Edmund Burke's involvement in Indian politics forced him to reconsider one of the central concepts of his political thought: his theory of trusteeship. During the course of the debate over India, Burke came to realize that the theory could not work there because the Indians shared few political values with their English rulers and were unable to call those rulers to account. He, therefore, revised his approach to appeal to a natural law standard and to make the English Parliament and people surrogates for the Indians. However, these devices also failed, for the former proved unenforceable and the latter was undermined by the House of Lords' acquittal of Hastings. The theory of trusteeship thus proved to be critically defective, for, without greater popular accountability than Bruke was willing to permit, it failed to provide government which was both effective and responsible.
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