It is indeed impossible to deny that, in the great art of inspiring large masses of human beings with confidence and attachment, no ruler ever surpassed Hastings.  If he had made himself popular with the English by giving up the Bengalees to extortion and oppression, or if, on the other hand, he had conciliated the Bengalees and alienated the English, there would have been no cause for wonder.  What is peculiar to him is that, being the chief of a small band of strangers, who exercised boundless power over a great indigenous population, he made himself beloved both by the subject many and by the dominant few.  The affection felt for him by the civil service was singularly ardent and constant.  Through all his disasters and perils, his brethren stood by him with steadfast loyalty.  The army, at the same time, loved him as armies have seldom loved any but the greatest chiefs who have led them to victory.  Even in his disputes with distinguished military men, he could always count on the support of the military profession.  While such was his empire over the hearts of his countrymen, he enjoyed among the natives a popularity, such as other governors have perhaps better merited, but such as no other governor has been able to attain.  He spoke their vernacular dialects with facility and precision.  He was intimately acquainted with their feelings and usages.  On one or two occasions, for great ends, he deliberately acted in defiance of their opinion; but on such occasions he gained more in their respect than he lost in their love, In general, he carefully avoided all that could shock their national or religious prejudices.  His administration was indeed in many respects faulty; but the Bengalee standard of good government was not high.  Under the Nabobs, the hurricane of Mahratta cavalry had passed annually over the rich alluvial plain.  But even the Mahratta shrank from a conflict with the mighty children of the sea; and the immense rich harvests of the Lower Ganges were safely gathered in under the protection of the English sword.  The first English conquerors had been more rapacious and merciless even than the Mahrattas—­but that generation had passed away.  Defective as was the police, heavy as were the public burdens, it is probable that the oldest man in Bengal could not recollect a season of equal security and prosperity.  For the first time within living memory, the province was placed under a government strong enough to prevent others from robbing, and not inclined to play the robber itself.  These things inspired goodwill.  At the same time, the constant success of Hastings and the manner in which he extricated himself from every difficulty made him an object of superstitious admiration; and the more than regal splendour which he sometimes displayed dazzled a people who have much in common with children.  Even now, after the lapse of more than fifty years, the natives of India still talk of him as the greatest of the English; and nurses sing children to sleep with a jingling ballad about the fleet horses and richly caparisoned elephants of Sahib Warren Hostein.