genius.  But their friendship was at an end.  It had been violently and publicly dissolved, with tears and stormy reproaches.  If those men, once so dear to each other, were now compelled to meet for the purpose of managing the impeachment, they met as strangers whom public business had brought together, and behaved to each other with cold and distant civility.  Burke had in his vortex whirled away Windham.  Fox had been followed by Sheridan and Grey.

Only twenty-nine Peers voted.  Of these only six found Hastings guilty on the charges relating to Cheyte Sing and to the Begums.  On other charges, the majority in his favour was still greater.  On some he was unanimously absolved.  He was then called to the bar, was informed from the woolsack that the Lords had acquitted him, and was solemnly discharged.  He bowed respectfully and retired.

We have said that the decision had been fully expected.  It was also generally approved.  At the commencement of the trial there had been a strong and indeed unreasonable feeling against Hastings.  At the close of the trial there was a feeling equally strong and equally unreasonable in his favour.  One cause of the change was, no doubt, what is commonly called the fickleness of the multitude, but what seems to us to be merely the general law of human nature.  Both in individuals and in masses violent excitement is always followed by remission, and often by reaction.  We are all inclined to depreciate whatever we have overpraised, and, on the other hand, to show undue indulgence where we have shown undue rigour.  It was thus in the case of Hastings.  The length of his trial, moreover, made him an object of compassion.  It was thought, and not without reason, that, even if he was guilty, he was still an ill-used man, and that an impeachment of eight years was more than a sufficient punishment.  It was also felt that, though, in the ordinary course of criminal law, a defendant is not allowed to set off his good actions against his crimes, a great political cause should be tried on different principles, and that a man who had governed an empire during thirteen years might have done some very reprehensible things, and yet might be on the whole deserving of rewards and honours rather than of fine and imprisonment.  The press, an instrument neglected by the prosecutors, was used by Hastings and his friends with great effect.  Every ship, too, that arrived from Madras or Bengal, brought a cuddy full of his admirers.  Every gentleman from India spoke of the late Governor-General as having deserved better, and having been treated worse, than any man living.  The effect of this testimony unanimously given by all persons who knew the East, was naturally very great.  Retired members of the Indian services, civil and military, were settled in all corners of the kingdom.  Each of them was, of course, in his own little circle, regarded as an oracle on an Indian question; and they were, with scarcely one exception, the zealous advocates of Hastings.