e on the chiefs of the party an immense load of
labor. Yet it could scarcely, in any manner, affect the event of the
great political game. The followers of the coalition were therefore more
inclined to revile Hastings than to prosecute him. They lost no
opportunity of coupling his name with the names of the most hateful
tyrants of whom history makes mention. The wits of Brooks's aimed their
keenest sarcasms both at his public and at his domestic life. Some fine
diamonds which he had presented, as it was rumored, to the royal family,
and a certain richly carved ivory bed which the Queen had done him the
honor to accept from him, were favorite subjects of ridicule. One lively
poet proposed that the great acts of the fair Marian's present husband
should be immortalized by the pencil of his predecessor; and that Imhoff
should be employed to embellish the House of Commons with paintings of
the bleeding Rohillas, of Nuncomar swinging, of Cheyte Sing letting
himself down to the Ganges. Another, in an exquisitely humorous parody
of Virgil's third eclogue, propounded the question what that mineral
could be of which the rays had power to make the most austere of
princesses the friend of a wanton. A third described, with gay
malevolence, the gorgeous appearance of Mrs. Hastings at St. James's,
the galaxy of jewels, torn from Indian Begums, which adorned her
headdress, her necklace gleaming with future votes, and the depending
questions that shone upon her ears. Satirical attacks of this
description, and perhaps a motion for a vote of censure, would have
satisfied the great body of the Opposition. But there were two men whose
indignation was not to be so appeased, Philip Francis and Edmund Burke.

Francis had recently entered the House of Commons, and had already
established a character there for industry and ability. He labored
indeed under one most unfortunate defect, want of fluency. But he
occasionally expressed himself with a dignity and energy worthy of the
greatest orators. Before he had been many days in Parliament, he
incurred the bitter dislike of Pitt, who constantly treated him with as
much asperity as the laws of debate would allow. Neither lapse of years
nor change of scene had mitigated the enmities which Francis had brought
back from the East. After his usual fashion, he mistook his malevolence
for virtue, nursed it, as preachers tell us that we ought to nurse our
good dispositions, and paraded it, on all occasions,