When Burke undertook the prosecution of Hastings in 1788, these considerations seemed far from his mind. The splendid opening charge contains arguments strictly from genus, despite the renunciation of such arguments which we see above. He attacked the charter of the East India Company by showing that it violated the idea of a charter.[46] He affirmed the natural rights of man, and held that they had been criminally denied in India.[47] He scorned the notion of geographical morality. These sound like the utterances of a man committed to abstract right. Lord Morley has some observations on Burke which may contain the explanation. His study of Burke’s career led him to feel that “direct moral or philanthropic apostleship was not his function.”[48] Of his interest in India, he remarked: “It was reverence rather than sensibility, a noble and philosophic conservatism rather than philanthropy, which raised the storm in Burke’s breast against the rapacity of English adventurers in India, and the imperial crimes of Hastings.”[49] If it is true that Burke acted out of reverence rather than out of sensibility or philanthropy, what was the reverence of? It was, likely, for storied India, for an ancient and opulent civilization which had brought religion and the arts to a high point of development while his ancestors were yet “in the woods.” There is just enough of deference for the established and going concern, for panoply, for that which has prestige, to make us feel that Burke was again impressed—with an intended consequence which was noble, of course; but it is only fair to record this component of the situation. The noble and philosophic conservatism next translated itself into a violent opposition to the French Revolution, which was threatening to bring down a still greater structure of rights and dignities, though in this instance in the name of reform and emancipation. The French Revolution was the touchstone of Burke. Those who have regarded his position on this event as a reversal, or a sign of fatigue and senescence, have not sufficiently analyzed his methods and his sources. Burke would have had to become a new man to take any other stand than he did on the French Revolution. It was an event perfectly suited to mark off those who argue from circumstance, for it was one of the most radical revolutions on record, and it was the work of a people fond of logical rigor and clear demonstration.