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Many blue books had been filled by the labours of parliamentary committees upon India; several folio volumes were filled with reports of the impeachment of Hastings, and with official papers connected with the same proceeding. A mass of other materials, including a collection of Sir Elijah Impey's papers in the British Museum, soon presented themselves.
If a bailiff was resisted, they ordered the soldiers to be called out. If a servant of the Company, in conformity with the orders of the government, withstood the miserable catchpoles who, with Impey's writs in their hands, exceeded the insolence and rapacity of gang-robbers, he was flung into prison for a contempt.
Of Impey's conduct it is impossible to speak too severely. We have already said that, in our opinion, he acted unjustly in refusing to respite Nuncomar. No rational man can doubt that he took this course in order to gratify the Governor-General. If we had ever had any doubts on that point, they would have been dispelled by a letter which Mr. Gleig has published.
His sympathy with Macaulay's patriotism made him, I think, a little blind to the lax morality with which it was in this case associated. There is yet another point upon which I think that Macaulay deserves a severer sentence. 'It is to be regretted, says Fitzjames, 'that Macaulay should never have noticed the reply made to the essay by Impey's son. Unluckily this is not a solitary instance.
'Every schoolboy of fourteen' knows by heart his vivid account of the reign of terror produced by Impey's exercise of the powers of the supreme court, and of the bribe by which Hastings bought him off. A powerful and gloomy picture is drawn in two or three expressive paragraphs.
The provincial courts had been hitherto more of a curse than a blessing; under Impey's guidance they were brought into harmony with the Supreme Court. Impey was not long suffered to remain in his new office. Two years after his acceptance of the post he was removed from it by order of the Court of Directors. But the work he had done in that short time was good work and left abiding traces.
But we must not forget to do justice to Sir Elijah Impey's conduct on this occasion. It was not indeed easy for him to intrude himself into a business so entirely alien from all his official duties. But there was something inexpressibly alluring, we must suppose, in the peculiar rankness of the infamy which was then to be got at Lucknow.
Finally, Fitzjames resolved to make an experiment by writing a monograph upon 'Impey's Trial of Nuncomar, which is an episode in the great Warren Hastings story, compressible within moderate limits. Impey, as Fitzjames remarks incidentally, had certain claims both upon him and upon Macaulay; for he had been a Fellow of Trinity and had made the first attempt at a code in India.
If he did urge these pretensions, the government could, at a moment's notice, eject him from the new place which had been created for him. The bargain was struck; Bengal was saved; an appeal to force was averted; and the Chief Justice was rich, quiet, and infamous. Of Impey's conduct it is unnecessary to speak.
Hastings's plan had borne fruit in Impey's "Code," and afterwards in the passing of an Act of Parliament clearly defining the jurisdiction and the powers of the Supreme Court. One of the latest acts of Warren Hastings's administration was also one of the acts that most provoked the indignation and the resentment of those who in England were watching with hostile eyes the progress of his career.
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