CHAPTER IX.

Count de Mirabeau-Speech on the Nabob of Arcot's debts-Report of the Shipwreck of his Son-Impeachment 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.

EARLY in this year (1785), he received on a short visit at Beaconsfield the celebrated Count de Mirabeau, destined afterwards to figure so prominently in the French Revolution. He had come to England on some literary projects, was already well known and received by several persons of distinction, among whom were Lord Lansdowne and Sir Gilbert Elliot. By the latter, with whom he had been schoolfellow, he was introduced to Burke, as indeed were most other eminent foreigners who found their way to England; but we have no record of what either of these personages then thought of the other. During the reign of the former over the National Assembly, however, whole speeches of the Irish orator were pressed into his service and unscrupulously used as his own-a proceeding adopted by him towards many other writers likewise, whose arguments or manner assisted such views as he had in prospect. The response of Burke was by no means so complimentary; for writing in February, 1791, shortly before the French leader's death, and when his projects for the re-establishment of the Royal authority were unknown in England, he thus wrote jocularly to a Mr. Woodford in allusion to the Abbè Maury, paying him a visit—“ I have had the Count de Mirabeau in my house; will he (the Abbé) submit afterwards to enter under the same roof? I will have it purified and expiated, and I shall look into the best formulas from the time of Homer downwards for that purpose. I will do everything but imitate the Spaniard, who burned his house because the Connétable de Bourbon had been lodged in it. That ceremony is too expensive for my finances."

In the session commencing 25th January 1785, no notice being taken of the India Company's affairs in the Speech from the Throne, Mr. Burke moved an amendment supported by Mr. Fox. In allusion to the Governor General he observed, that "there was at that 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 resentment towards Mr. Fox, as he had done in the preceding session towards the Member for Malton. 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, he took part. Though siding chiefly with Opposition on this point, he was less active than usual on the latter, a feeling of delicacy preventing him as he said in reply to an allusion from Mr. Pitt, from balancing minutely and invidiously conflicting claims between the country of his nativity and that of his adoption. 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.

The Minister's motion for reform in the representation drew from Burke some pointed animadversions, demanding how he of all men could assume that the people were not sufficiently represented in that House, when he daily boasted that his own place and preponderance there were solely owing to the voice of the people? The argument was unanswerable. On the government bill for regulating the public offices which Sheridan termed a mere ratcatching measure, he was equally severe, and continuing the allusion to matters of petty reform, ludicrously quoted

"Mice and rats, and such small deer,

Had been Tom's food for seven long yea:

while he contrasted its biting and impracticable economy with the profusion countenanced in India, which would ultimately fall on the shoulders of England. This theme, India, now chiefly occupied all his thoughts, as he thus 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 pre

1785. SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 215

ceding session) that had lately been showering on my 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 of the session, February 28th, was on the debts of the Nabob of Arcot, one of those outpourings of a 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 of 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 deemed equal to any thing ever delivered in Parliament. The oppressions exercised upon the neighbouring state of Tanjore by the Nabob and his agents, were known to Burke from private information, as well as from public documents. He characterized the chief agent and counsellor of his Highness on these occasions, Mr. Benfield, 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 man to destroy." Some of the spirit of the speech is said to have evaporated in the printed report. On this subject he had in the following month some correspondence with Lord Thurlow.

Shortly after this period he suffered great agony of mind for a 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. After the death of the Marquis of Rockingham, Earl Fitzwilliam had made him auditor of his accounts.

The re-election of the Member for Malton as Lord Rector of Glasgow University having taken place in November 1784 he proceeded thither toward the end of August this year

accompanied by Mr. Windham, to be again installed. The ceremony finished, he made a tour of some length to the usual picturesque resorts of travellers in that country, and experienced as most admirers of Nature and her works acknowledge no slight pleasure from their number and variety. No particulars of this journey seem to have been preserved, excepting a romantic story of meeting by accident with a young lady, who being unable to enter the matrimo nial state, in consequence of her lover having no provision for their support, the travellers like true knights-erran succoured the distressed damsel by procuring an appoint ment for her betrothed in India. Burke writing in the end of October to Shackleton thus shortly adverts to the excursion-"I have had a very pleasant tour over a con siderable part of Scotland, and have seen the works both of God and man, in some new and striking forms."

At the opening of the next session, January 24th, 1786, he entered on one of the most tempestuous scenes of his life -nearly the whole of which was a political storm-in the prosecution of the late Governor General of India, who had recently arrived in England. This storm indeed was of his own creation. But it was raised in no spirit of passion, interest, or malevolence. To himself it became a sacrifice of case to the great interests as he conceived of justice and humanity, in order to restrain the strong from ill-doing, and throw the shield of law and principle over the most helpless race of people under British dominion. Such was his design; and in the opinions of statesmen it has been fully accomplished.*

Much consideration is required adequately to appreciate the degree of moral courage necessary for this undertaking. Nothing so arduous or laborious had ever fallen to a member of the English legislature; for though the work was in some measure divided, infinitely the greater part fell to his share. It was indeed a moral labour of Hercules. Not only uncommon capacity of mind was required, 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,

Lord John Russell's Memorials and Correspondence of Fox, vol. ii. His Lordship has a good passage on this subject.

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. He was supposed to possess the personal good opinion of the King.* He had acquired the favour of the Board of Control. 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 previously 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 interests, 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 offences 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 opinions of some of his own party, and in some degree against his own personal interests, Mr. Burke determinedly persevered, winning a large portion of the nation over to his opinion before the end of the session, and what was of no less moment, con

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 extraordinary situations, but in a wheelbarrow is something new."