Page:Warren Hastings (Trotter).djvu/208

202 the austere Queen Charlotte. Her husband found himself equally honoured by the King, while one at least of the Ministers, Lord Chancellor Thurlow, greeted him as an old friend. Even Dundas, who had become President of the new Board of Control, received him with all apparent favour. The Court of Directors unanimously thanked him for his eminent services. He found himself in short, to use his own words, 'everywhere and universally treated with evidences, apparent even to my own observation, that I possess the good opinion of the country.' If any shadow of coming trouble ever crossed his path, if he still at times regretted that his wife had not become a mother, the man's buoyant, hopeful spirit soon passed out into the sunshine of present happiness and of dreams that might some day be fulfilled. One dream of his childhood was fulfilled three years later, when the greater part of Daylesford fell by purchase into his hands. The vast fortune which his foes accused him of having extorted from the princes and people of India amounted only to £80,000, besides half that sum settled upon his wife. For a Governor-General of eleven years' standing this was a very modest saving from an income of £25,000 a year.

Hastings' dreams of peace from persecution and of some public reward for his past services were soon to be rudely dispelled. In June, 1785, Burke had proclaimed to the House of Commons his intention to 'make a motion respecting the conduct of a gentleman