BOOK IV.

CHAPTER I.

1785-1788.

NOTHING of importance marked the voyage home. "I had," wrote Hastings to one of the three who saw him last at the Sandheads, "a pleasant voyage without bad weather; a clean and tight ship; officers of skill and attention, and even of science; a society that I loved; and a rapid course." He only complained that his mind was stupid, and that he never passed a night without a slight fever.* The monotony of life at sea was broken by a short stay at St. Helena, and he employed his ample leisure in writing a narrative of the last three months of his rule, and in scribbling

*Gleig's "Warren Hastings," Vol. 3., Chap. viii.

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verses in imitation of Horace. On the 13th of June he landed at Plymouth, and next morning posted off to London.

The first meeting with his wife took place at Maidenhead on the 17th. The rest of the month they spent together in London, performing "all the duties of loyalty, respect, and civility," and as happy as love could make a well-matched but still childless couple. Ever since the austere and stately Queen Charlotte had smiled upon Mrs. Hastings, her reception in the drawing-rooms of the great was assured. Her husband, too, was graciously received at Court. His welcome at the India House was all that he could desire. The Directors unanimously thanked him for his great services Among the ministers, Lord Thurlow greeted him as a true friend. Even from Dundas, who under the new India Act had become President of the new Board of Control, a machine devised by Pitt for the gradual absorption of the Company's power by the Crown,* he

*Pitt's India Bill of 1784, created a Board of Control composed of six Privy Councillors, in whose hands the Government of India was virtually centred. Of the twenty-four Directors, three were formed into a secret committee, subject to the orders of the Board. The Court of Proprietors was reduced to utter powerlessness.

met at this time with nothing but the compli ments due to his deserts. Hastings' friends, public and private, were numerous and powerful. In short, as he himself wrote a few weeks later, "I find myself everywhere, and universally, treated with evidences, apparent even to my own observation, that I possess the good opinion of the country."

At Cheltenham, Tunbridge, and Bath, Hastings and his wife seem to have spent the remain

der of that year. Together they drank the waters of those places and enjoyed the company which they found there. Hastings' letters of this period show the interest he still took in Indian affairs, and his readiness to help the Ministry with advice on questions raised by the working of the new India Act. If a shadow of coming trouble now and then crossed his path, he soon escaped from it into the sunshine of surrounding bliss, of dreams fufilled or still awaiting fulfilment. One of these latter now occupied his thoughts; the dream of his early childhood, the hope that he might one day become owner of the old ancestral domain at Daylesford. He had brought home no more than £80,000, after thirteen years of high office in a country where any

BURKE PREPARES HIS CHARGES.

293

less scrupulous governor might, in the same circumstances, have amassed a million, if not much more*. With a part of this money he made a handsome offer to the owner of Daylesford, but in vain. Mr. Mr. Knight refused to part with his property on any terms; and so, for the present, Hastings had to content himself with buying a small estate in Old Windsor, called Beaumont Lodge. His town house for the next four years was in Wimpole Street. It was not till 1788 that Mr. Knight agreed to sell him the greater part of Daylesford for about £11,424.†

By that time, the malice of his enemies and the force of party spirit had once more triumphed over the dictates of common justice and gratitude to a public hero. With a zeal which he may have mistaken for patiotism, added to the vindictive rage of an ousted placeman and a discomfited partisan, Burke had once more made himself the blind tool and ready slave of the unforgiving Francis. Under the influence of that lying Belial, he had worked himself into the belief that the saviour of India was the worst of criminals,

* "Debates of the House of Lords," &c., p. 442. ings owned a separate sum of about £40,000, the her marriage settlement.

† Gleig's "Warren Hastings," Vol. 3, Chap. xii.

Mrs. Hastproceeds of

an enemy to the whole human race. His rash zeal and fiery eloquence had dragged the leaders of the great Whig party, some of them against their will, into a course of action at once impolitic and cruelly unjust. As early as June, 1785, he had announced in the House of Commons his intention erelong, to "make a motion repecting the conduct of a gentleman just returned from India."

In the following February he carried out his threat.* His demand for copies of certain papers having, through Pitt's influence, been twice rejected, he proceeded, with Francis' help, to draw up a list of charges against the object of that crafty schemer's undying hate. Eleven of these were presented on the 4th April, and as many more were added later to the black account. On the 25th, Hastings obtained leave to be heard in his own defence. Five days only were granted him, "to reply to a volume that could not be read in less than two." But he worked hard, and at

*It has been argued that the rashness of Hastings' agent, Major Scott-Waring, in challenging Burke to make his threat good, provoked the issue which Burke's friends would else have shirked. This may be true, in default of evidence to the contrary; but to me it seems more probable that Burke's mind was already made up for war à outrance with the late GovernorGeneral.