carried; and those who had moved it hoped that the managers would resign in disgust.  Burke was deeply hurt.  But his zeal for what he considered as the cause of justice and mercy triumphed over his personal feelings.  He received the censure of the House with dignity and meekness, and declared that no personal mortification or humiliation should induce him to flinch from the sacred duty which he had undertaken.

In the following year the Parliament was dissolved; and the friends of Hastings entertained a hope that the new House of Commons might not be disposed to go on with the impeachment.  They began by maintaining that the whole proceeding was terminated by the dissolution.  Defeated on this point, they made a direct motion that the impeachment should be dropped; but they were defeated by the combined forces of the Government and the Opposition.  It was, however, resolved that, for the sake of expedition, many of the articles should be withdrawn.  In truth, had not some such measure been adopted, the trial would have lasted till the defendant was in his grave.

At length, in the spring of 1795, the decision was pronounced, near eight years after Hastings had been brought by the Sergeant-at-Arms of the Commons to the bar of the Lords.  On the last day of this great procedure the public curiosity, long suspended, seemed to be revived.  Anxiety about the judgment there could be none; for it had been fully ascertained that there was a great majority for the defendant.  Nevertheless many wished to see the pageant, and the Hall was as much crowded as on the first day.  But those who, having been present on the first day, now bore a part in the proceedings of the last, were few; and most of those few were altered men.

As Hastings himself said, the arraignment had taken place before one generation, and the judgment was pronounced by another.  The spectator could not look at the woolsack, or at the red benches of the Peers, or at the green benches of the Commons, without seeing something that reminded him of the instability of all human things, of the instability of power and fame and life, of the more lamentable instability of friendship.  The great seal was borne before Lord Loughborough, who, when the trial commenced, was a fierce opponent of Mr. Pitt’s Government, and who was now a member of that Government, while Thurlow, who presided in the court when it first sat, estranged from all his old allies, sat scowling among the junior barons.  Of about a hundred and sixty nobles who walked in the procession on the first day, sixty had been laid in their family vaults.  Still more affecting must have been the sight of the managers’ box.  What had become of that fair fellowship, so closely bound together by public and private ties, so resplendent with every talent and accomplishment?  It had been scattered by calamities more bitter than the bitterness of death.  The great chiefs were still living, and still in the full vigour of their