Acknowledgements

This book began as my doctoral dissertation, completed at the University of Parma in 2012. I have many people to thank from that period and from the years since then. First of all, I would like to thank Diego Saglia, for invaluable direction and constant support throughout. The gratitude I owe to Diego for his numerous suggestions, advice and criticism is far greater than can be expressed here. I am also deeply indebted to Phiroze Vasunia for the many conversations – encouraging and challenging in equal measure – that helped me refine the terms of this study. The Department of Classics at the University of Reading, where I was visiting scholar in 2011 and where this book began life, provided me with a stimulating research environment and a passionate interest in classical reception studies.

I am profoundly grateful to Jo Brown, who read the manuscript in draft and offered numerous comments. She was extremely generous with her time and assistance. Special thanks go to Sheila O’Connell for showing me Sarah Sophia Banks’s collection of ‘Tickets of the Warren Hastings Trial’ and for her generous help at the Department of Prints and Drawings of the British Museum; to Matthew Fox, who kindly shared his research with me; and to Daphne Ayles and Anastasia Bakogianni, for their wonderful hospitality and friendship during my stays in London. I owe much to Anastasia for all her support and encouragement and for never tiring of discussing the issues we are both so interested in.

Tom Stottor started to work with me on the editing of the book and I am deeply obliged for his enthusiasm and interest in the work. I am also indebted to several people at Bloomsbury, particularly to Alice Wright, Rachel Singleton, Lily Mac Mahon, and Terry Woodley, for their professionalism and skill. My thanks then go to the anonymous readers who commented on the manuscript, for their astute observations and suggestions. At the closing stages, the vigilant solicitude of Merv Honeywood of RefineCatch was greatly appreciated.

The staff of the Biblioteca Pier Giorgio Negro of the University of Parma have been exceptionally efficient in the assistance they have extended to me over the years. I have also been helped by staff at the British Library, the British Museum, Senate House Library of the University of London, the Bodleian Library and the Library of the University of Reading.

The section of the book on Sarah Sophia Banks’s collection of passes is a revised version of part of my article ‘An impeachment turned into a show: Sarah Sophia Banks’s collection of “Tickets for Warren Hastings Trial” ’, Il lettore di provincia 150 (2018), pp. 49–66. I am particularly grateful to the publisher for granting permission to reuse this material.

Finally, I would like to thank my family. My brother’s deep and passionate love for unstained snowy mountain-tops has been a constant source of inspiration. Marco, Sven and my parents lived through all the highs and lows of this book and I cannot say how grateful I am for their unwavering and loving support throughout the years. This book is dedicated to them, with love.

Introduction

A fashionable spectacle

Yesterday the great World attended the trial of WARREN HASTINGS, Esq. – and whether he be convicted, or whether he be acquitted, his accusers are entitled to the thanks of the ladies mantua-makers and milliners. […] About twelve at night hair-dressing commenced. What an hour for hair-dressing! And the operators continued twisting of curls till nine the next morning. Poor Devils, what a night of labour they must have experienced!

The Times (14 February 1788)

The trial of Mr. Hastings […] swallows up everything – no spectacle was ever so much resorted to. The manners, at least the hours of London, are completely changed.

Anthony Morris Storer to William Eden (22 February 1788)¹

The adjournment of the trial has indeed been felt by this whole metropolis as a breaking up for the holidays is by schoolboys and schoolgirls, for besides the managers, the Lords, and the person accused, all the fine ladies and many of the fine gentlemen were on duty, which, considering the revolution in their hours and ways of life, must have been as severe a campaign as Coxheath or Warley were to the militia. The ladies were up at six every morning, to dress and breakfast so as to be at Westminster Hall by nine o’clock.

Sir Gilbert Elliot to Lady Elliot (3 March 1788)²

Penned by three very different individuals – a newspaper reporter, a politician, and a future Governor-General of Bengal – these three reports give us an idea of the profound impact that the impeachment of Warren Hastings (1732–1818), first Governor-General of Bengal between 1773 and 1785, had on the ‘hours and way of life’ of the British and foreign elites in London. During the early months of 1788, the impeachment of Hastings became a national sensation and the public’s appetite for this extraordinary spectacle was insatiable.

Hastings had served for two long periods in India and each time had come back to Britain with a considerable fortune. Though he was ‘treated as something of a celebrity’ after his return to England for the second time,³ his enemies persecuted him with the utmost ferocity, and in 1786 he was impeached before the House of Commons on twenty-two ‘Articles of Charge of High Crimes and Misdemeanors’. Most articles were rejected, but seven were passed by the Commons.

If some of the charges, such as the awarding of corrupt contracts or the illegal receipt of presents, were of a traditional sort, the two principal charges concerned the Governor-General’s relations with Indian rulers. In the first charge, Burke held that Hastings had provoked Raja Chait Singh of Benares to revolt in 1781. In the second charge, the Anglo-Irish orator argued that Hastings had confiscated the landed income and treasure of the mother and grandmother of the nawab of Awadh (who were also known as the Begums of Oudh).⁴

Six of the seven charges were then redrafted as ‘Articles of Impeachment’ and on 10 May 1787 the House of Commons voted that Hastings was to be prosecuted before the Lords. One of the most spectacular of the eighteenth century’s public events, the trial opened in 1788 and ended in Hastings’s acquittal in 1795.

The prosecution of the Governor-General was brought by a cast of star orators, which included three of the most brilliant speakers of the period: the politician and philosopher Edmund Burke (1729/30–97), the Whig leader Charles James Fox (1749–1806) and the celebrated playwright and manager of Drury Lane Theatre, Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816). For the occasion, the austere edifice where the trial took place, Westminster Hall, was draped in scarlet and turned into a ‘huge theatrical auditorium’.⁵

Besides nearly 170 Lords, the large number of auditors present in Westminster Hall comprised many of the most distinguished figures of the time, such as, notably, the historian Edward Gibbon (1737–94), the painter Joshua Reynolds (1723–92), the actress Sarah Siddons (1755–1831), the soprano Elizabeth Ann Linley (1754–92) and the naturalist and long-time president of the Royal Society, Sir Joseph Banks (1743–1820). For at least the first half of 1788, the galleries of the debating chamber were packed with refined ladies and gentlemen who squashed together to catch a glimpse of the Governor-General or to enjoy Burke’s and Sheridan’s extraordinary performances.

From a twenty-first-century perspective, it may be puzzling to think of a grave parliamentary debate in terms of a fashionable spectacle. Yet it was in a blaze of splendour and publicity that the trial against the Governor-General opened on the morning of 13 February 1788. As Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859), historian, politician and member of the Supreme Council of India, recalled about fifty years later:

The long galleries were crowded by such an audience as has rarely excited the fears or the emulation of an orator. There were gathered together, from all parts of a great, free, enlightened, and prosperous realm, grace and female loveliness, wit and learning, the representatives of every science and of every art. […] There the historian of the Roman Empire thought of the days when Cicero pleaded the cause of Sicily against Verres.⁶

In contrast to the general atmosphere of excitement in the courtroom, the defendant looked ‘pale, ill, and altered’ – or, at least, so he seemed to the novelist Frances Burney (1752–1840), a self-declared supporter of Hastings.⁷ While Burney’s impression may have been exaggerated as a result of her feeling for him, there is no doubt that the endurance of so interminable a judicial action caused Hastings much excruciating pain, as he indicated in a letter of 17 July 1788: ‘if any friend of mine shall be hereafter brought to a similar trial, shall I advise him to plead guilty to the charge, to avoid the torture of the process’.⁸ Indeed, Hastings was judged not only by the House of Lords but also symbolically by the whole nation.

From the opening speeches to its final verdict, the trial was covered in contemporary newspapers, inspired popular doggerels and was often represented in satirical prints as a theatrical spectacle. That the managers’ speeches were intentionally dramatic rather than legalistic – Burke and his colleagues often omitted canons of evidence, opting instead for sudden indispositions and swoons (sometimes real and sometimes feigned) – is a point worth stressing. One of the most striking examples, in this sense, is Burke’s account of the so-called Rangpur episode (18 February 1788). His graphic description of tortures allegedly inflicted by revenue collectors in the district of Rangpur shocked the audience and caused a sensation at the time. The orator himself was taken ill and the session had to be adjourned. Although a company official, John Paterson (d. 1809), and, later, a committee of three were sent to India to investigate, exactly what atrocities had been committed was not clearly determined. F. P. Lock has persuasively argued that, even if all the allegations were true, ‘Hastings neither committed nor authorized them, nor could he reasonably be held responsible for them’.⁹ Some four months after Burke’s melodramatic performance, Sheridan complemented his celebrated four-day speech in defence of the Begums of Oudh with similar dramatic gestures: a (feigned) illness (10 June 1788) and a well-timed fainting spell (13 June 1788).

Scholars have been quick to seize on the vast resonance and theatricality of the impeachment as well as on its intricate combination of spectatorship, histrionics and conspicuous consumption. In recent years, in particular, commentators have variously remarked on the ubiquity of correlations between the impeachment and the theatre. Siraj Ahmed’s 2002 article on Burke and ‘the theater of the civilized self’, for example, contended that the Anglo-Irish orator’s exaggerated performance – especially in its descriptions of the horrors perpetrated at Rangpur – ‘had all the sensationalism of the contemporary vogue for sentimental drama’.¹⁰ Focusing on the politics of visuality both in the prosecutors’ performance at the trial and in the trial’s satirical reception, Daniel O’Quinn’s 2005 study on the ‘raree show of impeachment’ has equally demonstrated that the cause célèbre shared many tropes with ‘the lowest forms of theatrical presentation’.¹¹

The spectacle of the event has, in fact, been explored from a variety of perspectives, either historical, philosophical-political, or postcolonial. Notably, Sara Suleri’s 1992 reading of the Hastings trial has placed Burke’s and his fellow manager’s spectacular performances alongside ‘the inascribability of colonial guilt’.¹² From different angles, and yet similarly, historians and political scientists have stressed that Burke’s carefully crafted staged-production was designed to explore – as Jennifer Pitts has put it – ‘the “incorrigibility” of the Company, the tendency to abuse inherent in any attempt to govern a distant colony, and the particular evils of British rule over a people the British were content to regard as lawless and benighted’.¹³

In this book, I hope to bring a new critical energy to the discussion of the pervasive presence of theatricality in the trial, registering the ways in which the managers, in particular Burke and Sheridan, were influenced by classical oratory. In doing so, I excavate a wide range of eighteenth-century sources – journals, correspondence, reports in newspapers and satirical engravings – that show how profoundly Graeco-Roman culture permeated the managers’ most spectacular performances.

It is important to stress that this study does not offer a political assessment of the trial, nor does it evaluate the veracity of Burke’s accusations against Hastings; those who wish to know more about the articles of charge against the Governor-General and to get a firm grasp of the long and intricate phases of the impeachment should consult P. J. Marshall’s 1965 seminal monograph or Richard Bourke’s more recent analysis.¹⁴ Rather, each chapter of The Trial of Warren Hastings offers an analytical snapshot of the multi-layered classical influences that pervaded and informed the impeachment, its context and eighteenth-century reception, and illuminates their significance both for British parliamentary oratory and, on a more symbolic level, for the British rule in India.

Classical presences

Starting with P. J. Marshall, a number of scholars have noticed that Burke ‘knew that he needed not only to convince the British public that a peril existed but also to excite them into supporting his cause’.¹⁵ Were the charges against Hastings rendered into tedious legal discourses (that is, without theatrical histrionics), they would become incomprehensible and would fail to capture most Britons’ interest: ‘If we proceed under the publick [sic] eye’ – the Irish-born orator wrote on 1 November 1787 – ‘I have no more doubt than I entertain of my existence, that all the ability, influence and power that can accompany a decided partiality in that tribunal can [not] save our criminal from a condemnation’.¹⁶ From that perspective, attracting the continuous attention of the audience at large was crucial to the success of the impeachment.

Burke’s and his colleagues’ exaggerated performances may be ascribed to contemporary modes of delivery or – in the words of Tillman W. Nechtman – to ‘a tradition of English theatrics that dated back to Shakespeare’.¹⁷ In his perceptive comment on Sheridan’s tragic body at the trial, David Francis Taylor has significantly noted that many came to Westminster Hall expecting ‘Shakespearian pathos’.¹⁸ For example, it was ‘only within the vicarious economy of tragedy’ that ‘spectators-consumers – uninterested in legal argumentation and unfamiliar with the process of impeachment –’ could read Sheridan’s June 1788 flamboyant delivery.¹⁹ Nonetheless, the managers’ theatrical shows can also be ascribed to classical, especially Roman, rhetorical prescriptions, which recommended that the orator should transform into an actor, namely a performer. Classical authors had repeatedly argued for the importance of an affecting body language. It was by means of a tragic body that the orator could, indeed, become the emotional puppet-master of his spectators.

By calling attention to key passages from Cicero’s and Quintilian’s rhetorical treatises, this book shows how pervasively classical and, especially, Roman models informed the trial’s dramatic atmosphere. In particular, Cicero’s recommendation that a highly emotional performance is fundamental to stir the feelings of the audience seems to have had a far-reaching impact on the managers’ theatrical gestures. Among all classical orators, I have chosen to focus on Cicero and Quintilian for two main reasons. As I show in Chapter 1, it was especially Roman models that counted in the education of the eighteenth-century British elite. And secondly, of all Roman orators, it was Cicero and Quintilian who took the lion’s share. In this sense, the exhortation of the 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) to his seventeen-year-old son in 1749 is quite emblematic: ‘You have read Quintilian; the best book in the world to form an orator; pray read Cicero, de Oratore; the best book in the world to finish one’.²⁰

This leads us a step further. In spite of the copious number of studies already existing on the trial, heretofore the impeachment of Hastings has never been thoroughly considered through the framework of classical reception studies. It is true that scholars have frequently drawn attention to the close correspondence between Cicero’s orations against Verres and Burke’s speeches against the Governor-General. But their observations are rather limited to rapid allusions or brief remarks. Specific similarities and differences between the impeachments of Verres and Hastings have been noted and analysed by H. V. Canter and Geoffrey Carnall in 1914 and 1998, respectively.²¹ And yet, where both articles have the merit of emphasizing the importance of Burke’s rhetorical borrowings from Cicero, neither offers an in-depth and close comparison of the Latin and English texts.

As this book will demonstrate, not only did Burke refer to the impeachment of Verres in a general sense, but he closely looked at and repeatedly referred to Cicero’s orations In Verrem. Though Burke had frequently identified himself with Cicero throughout his career,²² it was during the long years of the impeachment of Hastings that he most insistently encouraged and welcomed the comparison with his Roman exemplar. Cicero’s relentless attack on Verres, the propraetor who had exploited and oppressed the province of Sicily between 73 and 71 BC, had been an undisputed success. Outwitted by the speed and forensic tactics of the orator, Verres fled Rome for exile in Massalia (Marseille) sometime after Cicero gave the speech recorded in his Actio Prima and when the court heard the testimony of witnesses. To the eyes of the Irish-born orator, the prosecution of Verres was not merely an auspicious antecedent. It was an illustrious model that he intended to hold up as an exemplum for the benefit of the Court and the whole nation.

Burke’s reference to the proceedings against the propraetor of Sicily proved highly successful in capturing the public imagination. From January to June 1788, all major newspapers published in Britain, and British newspapers issued in India, described the trial of the Governor-General in terms of a re-enactment of the proceedings against Verres. Even satirists did not fail to notice the striking similarities between the impeachment of Verres and Hastings, and published cartoons representing Burke as a British Cicero and Hastings as a modern-day Verres.

In spite of the Anglo-Irish orator’s vehemence and oratorical brilliance, however, the loss of the audience’s interest and attention spelled out the defeat of his prosecution of Hastings. Certainly, the inordinate length of the trial did not favour Burke’s cause. As Suleri has remarked, the impeachment of Hastings ‘provided eighteenth-century England with a spectacle first of political pageantry and then of boredom’.²³ By the time a verdict was reached, eight years had passed, and very few were surprised when, on 23 April 1795, the members of the House of Lords acquitted the former Governor-General of Bengal of all charges.

The Trial of Warren Hastings falls into five chapters, each of which concentrates on a particular aspect of the impact of the Classics on the impeachment of Warren Hastings and, more broadly, on the public conversation about Britain and India. Through this structure I both provide a panorama of the social and cultural contexts in which the cause célèbre was conducted and commented on by contemporary observers, and maintain a rigorous focus on the influence of classical rhetoric on British parliamentary oratory – specifically, Burke’s and Sheridan’s speeches and performances. The first chapter of this book examines the crucial role played by the Classics in eighteenth-century British culture and education, and how and why Cicero and Verres were familiar to the aristocracy and gentry. It also provides a survey of the most eminent MPs and intellectuals who modelled their lives on, or were compared to, either the celebrated Roman lawyer or the greedy governor of Sicily. Chapter 2 looks at the two protagonists of the cause célèbre under examination, piecing together the significant details from their classical – particularly Roman – education that influenced their personalities and careers and were ultimately relevant to the impeachment. Chapter 3 considers the trial of the Governor-General of Bengal as a theatrical entertainment attended by the most fashionable members of society, and asks why Hastings’s prosecutors – Sheridan and Burke, above all others – feigned illnesses and fainting spells at the end of their most striking speeches. This is a pivotal section of the book, because it determines how the managers’ coups de théâtre were not only related to the eighteenth-century culture of sensibility or the contemporary vogue for melodrama, but were, in fact, influenced by classical rhetorical prescriptions, which recommended that the orator should transform legal debates into spectacles of justice. Chapter 4, then, brings us to the heart of Burke’s appropriation and reuse of the Verrines throughout the impeachment of Hastings. To do so, it focuses on a shocking section in the oration delivered on the fifth day of the trial – namely, the narration of the Rangpur atrocities – in order to collate it with several relevant passages from Cicero’s orations In Verrem. The final chapter explores receptions of the trial in contemporary satirical prints as well as in the major newspapers published in Britain and in India. The ultimate aim of this section is to emphasize how not only the political elite, but also a broader audience, followed and discussed the Hastings trial within a classically framed discourse in which Cicero, Verres and Rome were a constant presence.

As this summary suggests, The Trial of Warren Hastings weaves together a wide range of disciplinary strands: literary criticism and classical studies; parliamentary and cultural histories; journalism and fine arts. Indeed, to examine the inter-relatedness and multiple dialogues that developed between the Classics, rhetorical practices and the managers’ melodramatic shows, as well as their reception in the late eighteenth century is necessarily to traverse the boundaries of discipline and expertise. And it is precisely by crossing these boundaries and using ‘creative imagination’ – as Frances Burney described Burke’s ingenious thought²⁴ – that this book affords interpretative glances at the complex interactions at play in one of the most extraordinary spectacles and major theatrical events of all British parliamentary history.