while the sway of the Company rested on no rules except those of the counting-house and the barrack. And they had no scheme of foreign policy fit to cope with the dangers that surrounded Bengal.
All this Hastings set himself to amend or to form anew. The changes wrought by his domestic and his foreign policy mark a very important epoch in our Indian history. Before his time no part of British India possessed a government worthy of the name. His genius and energy first gave clear and permanent shape to what had been a mere rudis indigestaque moles. The administrative system which he built up in those thirteen years remains essentially the system of the present day. As he said himself in his written defence before the Lords, 'Every division of official business, and every department of Government which now exists in Bengal, ... are of my formation. The establishment formed for the administration of the revenue, the institution of the courts of civil and criminal justice in the province of Bengal and its immediate dependencies, the form of Government established for the province of Benares ... were created by me. Two great sources of revenue, opium and salt, were of my creation. ... To sum up all, I maintained the provinces of my immediate administration in a state of peace, plenty, and security, when every other member of the British empire was involved in external war or civil tumultHistory of the Trial of Warren Hastings..'
Hastings had not only given a strong and stable
