ise was made. An annuity for life of
four thousand pounds was settled on Hastings; and in order to enable him
to meet pressing demands, he was to receive ten years' annuity in
advance. The Company was also permitted to lend him fifty thousand
pounds, to be repaid by instalments without interest. This relief,
though given in the most absurd manner, was sufficient to enable the
retired governor to live in comfort, and even in luxury, if he had been
a skilful manager. But he was careless and profuse, and was more than
once under the necessity of applying to the Company for assistance,
which was liberally given.

He had security and affluence, but not the power and dignity which, when
he landed from India, he had reason to expect. He had then looked
forward to a coronet, a red ribbon, a seat at the council board, an
office at Whitehall. He was then only fifty-two, and might hope for many
years of bodily and mental vigor. The case was widely different when he
left the bar of the Lords. He was now too old a man to turn his mind to
a new class of studies and duties. He had no chance of receiving any
mark of royal favor while Mr. Pitt remained in power; and, when Mr. Pitt
retired, Hastings was approaching his seventieth year.

Once, and only once, after his acquittal, he interfered in politics; and
that interference was not much to his honor. In 1804 he exerted himself
strenuously to prevent Mr. Addington, against whom Fox and Pitt had
combined, from resigning the Treasury. It is difficult to believe that a
man so able and energetic as Hastings can have thought that, when
Bonaparte was at Boulogne with a great army, the defence of our island
could safely be entrusted to a ministry which did not contain a single
person whom flattery could describe as a great statesman. It is also
certain that, on the important question which had raised Mr. Addington
to power, and on which he differed from both Fox and Pitt, Hastings, as
might have been expected, agreed with Fox and Pitt, and was decidedly
opposed to Addington. Religious intolerance has never been the vice of
the Indian service, and certainly was not the vice of Hastings. But Mr.
Addington had treated him with marked favor. Fox had been a principal
manager of the impeachment. To Pitt it was owing that there had been an
impeachment; and Hastings, we fear, was on this occasion guided by
personal considerations rather than by a regard to the public interest.

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