refused to obey the call, set at liberty the persons wrongfully detained by the court, and took measures for resisting the outrageous proceedings of the sheriff’s officers, if necessary, by the sword.  But he had in view another device, which might prevent the necessity of an appeal to arms.  He was seldom at a loss for an expedient; and he knew Impey well.  The expedient, in this case, was a very simple one, neither more nor less than a bribe.  Impey was, by Act of Parliament, a judge, independent of the Government of Bengal, and entitled to a salary of eight thousand a year.  Hastings proposed to make him also a judge in the Company’s service, removable at the pleasure of the Government of Bengal; and to give him, in that capacity, about eight thousand a year more.  It was understood that, in consideration of this new salary, Impey would desist from urging the high pretensions of his court.  If he did urge these pretensions, the Government could, at a moment’s notice, eject him from the new place which had been created for him.  The bargain was struck; Bengal was saved; an appeal to force was averted; and the Chief Justice was rich, quiet and infamous.

Of Impey’s conduct it is unnecessary to speak.  It was of a piece with almost every part of his conduct that comes under the notice of history.  No other such judge has dishonoured the English ermine, since Jeffreys drank himself to death in the Tower.  But we cannot agree with those who have blamed Hastings for this transaction.  The case stood thus.  The negligent manner in which the Regulating Act had been framed put it in the power of the Chief Justice to throw a great country into the most dreadful confusion.  He was determined to use his power to the utmost, unless he was paid to be still; and Hastings consented to pay him.  The necessity was to be deplored.  It is also to be deplored that pirates should be able to exact ransom, by threatening to make their captives walk the plank.  But to ransom a captive from pirates has always been held a humane and Christian act; and it would be absurd to charge the payer of the ransom with corrupting the virtue of the corsair.  This, we seriously think, is a not unfair illustration of the relative position of Impey, Hastings, and the people of India.  Whether it was right in Impey to demand or to accept a price for powers which, if they really belonged to him, he could not abdicate, which, if they did not belong to him, he ought never to have usurped, and which in neither case he could honestly sell, is one question.  It is quite another question whether Hastings was not right to give any sum, however large, to any man, however worthless, rather than either surrender millions of human being to pillage, or rescue them by civil war.

Francis strongly opposed this arrangement.  It may, indeed be suspected that personal aversion to Impey was as strong motive with Francis as regard for the welfare of the province.  To a mind burning with resentment, it might seem better to leave Bengal to the oppressors than to redeem it by enriching them.  It is not improbable, on the other hand, that Hastings may have been the more willing to resort to an expedient agreeable to the Chief Justice, because that high functionary had already been so serviceable, and might, when existing dissensions were composed, be serviceable again.