n refusing to
respite Nuncomar. No rational man can doubt that he took this course in
order to gratify the Governor-General. If we had ever had any doubts on
that point, they would have been dispelled by a letter which Mr. Gleig
has published. Hastings, three or four years later, described Impey as
the man "to whose support he was at one time indebted for the safety of
his fortune, honor, and reputation." These strong words can refer only
to the case of Nuncomar; and they must mean that Impey hanged Nuncomar
in order to support Hastings. It is, therefore, our deliberate opinion
that Impey, sitting as a judge, put a man unjustly to death in order to
serve a political purpose.

But we look on the conduct of Hastings in a somewhat different light. He
was struggling for fortune, honor, liberty, all that makes life
valuable. He was beset by rancorous and unprincipled enemies. From his
colleagues he could expect no justice. He cannot be blamed for wishing
to crush his accusers. He was indeed bound to use only legitimate means
for that end. But it was not strange that he should have thought any
means legitimate which were pronounced legitimate by the sages of the
law, by men whose peculiar duty it was to deal justly between
adversaries, and whose education might be supposed to have peculiarly
qualified them for the discharge of that duty. Nobody demands from a
party the unbending equity of a judge. The reason that judges are
appointed is, that even a good man cannot be trusted to decide a cause
in which he is himself concerned. Not a day passes on which an honest
prosecutor does not ask for what none but a dishonest tribunal would
grant. It is too much to expect that any man, when his dearest interests
are at stake, and his strongest passions excited, will, as against
himself, be more just than the sworn dispensers of justice. To take an
analogous case from the history of our own island: suppose that Lord
Stafford, when in the Tower on suspicion of being concerned in the
Popish Plot, had been apprised that Titus Oates had done something which
might, by a questionable construction, be brought under the head of
felony. Should we severely blame Lord Stafford, in the supposed case,
for causing a prosecution to be instituted, for furnishing funds, for
using all his influence to intercept the mercy of the Crown? We think
not. If a judge, indeed, from favor to the Catholic lords, were to
strain the law in order to hang Oates, such a