Tipu Sultan was an outstanding administrator and a great reformer, endowed with great vision and calibre. Despite his troubled life, he introduced great reforms in almost all departments of the state administration which brought unprecedented peace and prosperity to his people. He highly developed agriculture and industry in his dominion and initiated progressive agricultural reforms beneficial to the peasantry. Mill, the celebrated English historian, considers his territories to be `the best and its population the most flourishing in India' and Tipu Sultan a ruler who `sustains an advantageous comparison with the greatest princes of the east.' He kept a watch over his people and received reports to make annual tours of their districts for this purpose. The `patels' could not subject the poor cultivators to forced labour.