fourteen' knows by heart his vivid account of the reign of
terror produced by Impey's exercise of the powers of the supreme court,
and of the bribe by which Hastings bought him off. A powerful and gloomy
picture is drawn in two or three expressive paragraphs. The objection to
the story, says Fitzjames, 'is that it is absolutely false from end to
end, and in almost every particular.'[187] Fitzjames proceeds not only
to assert the absence of evidence, but to show what was the supposed
evidence out of which Macaulay's imagination conjured this vision of
horror. Fitzjames remarks in a letter that his investigations had given
him a very low opinion of the way in which history was written, and
certainly, if

Macaulay's statement was a fair specimen, the estimate could hardly be
too low.

I may admit that, to my mind, the purely judicial method followed by
Fitzjames has its disadvantages. It tends to the exclusion of
considerations which, though rightly excluded from a criminal inquiry,
cannot be neglected by an historian. A jury would be properly directed
to acquit Hastings upon the charge of having instigated the prosecution
of Nuncomar. Yet, after all, it is very hard to resist the impression
that he must have had some share, more or less direct, in producing an
event which occurred just at the right moment and had such fortunate
results for him. It would be very wrong to hang a man upon such
presumptions; but it is impossible to deny that they have a logical
bearing upon the facts. However this may be, I think it is undeniable
that Fitzjames did good service to history in showing once for all the
ruthlessness and extravagance of Macaulay's audacious rhetoric. It is
characteristic that while making mincemeat of Macaulay's most famous
essay, Fitzjames cannot get rid of his tenderness for the great 'Tom' of
his boyish days. Besides praising the literary skill, which indeed, is
part of his case, he parts from his opponent with the warm eulogy which
I have previously noticed. He regards Macaulay as deluded by James Mill
and by the accepted Whig tradition. He condemns Mill, whose dryness and
severity have gained him an undeserved reputation for impartiality and
accuracy; he speaks--certainly not too strongly--of the malignity of
Francis; and he is, I think, a little hard upon Burke, Sheridan, and
Elliot, who were misled by really generous feelings (as he fully admits)
into the sentimental rhetoric by which he was always irritat