acquire. The
press had no foreign correspondence; India was six months away, and all
the Europeans in it were either servants of the Company, or remained in
it on the Company's sufferance. The Whigs finally determined to attempt
a grand inquisition into its affairs, and a bill was brought in by Fox,
withdrawing the government of India from the Company and vesting it in a
commission named in the bill. This was preceded by eleven reports from a
Committee of Inquiry. But the bill failed utterly, and brought down the
Whig ministry, which did not get into office again in Burke's time. This
was followed in 1785, on Burke's instigation, by the impeachment of the
most conspicuous of the Company's officers, Warren Hastings. Burke was
appointed one of the managers on behalf of the Commons.

No episode in his career is so familiar to the public as his conduct of
this trial, owing to Warren Hastings having been the subject of one of
the most popular of Macaulay's Essays. None brought out more clearly
Burke's great dialectical powers, or so well displayed his mastery of
details and his power of orderly exposition. The trial lasted eight
years, and was adjourned over from one Parliamentary session to another.
These delays were fatal to its success. The public interest in it died
out long before the close, as usual in protracted legal prosecutions;
the feeling spread that the defendant could not be very guilty when it
took so long to prove his crime. Although Burke toiled over the case
with extraordinary industry and persistence, and an enthusiasm which
never flagged, Hastings was finally acquitted.

But the labors of the prosecution were not wholly vain. It awoke in
England an attention to the government of India which never died out,
and led to a considerable curtailing of the power of the East India
Company, and necessarily of its severity, in dealing with Indian States.
The impeachment was preceded by eleven reports on the affairs of India
by the Committee of the House of Commons, and the articles of
impeachment were nearly as voluminous. Probably no question which has
ever come before Parliament has received so thorough an examination.
Hardly less important was the report of the Committee of the Commons
(which consisted of the managers of the impeachment) on the Lords'
journals. This was an elaborate examination of the rules of evidence
which govern proceedings in the trial of impeachments, or of persons
guilty of malfeasance in