dders when Burke enters
the hall at the head of the Commons. She pronounces him the cruel
oppressor of an innocent man. She is at a loss to conceive how the
managers can look at the defendant, and not blush. Windham comes to her
from the managers' box, to offer her refreshment. "But," says she, "I
could not break bread with him." Then, again, she exclaims, "Ah, Mr.
Windham, how came you ever engaged in so cruel, so unjust a cause?" "Mr.
Burke saw me," she says, "and he bowed with the most marked civility of
manner." This, be it observed, was just after his opening speech,--a
speech which had produced a mighty effect, and which, certainly, no
other orator that ever lived could have made. "My curtsy," she
continues, "was the most ungrateful, distant, and cold; I could not do
otherwise; so hurt I felt to see him the head of such a cause." Now, not
only had Burke treated her with constant kindness, but the very last act
which he performed on the day on which he was turned out of the Pay
Office, about four years before this trial, was to make Dr. Burney
organist of Chelsea Hospital. When, at the Westminster election, Dr.
Burney was divided between his gratitude for this favor and his Tory
opinions, Burke in the noblest manner disclaimed all right to exact a
sacrifice of principle. "You have little or no obligations to me," he
wrote; "but if you had as many as I really wish it were in my power, as
it is certainly in my desire, to lay on you, I hope you do not think me
capable of conferring them, in order to subject your mind or your
affairs to a painful and mischievous servitude." Was this a man to be
uncivilly treated by a daughter of Dr. Burney, because she chose to
differ from him respecting a vast and most complicated question, which
he had studied deeply during many years, and which she had never studied
at all? It is clear, from Miss Burney's own narrative, that, when she
behaved so unkindly to Mr. Burke, she did not even know of what Hastings
was accused. One thing, however, she must have known, that Burke had
been able to convince a House of Commons, bitterly prejudiced against
himself, that the charges were well founded, and that Pitt and Dundas
had concurred with Fox and Sheridan in supporting the impeachment.
Surely a woman of far inferior abilities to Miss Burney might have been
expected to see that this never could have happened unless there had
been a strong case against the late Governor General. And there was, a