But there was something else in its way quite as serious as this. Practically all the charges that were brought against Warren Hastings on his impeachment are answered and disposed of by the fact that the only condition upon which he could retain his position and do the work that he had set his soul upon doing was, in three words, making India _pay_. John Company looked upon his new possession as a trader on a market. With the Directors, who, after all were Hastings’ masters, it was business first, and policy and government a good distance after. Even Macaulay admits that every exhortation to govern leniently and respect the rights of the native princes and their subjects was accompanied by a demand for increased contributions. “The inconsistency was at once manifest to their vice-regent at Calcutta, who, with an empty treasury, with an unpaid army, with his own salary often in arrear, with deficient crops, with Government tenants daily running away, was called upon to remit home another half-million without fail.” There is another thing to be remembered before we can judge Warren Hastings fairly in the matter of his forced contributions. The tea that was flung overboard in Boston Harbour in the December of 1773 was imported by the East India Company. The connection will appear more obvious when we look at what followed. Great Britain was about to plunge into war, east and west, north and south. Criminal misgovernment at home had produced revolt abroad. Disaster after disaster and disgrace after disgrace were soon to befall the British arms. The Anglo-Saxon race was about to be split in two, and England herself was to fight, if not for her very existence, at least for her honourable place among the nations. All this Warren Hastings foresaw with that marvellous prevision which made some of his actions look almost prophetic, and determined that, come what might elsewhere, the Star of the East should not be plucked from the British Crown. He was not a soldier. He was an administrator. His task was not to increase but to hold. He was by no means always successful in war, and in all his long rule he never added a province or a district to the area of British India; but what Clive won he held and strengthened during those fateful years when the destiny of Britain as an empire was trembling in the balances of Fate. Now, to keep India, money was absolutely necessary, and the getting of it was not always work that could be done with kid gloves on, and the greatness of Warren Hastings as Empire-Maker or Holder may be seen in the fact that he deliberately, and with his eyes open, risked his future fortune and reputation in the doing of this work by the only means available.