XX. 1782. BOOK rattas, 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 accession 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 personal disposition of Scindia, yet does it not lessen the criminality of establishing a power which must survive the man to whom a power more than personal was given*." What is perhaps the most extraordinary circumstance in these extraordinary transactions, Mr. Has * Vide Articles of Impeachment exhibited against Warren Hastings, Esq. by Edmund Burke. But these articles must not be confounded with the articles actually presented by the commons, at the bar of the house of lords, which, being reduced by a subsequent revision, from 22 to 20 in number, assumed a new and very different form. In the latter, the important charges relative to the Rohillas, the Mahrattas, the treatment of the GEORGE III. 223 XX. 1782. tings, embracing the opportunity when the Mahrattas BOOK Mogul, the negotiations at Dehli, &c. &c. were entirely omit- XX. BOOK obligation imposed upon me, by the supposition 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." 1782. Mr. Hastings indeed admitted, that there was no present danger to the Company's possessions 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 arise 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 distant period, if they be permitted to grow into matu rity without interruption. Acknowledging that the urgent solicitations of the prince had their weight with him, he professed nevertheless that a stronger impulse, arising from the hope of blasting the growth of a generation whose strength might become fatal to our own, pleaded in his mind for supporting his wishes." The council, unable to explore the dark and unfathomable abyss of the governor's politics, and astonished, doubtless, at an inconsistency so gross and flagrant as that of warring against a power lest it should become formidable, in favor of a power already formidable, negatived the proposition; and the peace of India was for this time happily preserved. XX. 1782. The governor, perceiving his influence in the BOOK council lost, knowing his reputation at home to be greatly in the wane, and fearing most probably a disgraceful dismission, now thought it expedient to RESIGN the GOVERNMENT. On his arrival in Resignation England he was, after a long previous investigation tings. of his numerous delinquencies, most deservedly 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. of Mr. Has ter. The political character of Mr. Hastings, on a cool His characand impartial review of his conduct, so forcibly imitself upon presses the mind, that it can derive little aid from any adventitious illustration. Daring in the conception, and ardent in the prosecution 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 superiority from the inflexibility of his temper, and the apparent force of his own conviction respecting the rectitude and propriety of his measures: to which must be added, that in his public dispatches he possessed the dangerous art of giving plausibility to the most absurd and pernicious measures by artful and imposing glosses, branching out sometimes into studied ambi guities, sometimes into bold assumptions, under a perpetual external show of ingenuousness, liberality, and candor. BOOK 1782. The numerous individuals returning in rapid succession from India, whom Mr. Hastings had engaged in his interest by various obligations, contributed also to enhance his reputation, by the high eulogiums which they almost universally bestowed upon his conduct; and in which, dazzled by the brilliant exterior of the governor's administration, and unequal to the clear comprehension of an extensive and complex system, they were probably for the most part very sincere. The truth however is, that this man, for thirteen years the scourge of the East, and whom ignorance and folly have prepos terously ranked with the SULLYS and the CHATHAMS of the West, has never been, and never can become, the theme of discerning and rational panegyric. Not to speak of his total and flagrant disregard of the sole legitimate end and object of government-the happiness of the governed-his conduct will be found, in almost all its parts, and in the choice and prosecution of his own purposes, absurd, perplexed, capricious, and inconsequent. His course was one perpetual deviation from the straight and luminous path of political and moral rectitude; and his general reputation was supported chiefly by his habitual vigor of mind and personal courage, which were in him intimately blended, and seemed to rise on some occasions even to the semblance of magnanimity. His exertions in the last war for the preservation of the Carnatic, which he had so wan |