Mahrattas; but that generation had passed away.
Defective as was the police, heavy as were the public burdens, it is
probable that the oldest man in Bengal could not recollect a season of
equal security and prosperity. For the first time within living memory,
the province was placed under a government strong enough to prevent
others from robbing, and not inclined to play the robber itself. These
things inspired good will. At the same time, the constant success of
Hastings and the manner in which he extricated himself from every
difficulty made him an object of superstitious admiration; and the more
than regal splendor which he sometimes displayed dazzled a people who
have much in common with children. Even now, after the lapse of more
than fifty years, the natives of India still talk of him as the greatest
of the English; and nurses sing children to sleep with a jingling ballad
about the fleet horses and richly caparisoned elephants of Sahib Warren
Hostein.

The gravest offences of which Hastings was guilty did not affect his
popularity with the people of Bengal; for those offences were committed
against neighboring states. Those offences, as our readers must have
perceived, we are not disposed to vindicate; yet, in order that the
censure may be justly apportioned to the transgression, it is fit that
the motive of the criminal should be taken into consideration. The
motive which prompted the worst acts of Hastings was misdirected and
ill-regulated public spirit. The rules of justice, the sentiments of
humanity, the plighted faith of treaties, were in his view as nothing
when opposed to the immediate interest of the state. This is no
justification, according to the principles either of morality, or of
what we believe to be identical with morality, namely, far-sighted
policy. Nevertheless, the common sense of mankind, which in questions of
this sort seldom goes far wrong, will always recognize a distinction
between crimes which originate in an inordinate zeal for the
commonwealth, and crimes which originate in selfish cupidity. To the
benefit of this distinction Hastings is fairly entitled. There is, we
conceive, no reason to suspect that the Rohilla war, the revolution of
Benares, or the spoliation of the Princesses of Oude, added a rupee to
his fortune. We will not affirm that, in all pecuniary dealings, he
showed that punctilious integrity, that dread of the faintest appearance
of evil, which is now the glory of the I