After two days occupied in reading the charges and the defendant’s replies, Burke arose and opened the case for the prosecution in a speech full of eloquent exaggeration and honourable zeal in the cause of an oppressed people. He spoke during days, after which the Benares charge was brought forward by Fox and Grey (afterwards Earl Grey), the youngest of the managers, and that relating to the Begums by Adam and Sheridan. The court then adjourned to the next session. But it is unnecessary here to follow the details of this famous trial which “dragged its slow length along” for seven years. In the spring of 1795 Hastings was acquitted, by a large majority, on all counts; and, although his conduct had, in some particulars, been far from faultless, and the sincerity of his principal accusers was beyond question, his acquittal must be owned as just as it was honourable, especially when we remember that his action had been entirely uninfluenced by considerations of private advantage, that he had endured for so many anxious years the burden of an impeachment, that he was ruined in fortune by the expenses of the trial, and that his great services to his country had been left wholly without reward.
His poverty, however, was relieved by the Directors of the East India Company, who bestowed upon him a pension of 4,000 a year, and he passed the remainder of his long life in honourable retirement. He died in 1818, his wife, to whom he was always devotedly attached, surviving him by a few Years.
[The following section contains little besides the account of Fanny’s visits to Westminster Hall during the early days of the trial. One other event, however, it relates, of sorrowful significance to the diarist. By the death of Mrs. Delany, on the 11th of April, 17; she lost at once a dear and venerated friend, and her only occasional refuge from the odious tyranny of Court routine.-ED.]
WESTMINSTER HALL AT THE OPENING OF THE HASTINGS TRIAL.
February 13th. O what an interesting transaction does this day open! a day, indeed, of strong emotion to me, though all upon matters foreign to any immediate concern of my own—if anything may be called foreign that deeply interests us, merely because it is not personal.
The trial, so long impending, of Mr. Hastings, opened to-day.
The queen yesterday asked me if I wished to be present at the beginning, or had rather take another day. I was greatly obliged by her condescension, and preferred the opening. I thought it would give me a general view of the court, and the manner of proceeding, and that I might read hereafter the speeches and evidence. She then told me she had six tickets from Sir Peter Burrell, the grand chamberlain, for every day; that three were for his box, and three for his gallery. She asked me who I would go with, and promised me a box-ticket not only for myself, but my companion. Nor was this consideration all she showed me for she added, that as I might naturally wish for my father, she would have me send him my other ticket.
I thanked her very gratefully, and after dinner went to St. Martin’s-street; but all there was embarrassing: my father could not go; he was averse to be present at the trial, and he was a little lame from a fall. In the end I sent an express to Hammersmith, to desire Charles[262] to come to me the next morning by eight o’clock. I was very sorry not to have my father, as he had been named by the queen; but I was glad to have Charles.