Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3)Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
History
Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3)
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
English literature -- History and criticism; Great Britain -- History
All this, we believe, might stand, with scarcely any change, for a
character of Philip Francis.
It is not strange that the great anonymous writer should have been
willing at that time to leave the country which had been so powerfully
stirred by his eloquence. Everything had gone against him. That party
which he clearly preferred to every other, the party of George
Grenville, had been scattered by the death of its chief; and Lord
Suffolk had led the greater part of it over to the ministerial benches.
The ferment produced by the Middlesex election had gone down. Every
faction must have been alike an object of aversion to Junius. His
opinions on domestic affairs separated him from the ministry; his
opinions on colonial affairs from the opposition. Under such
circumstances, he had thrown down his pen in misanthropical despair. His
farewell letter to Woodfall bears date the nineteenth of January, 1773.
In that letter, he declared that he must be an idiot to write again;
that he had meant well by the cause and the public; that both were given
up; that there were not ten men who would act steadily together on any
question. "But it is all alike," he added, "vile and contemptible. You
have never flinched that I know of; and I shall always rejoice to hear
of your prosperity." These were the last words of Junius. In a year from
that time, Philip Francis was on his voyage to Bengal.
With the three new Councillors came out the judges of the Supreme
Court. The chief justice was Sir Elijah Impey. He was an old
acquaintance of Hastings; and it is probable that the Governor-General,
if he had searched through all the inns of court, could not have found
an equally serviceable tool. But the members of Council were by no means
in an obsequious mood. Hastings greatly disliked the new form of
government, and had no very high opinion of his coadjutors. They had
heard of this, and were disposed to be suspicious and punctilious. When
men are in such a frame of mind, any trifle is sufficient to give
occasion for dispute. The members of Council expected a salute of
twenty-one guns from the batteries of Fort William. Hastings allowed
them only seventeen. They landed in ill-humor. The first civilities were
exchanged with cold reserve. On the morrow commenced that long quarrel
which, after distracting British India, was renewed in England, and in
which all the most eminent statesmen and orators of the age took active
part on one or the other side.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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