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258 BURKE. objections been confined to the ex-ministers and their friends, the coalesced ministers might have repelled them, at least by force of numbers; but it was peculiarly unfor- tunate for Mr. Burke, Mr. Fox, and the Whig part of the administration, that they were opposed without doors by the voice of the people, and in the writings of all those authors who had the credit of being constitutional autho- rities. The East India bill, accordingly, although carried in the house of commons, was lost in that of the lords, and a new administration was formed in December 1788, at the bead of which was Mr. Pitt. The majority of the house of commons, however, stili continuing attached to the dismissed ministers, public business was intérrupted, and continued in an embarrassed state until his majesty deternined to appeal to the people by a dissolution of parliament in May 1784. The issue of this was, that many of the most distinguished adherents to the coalition were rejected by their constitgents, and Mr. Pitt, in the new parliament, acquired a majority quite decisive as to the common routine of business, but eer- tainly for many years not comparable in talents to the opposition. Mr. Burke, again belonging to this class, exerted the utmost of those powers which so justly entitled him to the character he maintained in the world. To detail the progress of that high character through all the political business he went through would be incompatible with the nature and limits of this work; his talents will be best shewn in a general and minute review of his publie life, as exemplified in his speecbes, his political and other publications, and he will be found one of the greatest orna- ments of the age he lived in. A committee of the house of commons had been ap- pointed in 1782, of which Burke was a member, to inquire into the execution of justice in the East Indies. In the course of their researches on the subject, Burke had seen what he conceived to be disgraceful peculation, combined with rapacious avarice; and atrocities of the deepest dye,