of history. No other such judge has dishonoured the English ermine, since Jef

feries drank himself to death in the Tower."

In 1781 occurred the affair of the Begums or Princesses of Oude, the one the mother, the other the wife of the late Nabob, Sujah Dowlah, from whom Hastings is charged with having extorted above twelve hundred thousand pounds by very rigorous methods, on the pretence that they had had a share in instigating a recent serious insurrection at Benares.

It

"We must not forget," says Mr Macaulay, "to do justice to Sir Elijah Impey's conduct on this occasion. was not indeed easy for him to intrude himself into a business so entirely alien from all his official duties. But there was something inexpressibly alluring, we must suppose, in the peculiar rankness of the infamy which was then to be got at Lucknow. He hurried thither as fast as relays of palankin-bearers could carry him. A crowd of people came before him with affidavits against the Begums, ready drawn in their hands. Those affidavits he did not read. Some of them, indeed, he could not read, for they were in the dialects of Northern India, and no interpreter was employed. He administered the oath to the deponents with all possible expedition, and asked not a single question, not even whether they had perused the statements to which they swore. This work performed, he got again into his palankin, and posted back to Calcutta to be in time for the opening of term. The cause was one which, by his own confession, lay altogether out of his jurisdiction. Under the charter of justice, he had no more right to inquire into crimes committed by natives in Oude than the Lord President of the Court of Session of Scotland to hold an assize at Exeter. He had no right to try the Begums, nor did he pretend to try them. With what object then did he undertake so long a journey? Evidently in order that he might give, in an irregular manner, that sanction which in a regular manner he could not give, to the crimes of those who had recently hired him ; and in order that a confused mass of testimony, which he did not sift, which he did not even read, might acquire an authority not properly belonging to it, from the signature of the highest judicial func

tionary in India. The time was ap

proaching, however, when he was to be stripped of that robe which has never, since the Revolution, been disgraced so foully as by him... Impey was recalled by a letter from the Secretary of State."

Such is, we believe, the whole of Mr Macaulay's account of the Chief-Justice. The words, it will be perceived, are hard enough. Let us now see what are the facts.

In the first place, it appears very clearly that Sir Elijah Impey was, in reality, altogether a different description of man from what Mr Macaulay has painted him. His Sir Elijah— stern, unscrupulous, remorseless, equally destitute of moral principle and of the common feelings of humanity, fitted by natural disposition to be a hangman and a murderer-regardless alike of justice and of decency, of the rights of others and of his own reputation and character-rapacious at once of money and of power--now a crawling sycophant and slave, ready to fetch and carry and do any dirty work for any one who would employ him or command him -now the punctilious, domineering, and unbending asserter of the most extreme and dubious claims of his place and office-may be a very striking and artistic delineation, but it is the mere creation of his own brain. The Right Honourable essayist would not pretend that he has any evidence of its truth whatever, except only the conduct which he has himself attributed to Sir Elijah. If that conduct be falsely attributed, as we shall show presently that it is in every instance, then the entire basis on which Mr Macaulay's representation of him rests, falls to the ground. But, while there is, beyond this pile of misconception and falsehood, confessedly no evidence whatever on the one side, there is a concurrence of every possible kind of evidence on the other. Every thing that is known of Impey, apart from these disputed Indian transactions, goes to show him to have been a man of a nature the very reverse of that supposed by Mr Macaulay. All the records of his private life, from his boyhood to the last breath he drew, exhibit him as a man of a gentle disposition, of warm affections, of a cheerful temper, fond of seeing every body happy about him, simple in his tastes, moderate in his desires, moral, pious, beloved by his family, an object of attachment with his domestics, popular among the poor and the labour

ing classes wherever he lived, enjoying the regard of a wide circle of friends, the good opinion of no one of whom he ever lost. We cannot present the evidence of all this here; but it is before the world in these Memoirs of Sir Elijah now published by his son; and it is such as must convince the most sceptical. It consists of his own letters and other private papers-several of them never looked upon till after his death by any eye but his own—of numerous anecdotes and reminiscences of him, of the truth of which it is impossible to doubt of the attestations of those to whom he was personally best known-of proofs of the mutual affection and confidence in which he lived with the members of his family, and of the universally strong feelings of regard with which his memory is cherished by those of them who survive-in short, as we have said, of all the traces which a man can, in ordinary circumstances, leave behind him of what the tenor of his life and his real character have been. We do not advance this evidence of character as a plea absolutely in bar of Mr Macaulay's charges; but we must hold that it furnishes a strong presumption against their truth, and one which he was bound to grapple with, instead of scattering about him, as he does, in utter ignorance and recklessness, his imputations and epithets of hired fag, and serviceable tool, and accommodating judge, and oppressor, and murderer, and willing recipient of wealth and infamy, and worst dishonourer of the English ermine since drunken Jefferies, and other rhetorical variations in the same style. It is impossible not to sympathize with the feelings of injury and indignation which Sir Elijah Impey's son and vindicator describes as having been roused in himself and the other nearest connexions of his father on the first appearance of this violent diatribe.

"At that time," he writes, "besides myself there were four children of Sir Elijah yet surviving. We were all most tenderly attached to his memory, and deeply wounded by its desecration.-Though not altogether unknown in the world, it is just possible that the reviewer knew nothing of our existence; but it is highly probable that he would not have

deranged the symmetry of a single sentence, once constructed, to save five affectionate hearts from anguish. I abstain, as much as possible, from mixing up the sanctity of domestic sorrow with resentment of a public wrong; but, if there be a slanderer base enough to find pleasure and triumph in having tortured the feelings of delicate and sensitive women, aged and honourable men, he may take my assurance for the fact, that these calumnies have not only embittered the remnants of life, but mingled with the sharpness of death."

We will now take Mr Macaulay's several charges in the order in which we have already given them. First, therefore, comes the case of Nuncomar.

The undisputed and indisputable facts are these:-Nuncomar was a person of the most infamous character, universally believed to be capable of any crime. This is amply acknowledged by Mr Macaulay himself, by whom the man is represented as indubitably a scoundrel of the first water. In particular it appears that forgery was one of the expedients to which he was suspected of frequently having recourse to bring about his bad ends. Mr Macaulay refers to a statement which has been made by one historian, that "in Nuncomar's house a casket was found containing counterfeits of the seals of all the richest men of the province;" and he adds, that the story "in itself is by no means improbable." On the recommendation, or rather indeed in obedience to the express orders, of the Court of Directors at home, this man had been at one time employed by Hastings. To quote Mr Macaulay's account, “The vices of Nuncomar were acknowledged. But even from his vices, it was said, much advantage might at such a conjuncture be derived; and, though he could not safely be trusted, it might still be proper to encourage him by hopes of reward." When the Governor-General had made his use of him, he threw him off. Some time after this, on the 6th of March, 1775, Francis produced in the council-chamber a paper which he had received from Nuncomar, bringing certain charges. of bribery against Hastings. Mr Macaulay seems to regard these charges as altogether improbable. The only evidence, in addition to his own asser

tion, that Nuncomar brought forward appears to have been a letter from the Munny Begum. "The seal," says Mr Macaulay, "whether forged, as Hastings affirmed, or genuine, as we are rather inclined to believe, proved nothing. Nuncomar, as every body knows who knows India, had only to tell the Munny Begum, that such a letter would give pleasure to the majority of the council, in order to procure her attestation." In fact, no writer who has examined the matter has, we believe, come to any other conclusion than that the charges were false. And there can hardly be a doubt that the letter purporting to be from the Begum was a forgery. Mr Macaulay omits to state that Hastings immediately instituted proceedings in the Supreme Court against Nuncomar and several other persons for a conspiracy. Nuncomar was out upon bail on this charge, when on the 6th of May he was arrested on a charge of felony. "The crime imputed to him," says Mr Macaulay, “was, that six years before he had forged a bond. The ostensible prosecutor was a native. But it was then, and still is, the opinion of every body, idiots and biographers excepted, that Hastings was the real mover in the business." The ground upon which it is thus assumed that every one, not an idiot, must believe the arrest and prosecution of Nuncomar to have been instigated by Hastings, is simply that it might possibly have been convenient for Hastings at the time to get Nuncomar out of the way. Not a shred or shadow of evidence exists that the Governor-General had any part in the matter. Looking to all the circumstances to the contempt with which he had treated Nuncomar's accusations, -to their really contemptible character to the danger, on the other hand, to which he would have exposed himself by taking the course which Mr Macaulay attributes to him, we will not say that every body, idiots and rhetoricians excepted, must adopt an

opinion the opposite of that adopted by Mr Macaulay; but we think that judgments as sound as his has ever been accounted may do so.* As for his assertion that his own was at the time, and still is, the all but universal opinion, it is, like many other assertions in his essay, one about a matter of which he knows and can know nothing. But take the case to be as he puts it; suppose Mr Hastings to have secretly instigated the prosecution of Nuncomar; how does that implicate Sir Elijah Impey? Are we actually to make another wild and monstrous assumption, and be called idiots if we are not ready to believe that this supposed act of the Governor-General was done in concert with the Chief-Justice? Was all India of this opinion too at the time? and has all the world been of the same opinion ever since?

Much is attempted to be made of the circumstance, that the felony for which Nuncomar was tried, was a felony six years old. The fact is, that Nuncomar had been arrested and committed upon the charge at the time by the Mayor's Court at Calcutta, but had been released by order of Hastings, who had been ordered by the secret committee of the Court of Directors to avail himself of the services of the Rajah, and who in those days, before the passing of the Regulating Act, and the establishment of the Supreme Court, was constantly in the habit of interfering with the course of justice; even the instrument alleged to be forged was withheld from the prosecutor, who consequently could take no farther step in the case; when the Mayor's Court was superseded by the Supreme Court, which was entirely independent of the Governor-General and council, and which commenced its sittings towards the end of October 1774, he obtained the document by the authority of the new judges, and then he seems to have proceeded with all reasonable despatch. In truth, it appears that he had actually taken steps to recover the forged bond

some time before Nuncomar made his charges against Hastings; so that it might be more reasonably suspected that the Rajah made those charges in the hope of thereby escaping from this impending prosecution for forgery, than that Hastings got up the prosecution against him with the view of quashing the charges brought against himself. But at any rate, Impey's part in the affair only commences from the preferring of the indictment, and the bringing of the man to trial, and that was in June 1775, at the first effective court of oyer and terminer and gaol delivery, held by the Supreme Court. Let us then follow Mr Macaulay's series of assertions from this point. Not one of them that contains any thing material in reference to the conduct of Impey, will stand examination. Some will be found to rest upon no evidence, others to be opposed to all evidence, all to be either mere assumptions, or utter (however unintentional) misrepresentations.

66

It is not true that the law which made forgery capital in England was unknown to the natives of India; and, although it had never before been literally 'put in execution among them," its authority had been already sufficiently vindicated by an example which could not fail to be well remembered. A few years before, in 1765, a Hindoo, named Radachund Mettre, had been tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for forgery; he had not indeed been hanged, but the punishment was remitted expressly in consequence of the special circumstance of the case being the first that had occurred. The Hindoo inhabitants of Calcutta had petitioned the President and Council for his respite, on the ground that the crime of which he had been convicted had not previously been understood to be capital; whereupon the President and Council had recommended the prisoner to mercy, in the hope, as they distinctly stated, that his condemnation alone, without the sentence being actually carried into effect in that instance, would "be sufficient to deter others from committing the like offence." Upon that ground alone his Majesty's pardon had been granted. "Impey,"

we are told by Mr Macaulay, "would not hear of mercy or delay." In point of fact, the only application for mercy that was made to the court was from

the prisoner himself. "In 1765, when Radachund Mettre lay under sentence of death for forgery," as the son of Sir Elijah Impey here observes, "the principal native inhabitants of Calcutta drew up and signed an earnest petition in his favour; but now no such step was taken by the natives, neither Hindoo nor Mohammedan; nor could a single English resident of either party be found to recommend the prisoner to mercy, or to pray for a suspension of his execution-though solicited to the utmost verge of propriety by Mr Farrer, his humane and spirited advocate. Not a friend nor relative petitioned for the life of the convict. They could hardly have been withheld by fear of Mr Hastings; for, though not stronger than the law, Francis, Clavering, and Monson were at that time far stronger than the Governor-General. The majority in Council were ruling all things with an absolute sway, and they continued so to rule for many months after that period. From them the family and friends of Nuncomar had received offices of emolument, together with such honours as such strange statesmen only could confer. To them, therefore, they might have reasonably petitioned in behalf of their relative. Yet, they

petitioned not. Like Nuncomar himself, they probably rested upon the confident hope that Francis, Clavering, or Monson would prevent his execution. But assuredly it was not for the judges of the Supreme Court to enter into these secret speculations, or to invite petitions from family partizans or friends. The only party or person that petitioned for Nuncomar, was Nuncomar himself."

As for the "great excitement among all classes," so strongly painted by Mr Macaulay, there is positively no evidence whatever that any thing of the kind was occasioned either by the arrest, by the condemnation, or by the execution of the notorious Brahmin. It was by no means the first time that Brahmins had been arrested, and

It was

ings's trial, had ceased to be an object of interest among his countrymen long before his unprincipled career was thus brought to a close. His execution, accordingly, seems to have produced as little of a convulsion in Calcutta as his arrest had done. "It is a remarkable circumstance," Mr Macaulay observes, "that one of the letters of Hastings to Dr Johnson bears date a very few hours after the death of Nuncomar. While the whole settlement was in commotion-while a mighty and ancient priesthood were weeping over the remains of their chief

punished, and even hanged. Nuncomar himself had been apprehended on another criminal charge a very short time before. That "Calcutta was astounded," as Mr Macaulay asserts, by the news of his being now taken up again, we may safely hold to be a mere figure of rhetoric. We have already seen how immoveable the whole population, English, Mahommedan, and Hindoo, proved when it was attempted to rouse their feelings in behalf of the Rajah, after he had been tried, convicted, and sentenced. There is, indeed, a narrative which Mr Macaulay does not quote or refer to, but which is the sole authority for a high-wrought description he has given of the universal grief and horror manifested by the natives on the day of Nuncomar's execution. It professes to be a letter written by the Sheriff of Calcutta, who was present on the occasion. But there is every reason to believe that it is a fiction and a forgery. never heard of by any body, till it was read in the House of Commons by Sir Gilbert Elliot, in the course of the speech in which he moved the impeachment of Sir Elijah Impey, on the 12th of December 1787, twelve years after the event of which it professed to give an account, and the time at which it was pretended to have been written. It was first given to the world in the Annual Register for 1788, published in 1790. Elliot, there can be no doubt, had received it from Francis, the original instigator of the proceedings against both Hastings and Impey-by his own avowal, the private as well as public enemy of both, and especially of the latter- -a man, besides, of the most vindictive and rancorous nature, and one in all probability practised in literary assassination. Sheriff Macrabie, the pretended writer, was the brother-in-law of Francis. But he was never suspected to have possessed any of that skill in writing which the letter displays. In no other notice of the execution is there to be found a trace of the excitement and agitation with which Sheriff Macrabie is made to describe it as having been attended. In fact, Nuncomar, as Major Rennell explained in his examination on Hast

the conqueror in that deadly grapple sat down, with characteristic self-possession, to write about the Tour to the Hebrides, Jones's Persian Grammar, and the history, traditions, arts, and natural productions of India." It may answer well enough for a mere rhetorical purpose to state the thing in this way; but nobody can feel such an explanation to be the true one. The weeping of the mighty and ancient priesthood, and the commotion of the whole settlement, may be safely set down to the heated fancy of Mr Macaulay, under the inspiration of the pseudo-Macrabie. "I have been assured," says Mr E. B. Impey, merely by my father and Mr Hastings, but by other persons who were in Calcutta on the day of the execution, that the scene excited very little interest among the Hindoos, and that the rest of the natives witnessed it with quiet indifference; or the more openly expressed opinion, that the Rajah—the worst man in India-met with the fate he had long merited." This is much more likely.

"not

Were not Francis, Monson, and Clavering, then, furious with indignation and horror? It is not true that they described the Governor-General and the Chief-Justice as the worst of murderers? No doubt Francis, many years after, in England and before Parliament, pretended that they did all this; very possibly the story of Clavering's valorous, but unperformed, vow that he would rescue the criminal at the foot of the gallows, may be supported by his respectable authority. But Francis, when he was dressing up this