n Hastings. The terrible attacks of Burke were
for a time eclipsed by the dazzling brilliancy of Sheridan's attack
upon him in the famous Begum speech. Those who heard that speech speak
of it with reverence and with passion as one of the masterpieces of the
world. In the form in which it is preserved, or rather in which it has
failed to be preserved for us, it is hard, if not impossible, to find
merit calling for the rapture which it aroused in the minds of men
familiar with magnificent oratory, and perfectly competent to judge.
That it did arouse rapture is beyond doubt, and for the moment it was
even more effective in injuring Hastings than the more profound but
less flaming utterances of Burke. The testimony of Fox, the testimony
of Byron, alike are offered in its unqualified praise.

It was decided by the House of Commons, with the consent of Pitt, that
Hastings should be impeached. One indignity Pitt spared him, one
danger Pitt saved him from. Burke was, somewhat incomprehensibly,
anxious that the name of Francis should be placed upon that Committee
of Impeachment to which Burke had already been nominated as the first
member by Pitt. But here Pitt was resolute. Francis was flagrantly
hostile to Hastings, hostile with a personal as well as a public
hatred, and Pitt could not tolerate the notion that he should find a
place upon the Committee of Impeachment. Burke protested, and the
{281} very protest was characteristic of Burke's high-mindedness. For
to Burke the whole business was a purely public business, in no sense
connected with any private feelings, and it seemed to him as if the
exclusion of any one of those who had been conspicuous in the
arraignment of Hastings from a responsible place on the Committee of
Impeachment on the ground of personal feeling was to cast something
like a slur upon the purity of motive of the men engaged in the attack.
But Pitt was in the right, and the name of Francis was, by a large
majority, not suffered to appear upon the committee.

[Sidenote: 1787--The impeachment trial]

In the May of 1787 Burke formally impeached Warren Hastings at the Bar
of the House of Lords. Hastings was immediately taken into custody by
the Sergeant-at-Arms, and was held to bail for 20,000 pounds, with two
sureties for 10,000 pounds each. The delay which was to be
characteristic of the whole proceedings was evident from the first.
Though Hastings was taken into custody in the May of 1787, It