III

THE OPENING OF THE TRIAL OF WARREN HASTINGS[58]

In the mean time, the preparations for the trial had proceeded
rapidly; and on the thirteenth of February, 1788, the sittings of the
Court commenced. There have been spectacles more dazzling to the eye,
more gorgeous with jewelry and cloth of gold, more attractive to
grown-up children, than that which was then exhibited at Westminster;
but perhaps there never was a spectacle so well calculated to strike a
highly cultivated, a reflecting, an imaginative mind. All the various
kinds of interest which belong to the near and to the distant, to the
present and to the past, were collected on one spot and in one hour.
All the talents and all the accomplishments which are developed by
liberty and civilization were now displayed, with every advantage that
could be derived both from cooperation and from contrast. Every step
in the proceedings carried the mind either backward, through many
troubled centuries, to the days when the foundations of our
constitution were laid; or far away, over boundless seas and deserts,
to dusky nations living under strange stars, worshiping strange gods,
and writing strange characters from right to left. The High Court of
Parliament was to sit, according to forms handed down from the days of
the Plantagenets, on an Englishman accused of exercising tyranny over
the lord of the holy city of Benares, and over the ladies of the
princely house of Oude.

The place was worthy of such a trial. It was the great hall of William
Rufus, the hall which had resounded with acclamations at the
inauguration of thirty kings, the hall which had witnessed the just
sentence of Bacon and the just absolution of Somers, the hall where
the eloquence of Strafford had for a moment awed and melted a
victorious party inflamed with just resentment, the hall where Charles
had confronted the High Court of Justice with the placid courage which
has half redeemed his fame. Neither military nor civil pomp was
wanting. The avenues were lined with grenadiers. The streets were kept
clear by cavalry. The peers, robed in gold and ermine, were marshaled
by the heralds under Garter King-at-arms. The judges in their
vestments of state attended to give advice on points of law. Near a
hundred and seventy lords, three-fourths of the Upper House as the
Upper House then was, walked in solemn order from their usual place of
assembling to the tribunal. The junior baron present led the