Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/320

278 Company, both of whom he charged with the most abominable tyranny and corruption. Against some of the Company's servants the true record of misdeeds and errors was sufficiently long; but Hastings was a man of the highest character and capacity, an incorruptible administrator who had done his country great and meritorious services. Yet his integrity was virulently aspersed, and all his public acts wantonly distorted, in speeches that invoked against him the moral indignation of partisans engaged in the ignoble wrangle over places, pensions, and sinecures, among whom none had been exposed to similar trials of a man's courage or constancy, and only a very few would have resisted similar temptations.

In this manner the report and resolutions were used as fuel for the engines of party-warfare to drive the bill through Parliament against some very solid opposition. Nevertheless, the essential question before the Commons and the country was not so much whether the Company and their officers were guilty of crimes that were for the most part incredible, as whether the patronage of India should be the prize of politicians, who, after furiously denouncing each other's measures and principles, had made a very dishonourable coalition to obtain office. On this point the king, with a majority of his people, was against the ministry that had been formed under the Duke of Portland by Lord North's association with Fox and Burke.

It thus came to pass that the pitched battles of the memorable Parliamentary campaigns of 1783-1784