from the box of the managers of the impeachment to talk over with her the incidents of the day, and she gave him her impressions of Burke’s speech, which were probably those of the majority of his hearers, for the majority were favourable to Hastings.  “I told him,” says Miss Burney, “that Mr. Burke’s opening had struck me with the highest admiration of his powers, from the eloquence, the imagination, the fire, the diversity of expression, and the ready flow of language with which he seemed gifted, in a most superior manner, for any and every purpose to which rhetoric could lead.”  “And when he came to his two narratives,” I continued, “when he related the particulars of those dreadful murders, he interested, he engaged, he at last overpowered me; I felt my cause lost.  I could hardly keep on my seat.  My eyes dreaded a single glance towards a man so accused as Mr. Hastings; I wanted to sink on the floor, that they might be saved so painful a sight.  I had no hope he could clear himself; not another wish in his favour remained.  But when from this narration Mr. Burke proceeded to his own comments and declamation—­when the charges of rapacity, cruelty, tyranny, were general, and made with all the violence of personal detestation, and continued and aggravated without any further fact or illustration; then there appeared more of study than of truth, more of invective than of justice; and, in short, so little of proof to so much of passion, that in a very short time I began to lift up my head, my seat was no longer uneasy, my eyes were indifferent which way they looked, or what object caught them, and before I was myself aware of the declension of Mr. Burke’s powers over my feelings, I found myself a mere spectator in a public place, and looking all around it, with my opera-glass in my hand!”

In 1795, six years after Burke’s opening, the Lords were ready with their verdict.  It had long been anticipated.  Hastings was acquitted.  This was the close of the fourteen years of labour, from the date of the Select Committee of 1781.  “If I were to call for a reward,” Burke said, “it would be for the services in which for fourteen years, without intermission, I showed the most industry and had the least success.  I mean the affairs of India; they are those on which I value myself the most; most for the importance; most for the labour; most for the judgment; most for constancy and perseverance in the pursuit.”

The side that is defeated on a particular issue, is often victorious on the wide and general outcome.  Looking back across the ninety years that divide us from that memorable scene in Westminster Hall, we may see that Burke had more success than at first appeared.  If he did not convict the man, he overthrew a system, and stamped its principles with lasting censure and shame.  Burke had perhaps a silent conviction that it would have been better for us and for India if Clive had succeeded in his attempt to blow out his own brains in the Madras counting-house, or if