, the Vizier began to reflect with uneasiness on the
engagement into which he had entered. His mother and grandmother
protested and implored. His heart, deeply corrupted by absolute power and
licentious pleasures, yet not naturally unfeeling, failed him in this crisis.
Even the English resident at Lucknow, though hitherto devoted to Hastings,
shrank from extreme measures. But the Governor-General was inexorable.
He wrote to the resident in terms of the greatest severity, and declared that,
if the spoliation which had been agreed upon were not instantly carried into
effect, he would himself go to Lucknow, and do that from which feebler
minds recoil with dismay. The resident, thus menaced, waited on His
Highness and insisted that the treaty of Chunar should be carried into full
and immediate effect. Asaph-ul-Dowlah yielded, making at the same time a
solemn protestation that he yielded to compulsion. The lands were resumed;
but the treasure was not so easily obtained. It was necessary to use violence.
A body of the Company's troops marched to Fyzabad, and forced the gates
of the palace. The Princesses were confined to their own apartments. But
still they refused to submit. Some more stringent mode of coercion was to
be found. A mode was found of which, even at this distance of time, we
cannot speak without shame and sorrow.

There were at Fyzabad two ancient men, belonging to that unhappy class
which a practice, of immemorial antiquity in the East, has excluded from
the pleasures of love and from the hope of posterity. It has always been held
in Asiatic courts that beings thus estranged from sympathy with their kind
are those whom princes may most safely trust. Sujah Dowlah had been of
this opinion. He had given his entire confidence to the two eunuchs; and
after his death they remained at the head of the household of his widow.
These men were, by the orders of the British government, seized,
imprisoned, ironed, starved almost to death, in order to extort money from
the Princesses. After they had been two months in confinement, their health
gave way. They implored permission to take a little exercise in the garden
of their prison. The officer who was in charge of them stated that, if they
were allowed this indulgence, there was not the smallest chance of their
escaping, and that their irons really added nothing to the security of the
custody in which they were kept. He did not understand the plan of his
superiors. Their object in these inflictions was not security but torture; and
all mitigation was refused. Yet this was not the worst. It was resolved by an
English government that these two infirm old men should be delivered to
the tormentors. For that purpose they were removed to Lucknow. What
horrors their dungeon there witnessed can only be guessed. But there
remains on the records of Parliament this letter, written by a British resident
to a British soldier:—
"Sir, the Nabob having determined to inflict corporal punishment upon the
prisoners under your guard, this is to desire that his officers, when they
shall come, may have free access to the prisoners, and be permitted to do
with them as they shall see proper."
While these barbarities were perpetrated at Lucknow, the Princesses were
still under duress at Fyzabad. Food was allowed to enter their apartments
only in such scanty quantities that their female attendants were in danger of
perishing with hunger. Month after month this cruelty continued, till at
length, after twelve hundred thousand pounds had been wrung out of the
Princesses, Hastings began to think that he had really got to the bottom of
their coffers, and that no rigor could extort more. Then at length the
wretched men who were detained at Lucknow regained their liberty. When

their irons were knocked off and the doors of their prison opened, their
quivering lips, the tears which ran down their cheeks, and the thanksgivings
which they poured forth to the common Father of Mussulmans and
Christians, melted even the stout hearts of the English warriors who stood
by.
But we must not forget to do justice to Sir Elijah Impey's conduct on this
occasion. It was not indeed easy for him to intrude himself into a business
so entirely alien from all his official duties. But there was something
inexpressibly alluring, we must suppose, in the peculiar rankness of the
infamy which was then to be got at Lucknow. He hurried thither as fast as
relays of palanquin-bearers could carry him. A crowd of people came before
him with affidavits against the Begums, ready drawn in their hands. Those
affidavits he did not read. Some of them, indeed, he could not read; for they
were in the dialects of Northern India, and no interpreter was employed. He
administered the oath to the deponents, with all possible expedition, and
asked not a single question, not even whether they had perused the
statements to which they swore. This work performed, he got again into his
palanquin, and posted back to Calcutta, to be in time for the opening of
term. The cause was one which, by his own confession, lay altogether out of
his jurisdiction. Under the charter of justice, he had no more right to inquire
into crimes committed by Asiatics in Oude than the Lord President of the
Court of Session of Scotland to hold an assize at Exeter. He had no right to
try the Begums, nor did he pretend to try them. With what object, then, did
he undertake so long a journey? Evidently in order that he might give, in an
irregular manner, that sanction which in a regular manner he could not give,
to the crimes of those who had recently hired him; and in order that a
confused mass of testimony which he did not sift, which he did not even
read, might acquire an authority not properly belonging to it, from the
signature of the highest judicial functionary in India.
The time was approaching, however, when he was to be stripped of that
robe which has never, since the Revolution, been disgraced so foully as by
him. The state of India had for some time occupied much of the attention of
the British Parliament. Towards the close of the American war, two
committees of the Commons sat on Eastern affairs. In one Edmund Burke
took the lead. The other was under the presidency of the able and versatile
Henry Dundas, then Lord Advocate of Scotland. Great as are the changes

which, during the last sixty years, have taken place in our Asiatic
dominions, the reports which those committees laid on the table of the
House will still be found most interesting and instructive.
There was as yet no connection between the Company and either of the
great parties in the state. The ministers had no motive to defend Indian
abuses. On the contrary, it was for their interest to show, if possible, that the
government and patronage of our Oriental empire might, with advantage, be
transferred to themselves. The votes, therefore, which, in consequence of
the reports made by the two committees, were passed by the Commons,
breathed the spirit of stern and indignant justice. The severest epithets were
applied to several of the measures of Hastings, especially to the Rohilla
war; and it was resolved, on the motion of Mr. Dundas, that the Company
ought to recall a Governor-General who had brought such calamities on the
Indian people, and such dishonor on the British name. An act was passed
for limiting the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. The bargain which
Hastings had made with the Chief Justice was condemned in the strongest
terms; and an address was presented to the King, praying that Impey might
be ordered home to answer for his misdeeds.
Impey was recalled by a letter from the Secretary of State. But the
proprietors of India Stock resolutely refused to dismiss Hastings from their
service, and passed a resolution affirming, what was undeniably true, that
they were entrusted by law with the right of naming and removing their
Governor-General, and that they were not bound to obey the directions of a
single branch of the legislature with respect to such nomination or removal.
Thus supported by his employers, Hastings remained at the head of the
government of Bengal till the spring of 1785. His administration, so
eventful and stormy, closed in almost perfect quiet. In the Council there was
no regular opposition to his measures. Peace was restored to India. The
Mahratta war had ceased. Hyder was no more. A treaty had been concluded
with his son Tippoo; and the Carnatic had been evacuated by the armies of
Mysore. Since the termination of the American war, England had no
European enemy or rival in the Eastern seas.
On a general review of the long administration of Hastings, it is impossible
to deny that, against the great crimes by which it is blemished, we have to

set off great public services. England had passed through a perilous crisis.
She still, indeed, maintained her place in the foremost rank of European
powers; and the manner in which she had defended herself against fearful
odds had inspired surrounding nations with a high opinion both of her spirit
and of her strength. Nevertheless, in every part of the world, except one, she
had been a loser. Not only had she been compelled to acknowledge the
independence of thirteen colonies peopled by her children, and to conciliate
the Irish by giving up the right of legislating for them; but, in the
Mediterranean, in the Gulf of Mexico, on the coast of Africa, on the
continent of America, she had been compelled to cede the fruits of her
victories in former wars. Spain regained Minorca and Florida; France
regained Senegal, Goree, and several West Indian Islands. The only quarter
of the world in which Britain had lost nothing was the quarter in which her
interests had been committed to the care of Hastings. In spite of the utmost
exertions both of European and Asiatic enemies, the power of our country
in the East had been greatly augmented. Benares was subjected; the Nabob
Vizier reduced to vassalage. That our influence had been thus extended,
nay, that Fort William and Fort St. George had not been occupied by hostile
armies, was owing, if we may trust the general voice of the English in India,
to the skill and resolution of Hastings.
His internal administration, with all its blemishes, gives him a title to be
considered as one of the most remarkable men in our history. He dissolved
the double government. He transferred the direction of affairs to English
hands. Out of a frightful anarchy, he educed at least a rude and imperfect
order. The whole organization by which justice was dispensed, revenue
collected, peace maintained throughout a territory not inferior in population
to the dominions of Louis the Sixteenth or of the Emperor Joseph, was
formed and superintended by him. He boasted that every public office,
without exception, which existed when he left Bengal was his creation. It is
quite true that this system, after all the improvements suggested by the
experience of sixty years, still needs improvement, and that it was at first
far more defective than it now is. But whoever seriously considers what it is
to construct from the beginning the whole of a machine so vast and
complex as a government will allow that what Hastings effected deserves
high admiration. To compare the most celebrated European ministers to him
seems to us as unjust as it would be to compare the best baker in London

with Robinson Crusoe, who, before he could bake a single loaf, had to
make his plough and his harrow, his fences and his scarecrows, his sickle
and his flail, his mill and his oven.
The just fame of Hastings rises still higher when we reflect that he was not
bred a statesman; that he was sent from school to a counting-house; and that
he was employed during the prime of his manhood as a commercial agent,
far from all intellectual society.
Nor must we forget that all, or almost all, to whom, when placed at the head
of affairs, he could apply for assistance were persons who owed as little as
himself, or less than himself, to education. A minister in Europe finds
himself, on the first day on which he commences his functions, surrounded
by experienced public servants, the depositaries of official traditions.
Hastings had no such help. His own reflection, his own energy, were to
supply the place of all Downing Street and Somerset House. Having had no
facilities for learning, he was forced to teach. He had first to form himself,
and then to form his instruments; and this not in a single department, but in
all the departments of the administration.
It must be added that, while engaged in this most arduous task, he was
constantly trammelled by orders from home, and frequently borne down by
a majority in Council. The preservation of an empire from a formidable
combination of foreign enemies, the construction of a government in all its
parts, were accomplished by him, while every ship brought out bales of
censure from his employers, and while the records of every consultation
were filled with acrimonious minutes by his colleagues. We believe that
there never was a public man whose temper was so severely tried; not
Marlborough, when thwarted by the Dutch Deputies: not Wellington, when
he had to deal at once with the Portuguese Regency, the Spanish Juntas, and
Mr. Perceval. But the temper of Hastings was equal to almost any trial. It
was not sweet; but it was calm. Quick and vigorous as his intellect was, the
patience with which he endured the most cruel vexations, till a remedy
could be found, resembled the patience of stupidity. He seems to have been
capable of resentment, bitter and long-enduring; yet his resentment so
seldom hurried him into any blunder that it may be doubted whether what
appeared to be revenge was anything but policy.

The effect of this singular equanimity was that he always had the full
command of all the resources of one of the most fertile minds that ever
existed. Accordingly no complication of perils and embarrassments could
perplex him. For every difficulty he had a contrivance ready; and, whatever
may be thought of the justice and humanity of some of his contrivances, it
is certain that they seldom failed to serve the purpose for which they were
designed.
Together with this extraordinary talent for devising expedients, Hastings
possessed, in a very high degree, another talent scarcely less necessary to a
man in his situation, we mean the talent for conducting political
controversy. It is as necessary to an English statesman in the East that he
should be able to write, as it is to a minister in this country that he should be
able to speak. It is chiefly by the oratory of a public man here that the
nation judges of his powers. It is from the letters and reports of a public
man in India that the dispensers of patronage form their estimate of him. In
each case, the talent which receives peculiar encouragement is developed,
perhaps at the expense of the other powers. In this country, we sometimes
hear men speak above their abilities. It is not very unusual to find
gentlemen in the Indian service who write above their abilities. The English
politician is a little too much of a debater; the Indian politician a little too
much of an essayist.
Of the numerous servants of the Company who have distinguished
themselves as framers of minutes and dispatches, Hastings stands at the
head. He was indeed the person who gave to the official writing of the
Indian governments the character which it still retains. He was matched
against no common antagonist. But even Francis was forced to
acknowledge, with sullen and resentful candor, that there was no
contending against the pen of Hastings. And, in truth, the Governor-
General's power of making out a case, of perplexing what it was
inconvenient that people should understand, and of setting in the clearest
point of view whatever would bear the light, was incomparable. His style
must be praised with some reservation. It was in general forcible, pure, and
polished; but it was sometimes, though not often, turgid, and, on one or two
occasions, even bombastic. Perhaps the fondness of Hastings for Persian
literature may have tended to corrupt his taste.

And since we have referred to his literary tastes, it would be most unjust not
to praise the judicious encouragement which, as a ruler, he gave to liberal
studies and curious researches. His patronage was extended, with prudent
generosity, to voyages, travels, experiments, publications. He did little, it is
true, towards introducing into India the learning of the West. To make the
young natives of Bengal familiar with Milton and Adam Smith, to substitute
the geography, astronomy, and surgery of Europe for the dotages of the
Brahminical superstition, or for the imperfect science of ancient Greece
transfused through Arabian expositions—this was a scheme reserved to
crown the beneficent administration of a far more virtuous ruler. Still, it is
impossible to refuse high commendation to a man who, taken from a ledger
to govern an empire, overwhelmed by public business, surrounded by
people as busy as himself, and separated by thousands of leagues from
almost all literary society, gave, both by his example and by his
munificence, a great impulse to learning. In Persian and Arabic literature he
was deeply skilled. With the Sanskrit he was not himself acquainted; but
those who first brought that language to the knowledge of European
students owed much to his encouragement. It was under his protection that
the Asiatic Society commenced its honorable career. That distinguished
body selected him to be its first president; but, with excellent taste and
feeling, he declined the honor in favor of Sir William Jones. But the chief
advantage which the students of Oriental letters derived from his patronage
remains to be mentioned. The Pundits of Bengal had always looked with
great jealousy on the attempts of foreigners to pry into those mysteries
which were locked up in the sacred dialect. The Brahminical religion had
been persecuted by the Mahommedans. What the Hindoos knew of the
spirit of the Portuguese government might warrant them in apprehending
persecution from Christians. That apprehension, the wisdom and
moderation of Hastings removed. He was the first foreign ruler who
succeeded in gaining the confidence of the hereditary priests of India, and
who induced them to lay open to English scholars the secrets of the old
Brahminical theology and jurisprudence.
It is indeed impossible to deny that, in the great art of inspiring large masses
of human beings with confidence and attachment, no ruler ever surpassed
Hastings. If he had made himself popular with the English by giving up the
Bengalese to extortion and oppression, or if, on the other hand, he had

conciliated the Bengalese and alienated the English, there would have been
no cause for wonder. What is peculiar to him is that, being the chief of a
small band of strangers who exercised boundless power over a great
indigenous population, he made himself beloved both by the subject many
and by the dominant few. The affection felt for him by the civil service was
singularly ardent and constant. Through all his disasters and perils, his
brethren stood by him with steadfast loyalty. The army, at the same time,
loved him as armies have seldom loved any but the greatest chiefs who
have led them to victory. Even in his disputes with distinguished military
men, he could always count on the support of the military profession. While
such was his empire over the hearts of his countrymen, he enjoyed among
the natives a popularity such as other governors have perhaps better
merited, but such as no other governor has been able to attain. He spoke
their vernacular dialects with facility and precision. He was intimately
acquainted with their feelings and usages. On one or two occasions, for
great ends, he deliberately acted in defiance of their opinion; but on such
occasions he gained more in their respect than he lost in their love. In
general, he carefully avoided all that could shock their national or religious
prejudices. His administration was indeed in many respects faulty; but the
Bengalee standard of good government was not high. Under the Nabobs,
the hurricane of Mahratta cavalry had passed annually over the rich alluvial
plain. But even the Mahratta shrank from a conflict with the mighty
children of the sea; and the immense rice harvests of the Lower Ganges
were safely gathered in, under the protection of the English sword. The first
English conquerors had been more rapacious and merciless even than the
Mahrattas; but that generation had passed away. Defective as was the
police, heavy as were the public burdens, it is probable that the oldest man
in Bengal could not recollect a season of equal security and prosperity. For
the first time within living memory, the province was placed under a
government strong enough to prevent others from robbing, and not inclined
to play the robber itself. These things inspired good will. At the same time,
the constant success of Hastings and the manner in which he extricated
himself from every difficulty made him an object of superstitious
admiration; and the more than regal splendor which he sometimes displayed
dazzled a people who have much in common with children. Even now, after
the lapse of more than fifty years, the natives of India still talk of him as the
greatest of the English; and nurses sing children to sleep with a jingling

ballad about the fleet horses and richly caparisoned elephants of Sahib
Warren Hostein.
The gravest offences of which Hastings was guilty did not affect his
popularity with the people of Bengal; for those offences were committed
against neighboring states. Those offences, as our readers must have
perceived, we are not disposed to vindicate; yet, in order that the censure
may be justly apportioned to the transgression, it is fit that the motive of the
criminal should be taken into consideration. The motive which prompted
the worst acts of Hastings was misdirected and ill-regulated public spirit.
The rules of justice, the sentiments of humanity, the plighted faith of
treaties, were in his view as nothing when opposed to the immediate interest
of the state. This is no justification, according to the principles either of
morality, or of what we believe to be identical with morality, namely, far-
sighted policy. Nevertheless, the common sense of mankind, which in
questions of this sort seldom goes far wrong, will always recognize a
distinction between crimes which originate in an inordinate zeal for the
commonwealth, and crimes which originate in selfish cupidity. To the
benefit of this distinction Hastings is fairly entitled. There is, we conceive,
no reason to suspect that the Rohilla war, the revolution of Benares, or the
spoliation of the Princesses of Oude, added a rupee to his fortune. We will
not affirm that, in all pecuniary dealings, he showed that punctilious
integrity, that dread of the faintest appearance of evil, which is now the
glory of the Indian civil service. But when the school in which he had been
trained and the temptations to which he was exposed are considered, we are
more inclined to praise him for his general uprightness with respect to
money, than rigidly to blame him for a few transactions which would now
be called indelicate and irregular, but which even now would hardly be
designated as corrupt. A rapacious man he certainly was not. Had he been
so he would infallibly have returned to his country the richest subject in
Europe. We speak within compass when we say that, without applying any
extraordinary pressure, he might easily have obtained from the zemindars of
the Company's provinces and from neighboring princes, in the course of
thirteen years, more than three millions sterling, and might have outshone
the splendor of Carlton House and of the Palais Royal. He brought home a
fortune such as a Governor-General, fond of state and careless of thrift,
might easily, during so long a tenure of office, save out of his legal salary.

Mrs. Hastings, we are afraid, was less scrupulous. It was generally believed
that she accepted presents with great alacrity, and that she thus formed,
without the connivance of her husband, a private hoard amounting to
several lacs of rupees. We are the more inclined to give credit to this story
because Mr. Gleig, who cannot but have heard it, does not, as far as we
have observed, notice or contradict it.
The influence of Mrs. Hastings over her husband was indeed such that she
might easily have obtained much larger sums than she was ever accused of
receiving. At length her health began to give way; and the Governor-
General, much against his will, was compelled to send her to England. He
seems to have loved her with that love which is peculiar to men of strong
minds, to men whose affection is not easily won or widely diffused. The
talk of Calcutta ran for some time on the luxurious manner in which he
fitted up the round-house of an Indiaman for her accommodation, on the
profusion of sandal-wood and carved ivory which adorned her cabin, and
on the thousands of rupees which had been expended in order to procure for
her the society of an agreeable female companion during the voyage. We
may remark here that the letters of Hastings to his wife are exceedingly
characteristic. They are tender, and full of indications of esteem and
confidence: but, at the same time, a little more ceremonious than is usual in
so intimate a relation. The solemn courtesy with which he compliments his
"elegant Marian" reminds us now and then of the dignified air with which
Sir Charles Grandison bowed over Miss Byron's hand in the cedar parlor.
After some months Hastings prepared to follow his wife to England. When
it was announced that he was about to quit his office, the feeling of the
society which he had so long governed manifested itself by many signs.
Addresses poured in from Europeans and Asiatics, from civil functionaries,
soldiers, and traders. On the day on which he delivered up the keys of
office, a crowd of friends and admirers formed a lane to the quay where he
embarked. Several barges escorted him far down the river; and some
attached friends refused to quit him till the low coast of Bengal was fading
from the view, and till the pilot was leaving the ship.
Of his voyage little is known, except that he amused himself with books
and with his pen; and that among the compositions by which he beguiled
the tediousness of that long leisure, was a pleasing imitation of Horace's

Otium Divos rogat. This little poem was inscribed to Mr. Shore, afterwards
Lord Teignmouth, a man of whose integrity, humanity, and honor it is
impossible to speak too highly; but who, like some other excellent members
of the civil service, extended to the conduct of his friend Hastings an
indulgence of which his own conduct never stood in need.
The voyage was, for those times, very speedy. Hastings was little more than
four months on the sea. In June, 1785, he landed at Plymouth, posted to
London, appeared at Court, paid his respects in Leadenhall Street, and then
retired with his wife to Cheltenham.
He was greatly pleased with his reception. The King treated him with
marked distinction. The Queen, who had already incurred much censure on
account of the favor which, in spite of the ordinary severity of her virtue,
she had shown to the "elegant Marian," was not less gracious to Hastings.
The Directors received him in a solemn sitting; and their chairman read to
him a vote of thanks which they had passed without one dissentient voice.
"I find myself," said Hastings, in a letter written about a quarter of a year
after his arrival in England,—"I find myself everywhere, and universally,
treated with evidences, apparent even to my own observation, that I possess
the good opinion of my country."
The confident and exulting tone of his correspondence about this time is the
more remarkable, because he had already received ample notice of the
attack which was in preparation. Within a week after he landed at
Plymouth, Burke gave notice in the House of Commons of a motion
seriously affecting a gentleman lately returned from India. The session,
however, was then so far advanced that it was impossible to enter on so
extensive and important a subject.
Hastings, it is clear, was not sensible of the danger of his position. Indeed
that sagacity, that judgment, that readiness in devising expedients, which
had distinguished him in the East, seemed now to have forsaken him; not
that his abilities were at all impaired; not that he was not still the same man
who had triumphed over Francis and Nuncomar, who had made the Chief
Justice and the Nabob Vizier his tools, who had deposed Cheyte Sing, and
repelled Hyder Ali. But an oak, as Mr. Grattan finely said, should not be
transplanted at fifty. A man who, having left England when a boy, returns to

it after thirty or forty years passed in India, will find, be his talents what
they may, that he has much both to learn and to unlearn before he can take a
place among English statesmen. The working of a representative system,
the war of parties, the arts of debate, the influence of the press, are startling
novelties to him. Surrounded on every side by new machines and new
tactics, he is as much bewildered as Hannibal would have been at Waterloo,
or Themistocles at Trafalgar. His very acuteness deludes him. His very
vigor causes him to stumble. The more correct his maxims, when applied to
the state of society to which he is accustomed, the more certain they are to
lead him astray. This was strikingly the case with Hastings. In India he had
a bad hand; but he was master of the game, and he won every stake. In
England he held excellent cards, if he had known how to play them; and it
was chiefly by his own errors that he was brought to the verge of ruin.
Of all his errors the most serious was perhaps the choice of a champion.
Clive, in similar circumstances, had made a singularly happy selection. He
put himself into the hands of Wedderburn, afterwards Lord Loughborough,
one of the few great advocates who have also been great in the House of
Commons. To the defence of Clive, therefore, nothing was wanting, neither
learning nor knowledge of the world, neither forensic acuteness nor that
eloquence which charms political assemblies. Hastings entrusted his
interests to a very different person, a major in the Bengal army, named
Scott. This gentleman had been sent over from India some time before as
the agent of the Governor-General. It was rumored that his services were
rewarded with Oriental munificence; and we believe that he received much
more than Hastings could conveniently spare. The Major obtained a seat in
Parliament, and was there regarded as the organ of his employer. It was
evidently impossible that a gentleman so situated could speak with the
authority which belongs to an independent position. Nor had the agent of
Hastings the talents necessary for obtaining the ear of an assembly which,
accustomed to listen to great orators, had naturally become fastidious. He
was always on his legs; he was very tedious; and he had only one topic, the
merits and wrongs of Hastings. Everybody who knows the House of
Commons will easily guess what followed. The Major was soon considered
as the greatest bore of his time. His exertions were not confined to
Parliament. There was hardly a day on which the newspapers did not
contain some puff upon Hastings, signed Asiaticus or Bengalensis, but

known to be written by the indefatigable Scott; and hardly a month in which
some bulky pamphlet on the same subject, and from the same pen, did not
pass to the trunk-makers and the pastry-cooks. As to this gentleman's
capacity for conducting a delicate question through Parliament, our readers
will want no evidence beyond that which they will find in letters preserved
in these volumes. We will give a single specimen of his temper and
judgment. He designated the greatest man then living as "that reptile Mr.
Burke."
In spite, however, of this unfortunate choice, the general aspect of affairs
was favorable to Hastings. The King was on his side. The Company and its
servants were zealous in his cause. Among public men he had many ardent
friends. Such were Lord Mansfield, who had outlived the vigor of his body,
but not that of his mind; and Lord Lansdowne, who, though unconnected
with any party, retained the importance which belongs to great talents and
knowledge. The ministers were generally believed to be favorable to the
late Governor-General. They owed their power to the clamor which had
been raised against Mr. Fox's East India Bill. The authors of that bill, when
accused of invading vested rights, and of setting up powers unknown to the
Constitution, had defended themselves by pointing to the crimes of
Hastings, and by arguing that abuses so extraordinary justified
extraordinary measures. Those who, by opposing that bill, had raised
themselves to the head of affairs would naturally be inclined to extenuate
the evils which had been made the plea for administering so violent a
remedy; and such, in fact, was their general disposition. The Lord
Chancellor Thurlow, in particular, whose great place and force of intellect
gave him a weight in the government inferior only to that of Mr. Pitt,
espoused the cause of Hastings with indecorous violence. Mr. Pitt, though
he had censured many parts of the Indian system, had studiously abstained
from saying a word against the late chief of the Indian government. To
Major Scott, indeed, the young minister had in private extolled Hastings as
a great, a wonderful man, who had the highest claims on the government.
There was only one objection to granting all that so eminent a servant of the
public could ask. The resolution of censure still remained on the Journals of
the House of Commons. That resolution was, indeed, unjust; but, till it was
rescinded, could the minister advise the King to bestow any mark of
approbation on the person censured? If Major Scott is to be trusted, Mr. Pitt

declared that this was the only reason which prevented the advisers of the
Crown from conferring a peerage on the late Governor-General. Mr.
Dundas was the only important member of the administration who was
deeply committed to a different view of the subject. He had moved the
resolution which created the difficulty; but even from him little was to be
apprehended. Since he had presided over the committee on Eastern affairs,
great changes had taken place. He was surrounded by new allies; he had
fixed his hopes on new objects; and whatever may have been his good
qualities,—and he had many,—flattery itself never reckoned rigid
consistency in the number.
From the ministry, therefore, Hastings had every reason to expect support;
and the ministry was very powerful. The Opposition was loud and
vehement against him. But the Opposition, though formidable from the
wealth and influence of some of its members, and from the admirable
talents and eloquence of others, was outnumbered in Parliament, and odious
throughout the country. Nor, as far as we can judge, was the Opposition
generally desirous to engage in so serious an undertaking as the
impeachment of an Indian Governor. Such an impeachment must last for
years. It must impose on the chiefs of the party an immense load of labor.
Yet it could scarcely, in any manner, affect the event of the great political
game. The followers of the coalition were therefore more inclined to revile
Hastings than to prosecute him. They lost no opportunity of coupling his
name with the names of the most hateful tyrants of whom history makes
mention. The wits of Brooks's aimed their keenest sarcasms both at his
public and at his domestic life. Some fine diamonds which he had
presented, as it was rumored, to the royal family, and a certain richly carved
ivory bed which the Queen had done him the honor to accept from him,
were favorite subjects of ridicule. One lively poet proposed that the great
acts of the fair Marian's present husband should be immortalized by the
pencil of his predecessor; and that Imhoff should be employed to embellish
the House of Commons with paintings of the bleeding Rohillas, of
Nuncomar swinging, of Cheyte Sing letting himself down to the Ganges.
Another, in an exquisitely humorous parody of Virgil's third eclogue,
propounded the question what that mineral could be of which the rays had
power to make the most austere of princesses the friend of a wanton. A third
described, with gay malevolence, the gorgeous appearance of Mrs. Hastings

at St. James's, the galaxy of jewels, torn from Indian Begums, which
adorned her headdress, her necklace gleaming with future votes, and the
depending questions that shone upon her ears. Satirical attacks of this
description, and perhaps a motion for a vote of censure, would have
satisfied the great body of the Opposition. But there were two men whose
indignation was not to be so appeased, Philip Francis and Edmund Burke.
Francis had recently entered the House of Commons, and had already
established a character there for industry and ability. He labored indeed
under one most unfortunate defect, want of fluency. But he occasionally
expressed himself with a dignity and energy worthy of the greatest orators.
Before he had been many days in Parliament, he incurred the bitter dislike
of Pitt, who constantly treated him with as much asperity as the laws of
debate would allow. Neither lapse of years nor change of scene had
mitigated the enmities which Francis had brought back from the East. After
his usual fashion, he mistook his malevolence for virtue, nursed it, as
preachers tell us that we ought to nurse our good dispositions, and paraded
it, on all occasions, with Pharisaical ostentation.
The zeal of Burke was still fiercer; but it was far purer. Men unable to
understand the elevation of his mind have tried to find out some
discreditable motive for the vehemence and pertinacity which he showed on
this occasion. But they have altogether failed. The idle story that he had
some private slight to revenge has long been given up, even by the
advocates of Hastings. Mr. Gleig supposes that Burke was actuated by party
spirit, that he retained a bitter remembrance of the fall of the coalition, that
he attributed that fall to the exertions of the East India interest, and that he
considered Hastings as the head and the representative of that interest. This
explanation seems to be sufficiently refuted by a reference to dates. The
hostility of Burke to Hastings commenced long before the coalition, and
lasted long after Burke had become a strenuous supporter of those by whom
the coalition had been defeated. It began when Burke and Fox, closely
allied together, were attacking the influence of the Crown, and calling for
peace with the American republic. It continued till Burke, alienated from
Fox, and loaded with the favors of the Crown, died, preaching a crusade
against the French republic. We surely cannot attribute to the events of 1784
an enmity which began in 1781, and which retained undiminished force
long after persons far more deeply implicated than Hastings in the events of

1784 had been cordially forgiven. And why should we look for any other
explanation of Burke's conduct than that which we find on the surface? The
plain truth is that Hastings had committed some great crimes, and that the
thought of those crimes made the blood of Burke boil in his veins. For
Burke was a man in whom compassion for suffering and hatred of injustice
and tyranny were as strong as in Las Casas or Clarkson. And although in
him, as in Las Casas and in Clarkson, these noble feelings were alloyed
with the infirmity which belongs to human nature, he is, like them, entitled
to this great praise, that he devoted years of intense labor to the service of a
people with whom he had neither blood nor language, neither religion nor
manners, in common, and from whom no requital, no thanks, no applause
could be expected.
His knowledge of India was such as few, even of those Europeans who have
passed many years in that country, have attained, and such as certainly was
never attained by any public man who had not quitted Europe. He had
studied the history, the laws, and the usages of the East with an industry
such as is seldom found united to so much genius and so much sensibility.
Others have perhaps been equally laborious, and have collected an equal
mass of materials. But the manner in which Burke brought his higher
powers of intellect to work on statements of facts, and on tables of figures,
was peculiar to himself. In every part of those huge bales of Indian
information which repelled almost all other readers, his mind, at once
philosophical and poetical, found something to instruct or to delight. His
reason analyzed and digested those vast and shapeless masses; his
imagination animated and colored them. Out of darkness, and dulness, and
confusion, he formed a multitude of ingenious theories and vivid pictures.
He had, in the highest degree, that noble faculty whereby man is able to live
in the past and in the future, in the distant and in the unreal. India and its
inhabitants were not to him, as to most Englishmen, mere names and
abstractions, but a real country and a real people. The burning sun, the
strange vegetation of the palm and the cocoa tree, the rice-field, the tank,
the huge trees, older than the Mogul empire, under which the village
crowds assemble, the thatched roof of the peasant's hut, the rich tracery of
the mosque where the imaum prays with his face to Mecca, the drums, and
banners, and gaudy idols, the devotee swinging in the air, the graceful
maiden, with the pitcher on her head, descending the steps to the riverside,

the black faces, the long beards, the yellow streaks of sect, the turbans and
the flowing robes, the spears and the silver maces, the elephants with their
canopies of state, the gorgeous palanquin of the prince, and the close litter
of the noble lady,—all these things were to him as the objects amidst which
his own life had been passed, as the objects which lay on the road between
Beaconsfield and St. James's Street. All India was present to the eye of his
mind, from the halls where suitors laid gold and perfumes at the feet of
sovereigns to the wild moor where the gypsy camp was pitched, from the
bazaar, humming like a beehive with the crowd of buyers and sellers, to the
jungle where the lonely courier shakes his bunch of iron rings to scare away
the hyenas. He had just as lively an idea of the insurrection at Benares as of
Lord George Gordon's riots, and of the execution of Nuncomar as of the
execution of Dr. Dodd. Oppression in Bengal was to him the same thing as
oppression in the streets of London.
He saw that Hastings had been guilty of some most unjustifiable acts. All
that followed was natural and necessary in a mind like Burke's. His
imagination and his passions, once excited, hurried him beyond the bounds
of justice and good sense. His reason, powerful as it was, became the slave
of feelings which it should have controlled. His indignation, virtuous in its
origin, acquired too much of the character of personal aversion. He could
see no mitigating circumstance, no redeeming merit. His temper, which,
though generous and affectionate, had always been irritable, had now been
made almost savage by bodily infirmities and mental vexations. Conscious
of great powers and great virtues, he found himself, in age and poverty, a
mark for the hatred of a perfidious court and a deluded people. In
Parliament his eloquence was out of date. A young generation, which knew
him not, had filled the House. Whenever he rose to speak, his voice was
drowned by the unseemly interruption of lads who were in their cradles
when his orations on the Stamp Act called forth the applause of the great
Earl of Chatham. These things had produced on his proud and sensitive
spirit an effect at which we cannot wonder. He could no longer discuss any
question with calmness, or make allowance for honest differences of
opinion. Those who think that he was more violent and acrimonious in
debates about India than on other occasions are ill informed respecting the
last years of his life. In the discussions on the Commercial Treaty with the
Court of Versailles, on the Regency, on the French Revolution, he showed

even more virulence than in conducting the impeachment. Indeed, it may be
remarked that the very persons who called him a mischievous maniac, for
condemning in burning words the Rohilla war and the spoliation of the
Begums, exalted him into a prophet as soon as he began to declaim, with
greater vehemence, and not with greater reason, against the taking of the
Bastile and the insults offered to Marie Antoinette. To us he appears to have
been neither a maniac in the former case nor a prophet in the latter, but in
both cases a great and good man, led into extravagance by a sensibility
which domineered over all his faculties.
It may be doubted whether the personal antipathy of Francis, or the nobler
indignation of Burke, would have led their party to adopt extreme measures
against Hastings, if his own conduct had been judicious. He should have
felt that, great as his public services had been, he was not faultless; and
should have been content to make his escape, without aspiring to the honors
of a triumph. He and his agent took a different view. They were impatient
for the rewards which, as they conceived, were deferred only till Burke's
attack should be over. They accordingly resolved to force on a decisive
action with an enemy for whom, if they had been wise, they would have
made a bridge of gold. On the first day of the session of 1786, Major Scott
reminded Burke of the notice given in the preceding year, and asked
whether it was seriously intended to bring any charge against the late
Governor-General. This challenge left no course open to the Opposition,
except to come forward as accusers, or to acknowledge themselves
calumniators. The administration of Hastings had not been so blameless,
nor was the great party of Fox and North so feeble, that it could be prudent
to venture on so bold a defiance. The leaders of the Opposition instantly
returned the only answer which they could with honor return; and the whole
party was irrevocably pledged to a prosecution.
Burke began his operations by applying for Papers. Some of the documents
for which he asked were refused by the ministers, who, in the debate, held
language such as strongly confirmed the prevailing opinion that they
intended to support Hastings. In April the charges were laid on the table.
They had been drawn by Burke with great ability, though in a form too
much resembling that of a pamphlet. Hastings was furnished with a copy of
the accusation; and it was intimated to him that he might, if he thought fit,
be heard in his own defence at the bar of the Commons.

Here again Hastings was pursued by the same fatality which had attended
him ever since the day when he set foot on English ground. It seemed to be
decreed that this man, so politic and so successful in the East, should
commit nothing but blunders in Europe. Any judicious adviser would have
told him that the best thing which he could do would be to make an
eloquent, forcible, and affecting oration at the bar of the House; but that, if
he could not trust himself to speak, and found it necessary to read, he ought
to be as concise as possible. Audiences accustomed to extemporaneous
debating of the highest excellence are always impatient of long written
compositions. Hastings, however, sat down as he would have done at the
Government House in Bengal, and prepared a paper of immense length.
That paper, if recorded on the consultations of an Indian administration,
would have been justly praised as a very able minute. But it was now out of
place. It fell flat, as the best written defence must have fallen flat, on an
assembly accustomed to the animated and strenuous conflicts of Pitt and
Fox. The members, as soon as their curiosity about the face and demeanor
of so eminent a stranger was satisfied, walked away to dinner, and left
Hastings to tell his story till midnight to the clerks and the Sergeant-at-
arms.
All preliminary steps having been duly taken, Burke, in the beginning of
June, brought forward the charge relating to the Rohilla war. He acted
discreetly in placing this accusation in the van; for Dundas had formerly
moved, and the House had adopted, a resolution condemning, in the most
severe terms, the policy followed by Hastings with regard to Rohilcund.
Dundas had little, or rather nothing, to say in defence of his own
consistency; but he put a bold face on the matter, and opposed the motion.
Among other things, he declared that, though he still thought the Rohilla
war unjustifiable, he considered the services which Hastings had
subsequently rendered to the state as sufficient to atone even for so great an
offence. Pitt did not speak, but voted with Dundas; and Hastings was
absolved by a hundred and nineteen votes against sixty-seven.
Hastings was now confident of victory. It seemed, indeed, that he had
reason to be so. The Rohilla war was, of all his measures, that which his
accusers might with greatest advantage assail. It had been condemned by
the Court of Directors. It had been condemned by the House of Commons.
It had been condemned by Mr. Dundas, who had since become the chief

minister of the Crown for Indian affairs. Yet Burke, having chosen this
strong ground, had been completely defeated on it. That, having failed here,
he should succeed on any point, was generally thought impossible. It was
rumored at the clubs and coffee-houses that one or perhaps two more
charges would be brought forward, that if, on those charges, the sense of the
House of Commons should be against impeachment, the Opposition would
let the matter drop, that Hastings would be immediately raised to the
peerage, decorated with the star of the Bath, sworn of the Privy Council,
and invited to lend the assistance of his talents and experience to the India
board. Lord Thurlow, indeed, some months before, had spoken with
contempt of the scruples which prevented Pitt from calling Hastings to the
House of Lords; and had even said, that if the Chancellor of the Exchequer
was afraid of the Commons, there was nothing to prevent the Keeper of the
Great Seal from taking the royal pleasure about a patent of peerage. The
very title was chosen. Hastings was to be Lord Daylesford. For, through all
changes of scene and changes of fortune, remained unchanged his
attachment to the spot which had witnessed the greatness and the fall of his
family, and which had borne so great a part in the first dreams of his young
ambition.
But in a very few days these fair prospects were overcast. On the thirteenth
of June, Mr. Fox brought forward, with great ability and eloquence, the
charge respecting the treatment of Cheyte Sing. Francis followed on the
same side. The friends of Hastings were in high spirits when Pitt rose. With
his usual abundance and felicity of language, the Minister gave his opinion
on the case. He maintained that the Governor-General was justified in
calling on the Rajah of Benares for pecuniary assistance, and in imposing a
fine when that assistance was contumaciously withheld. He also thought
that the conduct of the Governor-General during the insurrection had been
distinguished by ability and presence of mind. He censured, with great
bitterness, the conduct of Francis, both in India and in Parliament, as most
dishonest and malignant. The necessary inference from Pitt's arguments
seemed to be that Hastings ought to be honorably acquitted; and both the
friends and the opponents of the Minister expected from him a declaration
to that effect. To the astonishment of all parties, he concluded by saying
that, though he thought it right in Hastings to fine Cheyte Sing for
contumacy, yet the amount of the fine was too great for the occasion. On

this ground, and on this ground alone, did Mr. Pitt, applauding every other
part of the conduct of Hastings with regard to Benares, declare that he
should vote in favor of Mr. Fox's motion.
The House was thunderstruck; and it well might be so. For the wrong done
to Cheyte Sing, even had it been as flagitious as Fox and Francis contended,
was a trifle when compared with the horrors which had been inflicted on
Rohilcund. But if Mr. Pitt's view of the case of Cheyte Sing were correct,
there was no ground for an impeachment, or even for a vote of censure. If
the offence of Hastings was really no more than this, that, having a right to
impose a mulct, the amount of which mulct was not defined, but was left to
be settled by his discretion, he had, not for his own advantage, but for that
of the state, demanded too much, was this an offence which required a
criminal proceeding of the highest solemnity,—a criminal proceeding to
which, during sixty years, no public functionary had been subjected? We
can see, we think, in what way a man of sense and integrity might have
been induced to take any course respecting Hastings except the course
which Mr. Pitt took. Such a man might have thought a great example
necessary, for the preventing of injustice and for the vindicating the national
honor, and might, on that ground, have voted for impeachment both on the
Rohilla charge and on the Benares charge. Such a man might have thought
that the offences of Hastings had been atoned for by great services, and
might, on that ground, have voted against the impeachment, on both
charges. With great diffidence, we give it as our opinion that the most
correct course would, on the whole, have been to impeach on the Rohilla
charge, and to acquit on the Benares charge. Had the Benares charge
appeared to us in the same light in which it appeared to Mr. Pitt, we should,
without hesitation, have voted for acquittal on that charge. The one course
which it is inconceivable that any man of a tenth part of Mr. Pitt's abilities
can have honestly taken was the course which he took. He acquitted
Hastings on the Rohilla charge. He softened down the Benares charge till it
became no charge at all; and then he pronounced that it contained matter for
impeachment.
Nor must it be forgotten that the principal reason assigned by the ministry
for not impeaching Hastings on account of the Rohilla war was this, that the
delinquencies of the early part of his administration had been atoned for by
the excellence of the later part. Was it not most extraordinary that men who

had held this language could afterwards vote that the later part of his
administration furnished matter for no less than twenty articles of
impeachment? They first represented the conduct of Hastings in 1780 and
1781 as so highly meritorious that, like works of supererogation in the
Catholic theology, it ought to be efficacious for the cancelling of former
offences; and they then prosecuted him for his conduct in 1780 and 1781.
The general astonishment was the greater because, only twenty-four hours
before, the members on whom the Minister could depend had received the
usual notes from the Treasury, begging them to be in their places and to
vote against Mr. Fox's motion. It was asserted by Mr. Hastings that, early on
the morning of the very day on which the debate took place, Dundas called
on Pitt, woke him, and was closeted with him many hours. The result of this
conference was a determination to give up the late Governor-General to the
vengeance of the Opposition. It was impossible even for the most powerful
minister to carry all his followers with him in so strange a course. Several
persons high in office, the Attorney-General, Mr. Grenville, and Lord
Mulgrave, divided against Mr. Pitt. But the devoted adherents who stood by
the head of the government without asking questions were sufficiently
numerous to turn the scale. A hundred and nineteen members voted for Mr.
Fox's motion; seventy-nine against it. Dundas silently followed Pitt.
That good and great man, the late William Wilberforce, often related the
events of this remarkable night. He described the amazement of the House,
and the bitter reflections which were muttered against the Prime Minister by
some of the habitual supporters of government. Pitt himself appeared to feel
that his conduct required some explanation. He left the treasury bench, sat
for some time next to Mr. Wilberforce, and very earnestly declared that he
had found it impossible, as a man of conscience, to stand any longer by
Hastings. The business, he said, was too bad. Mr. Wilberforce, we are
bound to add, fully believed that his friend was sincere, and that the
suspicions to which this mysterious affair gave rise were altogether
unfounded.
Those suspicions, indeed, were such as it is painful to mention. The friends
of Hastings, most of whom, it is to be observed, generally supported the
administration, affirmed that the motive of Pitt and Dundas was jealousy.
Hastings was personally a favorite with the King. He was the idol of the

East India Company and of its servants. If he were absolved by the
Commons, seated among the Lords, admitted to the Board of Control,
closely allied with the strong-minded and imperious Thurlow, was it not
almost certain that he would soon draw to himself the entire management of
Eastern affairs? Was it not possible that he might become a formidable rival
in the cabinet? It had probably got abroad that very singular
communications had taken place between Thurlow and Major Scott, and
that, if the first Lord of the Treasury was afraid to recommend Hastings for
a peerage, the Chancellor was ready to take the responsibility of that step on
himself. Of all ministers, Pitt was the least likely to submit with patience to
such an encroachment on his functions. If the Commons impeached
Hastings, all danger was at an end. The proceeding, however it might
terminate, would probably last some years. In the meantime, the accused
person would be excluded from honors and public employments, and could
scarcely venture even to pay his duty at court. Such were the motives
attributed by a great part of the public to the young minister, whose ruling
passion was generally believed to be avarice of power.
The prorogation soon interrupted the discussions respecting Hastings. In the
following year, those discussions were resumed. The charge touching the
spoliation of the Begums was brought forward by Sheridan, in a speech
which was so imperfectly reported that it may be said to be wholly lost, but
which was, without doubt, the most elaborately brilliant of all the
productions of his ingenious mind. The impression which it produced was
such as has never been equalled. He sat down, not merely amidst cheering,
but amidst the loud clapping of hands, in which the Lords below the bar and
the strangers in the gallery joined. The excitement of the House was such
that no other speaker could obtain a hearing; and the debate was adjourned.
The ferment spread fast through the town. Within four and twenty hours,
Sheridan was offered a thousand pounds for the copyright of the speech, if
he would himself correct it for the press. The impression made by this
remarkable display of eloquence on severe and experienced critics, whose
discernment may be supposed to have been quickened by emulation, was
deep and permanent. Mr. Windham, twenty years later, said that the speech
deserved all its fame, and was, in spite of some faults of taste, such as were
seldom wanting either in the literary or in the parliamentary performances
of Sheridan, the finest that had been delivered within the memory of man.

Mr. Fox, about the same time, being asked by the late Lord Holland what
was the best speech ever made in the House of Commons, assigned the first
place, without hesitation, to the great oration of Sheridan on the Oude
charge.
When the debate was resumed, the tide ran so strongly against the accused
that his friends were coughed and scraped down. Pitt declared himself for
Sheridan's motion; and the question was carried by a hundred and seventy-
five votes against sixty-eight.
The Opposition, flushed with victory and strongly supported by the public
sympathy, proceeded to bring forward a succession of charges relating
chiefly to pecuniary transactions. The friends of Hastings were discouraged,
and, having now no hope of being able to avert an impeachment, were not
very strenuous in their exertions. At length the House, having agreed to
twenty articles of charge, directed Burke to go before the Lords, and to
impeach the late Governor-General of High Crimes and Misdemeanors.
Hastings was at the same time arrested by the Sergeant-at-arms, and carried
to the bar of the Peers.
The session was now within ten days of its close. It was, therefore,
impossible that any progress could be made in the trial till the next year.
Hastings was admitted to bail; and further proceedings were postponed till
the Houses should reassemble.
When Parliament met in the following winter, the Commons proceeded to
elect a committee for managing the impeachment. Burke stood at the head;
and with him were associated most of the leading members of the
Opposition. But when the name of Francis was read a fierce contention
arose. It was said that Francis and Hastings were notoriously on bad terms,
that they had been at feud during many years, that on one occasion their
mutual aversion had impelled them to seek each other's lives, and that it
would be improper and indelicate to select a private enemy to be a public
accuser. It was urged on the other side with great force, particularly by Mr.
Windham, that impartiality, though the first duty of a judge, had never been
reckoned among the qualities of an advocate; that in the ordinary
administration of criminal justice among the English, the aggrieved party,
the very last person who ought to be admitted into the jury-box, is the

prosecutor; that what was wanted in a manager was, not that he should be
free from bias, but that he should be able, well informed, energetic, and
active. The ability and information of Francis were admitted; and the very
animosity with which he was reproached, whether a virtue or a vice, was at
least a pledge for his energy and activity. It seems difficult to refute these
arguments. But the inveterate hatred borne by Francis to Hastings had
excited general disgust. The House decided that Francis should not be a
manager. Pitt voted with the majority, Dundas with the minority.
In the meantime, the preparations for the trial had proceeded rapidly; and on
the thirteenth of February, 1788, the sittings of the Court commenced. There
have been spectacles more dazzling to the eye, more gorgeous with jewelry
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 civilization were now displayed, with every advantage that
could be derived both from coöperation and from contrast. Every step in the
proceedings carried the mind either backward, through many troubled
centuries, to the days when the foundations of our 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 Oude.
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
gray 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 foreheads of so many writers and statesmen,
and the sweet smiles of so many noble matrons. It had induced Parr to
suspend his labors 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 St. 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.
His counsel accompanied him, men all of whom were afterwards raised by
their talents and learning to the highest posts in their profession, the bold
and strong-minded Law, afterwards Chief Justice of the King's Bench; the
more humane and eloquent Dallas, afterwards Chief Justice of the Common
Pleas: and Plomer who, near twenty years later, successfully conducted in
the same high court the defence of Lord Melville, and subsequently became
Vice-Chancellor and Master of the Rolls.
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 high-souled Windham. Nor, though surrounded by such
men, did the youngest manager pass unnoticed. At an age when most of
those who distinguish themselves in life are still contending for prizes and
fellowships at collage, he had won for himself a conspicuous place in
Parliament. No advantage of fortune or connection was wanting that could
set off to the height his splendid talents and his unblemished honor. At
twenty-three he had been thought worthy to be ranked with the veteran
statesmen who appeared as the delegates of the British Commons, at the bar
of the British nobility. All who stood at that bar, save him alone, are gone,
culprit, advocates, accusers. To the generation which is now in the vigor of
life, he is the sole representative of a great age which has passed away. But
those who, within the last ten years, have listened with delight, till the
morning sun shone on the tapestries of the House of Lords, to the lofty and
animated eloquence of Charles Earl Grey are able to form some estimate of
the powers of a race of men among whom he was not the foremost.
The charges and the answers of Hastings were first read. The ceremony
occupied two whole days, and was rendered less tedious than it would
otherwise have been by the silver voice and just emphasis of Cowper, the
clerk of the court, a near relation of the amiable poet. 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 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
Company and of the English Presidencies. 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 public
law. The energy and pathos of the great orator extorted expressions of
unwonted admiration from the stern and hostile Chancellor, and, for a
moment, seemed to pierce even the resolute heart of the defendant. The
ladies in the galleries, unaccustomed to such displays of eloquence, excited
by the solemnity of the occasion, and perhaps not unwilling to display their
taste and sensibility, 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. 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."
When the deep murmur of various emotions had subsided, Mr. Fox rose to
address the Lords respecting the course of proceeding to be followed. The
wish of the accusers was that the Court would bring to a close the
investigation of the first charge before the second was opened. The wish of
Hastings and of his counsel was that the managers should open all the
charges, and produce all the evidence for the prosecution, before the
defence began. The Lords retired to their own House to consider the
question. The Chancellor took the side of Hastings. Lord Loughborough,
who was now in opposition, supported the demand of the managers. The
division showed which way the inclination of the tribunal leaned. A
majority of near three to one decided in favor of the course for which
Hastings contended.
When the Court sat again, Mr. Fox, assisted by Mr. Grey, opened the charge
respecting Cheyte Sing, and several days were spent in reading papers and
hearing witnesses. The next article was that relating to the Princesses of

Oude. The conduct of this part of the case was entrusted to Sheridan. The
curiosity of the public to hear him was unbounded. His sparkling and highly
finished declamation lasted two days; but the hall was crowded to
suffocation during the whole time. It was said that fifty guineas had been
paid for a single ticket. Sheridan, when he concluded, contrived, with a
knowledge of stage effect which his father might have envied, to sink back,
as if exhausted, into the arms of Burke, who hugged him with the energy of
generous admiration.
June was now far advanced. The session could not last much longer; and the
progress which had been made in the impeachment was not very
satisfactory. There were twenty charges. On two only of these had even the
case for the prosecution been heard; and it was now a year since Hastings
had been admitted to bail.
The interest taken by the public in the trial was great when the Court began
to sit, and rose to the height when Sheridan spoke on the charge relating to
the Begums. From that time the excitement went down fast. The spectacle
had lost the attraction of novelty. The great displays of rhetoric were over.
What was behind was not of a nature to entice men of letters from their
books in the morning, or to tempt ladies who had left the masquerade at two
to be out of bed before eight. There remained examinations and cross-
examinations. There remained statements of accounts. There remained the
reading of papers, filled with words unintelligible to English ears, with lacs
and crores, zemindars and aumils, sunnuds and perwannahs, jaghires and
nuzzurs. There remained bickerings, not always carried on with the best
taste or with the best temper, between the managers of the impeachment and
the counsel for the defence, particularly between Mr. Burke and Mr. Law.
There remained the endless marches and countermarches of the Peers
between their House and the hall: for as often as a point of law was to be
discussed, their Lordships retired to discuss it apart; and the consequence
was, as a Peer wittily said, that the Judges walked and the trial stood still.
It is to be added that, in the spring of 1788, when the trial commenced, no
important question, either of domestic or foreign policy, occupied the public
mind. The proceeding in Westminster Hall, therefore, naturally attracted
most of the attention of Parliament and of the public. It was the one great
event of that season. But in the following year the King's illness, the debates

on the Regency, the expectation of a change of Ministry, completely
diverted public attention from Indian affairs; and within a fortnight after
George the Third had returned thanks in St. Paul's for his recovery, the
States-General of France met at Versailles. In the midst of the agitation
produced by these events, the impeachment was for a time almost forgotten.
The trial in the hall went on languidly. In the session of 1788, when the
proceedings had the interest of novelty, and when the Peers had little other
business before them, only thirty-five days were given to the impeachment.
In 1789 the Regency Bill occupied the Upper House till the session was far
advanced. When the King recovered the circuits were beginning. The
Judges left town; the Lords waited for the return of the oracles of
jurisprudence; and the consequence was that during the whole year only
seventeen days were given to the case of Hastings. It was clear that the
matter would be protracted to a length unprecedented in the annals of
criminal law.
In truth, it is impossible to deny that impeachment, though it is a fine
ceremony, and though it may have been useful in the seventeenth century, is
not a proceeding from which much good can now be expected. Whatever
confidence may be placed in the decision of the Peers on an appeal arising
out of ordinary litigation, it is certain that no man has the least confidence
in their impartiality when a great public functionary, charged with a great
state crime, is brought to their bar. They are all politicians. There is hardly
one among them whose vote on an impeachment may not be confidently
predicted before a witness has been examined; and, even if it were possible
to rely on their justice, they would still be quite unfit to try such a cause as
that of Hastings. They sit only during half the year. They have to transact
much legislative and much judicial business. The law lords, whose advice is
required to guide the unlearned majority, are employed daily in
administering justice elsewhere. It is impossible, therefore, that during a
busy session, the Upper House should give more than a few days to an
impeachment. To expect that their Lordships would give up partridge-
shooting, in order to bring the greatest delinquent to speedy justice, or to
relieve accused innocence by speedy acquittal, would be unreasonable
indeed. A well-constituted tribunal, sitting regularly six days in the week,
and nine hours in the day, would have brought the trial of Hastings to a

close in less than three months. The Lords had not finished their work in
seven years.
The result ceased to be matter of doubt, from the time when the Lords
resolved that they would be guided by the rules of evidence which are
received in the inferior courts of the realm. Those rules, it is well known,
exclude much information which would be quite sufficient to determine the
conduct of any reasonable man, in the most important transactions of
private life. These rules, at every assizes, save scores of culprits whom
judges, jury, and spectators, firmly believe to be guilty. But when those
rules were rigidly applied to offences committed many years before, at the
distance of many thousands of miles, conviction was, of course, out of the
question. We do not blame the accused and his counsel for availing
themselves of every legal advantage in order to obtain an acquittal. But it is
clear that an acquittal so obtained cannot be pleaded in bar of the judgment
of history.
Several attempts were made by the friends of Hastings to put a stop to the
trial. In 1789 they proposed a vote of censure upon Burke, for some violent
language which he had used respecting the death of Nuncomar and the
connection between Hastings and Impey. Burke was then unpopular in the
last degree both with the House and with the country. The asperity and
indecency of some expressions which he had used during the debates on the
Regency had annoyed even his warmest friends. The vote of censure was
carried; and those who had moved it hoped that the managers would resign
in disgust. Burke was deeply hurt. But his zeal for what he considered as
the cause of justice and mercy triumphed over his personal feelings. He
received the censure of the House with dignity and meekness, and declared
that no personal mortification or humiliation should induce him to flinch
from the sacred duty which he had undertaken.
In the following year the Parliament was dissolved, and the friends of
Hastings entertained a hope that the new House of Commons might not be
disposed to go on with the impeachment. They began by maintaining that
the whole proceeding was terminated by the dissolution. Defeated on this
point, they made a direct motion that the impeachment should be dropped;
but they were defeated by the combined forces of the Government and the
Opposition. It was, however, resolved that, for the sake of expedition, many

of the articles should be withdrawn. In truth, had not some such measure
been adopted, the trial would have lasted till the defendant was in his grave.
At length, in the spring of 1795, the decision was pronounced, near eight
years after Hastings had been brought by the Sergeant-at-arms of the
Commons to the bar of the Lords. On the last day of this great procedure
the public curiosity, long suspended, seemed to be revived. Anxiety about
the judgment there could be none; for it had been fully ascertained that
there was a great majority for the defendant. Nevertheless, many wished to
see the pageant, and the hall was as much crowded as on the first day. But
those who, having been present on the first day, now bore a part in the
proceedings of the last, were few; and most of those few were altered men.
As Hastings himself said, the arraignment had taken place before one
generation, and the judgment was pronounced by another. The spectator
could not look at the woolsack, or at the red benches of the Peers, or at the
green benches of the Commons, without seeing something that reminded
him of the instability of all human things, of the instability of power and
fame and life, of the more lamentable instability of friendship. The Great
Seal was borne before Lord Loughborough who, when the trial
commenced, was a fierce opponent of Mr. Pitt's government, and who was
now a member of that government, while Thurlow, who presided in the
Court when it first sat, estranged from all his old allies, sat scowling among
the junior barons. Of about a hundred and sixty nobles who walked in the
procession on the first day, sixty had been laid in their family vaults. Still
more affecting must have been the sight of the managers' box. What had
become of that fair fellowship, so closely bound together by public and
private ties, so resplendent with every talent and accomplishment? It had
been scattered by calamities more bitter than the bitterness of death. The
great chiefs were still living, and still in the full vigor of their genius. But
their friendship was at an end. It had been violently and publicly dissolved,
with tears and stormy reproaches. If those men, once so dear to each other,
were now compelled to meet for the purpose of managing the impeachment,
they met as strangers whom public business had brought together, and
behaved to each other with cold and distant civility. Burke had in his vortex
whirled away Windham. Fox had been followed by Sheridan and Grey.

Only twenty-nine Peers voted. Of these only six found Hastings guilty on
the charges relating to Cheyte Sing and to the Begums. On other charges,
the majority in his favor was still greater. On some, he was unanimously
absolved. He was then called to the bar, was informed from the woolsack
that the Lords had acquitted him, and was solemnly discharged. He bowed
respectfully and retired.
We have said that the decision had been fully expected. It was also
generally approved. At the commencement of the trial there had been a
strong and indeed unreasonable feeling against Hastings. At the close of the
trial there was a feeling equally strong and equally unreasonable in his
favor. One cause of the change was, no doubt, what is commonly called the
fickleness of the multitude, but what seems to us to be merely the general
law of human nature. Both in individuals and in masses violent excitement
is always followed by remission, and often by reaction. We are all inclined
to depreciate whatever we have overpraised, and, on the other hand, to
show undue indulgence where we have shown undue rigor. It was thus in
the case of Hastings. The length of his trial, moreover, made him an object
of compassion. It was thought, and not without reason, that, even if he was
guilty, he was still an ill-used man, and that an impeachment of eight years
was more than a sufficient punishment. It was also felt that, though, in the
ordinary course of criminal law, a defendant is not allowed to set off his
good actions against his crimes, a great political cause should be tried on
different principles, and that a man who had governed an empire during
thirteen years might have done some very reprehensible things, and yet
might be on the whole deserving of rewards and honors rather than of fine
and imprisonment. The press, an instrument neglected by the prosecutors,
was used by Hastings and his friends with great effect. Every ship, too, that
arrived from Madras or Bengal, brought a cuddy full of his admirers. Every
gentleman from India spoke of the late Governor-General as having
deserved better, and having been treated worse, than any man living. The
effect of this testimony, unanimously given by all persons who knew the
East, was naturally very great. Retired members of the Indian services, civil
and military, were settled in all corners of the kingdom. Each of them was,
of course, in his own little circle, regarded as an oracle on an Indian
question; and they were, with scarcely one exception, the zealous advocates
of Hastings. It is to be added that the numerous addresses to the late

Governor-General, which his friends in Bengal obtained from the natives
and transmitted to England, made a considerable impression. To these
addresses we attach little or no importance. That Hastings was beloved by
the people whom he governed is true; but the eulogies of pundits,
zemindars, Mahommedan doctors, do not prove it to be true. For an English
collector or judge would have found it easy to induce any native who could
write to sign a panegyric on the most odious ruler that ever was in India. It
was said that at Benares, the very place at which the acts set forth in the
first article of impeachment had been committed, the natives had erected a
temple to Hastings; and this story excited a strong sensation in England.
Burke's observations on the apotheosis were admirable. He saw no reason
for astonishment, he said, in the incident which had been represented as so
striking. He knew something of the mythology of the Brahmins. He knew
that as they worshipped some gods from love, so they worshipped others
from fear. He knew that they erected shrines, not only to the benignant
deities of light and plenty, but also to the fiends who preside over smallpox
and murder. Nor did he at all dispute the claim of Mr. Hastings to be
admitted into such a Pantheon. This reply has always struck us as one of the
finest that ever was made in Parliament. It is a grave and forcible argument,
decorated by the most brilliant wit and fancy.
Hastings was, however, safe. But in everything except character, he would
have been far better off if, when first impeached, he had at once pleaded
guilty, and paid a fine of fifty thousand pounds. He was a ruined man. The
legal expenses of his defence had been enormous. The expenses which did
not appear in his attorney's bill were perhaps larger still. Great sums had
been paid to Major Scott. Great sums had been laid out in bribing
newspapers, rewarding pamphleteers, and circulating tracts. Burke, so early
as 1790, declared in the House of Commons that twenty thousand pounds
had been employed in corrupting the press. It is certain that no controversial
weapon, from the gravest reasoning to the coarsest ribaldry, was left
unemployed. Logan defended the accused governor with great ability in
prose. For the lovers of verse, the speeches of the managers were
burlesqued in Simpkin's letters. It is, we are afraid, indisputable that
Hastings stooped so low as to court the aid of that malignant and filthy
baboon John Williams, who called himself Anthony Pasquin. It was
necessary to subsidize such allies largely. The private hoards of Mrs.

Hastings had disappeared. It is said that the banker to whom they had been
entrusted had failed. Still if Hastings had practised strict economy, he
would, after all his losses, have had a moderate competence; but in the
management of his private affairs he was imprudent. The dearest wish of
his heart had always been to regain Daylesford. At length, in the very year
in which his trial commenced, the wish was accomplished; and the domain,
alienated more than seventy years before, returned to the descendant of its
old lords. But the manor house was a ruin; and the grounds round it had,
during many years, been utterly neglected. Hastings proceeded to build, to
plant, to form a sheet of water, to excavate a grotto; and, before he was
dismissed from the bar of the House of Lords, he had expended more than
forty thousand pounds in adorning his seat.
The general feeling both of the Directors and of the proprietors of the East
India Company was that he had great claims on them, that his services to
them had been eminent, and that his misfortunes had been the effect of his
zeal for their interest. His friends in Leadenhall Street proposed to
reimburse him for the costs of his trial, and to settle on him an annuity of
five thousand pounds a year. But the consent of the Board of Control was
necessary; and at the head of the Board of Control was Mr. Dundas, who
had himself been a party to the impeachment, who had, on that account,
been reviled with great bitterness by the adherents of Hastings, and who,
therefore, was not in a very complying mood. He refused to consent to what
the Directors suggested. The Directors remonstrated. A long controversy
followed. Hastings, in the meantime, was reduced to such distress that he
could hardly pay his weekly bills. At length a compromise was made. An
annuity for life of four thousand pounds was settled on Hastings; and in
order to enable him to meet pressing demands, he was to receive ten years'
annuity in advance. The Company was also permitted to lend him fifty
thousand pounds, to be repaid by instalments without interest. This relief,
though given in the most absurd manner, was sufficient to enable the retired
governor to live in comfort, and even in luxury, if he had been a skilful
manager. But he was careless and profuse, and was more than once under
the necessity of applying to the Company for assistance, which was
liberally given.
He had security and affluence, but not the power and dignity which, when
he landed from India, he had reason to expect. He had then looked forward

to a coronet, a red ribbon, a seat at the council board, an office at Whitehall.
He was then only fifty-two, and might hope for many years of bodily and
mental vigor. The case was widely different when he left the bar of the
Lords. He was now too old a man to turn his mind to a new class of studies
and duties. He had no chance of receiving any mark of royal favor while
Mr. Pitt remained in power; and, when Mr. Pitt retired, Hastings was
approaching his seventieth year.
Once, and only once, after his acquittal, he interfered in politics; and that
interference was not much to his honor. In 1804 he exerted himself
strenuously to prevent Mr. Addington, against whom Fox and Pitt had
combined, from resigning the Treasury. It is difficult to believe that a man
so able and energetic as Hastings can have thought that, when Bonaparte
was at Boulogne with a great army, the defence of our island could safely
be entrusted to a ministry which did not contain a single person whom
flattery could describe as a great statesman. It is also certain that, on the
important question which had raised Mr. Addington to power, and on which
he differed from both Fox and Pitt, Hastings, as might have been expected,
agreed with Fox and Pitt, and was decidedly opposed to Addington.
Religious intolerance has never been the vice of the Indian service, and
certainly was not the vice of Hastings. But Mr. Addington had treated him
with marked favor. Fox had been a principal manager of the impeachment.
To Pitt it was owing that there had been an impeachment; and Hastings, we
fear, was on this occasion guided by personal considerations rather than by
a regard to the public interest.
The last twenty-four years of his life were chiefly passed at Daylesford. He
amused himself with embellishing his grounds, riding fine Arab horses,
fattening prize-cattle, and trying to rear Indian animals and vegetables in
England. He sent for seeds of a very fine custard-apple, from the garden of
what had once been his own villa, among the green hedgerows of Allipore.
He tried also to naturalize in Worcestershire the delicious leechee, almost
the only fruit of Bengal which deserves to be regretted even amidst the
plenty of Covent Garden. The Mogul emperors, in the time of their
greatness, had in vain attempted to introduce into Hindostan the goat of the
table-land of Thibet, whose down supplies the looms of Cashmere with the
materials of the finest shawls. Hastings tried, with no better fortune, to rear
a breed at Daylesford; nor does he seem to have succeeded better with the

cattle of Bootan, whose tails are in high esteem as the best fans for brushing
away the mosquitoes.
Literature divided his attention with his conservatories and his menagerie.
He had aways loved books, and they were now necessary to him. Though
not a poet, in any high sense of the word, he wrote neat and polished lines
with great facility, and was fond of exercising this talent. Indeed, if we must
speak out, he seems to have been more of a Trissotin than was to be
expected from the powers of his mind and from the great part which he had
played in life. We are assured in these Memoirs that the first thing which he
did in the morning was to write a copy of verses. When the family and
guests assembled, the poem made its appearance as regularly as the eggs
and rolls; and Mr. Gleig requires us to believe that if from any accident
Hastings came to the breakfast-table without one of his charming
performances in his hand, the omission was felt by all as a grievous
disappointment. Tastes differ widely. For ourselves we must say that,
however good the breakfasts at Daylesford may have been,—and we are
assured that the tea was of the most aromatic flavor, and that neither tongue
nor venison-pasty was wanting,—we should have thought the reckoning
high if we had been forced to earn our repast by listening every day to a
new madrigal or sonnet composed by our host. We are glad, however, that
Mr. Gleig has preserved this little feature of character, though we think it by
no means a beauty. It is good to be often reminded of the inconsistency of
human nature, and to learn to look without wonder or disgust on the
weaknesses which are found in the strongest minds. Dionysius in old times,
Frederic in the last century, with capacity and vigor equal to the conduct of
the greatest affairs, united all the little vanities and affectations of provincial
blue-stockings. These great examples may console the admirers of Hastings
for the affliction of seeing him reduced to the level of the Hayleys and
Sewards.
When Hastings had passed many years in retirement, and had long outlived
the common age of men, he again became for a short time an object of
general attention. In 1813 the charter of the East India Company was
renewed; and much discussion about Indian affairs took place in
Parliament. It was determined to examine witnesses at the bar of the
Commons; and Hastings was ordered to attend. He had appeared at that bar
once before. It was when he read his answer to the charges which Burke

had laid on the table. Since that time twenty-seven years had elapsed; public
feeling had undergone a complete change; the nation had now forgotten his
faults, and remembered only his services. The reappearance, too, of a man
who had been among the most distinguished of a generation that had passed
away, who now belonged to history, and who seemed to have risen from the
dead, could not but produce a solemn and pathetic effect. The Commons
received him with acclamations, ordered a chair to be set for him, and,
when he retired, rose and uncovered. There were, indeed, a few who did not
sympathize with the general feeling. One or two of the managers of the
impeachment were present. They sat in the same seats which they had
occupied when they had been thanked for the services which they had
rendered in Westminster Hall: for, by the courtesy of the House, a member
who has been thanked in his place is considered as having a right always to
occupy that place. These gentlemen were not disposed to admit that they
had employed several of the best years of their lives in persecuting an
innocent man. They accordingly kept their seats, and pulled their hats over
their brows; but the exceptions only made the prevailing enthusiasm more
remarkable. The Lords received the old man with similar tokens of respect.
The University of Oxford conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Laws;
and, in the Sheldonian Theatre, the undergraduates welcomed him with
tumultuous cheering.
These marks of public esteem were soon followed by marks of royal favor.
Hastings was sworn of the Privy Council, and was admitted to a long
private audience of the Prince Regent, who treated him very graciously.
When the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia visited England,
Hastings appeared in their train both at Oxford and in the Guildhall of
London, and, though surrounded by a crowd of princes and great warriors,
was everywhere received with marks of respect and admiration. He was
presented by the Prince Regent both to Alexander and to Frederic William;
and his Royal Highness went so far as to declare in public that honors far
higher than a seat in the Privy Council were due, and would soon be paid, to
the man who had saved the British dominions in Asia. Hastings now
confidently expected a peerage; but, from some unexplained cause, he was
again disappointed.
He lived about four years longer, in the enjoyment of good spirits, of
faculties not impaired to any painful or degrading extent, and of health such

as is rarely enjoyed by those who attain such an age. At length, on the
twenty-second of August, 1818, in the eighty-sixth year of his age, he met
death with the same tranquil and decorous fortitude which he had opposed
to all the trials of his various and eventful life.
With all his faults,—and they were neither few nor small,—only one
cemetery was worthy to contain his remains. In that temple of silence and
reconciliation where the enmities of twenty generations lie buried, in the
Great Abbey which has during many ages afforded a quiet resting-place to
those whose minds and bodies have been shattered by the contentions of the
Great Hall, the dust of the illustrious accused should have mingled with the
dust of the illustrious accusers. This was not to be. Yet the place of
interment was not ill chosen. Behind the chancel of the parish church of
Daylesford, in earth which already held the bones of many chiefs of the
House of Hastings, was laid the coffin of the greatest man who has ever
borne that ancient and widely extended name. On that very spot probably,
fourscore years before, the little Warren, meanly clad and scantily fed, had
played with the children of ploughmen. Even then his young mind had
revolved plans which might be called romantic. Yet, however romantic, it is
not likely that they had been so strange as the truth. Not only had the poor
orphan retrieved the fallen fortunes of his line. Not only had he repurchased
the old lands, and rebuilt the old dwelling. He had preserved and extended
an empire. He had founded a polity. He had administered government and
war with more than the capacity of Richelieu. He had patronized learning
with the judicious liberality of Cosmo. He had been attacked by the most
formidable combination of enemies that ever sought the destruction of a
single victim; and over that combination, after a struggle of ten years, he
had triumphed. He had at length gone down to his grave in the fulness of
age, in peace after so many troubles, in honor after so much obloquy.
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 the sufferings of others, he was
deficient. His principles were somewhat lax. His heart was somewhat hard.
But though we cannot with truth describe him either as a righteous or as a
merciful ruler, we cannot regard without admiration the amplitude and
fertility of his intellect, his rare talents for command, for administration,
and for controversy, his dauntless courage, his honorable poverty, his

fervent zeal for the interests of the state, his noble equanimity, tried by both
extremes of fortune, and never disturbed by either.

FOOTNOTES:
[5] Memoirs of the Life of Warren Hastings, first Governor-General of Bengal.
Compiled from Original Papers, by the Rev. G. R. Gleig, M. A. 3 vols. 8vo.
London: 1841.

FREDERIC THE GREAT[6]
The Edinburgh Review, April, 1842
This work, which has the high honor of being introduced to the world by
the author of Lochiel and Hohenlinden, is not wholly unworthy of so
distinguished a chaperon. It professes, indeed, to be no more than a
compilation; but it is an exceedingly amusing compilation, and we shall be
glad to have more of it. The narrative comes down at present only to the
commencement of the Seven Years' War, and therefore does not comprise
the most interesting portion of Frederic's reign.
It may not be unacceptable to our readers that we should take this
opportunity of presenting them with a slight sketch of the life of the greatest
king that has, in modern times, succeeded by right of birth to a throne. It
may, we fear, be impossible to compress so long and eventful a story within
the limits which we must prescribe to ourselves. Should we be compelled to
break off, we may perhaps, when the continuation of this work appears,
return to the subject.
The Prussian monarchy, the youngest of the great European states, but in
population and revenue the fifth among them, and in art, science, and
civilization entitled to the third, if not to the second place, sprang from a
humble origin. About the beginning of the fifteenth century, the marquisate
of Brandenburg was bestowed by the Emperor Sigismund on the noble
family of Hohenzollern. In the sixteenth century that family embraced the
Lutheran doctrines. It obtained from the King of Poland, early in the
seventeenth century, the investiture of the Duchy of Prussia. Even after this
accession of territory, the chiefs of the House of Hohenzollern hardly
ranked with the Electors of Saxony and Bavaria. The soil of Brandenburg
was for the most part sterile. Even round Berlin, the capital of the province,
and round Potsdam, the favorite residence of the Margraves, the country

was a desert. In some places, the deep sand could with difficulty be forced
by assiduous tillage to yield thin crops of rye and oats. In other places, the
ancient forests, from which the conquerors of the Roman empire had
descended on the Danube, remained untouched by the hand of man. Where
the soil was rich it was generally marshy, and its insalubrity repelled the
cultivators whom its fertility attracted. Frederic William, called the Great
Elector, was the prince to whose policy his successors have agreed to
ascribe their greatness. He acquired by the peace of Westphalia several
valuable possessions, and among them the rich city and district of
Magdeburg; and he left to his son Frederic a principality as considerable as
any which was not called a kingdom.
Frederic aspired to the style of royalty. Ostentatious and profuse, negligent
of his true interests and of his high duties, insatiably eager for frivolous
distinctions, he added nothing to the real weight of the state which he
governed: perhaps he transmitted his inheritance to his children impaired
rather than augmented in value; but he succeeded in gaining the great object
of his life, the title of King. In the year 1700 he assumed this new dignity.
He had on that occasion to undergo all the mortifications which fall to the
lot of ambitious upstarts. Compared with the other crowned heads of
Europe, he made a figure resembling that which a Nabob or a Commissary,
who had bought a title, would make in the company of Peers whose
ancestors had been attainted for treason against the Plantagenets. The envy
of the class which Frederic quitted, and the civil scorn of the class into
which he intruded himself, were marked in very significant ways. The
Elector of Saxony at first refused to acknowledge the new Majesty. Louis
the Fourteenth looked down on his brother King with an air not unlike that
with which the Count in Molière's play regards Monsieur Jourdain, just
fresh from the mummery of being made a gentleman. Austria exacted large
sacrifices in return for her recognition, and at last gave it ungraciously.
Frederic was succeeded by his son, Frederic William, a prince who must be
allowed to have possessed some talents for administration, but whose
character was disfigured by odious vices, and whose eccentricities were
such as had never before been seen out of a madhouse. He was exact and
diligent in the transacting of business; and he was the first who formed the
design of obtaining for Prussia a place among the European powers,
altogether out of proportion to her extent and population, by means of a

strong military organization. Strict economy enabled him to keep up a peace
establishment of sixty thousand troops. These troops were disciplined in
such a manner that, placed beside them, the household regiments of
Versailles and St. James's would have appeared an awkward squad. The
master of such a force could not but be regarded by all his neighbors as a
formidable enemy and a valuable ally.
But the mind of Frederic William was so ill regulated that all his
inclinations became passions, and all his passions partook of the character
of moral and intellectual disease. His parsimony degenerated into sordid
avarice. His taste for military pomp and order became a mania, like that of a
Dutch burgomaster for tulips, or that of a member of the Roxburghe Club
for Caxtons. While the envoys of the Court of Berlin were in a state of such
squalid poverty as moved the laughter of foreign capitals, while the food
placed before the princes and princesses of the blood-royal of Prussia was
too scanty to appease hunger, and so bad that even hunger loathed it, no
price was thought too extravagant for tall recruits. The ambition of the King
was to form a brigade of giants, and every country was ransacked by his
agents for men above the ordinary stature. These researches were not
confined to Europe. No head that towered above the crowd in the bazaars of
Aleppo, of Cairo, or of Surat, could escape the crimps of Frederic William.
One Irishman more than seven feet high, who was picked up in London by
the Prussian ambassador, received a bounty of near thirteen hundred pounds
sterling, very much more than the ambassador's salary. This extravagance
was the more absurd because a stout youth of five feet eight, who might
have been procured for a few dollars, would in all probability have been a
much more valuable soldier. But to Frederic William, this huge Irishman
was what a brass Otho, or a Vinegar Bible, is to a collector of a different
kind.
It is remarkable that though the main end of Frederic William's
administration was to have a great military force, though his reign forms an
important epoch in the history of military discipline, and though his
dominant passion was the love of military display, he was yet one of the
most pacific of princes. We are afraid that his aversion to war was not the
effect of humanity, but was merely one of his thousand whims. His feeling
about his troops seems to have resembled a miser's feeling about his money.
He loved to collect them, to count them, to see them increase; but he could

not find it in his heart to break in upon the precious hoard. He looked
forward to some future time when his Patagonian battalions were to drive
hostile infantry before them like sheep; but this future time was always
receding; and it is probable that, if his life had been prolonged thirty years,
his superb army would never have seen any harder service than a sham fight
in the fields near Berlin. But the great military means which he had
collected were destined to be employed by a spirit far more daring and
inventive than his own.
Frederic, surnamed the Great, son of Frederic William, was born in January,
1712. It may safely be pronounced that he had received from nature a
strong and sharp understanding, and a rare firmness of temper and intensity
of will. As to the other parts of his character, it is difficult to say whether
they are to be ascribed to nature, or to the strange training which he
underwent. The history of his boyhood is painfully interesting. Oliver Twist
in the parish workhouse, Smike at Dotheboys Hall, were petted children
when compared with this wretched heir apparent of a crown. The nature of
Frederic William was hard and bad, and the habit of exercising arbitrary
power had made him frightfully savage. His rage constantly vented itself to
right and left in curses and blows. When his Majesty took a walk, every
human being fled before him, as if a tiger had broken loose from a
menagerie. If he met a lady in the street, he gave her a kick, and told her to
go home and mind her brats. If he saw a clergyman staring at the soldiers,
he admonished the reverend gentleman to betake himself to study and
prayer, and enforced this pious advice by a sound caning, administered on
the spot. But it was in his own house that he was most unreasonable and
ferocious. His palace was hell, and he the most execrable of fiends, a cross
between Moloch and Puck. His son Frederic and his daughter Wilhelmina,
afterwards Margravine of Baireuth, were in an especial manner objects of
his aversion. His own mind was uncultivated. He despised literature. He
hated infidels, papists, and metaphysicians, and did not very well
understand in what they differed from each other. The business of life,
according to him, was to drill and to be drilled. The recreations suited to a
prince were to sit in a cloud of tobacco smoke, to sip Swedish beer between
the puffs of the pipe, to play backgammon for three half-pence a rubber, to
kill wild hogs, and to shoot partridges by the thousand. The Prince Royal
showed little inclination either for the serious employments or for the

amusements of his father. He shirked the duties of the parade; he detested
the fume of tobacco; he had no taste either for backgammon or for field
sports. He had an exquisite ear, and performed skilfully on the flute. His
earliest instructors had been French refugees, and they had awakened in
him a strong passion for French literature and French society. Frederic
William regarded these tastes as effeminate and contemptible, and, by abuse
and persecution, made them still stronger. Things became worse when the
Prince Royal attained that time of life at which the great revolution in the
human mind and body takes place. He was guilty of some youthful
indiscretions, which no good and wise parent would regard with severity. At
a later period he was accused, truly or falsely, of vices from which History
averts her eyes, and which even Satire blushes to name, vices such that, to
borrow the energetic language of Lord Keeper Coventry, "the depraved
nature of man, which of itself carrieth man to all other sin, abhorreth them."
But the offences of his youth were not characterized by any peculiar
turpitude. They excited, however, transports of rage in the King, who hated
all faults except those to which he was himself inclined, and who conceived
that he made ample atonement to Heaven for his brutality by holding the
softer passions in detestation. The Prince Royal, too, was not one of those
who are content to take their religion on trust. He asked puzzling questions,
and brought forward arguments which seemed to savor of something
different from pure Lutheranism. The King suspected that his son was
inclined to be a heretic of some sort or other, whether Calvinist or Atheist
his Majesty did not very well know. The ordinary malignity of Frederic
William was bad enough. He now thought malignity a part of his duty as a
Christian man, and all the conscience that he had stimulated his hatred. The
flute was broken; the French books were sent out of the palace; the Prince
was kicked and cudgelled, and pulled by the hair. At dinner the plates were
hurled at his head; sometimes he was restricted to bread and water;
sometimes he was forced to swallow food so nauseous that he could not
keep it on his stomach. Once his father knocked him down, dragged him
along the floor to a window, and was with difficulty prevented from
strangling him with the cord of the curtain. The Queen, for the crime of not
wishing to see her son murdered, was subjected to the grossest indignities.
The Princess Wilhelmina, who took her brother's part, was treated almost as
ill as Mrs. Brownrigg's apprentices. Driven to despair, the unhappy youth
tried to run away. Then the fury of the old tyrant rose to madness. The

Prince was an officer in the army: his flight was therefore desertion; and in
the moral code of Frederic William, desertion was the highest of all crimes.
"Desertion," says this royal theologian, in one of his half crazy letters, "is
from hell. It is a work of the children of the Devil. No child of God could
possibly be guilty of it." An accomplice of the Prince, in spite of the
recommendation of a court martial, was mercilessly put to death. It seemed
probable that the Prince himself would suffer the same fate. It was with
difficulty that the intercession of the States of Holland, of the Kings of
Sweden and Poland, and of the Emperor of Germany, saved the House of
Brandenburg from the stain of an unnatural murder. After months of cruel
suspense, Frederic learned that his life would be spared. He remained,
however, long a prisoner; but he was not on that account to be pitied. He
found in his jailers a tenderness which he had never found in his father; his
table was not sumptuous, but he had wholesome food in sufficient quantity
to appease hunger; he could read the Henriade without being kicked, and
could play on his flute without having it broken over his head.
When his confinement terminated he was a man. He had nearly completed
his twenty-first year, and could scarcely be kept much longer under the
restraints which had made his boyhood miserable. Suffering had matured
his understanding, while it had hardened his heart and soured his temper.
He had learnt self-command and dissimulation: he affected to conform to
some of his father's views, and submissively accepted a wife, who was a
wife only in name, from his father's hand. He also served with credit,
though without any opportunity of acquiring brilliant distinction, under the
command of Prince Eugene, during a campaign marked by no extraordinary
events. He was now permitted to keep a separate establishment, and was
therefore able to indulge with caution his own tastes. Partly in order to
conciliate the king, and partly, no doubt, from inclination, he gave up a
portion of his time to military and political business, and thus gradually
acquired such an aptitude for affairs as his most intimate associates were
not aware that he possessed.
His favorite abode was at Rheinsberg, near the frontier which separates the
Prussian dominions from the Duchy of Mecklenburg. Rheinsberg is a fertile
and smiling spot, in the midst of the sandy waste of the Marquisate. The
mansion, surrounded by woods of oak and beech, looks out upon a spacious
lake. There Frederic amused himself by laying out gardens in regular alleys

and intricate mazes, by building obelisks, temples, and conservatories, and
by collecting rare fruits and flowers. His retirement was enlivened by a few
companions, among whom he seems to have preferred those who, by birth
or extraction, were French. With these inmates he dined and supped well,
drank freely, and amused himself sometimes with concerts, and sometimes
with holding chapters of a fraternity which he called the Order of Bayard;
but literature was his chief resource.
His education had been entirely French. The long ascendency which Louis
the Fourteenth had enjoyed, and the eminent merit of the tragic and comic
dramatists, of the satirists, and of the preachers who had flourished under
that magnificent prince, had made the French language predominant in
Europe. Even in countries which had a national literature, and which could
boast of names greater than those of Racine, of Molière, and of Massillon,
in the country of Dante, in the country of Cervantes, in the country of
Shakespeare and Milton, the intellectual fashions of Paris had been to a
great extent adopted. Germany had not yet produced a single masterpiece of
poetry or eloquence. In Germany, therefore, the French taste reigned
without rival and without limit. Every youth of rank was taught to speak
and write French. That he should speak and write his own tongue with
politeness, or even with accuracy and facility, was regarded as
comparatively an unimportant object. Even Frederic William, with all his
rugged Saxon prejudices, thought it necessary that his children should know
French, and quite unnecessary that they should be well versed in German.
The Latin was positively interdicted. "My son," his Majesty wrote, "shall
not learn Latin; and, more than that, I will not suffer anybody even to
mention such a thing to me." One of the preceptors ventured to read the
Golden Bull in the original with the Prince Royal. Frederic William entered
the room, and broke out in his usual kingly style:—
"Rascal, what are you at there?"
"Please your Majesty," answered the preceptor, "—— was explaining the
Golden Bull to his Royal Highness."
"I'll Golden Bull you, you rascal!" roared the Majesty of Prussia. Up went
the King's cane; away ran the terrified instructor; and Frederic's classical
studies ended forever. He now and then affected to quote Latin sentences,

and produced such exquisitely Ciceronian phrases as these: "Stante pede
morire;" "De gustibus non est disputandus;" "Tot verbas tot spondera." Of
Italian he had not enough to read a page of Metastasio with ease; and of the
Spanish and English, he did not, as far as we are aware, understand a single
word.
As the highest human compositions to which he had access were those of
the French writers, it is not strange that his admiration for those writers
should have been unbounded. His ambitious and eager temper early
prompted him to imitate what he admired. The wish, perhaps, dearest to his
heart was that he might rank among the masters of French rhetoric and
poetry. He wrote prose and verse as indefatigably as if he had been a
starving hack of Cave or Osborn; but Nature, which had bestowed on him,
in a large measure, the talents of a captain and of an administrator, had
withheld from him those higher and rarer gifts, without which industry
labors in vain to produce immortal eloquence and song. And, indeed, had he
been blessed with more imagination, wit, and fertility of thought than he
appears to have had, he would still have been subject to one great
disadvantage, which would, in all probability, have forever prevented him
from taking a high place among men of letters. He had not the full
command of any language. There was no machine of thought which he
could employ with perfect ease, confidence, and freedom. He had German
enough to scold his servants, or to give the word of command to his
grenadiers; but his grammar and pronunciation were extremely bad. He
found it difficult to make out the meaning even of the simplest German
poetry. On one occasion a version of Racine's Iphigénie was read to him. He
held the French original in his hand; but was forced to own that even with
such help he could not understand the translation. Yet though he had
neglected his mother tongue in order to bestow all his attention on French,
his French was, after all, the French of a foreigner. It was necessary for him
to have always at his beck some men of letters from Paris to point out the
solecisms and false rhymes of which, to the last, he was frequently guilty.
Even had he possessed the poetic faculty, of which, as far as we can judge,
he was utterly destitute, the want of a language would have prevented him
from being a great poet. No noble work of imagination, as far as we
recollect, was ever composed by any man, except in a dialect which he had
learned without remembering how or when, and which he had spoken with

perfect ease before he had ever analyzed its structure. Romans of great
abilities wrote Greek verses; but how many of those verses have deserved
to live? Many men of eminent genius have, in modern times, written Latin
poems; but, as far as we are aware, none of those poems, not even Milton's,
can be ranked in the first class of art, or even very high in the second. It is
not strange, therefore, that, in the French verses of Frederic, we can find
nothing beyond the reach of any man of good parts and industry, nothing
above the level of Newdigate and Seatonian poetry. His best pieces may
perhaps rank with the worst in Dodsley's collection. In history, he
succeeded better. We do not indeed find in any part of his voluminous
Memoirs either deep reflection or vivid painting. But the narrative is
distinguished by clearness, conciseness, good sense, and a certain air of
truth and simplicity, which is singularly graceful in a man who, having done
great things, sits down to relate them. On the whole, however, none of his
writings are so agreeable to us as his Letters, particularly those which are
written with earnestness, and are not embroidered with verses.
It is not strange that a young man devoted to literature, and acquainted only
with the literature of France, should have looked with profound veneration
on the genius of Voltaire. "A man who has never seen the sun," says
Calderon, in one of his charming comedies, "cannot be blamed for thinking
that no glory can exceed that of the moon. A man who has seen neither
moon nor sun cannot be blamed for talking of the unrivalled brightness of
the morning star." Had Frederic been able to read Homer and Milton, or
even Virgil and Tasso, his admiration of the Henriade would prove that he
was utterly destitute of the power of discerning what is excellent in art. Had
he been familiar with Sophocles or Shakespeare, we should have expected
him to appreciate Zaire more justly. Had he been able to study Thucydides
and Tacitus in the original Greek and Latin, he would have known that there
were heights in the eloquence of history far beyond the reach of the author
of the Life of Charles the Twelfth. But the finest heroic poem, several of the
most powerful tragedies, and the most brilliant and picturesque historical
work that Frederic had ever read were Voltaire's. Such high and various
excellence moved the young Prince almost to adoration. The opinions of
Voltaire on religious and philosophical questions had not yet been fully
exhibited to the public. At a later period, when an exile from his country,
and at open war with the Church, he spoke out. But when Frederic was at

Rheinsberg, Voltaire was still a courtier; and, though he could not always
curb his petulant wit, he had as yet published nothing that could exclude
him from Versailles, and little that a divine of the mild and generous school
of Grotius and Tillotson might not read with pleasure. In the Henriade, in
Zaire, and in Alzire, Christian piety is exhibited in the most amiable form;
and, some years after the period of which we are writing, a Pope
condescended to accept the dedication of Mahomet. The real sentiments of
the poet, however, might be clearly perceived by a keen eye through the
decent disguise with which he veiled them, and could not escape the
sagacity of Frederic, who held similar opinions, and had been accustomed
to practise similar dissimulation.
The Prince wrote to his idol in the style of a worshipper; and Voltaire
replied with exquisite grace and address. A correspondence followed, which
may be studied with advantage by those who wish to become proficients in
the ignoble art of flattery. No man ever paid compliments better than
Voltaire. His sweetest confectionery had always a delicate, yet stimulating
flavor, which was delightful to palates wearied by the coarse preparations of
inferior artists. It was only from his hand that so much sugar could be
swallowed without making the swallower sick. Copies of verses, writing
desks, trinkets of amber, were exchanged between the friends. Frederic
confided his writings to Voltaire; and Voltaire applauded, as if Frederic had
been Racine and Bossuet in one. One of his Royal Highness's performances
was a refutation of Machiavelli. Voltaire undertook to convey it to the press.
It was entitled the Anti-Machiavel, and was an edifying homily against
rapacity, perfidy, arbitrary government, unjust war, in short, against almost
everything for which its author is now remembered among men.
The old King uttered now and then a ferocious growl at the diversions of
Rheinsberg. But his health was broken; his end was approaching; and his
vigor was impaired. He had only one pleasure left, that of seeing tall
soldiers. He could always be propitiated by a present of a grenadier of six
feet four or six feet five; and such presents were from time to time
judiciously offered by his son.
Early in the year 1740 Frederic William met death with a firmness and
dignity worthy of a better and wiser man; and Frederic, who had just
completed his twenty-eighth year, became King of Prussia. His character

was little understood. That he had good abilities, indeed, no person who had
talked with him, or corresponded with him, could doubt. But the easy
Epicurean life which he had led, his love of good cookery and good wine,
of music, of conversation, of light literature, led many to regard him as a
sensual and intellectual voluptuary. His habit of canting about moderation,
peace, liberty, and the happiness which a good mind derives from the
happiness of others, had imposed on some who should have known better.
Those who thought best of him, expected a Telemachus after Fénelon's
pattern. Others predicted the approach of a Medicean age,—an age
propitious to learning and art, and not unpropitious to pleasure. Nobody had
the least suspicion that a tyrant of extraordinary military and political
talents, of industry more extraordinary still, without fear, without faith, and
without mercy, had ascended the throne.
The disappointment of Falstaff at his old boon companion's coronation was
not more bitter than that which awaited some of the inmates of Rheinsberg.
They had long looked forward to the accession of their patron, as to the
event from which their own prosperity and greatness was to date. They had
at last reached the promised land,—the land which they had figured to
themselves as flowing with milk and honey; and they found it a desert. "No
more of these fooleries," was the short, sharp admonition given by Frederic
to one of them. It soon became plain that, in the most important points, the
new sovereign bore a strong family likeness to his predecessor. There was
indeed a wide difference between the father and the son as respected extent
and vigor of intellect, speculative opinions, amusements, studies, outward
demeanor. But the groundwork of the character was the same in both. To
both were common the love of order, the love of business, the military taste,
the parsimony, the imperious spirit, the temper irritable even to ferocity, the
pleasure in the pain and humiliation of others. But these propensities had in
Frederic William partaken of the general unsoundness of his mind, and
wore a very different aspect when found in company with the strong and
cultivated understanding of his successor. Thus, for example, Frederic was
as anxious as any prince could be about the efficiency of his army. But this
anxiety never degenerated into a monomania, like that which led his father
to pay fancy prices for giants. Frederic was as thrifty about money as any
prince or any private man ought to be. But he did not conceive, like his
father, that it was worth while to eat unwholesome cabbages for the purpose

of saving four or five rix-dollars in the year. Frederic was, we fear, as
malevolent as his father; but Frederic's wit enabled him often to show his
malevolence in ways more decent than those to which his father resorted,
and to inflict misery and degradation by a taunt instead of a blow. Frederic,
it is true, by no means relinquished his hereditary privilege of kicking and
cudgelling. His practice, however, as to that matter, differed in some
important respects from his father's. To Frederic William, the mere
circumstance that any persons whatever, men, women, or children,
Prussians or foreigners, were within reach of his toes and of his cane,
appeared to be a sufficient reason for proceeding to belabor them. Frederic
required provocation as well as vicinity; nor was he ever known to inflict
this paternal species of correction on any but his born subjects; though on
one occasion M. Thiébault had reason, during a few seconds, to anticipate
the high honor of being an exception to this general rule.
The character of Frederic was still very imperfectly understood either by his
subjects or by his neighbors, when events occurred which exhibited it in a
strong light. A few months after his accession died Charles the Sixth,
Emperor of Germany, the last descendant, in the male line, of the House of
Austria.
Charles left no son, and had, long before his death, relinquished all hopes of
male issue. During the latter part of his life, his principal object had been to
secure to his descendants in the female line the many crowns of the House
of Hapsburg. With this view he had promulgated a new law of succession,
widely celebrated throughout Europe under the name of the Pragmatic
Sanction. By virtue of this law, his daughter, the Archduchess Maria
Theresa, wife of Francis of Lorraine, succeeded to the dominions of her
ancestors.
No sovereign has ever taken possession of a throne by a clearer title. All the
politics of the Austrian cabinet had, during twenty years, been directed to
one single end, the settlement of the succession. From every person whose
rights could be considered as injuriously affected, renunciations in the most
solemn form had been obtained. The new law had been ratified by the
Estates of all the kingdoms and principalities which made up the great
Austrian monarchy. England, France, Spain, Russia, Poland, Prussia,
Sweden, Denmark, the Germanic body, had bound themselves by treaty to

maintain the Pragmatic Sanction. That instrument was placed under the
protection of the public faith of the whole civilized world.
Even if no positive stipulations on this subject had existed, the arrangement
was one which no good man would have been willing to disturb. It was a
peaceable arrangement. It was an arrangement acceptable to the great
population whose happiness was chiefly concerned. It was an arrangement
which made no change in the distribution of power among the states of
Christendom. It was an arrangement which could be set aside only by
means of a general war; and, if it were set aside, the effect would be that the
equilibrium of Europe would be deranged, that the loyal and patriotic
feelings of millions would be cruelly outraged, and that great provinces
which had been united for centuries would be torn from each other by main
force.
The sovereigns of Europe were therefore bound, by every obligation which
those who are entrusted with power over their fellow creatures ought to
hold most sacred, to respect and defend the rights of the Archduchess. Her
situation and her personal qualities were such as might be expected to move
the mind of any generous man to pity, admiration, and chivalrous
tenderness. She was in her twenty-fourth year. Her form was majestic, her
features beautiful, her countenance sweet and animated, her voice musical,
her deportment gracious and dignified. In all domestic relations she was
without reproach. She was married to a husband whom she loved, and was
on the point of giving birth to a child when death deprived her of her father.
The loss of a parent and the new cares of empire were too much for her in
the delicate state of her health. Her spirits were depressed, and her cheek
lost its bloom. Yet it seemed that she had little cause for anxiety. It seemed
that justice, humanity, and the faith of treaties would have their due weight,
and that the settlement so solemnly guaranteed would be quietly carried into
effect. England, Russia, Poland, and Holland declared in form their
intention to adhere to their engagements. The French ministers made a
verbal declaration to the same effect. But from no quarter did the young
Queen of Hungary receive stronger assurances of friendship and support
than from the King of Prussia.
Yet the King of Prussia, the Anti-Machiavel, had already fully determined
to commit the great crime of violating his plighted faith, of robbing the ally

whom he was bound to defend, and of plunging all Europe into a long,
bloody, and desolating war; and all this for no end whatever, except that he
might extend his dominions, and see his name in the gazettes. He
determined to assemble a great army with speed and secrecy, to invade
Silesia before Maria Theresa should be apprised of his design, and to add
that rich province to his kingdom.
We will not condescend to refute at length the pleas which the compiler of
the Memoirs before us has copied from Doctor Preuss. They amount to this,
that the House of Brandenburg had some ancient pretensions to Silesia, and
had in the previous century been compelled, by hard usage on the part of
the Court of Vienna, to waive those pretensions. It is certain that, whoever
might originally have been in the right, Prussia had submitted. Prince after
prince of the House of Brandenburg had acquiesced in the existing
arrangement. Nay, the Court of Berlin had recently been allied with that of
Vienna, and had guaranteed the integrity of the Austrian states. Is it not
perfectly clear that, if antiquated claims are to be set up against recent
treaties and long possession, the world can never be at peace for a day? The
laws of all nations have wisely established a time of limitation, after which
titles, however illegitimate in their origin, cannot be questioned. It is felt by
everybody, that to eject a person from his estate on the ground of some
injustice committed in the time of the Tudors would produce all the evils
which result from arbitrary confiscation, and would make all property
insecure. It concerns the commonwealth—so runs the legal maxim—that
there be an end of litigation. And surely this maxim is at least equally
applicable to the great commonwealth of states; for in that commonwealth
litigation means the devastation of provinces, the suspension of trade and
industry, sieges like those of Badajoz and St. Sebastian, pitched fields like
those of Eylau and Borodino. We hold that the transfer of Norway from
Denmark to Sweden was an unjustifiable proceeding; but would the King of
Denmark be therefore justified in landing, without any new provocation, in
Norway, and commencing military operations there? The King of Holland
thinks, no doubt, that he was unjustly deprived of the Belgian provinces.
Grant that it were so. Would he, therefore, be justified in marching with an
army on Brussels? The case against Frederic was still stronger, inasmuch as
the injustice of which he complained had been committed more than a
century before. Nor must it be forgotten that he owed the highest personal

obligations to the House of Austria. It may be doubted whether his life had
not been preserved by the intercession of the prince whose daughter he was
about to plunder.
To do the King justice, he pretended to no more virtue than he had. In
manifestoes he might, for form's sake, insert some idle stories about his
antiquated claim on Silesia; but in his conversations and Memoirs he took a
very different tone. His own words are: "Ambition, interest, the desire of
making people talk about me, carried the day; and I decided for war."
Having resolved on his course, he acted with ability and vigor. It was
impossible wholly to conceal his preparations; for throughout the Prussian
territories regiments, guns, and baggage were in motion. The Austrian
envoy at Berlin apprised his court of these facts, and expressed a suspicion
of Frederic's designs; but the ministers of Maria Theresa refused to give
credit to so black an imputation on a young prince who was known chiefly
by his high professions of integrity and philanthropy. "We will not," they
wrote, "we cannot, believe it."
In the meantime the Prussian forces had been assembled. Without any
declaration of war, without any demand for reparation, in the very act of
pouring forth compliments and assurances of good will, Frederic
commenced hostilities. Many thousands of his troops were actually in
Silesia before the Queen of Hungary knew that he had set up any claim to
any part of her territories. At length he sent her a message which could be
regarded only as an insult. If she would but let him have Silesia, he would,
he said, stand by her against any power which should try to deprive her of
her other dominions; as if he was not already bound to stand by her, or as if
his new promise could be of more value than the old one.
It was the depth of winter. The cold was severe, and the roads heavy with
mire. But the Prussians pressed on. Resistance was impossible. The
Austrian army was then neither numerous nor efficient. The small portion
of that army which lay in Silesia was unprepared for hostilities. Glogau was
blockaded; Breslau opened its gates; Ohlau was evacuated. A few scattered
garrisons still held out; but the whole open country was subjugated: no
enemy ventured to encounter the King in the field; and, before the end of

January, 1741, he returned to receive the congratulations of his subjects at
Berlin.
Had the Silesian question been merely a question between Frederic and
Maria Theresa, it would be impossible to acquit the Prussian King of gross
perfidy. But when we consider the effects which his policy produced, and
could not fail to produce, on the whole community of civilized nations, we
are compelled to pronounce a condemnation still more severe. Till he began
the war, it seemed possible, even probable, that the peace of the world
would be preserved. The plunder of the great Austrian heritage was indeed a
strong temptation; and in more than one cabinet ambitious schemes were
already meditated. But the treaties by which the Pragmatic Sanction had
been guaranteed were express and recent. To throw all Europe into
confusion for a purpose clearly unjust, was no light matter. England was
true to her engagements. The voice of Fleury had always been for peace. He
had a conscience. He was now in extreme old age, and was unwilling, after
a life which, when his situation was considered, must be pronounced
singularly pure, to carry the fresh stain of a great crime before the tribunal
of his God. Even the vain and unprincipled Belle-Isle, whose whole life was
one wild day-dream of conquest and spoliation, felt that France, bound as
she was by solemn stipulations, could not, without disgrace, make a direct
attack on the Austrian dominions. Charles, Elector of Bavaria, pretended
that he had a right to a large part of the inheritance which the Pragmatic
Sanction gave to the Queen of Hungary; but he was not sufficiently
powerful to move without support. It might, therefore, not unreasonably be
expected that, after a short period of restlessness, all the potentates of
Christendom would acquiesce in the arrangements made by the late
Emperor. But the selfish rapacity of the King of Prussia gave the signal to
his neighbors. His example quieted their sense of shame. His success led
them to underrate the difficulty of dismembering the Austrian monarchy.
The whole world sprang to arms. On the head of Frederic is all the blood
which was shed in a war which raged during many years and in every
quarter of the globe,—the blood of the column of Fontenoy, the blood of the
mountaineers who were slaughtered at Culloden. The evils produced by his
wickedness were felt in lands where the name of Prussia was unknown;
and, in order that he might rob a neighbor whom he had promised to

defend, black men fought on the coast of Coromandel, and red men scalped
each other by the Great Lakes of North America.
Silesia had been occupied without a battle; but the Austrian troops were
advancing to the relief of the fortresses which still held out. In the spring
Frederic rejoined his army. He had seen little of war, and had never
commanded any great body of men in the field. It is not, therefore, strange
that his first military operations showed little of that skill which, at a later
period, was the admiration of Europe. What connoisseurs say of some
pictures painted by Raphael in his youth may be said of this campaign. It
was in Frederic's early bad manner. Fortunately for him, the generals to
whom he was opposed were men of small capacity. The discipline of his
own troops, particularly of the infantry, was unequalled in that age; and
some able and experienced officers were at hand to assist him with their
advice. Of these, the most distinguished was Field-Marshal Schwerin, a
brave adventurer of Pomeranian extraction, who had served half the
governments in Europe, had borne the commissions of the States General of
Holland and of the Duke of Mecklenburg, had fought under Marlborough at
Blenheim, and had been with Charles the Twelfth at Bender.
Frederic's first battle was fought at Molwitz; and never did the career of a
great commander open in a more inauspicious manner. His army was
victorious. Not only, however, did he not establish his title to the character
of an able general; but he was so unfortunate as to make it doubtful whether
he possessed the vulgar courage of a soldier. The cavalry, which he
commanded in person, was put to flight. Unaccustomed to the tumult and
carnage of a field of battle, he lost his self-possession, and listened too
readily to those who urged him to save himself. His English gray carried
him many miles from the field, while Schwerin, though wounded in two
places, manfully upheld the day. The skill of the old Field-Marshal and the
steadiness of the Prussian battalions prevailed; and the Austrian army was
driven from the field with the loss of eight thousand men.
The news was carried late at night to a mill in which the King had taken
shelter. It gave him a bitter pang. He was successful; but he owed his
success to dispositions which others had made, and to the valor of men who
had fought while he was flying. So unpromising was the first appearance of
the greatest warrior of that age.

The battle of Molwitz was the signal for a general explosion throughout
Europe. Bavaria took up arms. France, not yet declaring herself a principal
in the war, took part in it as an ally of Bavaria. The two great statesmen to
whom mankind had owed many years of tranquillity disappeared about this
time from the scene, but not till they had both been guilty of the weakness
of sacrificing their sense of justice and their love of peace to the vain hope
of preserving their power. Fleury, sinking under age and infirmity, was
borne down by the impetuosity of Belle-Isle. Walpole retired from the
service of his ungrateful country to his woods and paintings at Houghton;
and his power devolved on the daring and eccentric Carteret. As were the
ministers, so were the nations. Thirty years during which Europe had, with
few interruptions, enjoyed repose had prepared the public mind for great
military efforts. A new generation had grown up, which could not remember
the siege of Turin or the slaughter of Malplaquet; which knew war by
nothing but its trophies; and which, while it looked with pride on the
tapestries at Blenheim, or the statue in the Place of Victories, little thought
by what privations, by what waste of private fortunes, by how many bitter
tears, conquests must be purchased.
For a time fortune seemed adverse to the Queen of Hungary. Frederic
invaded Moravia. The French and Bavarians penetrated into Bohemia, and
were there joined by the Saxons. Prague was taken. The Elector of Bavaria
was raised by the suffrages of his colleagues to the Imperial throne,—a
throne which the practice of centuries had almost entitled the House of
Austria to regard as a hereditary possession.
Yet was the spirit of the haughty daughter of the Cæsars unbroken. Hungary
was still hers by an unquestionable title; and although her ancestors had
found Hungary the most mutinous of all their kingdoms, she resolved to
trust herself to the fidelity of a people, rude indeed, turbulent, and impatient
of oppression, but brave, generous, and simple-hearted. In the midst of
distress and peril she had given birth to a son, afterwards the Emperor
Joseph the Second. Scarcely had she risen from her couch, when she
hastened to Presburg. There, in the sight of an innumerable multitude, she
was crowned with the crown and robed with the robe of St. Stephen. No
spectator could restrain his tears when the beautiful young mother, still
weak from child-bearing, rode, after the fashion of her fathers, up the
Mount of Defiance, unsheathed the ancient sword of state, shook it towards

north and south, east and west, and, with a glow on her pale face,
challenged the four corners of the world to dispute her rights and those of
her boy. At the first sitting of the Diet she appeared clad in deep mourning
for her father, and in pathetic and dignified words implored her people to
support her just cause. Magnates and deputies sprang up, half drew their
sabres, and with eager voices vowed to stand by her with their lives and
fortunes. Till then, her firmness had never once forsaken her before the
public eye; but at that shout she sank down upon her throne, and wept
aloud. Still more touching was the sight when, a few days later, she came
again before the Estates of her realm, and held up before them the little
Archduke in her arms. Then it was that the enthusiasm of Hungary broke
forth into that war-cry which soon resounded throughout Europe, "Let us
die for our King, Maria Theresa!"
In the meantime, Frederic was meditating a change of policy. He had no
wish to raise France to supreme power on the Continent, at the expense of
the House of Hapsburg. His first object was to rob the Queen of Hungary.
His second object was that, if possible, nobody should rob her but himself.
He had entered into engagements with the powers leagued against Austria;
but these engagements were in his estimation of no more force than the
guarantee formerly given to the Pragmatic Sanction. His plan now was to
secure his share of the plunder by betraying his accomplices. Maria Theresa
was little inclined to listen to any such compromise; but the English
government represented to her so strongly the necessity of buying off
Frederic that she agreed to negotiate. The negotiation would not, however,
have ended in a treaty, had not the arms of Frederic been crowned with a
second victory. Prince Charles of Lorraine, brother-in-law to Maria Theresa,
a bold and active though unfortunate general, gave battle to the Prussians at
Chotusitz, and was defeated. The King was still only a learner of the
military art. He acknowledged, at a later period, that his success on this
occasion was to be attributed, not at all to his own generalship, but solely to
the valor and steadiness of his troops. He completely effaced, however, by
his personal courage and energy, the stain which Molwitz had left on his
reputation.
A peace, concluded under the English mediation, was the fruit of this battle.
Maria Theresa ceded Silesia, Frederic abandoned his allies; Saxony
followed his example; and the Queen was left at liberty to turn her whole

force against France and Bavaria. She was everywhere triumphant. The
French were compelled to evacuate Bohemia, and with difficulty effected
their escape. The whole line of their retreat might be tracked by the corpses
of thousands who had died of cold, fatigue, and hunger. Many of those who
reached their country carried with them the seeds of death. Bavaria was
overrun by bands of ferocious warriors from that bloody debatable land
which lies on the frontier between Christendom and Islam. The terrible
names of the Pandoor, the Croat, and the Hussar, then first became familiar
to western Europe. The unfortunate Charles of Bavaria, vanquished by
Austria, betrayed by Prussia, driven from his hereditary states, and
neglected by his allies, was hurried by shame and remorse to an untimely
end. An English army appeared in the heart of Germany, and defeated the
French at Dettingen. The Austrian captains already began to talk of
completing the work of Marlborough and Eugene, and of compelling
France to relinquish Alsace and the Three Bishoprics.
The Court of Versailles, in this peril, looked to Frederic for help. He had
been guilty of two great treasons: perhaps he might be induced to commit a
third. The Duchess of Chateauroux then held the chief influence over the
feeble Louis. She determined to send an agent to Berlin; and Voltaire was
selected for the mission. He eagerly undertook the task; for, while his
literary fame filled all Europe, he was troubled with a childish craving for
political distinction. He was vain, and not without reason, of his address,
and of his insinuating eloquence; and he flattered himself that he possessed
boundless influence over the King of Prussia. The truth was that he knew,
as yet, only one corner of Frederic's character. He was well acquainted with
all the petty vanities and affectations of the poetaster, but was not aware
that these foibles were united with all the talents and vices which lead to
success in active life, and that the unlucky versifier who pestered him with
reams of middling Alexandrines was the most vigilant, suspicious, and
severe of politicians.
Voltaire was received with every mark of respect and friendship, was
lodged in the palace, and had a seat daily at the royal table. The negotiation
was of an extraordinary description. Nothing can be conceived more
whimsical than the conferences which took place between the first literary
man and the first practical man of the age, whom a strange weakness had
induced to exchange their parts. The great poet would talk of nothing but

treaties and guarantees, and the great King of nothing but metaphors and
rhymes. On one occasion Voltaire put into his Majesty's hands a paper on
the state of Europe, and received it back with verses scrawled on the
margin. In secret they both laughed at each other. Voltaire did not spare the
King's poems; and the King has left on record his opinion of Voltaire's
diplomacy. "He had no credentials," says Frederic, "and the whole mission
was a joke, a mere farce."
But what the influence of Voltaire could not effect, the rapid progress of the
Austrian arms effected. If it should be in the power of Maria Theresa and
George the Second to dictate terms of peace to France, what chance was
there that Prussia would long retain Silesia? Frederic's conscience told him
that he had acted perfidiously and inhumanly towards the Queen of
Hungary. That her resentment was strong she had given ample proof; and of
her respect for treaties he judged by his own. Guarantees, he said, were
mere filigree, pretty to look at, but too brittle to bear the slightest pressure.
He thought it his safest course to ally himself closely to France, and again
to attack the Empress Queen. Accordingly in the autumn of 1744, without
notice, without any decent pretext, he recommenced hostilities, marched
through the electorate of Saxony without troubling himself about the
permission of the Elector, invaded Bohemia, took Prague, and even
menaced Vienna.
It was now that, for the first time, he experienced the inconstancy of
fortune. An Austrian army under Charles of Lorraine threatened his
communications with Silesia. Saxony was all in arms behind him. He found
it necessary to save himself by a retreat. He afterwards owned that his
failure was the natural effect of his own blunders. No general, he said, had
ever committed greater faults. It must be added that to the reverses of this
campaign he always ascribed his subsequent successes. It was in the midst
of difficulty and disgrace that he caught the first clear glimpse of the
principles of the military art.
The memorable year 1745 followed. The war raged by sea and land, in
Italy, in Germany, and in Flanders; and even England, after many years of
profound internal quiet, saw, for the last time, hostile armies set in battle
array against each other. This year is memorable in the life of Frederic as
the date at which his novitiate in the art of war may be said to have

terminated. There have been great captains whose precocious and self-
taught military skill resembled intuition. Condé, Clive, and Napoleon are
examples. But Frederic was not one of these brilliant portents. His
proficiency in military science was simply the proficiency which a man of
vigorous faculties makes in any science to which he applies his mind with
earnestness and industry. It was at Hohenfriedberg that he first proved how
much he had profited by his errors, and by their consequences. His victory
on that day was chiefly due to his skilful dispositions, and convinced
Europe that the prince who, a few years before, had stood aghast in the rout
of Molwitz, had attained in the military art a mastery equalled by none of
his contemporaries, or equalled by Saxe alone. The victory of
Hohenfriedberg was speedily followed by that of Sorr.
In the meantime the arms of France had been victorious in the Low
Countries. Frederic had no longer reason to fear that Maria Theresa would
be able to give law to Europe, and he began to meditate a fourth breach of
his engagements. The Court of Versailles was alarmed and mortified. A
letter of earnest expostulation, in the handwriting of Louis, was sent to
Berlin; but in vain. In the autumn of 1745, Frederic made peace with
England, and, before the close of the year, with Austria also. The
pretensions of Charles of Bavaria could present no obstacle to an
accommodation. That unhappy prince was no more; and Francis of
Lorraine, the husband of Maria Theresa, was raised, with the general assent
of the Germanic body, to the Imperial throne.
Prussia was again at peace; but the European war lasted till, in the year
1748, it was terminated by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. Of all the powers
that had taken part in it, the only gainer was Frederic. Not only had he
added to his patrimony the fine province of Silesia: he had, by his
unprincipled dexterity, succeeded so well in alternately depressing the scale
of Austria and that of France, that he was generally regarded as holding the
balance of Europe, a high dignity for one who ranked lowest among kings,
and whose great-grandfather had been no more than a Margrave. By the
public, the King of Prussia was considered as a politician destitute alike of
morality and decency, insatiably rapacious, and shamelessly false; nor was
the public much in the wrong. He was at the same time allowed to be a man
of parts, a rising general, a shrewd negotiator and administrator. Those
qualities wherein he surpassed all mankind were as yet unknown to others