ABSTRACT
Edmund Burke became a leading figure in the parliamentary select committee charged with investigating the East India Company, and he wrote the famous Ninth and Eleventh Reports of the Select Committee. In 1783 a coalition headed by Charles Fox and Lord North formed an administration that wanted to take action with regard to India. As the coalition's leading expert on India, Burke became the engine of Indian reform by drafting legislation known as Fox's India Bill to make the East India Company accountable to Parliament. Speech on Opening of Impeachment was Burke's four-day speech at the start of the Hastings's trial before the House of Lords. Speech on Opening of Impeachment remains a pillar in Burke's monument of his "endeavours to save the Nation from the Shame and guilt" created by its treatment of the Indian peoples.
