Against this dubious course we may set his strenuous advocacy of reform in India. That country was victim of the corrupt and cruel system of the East India Company. Burke was familiar with the subject, for he had been a member of select committees on Indian affairs and had drawn two important reports. He is also supposed to have framed the East India bill commonly known as Fox's. At any rate he defended it, 1 Dec. 1783, in one of his best speeches. The bill, however, was defeated and the Coalition, which supported it, driven from office. Early in 1785 Burke renewed the attack in his 'Speech on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts' — a preliminary to the proceedings against Warren Hastings. In 1786 Burke drew the ar ticles against Hastings. The trial dragged on till 1795, and though the verdict at last was for acquitttal, Burke had none the less suc ceeded in reforming the government of India; for he had trumpeted the wrongs of that ((emptied and embowele& land till public sen timent would no longer tolerate them.
Before the trial of Hastings had closed, the French Revolution had broken out. Burke looked upon it, not as the emancipation of op pressed masses, but as an effort of atheists and political theorists to uproot the settled order. Since his views were hostile to those of the more radical Whigs, he began to draw away from the men with whom he had \been allied against the encroachments of the Crown in England and America. In 1790 he widened the breach still further by proclamation of his opinions in (Reflections on the Revolu tion in France.' The book had for that day an enormous sale and divided Great Britain into two parties — one composed of Burke and an uncongenial company of Tories; the other of Liberals, many of whom had been Burke's life long associates. Burke himself violently quar
reled with his old friend Fox. The seeming contradiction between his early position and his later is accounted for in part by the fact that he grew more conservative with age, in part by his desire to preserve the balance between monarch and subject. In England the Crown had been the aggressor; in France, he thought, the peo ple. Moreover, he had always insisted that liberty is from and in France he saw nothing but disorder. As the Revolution progressed, Burke became more and more wrought up, so that in each of his suc ceeding utterances —'Letter to a Member of the National Assembly' (1791), 'Appeal from Among his important writings or speeches not already mentioned are (Address to the King' (1777) ; (Letter to Sir Hercules Lang rishe) (1792) ; (Thoughts and Details on Scarcity' (1795). See REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ; ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES; ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTI FUL.
Bibliography.— There are in the market three or four editions of Burke's writings and speeches, substantially complete. The best short life is in the 'Dictionary of National Biogra phy.' John Morley's (Life of Burke' (in the 'English Men of Letters,' 1879) is excellent; also his 'Burke, a Historical Study' (1867). Of the earlier lives, James Prior's (2d ed., 1826) is the best. Of course Burke bulks large in the standard histories and memoirs of Eng land in the 18th century.