ur; most for the judgment; most
for constancy and perseverance in the pursuit." Sheridan's speech in the
House of Commons upon the charge relative to the begums of Oude probably
excelled anything that Burke achieved, as a dazzling performance abounding
in the most surprising literary and rhetorical effects. But neither
Sheridan nor Fox was capable of that sustained and overflowing indignation
at outraged justice and oppressed humanity, that consuming moral fire,
which burst forth again and again from the chief manager of the
impeachment, with such scorching might as drove even the cool and intrepid
Hastings beyond all self-control, and made him cry out with protests and
exclamations like a criminal writhing under the scourge. Burke, no doubt,
in the course of that unparalleled trial showed some prejudice; made some
minor overstatements of his case; used many intemperances; and suffered
himself to be provoked into expressions of heat and impatience by the
cabals of the defendant and his party, and the intolerable incompetence of
the tribunal. It is one of the inscrutable perplexities of human affairs,
that in the logic of practical [v.04 p.0831] life, in order to reach
conclusions that cover enough for truth, we are constantly driven to
premises that cover too much, and that in order to secure their right
weight to justice and reason good men are forced to fling the two-edged
sword of passion into the same scale. But these excuses were mere trifles,
and well deserve to be forgiven, when we think that though the offender was
in form acquitted, yet Burke succeeded in these fourteen years of laborious
effort in laying the foundations once for all of a moral, just,
philanthropic and responsible public opinion in England with reference to
India, and in doing so performed perhaps the most magnificent service that
any statesman has ever had it in his power to render to humanity.

Burke's first decisive step against Hastings was a motion for papers in the
spring of 1786; the thanks of the House of Commons to the managers of the
impeachment were voted in the summer of 1794. But in those eight years some
of the most astonishing events in history had changed the political face of
Europe. Burke was more than sixty years old when the states-general met at
Versailles in the spring of 1789. He had taken a prominent part on the side
of freedom in the revolution which stripped England of her empire in the
West. He had taken a prominent par