great portion of the king's present distresses and dangers."

According to this most curious logic, the company's orders, not to interpose in the disputes of "the country powers," were not violated by entering into a war for the re-establishment of the authority of the mogul; because, the imperial crown of Hindostan being reduced to

a

"fplendid bubble," the emperor could not now be reckoned amongst the country powers. But either recollecting or forgetting himself, he immediately offers another argument directly the reverse of the former, viz. "that the authority of the mogul, even in its present state was fo confiderable that, if it was fuffered to be annihilated, great danger might arise to the company's interests, from the power which should be established on its ruins." And lastly he urges, "that the English company are bound in equity and justice to affist in raising the throne of the mogul to its former state of exaltation, because they have been the efficient instrument of its present distress and degradation," alluding no doubt to the deprivation of his tribute and the seizure of his demefne, " in lieu of which they were now bound in honor to enable him to seize upon the property of others; and his imperial majesty would no doubt, deem himself bound in return to reward his honorable allies the company, with a reasonable share of the plunder."

On the first advice of the flight of the prince from Dehli, Mr. Haftings wrote to the Mahratta chief, Madajee Scindia, to apprize him of this event, and profeffing himSelf unprepared, to ask his advice how to act in this emergency: and certain confidential agents from the Mahratta chief repairing to Lucknow, held frequent and fecret conferences with the governor, the purport of which was never communicated to the board at Calcutta.

The whole of this tissue of cabals and intrigues terminated, however, very unexpectedly, in the fudden invafion sion of the emperor's territories by the Mahrattas, who made themselves masters of Dehli; and the emperor being a second time prisoner in their hands, was obliged to declare the head of the Mahratta state to be vicegerent of the Mogul empire; in which capacity great and indefinite claims of superiority were advanced on the part of the peishwa, and a specific claim set up to the tribute due to the emperor from Bengal.

Far from being alarmed at this addition to the Mahratta power, Mr. Hastings declared, " that such was the attachment of Scindia to the English, that, while he lives, every acceffion of territory obtained by him will be an advantage to this government." Upon which it has been authoritatively remarked, "that if this were true respecting the perfonal disposition of Scindia, yet does it not leffen the criminality of establishing a power, which must furvive the man to whom a power more than personal was given *."

What is perhaps the most extraordinary circumstance in these extraordinary tranfactions, Mr. Hastings embracing the opportunity when the Mahrattas were affembled in great force upon the frontiers of the vizieriate of Oude, entered into an AGREEMENT with the vizier, after seven years useless retention of them at a ruinous expence, to withdraw a very great proportion of the British troops in this moment of danger from the province; afferting, in contradiction to the whole tenor of his conduct and former declarations, "that this government has not any right to force defence with its maintenance upon the nabob." The council refusing in the present circumstances to ratify this agreement, Mr. Hastings moved, in his minute of December 4, 1784, "that if, contrary to his opinion, the faid troops should not be reduced, they should be employed

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employed under the prince Mirza Jehander Shah (now notoriously under the abfolute control of the Mahrattas) to affist in carrying on a war against the nation called the SEIKS, the antient enemies of the Mahratta state; a warlike people, poffeffing an extensive territory to the northwest of India, on the confines of Tartary. I feel," says he, "the sense of an obligation imposed upon me, by the fuppofition I have made, to state a mode of rendering the detachment of use in its prescribed station, and of affording the appearance of a cause for its detention."

Mr. Haftings indeed admitted, that there was no present danger to the company's poffeffions from this remote, and almost unknown people; but he declared, " that their military and enthusiastic spirit, the hardiness of their natural constitution, the dangers which might arife from them in some future time, if they should ever happen to be united under one head, were reasons in favor of this war; and he predicted great danger from them, at no very diftant period, if they be permitted to grow into maturity without interruption. Acknowledging that the urgent folicitations of the prince had their weight with him, he profeffed nevertheless that a stronger impulse, arifing from the hope of blafting the growth of a generation whose strength might become fatal to our own, pleaded in his mind for fupporting his wishes."

The council, unable to explore the dark and unfathomable abyss of the governor's politics, and aftonished, doubtless, at an inconfiftency so gross and flagrant as that of warring against a power left it should become formidable, in favour of a power already formidable, negatived the propofition, and the peace of India was for this time happily preferved.

The governor, perceiving his influence in the council lost, knowing his reputation at home to be greatly in the wane, and fearing most probably a disgraceful difmiffion, now thought it expedient to RESIGN the GOVERNMENT.

On

On his arrival in England he was, after a long previous investigation of his numerous delinquencies, moft defervedly IMPEACHED at the bar of the house of lords, by the commons of Great Britain, of HIGH CRIMES and MISDEMEANORS in the execution of his office.

The political character of Mr. Hastings, on a cool and impartial review of his conduct, so forcibly impresses itself upon the mind, that it can derive little aid from any adventitious illustration. Daring in the conception, and ardent in the profecution of his designs; fertile in resources, and relying with confidence and even with pride on the strength of his own genius, his character acquired a certain stamp of dignity and fuperiority from the inflexibility of his temper, and the apparent force of his own conviction respecting the rectitude and propriety of his meafures: to which must be added, that in his public dispatches he poffeffed the dangerous art of giving plausibility to the most abfurd and pernicious measures by artful and impofing gloffes, branching out fometimes into studied ambiguities, fometimes into bold afsumptions, under a perpetual external show of ingenuousness, liberality, and candor.

The numerous individuals returning in rapid fucceffion from India, whom Mr. Hastings had engaged in his interest by various obligations, contributed alfo to enhance his reputation, by the high eulogiums which they almost univerfally bestowed upon his conduct; and in which, dazzled by the brilliant exterior of the governor's administration, and unequal to the clear comprehenfion of an extenfive and complex system, they were probably for the most part very fincere. The truth however is, that this man, for thirteen years the fcourge of the East, and whom ig. norance and folly have preposteroufly ranked with the SULLYS and the CHATHAMS of the West, has never been, and never can become, the theme of difcerning and rational panegyric. Not to speak of his total and flagrant difregard of the fole legitimate end and object of government,

the

the happiness of the governed, his conduct will be found, in almost all its parts, and in the choice and profecution of his own purposes, abfurd, perplexed, capricious and inconfequent. His course was one perpetual deviation from the straight and luminous path of political and moral rectitude; and his general reputation was supported merely by his habitual vigor of mind and perfonal courage, which were in him intimately blended, and seemed to rife on some occafions even to the semblance of magnanimity. His exertions in the last war for the preservation of the Carnatic, which he had fo wantonly and rashly endangered, were generally and justly spoken of as highly meritorious; but even in this most splendid and boafted part of his political conduct, he could challenge only the praife of a madman, who fires a house and then labors ftrenuoufly to extinguish the flames.

The administration of Mr. Hastings has been truly faid, in the glowing expreffions of eloquencet, " to exhibit a medley of meanness and outrage, of duplicity and depredation, of prodigality and oppreffion, of the most callous cruelty contrafted with the hollow affectation of liberality and good faith. The fordid system of commercial policy, to which all the arrangements and regulations of the company are ultimately to be traced, was under his government carried to its utmost extent. - Thus have nations been extirpated for a fum of money, whole tracts of country laid waste to furnish an investment, princes expelled for the balance of an account, and a bloody fceptre wielded in one hand, in order to replenish the empty purse of mercantile mendicancy displayed in the other "

The conceffions of Mr. Haftings himself are indeed occafionally very large and ample; for his views seldom feem to have extended beyond the precise object which he wished at the moment to compass. The ruinous effects of Bri

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† Vide Sheridan's speech on the begum charge, in the 14th article of impeachment.