to public reparation of the wrong which Parliament had done him twenty years before. The new Ministers were willing to grant him a peerage, but refused to ask the Commons for a reversal of their former sentence. On such conditions Hastings promptly declined the peerage, which he had asked for merely to please his wife. The one desire of his heart was to see his character cleared by those who had once branded him as a traitor to his country and false to his trust. There was comfort, however, in knowing that one of his old assailants, the great Lord Wellesley, had lately returned from India a staunch admirer of the man for whose impeachment he had so eagerly voted. He too had learned by hard experience how much easier it is to condemn ignorantly than to understand aright. He too had become a mark for hostile proceedings in the House of Commons; but the Ministry, added by Fox himself, defeated the motion for his impeachment.
In 1813, at the age of eighty, Hastings was summoned to London to give evidence before both Houses on the question of renewing the Company's Charter. His appearance at the bar of the Commons evoked a storm of cheers; and as he retired, a few hours later, the members all rose with hats off, and 'stood in silence' until he had passed. A few days later he was greeted with equal reverence by the Lords. The gist of his evidence was to uphold the Company's ancient monopoly, to keep 'interlopers' out of India, and to discourage missionary enterprise among a people
