"Charlemont and I were of opinion that we should not make the volunteers speak upon the present business; so I left it out in the Resolutions at our late review. They are as tractable as we could desire, and we can manage them completely. We inculcate all moderation--were we to slacken in that, they would instantly step forward."
The date of the following letter is August 10th--two days before Mr.
Orde brought forward the Propositions.
"We have got the bill entire, sent about by Orde. The more it is read, the less it is liked. I made notable use of the clause you sent me before the whole arrived. We had a select meeting to-day of the D. of Leinster, Charlemont, Conolly, Grattan, Forbes, and myself. We think of moving an address to postpone to-morrow till the 15th of January, and have also some resolutions ready _pro re nata_, as we don"t yet know what shape they will put the business into;--Conolly to move. To- morrow morning we settle the Address and Resolutions, and after that, to-morrow, meet more at large at Leinster House. All our troops muster pretty well. Mountmorris is here, and to be with us to-morrow morning.
We reckon on something like a hundred, and some are sanguine enough to add near a score above it--that is too much. The report of to-night is that Orde is not yet ready for us, and will beg a respite of a few days --Beresford is not yet arrived, and that is said to be the cause.
Mornington and Poole are come--their muster is as strict as ours. If we divide any thing like a hundred, they will not dare to take a victory over us. Adieu, yours most truly,
"I. C."
The motion for bringing in the Bill was carried only by a majority of nineteen, which is thus announced to Mr. Sheridan by his correspondent:--
"I congratulate with you on 108 minority-against 127. The business never can go on. They were astonished, and looked the sorriest devils you can imagine. Orde"s exhibition was pitiful indeed--the support of his party weak and open to attack--the debate on their part really poor. On ours, Conolly, O"Neill, and the other country gentlemen, strong and of great weight--Grattan able and eloquent in an uncommon degree--every body in high spirits, and altogether a force that was irresistible. We divided at nine this morning, on leave to bring in a Bill for the settlement.
The ground fought upon was the Fourth Resolution, and the principle of that in the others. The commercial detail did not belong accurately to the debate, though some went over it in a cursory way. Grattan, two hours and a half--Flood as much--the former brilliant, well attended to, and much admired--the latter tedious from detail; of course, not so well heard, and answered by Foster in detail, to refutation.
"The Attorney General defended the const.i.tutional safety under the Fourth-Resolution principle. Orde mentioned the Opposition in England twice in his opening speech, with imputations, or insinuations at least, not very favorable. You were not left undefended. Forbes exerted his warm attachment to you with great effect--Burgh, the flag-ship of the Leinster squadron, gave a well-supported fire pointed against Pitt, and covering you. Hardy (the Bishop of Down"s friend) in a very elegant speech gave you due honor; and I had the satisfaction of a slight skirmish, which called up the Attorney General, &c...."
On the 15th of August Mr. Orde withdrew his Bill, and Mr. Corry writes-- "I wish you joy a thousand times of our complete victory. Orde has offered the Bill--moved its being printed for his own justification to the country, and no more of it this session. We have the effects of a complete victory."
Another question of much less importance, but more calculated to call forth Sheridan"s various powers, was the Plan of the Duke of Richmond for the fortification of dock-yards, which Mr. Pitt brought forward (it was said, with much reluctance) in the session of 1786, and which Sheridan must have felt the greater pleasure in attacking, from the renegade conduct of its n.o.ble author in politics. In speaking of the Report of a Board of General Officers, which had been appointed to examine into the merits of this plan, and of which the Duke himself was President, he thus ingeniously plays with the terms of the act in question, and fires off his wit, as it were, _en ricochet_, making it bound lightly from sentence to sentence:--
"Yet the n.o.ble Duke deserved the warmest panegyrics for the striking proofs he had given of his genius as an engineer; which appeared even in the planning and construction of the paper in his hand! The professional ability of the Master-general shone as conspicuously there, as it could upon our coasts. He had made it an argument of posts; and conducted his reasoning upon principles of trigonometry, as well as logic. There were certain detached data, like advanced works, to keep the enemy at a distance from the main object in debate. Strong provisions covered the flanks of his a.s.sertions. His very queries were in cas.e.m.e.nts. No impression, therefore, was to be made on this fortress of sophistry by desultory observations; and it was necessary to sit down before it, and a.s.sail it by regular approaches. It was fortunate, however, to observe, that notwithstanding all the skill employed by the n.o.ble and literary engineer, his mode of defence on paper was open to the same objection which had been urged against his other fortifications; that if his adversary got possession of one of his posts, it became strength against him, and the means of subduing the whole line of his argument."
He also spoke at considerable length, upon the Plan brought forward by Mr. Pitt for the Redemption of the National Debt--that grand object of the calculator and the financier, and equally likely, it should seem, to be attained by the dreams of the one as by the experiments of the other.
Mr. Pitt himself seemed to dread the suspicion of such a partnership, by the care with which he avoided any acknowledgment to Dr. Price, whom he had nevertheless personally consulted on the subject, and upon whose visions of compound interest this fabric of finance was founded.
In opening the Plan of his new Sinking Fund to the House, Mr. Pitt, it is well known, p.r.o.nounced it to be "a firm column, upon which he was proud to flatter himself his name might be inscribed." Tycho Brahe would have said the same of his Astronomy, and Des Cartes of his Physics;--but these baseless columns have long pa.s.sed away, and the Plan of paying debt with borrowed money well deserves to follow them. The delusion, indeed, of which this Fund was made the instrument, during the war with France, is now pretty generally acknowledged; and the only question is, whether Mr. Pitt was so much the dupe of his own juggle, as to persuade himself that thus playing with a debt, from one hand to the other, was paying it--or whether, aware of the inefficacy of his Plan for any other purpose than that of keeping up a blind confidence in the money-market, he yet gravely went on, as a sort of High Priest of Finance, profiting by a miracle in which he did not himself believe, and, in addition to the responsibility of the uses to which he applied the money, incurring that of the fiscal imposture by which he raised it.
Though, from the prosperous state of the revenue at the time of the inst.i.tution of this Fund, the absurdity was not yet committed of borrowing money to maintain it, we may perceive by the following acute pleasantry of Mr. Sheridan, (who denied the existence of the alleged surplus of income,) that he already had a keen insight into the fallacy of that Plan of Redemption afterwards followed:--"At present," he said, "it was clear there was no surplus; and the only means which suggested themselves to him were, a loan of a million for the especial purpose-- for the Right Honorable gentleman might say, with the person in the comedy, "_If you won"t lend me the money, how can I pay you?_""
CHAPTER X.
CHARGES AGAINST MR. HASTINGS.--COMMERCIAL TREATY WITH FRANCE.--DEBTS OF THE PRINCE OF WALES.
The calm security into which Mr. Pitt"s administration had settled, after the victory which the Tory alliance of King and people had gained for him, left but little to excite the activity of party spirit, or to call forth those grand explosions of eloquence, which a more electric state of the political world produces. The orators of Opposition might soon have been reduced, like Philoetetes wasting his arrows upon geese at Lemnos, [Footnote: _"Pinnigero, non armigero in corpore tela exerceantur."--Accius, ap. Ciceron._ lib. vii. ep. 33.] to expend the armory of their wit upon the Grahams and Rolles of the Treasury bench.
But a subject now presented itself--the Impeachment of Warren Hastings-- which, by embodying the cause of a whole country in one individual, and thus combining the extent and grandeur of a national question, with the direct aim and singleness of a personal attack, opened as wide a field for display as the most versatile talents could require, and to Mr.
Sheridan, in particular, afforded one of those precious opportunities, of which, if Fortune but rarely offers them to genius, it is genius alone that can fully and triumphantly avail itself.
The history of the rise and progress of British power in India--of that strange and rapid vicissitude, by which the ancient Empire of the Moguls was transferred into the hands of a Company of Merchants in Leadenhall Street--furnishes matter perhaps more than any other that could be mentioned, for those strong contrasts and startling a.s.sociations, to which eloquence and wit often owe their most striking effects. The descendants of a Throne, once the loftiest in the world, reduced to stipulate with the servants of traders for subsistence--the dethronement of Princes converted into a commercial transaction, and a ledger-account kept of the profits of Revolutions--the sanct.i.ty of Zena.n.u.s violated by search-warrants, and the chicaneries of English Law transplanted, in their most mischievous luxuriance, into the holy and peaceful shades of the Bramins,--such events as these, in which the poetry and the prose of life, its pompous illusions and mean realities, are mingled up so sadly and fantastically together, were of a nature, particularly when recent, to lay hold of the imagination as well as the feelings, and to furnish eloquence with those strong lights and shadows, of which her most animated pictures are composed.
It is not wonderful, therefore, that the warm fancy of Mr. Burke should have been early and strongly excited by the scenes of which India was the theatre, or that they should have (to use his own words) "constantly preyed upon his peace, and by night and day dwelt on his imagination."
His imagination, indeed,--as will naturally happen, where this faculty is restrained by a sense of truth--was always most livelily called into play by events of which he had not himself been a witness; and, accordingly, the sufferings of India and the horrors of revolutionary France were the two subjects upon which it has most unrestrainedly indulged itself. In the year 1780 he had been a member of the Select Committee, which was appointed by the House of Commons to take the affairs of India into consideration, and through some of whose luminous Reports we trace that powerful intellect, which "stamped an image of itself" on every subject that it embraced. Though the reign of Clive had been sufficiently fertile in enormities, and the treachery practised towards Ornichund seemed hardly to admit of any parallel, yet the loftier and more prominent iniquities of Mr. Hastings"s government were supposed to have thrown even these into shadow. Against him, therefore, --now rendered a still n.o.bler object of attack by the haughty spirit with which he defied his accusers,--the whole studies and energies of Mr.
Burke"s mind were directed.
It has already been remarked that to the impetuous zeal, with which Burke at this period rushed into Indian politics, and to that ascendancy over his party by which he so often compelled them to "swell with their tributary urns his flood," the ill-fated East India Bill of Mr. Fox in a considerable degree owed its origin. In truth, the disposition and talents of this extraordinary man made him at least as dangerous as useful to any party with which he connected himself. Liable as he was to be hurried into unsafe extremes, impatient of contradiction, and with a sort of _feudal_ turn of mind, which exacted the unconditional service of his followers, it required, even at that time, but little penetration to foresee the violent schism that ensued some years after, or to p.r.o.nounce that, whenever he should be unable to command his party, he would desert it.
The materials which he had been collecting on the subject of India, and the indignation with which these details of delinquency had filled him, at length burst forth (like that mighty cloud, described by himself as "pouring its whole contents over the plains of the Carnatic") in his wonderful speech on the Nabob of Arcot"s debts [Footnote: Isocrates, in his Encomium upon Helen, dwells much on the advantage to an orator of speaking upon subjects from which but little eloquence is expected-- [Greek: pezi ton phaulon chai tapeinon]. There is little doubt, indeed, that _surprise_ must have considerable share in the pleasure, which we derive from eloquence on such unpromising topics as have inspired three of the most masterly speeches that can be selected from modern oratory--that of Burke on the Nabob of Arcot"s debts--of Grattan on t.i.thes, and of Mr. Fox on the Westminster Scrutiny.]--a speech, whose only rivals perhaps in all the records of oratory, are to be found among three or four others of his own, which, like those poems of Petrarch called _Sorelle_ from their kindred excellence, may be regarded as sisters in beauty, and equalled only by each other.
Though the charges against Mr. Hastings had long been threatened, it was not till the present year that Mr. Burke brought them formally forward.
He had been, indeed, defied to this issue by the friends of the Governor-General, whose reliance, however, upon the sympathy and support of the ministry (accorded, as a matter of course, to most State delinquents) was, in this instance, contrary to all calculation, disappointed. Mr. Pitt, at the commencement of the proceedings, had shown strong indications of an intention to take the cause of the Governor-General under his protection. Mr. Dundas, too, had exhibited one of those convenient changes of opinion, by which such statesmen can accommodate themselves to the pa.s.sing hue of the Treasury-bench, as naturally as the Eastern insect does to the color of the leaf on which it feeds. Though one of the earliest and most active denouncers of Indian mis-government, and even the mover of those strong Resolutions in 1782 [Footnote: In introducing the Resolutions he said, that "he was urged to take this step by an account, which had lately arrived from India, of an act of the most flagrant violence and oppression and of the grossest breach of faith, committed by Mr. Hastings against Cheyte Sing, the Raja of Benares."] on which some of the chief charges of the present prosecution were founded, he now, throughout the whole of the opening scenes of the Impeachment, did not scruple to stand forth as the warm eulogist of Mr. Hastings, and to endeavor by a display of the successes of his administration to dazzle away attention from its violence and injustice.
This tone, however, did not long continue:--in the midst of the antic.i.p.ated triumph of Mr. Hastings, the Minister suddenly "changed his hand, and checked his pride." On the occasion of the Benares Charge, brought forward in the House of Commons by Mr. Fox, a majority was, for the first time, thrown into the scale of the accusation; and the abuse that was in consequence showered upon Mr. Pitt and Mr. Dundas, through every channel of the press, by the friends of Mr. Hastings, showed how wholly unexpected, as well as mortifying, was the desertion.
As but little credit was allowed to conviction in this change, it being difficult to believe that a Minister should come to the discussion of such a question, so lightly ballasted with opinions of his own as to be thrown from his equilibrium by the first wave of argument he encountered,--various statements and conjectures were, at the time, brought forward to account for it. Jealousy of the great and increasing influence of Mr. Hastings at court was, in general, the motive a.s.signed for the conduct of the Minister. It was even believed that a wish expressed by the King, to have his new favorite appointed President of the Board of Control, was what decided Mr. Pitt to extinguish, by cooperating with the Opposition, every chance of a rivalry, which might prove troublesome, if not dangerous, to his power. There is no doubt that the arraigned ruler of India was honored at this period with the distinguished notice of the Court--partly, perhaps, from admiration of his proficiency in that mode of governing, to which all Courts are, more or less, instinctively inclined, and partly from a strong distaste to those who were his accusers, which would have been sufficient to recommend any person or measure to which they were opposed.
But whether Mr. Pitt, in the part which he now took, was actuated merely by personal motives, or (as his eulogists represent) by a strong sense of impartiality and justice, he must at all events have considered the whole proceeding, at this moment, as a most seasonable diversion of the attacks of the Opposition, from his own person and government to an object so little connected with either. The many restless and powerful spirits now opposed to him would soon have found, or made, some vent for their energies, more likely to endanger the stability of his power;-- and, as an expedient for drawing off some of that perilous lightning, which flashed around him from the lips of a Burke, a Fox, and a Sheridan, the prosecution of a great criminal like Mr. Hastings furnished as efficient a conductor as could be desired.
Still, however, notwithstanding the accession of the Minister, and the impulse given by the majorities which he commanded, the projected impeachment was but tardy and feeble in its movements, and neither the House nor the public went cordially along with it. Great talents, united to great power--even when, as in the instance of Mr. Hastings, abused-- is a combination before which men are inclined to bow implicitly. The iniquities, too, of Indian rulers were of that gigantic kind, which seemed to outgrow censure, and even, in some degree, challenge admiration.
In addition to all this, Mr. Hastings had been successful; and success but too often throws a charm round injustice, like the dazzle of the necromancer"s shield in Ariosto, before which every one falls
_"Con gli occhi abbacinati, e senza mente."_
The feelings, therefore, of the public were, at the outset of the prosecution, rather for than against the supposed delinquent. Nor was this tendency counteracted by any very partial leaning towards his accusers. Mr. Fox had hardly yet recovered his defeat on the India Bill, or--what had been still more fatal to him--his victory in the Coalition.
Mr. Burke, in spite of his great talents and zeal, was by no means popular. There was a tone of dictatorship in his public demeanor against which men naturally rebelled; and the impetuosity and pa.s.sion with which he flung himself into every favorite subject, showed a want of self- government but little calculated to inspire respect. Even his eloquence, various and splendid as it was, failed in general to win or command the attention of his hearers, and, in this great essential of public speaking, must be considered inferior to that ordinary, but practical, kind of oratory, [Footnote: "Whoever, upon comparison, is deemed by a common audience the greatest orator, ought most certainly to be p.r.o.nounced such by men of science and erudition."--_Hume_, Essay 13.] which reaps its harvest at the moment of delivery, and is afterwards remembered less for itself than its effects. There was a something--which those who have but read him can with difficulty conceive--that marred the impression of his most sublime and glowing displays. In vain did his genius put forth its superb plumage, glittering all over with the hundred eyes of fancy--the gait of the bird was heavy and awkward, and its voice seemed rather to scare than attract. Accordingly, many of those masterly discourses, which, in their present form, may proudly challenge comparison with all the written eloquence upon record, were, at the time when they were p.r.o.nounced, either coldly listened to, or only welcomed as a signal and excuse for not listening at all. To such a length was this indifference carried, that, on the evening when he delivered his great Speech on the Nabob of Arcot"s debts, so faint was the impression it produced upon the House, that Mr. Pitt and Lord Grenville, as I have heard, not only consulted with each other as to whether it was necessary they should take the trouble of answering it, but decided in the negative. Yet doubtless, at the present moment, if Lord Grenville--master as he is of all the knowledge that belongs to a statesman and a scholar--were asked to point out from the stores of his reading the few models of oratorical composition, to the perusal of which he could most frequently, and with unwearied admiration, return, this slighted and unanswered speech would be among the number.
From all these combining circ.u.mstances it arose that the prosecution of Mr. Hastings, even after the accession of the Minister, excited but a slight and wavering interest; and, without some extraordinary appeal to the sympathies of the House and the country--some startling touch to the chord of public feeling--it was questionable whether the inquiry would not end as abortively as all the other Indian inquests [Footnote: Namely, the fruitless prosecution of Lord Clive by General Burgoyne, the trifling verdict upon the persons who had imprisoned Lord Pigot, and the Bill of Pains and Penalties against Sir Thomas Rumbold, finally withdrawn.] that had preceded it.
In this state of the proceeding, Mr. Sheridan brought forward, on the 7th of February, in the House of Commons, the charge relative to the Begum Princesses of Oude, and delivered that celebrated Speech, whose effect upon its hearers has no parallel in the annals of ancient or modern eloquence. [Footnote: Mr. Burke declared it to be "the most astonishing effort of eloquence, argument, and wit united, of which there was any record or tradition." Mr. Fox said, "All that he had ever heard, all that he had ever read, when compared with it, dwindled into nothing, and vanished like vapor before the sun,"--and Mr. Pitt acknowledged "that it surpa.s.sed all the eloquence of ancient and modern times, and possessed every thing that genius or art could furnish, to agitate and control the human mind."
There were several other tributes, of a less distinguished kind, of which I find the following account in the Annual Register--
"Sir William Dolben immediately moved an adjournment of the debate, confessing, that, in the state of mind in which Mr. Sheridan"s speech had left him, it was impossible for him to give a determinate opinion.
Mr. Stanhope seconded the motion. When he had entered the House, he was not ashamed to acknowledge, that his opinion inclined to the side of Mr.
Hastings. But such had been the wonderful efficacy of Mr. Sheridan"s convincing detail of facts, and irresistible eloquence, that he could not but say that his sentiments were materially changed. Nothing, indeed, but information almost equal to a miracle, could determine him not to vote for the Charge; but he had just felt the influence of such a miracle, and he could not but ardently desire to avoid an immediate decision. Mr. Mathew Montague confessed, that he had felt a similar revolution of sentiment."]
When we recollect the men by whom the House of Commons was at that day adorned, and the conflict of high pa.s.sions and interests in which they had been so lately engaged;--when we see them all, of all parties, brought (as Mr. Pitt expressed it) "under the wand of the enchanter,"
and only vying with each other in their description of the fascination by which they were bound;--when we call to mind, too, that he, whom the first statesmen of the age thus lauded, had but lately descended among them from a more aerial region of intellect, bringing trophies falsely supposed to be incompatible with political prowess;--it is impossible to imagine a moment of more entire and intoxicating triumph. The only alloy that could mingle with such complete success must be the fear that it was too perfect ever to come again;--that his fame had then reached the meridian point, and from that consummate moment must date its decline.
Of this remarkable Speech there exists no Report;--for it would be absurd to dignify with that appellation the meagre and lifeless sketch, the
_Tenuem sine viribus umbram In faciem aenae,_
which is given in the Annual Registers and Parliamentary Debates. Its fame, therefore, remains like an empty shrine--a cenotaph still crowned and honored, though the inmate is wanting. Mr. Sheridan was frequently urged to furnish a Report himself, and from his habit of preparing and writing out his speeches, there is little doubt that he could have accomplished such a task without much difficulty. But, whether from indolence or design, he contented himself with leaving to imagination, which, in most cases, he knew, transcends reality, the task of justifying his eulogists, and perpetuating the tradition of their praise. Nor, in doing thus, did he act perhaps unwisely for his fame. We may now indulge in dreams of the eloquence that could produce such effects, [Footnote: The following anecdote is given as a proof of the irresistible power of this speech in a note upon Mr. Bisset"s History of the Reign of George III.:--
"The late Mr. Logan, well known for his literary efforts, and author of a most masterly defence of Mr. Hastings, went that day to the House of Commons, prepossessed for the accused and against his accuser. At the expiration of the first hour he said to a friend, "All this is declamatory a.s.sertion without proof:"--when the second was finished, "This is a most wonderful oration:"--at the close of the third, "Mr.
Hastings has acted very unjustifiably:"--the fourth, "Mr. Hastings is a most atrocious criminal;"--and, at last, "Of all monsters of iniquity the most enormous is Warren Hastings!""] as we do of the music of the ancients and the miraculous powers attributed to it, with as little risk of having our fancies chilled by the perusal of the one, as there is of our faith being disenchanted by hearing a single strain of the other.
After saying thus much, it may seem a sort of wilful profanation, to turn to the spiritless abstract of this speech, which is to be found in all the professed reports of Parliamentary oratory, and which stands, like one of those half-clothed mummies in the Sicilian vaults, with, here and there, a fragment of rhetorical drapery, to give an appearance of life to its marrowless frame. There is, however, one pa.s.sage so strongly marked with the characteristics of Mr. Sheridan"s talent--of his vigorous use of the edge of the blade, with his too frequent display of the glitter of the point--that it may be looked upon as a pretty faithful representation of what he spoke, and claim a place among the authentic specimens of his oratory. Adverting to some of those admirers of Mr. Hastings, who were not so implicit in their partiality as to give unqualified applause to his crimes, but found an excuse for their atrocity in the greatness of his mind, he thus proceeds:--
"To estimate the solidity of such a defence, it would be sufficient merely to consider in what consisted this prepossessing distinction, this captivating characteristic of greatness of mind. Is it not solely to be traced in great actions directed to great ends? In them, and them alone, we are to search for true estimable magnanimity. To them only can we justly affix the splendid t.i.tle and honors of real greatness. There was indeed another species of greatness, which displayed itself in boldly conceiving a bad measure, and undauntedly pursuing it to its accomplishment. But had Mr. Hastings the merit of exhibiting either of these descriptions of greatness,--even of the latter? He saw nothing great--nothing magnanimous--nothing open--nothing direct in his measures, or in his mind. On the contrary, he had too often pursued the worst objects by the worst means. His course was an eternal deviation from rect.i.tude. He either tyrannized or deceived; and was by turns a Dionysius and a Scapin. [Footnote: The spirit of this observation has been well condensed in the compound name given by the Abbe de Pradt to Napoleon--"Jupiter Scapin."] As well might the writhing obliquity of the serpent be compared to the swift directness of the arrow, as the duplicity of Mr. Hastings"s ambition to the simple steadiness of genuine magnanimity. In his mind all was shuffling, ambiguous, dark, insidious, and little: nothing simple, nothing unmixed: all affected plainness, and actual dissimulation; a heterogeneous ma.s.s of contradictory qualities; with nothing great but his crimes; and even those contrasted by the littleness of his motives, which at once denoted both his baseness and his meanness, and marked him for a traitor and a trickster. Nay, in his style and writing there was the same mixture of vicious contrarieties;-- the most grovelling ideas were conveyed in the most inflated language, giving mock consequence to low cavils, and uttering quibbles in heroics; so that his compositions disgusted the mind"s taste, as much as his actions excited the soul"s abhorrence. Indeed this mixture of character seemed, by some unaccountable but inherent quality, to be appropriated, though in inferior degrees, to everything that concerned his employers.
He remembered to have heard an honorable and learned gentleman (Mr.
Dundas) remark, that there was something in the first frame and const.i.tution of the Company, which extended the sordid principles of their origin over all their successive operations; connecting with their civil policy, and even with their boldest achievements, the meanness of a pedlar and the profligacy of pirates. Alike in the political and the military line could be observed _auctioneering amba.s.sadors_ and _trading generals_;--and thus we saw a revolution brought about by _affidavits_; an army employed in _executing an arrest_; a town besieged on _a note of hand_; a prince dethroned for the _balance of an account_. Thus it was they exhibited a government, which united the mock majesty of a b.l.o.o.d.y sceptre, and the little _traffic of a merchant"s counting-house_, wielding a truncheon with one hand, and _picking a pocket with the other_."
The effect of this speech, added to the line taken by the Minister, turned the balance against Hastings, and decided the Impeachment.