On Sir Thomas Wren’s tomb in St. Paul’s stands the Latin legend which translated reads: “If you seek his monument look around you!” If a man could be endowed with an infinite range of vision he might be placed on the highest pinnacle of the Himalayas, and as he looked east and west and south the same might be said to him as the epitaph of Robert Clive; for all that he could see from the Arabian Gulf to the Bay of Bengal, and from the Himalayan slopes to the coral reefs of Cape Comorin, would be the monument of his eternal fame--and is there man born of woman who could desire a worthier? VIII _WARREN HASTINGS_, _THE FIRST UNCROWNED KING OF INDIA_ VIII WARREN HASTINGS Both in point of time and personal capacity, Warren Hastings, first Governor-General of the British Empire in India, was the successor of Robert, Lord Clive. At the same time it may be as well to point out in this connection that there might be more literal correctness in describing Warren Hastings as an Empire-Preserver rather than an Empire-Maker. It was the victor of Plassey who rough-hewed the stones upon which the now gorgeous fabric of our Indian Empire stands. It was Hastings who, in spite of stupendous difficulties, took those stones and laid them down according to that plan which he had formed, and which has been followed in the main by all who have added to the structure. As was said in other words of William of Orange, one of the greatest claims that the great Governor has to the interest and admiration of those who have a share in the splendid inheritance that he built up, lies in the fact that he did his work in the face of everlasting hindrances and in the midst of perpetual embarrassments, which must infallibly have discouraged and bewildered any but a man upon whom the gods had set the stamp of greatness, and, in their own way, crowned him one of the kings of men. In short, like the grandson of William the Silent, Warren Hastings was first and foremost an overcomer of difficulties. Great and splendid and enduring as his work undoubtedly was, it would not, after all, have been very difficult to do if he had just been left to do it--not helped, because he wasn’t the kind of man who wanted help, but just left alone. Instead of this, however, as though it were not enough that his work of organising and consolidating what the sword of Clive had won, and combating the infinity of complications arising out of the rivalry of a dozen warring native potentates, he was purposely surrounded in his own council-chamber by unscrupulous enemies of his own blood and country, whose only title to historical recognition is now the infamy that they have earned by failing to prevent the doing of that work which Warren Hastings saw had got to be done, and which he, with an inflexible heroism, decided to do in spite of everything that his enemies, white or brown, Mohammedan, Hindoo or British, could do to cripple him.