22. THE IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS

Peroration of the Speech before the High Court of Parliament, in February, 1788.

My Lords, you have now heard the principles on which Mr. Hastings governs the part of Asia subjected to the British empire. Here he has declared his opinion, that he is a despotic prince; that he is to use arbitrary power; and, of course, all his acts are covered with that shield. "I know," says he, "the Constitution of Asia only from its practice. Will your Lordships submit to hear the corrupt practices of mankind made the principles of Government?

He have arbitrary power! My Lords, the East India Company have not arbitrary power to give him; the King has no arbitrary power to give him; your Lordships have not; nor the Commons; nor the whole Legislature. We have no arbitrary power to give, because arbitrary power is a thing which neither any man can hold nor any man can give. No man can lawfully govern himself according to his own will, much less can one person be governed by the will of another. We are all born in subjection, all born equally, high and low, governors and governed, in subjection to one great, immutable, preëxistent law, prior to all our devices, and prior to all our contrivances, paramount to all our ideas and all our sensations, antecedent to our very existence, by which we are knit and connected in the eternal frame of the universe, out of which we cannot stir.

This great law does not arise from our conventions or compacts; on the contrary, it gives to our conventions and compacts all the force and sanction they can have; it does not arise from our vain institutions. Every good gift is of God; all power is of God; and He, who has given the power, and from whom alone it originates, will never suffer the exercise of it to

be practiced upon any less solid foundation than the power itself. If, then, all dominion of man over man is the effect of the divine disposition, it is bound by the eternal laws of Him that gave it, with which no human authority can dispense; neither he that exercises it, nor even those who are subject to it: and if they were mad enough to make an express compact that should release their magistrate from his duty, and should declare their lives, liberties, and properties dependent upon, not rules and laws, but his mere capricious will, that covenant would be void.

This arbitrary power is not to be had by conquest. Nor can any sovereign have it by succession; for no man can succeed to fraud, rapine, and violence. Those who give and those who receive arbitrary power are alike criminal; and there is no man but is bound to resist it to the best of his power, wherever it shall show its face to the world.

Law and arbitrary power are in eternal enmity. Name me a magistrate, and I will name property; name me power, and I will name protection. It is a contradiction in terms; it is blasphemy in religion, it is wickedness in politics, to say that any man can have arbitrary power. In every patent of office the duty is included. For what else does a magistrate exist? To suppose for power, is an absurdity in idea. Judges are guided and governed by the eternal laws of justice, to which we are all subject. We may bite our chains, if we will; but we shall be made to know ourselves, and be taught that man is born to be governed by law; and he that will substitute will in the place of it, is an enemy to God.

My Lords, I do not mean to go further than just to remind your Lordships of this, — that Mr. Hastings's government was one whole system of oppression, of robbery of individuals, of spoliation of the public, and of supersession of the whole system of the English government, in order to vest in the worst of the natives

all the power that could possibly exist in any government; in order to defeat the ends which all governments ought, in common, to have in view. In the name of the Commons of England, I charge all this villainy upon Warren Hastings, in this last moment of my application to you.

Therefore, it is with confidence that, ordered by the Commons of Great Britain, I impeach Warren Hastings of high crimes and misdemeanors.

I impeach him in the name of the Commons of Great Britain in Parliament assembled, whose parliamentary trust he has abused.

I impeach him in the name of the Commons of Great Britain, whose national character he has dishonored. I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose laws, rights, and liberties he has subverted.

I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose property he has destroyed, whose country he has laid waste and desolate.

I impeach him in the name of human nature itself, which he has cruelly outraged, injured, and oppressed, in both sexes. And I impeach him in the name and by the virtue of those eternal laws of justice, which ought equally to pervade every age, condition, rank, and situation, in the world.

EDMUND BURKE. (Adapted by ROBERT MCLEAn Cumnock.)

22. In 1788 the House of Commons voted that Warren Hastings, late Governor-General of India, should be impeached before the House of Lords for high crimes and misdemeanors. Hastings' management of India had been very advantageous for England, but the measures that he had adopted to obtain certain large sums of money expected of him were most oppressive and unjust to the natives and their rulers. Edmund Burke, a noted Irish statesman and orator, was placed at the head of the commission charged

with conducting the impeachment. The trial, which is one of the most memorable in history both for its length and the brilliancy of its oratory, was protracted for more than six years and resulted in the acquittal of Hastings.

Study carefully the concluding "charge." Try to express the steady growth in intensity through the last six paragraphs. Meaning of impeach?

Practice, first, expressing the gradation in two paragraphs. Then, in three. Then, in four. Then, in five. Then, in six.

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS FOR WRITTEN REVIEW

I. What is meant by gradation of thought and emotion?

2. How do the exercises in Chapter XIII differ from those in Chapter V?

3. Wherein lies the difficulty in reading long series of graded thoughts or emotions?

4. Explain the references upon which rests the gradation in No. 9.

5. Wherein lies the gradation in thought in No. 12? 6. How does the gradation in No. 15 differ from that in No. 10?

7. Quote from No. 18 three examples of gradation. 8. Wherein lies the gradation of thought in No. 20? 9. (No. 21.) Paraphrase the following expressions: (a) Ruinous and ignominious situation.

(b) Rescue the ear of majesty from the delusions which surround it.

(c) Sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign prince.

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10. (No. 22, ¶2.) Why can neither any man hold nor any man give arbitrary power?”

(15.) Why are “law and arbitrary power in eternal enmity?"

CHAPTER XIV

STUDIES IN REPEATED WORDS AND REFRAINS

Why did the speaker or writer repeat the word, the phrase, the clause, the sentence? What effect is produced by the repetition? These are the leading questions in the study of this chapter.

Sometimes words are repeated to strengthen the idea that they express; sometimes to strengthen other words; sometimes to retard the movement, thus giving more time to think; sometimes, in long and involved periods, to keep the meaning clear; sometimes for oratorical effect; and sometimes for no better reason than to fill out the required number of feet in a line of poetry. Whatever may be the motive or the effect, it is certain that expression is bound to be stronger in proportion as the motive is understood and the effect appreciated.

The striking effect of repetition in some of the world's great orations finds illustration in Daniel Webster's Independence now and independence forever, Patrick Henry's Give me liberty or give me death, and the conclusion of Edmund Burke's arraignment of Warren Hastings with its "I impeach him I impeach him. . .

The importance of the refrain is seen in our lyrics, and such well-loved poems as "Excelsior" and "Lenore," or such masterpieces as "The Raven" and "Recessional."