the battle of Plassy had been a decisive defeat instead of a decisive victory.  “All these circumstances,” he once said, in reference to the results of the investigation of the Select Committee, “are not, I confess, very favourable to the idea of our attempting to govern India at all.  But there we are:  there we are placed by the Sovereign Disposer, and we must do the best we can in our situation.  The situation of man is the preceptor of his duty.”  If that situation is better understood now than it was a century ago, and that duty more loftily conceived, the result is due, so far as such results can ever be due to one man’s action apart from the confluence of the deep impersonal elements of time, to the seeds of justice and humanity which were sown by Burke and his associates.  Nobody now believes that Clive was justified in tricking Omichund by forging another man’s name; that Impey was justified in hanging Nuncomar for committing the very offence for which Clive was excused or applauded, although forgery is no grave crime according to Hindoo usage, and it is the gravest according to English usage; that Hastings did well in selling English troops to assist in the extermination of a brave people with whom he was at peace; that Benfield did well in conniving with an Eastern prince in a project of extortion against his subjects.  The whole drift of opinion has changed, and it is since the trial of Hastings that the change has taken place.  The question in Burke’s time was whether oppression and corruption were to continue to be the guiding maxims of English policy.  The personal disinterestedness of the ruler who had been the chief founder of this policy, and had most openly set aside all pretence of righteous principle, was dust in the balance.  It was impossible to suppress the policy without striking a deadly blow at its most eminent and powerful instrument.  That Hastings was acquitted, was immaterial.  The lesson of his impeachment had been taught with sufficiently impressive force—­the great lesson that Asiatics have rights, and that Europeans have obligations; that a superior race is bound to observe the highest current morality of the time in all its dealings with the subject race.  Burke is entitled to our lasting reverence as the first apostle and great upholder of integrity, mercy, and honour in the relation between his countrymen and their humble dependents.

He shared the common fate of those who dare to strike a blow for human justice against the prejudices of national egotism.  But he was no longer able to bear obloquy and neglect, as he had borne it through the war with the colonies.  When he opened the impeachment of Hastings at Westminster, Burke was very near to his sixtieth year.  Hannah More noted in 1786 that his vivacity had diminished, and that business and politics had impaired his agreeableness.  The simpletons in the House, now that they had at last found in Pitt a political chief who could beat the Whig leaders on their own ground of eloquence,