had put a stop to them. His counsel must have deliberated long before they resolved to object to the admissibility of the evidence, and they were probably actuated by a dread of the prejudice it might create before it could be refuted. Law turned to good account the frivolity and vanity of Michael Angelo Taylor, a briefless barrister, who, although the butt of the Northern Circuit, had contrived to get himself appointed a Manager. An important point coming on for argument, Law observed-"It is really a pity to waste time in discussing such a point which must be clear to all lawyers; this is no point of political expediency, it is a mere point of law, and my honourable and learned friend there (pointing to Michael Angelo), from his accurate knowledge of the law, which he has practised with so much success, can confirm fully what I say." Michael puffed, and swelled, and nodded his head-when Burke ran up to him quite furious, and, shaking him, said, “You little rogue, what do you mean by assenting to this ?” Law was most afraid of Sheridan, but once ventured to try to ridicule a figurative observation of his that "the treasures in the Zenana of the Begum were an offering laid by the hand of piety on the altar of a saint," by asking, "how the lady was to be considered a saint, and how the camels when they bore the treasure were to be laid upon the altar?" Sheridan: "This is the first time in my life that I ever heard of special pleading on a metaphor, or a bill of indictment against a trope; but such is the turn of the learned gentleman's mind that when he attempts to be humorous no jest can be found, and when serious no fact is visible." Considering that the Managers were assisted by the legal acumen and experience of Dr. Lawrence, Mr. Mansfield, and Mr. Pigott, it is wonderful to see what questions they put and insisted upon. For example, it being proved that Mr. Hastings had authorized the letting of certain lands to Kelleram and Cullian Sing, supposed to be cruel oppressors, they asked the witness -"What impression the letting of the lands to Kelleram and Cullian Sing made on the minds of the inhabitants of the country?" Before there was time to object, the witness blurted out, "They heard it with terror and dismay." Law insisted that this answer should be expunged, and that the question should be overruled, it not being in the competence of the witness to speak of anybody's feelings but his own. The Managers standing up strenuously for the regularity of their question and the fitness of the answer to it, the Peers adjourned from Westminster Hall to their own chamber, and, after a reference to the Judges, Lord Chancellor Thurlow announced to the Managers that the question objected to could not be regularly put, and that the answer to it must be expunged. Nearly a whole day was wasted in this foolish controversy. On the 14th of February, 1792, and the seventy-fifth day of the trial, Law thus began to open the defence:: A.D. 1792. Law's opening of the defence. "Your Lordships are now entering on the fifth year of a trial, to which the history of this or any other country furnishes nothing like a parallel; and it at length becomes my duty to occupy somewhat longer the harassed and nearly exhausted attention of your Lordships, and to exercise reluctantly the expiring patience of my client. Mr. Hastings, by the bounteous permission of that Providence which disposes of all things, with a constitution weakened by great and incessant exertions in the service of his country and impaired by the influence of an unwholesome climate-suffering from year to year the wounds which most pierce a manly and noble mind-the passive listener to calumny and insult-thirsting with an honourable ardour for the public approbation which illustrious talents and services ever merit-while malignity and prejudice are combining to degrade him, and blacken his fair reputation in the eyes of his country-subdued by the painful progress of a trial protracted to a length unexperienced before by any British subject, and unprecedented in the annals of any other country-under all these accumulated hardships Mr. Hastings is alive this day, and kneeling at your Lordships' bar to implore the protection, as he is sure of the justice, of this august tribunal. To a case pampered -I had almost said corrupted-by luscious delicacies, the advocates of my client can only bring plain facts and sound arguments; but we can show that eloquence has been substituted for proofs, and acrimony has supplied the place of reasoning. I could never be brought to believe that justice was the end looked for, where vengeance was the moving power." After an exordium not wanting in dignified solemnity, although creating a wish for more purity and simplicity of diction, he proceeded to take a general view of the origin of the prosecution, of the charges into which it was divided, of the feeble manner in which they had been supported, and of the evidence by which they were to be repelled. Upon the whole, he rather disappointed expectation. Although he had shown spirit and energy while wrangling with the Managers about evidence, and although still undaunted by the matchless power of intellect opposed to him,- -now when he had all Westminster Hall to himself and he was to proceed for hours and days without interruption or personal contest, he quailed under the quietude, combined with the strangeness and grandeur, of the scene. He by no means satisfied the lively Miss Burney, then attached to the Royal household, who were all, as well as the King and Queen, devoted enemies to the impeachment, and thought no praise sufficiently warm which could be bestowed upon the accused. This is her disparaging language in her Diary: "To hear the attack the people came in crowds; to hear the defence they scarcely came in tête-à-tête. Mr. Law was terrified exceedingly, and his timidity induced him so frequently to beg quarter from his antagonists, both for any blunders and any deficiencies, that I felt angry even with modest egotism. We (Windham and I) spoke of Mr. Law, and I expressed some dis 6 satisfaction that such attackers should not have had able and more equal opponents. But do you not think that Mr. Law spoke well,' cried Windham-'clear, forcible?' 'Not forcible,' cried I-'I would not say not clear' 'He was frightened,' said Windham; he might not do himself justice. I have heard him elsewhere, and been very well satisfied with him; but he looked pale and alarmed, and his voice trembled.' However, she adds→→→ "In his second oration, Mr. Law was far more animated and less frightened, and acquitted himself so as almost to merit as much commendation as, in my opinion, he had merited censure at the opening." It is a curious fact that the State Trial which, of all that have taken place in England, excited the most interest is the worst reported. We have no account of it except from a set of ignorant short-hand writers, who, although they could take down evidence with sufficient accuracy, were totally incapable of comprehending the eloquent speeches which were made on either side. Burke having observed that "virtue does not depend upon climates and degrees," he was reported to have said, " virtue does not depend upon climaxes and trees." The only authentic specimens I can give of Mr. Law's His proce mium and peroration on the Begum charge. oratory when he was addressing the Lords on the merits of the impeachment are the prooemium and the peroration of his speech on the Begum charge, which are now in my possession, written by his own hand, and which he had elaborately composed at full length, and got by heart, although he trusted to short notes for his comments upon the evidence: "Again, my Lords, after a further period of protracted solicitude, Mr. Hastings presents himself at your Lordships' bar, with a temper undisturbed, and a firmness unshaken, by the lingering torture of a six years' trial, "God forbid that in the mention of this circumstance I should be understood to arraign either the justice or mercy of this tribunal. No, my Lords, all forms of justice have been well observed. My blame lights on the law, not on your office, 'which you with truth and mercy minister.' As little I advert to this circumstance as seeking on this account unduly to interest your Lordships' compassion and tenderness in his favour. No, my Lords, as he has hitherto disdained to avail himself of any covert address to these affections, so your Lordships may, I trust, be assured that he does not feel himself more disposed at this moment than at any former period of his trial to sully the magnanimity of his past life by the baseness of its close. "He does not even now on his own account merely condescend to lament the unfortunate peculiarity of his destiny which has marked him out as the only man since man's creation who has existed the object of a trial of such enduring continuance; for, my Lords, he has the virtue, I trust, as far as human infirmity and frailty will permit, to lose the sense of his own immediate and peculiar sufferings in the consolatory reflection which his mind presents to him—that as he is in the history of mankind the first instance of this extraordinary species of infliction, so unless he vainly deems of the effect of this instance upon the human mind, and has formed a rash and visionary estimate of the generosity and mercy of our nature, it will be the last. "He trusts, indeed, that with reference to his own country at least, he may venture to predict, what the great Roman historian, Livy, in contrasting a new and barbarous punishment, inflicted in the infancy of the Roman empire, with the subsequent lenity and humanity of the system of penal laws which obtained amongst his countrymen, ventured in nearly the same words to declare-Primum ultimumque illud supplicium apud Romanos exempli parum memoris legum humanarum fuit.'* Dismissing, This, it will be recollected, relates to the case of Mettius Fuffetius, who for his treachery was sentenced to a frightful death by Tullus Hostilius. The historian in a few lines beautifully narrates the sentence, the execution, and the behaviour of the lookers-on:-"Tum Tullus: Metti Fuffeti,' inquit, 'si ipse discere posses fidem ac fœdera servare, vivo tibi ea disciplina a me adhibita esset. Nunc quoniam tuum insanabile ingenium est, at tu tuo supplicio doce humanum genus ea sancta credere, quæ a te violata sunt. Ut igitur paullo ante animum inter Fidenatem Romanamque rem ancipitem gessisti, ita jam corpus "Avertere omnes a tanta fœditate spectaculi oculos. Primum ultimumque illud supplicium apud Romanos exempli parum memoris legum humanarum fuit, in aliis gloriari licet, nulli gentium mitiores placuisse pœnas."-Lib. I. c.28 |