Impeachment of Warren Hastings

The impeachment of Warren Hastings, the first governor-general of the Bengal Presidency in India, was attempted between 1787 and 1795 in the Parliament of Great Britain. Hastings was accused of misconduct during his time in Calcutta, particularly relating to mismanagement and personal corruption. The impeachment 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. According to historian Mithi Mukherjee, the impeachment trial became the site of a debate between two radically opposed visions of empire—one represented by Hastings, based on ideas of absolute power and conquest in pursuit of the exclusive national interests of the colonizer, versus one represented by Burke, of sovereignty based on a recognition of the rights of the colonized.[1]

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 trial".[2]

Background

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 population.[3]

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.

Disputes and war

Impeachment

Opening

Hastings' trial began on 13 February 1788. It took place in Westminster Hall, with members of the House of Commons seated to Hastings' right, the Lords to his left, and a large audience of spectators, including royalty, in the boxes and public galleries.[18] The proceedings began with a lengthy address by Edmund Burke, who took four days to cover all the charges against Hastings.[19] While Burke took the proceedings very seriously, Macaulay said that many spectators treated the trial as a social event.[19] 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."[19]

Hastings was granted bail

Aftermath

Hastings was financially ruined by the impeachment and was left with debts of £70,000.[26] 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.[20] 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 survived as Sunray Gardens in 2012). [29]

Meanwhile, Hastings 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.

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 during the Napoleonic Wars 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.

Bibliography

Mukherjee, Mithi. "Justice, War, and the Imperium: India and Britain in Edmund Burke's Prosecutorial Speeches in the Impeachment Trial of Warren Hastings." Law and History Review 23.3 (2005): 589-630 online . Also see Mukherjee, India in the Shadows of Empire: A Legal and Political History (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010).
Brian Smith. "Edmund Burke, the Warren Hastings trial, and the moral dimension of corruption." Polity 40.1 (2008): 70-94 online.

References

Mithi Mukherjee. Justice, War, and the Imperium: India and Britain in Edmund Burke's Prosecutorial Speeches in the Impeachment Trial of Warren Hastings Law and History Review, 2005, retrieved 16 May 2020^
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{{harv|Peter Whiteley|1996|pp=103–114}}^
{{harv|Robert Harvey|1998|p=380}}

Return to Britain

Hastings sailed for home on 6 February and reached Britain in June 1785.[9] During the voyage he wrote a defence of his conduct The State of Bengal and presented it to Henry Dundas.[10] 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.[11] 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.[12] Hastings even hoped to be awarded an Irish peerage.[13] 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".[11]

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.[14] 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 Chait Singh. 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 119–79.[15]

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.[16] 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.[17]

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).