SOLD Edmund Burke Demands the House of Lords’ Cooperation in the Hastings Impeachment

Statesman and political philosopher, Burke maintained a keen interest in India. He concluded that the British governance there, under the administration of governor-general Warren Hastings, was corrupt and a fundamental outrage against the human rights of millions of Indians – ‘we are usurpers of other men’s rights there’, as he put it. He proposed that India be governed by independent commissioners in London, but a bill to this end was defeated.

Then Hastings himself became Burke’s foremost target, and at Burke’s instigation he was impeached in 1787. Hastings had many friends in the House of Lords and elsewhere in the government and business communities, and the impeachment process, managed by Burke, had opposition.

Here Burke seeks access to the Journals of the House of Lords, clearly to help establish his case.

Edmund Burke Autograph Letter Signed, London, February 17, 1791, “I troubled your Lordship some months ago to request you would please to give orders for a set of the Journals of the Lords to be delivered to Messrs. Wallis & Howard for the use of the managers of the Impeachment against Mr. Hastings; but the vice-manager not then having been reappointed, your Lordship thought yourself not justified in complying with the request.  The managers now being in office, I take the liberty to renew the application, and to request that your Lordship will please to order a set of the Journals to be delivered to Messrs. Wallis & Howard, our Solicitors, for the use of the managers.”

The impeachment process continued until Hastings was finally acquitted in 1795. Despite Burke’s defeat, the Hastings affair led to reforms in England’s administration in India and helped bring the inequities of England’s colonial system before the public. Burke believed this was the most important political contribution of his career.