rculating
tracts. Burke, so early as 1790, declared in the House of Commons that
twenty thousand pounds had been employed in corrupting the press. It is
certain that no controversial weapon, from the gravest reasoning to the
coarsest ribaldry, was left unemployed. Logan defended the accused
governor with great ability in prose. For the lovers of verse, the
speeches of the managers were burlesqued in Simpkin's letters. It is, we
are afraid, indisputable that Hastings stooped so low as to court the
aid of that malignant and filthy baboon John Williams, who called
himself Anthony Pasquin. It was necessary to subsidize such allies
largely. The private hoards of Mrs. Hastings had disappeared. It is said
that the banker to whom they had been entrusted had failed. Still if
Hastings had practised strict economy, he would, after all his losses,
have had a moderate competence; but in the management of his private
affairs he was imprudent. The dearest wish of his heart had always been
to regain Daylesford. At length, in the very year in which his trial
commenced, the wish was accomplished; and the domain, alienated more
than seventy years before, returned to the descendant of its old lords.
But the manor house was a ruin; and the grounds round it had, during
many years, been utterly neglected. Hastings proceeded to build, to
plant, to form a sheet of water, to excavate a grotto; and, before he
was dismissed from the bar of the House of Lords, he had expended more
than forty thousand pounds in adorning his seat.

The general feeling both of the Directors and of the proprietors of the
East India Company was that he had great claims on them, that his
services to them had been eminent, and that his misfortunes had been the
effect of his zeal for their interest. His friends in Leadenhall Street
proposed to reimburse him for the costs of his trial, and to settle on
him an annuity of five thousand pounds a year. But the consent of the
Board of Control was necessary; and at the head of the Board of Control
was Mr. Dundas, who had himself been a party to the impeachment, who
had, on that account, been reviled with great bitterness by the
adherents of Hastings, and who, therefore, was not in a very complying
mood. He refused to consent to what the Directors suggested. The
Directors remonstrated. A long controversy followed. Hastings, in the
meantime, was reduced to such distress that he could hardly pay his
weekly bills. At length a comprom