y's welfare, while such appointments were in themselves
unjust to the claims of the Company's own servants. He vehemently
urged the necessity for making the rewards of the service more adequate
to the duties of the service, and he announced himself as determined to
do all he could for "the improvement of the Company's finances, so far
as it can be effected without encroaching upon their future income."
If Hastings could scheme out needed reforms on his way out, he found on
his arrival that the need for reform was little short of appalling.
The position which Hastings held was a curious one. He was President
of the Council, it is true, but president of a council of which every
member had an equal vote, and many of the members of which had personal
reasons for wishing to oppose the reforms that Hastings was coming out
to accomplish. A disorganized government had to be reorganized, an
exhausted exchequer to be refilled, a heart-breaking debt to be
reduced, and all this had to be done under conditions that well might
have shaken a less dauntless spirit than that of Warren Hastings.

Warren Hastings was never for one moment shaken. In a very short space
of time he had greatly bettered the administrative system, had fostered
the trade of the country by the adoption of a uniform and low Customs
duty, and had greatly furthered the establishment of civilized rule in
the province conquered by Clive. He accomplished this in the face of
difficulties and all dissensions in his own Council, against subtle
native intrigues, against opposition open and covert of the most
persistent kind. Every creature who throve out of the disorganization
of India naturally worked, in the daylight or in the dark, against
Hastings's efforts at organization. In 1771, when he was made Governor
of Bengal, he had attempted much and succeeded in much. He fought hard
with the secret terror of dacoity. Having given Bengal a judicial
system, he proceeded to increase its usefulness by drawing up a code of
Mohammedan and Hindu law. For the former he used the digest made by
command of Aurungzebe; for the {258} second he employed ten learned
Pundits, the result of whose labors was afterwards translated into
English by Halhed, who had been the friend of Sheridan and his rival
for the hand of Miss Linley.

The work which Warren Hastings accomplished in India must be called
gigantic. He created organization out of chaos; he marched
straightforward upon th