CHANAKYA NATIONAL LAW

UNIVERSITY,patna

ROUGHT DRAFT :ENGLISH

TOPIC: IMPEACHMENT SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE
AGAINST WARREN HASTINGS

SUBMITTED TO:MR. PRATYUSH KAUSIK

FACULTY OF ENGLISH
SubMITTEDBy:
MAITREYA SAHA
ROLL NO 1541
BA LLB, 1ST SEMESTER

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Writing a project is one of the most significant academic challenges I have
ever faced. Though this project has been presented by me but there are
many people who remained in veil, who gave their all support and helped
me to complete this project.
First of all I am very grateful to my subject teacher without the kind
support and help of whom the completion of the project was a herculean
task for me. He Pratyush Kauisk donated his valuable time from his busy
schedule to help me to complete this project and suggested me from
where and how to collect information and data.
I am very thankful to the librarian who provided me several books on this
topic which proved beneficial in completing this project.
I acknowledge my friends who gave their valuable and meticulous advice
which was very useful and could not be ignored in writing the project. I
want to convey a most sincere thanks to my parents for helping me
throughout the project.
MAITREYA SAHA
ROLL NO. 1541
1st SEMESTER

Table of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT................................................................................................. 2
INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................... 6
2

BACKGROUND OF SPEECH.......................................................................................... 9
Appointment............................................................................................................ 9
Disputes and war..................................................................................................... 9
First attacks........................................................................................................... 10
Return to Britain.................................................................................................... 11
IMPEACHMENT PROCEEDINGS..................................................................................13
Opening................................................................................................................. 13
Public opinion changes.......................................................................................... 13
Verdict................................................................................................................... 14
AFTERMATH.............................................................................................................. 15
CONCLUSION............................................................................................................ 16
BIBLIOGRAPHY.......................................................................................................... 18

Introduction

The impeachment of Warren Hastings was a failed attempt to impeach the former GovernorGeneral of IndiaWarren Hastings in the Parliament of Great Britain between 1788 and 1795.
Hastings was accused of misconduct during his time in Calcutta particularly relating to
mismanagement and personal corruption. The prosecution was led by Edmund Burke and
became a wider debate about the role of the East India Company and the expanding empire in
India.
Hastings' trial began on 13 February 1788 and took place in Westminster Hall with members of
the House of Commons seated to his right and the Lords to his left and a large audience of
spectators, including royalty, in the boxes and public galleries. The proceedings began with a
lengthy address by Edmund Burke, who took four days to cover all the charges against Hastings.
Burke took the proceedings very seriously but, we have it from Macaulay, for many spectators
the trial resembled a social event. Hastings himself remarked that for the first half hour, I
looked up to the orator in a reverie of wonder, and during that time I felt myself the most
culpable man on earth.
Hastings was granted bail in spite of Burke's suggestion that he might flee the country with the
wealth he had allegedly stolen from India. Further speeches were made over the coming weeks
by other leading Whigs such as Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Charles James Fox. In total there
were nineteen members of the Impeachment Committee.
On 23 April 1795 the Lord ChancellorLord Loughborough oversaw the delivery of the verdict. A
third of the Lords who had attended the trial's opening had since died and only twenty-nine of the
others had sat through enough of the evidence to be permitted to pronounce judgement.
Loughborough asked each of the peers sixteen questions relating to individual charges. On most
charges he was unanimously found not guilty. On three questions five or six peers gave guilty
verdicts, but Hastings was still comfortably cleared by majority vote.This overwhelming verdict
had been expected for some time and caused little surprise.
Burke, who had invested a large amount of time and energy into the prosecution, was frustrated
by the ultimate failure of the impeachment. He had warned the Lords that it would be

AIM AND OBJECTIVE

i.

To find out the reason behind the firm opinion of

Edmund Burke against Warren Hastings.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

For the purpose of project research in furtherance of research the

researcher will rely upon the Doctrinal Method of Research.

INTRODUCTION
The impeachment of Warren Hastings was a failed attempt to impeach the former GovernorGeneral of India Warren Hastings in the Parliament of Great Britain between 1788 and 1795.
Hastings was accused of misconduct during his time in Calcutta particularly relating to
mismanagement and personal corruption. The prosecution was led by Edmund Burke and
became a wider debate about the role of the East India Company and the expanding empire in
India.
The trial did not sit continuously and the case dragged on for seven years. When the
eventual verdict was given Hastings was overwhelmingly acquitted. It has been described as
"probably the British Isles' most famous, certainly the longest, political trial1
Warren Hastings (1732-1818) was the first Governor General of India (17781884). He resigned, returned to England, was impeached for his conduct in India and had to face
a trial by Parliament. He was acquitted in 1795. Edmund Burke (1729-1797) was a Member of
Parliament (House of Commons) and became known for his trenchant criticism of the French
Revolution. He was the foremost speaker in the trial of Hastings and was commissioned by the
House of Commons to report to the House of Lords on this trial. He addressed the House of
Lords
several
times
from
February
15
to
19,
1788.

The question is not solely whether the prisoner at the bar be found innocent or be found guilty,
but whether millions of mankind shall be miserable or happy. You do not decide the case only;
you fix a rule. For your Lordships will undoubtedly see, in the course of this cause, that there is
not only a long, connected, systematic, course of misdemeanor, but an equally connected system
of maxims and principles invented to justify them, upon which your lordships must judge. It is
according to the judgment that you shall pronounce upon the past transactions of India,
connected with those principles, that the whole rule, tenure, tendency and character of our future
government
in
India
is
to
be
finally
decided......
We have brought before your lordships the head, the chief, the captain-general in inquity one in
whom all the frauds, all the peculations, all the violence, all the tyranny in India are embodied,
disciplined
and
arrayed....
Mr. Hastings first broke through that service (of the East India Company) by making offices
which had no reference to gradation, but which were superior in profit to those which the
highest gradation might have acquired. He established whole systems of offices.., and he filled
them in such a manner as suited best his own views and purposes; so that in effect the whole of
that order, whatever merit was in it, was by him broken down and subverted....
The East India Company in India is not the British nation. When the Tartars entered China...
when the Normans came to England they came as a nation. The Company in India does not exist
1 Patrick Turnbull 1975, p. 207.
6

as a nation... They are a republic, a commonwealth without a people. They are a state made up
wholly of magistrates... being a kingdom of magistrates, the esprit de corps is strong in it - the
spirit of the body by which they consider themselves as having a common interest... separated
both from the country that sent them out and from the country in which they are, and where there
is no control by persons who understand their language, who understand their manners, or can
apply their conduct to the laws of the country. Such control does not exist in India.
..... But these men are sent over to exercise functions at which a statesman here would tremble.
without any study, without any of that sort of experience which forms men gradually and
insensibly to great affairs....... Mr. Hastings has himself, in his de fence before the House of
Commons ... lamented his own situation in particular. It was much to be lamented indeed. How
far it will form a justification of his conduct, when we come to examine this conduct, will be
seen...... He was fourteen years at the head of that service, and there is not one single instance in
which he endeavoured to detect corruption, in which he ever attempted to punish it, but this
whole service with that whole mass of enormity slept, as it were, under his terror and his
protection his protection if they did not dare to move against him, his terror from his power to
pluck out individuals and make a public example of them whenever he pleased.
.............
Now your lordships see the whole of the revolutions. I have stated them, I trust, with
perspicuity.... You saw the native government vanish away by degrees, until it is reduced to a
situation fit for nothing, but to become a private perquisite, as it has been, to Mr. Hastings, to be
granted
to
whom
he
please.
... But he has told your lordships in his defence, that actions in Asia do not bear the same moral
qualities as the same actions would bear in Europe. My lords, we positively deny that principle...
we are to let your lordships know that these gentlemen have formed a plan of geographical
morality, by which the duties of men in public and in private situations are not to be governed by
their relations to the great governor of the universe, or by their relations to men, but by climates,
degrees of longitude and latitude.... as if, when you have crossed the equinoctial line, all the
virtues
die....
Mr. Hastings comes before your lordships not as a British Governor answering to a British
tribunal, but as a subahdar (Indian provincial governor), as a Pascha... He says: I had an
arbitrary power to exercise; I exercised it. Slaves I found the people, slaves they are. They are so
by their constitution, and if they are, I did not make it for them. I was unfortunately bound to
exercise
this
arbitrary
power
and
accordingly
I
did
exercise
it....
I charge Mr. Hastings... with having destroyed, for private purposes, the whole system of
government by the six provincial councils which he had no right to destroy..... I charge him with
taking bribes of Gunga Govind Sing (Ganga Govind Singh, Maharaja of Benares) ..... I charge
him with having robbed those people from whom he took the bribes. I charge him with having
fraudulently alienated the fortunes of widows. I charge him with having ... taken the lands of
orphans and given them to wicked persons under him. ...... and with having destroyed the landed

interests, cruelly harassed the peasants, burnt their houses, seized their crops, tortured and
degraded their persons, and destroyed the honour of the whole female race of that country.2
Edmund Burke (/brk/; 12 January [NS] 172] 9 July 1797) was an
Irish statesman born in Dublin, as well as an author, orator, political theorist, and philosopher
who, after moving to London, served as a member of parliament (MP) for many years in the
House of Commons with the Whig Party.
Burke is remembered mainly for his support of the cause of the American Revolutionaries,
Catholic emancipation, the impeachment of Warren Hastings from the East India Company, and
for his later objections about the French Revolution, the latter leading to his becoming the
leading figure within the conservative faction of the Whig Party, which he dubbed the "Old
Whigs", as opposed to the proFrench Revolution "New Whigs", led by Charles James Fox.
In the nineteenth century Burke was praised by both conservatives and liberals. Subsequently, in
the twentieth century, he became widely regarded as the philosophical founder of modern
conservatism3

2 Retrieved from : http://cw.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415485432/26.asp.

3Extracts from Mr. Burke's Table-talk, at Crewe Hall. Written down by Mrs. Crewe, pp. 62.",
Miscellanies of the Philobiblon Society. Volume VII (London: Whittingham and Wilkins, 18623), pp. 52
3..
8

BACKGROUND OF SPEECH
Appointment
Born in 1732, Warren Hastings spent much of his adult life in India after first travelling out as a
clerk of the East India Company in 1750. Hastings developed a reputation as an "Indian" who
sought to use traditional Indian methods of governance to run British India rather than the policy
of importing European-style law, government and culture favoured by many of his colleagues
and representatives of other colonial powers in India. After working his way through the ranks of
the Company he was appointed in 1773 as Governor General, a new position that had been
created by the North government in order to improve the running of British India. The old
structure of rule had come under strain as the Company's holdings had expanded in recent
decades from isolated trading posts to large swathes of territory and population4
The powers of the Governor General were balanced out by the establishment of a Calcutta
Council which had the authority to veto his decisions. Hastings spent much of his time in office
marshalling his own supporters on the Council in an effort to avoid being outvoted.

4 Patrick Turnbull 1975, p. 201202.

9

Disputes and war

Hastings' initial accuser Sir Philip Francis

Hastings soon ran into opposition on the Council. His principal enemy was the Irish-born
politician Philip Francis. Francis developed a strong dislike of Hastings and was convinced that
the Governor General's policies were self-serving and destructive. This was a belief shared with
some other members of the Council whom he was able to influence. Francis and Hastings'
personal rivalry continued for many years and led to a duel between them in 1780 in which
Francis was wounded, but not killed. 5Francis returned to Britain in 1781 and began raising
questions about Hastings' conduct. He found support from many leading opposition Whigs.
In 1780 Hyder Ali, the ruler of Mysore, went to war with the company after British forces
captured the French-controlled port of Mah. Taking advantage of Britain's involvement in the
American War of Independence and the support of French forces Hyder went on the offensive
and enjoyed success during the opening stages of the war, inflicting a serious defeat at the Battle
of Pollilur and at one point threatening Madras itself with capture. The Commander in Chief
Eyre Coote went south with reinforcements and defeated Hyder's army in a series of battles
which helped to steady the position in the Carnatic. Hyder was unable to secure victory and the
war ended in a stalemate. It was halted by the Treaty of Mangalore in 1784 which largely
restored the status quo ante bellum. Even so, the British position in India had been severely
threatened.
The war shook public confidence and raised questions about the supposed mismanagement by
the Company's agents in India. It proved to be a catalyst for the growing campaign in London
against Hastings which gathered strength during the ensuing years.

5 Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall (1889). Warren Hastings. Macmillan and Company
10

First attacks
The Company had already gone through scandals in the 1760s and 1770s and the wealthy nabobs
who returned to Britain from India were widely unpopular. Against this backdrop the criticisms
circulated by Francis and others provoked a general consensus that the 1773 India Act hadn't
been sufficient to rein in the alleged excesses. The Indian question again became a contentious
political issue. The FoxNorth Coalition fell from power after it attempted to bring in a radical
East India Bill in 1783. The following year the new government of William Pitt passed an India
Act of 1784 which established a Board of Control and which finally stabilised the governance of
India.
Hastings was personally attacked by Charles James Fox during the presentation of his India
Bill.When Pitt introduced his Bill he failed to mention Hastings at all, seen as expressing a lack
of confidence, and made wide-ranging criticisms of the Company . He suggested that recent wars
in India had been ruinous and unnecessary. Hastings was particularly upset by this, as he was an
admirer of Pitt. By now, Hastings wished to resign and return home unless the role of Governor
General was given greater freedom to exercise powerwhich was unlikely to be granted him.
He handed over to an Acting Governor General, John MacPherson until a permanent replacement
was appointed.6

Return to Britain

The MP Edmund Burke led the prosecution of Hastings.

6 Peter Whiteley (1996). Lord North: The Prime Minister Who Lost America. Continuum. ISBN 978-185285-145-3
11

Hastings sailed for home on 6 February and reached Britain in June 1785.During the voyage he
wrote a defence of his conduct The State of Bengal and presented it to Henry Dundas.Hastings
anticipated he would face attacks in parliament and the press but expected them to be short-lived
and to fall away once he was there in person to defend himself . Initially this proved to be the case
as he enjoyed an audience with King George III and a unanimous vote of thanks by the directors
of the East India Company. Hastings even hoped to be awarded an Irish peerage. However, in
Parliament Edmund Burke announced he "would at a future date make a motion respecting the
conduct of a gentleman just returned from India".
In early 1786 Burke began his first move by raising questions over Hastings' role in the Maratha
War. The attacks on Hastings were largely made by opposition Whigs hoping to embarrass the
government of William Pitt. Pitt and other government ministers such as Dundas defended
Hastings and suggested that he had saved the British Empire in Asia.Philip Francis made eleven
specific charges against Hastings, and others later followed. They covered various subjects such
as the Rohilla War, execution of Nanda-Kumar and Hastings' treatment of the Rajas of Benares.
Pitt broadly defended Hastings, but declared his punishment of the Rajah had been excessive. In
the wake of this an anti-Hastings motion was passed in the Commons 11979.7
Encouraged by Pitt's failure to adequately support Hastings, his opponents pressed on with their
campaign. The situation quickly deteriorated for Hastings. It soon became clear that he was
heading towards an impeachment. Hastings recruited Edward Law, 1st Baron Ellenborough to
act in his defence. On 21 May 1787 Hastings was arrested by the Serjeant-at-Arms and taken to
the House of Lords to hear the charges against him.
Hastings was to be prosecuted in the House of Lords by an Impeachment Committee.
Impeachment was a relatively rare process of prosecuting those in high public office. Previous
figures who had faced such trials included the Duke of Buckingham, a favourite of James I, and
the Earl of Strafford, whose impeachment failed (but was followed up by a legislative bill of
attainder that resulted in Strafford's execution).8

7 Elizabeth D. Samet, "A Prosecutor and a Gentleman: Edmund Burke's Idiom of Impeachment", ELH
68, no. 2 (2001): 402.
8 Franklin B. Wickwire; Mary Wickwire (April 1980). Cornwallis, the imperial years. University of North
Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0-8078-1387-4.
12

IMPEACHMENT PROCEEDINGS

Opening
Hastings' trial began on 13 February 1788 and took place in Westminster Hall with members of
the House of Commons seated to his right and the Lords to his left and a large audience of
spectators, including royalty, in the boxes and public galleries. The proceedings began with a
lengthy address by Edmund Burke, who took four days to cover all the charges against Hastings.
Burke took the proceedings very seriously but, we have it from Macaulay, for many spectators
the trial resembled a social event. Hastings himself remarked that for the first half hour, I looked

13

up to the orator in a reverie of wonder, and during that time I felt myself the most culpable man
on earth.9
Hastings was granted bail in spite of Burke's suggestion that he might flee the country with the
wealth he had allegedly stolen from India. Further speeches were made over the coming weeks
by other leading Whigs such as Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Charles James Fox. In total there
were nineteen members of the Impeachment Committee.

Public opinion changes

The testimony of Lord Cornwallis, Hastings' successor as Governor General, was a major boost
to his defence.
In spite of the early excitement about the trial public interest in it began to wane as it dragged on
over months and years. Other major events dominated the news particularly once the French
Revolution began in 1789. Sheridan now complained he was "heartily tired of the Hastings trial"
despite being one of its instigators. As the trial progressed, public attitudes about Hastings also
began to shift. Hastings had initially been overwhelmingly portrayed as guilty in the popular
press, but doubts were increasingly raised. Increased support for Hastings may have been a result
of declining perceptions of his accusers. In a cartoon James Gillray portrayed Hastings as the
"Saviour of India" being assaulted by bandits resembling Burke and Fox.
A major lift for the defence came with the testimony on 9 April 1794 of Lord Cornwallis who
had recently returned from India, where he succeeded Hastings as Governor General. Cornwallis
rejected the accusations that Hastings' actions had damaged Britain's reputation and observed
that Hastings was universally popular with the inhabitants. When asked if he had "found any just
cause to impeach the character of Mr Hastings?" he replied "never".
9 O'Toole, Garson. "The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil is that Good Men Do Nothing" . Quote
Investigator. Retrieved 25 July 2015

14

A further blow for the prosecution came with the evidence of William Larkins the former
Accountant General of Bengal. They had rested their hopes on his revealing widespread
corruption but he denied that Hastings had amassed any illicit money and made a defence of his
conduct. Various other figures came forwards as character witnesses to support Hastings. Burke's
reply to the defence lasted nine days from late May to mid-June 1794.

Verdict
On 23 April 1795 the Lord Chancellor Lord Loughborough oversaw the delivery of the verdict.
A third of the Lords who had attended the trial's opening had since died and only twenty-nine of
the others had sat through enough of the evidence to be permitted to pronounce judgement.
Loughborough asked each of the peers sixteen questions relating to individual charges. On most
charges he was unanimously found not guilty. On three questions five or six peers gave guilty
verdicts, but Hastings was still comfortably cleared by majority vote. This overwhelming verdict
had been expected for some time and caused little surprise.10
Burke, who had invested a large amount of time and energy into the prosecution, was frustrated
by the ultimate failure of the impeachment. He had warned the Lords that it would be "to the
perpetual infamy" of the House if they voted to acquit and remained convinced of Hastings' guilt
until his death in 1797.11

AFTERMATH
Hastings was financially ruined by the impeachment and was left with debts of 70,000. ] Unlike
many other Indian officials he had not amassed a large fortune while in India and he had to fund
his legal defence, which had cost an estimated 71,000, out of his own funds. His defence lawyer
was Richard Shaw(e) who built his mansion Casino House in Herne Hill at least in part from the
proceeds, employing John Nash and Humphry Repton as landscape designer (responsible for the
water garden the remnants of which survive as Sunray Gardens in 2012). ] Meanwhile, Hastings
10 Marshall, P. J. The Impeachment of Warren Hastings (1965), the standard history of the trial and
Burke's role.
11Retrieved from : https://archive.org/details/speechesofrighth02burk.(14th October, 2016; 09:00pm).
15

appealed to the British government for financial assistance and was eventually compensated by
the East India Company with a loan of 50,000 and a pension of 4,000 a year.12
Although this did not solve all his financial worries, Hastings was ultimately able to fulfill his
lifelong ambition of purchasing the family's traditional estate of Daylesford in Gloucestershire
which had been lost in a previous generation. Hastings held no further public office, but was
regarded as an expert on Indian matters and was asked to give evidence to parliament on the
subject in 1812. After he had finished giving his testimony, the members all stood up in an
almost unprecedented act for anyone other than the royal family.
Hastings' successors as Governor General, beginning with Lord Cornwallis, were granted the
much wider powers that Hastings had sought while in Calcutta. Pitt's India Act served to move
much of the supervisory role for India away from the East India Company directors and officials
in Leadenhall Street to a new political Board of Control based in London.13
The overwhelming failure to secure a conviction, and the stream of testimony that came out of
India praising him have led commentators to ask why Hastings, who appeared to many observers
to have given dedicated service to the company and to have curbed its worst excess, ended up
being prosecuted in the first place. A number of factors may have played a part, including
partisan politics, although Pitt joined the opposition in supporting the Impeachment.
There has been particular focus on the role played by Pitt particularly his sudden withdrawal
of outright support for Hastings in 1786 which galvanised the opposition into pursuing the case.
It is possible that Pitt believed "he ran the very genuine risk of being accused by the opposition
of shielding a notorious criminal from justice, for political reasons". Henry Dundas was himself
later impeached in 1806 and acquitted in the final ever impeachment in Britain.14

12 Bromwich, David, The Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke: From the Sublime and Beautiful to
American Independence (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014). A review: Freedom fighter, The
Economist, 5 July 2014.
13 Cone, Carl B. Burke and the Nature of Politics (2 vols, 1957, 1964), a detailed modern biography of
Burke; somewhat uncritical and sometimes superficial regarding politics.
14 The Worlds Famous Orations. Ireland (17751902). "III. At the Trial of Warren Hastings" Edmund
Burke (172997).
16

CONCLUSION
For years Burke pursued impeachment efforts against Warren Hastings, formerly GovernorGeneral of Bengal, that resulted in the trial during 1786. His interaction with the British
dominion of India began well before Hastings' impeachment trial. For two decades prior to the
impeachment, Parliament had dealt with the Indian issue. This trial was the pinnacle of years of
unrest and deliberation.[65] In 1781 Burke was first able to delve into the issues surrounding the
East India Company when he was appointed Chairman of the Commons Select Committee on
East Indian Affairsfrom that point until the end of the trial; India was Burke's primary concern.
This committee was charged "to investigate alleged injustices in Bengal, the war with Hyder Ali,
and other Indian difficulties". While Burke and the committee focused their attention on these
matters, a second 'secret' committee was formed to assess the same issues. Both committee
reports were written by Burke. Among other purposes, the reports conveyed to the Indian princes
that Britain would not wage war on them, along with demanding that the HEIC recall Hastings.
This was Burke's first call for substantive change regarding imperial practices. When addressing
the whole House of Commons regarding the committee report, Burke described the Indian issue
as one that "began 'in commerce' but 'ended in empire.'"
On 28 February 1785, Burke delivered a now-famous speech, The Nabob of Arcot's Debts,
wherein he condemned the damage to India by the East India Company. In the province of the
Carnatic the Indians had constructed a system of reservoirs to make the soil fertile in a naturally
dry region, and centred their society on the husbandry of water:
These are the monuments of real kings, who were the fathers of their people; testators to a
posterity which they embraced as their own. These are the grand sepulchres built by ambition;
but by the ambition of an insatiable benevolence, which, not contented with reigning in the
dispensation of happiness during the contracted term of human life, had strained, with all the
reachings and graspings of a vivacious mind, to extend the dominion of their bounty beyond the
limits of nature, and to perpetuate themselves through generations of generations, the guardians,
the protectors, the nourishers of mankind.
Burke held that the advent of British dominion, and in particular the conduct of the East India
Company, had destroyed much that was good in these traditions and that, as a consequence of
this, and the lack of new customs to replace them, the Indians were suffering. He set about
establishing a set of British expectations, whose moral foundation would, in his opinion, warrant
the empire.15
On 4 April 1786, Burke presented the Commons with the Article of Charge of High Crimes and
Misdemeanors against Hastings. The impeachment in Westminster Hall, which did not begin
15 Cone, Carl B. Burke and the Nature of Politics (2 vols, 1957, 1964), a detailed modern biography of
Burke; somewhat uncritical and sometimes superficial regarding politics.
17

until 14 February 1788, would be the "first major public discursive event of its kind in England",
bringing the morality and duty of imperialism to the forefront of public perception. Burke
already was known for his eloquent rhetorical skills and his involvement in the trial only
enhanced its popularity and significance.Burke's indictment, fuelled by emotional indignation,
branded Hastings a 'captain-general of iniquity'; who never dined without 'creating a famine';
whose heart was 'gangrened to the core', and who resembled both a 'spider of Hell' and a
'ravenous vulture devouring the carcasses of the dead. The House of Commons eventually
impeached Hastings, but subsequently, the House of Lords acquitted him of all charges.16

16 Crowe, Ian, ed. An Imaginative Whig: Reassessing the Life and Thought of Edmund Burke. (2005).
247 pp. essays by scholars.
18

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J. C. D. Clark (ed.), Reflections on the Revolution in France. A Critical Edition (Stanford

University Press, 2001).

Burke's Politics (1949), edited by R. Hoffman and P. Levack

Burke, Edmund, The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke (9 vol 1981 ) vol 1
online; vol 2 online; vol 6 India: The Launching of the Hastings Impeachment, 1786
1788 online; vol 8 online; vol 9 online.
REFERENCES

Levin, Yuval. The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right
and Left (Basic Books; 2013) 275 pages; their debate regarding the French Revolution.

Lucas, Paul. "On Edmund Burke's Doctrine of Prescription; Or, An Appeal from the New
to the Old Lawyers", Historical Journal, 11 (1968) opens the way towards an effective
synthesis of Burke's ideas of History, Change and Prescription.

Jim McCue, Edmund Burke and Our Present Discontents (The Claridge Press, 1997).

Magnus, Philip. Edmund Burke: A Life (1939), older biography

Marshall, P. J. The Impeachment of Warren Hastings (1965), the standard history of the
trial and Burke's role

Conor Cruise O'Brien, The Great Melody. A Thematic Biography of Edmund Burke
(1992). ISBN 0-226-61651-7.

19