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196 devising new schemes of retrenchment and reform, in receiving farewell addresses, and in writing farewell letters to all the native chiefs and princes connected with his Government. On the 1st February, 1785, he handed over the keys of the Treasury and Fort William to his second in Council, Sir John Macpherson. He took leave of his colleagues in words of unfeigned kindliness and large hope. A crowd of friends and admirers greeted him as, for the last time, he entered his house at Alipur, now the abode of the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. That afternoon three intimate friends accompanied him to the Ghát, and went with him down the river to Kijri. On the 8th February, 1785, they left him on board the Berrington, which bore him homewards to the land he had not seen for sixteen years.

The foregoing pages have shown what kind of work Warren Hastings wrought for his masters during the thirteen years of his rule in Bengal. In 1772 he found that large and fertile province sunk in general wretchedness and disorder. Outside the trading factories and the British cantonments chaos reigned supreme. Law and justice and civil order were words of little meaning. The strong everywhere preyed upon the weak; the mass of the people were oppressed and plundered alike by the Nawáb's own officers and by the servants of an English trading-company. Bands of robbers and gangs of revenue agents carried off what war and famine had spared. The Nawáb's government was powerless for any good purpose,