The parliamentary session of 1772–3 represented a watershed in the development of the relationship between the state and the East India Company. The statutory arrangements formulated by North and his colleagues were no more, and intended to be no more, than temporary measures, but they did serve to extend government control over the Company at home. However, it remained to be seen whether or not reforms generated in Britain by ministers and politicians could solve the Company's economic and administrative problems in Bengal. Whatever the outcome, and examination of that matter lies beyond the scope of this study, North, unlike his predecessors, had made a very real attempt to come to terms with the responsibilities that went hand in hand with the extension of the Company's commercial and political activities. He fully recognized that a permanent solution to the questions related to the Bengal territorial revenues had not been found, but that had not been his overriding concern. Necessity, the collapse of the East India Company, had demanded that he look well beyond the extraction of a simple financial return from British activity in Bengal. Reform had replaced revenue in the ministerial order of priorities, and it was now accepted in government circles that without quite fundamental change Bengal would remain little more than a very fragile British asset.

It is worth stressing that the gradual transformation in ministerial attitudes towards the Indian problem may partly be explained by placing Indian issues in a wider imperial context.