of May, 1788, and might have refused to answer, as at that time the House of Commons had not yet decided whether he should or should not be impeached himself. His evidence completely discomfited Sheridan, and the conclusion of his address is worth quoting:

"It has been objected to me as a crime, my Lords, that I stepped out of my official line, in the business of the affidavits, that I acted as the secretary of Mr. Hastings. I did do so. But I trust it is not in one solitary instance that I have done more than mere duty might require. The records of the East India Company; the minutes of the House of Commons; the recollections of various inhabitants of India,-all, I trust, will prove that I never have been wanting in what I held was the service of my country. I have stayed when personal safety might have whispered "There is no occasion for your delay!' I have gone forth, when individual ease might have said 'Stay at home!' I have advised, when I might coldly have denied my advice. But, I thank God, recollection does not raise a blush at the part I took; and what I then did, I am not now ashamed to mention."

Sir James Stephen remarks that every word of Macaulay's account of this transaction is either incorrect, or a proof of ignorance both of the law and of the facts. He seems to imagine that he hurried from Calcutta to Lucknow, and to be entirely ignorant of the circumstances under which Impey joined Hastings at Benares. It was not true that "a crowd of people came before him with affidavits against the Begums, ready drawn in their hands." Of the forty-three affidavits, ten only mention the Begums, and that slightly and by hearsay. The affidavits relate chiefly to Cheyte Sing and the operations against him. Macaulay imputes it as a crime to Impey that he did not read the affidavits, that he asked no questions about them, and acted out of the local limits of his jurisdiction. The author points out that a person, before whom an affidavit is sworn, is never expected to know its contents. All he need know of the deponent's language is enough of it to ask him if the matter of his affidavit is true, and to give him the oath. All the affidavits were in English, except nineteen in Persian, one Persian translation of a Hindustani original, and one in French. Impey said before the House of Lords: "I understood the Hindustani language much more than for such a purpose, and Persian much more

than for such a purpose;" and the evidence shows that Impey did ask the nineteen deponents to the Persian affidavits whether their affidavits were true. Sir James Stephen also shows that up to 1835, when the 5 & 6 Will. IV. c. 62 was passed, the taking of voluntary affidavits for the purpose of attesting matters of fact was very common, and that the legal effect of such affidavits did not in any way depend upon the place where they were taken or the person before whom they were sworn. In his original review, Macaulay said: "The greater part he could not read, for they were in Persian and Hindustani." On learning from Macfarlane's work that Impey knew Persian, Macaulay substituted the expression "because they were in the dialects of northern India, and no interpreter was employed." It has been already shown that not one of the affidavits was in any "dialect of upper India." With regard to the evil motives attributed by Macaulay to Impey, whom he represents as intruding himself into a business entirely alien from all his official duties, because there was something inexpressibly alluring in the rankness of the infamy which was then to be got at Lucknow, Sir James Stephen charitably supposes that Macaulay knew nothing of the simple explanation given of his own conduct by Impey. The whole essay was, he considers, a mere effort of journalism, hastily put together from most insufficient materials. He shows that Macaulay was in several instances misled by James Mill, on whose misrepresentations and bad faith he passes some severe strictures.

There is a natural reluctance to speak harshly of an author over whose pages we have all spent so many delightful hours. Macaulay, in spite of his marvellous memory and his laborious researches, fell into many errors, which have been often exposed and commented on, and fresh instances of his inaccuracies are being constantly brought to light. But it may be doubted whether any of the attacks on him have been more deadly than the long indictment which runs through these two volumes, and the evidence by which it is supported. Macaulay is shown to be wrong throughout; but the most painful feature of the case is that he had been already shown to be wrong, and that, in spite of Mr. Impey's public vindication of his father, Macaulay persisted in republishing the gross misrepresentations by which he had tarnished the fair fame of an innocent man.

At the bottom of every calumny there is usually some lying and malignant spirit, who plots in the dark, and is sometimes, but not always, unmasked. The originator of the slanders, which embittered the lives of Hastings and Impey, was Sir Philip Francis. Of him we shall probably hear more if Sir James Stephen lives to write his promised history of the impeachment of Hastings, whom he regards as the ablest Englishman of the eighteenth century. Of Francis it may well be said, as Macaulay said of Pope, that he was all mask and stiletto. If Francis was Junius, as is commonly believed, he was an adept in the school of calumny before he sailed for India. Merivale tells us how chagrined Francis felt at the very outset at the powers given to the Supreme Court, and the precedence accorded to the Chief Justice. The members of Council sailed in the Ashburnam, the judges in the Anson, and it was thought advisable that the two vessels should keep close company. The chief incidents of the voyage were recounted by Macrabie, Francis's private secretary, in an entertaining journal, which is full of "gibes at the Anson and her legal freight." The arrangement under which the two vessels sail in company draws forth the following insolent quotation from Juvenal:

"Ac sibi consul

Ne placeat, curru servus portatur eodem.”*

And when they anchor in Fanchal Road, and remain ten days in the island visiting people of distinction: "We observe," says Macrabie, "that the commission with the great seal constantly attends the judges. The Chief Justice has stole a march on the gentlemen of the Council in point of precedence."

But Francis had a special reason for hating Sir Elijah Impey; for Impey, as president of a Court composed of three judges, had decided against him in a case which concerned his private character, and in which he had to pay Rs. 50,000 damages. "This," says Sir James Stephen, "would fully account for the passionate hatred with which, by his own admission, Francis regarded Impey. Notwithstanding his declarations about not taking part against Impey, I believe that he did so in underhand ways, by suggestions to the prosecutors and by anonymous writings. Francis was

"The menial destined in his car to ride,

And cool the swelling consul's feverish pride."-HODGSON.

the most skilful calumniator of his age. Evidence, which many people think strong, appears to brand him with the infamy of being the author of Junius. The strongest part of it consists of the similarity of his character to that of Junius, and his power of writing that peculiar feigned hand by which Junius attempted to disguise himself. He resembled Junius in the union in his person of the character of a devil and the accomplishments of a forger."

Francis, some years after his return to England, bought a house in St. James's Square, and spent the last twenty-seven years of his life there. In early life he had for some time acted as an occasional amanuensis to Lord Chatham, who resided in St. James's Square. At this period he had sometimes to write despatches in Latin and French, to the Minister's dictation; but there were long intervals of leisure when his pen was not required, and he spent many happy hours in the library with the undisturbed command of all the books. These pleasant associations seem to have been one of the causes of his settling in St. James's Square. His house is one which is well known to Anglo-Indians, for it is now the East India United Service Club.

R. M. MACDONALD.

THE SUBSTANCE OF TWO LECTURES ON THE REQUISITES OF A TRUE PATRIOT, AND MARRIAGE: ITS SOCIAL AND SPIRITUAL ASPECTS. By JADU NATH MAZUMDAR, M.A., Lahore.

The subject of the first of the lectures included in the above pamphlet does not come within the scope of this Journal; but we are glad to notice the high-minded tone which pervades its arguments and the ideal that it presents. The second lecture begins with an historical sketch of the forms and customs of marriage in the earliest states of Society of which we have record, with quotations from ancient Hindu authorities. The writer describes the eight kinds of marriage mentioned in the Shastras, and shows the gradual changes that have taken place in regard to the rite. He considers it to be evident that in old times widows were allowed to re-marry, but he does not favour the movement for encouraging widow-marriage in the present day. For he believes in a gradually improving social standard, to which

customs must conform; and his view is, that the highest ideal requires that both women and men should observe life-long celibacy, when they lose husband or wife. At the same time, being decidedly against early marriages, he would not have it considered that widowhood is entailed on a child whose betrothed husband dies. The pamphlet shows independent thought and good moral feeling, though its style lacks simplicity, and many, though holding the same general principles, may differ from the writer's conclusions.

A CHAPTER OF SCIENCE; OR, WHAT IS A LAW OF NATURE? By Prof. J. STUART, M.A., M.P., &c. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. 3s. 6d.

This is the text of a course of six lectures originally delivered to working men, and the object of the course was to present an example of instructive reasoning, and to familiarise the hearers, to some extent, with the scope and principles of scientific enquiry. The various steps in astronomical discovery are presented with great clearness, including the recent application to it of Spectrum Analysis, and the concluding lecture is devoted to an examination of the relations between Science and Religion.

W. L. C.

ON LIGHT AS A MEANS OF INVESTIGATION. By Prof. G. G. STOKES, M.A., Sec. R.S., &c. London: Macmillan & Co. 2s. 6d.

This is the second course of Burnett Lectures, delivered in Aberdeen in 1884, the first course (similar in size, price, &c.) being on the Nature of Light. Probably no living man is so well fitted to discuss several of the subjects treated in this little volume as its distinguished author. They are: (1) absorption, and its application to the discrimination of bodies; (2) emission of light, consequent on absorption, such as phosphorescence, fluorescence, &c.; (3) the rotation of the plane of polarisation of polarised light, and its connection with the constitution of bodies; (4) the whole question of spectrum analysis and its various applications to terrestrial and astronomical physics, including the motion of the heavenly