nded by him. He boasted that
every public office, without exception, which existed when he left
Bengal was his creation. It is quite true that this system, after all
the improvements suggested by the experience of sixty years, still needs
improvement, and that it was at first far more defective than it now is.
But whoever seriously considers what it is to construct from the
beginning the whole of a machine so vast and complex as a government
will allow that what Hastings effected deserves high admiration. To
compare the most celebrated European ministers to him seems to us as
unjust as it would be to compare the best baker in London with Robinson
Crusoe, who, before he could bake a single loaf, had to make his plough
and his harrow, his fences and his scarecrows, his sickle and his flail,
his mill and his oven.

The just fame of Hastings rises still higher when we reflect that he was
not bred a statesman; that he was sent from school to a counting-house;
and that he was employed during the prime of his manhood as a commercial
agent, far from all intellectual society.

Nor must we forget that all, or almost all, to whom, when placed at the
head of affairs, he could apply for assistance were persons who owed as
little as himself, or less than himself, to education. A minister in
Europe finds himself, on the first day on which he commences his
functions, surrounded by experienced public servants, the depositaries
of official traditions. Hastings had no such help. His own reflection,
his own energy, were to supply the place of all Downing Street and
Somerset House. Having had no facilities for learning, he was forced to
teach. He had first to form himself, and then to form his instruments;
and this not in a single department, but in all the departments of the
administration.

It must be added that, while engaged in this most arduous task, he was
constantly trammelled by orders from home, and frequently borne down by
a majority in Council. The preservation of an empire from a formidable
combination of foreign enemies, the construction of a government in all
its parts, were accomplished by him, while every ship brought out bales
of censure from his employers, and while the records of every
consultation were filled with acrimonious minutes by his colleagues. We
believe that there never was a public man whose temper was so severely
tried; not Marlborough, when thwarted by the Dutch Deputies: not
Wellington, when he had to de