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INDIA.]

CASE OF SIR ELIJAH IMPEY.

267

arguments against it. The sentence of death on Nuncomar was pronounced by Sir Elijah Impey as the chief, and apparently with the full concurrence of his colleagues. According to the Letters Patent by which the Supreme Court was constituted, the Judges had power to grant a reprieve from execution, provided they gave their reasons, and until the King's pleasure could be known. That power of reprieve, however, they did not see cause to exert on this occasion. Thus the law was left to take its course. On the 5th of August, 1775, the Rajah Nuncomar, at that time seventy years of age, and the head of the Brahmins of Bengal, was led forth to the gallows, and hanged; while Clavering and his two friends, with impotent rage, shut themselves up within their houses, and while an immense concourse of Hindoos looked on in wonder and affright.

For his share in these proceedings the Chief Justice has been arraigned even more severely than the Governor-General. It was Hastings thus cries Burke in his ardent and sometimes overflowing zeal — it was Hastings who murdered Nuncomar by the hand of Sir Elijah Impey! The personal friendship which had subsisted between them since their schoolboy days was urged as strong presumption of a guilty compact. For this argument, as levelled at one of the Judges, it became convenient to overlook entirely the existence of the other three. Thus Impey, who had but acted jointly, was arraigned alone. At length the surmises and suspicions against him assumed a more definite form. At the close of 1787 a member of the House of Commons, Sir Gilbert Elliot, moved for his impeachment mainly on this ground. Then Sir Elijah was permitted to appear at the Bar, and to speak in his own defence. He showed, to the perfect satisfaction of by far the greater part of those who heard him, that his behaviour through the trial had been wholly free from blame. And as to the proposal of Sir Robert Chambers, "it was a proposal," said he, "I speak "positively for myself, that I should, and I believe the "other Judges would, have been glad to have concurred

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But this was not all. Why, asked Sir Elijah, on behalf of his colleagues and himself, why were they to be censured for not having stayed the execution? By the Letters Patent they were required to give their reasons for any respite. What reasons, then, could they have given in the case of Nuncomar? Were they to allege his high rank, his long experience, or his priestly character? These, if rightly viewed, were only aggravations of his crime. Or were they to state that his crime, as any other act of forgery or perjury, was, in the eyes of the people of Bengal, a common and a slight offence?* It might be answered, that for that very reason it was needful to make a solemn and severe example. Yet now, when dispassionately viewed, these arguments against a respite seem more specious than solid, or at least are overborne by still weightier considerations. It is a most essential principle, whenever the penalty of death is to be inflicted, that the popular feeling should keep pace with the established law, lest, instead of horror at the crime, we produce only compassion for the criminal. In the age of Impey, however, this great principle was, even in England, by no means fully acknowledged or acted upon, and by that principle, therefore, Impey must not be too rigorously tried. On the whole, so far as the denial of a respite is concerned, we may think that his decision was erroneous, but have no grounds whatever for asserting that his motive was corrupt. **

* Even half a century later we find in the Indian Journal of Bishop Heber, "Perjury is dreadfully common, and very little thought of." (Furreedpoor, July 26. 1824.)

A very interesting account of the demeanour and the death of Nuncomar, and of its effects upon the Hindoo population, was produced by Sir Gilbert Elliot in 1788, and printed in the Annual Register for that year (p. 177). It was said to be written by Mr. Macrabie, who was the Sheriff present at the execution, and it has been followed by nearly all the later writers. But Mr. Impey, in the Memoirs of his father (see p. 111., and also p. 285.), gives some strong grounds for questioning its authenticity.

INDIA.]

PHILIP FRANCIS.

269

The execution of Nuncomar, although it may not have been connected with any step of Hastings, was certainly auspicious to his interests. The Hindoos could make no nice distinctions, such as the case required, between political and judicial authority. They looked only to the one broad fact that one of their chief men had stood forth to accuse the Governor-General, and that within a few weeks of his accusation that chief man had died upon the gallows. From that moment all the other natives shrank from any further charges against Hastings. From that moment, in their eyes, he recovered a large portion of his power. But it should be added, in justice to his memory, that throughout his long administration, he attracted, in a high degree, their love as well as fear. The English in India also were nearly all upon his side. Hastings, they saw, was familiar with their wants and wishes, and profoundly versed in their affairs. On the other hand they had slight confidence in either Clavering or Monson; and they had quickly taken fire against the War Office Clerk, who, in all respects ignorant of India, was yet seeking to impose upon it, with peremptory violence, every crotchet of his brain. He had not been many weeks at Calcutta ere he obtained the common surname of "King "Francis," or "Francis the First."

The arrogance of Francis, both then and afterwards, was indeed almost boundless. It is only, as I conceive, his consciousness of the authorship of Junius that can in any degree explain, though not excuse it. How else does it seem possible that fifteen years later, when that great man, Edmund Burke, was in the zenith of his fame, he should be addressed as follows, in a private letter from Philip Francis? "Once for all, I wish you would let me teach "you to write English." And then follows, in the same letter, a striking sentence, not inferior perhaps to any in Junius; It was not heard of until after more than twelve years, when it was produced for a merely party purpose, by the far from scrupulous hands of Philip Francis, the brother-in-law of Macrabie; and some of the particulars it states are "directly contradicted by contemporary accounts upon "legal evidence."

it most felicitously applies to writings the same principle acknowledged to be true of wood and stone:

"Why will

"you not allow yourself to be persuaded that polish is mate"rial to preservation?"*

Another point in the character of Francis - well according with what we may presume of the author of the reply to Junia ** was his taste for profligate amours. It was from these, at a somewhat later period, that arose the personal and bitter estrangement between himself and Sir Elijah Impey. By means of a ladder of ropes, Francis had one night climbed into the chamber of Mrs. Grand, a lady of Scottish birth, the wife of a Calcutta Barrister. After he had remained there for three-quarters of an hour an alarm was given, and Francis descending in haste from the apartment of the lady was seized at the foot of the ladder by the servants of the husband. Hereupon an action was brought by Mr. Grand against Mr. Francis in the Supreme Court of Calcutta. It was usual for the Judges of that Court to assess the damages in civil actions without the intervention of a Jury. Sir Elijah Impey in this case fixed the sum to be awarded at fifty thousand rupees. Yet, in the opinion of his colleague, Sir Robert Chambers, and still more strongly, no doubt, in the opinion of Francis himself, a lesser sum would have sufficed; since, however suspicious the ladder of ropes and the nocturnal visit, no positive act of guilt was proved. Up to that time the Chief Justice and the Member of Council at Calcutta had been on civil, nay familiar terms, but from this transaction may be dated the commencement of the active and persevering animosity with which Francis ever afterwards continued to pursue Sir Elijah Impey. Mr. Grand succeeded in obtaining a divorce, and Mrs. Grand took refuge with Francis, by whom, however, she was soon

* Letter of November 3. 1790, as printed in Burke's Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 164.

** Of that letter Junius immediately afterwards became ashamed; and he desired Mr. Woodfall to throw doubts on its authenticity. (Note of Sept. 10. 1769.) It is omitted from the earlier editions, but will be found in the publication of 1812. (Vol. iii. p. 218.)

INDIA.]

CONFLICTS AT THE INDIA HOUSE.

271

afterwards forsaken. She returned to Europe as the companion of another gentleman, Mr. William Macintosh; and, by a far more surprising turn of Fortune, closed her adventurous career as the wife of a celebrated foreign statesman, Prince Talleyrand. *

The news of the divisions in the Council at Calcutta appears to have greatly perplexed the Directors at home. For some time they endeavoured, but with little good effect, to hold a middle course. We find, in November, 1775, the King write as follows to Lord North: "The East India "Directors in their despatch manifestly wish to hurt neither "Hastings nor his adversaries, and therefore will most "probably disoblige both." Lord North himself, however, was deeply impressed with the iniquity of the Rohilla war. He regretted, that under the Regulating Act there was no power during the first five years to recall the GovernorGeneral without an Address to that effect from the Company to the Crown. "Send us that Address" such was his advice to his friends in the Direction; and accordingly after the annual elections in the spring of 1776, a strong effort was made. In the Court of Directors the numbers were nearly even; there were eleven votes for the recall of Hastings, and ten against it. The minority appealed to a Court of Proprietors, where the struggle was renewed. On that occasion the agent of Hastings in London, Colonel Maclean, reckoned up in some dismay the hostile force which not only "the "Chairs" but the Government poured in. He saw mingling with the merchants and the City-men no less than forty-nine Peers, Privy Councillors, and men in office; at their head a Minister of the Crown, Lord Sandwich. The debate continued till near midnight. A motion for adjournment was

Memoirs of Sir Elijah Impey, by his son, p. 173., and the unpublished biography of Mr. Charles Macintosh, as quoted in the Quarterly Review, No. CLXVII. p. 70. Perhaps it may be thought that Sir Robert Chambers, in his view of this transaction, judged rather according to the Mahomedan law, which in every such case requires the testimony of four eye witnesses. See the Moslem Annals of Abulfeda (p. 71.), and the Decline and Fall of Gibbon, who calls this "a law of domestic peace." (Vol. ix. p. 326.)

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