Who remarked about the East India Company that “The Company is an anomaly but it is part of a system where everything is an anomaly”?

The answer is B) Macaulay. He made the remark in the House of Commons during the debate on the East India Company Charter renewal in 1833, when he argued that the Company's commercial role was an anomaly within a wider imperial system full of anomalies. The 1833 Charter Act then ended the Company's trading monopoly and made the Governor-General of Bengal the Governor-General of India.

• A) Warren Hastings: He was the first Governor-General of Bengal under the Regulating Act of 1773. He was impeached by Burke, not the author of this remark.
• C) Lord Clive: He won Plassey in 1757 and secured the Diwani of Bengal through the Treaty of Allahabad in 1765. That grant created the dual system of government, but Clive never spoke these words.
• D) Henry Dundas: He was a key figure in British India policy as President of the Board of Control, linked to the Pitt's India Act of 1784. He is not the speaker of this statement.

Core concept: the Company's shift from trader to territorial sovereign, and how Parliament progressively reined it in through the Charter Acts of 1813, 1833 and 1853. This is a useful bridge to Mains questions on colonial administrative structure.

Trap: Aspirants often pick Clive or Hastings because they are the famous names of the Company era. Attribute quotes to the speaker's own debate, not to the most prominent administrator of the period.