XXII. 1787. suspicion of participating in the profits accruing BOOK from the contract. These affidavits (sir James said) were the pastoral essays of the learned judge, his songs in ripas et flumina, the forerunners only of those epic attestations, the prælia et reges, by which he had commemorated the wars of Benares and the rebellion of Qude." On this article the division was, ayes 60, noes 26. lative to Upon the 23d of March the charge relative to Charge reFyzoola Khan was brought forward by Mr. Wind- Fyzoola ham. This was carried on a division of 96 against 37 voices. Khan. On the 2d of April Mr. Sheridan opened to the Charge respecting house the charge upon the subject of presents: presents. upon which occasion he observed, "that the late governor-general had, in every part of his conduct, exhibited proofs of a wild, eccentric, and irregular mind, He had been every thing by starts, and nothing long-now high and lofty, now mean and insidious-now artful and temporising, now rigid and inflexible-in pride, in passion, in all things changeable, except in corruption. His revenge was a tempest, a tornado blackening the horizon, and involving all within the sphere of its influence in one common destruction. But his corruption was regular and systematic, a monsoon blowing uniformly from one point of the compass, and wafting the wealth of India to the same port in one certain direction." Upon a division, the numbers appeared, ayes 165, noes 54. BOOK XXII. 1787. lating to the reve nues. On the 19th of April the charge respecting the revenues was opened by Mr. Francis, who had for. Charge re- merly occupied, with so much honor to himself, but so unavailingly as to the public, the office of member of the Supreme Council in India, and who had recently taken his seat as a member of the house of commons. This charge was of a very important and interesting nature; and Mr. Francis. entered into a most able and elaborate discussion of it. He showed, from the very nature of their tenure, "that the zemindars were not mere collectors of the revenue, as they had been artfully represented by Mr. Hastings, but real land-owners possessing a permanent, divisible, and hereditary property, descending even to women." He enumerated the different modes of managing the revenues of Bengal, adopted by Mr. Hastings in the course of thirteen years. "The object of Mr. Hastings (he said) was to avoid coming to a fixed settlement, for then there must be an end to peculation. At the time of his accession to the government the provinces had not perfectly recovered the effects of the dreadful famine which had taken place in Bengal at a very recent period; yet then did the Committee of Circuit, under the sanction of Mr. Hastings, raise the rents of the zemindaries to an unheard-of standard; and by the ensuing project of 1781, the whole landed property of the country was put up to a pretended auction; the proprietors were universally deprived of their XXII. 1787. estates; and banyans, cheats, and adventurers of BOOK all sorts, put into possession of their lands. Under this settlement, Cantoo Baboo, Mr. Hastings's banyan, held farms to the amount of 135,000l. per annum. The directors had ordered the persons composing the Committee of Circuit to be prose cuted, but Mr. Hastings had ordered the prosecution to be withdrawn. A Committee of Revenue was subsequently introduced, under the influence of Gunga Govid Sing, a notorious and adroit villain, which completed the ruin of the country. When Mr. Hastings came into possession of the Bengal government, he found it a fertile, populous and prosperous country; it contained a regular gradation of ranks, like a pyramid, from a well-ordered yeomanry to sovereign princes: but these distinctions have been broken down-the whole nation has been pounded as it were by the oppression of the government into one mass-and the prince was no otherwise discoverable from the peasant than by the superiority of his sufferings, and the more pungent bitterness of his humiliations." Mr. Francis concluded in these remarkable words :-" My particular labor is now at an end. An unremitting perseverance of thirteen years has at last conducted me to that issue which has been the object of all my efforts. Mr. Hastings must now beimpeached-let him have a fair trialĮ desire no more. In arriving at that object I have BOOK secured every personal purpose that I ever had in XXII. 1787. view; the reputation of sir John Clavering, colonel Monson, and myself, is secure; your votes are my authority: the house of commons are my compurgators. The only victory I ever aimed at was to clear my character from foul aspersion, and to establish, as I trust I have done, the integrity of my conduct in the estimation of my country." This charge was confirmed, notwithstanding the unexpected dissent of the minister, by 71 to 55 voices. On the 9th of May the report made by Mr. Burke from the committee, to whom it had been referred to prepare the articles of impeachment, was confirmed by the house, ayes 175, noes 89. Mr. Hast- On the following day it was voted that Mr. Hasings impeached at tings be IMPEACHED: and Mr. Burke accordingly, the bar of lords. the house of in the name of the house of commons, and of all the commons of Great Britain, repaired to the bar of the house of lords, and impeached Mr. Hastings of high crimes and misdemeanors-at the same time acquainting their lordships, that the commons would with all convenient speed exhibit articles against him, and make good the same. On the 14th another charge respecting misdemeanors in Oude was added to the former by Mr. Burke, and voted without a division. On the same day the articles actually prepared were sent to the lords; and on the 21st, Mr. Hastings, being XXIL 1787. conducted to the bar of that house by the serjeant BOOK at arms, was taken into the custody of the black rod, but on the motion of the lord-chancellor was admitted to bail-himself in 20,000l. and two sureties, Mr. Sullivan, and Mr. Sumner, in 10,000l. each; and he was ordered to deliver in an answer to the articles of impeachment in one month from that time, or upon the second day of the next session of parliament. On the 30th of May (1787) the king put an end to the present session by a speech, applauding "the measures taken by parliament respecting the reduction of the national debt, and the treaty of navigation and commerce with the Most Christian king. He spoke of the general tranquillity of Europe, and lamented the DISSENSIONS which unhappily prevailed amongst the STATES of the UNITED PROVINCES." This then is the proper period to pause, and take a retrospective view of the politics of the Continent, and of the origin and progress of these dissensions. |