capable of doing, even beyond our direct task. I am ever, with Mrs. Burke's, my brother's, and my son's most affectionate regards to you, and to all Ballitore, which we love with great sincerity, my dear Miss Shackleton, "Your most faithful and most obliged "Beaconsfield, Dec. 13th, 1784." "EDMUND BURKE. His benevolence, as the preceding poetic compliment implies, was frequently shown in administering medicine, of which he knew a little of the practical part, to his poorer neighbours in the country, when they were unable to pay for more regular advice, or too distant to procure it immediately; and also to his servants and family. On one of these occasions in mixing some medicines for Mrs. Burke, he used a wrong one by mistake, and when he found it was likely to be productive of serious consequences, experienced indescribable agony for a few hours until assured there was no farther danger. In allusion to this unpleasant occurrence, he sometimes afterwards used to say to Dr. Brocklesby, "I mean to leave off practice, Doctor, for I fear I am little better than a quack." To beggars he was kind and charitable, showing more compassion to the itinerant class than is generally exhibited, and which his education in Ireland, where from there being no poor laws, more consideration is displayed to such objects than in this country, tended to strengthen. All the silver which he carried out, in going for a walk, was usually disposed of in this way before he came home, so that if a hackney-coach brought him to the door, he was scarcely ever able to discharge it without procuring the means from some one in the house. He would not admit that persons refused to assist travelling mendicants from policy, "No, Sir," said he, in a conversation on the subject, "it is only an apology for saving their money." Some years after this time, when enfeebled by infirmity and by grief for the loss of his son, he was walking in the neighbourhood of Beaconsfield, with two ladies, near relatives, a beggar-man rather advanced in years accosted them, requesting assistance. Mr. Burke, after a few questions, gave him a shilling. “I wonder, my dear Sir," remarked one of the ladies, as they walked on, "you should bestow upon those people, who are generally worthless characters, so much; what you have just now given will be spent in gin.” "Madam,” replied he emphatically, after a pause, and assuming a severe aspect, "he is an old man;-and if gin be his comfort, let him have gin." CHAPTER IX. Speech on the Nabob of Arcot's debts.-Report of the Shipwreck of his son.-I'mpeachment of Mr. Hastings.-Peroration on opening the Charges.--Visit to Ireland by Mr. Burke.-Conversations with a Gentleman in London.-Letters to Lord Charlemont.-Mr. Hardy's account of him.-Preface to Bellendenus.Epitaph on the Marquis of Rockingham. In the Session commencing 25th January, 1785, no notice being taken of India affairs in the Speech from the Throne, Mr. Burke moved an amendment, warmly supported by Mr. Fox, and observed in allusion to the Governor General, that "there was at this moment in India as great a phenomenon as ever the world had produced. A person who stood not as a delinquent, but as a criminal in the eyes of that House-whose criminal charge was on the records of their journals, and whose recall had been ordered by that House; nevertheless, in defiance of their authority, that criminal was at this moment commanding our armies, and directing the expenditure of our revenues in Bengal." He likewise took part on the subject of the Westminster_scrutiny, in which the Minister was accused of showing as much unworthy resentment towards Mr. Fox, as he had done in the preceding Session toward the Member for Malton; also on the question of the cotton tax; on that of the treatment of convicts under sentence of transportation; on the sinking fund; and, in addition to others of less moment, on the Irish commercial propositions. On the latter question, though siding chiefly with Opposition, he did not take so active a part as was expected, a feeling of delicacy preventing him, as he said in reply to an allusion from Mr. Pitt, as to his being an Irishman, from balancing minutely and invidiously, conflicting claims between the country of his nativity, and that of his adoption, when the latter had raised him from nothing, to stations of high public trust and honour, with the power to legislate, not for any one class of persons, or for any one spot, however dear that spot might be to him, but for the general interests of the kingdom at large. Mr. Pitt's motion for reform in the representation drew from Mr. Burke some pointed animadversions, demanding how he, of all men, could assume that the people were not sufficiently represented in that House, when he was daily in the habit of boasting that his own place and preponderance there, were solely owing to the voice of the people? On the bill of the Minister for regulating the public offices, which Mr. Sheridan termed a mere ratcatching measure, he was equally severe, and continuing the allusion, ludicrously quoted "Mice and rats, and such small deer, Had been Tom's food for seven long year." Contrasting its biting and impracticable economy with the pro fusion countenanced in India, which would ultimately fall on the shoulders of England, he used the following extraordinary series of figures; new and forcible indeed, and conveying a striking impression to the mind, but objectionable from their number, and from following each other in such quick succession; passages of this kind, however, are rare in his works : "He (Mr. Pitt) was desirous to draw a resource out of the crumbs dropped from the trenchers of penury. He was rasping from the marrowless bones of skeleton establishments an empirical alimentary powder to diet into a similitude of health the languishing chimeras of fraudulent reformation. But while Parliament looked with anxiety at his desperate and laborious trifling, while they were apprehensive that he would break his back with stooping to pick up chaff and straws, he recovers himself at an elastic bound; and with a broadcast swing of his arm, he squandered over his Indian field a sum far greater than the amount of all these establishments added together." This Indian field now chiefly occupied Mr. Burke's thoughts, as he himself expressed it, "at all hours and seasons, in the retirements of summer, in the avocations of the winter, and even amid the snows (alluding to the ill reception he had experienced the preceding session) that had lately been showering on his head." Besides the amendment to the Address, already noticed, he subsequently supported motions by other members on the same fruitful subject of India. But his great effort, February 28th, was on the debts of the Nabob of Arcot, one of those remarkable outpourings of a most fertile and vigorous intellect, which on an unpromising theme, and under the disadvantage of rising last in the debate, seemed to combine all that could instruct, dazzle, and even overpower the hearer. It has been said to be in some parts florid. But in energy, in rhetorical address, in a minute knowledge of India and especially the intricacies of the question itself, in the boldness of his attacks upon those of the Company's servants who were considered by their intrigues to have laid the foundation of these debts, in the clearness of his narrative and detail, it was rated equal to any thing ever delivered in Parliament. The oppressions exercised upon the neighbouring state of Tanjore, by the Nabob and his agents, had already produced much animadversion, and Mr. Burke being well informed of the circumstances from private information, as well as public documents, characterized the chief agent and counsellor of his Highness on these occasions, Mr. Paul B-d, as -d, as "the old betrayer, insulter, oppressor, and Scourge, of a country which has for years been an object of an unremitted, but unhappily an unequal struggle, between the bounties of Providence to renovate and the wickedness of mankind to destroy."-Some of the spirit of the speech is said to have evapo rated in the printed report. Shortly after this period he suffered great agony of mind for some time, in consequence of a newspaper account of the loss, in a violent storm off the coast of Holland, of a Harwich packet, in which his son had embarked for the continent. Fortunately the report proved untrue; he arrived in safety, and after visiting Holland, Flanders, and some of the adjoining states, was received with some distinction in the Court and capital of France. During his father's tenure of power, he had been appointed Joint-receiver with Dr. King of the revenues of the Crown Lands, held for life; and after the death of the Marquis of Rockingham, Earl Fitzwilliam had made him auditor of his accounts. Some lines were addressed to him on occasion of the above afflicting rumour, by an old friend in Ireland, beginning "On a Report of Edmund Burke's Death, and of his Son having been lost at Sea. It was at the opening of the next session, January 24th, 1786, that Mr. Burke entered on one of the most tempestuous scenes of his life-nearly the whole of which was a political storm-in the prosecution of Mr. Hastings, late Governor General of India, who had recently arrived in England. He was Much consideration is necessary adequately to appreciate the degree of moral courage requisite for this undertaking, nothing so arduous or laborious having ever fallen to the lot of a member of the English legislature; for though the work was in some measure divided, much the greater part unavoidably fell to his share. It demanded not only uncommon capacity of mind, but the most effective, and popular, and Parliamentary working talents; an utter disregard of difficulty; a vast fund of local knowledge; a perseverance in mental and bodily labour not to be conquered; a contempt for obloquy and reproach of every kind, such as few men had fortitude enough to encounter; an acquaintance with the powers, interests, habits, actual condition, intrigues, and even villanies of nearly all India, such as no man, and scarcely any body of men out of the country, could be expected to possess. The accused, besides, was no inconsiderable man. supposed to possess the personal good opinion of the King.* He had acquired the favour of the Board of Controul. He enjoyed the support of the India Company, which had profited by his sway. He had aggrandized the nation itself, which, satisfied with its acquisitions, felt little curiosity to inquire into the means employed to procure them; and in fact the subject, for two or three years before, would scarcely be listened to in Parliament. He had governed a vast empire for a series of years, and was of course enabled to profit by the weight, in all cases great, which authority bestows. He had not only amassed a competent fortune himself, but, what was of more consequence to his political interest, had enriched more men than any half dozen Prime Ministers of England put together. He had necessarily many friends and a vast number of apologists, several of whom were in Parliament, others in different situations of influence, who, from the oblique morality with which all India questions were treated, scarcely considered as improprieties there, what in England they would have stigmatized as unquestionable crimes. In addition to all these, the evidence had to come from a vast distance; qualified by some who thought the blame ought rather to fall on the agents than on the principal; by some who hesitated to condemn proceedings which had been the source of their own gain; by some who shrunk from the odium of coming forward, or being considered as public accusers; all which circumstances were observed to operate powerfully in the subsequent evidence given upon the trial of the Governor General. Against all these considerations, against the opinion of some of his own party, and in some degree against his own personal interests, Mr. Burke obstinately persevered, winning the nation During the trial a caricature was exhibited of Mr. Hastings trundling His Majesty in a wheelbarrow, with the label, "What a man buys he may sell.” Well," said the King good-humouredly on seeing it, " I have been represented in many extraor dinary situations, but in a wheelbarrow is really something new." |