"The character given of Mr. FRANCIS, by Mr. Burke and Lord Minto, in their places in the House of Commons, ought to be here inserted.

"Extract of Mr. Burke's speech on Mr. Fox's East-India Bill, on December 1, 1783.

6

Uncommon patience and temper supported Mr. FRANCIS a while longer, under the baneful influence of the commendation of the Court of Directors; his health, however, gave way at length, and in utter despair he returned to Europe: at his return, the doors of the India House were shut to this man, who had been the object of their constant admiration. He has indeed escaped with life, but he has forfeited all expectation of credit, consequence, party, and following. He may well say,

'Me nemo ministro

Fur erit, atque ideò nulli comes exeo.'

This man, whose deep reach of thought, whose large legislative conceptions, and whose grand plans of policy, make the most shining part of our reports, from whence we have learned all our lessons, if we have learned any good ones; this man, from whose materials those gentlemen, who have least acknowledged it, have yet spoken as from a brief; this man, driven from his employment, discountenanced by the Directors, has had no other reward, and no other distinction, but that inward sunshine of the soul' which a good con

science can always bestow on itself. He has not yet had so much as a good word, but from a person too insignificant to make any other return for the means, with which he has been furnished, for performing his share of a duty which is equally urgent on us all.'

"We must content ourselves with a few lines from the speech of Sir Gilbert Elliott, on moving the first charge against Sir Elijah Impey, 12th December, 1787.

say

In delivering my opinion of my honourable friend (Mr. FRANCIS), I am not so madly vain as to think it can add any thing to his honours--it is not for him, Sir, it is to do myself honour, that I here what I have often said elsewhere, that of all the great and considerable men whom this country possesses, there is not one in the empire who has a claim so much beyond all question, who can shew a title so thoroughly authenticated, as this gentleman, to the admiration, the thanks, the reward, the love of his country, and of the world. If I am asked for proof, I say, the book of his life is open before you; it has been read, it has been examined in every line by the diligent inquisition, the searching eye, of malice and envy. Has a single blot been found? Is there one page, which has not been traced by virtue and by wisdom? Virtue, Sir, not of the cold and neutral quality, which is contented to avoid reproach by shrinking from

action, and is the best ally of vice; but virtue fervent, full of ardour, of energy, of effect. Wisdom, Sir, not the mere flash of genius and of talents, though these are not wanting; but wisdom informed, deliberate, and profound. I know, Sir, the warmth imputed to, nay possessed by that character. It is a warmth which does but burnish all his other virtues. His heart is warm, his judgment is cool, and the latter of these features none will deny, except those, who have not examined, or wish to disbelieve it.'

66

Having given the evidences in favour of Mr. FRANCIS, we should act partially and unfairly, though without a personal motive of any kind, if we did not state, per contra, what has been said of him by a person, who, after making a great noise in the world, seems now to be lost and forgotten, and who certainly must have known whether what he said of him was true or false. In the Appendix, No. XI. to the fifth Report of the select committee, in 1782, there is a minute of Mr. Hastings, communicated to Mr. FRANCIS, on the night of the 14th of August, 1780, in which he says

'My authority for the opinions which I have declared concerning Mr. FRANCIS, depends on facts which have passed within my own certain knowledge. I judge of his public conduct by my experience of his private, which I have found to be void of truth and honour. This is a severe charge,

but temperately and deliberately made, from the firm persuasion that I owe this justice to the public and to myself, as the only redress to both for artifices, of which I have been a victim, and which threaten to involve their interests with disgrace and ruin. The only redress for a fraud, for which the law has made no provision, is the exposure of it.

"These innuendos were immediately followed by a challenge from Mr. FRANCIS. They met on the 17th of August, and he was shot through the body for his trouble. Whatever might be the artifices employed by the cold, plotting treachery of Mr. FRANCIS, to circumvent a man so artless and free from guile as Mr. Hastings, homo simplex et incautus, it is plain from the event, that Mr. Hastings was not the victim of them.

"Mr. FRANCIS left Bengal in December, 1780, passed five months at St. Helena, and arrived in England in October, 1781, when nobody would speak to him but the King and Edmund Burke. It appears, by one of his speeches, that his Majesty was very gracious to him. Since that time his parliamentary life has been before the public. One of the principal incidents in it was the resentment, truly unqualified, which he expressed in the House of Commons, on the 16th July, 1784, at the conduct of Lord Thurlow, then chancellor, who had declared in the House of Lords, that it

would have been happy for this country, if General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. FRANCIS, had been drowned in their passage to India.' His observations on this curious reflection were delivered in the true spirit of a philippic, and with a fury, which, considering the relative situation of the parties, astonished every body. But, what is still more curious, no man was ever so much courted by another, as Mr. FRANCIS was afterwards by Lord Thurlow, who probably had taken time to repent of that idle speech above mentioned. They lived much together in society, and, long before Lord Thurlow died, they were very good friends.

"The merits of Mr. FRANCIS's conduct in India, and the steady part he took in India affairs, as long as he had a seat in the House of Commons, have been generally acknowledged, but especially, and most emphatically of all men, by Mr. Fox. On the change of the ministry, in 1806, as soon as the death of Lord Cornwallis was known, there was no doubt in the mind of any man, not in the secret of the last coalition, that Mr. FRANCIS would be appointed to succeed him. Mr. Fox, it is to be presumed, had his reasons for preferring the Earl of Lauderdale, who in a publication, three years later than that event, with great candour, has declared that he secretly felt ashamed of his imperfect knowledge of the subject he was called upon to discuss; a feeling, to which he was perhaps more