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GEORGE III. RECEIVING THE CIVIC SWORD FROM THE LORD MAYOR OF LONDON ON HIS WAY TO THE THANKSGIVING AT ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL.

Now, nothing was so obvious as that the very things of which he complained, were the direct result of his own counsel. The managers had done all in their power to have each separate charge completed and decided, before proceeding to another; but his counsel, undoubtedly by his own desire, had opposed and overthrown this arrangement. It was, therefore, absolutely certain that the mischiefs of which he now complained must take place. His judges and his evidence must fall off, in the natural course of things, before any decision could be arrived at, and the decision, when reached, must be proportionably uncertain.

On the 20th of April the trial recommenced, and the next day Burke, entering on the case of Nuncomar, declared that "Hastings had murdered him by the hands of Sir Elijah Impey." The expression was strong; but from the evidence in Burke's hands, notwithstanding the denial by Sir Elijah, and the failure of his impeachment, Burke was apparently fully justified in arriving at that conclusion. What were the facts? The maharajah Nuncomar, who had been appointed to various important offices by Hastings himself, came forward, and accused the governor of acquitting Mahmud Keza Khan, the naib duan of Bengal, and rajah Shitabroy, the naib duan of Behar, of vast embezzlements in their accounts; and he offered to give proof of the receipt, by Hastings, of a bribe of three lacs and a half from the munny begum and rajah Gourdass. What was the answer of Hastings? He refused to enter into the charges, but immediately commenced a prosecution of Nuncomar on a charge of conspiracy, which failing, the maharajah was immediately prosecuted on a charge of forgery, not in the name of Hastings, but of another party, though no one doubted who was the real prosecutor. On this, under the presidency of Impey, as chief judge, Nuncomar was tried, condemned, all appeal to the authorities in England refused, and he was hastily hanged, though the crime, by the laws of his own country, was not capital: Burke had full evidence of all these proceedings in his hands; of the necessity for Hastings getting rid of Nuncomar; and he came to the conclusion, which, he said, nothing could ever tear from his soul, of the guilt of Hastings in the matter.

But his daring expression of this opinion furnished a fine opportunity for an attack on him, and, through him, on the managers.

On the 27th of April, therefore, major Scott presented a petition from Hastings, complaining of these words, and calling for the opinion of the house on them. Scott designated the charge as a cool, deliberate, systematic misrepresentation of the most horrible kind. The managers objected to the receipt of the petition; but Pitt declared that, though Hastings was the object of their prosecution, he did not cease to be the object of their justice, and ought not to be deprived of the opportunity of complaining of a grievance. Now, had Hastings and his counsel allowed the trial to take the course the managers so zealously advocated, he could have had an immediate opportunity of rebutting any such charges, and, further, of disproving them, on the trial itself. But it suited him now to make this a grievance, in order to destroy, if possible, the weight of the managers. Pitt, also, though evidently leaning to the side of the

managers at the commencement, and favouring the trial, had of late been so galled by the managers on the regency question, that he now as evidently was throwing all his momentum into the scale against them. The petition was received without a division; and the subject of it was settled to be debated on the 30th. The lords were requested to suspend proceedings on the trial; and, on that day, Pitt and his supporters threw out a number of doubts, calculated to create delay.

Burke proposed to withdraw, to allow of the free deliberation of the house, but, before doing so, he reiterated the whole case of Nuncomar, and asserted the justice of his conclusions. The next day, also, Mr. Montague, in defending Burke, produced and read a letter from him, defending his words in the hall. He declared himself the authorised accuser of Hastings; but that he had accused him on evidence produced to the secret committee, all of which he bound himself to make good in the course of the trial. As that evidence, however, was given on the faith of the witnesses remaining unknown except to the committee, which they had fully satisfied, he protested against these witnesses being dragged by the agents of the accused into the public eye, in order that they might be exposed to their vengeance. That he was willing to take all the responsibility on himself for the present. The ministerial party, however, would not be satisfied without the short-hand writer, who took down the evidence before the committee, being called to the bar: and he was called. After much debate, the marquis of Graham carried a resolution against Burke, to the effect that much regarding Nuncomar ought not to have been spoken. On the contrary, a resolution, moved by Fox, asserting that the evidence of Nuncomar, not having been taken when it should have been, the charge against Hastings remained in fresh force against him, and that, consequently, the words of Burke were proper and necessary, was rejected.

In consequence of this triumph of Hastings against them in the commons, a meeting of the managers was held, and it was seriously agitated whether the managers should not throw up their charge; but Burke opposed this, as likely to give a still greater triumph-the whole being a stratagem on the part of Hastings' counsel to drive them from their duty as accusers, and thus screen the accused. Accordingly, the next day, Burke appeared in the Hall at Westminster, and made a statement of all that had taken place in the commons; and repeated his firm conviction of the murder of Nuncomar by Hastings; not, perhaps, a murder in the legal sense, but so much so in a moral sense, that the conviction of it would never leave him but with life. A few days afterwards Mr. Marsham moved for the prosecution of a certain newspaper for a shameful libel on Burke; and Burke himself read a paper purporting to be a bill delivered by a newspaper editor to major Scott, Hastings' champion, for lampooning and abusing the managers. One item was stated to be "for attacking the veracity of Mr. Burke, three shillings and sixpence!" which Burke said was small pay for such a service. The motion of Marsham to prosecute the editor, whom he had named, was carried.

The managers demanded that the evidence of Nuncomar, which had been taken by the council in Calcutta, proving the

A.D. 1789.]

corruption and the crimes of Hastings, should be admitted by the court; but the lords retired to their own chamber of parliament to consider this point. There were so many retirings and returnings, that lord Stanhope said the judges walked, but the trial stood still. They were, however, finally of opinion that the evidence could not be admitted, the parties themselves not being there to substantiate it, and that, therefore, it was only circumstantial evidence. Burke, on this, exclaimed-"Plunder on, ye Indian delinquents! the laws intended to restrain you are mere scarecrows! Accumulate wealth by any means, however illegal, profligate, or infamous. You are sure of impunity; for the natives of India are, by their religion, debarred from appearing out of

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was not given upon oath, this being notoriously contrary to their religion; it being known, an oath was never required from natives. Yet this very evidence had been received by the council as legal; and, what was more, Hastings himself had always contended, during his own government, that such evidence was legal, and had uniformly acted upon it.

This decision, Burke properly said, "held out to future governors of Bengal the most certain and unbounded impunity. Peculation in India would no longer be practised as it used to be, with caution and secrecy-it would in future stalk abroad in noon-day, and act without disguise; because, after such a decision as had been given by their

Fox, however, insisted that direct personal evidence, taken and accepted by the supreme council in India, was good and sufficient evidence in that court; but the lords again retired to take the opinion of the judges on this point; and, on returning, replied that the judges did not consider that evidence could be received there which had not been given originally on oath. On this, Burke appeared to lose all patience. He declared that the ends of justice were thwarted by forms of law; that the criminal was thus effectually screened. When the most distinguished men in India had investigated, proved, and received these charges in evidence; and when the accused now stood before the house of peers impeached by the commons, instead of standing forward as a man conscious of his innocence, and glad of the opportunity to clear his name from such foul taint, every technical obstacle which the ingenuity of his counsel could devise was thrown in the way of evidence. When the testimony of Nuncomar, as taken by the supreme council of Calcutta, was tendered, it was rejected because it

proofs of peculation." The managers then desired that Philip Francis should be called in to prove the corruption of Hastings in the transactions with the munny Begum. Francis was no native; he could be examined on oath, and he was perfectly familiar with many of these transactions. But here, again, the counsel of Hastings most clamorously interfered, and the lords decided against the calling of Francis.

Defeated again, neither native evidence taken before the Calcutta council, nor the evidence of one of the council itself being admitted, the managers brought forward a letter from the munny Begum, proving the reception of the bribe by Hastings. This was objected to, as being merely a copy, though an attested one. After some delay the original itself was produced, and persons high in office in India at the time came forward to swear to the hand and seal of the Begum. This, it might have been supposed, would be decisive. By no means. The counsel of Hastings had still a resource. They submitted to the lords that the letter could not be admitted as evidence, because it made part of the evidence before the council which had been rejected on

other grounds; and the lords, again adjourning to their own chamber to consult, on their return announced to the court that the said letter could not be read!

Such was the manner in which these and the other charges against this great delinquent were met. Every piece of decisive evidence against him was resisted by every possible means; so that had he been the most innocent man alive, the only conviction which could remain in the mind of those who witnessed these things must have been that of his guilt. He had neither acted like an innocent, high-minded man to whom the imputation of guilt is intolerable, while in India, nor were his counsel now instructed to do so. Evidence on every charge gone into, of the most conclusive nature, was offered and rejected, and, spite of all the endeavours to clear the memory of Warren Hastings of cruelty and oppression, the very conduct of himself and his counsel on his trial must stamp the accusing verdict indelibly on his name.

Well might Burke exclaim that all attempt to prove the guilt of the accused on such a system was vain; that they were destroying all the endeavours of the managers by naked technicalities. But it was now clear that both the ministry and the lords were determined to prevent the full exposure of the case. Burke demanded to know on what opinions their lordships' decision was grounded; but he only received the most unscrupulous insult and abuse from Law afterwards lord Ellenborough, who affirmed that, to produce accusations against any man incapable of proof, was to be guilty of a slander and a calumny; and this in the face of the most decisive evidence being refused. Law threw in the face of the managers the recent resolutions of the commons. At this, Fox, in great indignation, said, it was indecent and highly irregular in an advocate to allude to what had taken place within the walls of the house of commons; but the learned counsel had done worse-he had misrepresented that to which he pretended to allude. He had charged the whole body of the commons with sending up slanders in the shape of charges, and had pronounced the deputies of the commons calumniators, merely because they offered in evidence those very documents on the authority of which the commons had pronounced the charges to be well founded, and sent them, as articles of impeachment, to the lords. On this head, Fox insisted that the counsel ought not to pass without due censure, and the lords were, in this instance, compelled to notice the indecency, and to reprimand Law by the mouth of Thurlow.

stood was to be the last, and that he would rather waive all defence than have it postponed for another year. When it has been seen that the delays of which he complained had been most diligently and pertinaciously evoked by his own counsel, this impudent plea shows that bis counsel trusted to defeat the whole process by these acts. But the court could not thus rid itself of the question, and it adjourned to the first Tuesday in the next session of parliament. Nothing, however, was more evident than that the inquiry had now become distasteful to the government; the public had long lost its interest in it, and the managers must have seen too plainly that they would not be allowed to convict a man who, with all his crimes, had so greatly extended the empire, and opened up vast fields for similar adventurers.

On the 11th of August the king prorogued parliament by commission, having himself gone to Weymouth for the benefit of his health. The lord chancellor, in the closing speech, congratulated the country on the continuance and prospect of peace; the prospect, however, being anything but peaceful, as we shall see. But, before taking a review of European affairs, we may note one or two incidents which had taken place during the present session, though not strictly connected with the narrative of it. The king had not, on recovering his sanity, perused, or been informed of, the conduct of the prince of Wales and his friends, during his malady, without great resentment. Pitt, in fact, had made political capital out of the affairs of the regency, by seeming to defend the rights of the unhappy monarch in his state of incapacity, while he really was only endeavouring to prevent his opponents profiting by it. The nation, ever ready to sympathise with the suffering party, were soon taught to regard Pitt as the champion of royalty in distress; and he gained much strength in public opinion from this. The prince and his friends were naturally represented in no favourable light by the ministerial party to the king, and while at Weymouth he wrote a letter to the duke of Clarence, commenting severely on the prince of Wales and the duke of York. The prince employed Sheridan to write for him a very able and judicious letter, which the prince copied and dispatched; and this had the good effect of leading to a reconciliation some months afterwards, at least in appearance.

During the heat of the controversy regarding the regency the duke of York had a very narrow escape for his life. Having charged lieutenant-colonel Lennox, the nephew and heir of the duke of Richmond, with submitting tamely to an insult at a military club, Lennox challenged him, and was so near shooting him in the duel at Wimbledon that he cut off a lock of his hair with the bullet!