fund upon which the rest of British India might draw
without limit. It was this inability to borrow in times
of emergency that drove Hastings to raise money by
forced loans and war contributions in Benares and Oude;
for the natives of India were in those days unaccustomed
to lend upon a public security, and indeed put less trust
in princes than in any other class of borrower.

Hastings takes in this review a rapid survey of the
state of the relations between Bengal and the native
powers; showing remarkable breadth of view and
political prescience in his reflections upon the general
position of the British nation in India, in explaining the
scope and design of his own administrative plans, and in
defending himself from the charges of ambition and a
love of conquest. Touching the origin and growth of
the Company's power in India he says: "The seed of
this wonderful production was sown by the hand of
calamity; it was nourished by fortune, and cultivated
and shaped by necessity." So firmly, nevertheless, had
this plant taken root in a few years, that the late war
had proved to all the leading powers of India "that their
combined strength and politics, assisted by our great
enemy the French, have not been able to destroy the
solid fabric of the English power in the East, nor even
to deprive it of any portion of its territories." He
affirmed, and his judgment has been fully upheld by
events, that India needed "nothing but attention, pro-
tection, and forbearance "; an equal, vigorous, and fixed
administration, and free play for its vast natural resources
and advantages, to secure its rapid rise to a high and per-
manent level of national prosperity. "But while," he
added, " I profess on these grounds the doctrine of peace,

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