rage, when a convulsive burst of
popular rage and despair warns tyrants not to presume too far on the
patience of mankind. But against misgovernment such as then afflicted
Bengal it was impossible to struggle. The superior intelligence and
energy of the dominant class made their power irresistible. A war of
Bengalese against Englishmen was like a war of sheep against wolves, of
men against demons. The only protection which the conquered could find
was in the moderation, the clemency, the enlarged policy of the
conquerors. That protection, at a later period, they found. But at first
English power came among them unaccompanied by English morality. There
was an interval between the time at which they became our subjects, and
the time at which we began to reflect that we were bound to discharge
towards them the duties of rulers. During that interval the business of
a servant of the Company was simply to wring out of the natives a
hundred or two hundred thousand pounds as speedily as possible, that he
might return home before his constitution had suffered from the heat, to
marry a peer's daughter, to buy rotten boroughs in Cornwall, and to give
balls in St. James's Square. Of the conduct of Hastings at this time
little is known; but the little that is known, and the circumstance that
little is known, must be considered as honorable to him. He could not
protect the natives: all that he could do was to abstain from plundering
and oppressing them; and this he appears to have done. It is certain
that at this time he continued poor; and it is equally certain, that by
cruelty and dishonesty he might easily have become rich. It is certain
that he was never charged with having borne a share in the worst abuses
which then prevailed; and it is almost equally certain that, if he had
borne a share in those abuses, the able and bitter enemies who
afterwards persecuted him would not have failed to discover and to
proclaim his guilt. The keen, severe, and even malevolent scrutiny to
which his whole public life was subjected, a scrutiny unparalleled, as
we believe, in the history of mankind, is in one respect advantageous to
his reputation. It brought many lamentable blemishes to light; but it
entitles him to be considered pure from every blemish which has not been
brought to light.

The truth is that the temptations to which so many English functionaries
yielded in the time of Mr. Vansittart were not temptations addressed to
the ruling pas