unworthy and harassing persecution of a meritorious and successful
statesman;--how those passionate appeals to justice, those vehement
denunciations of crime, which made the halls of Westminster and St.
Stephen's ring with their echoes, are now coldly judged, through the
medium of disfiguring Reports, and regarded, at the best, but as
rhetorical effusions, indebted to temper for their warmth, and to fancy
for their details;--while so little was the reputation of the delinquent
himself even scorched by the bolts of eloquence thus launched at him,
that a subsequent House of Commons thought themselves honored by his
presence, and welcomed him with such cheers [Footnote: When called as a
witness before the House, in 1813, on the subject of the renewal of the
East India Company's Charter.] as should reward only the friends and
benefactors of freedom;--when we reflect on this thankless result of so
much labor and talent, it seems wonderful that there should still be
found high and gifted spirits, to waste themselves away in such temporary
struggles, and, like that spendthrift of genius, Sheridan, to
_discount_ their immortality, for the payment of fame in hand which
these triumphs of the day secure to them.

For this direction, however, which the current of opinion has taken, with
regard to Mr. Hastings and his eloquent accusers, there are many very
obvious reasons to be assigned. Success, as I have already remarked, was
the dazzling talisman, which he waved in the eyes of his adversaries from
the first, and which his friends have made use of to throw a splendor
over his tyranny and injustice ever since. [Footnote: In the important
article of Finance, however, for which he made so many sacrifices of
humanity, even the justification of success was wanting to his measures.
The following is the account given by the Select Committee of the House
of Commons in 1810, of the state in which India was left by his
administration:--"The revenues had been absorbed; the pay and allowances