eyte
Sing were correct, there was no ground for an impeachment, or even for a
vote of censure. If the offence of Hastings was really no more than
this, that, having a right to impose a mulct, the amount of which mulct
was not defined, but was left to be settled by his discretion, he had,
not for his own advantage, but for that of the state, demanded too much,
was this an offence which required a criminal proceeding of the highest
solemnity,--a criminal proceeding to which, during sixty years, no
public functionary had been subjected? We can see, we think, in what way
a man of sense and integrity might have been induced to take any course
respecting Hastings except the course which Mr. Pitt took. Such a man
might have thought a great example necessary, for the preventing of
injustice and for the vindicating the national honor, and might, on that
ground, have voted for impeachment both on the Rohilla charge and on the
Benares charge. Such a man might have thought that the offences of
Hastings had been atoned for by great services, and might, on that
ground, have voted against the impeachment, on both charges. With great
diffidence, we give it as our opinion that the most correct course
would, on the whole, have been to impeach on the Rohilla charge, and to
acquit on the Benares charge. Had the Benares charge appeared to us in
the same light in which it appeared to Mr. Pitt, we should, without
hesitation, have voted for acquittal on that charge. The one course
which it is inconceivable that any man of a tenth part of Mr. Pitt's
abilities can have honestly taken was the course which he took. He
acquitted Hastings on the Rohilla charge. He softened down the Benares
charge till it became no charge at all; and then he pronounced that it
contained matter for impeachment.

Nor must it be forgotten that the principal reason assigned by the
ministry for not impeaching Hastings on account of the Rohilla war was
this, that the delinquencies of the early part of his administration had
been atoned for by the excellence of the later part. Was it not most
extraordinary that men who had held this language could afterwards vote
that the later part of his administration furnished matter for no less
than twenty articles of impeachment? They first represented the conduct
of Hastings in 1780 and 1781 as so highly meritorious that, like works
of supererogation in the Catholic theology, it ought to be efficacious
for the cancelling of former of