HISTORY OF EUROPE. 
just. The cause of temporary af- 
Biétion, has consigned the name of 
Hastings to immortal honour, by in- 
eorporating his life and ations with 
the juridical as well as the political 
and military history of his country. 
The charges brought against Mr, 
Hastings are not now to be con. 
sidered as misfortunes, but as diffi- 
culties that have proved and en« 
nobled his virtues. 
[209 
Tt deserves to be tecorded, in 
justice to the feelings of human na.° 
ture, as well as a testimony to tlie 
merit of Mr. Hastings, that a great 
number of writers, both at home 
and abroad, appeared as volunteers 
in his cause, sometimes for the ex- 
press purpose, and at others collate- 
rally, in writing on other subjeéts*. 
A like observation may be extended 
to the steady ardour with which 
Mr. 
* In one of the literary and political joutnals of the times, which, from the be- 
ginning of the trial to the end, had occasionally animadverted on the condué of all 
the members of the coalition against Mr. Hastings with the utmost freedom, we find 
the following congratulation on the acquittal of Mr. Hastings :— / 
“ We heartily congratulate our countrymen in every part of the world, and indeed 
all good men, on the honourable acquittal of Mr. Hastings, a man whose whole life, 
as we have had formerly occasion to observe, has been one continued scene of pub- 
lic service, public honour, and public prosecution. When Socrates, being accused 
of crimes and misdemeanors against the state, was asked if he did not intend to avail 
himself of the pleadings of orators in his behalf, which was freely offered, he said, 
that he did not intend to offer any other defence than that which the whole tenor and 
course of his life afforded; and on this ground he was contented to plead his own 
‘cause. On this ground, too, Mr. Hastings might have defended himself: for, al- 
thwugh he might have failed to unravel the nets woven for catching him, by the com- 
bined talents of opposite parties*, he would have satisfied the world, and all poste- 
rity, of his innocence and egregious merit: and aithough he might, for the want of 
such aid for extrication, have been found guilty in Westminster-Hall, the fine in which 
he would have been amerced would not have amounted to the third part of what his 
— defence cost him. Justice is not yet completed to Mr. Hastings by his country. 
The glory of invincible fortitude and patience may perhaps compensate for ten years 
of trouble and suspense, but cannot make up for an impaired fortune, never more 
than moderate.”"—English Review, Vol. XXKV. p. 320. 
© Inthe same journal the following criticism, both on the preface to the compilation 
respecting the trial, and the whole character and conduct of Mr. Hastings, appeared 
in the number for April, 1796, The writer of the preface, in his account of the com- 
pilation that forms his subject, rises, by a very natural and easy climax, from its sub- 
serviency to the purposes of the civilian, the politician, the antiquarian of future times, 
and the historian, to the interest which human nature, in all times and places, takes 
in a good nian struggling with adversity, and a vindication of the ways of God to 
man. In this view the trial of Mr. Hastings may be considered in the light of an 
‘heroic poem, whether of the epic gr dramatic kind, the grand moral or end of which, 
is, to illustrate the patient fortitude that arises from the consciousness of innocence 
and virtue. - 
_ There is an active and there is a passive fortitude: the latter not certainty less, but, 
in some respects, superior to the former. It was this species of fortitude that distim 
—— the hero of the sublimest poem that ever was composedf; it was this kind of 
fortitude that proved the Son of God in the desert, which Milton has made the subject 
of the Paradise Regained ; in the bloody sweat in the garden; in mount Calvary; and 
It has been Mr. Hastings’s fate to have had singular opportunities of displaying both 
and passive fortitude: the former in his conduct im India} the latter in the 
trial to which that conduct doomed him at home. 
_ © And on that day Herod and Pilate became friends. Mat. xxvii. 
# See Dr. Lowth s Dissertatlons on the sacred Hebrew Poetry, where he discourses on the Bock of Job. 
Vou. XXXVI, [P] 
In 
