THE TRIAL OF WARREN HASTINGS.
On the 5th of March, Burke moved for a committee to inspect the journals of the lords relative to the proceedings of the trial of Warren Hastings; and to report the facts and observations on them to the house. Leave being given, he diligently set to work, and the report, occupying nearly two hundred pages, was made on the 17th of April; and it is said, by competent judges, to be one of the most able and elaborate papers that have come from his pen. It was published, without authority, in form of a pamphlet; and Lord Thurlow embraced an early opportunity of venting his indignation against both its publication and its contents. He characterised it as “disgraceful and indecent, tending to misrepresent and vilify the conduct of judges and magistrates intrusted with the administration of justice and the laws of the country.” Burke made a pointed reply to this charge on the following day, in his seat in the house of commons. He remarked:—“It accuses the judges neither of ignorance nor corruption: whatever it says, it does not say it calumniously; that kind of language belongs to persons whose eloquence entitles them to a free use of epithets. The report states that the judges had given their opinion secretly, contrary to the almost uninterrupted tenor of parliamentary usage. It states that the opinions were given, not on the law, but on the case. It states that the mode of giving opinions was unprecedented, and contrary to the privileges of the house of commons. It states that the committee did not know on what rules and principles the judges had decided in those cases, as they neither heard them, nor are they entered on the journals. It is very true that we were and are extremely dissatisfied with those opinions, and the consequent determination of the lords; and we do not think such a mode of proceeding at all justified by the most numerous and best precedents. The report speaks for itself: whenever an occasion shall be regularly given to maintain everything of substance in that paper, I shall be ready to meet the proudest name for ability, learning, or rank, which this kingdom contains on that subject.” This reply of Burke contains an allusion to the result of this long-pending trial, as will be seen. Hastings was acquitted. As for the gauntlet which Burke threw down, no one seemed inclined to take it up; and Burke soon after quitted the house of commons for ever, he accepting the Chiltern Hundreds. But before Burke left the house, Pitt moved the thanks of the commons to him and the other managers, “for their faithful management in discharge of the trust reposed in them.” This motion was carried; and Burke in his reply observed, that prejudices against himself, arising from personal friendship or obligations to the accused, were too laudable for him to be discomposed at them. He had thrown out no general reflections on the Company’s servants; he had merely-repeated what Mr. Hastings himself had said of the troops serving in Oude, and the house had marked their opinion of the officers in the very terms he used. As for other expressions attributed to him, they had been much exaggerated and misrepresented. This was the last day that this philosophical statesman took his seat in the house of commons. Among his last words were a warning to the country to beware of the fate of France. But this warning was now scarcely needed. He had sounded the trumpet of alarm with such effect for several sessions, that the nation was roused to a sense of danger, and was prepared to ward off the blow by its most vigorous efforts. He had rendered a noble service, not only to his own generation, but to posterity—not only to his own country, but to every nation in Europe.