Meer Jaffier had given no assistance to the English during the action.

But, as soon as he saw that the fate of the day was decided, he drew

off his division of the army, and, when the battle was over, sent his

congratulations to his ally. The next morning he repaired to the English

quarters, not a little uneasy as to the reception which awaited him

there. He gave evident signs of alarm when a guard was drawn out to

receive him with the honours due to his rank. But his apprehensions were

speedily removed, Clive came forward to meet him, embraced him, saluted

him as Nabob of the three great provinces of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa,

listened graciously to his apologies, and advised him to march without

delay to Moorshedabad.

Surajah Dowlah had fled from the field of battle with all the speed

with which a fleet camel could carry him, and arrived at Moorshedabad

in little more than twenty-four hours. There he called his councillors

round him. The wisest advised him to put himself into the hands of the

English, from whom he had nothing worse to fear than deposition and

confinement. But he attributed this suggestion to treachery. Others

urged him to try the chance of war again. He approved the advice, and

issued orders accordingly. But he wanted spirit to adhere even during

one day to a manly resolution. He learned that Meer Jaffier had arrived,

and his terrors became insupportable. Disguised in a mean dress, with a

casket of jewels in his hand, he let himself down at night from a window

of his palace, and accompanied by only two attendants, embarked on the

river for Patna.

In a few days Clive arrived at Moorshedabad, escorted by two hundred

English soldiers and three hundred sepoys. For his residence had been

assigned a palace, which was surrounded by a garden so spacious that all

the troops who accompanied him could conveniently encamp within it. The

ceremony of the installation of Meer Jaffier was instantly performed.

Clive led the new Nabob to the seat of honour, placed him on it,

presented to him, after the immemorial fashion of the East, an

offering of gold, and then, turning to the natives who filled the hall,

congratulated them on the good fortune which had freed them from a

tyrant. He was compelled on this occasion to use the services of an

interpreter; for it is remarkable that, long as he resided in India,

intimately acquainted as he was with Indian politics and with the Indian

character, and adored as he was by his Indian soldiery, he never learned

to express himself with facility in any Indian language. He is said

indeed to have been sometimes under the necessity of employing, in his

intercourse with natives of India, the smattering of Portuguese which he

had acquired, when a lad, in Brazil.

The new sovereign was now called upon to fulfil the engagements into

which he had entered with his allies. A conference was held at the

house of Jugget Seit, the great banker, for the purpose of making the

necessary arrangements. Omichund came thither, fully believing himself

to stand high in the favour of Clive, who, with dissimulation surpassing

even the dissimulation of Bengal, had up to that day treated him with

undiminished kindness. The white treaty was produced and read. Clive

then turned to Mr. Scrafton, one of the servants of the Company, and

said in English, “It is now time to undeceive Omichund.” “Omichund,”

said Mr. Scrafton in Hindostanee, “the red treaty is a trick, you are

to have nothing.” Omichund fell back insensible into the arms of his

attendants. He revived; but his mind was irreparably ruined. Clive, who,

though little troubled by scruples of conscience in his dealings with

Indian politicians, was not inhuman, seems to have been touched. He saw

Omichund a few days later, spoke to him kindly, advised him to make a

pilgrimage to one of the great temples of India, in the hope that

change of scene might restore his health, and was even disposed,

notwithstanding all that had passed, again to employ him in the public

service. But from the moment of that sudden shock, the unhappy man sank

gradually into idiocy. He who had formerly been distinguished by the

strength of his understanding and the simplicity of his habits, now

squandered the remains of his fortune on childish trinkets, and loved to

exhibit himself dressed in rich garments, and hung with precious stones.

In this abject state he languished a few months, and then died.

We should not think it necessary to offer any remarks for the purpose of

directing the judgment of our readers, with respect to this transaction,

had not Sir John Malcolm undertaken to defend it in all its parts. He

regrets, indeed, that it was necessary to employ means so liable to

abuse as forgery; but he will not admit that any blame attaches to those

who deceived the deceiver. He thinks that the English were not bound to

keep faith with one who kept no faith with them and that, if they had

fulfilled their engagements with the wily Bengalee, so signal an example

of successful treason would have produced a crowd of imitators. Now, we

will not discus this point on any rigid principles of morality. Indeed,

it is quite unnecessary to do so for, looking at the question as a

question of expediency in the lowest sense of the word, and using no

arguments but such as Machiavelli might have employed in his conferences

with Borgia, we are convinced that Clive was altogether in the wrong,

and that he committed, not merely a crime, but a blunder. That honesty

is the best policy is a maxim which we firmly believe to be generally

correct, even with respect to the temporal interest of individuals;

but with respect to societies, the rule is subject to still fewer

exceptions, and that for this reason, that the life of societies is

longer than the life of individuals. It is possible to mention men who

have owed great worldly prosperity to breaches of private faith; but we

doubt whether it be possible to mention a state which has on the whole

been a gainer by a breach of public faith. The entire history of British

India is an illustration of the great truth, that it is not prudent to

oppose perfidy to perfidy, and that the most efficient weapon with which

men can encounter falsehood is truth. During a long course of years,

the English rulers of India, surrounded by allies and enemies whom

no engagement could bind, have generally acted with sincerity and

uprightness; and the event has proved that sincerity and uprightness are

wisdom. English valour and English intelligence have done less to extend

and to preserve our Oriental empire than English veracity. All that

we could have gained by imitating the doublings, the evasions, the

fictions, the perjuries which have been employed against us, is as

nothing, when compared with what we have gained by being the one

power in India on whose word reliance can be placed. No oath which

superstition can devise, no hostage however precious, inspires a

hundredth part of the confidence which is produced by the “yea, yea,”

and “nay, nay,” of a British envoy. No fastness, however strong by art

or nature, gives to its inmates a security like that enjoyed by the

chief who, passing through the territories of powerful and deadly

enemies, is armed with the British guarantee. The mightiest princes of

the East can scarcely, by the offer of enormous usury, draw forth any

portion of the wealth which is concealed under the hearths of their

subjects. The British Government offers little more than four per cent.

and avarice hastens to bring forth tens of millions of rupees from its

most secret repositories. A hostile monarch may promise mountains of

gold to our sepoys on condition that they will desert the standard of

the Company. The Company promises only a moderate pension after a long

service. But every sepoy knows that the promise of the Company will be

kept; he knows that if he lives a hundred years his rice and salt are as

secure as the salary of the Governor-General; and he knows that there is

not another state in India which would not, in spite of the most solemn

vows, leave him to die of hunger in a ditch as soon as he had ceased to

be useful. The greatest advantage which government can possess is to be

the one trustworthy government in the midst of governments which nobody

can trust. This advantage we enjoy in Asia. Had we acted during the last

two generations on the principles which Sir John Malcolm appears to have

considered as sound, had we as often as we had to deal with people like

Omichund, retaliated by lying and forging, and breaking faith, after

their fashion, it is our firm belief that no courage or capacity could

have upheld our empire.

Sir John Malcolm admits that Clive’s breach of faith could be justified

only by the strongest necessity. As we think that breach of faith not

only unnecessary, but most inexpedient, we need hardly say that we

altogether condemn it.

Omichund was not the only victim of the revolution. Surajah Dowlah was

taken a few days after his flight, and was brought before Meer Jaffier.

There he flung himself on the ground in convulsions of fear, and with

tears and loud cries implored the mercy which he had never shown. Meer

Jaffier hesitated; but his son Meeran, a youth of seventeen, who in

feebleness of brain and savageness of nature greatly resemble the

wretched captive, was implacable. Surajah Dowlah was led into a secret

chamber, to which in a short time the ministers of death were sent. In

this act the English bore no part and Meer Jaffier understood so much

of their feelings that he thought it necessary to apologize to them for

having avenged them on their most malignant enemy.

The shower of wealth now fell copiously on the Company and its servants.

A sum of eight hundred thousand pound sterling, in coined silver, was

sent down the river from Moorshedabad to Fort William. The fleet which

conveyed this treasure consisted of more than a hundred boats, and

performed its triumphal voyage with flags flying and music playing.

Calcutta, which a few months before had been desolate, was now more

prosperous than ever. Trade revived; and the signs of affluence

appeared in every English house. As to Clive, there was no limit to his

acquisitions but his own moderation. The treasury of Bengal was thrown

open to him. There were piled up, after the usage of Indian princes,

immense masses of coin, among which might not seldom he detected the

florins and byzants with which, before any European ship had turned the

Cape of Good Hope, the Venetians purchased the stuffs and spices of the

East. Clive walked between heaps of gold and silver, crowned with rubies

and diamonds, and was at liberty to help himself. He accepted between

two and three hundred thousand pounds.

The pecuniary transactions between Meer Jaffier and Clive were sixteen

years later condemned by the public voice, and severely criticised

in Parliament. They are vehemently defended by Sir John Malcolm. The

accusers of the victorious general represented his gains as the wages

of corruption, or as plunder extorted at the point of the sword from a

helpless ally. The biographer, on the other hand, considers these great

acquisitions as free gifts, honourable alike to the donor and to the

receiver, and compares them to the rewards bestowed by foreign powers on

Marlborough, on Nelson, and on Wellington. It had always, he says, been

customary in the East to give and receive presents; and there was, as

yet, no Act of Parliament positively prohibiting English functionaries

in India from profiting by this Asiatic usage. This reasoning, we

own, does not quite satisfy us. We do not suspect Clive of selling the

interests of his employers or his country; but we cannot acquit him

of having done what, if not in itself evil, was yet of evil example.

Nothing is more clear than that a general ought to be the servant of

his own government, and of no other. It follows that whatever rewards

he receives for his services ought to be given either by his own

government, or with the full knowledge and approbation of his own

government. This rule ought to be strictly maintained even with respect

to the merest bauble, with respect to a cross, a medal, or a yard of

coloured riband. But how can any government be well served, if those who

command its forces are at liberty, without its permission, without its

privity, to accept princely fortunes from its allies? It is idle to say

that there was then no Act of Parliament prohibiting the practice of

taking presents from Asiatic sovereigns. It is not on the Act which was

passed at a later period for the purpose of preventing any such taking

of presents, but on grounds which were valid before that Act was passed,

on grounds of common law and common sense, that we arraign the conduct

of Clive. There is no Act that we know of, prohibiting the Secretary of

State for Foreign Affairs from being in the pay of continental powers,

but it is not the less true that a Secretary who should receive a secret

pension from France would grossly violate his duty, and would deserve

severe punishment. Sir John Malcolm compares the conduct of Clive with

that of the Duke of Wellington. Suppose,--and we beg pardon for putting

such a supposition even for the sake of argument,--that the Duke of

Wellington had, after the campaign of 1815, and while he commanded the

army of occupation in France, privately accepted two hundred thousand

pounds from Lewis the Eighteenth, as a mark of gratitude for the great

services which his Grace had rendered to the House of Bourbon; what

would be thought of such a transaction? Yet the statute-book no more

forbids the taking of presents in Europe now than it forbade the taking

of presents in Asia then.

At the same time, it must be admitted that, in Clive’s case, there were

many extenuating circumstances. He considered himself as the general,

not of the Crown, but of the Company. The Company had, by implication

at least, authorised its agents to enrich themselves by means of

the liberality of the native princes, and by other means still more

objectionable. It was hardly to be expected that the servant should

entertain stricter notions of his duty than were entertained by his

masters. Though Clive did not distinctly acquaint his employers with

what had taken place and request their sanction, he did not, on the

other hand, by studied concealment, show that he was conscious of having

done wrong. On the contrary, he avowed with the greatest openness that

the Nabob’s bounty had raised him to affluence. Lastly, though we think

that he ought not in such a way to have taken anything, we must admit

that he deserves praise for having taken so little. He accepted twenty

lacs of rupees. It would have cost him only a word to make the twenty

forty. It was a very easy exercise of virtue to declaim in England

against Clive’s rapacity; but not one in a hundred of his accusers would

have shown so much self-command in the treasury of Moorshedabad.

Meer Jaffier could be upheld on the throne only by the hand which had

placed him on it. He was not, indeed, a mere boy; nor had he been so

unfortunate as to be born in the purple. He was not therefore quite so

imbecile or quite so depraved as his predecessor had been. But he had

none of the talents or virtues which his post required; and his son

and heir, Meeran, was another Surajah Dowlah. The recent revolution

had unsettled the minds of men. Many chiefs were in open insurrection

against the new Nabob. The viceroy of the rich and powerful province

of Oude, who, like the other viceroys of the Mogul was now in truth an

independent sovereign, menaced Bengal with invasion. Nothing but the

talents and authority of Clive could support the tottering government.

While things were in this state, a ship arrived with despatches which

had been written at the India House before the news of the battle of

Plassey had reached London. The Directors had determined to place the

English settlements in Bengal under a government constituted in the most

cumbrous and absurd manner; and to make the matter worse, no place in

the arrangement was assigned to Clive. The persons who were selected to

form this new government, greatly to their honour, took on themselves

the responsibility of disobeying these preposterous orders, and invited

Clive to exercise the supreme authority. He consented; and it soon

appeared that the servants of the Company had only anticipated the

wishes of their employers. The Directors, on receiving news of Clive’s

brilliant success, instantly appointed him governor of their possessions

in Bengal, with the highest marks of gratitude and esteem. His power was

now boundless, and far surpassed even that which Dupleix had attained in

the south of India. Meer Jaffier regarded him with slavish awe. On one

occasion, the Nabob spoke with severity to a native chief of high rank,

whose followers had been engaged in a brawl with some of the Company’s

sepoys. “Are you yet to learn,” he said, “who that Colonel Clive is, and

in what station God has placed him?” The chief, who, as a famous jester

and an old friend of Meer Jaffier, could venture to take liberties,

answered, “I affront the Colonel! I, who never get up in the morning

without making three low bows to his jackass!” This was hardly an

exaggeration. Europeans and natives were alike at Clive’s feet. The

English regarded him as the only man who could force Meer Jaffier to

keep his engagements with them. Meer Jaffier regarded him as the only

man who could protect the new dynasty against turbulent subjects and

encroaching neighbours.

It is but justice to say that Clive used his power ably and vigorously

for the advantage of his country. He sent forth an expedition against

the tract lying to the north of the Carnatic. In this tract the French

still had the ascendency; and it was important to dislodge them. The

conduct of the enterprise was intrusted to an officer of the name

of Forde, who was then little known, but in whom the keen eye of the

governor had detected military talents of a high order. The success of

the expedition was rapid and splendid.

While a considerable part of the army of Bengal was thus engaged at a

distance, a new and formidable danger menaced the western frontier.

The Great Mogul was a prisoner at Delhi in the hands of a subject. His

eldest son, named Shah Alum, destined to be, during many years, the

sport of adverse fortune, and to be a tool in the hands, first of the

Mahrattas, and then of the English, had fled from the palace of his

father. His birth was still revered in India. Some powerful princes,

the Nabob of Oude in particular, were inclined to favour him. Shah Alum

found it easy to draw to his standard great numbers of the military

adventurers with whom every part of the country swarmed. An army of

forty thousand men, of various races and religions, Mahrattas, Rohillas,

Jauts, and Afghans, were speedily assembled round him; and he formed the

design of overthrowing the upstart whom the English had elevated to a

throne, and of establishing his own authority throughout Bengal, Orissa,

and Bahar.

Meer Jaffier’s terror was extreme; and the only expedient which occurred

to him was to purchase, by the payment of a large sum of money, an

accommodation with Shah Alum. This expedient had been repeatedly

employed by those who, before him, had ruled the rich and unwarlike

provinces near the mouth of the Ganges. But Clive treated the suggestion

with a scorn worthy of his strong sense and dauntless courage. “If you

do this,” he wrote, “you will have the Nabob of Oude, the Mahrattas, and

many more, come from all parts of the confines of your country, who will

bully you out of money till you have none left in your treasury. I beg

your Excellency will rely on the fidelity of the English, and of those

troops which are attached to you.” He wrote in a similar strain to the

governor of Patna, a brave native soldier whom he highly esteemed. “Come

to no terms; defend your city to the last. Rest assured that the English

are staunch and firm friends, and that they never desert a cause in

which they have once taken a part.”

He kept his word. Shah Alum had invested Patna, and was on the point of

proceeding to storm, when he learned that the Colonel was advancing by

forced marches. The whole army which was approaching consisted of only

four hundred and fifty Europeans and two thousand five hundred sepoys.

But Clive and his Englishmen were now objects of dread over all the

East. As soon as his advance guard appeared, the besiegers fled before

him. A few French adventurers who were about the person of the prince

advised him to try the chance of battle; but in vain. In a few days this

great army, which had been regarded with so much uneasiness by the court

of Moorshedabad, melted away before the mere terror of the British name.

The conqueror returned in triumph to Fort William. The joy of Meer

Jaffier was as unbounded as his fears had been, and led him to bestow

on his preserver a princely token of gratitude. The quit-rent which

the East India Company were bound to pay to the Nabob for the extensive

lands held by them to the south of Calcutta amounted to near thirty

thousand pounds sterling a year. The whole of this splendid estate,

sufficient to support with dignity the highest rank of the British

peerage, was now conferred on Clive for life.

This present we think Clive justified in accepting. It was a present

which, from its very nature, could be no secret. In fact, the Company

itself was his tenant, and, by its acquiescence, signified its

approbation of Meer Jaffier’s grant.

But the gratitude of Meer Jaffier did not last long. He had for some

time felt that the powerful ally who had set him up, might pull him

down, and had been looking round for support against the formidable

strength by which he had himself been hitherto supported. He knew that

it would be impossible to find among the natives of India any force

which would look the Colonel’s little army in the face. The French power

in Bengal was extinct. But the fame of the Dutch had anciently been

great in the Eastern seas; and it was not yet distinctly known in

Asia how much the power of Holland had declined in Europe. Secret

communications passed between the court of Moorshedabad and the Dutch

factory at Chinsurah; and urgent letters were sent from Chinsurah,

exhorting the government of Batavia to fit out an expedition which might

balance the power of the English in Bengal. The authorities of Batavia,

eager to extend the influence of their country, and still more eager to

obtain for themselves a share of the wealth which had recently raised

so many English adventurers to opulence, equipped a powerful armament.

Seven large ships from Java arrived unexpectedly in the Hoogley. The

military force on board amounted to fifteen hundred men, of whom about

one half were Europeans. The enterprise was well timed. Clive had sent

such large detachments to oppose the French in the Carnatic that his

army was now inferior in number to that of the Dutch. He knew that Meer

Jaffier secretly favoured the invaders. He knew that he took on himself

a serious responsibility if he attacked the forces of a friendly power;

that the English ministers could not wish to see a war with Holland

added to that in which they were already engaged with France; that they

might disavow his acts; that they might punish him. He had recently

remitted a great part of his fortune to Europe, through the Dutch East

India Company; and he had therefore a strong interest in avoiding any

quarrel. But he was satisfied that, if he suffered the Batavian armament

to pass up the river and to join the garrison of Chinsurah, Meer Jaffier

would throw himself into the arms of these new allies, and that the

English ascendency in Bengal would be exposed to most serious danger.

He took his resolution with characteristic boldness, and was most ably

seconded by his officers, particularly by Colonel Forde, to whom the

most important part of the operations was intrusted. The Dutch attempted

to force a passage. The English encountered them both by land and water.

On both elements the enemy had a great superiority of force. On both

they were signally defeated. Their ships were taken. Their troops were

put to a total rout. Almost all the European soldiers, who constituted

the main strength of the invading army, were killed or taken. The

conquerors sat down before Chinsurah; and the chiefs of that settlement,

now thoroughly humbled, consented to the terms which Clive dictated.

They engaged to build no fortifications, and to raise no troops beyond

a small force necessary for the police of their factories; and it was

distinctly provided that any violation of these covenants should be

punished with instant expulsion from Bengal.

Three months after this great victory, Clive sailed for England. At

home, honours and rewards awaited him, not indeed equal to his claims or

to his ambition, but still such as, when his age, his rank in the army,

and his original place in society are considered, must be pronounced

rare and splendid. He was raised to the Irish peerage, and encouraged

to expect an English title. George the Third, who had just ascended

the throne, received him with great distinction. The ministers paid him

marked attention; and Pitt, whose influence in the House of Commons and

in the country was unbounded, was eager to mark his regard for one whose

exploits had contributed so much to the lustre of that memorable

period. The great orator had already in Parliament described Clive as a

heaven-born general, as a man who, bred to the labour of the desk, had

displayed a military genius which might excite the admiration of the

King of Prussia. There were then no reporters in the gallery; but these

words, emphatically spoken by the first statesman of the age, had passed

from mouth to mouth, had been transmitted to Clive in Bengal, and had

greatly delighted and flattered him. Indeed, since the death of Wolfe,

Clive was the only English general of whom his countrymen had

much reason to be proud. The Duke of Cumberland had been generally

unfortunate; and his single victory, having been gained over his

countrymen and used with merciless severity, had been more fatal to his

popularity than his many defeats. Conway, versed in the learning of

his profession, and personally courageous, wanted vigour and capacity.

Granby, honest, generous, and brave as a lion, had neither science nor

genius. Sackville, inferior in knowledge and abilities to none of his

contemporaries, had incurred, unjustly as we believe, the imputation

most fatal to the character of a soldier. It was under the command of

a foreign general that the British had triumphed at Minden and Warburg.

The people therefore, as was natural, greeted with pride and delight

a captain of their own, whose native courage and self-taught skill had

placed him on a level with the great tacticians of Germany.

The wealth of Clive was such as enabled him to vie with the first

grandees of England. There remains proof that he had remitted more

than a hundred and eighty thousand pounds through the Dutch East

India Company, and more than forty thousand pounds through the English

Company. The amount which he had sent home through private houses was

also considerable. He had invested great sums in jewels, then a very

common mode of remittance from India. His purchases of diamonds, at

Madras alone, amounted to twenty-five thousand pounds. Besides a great

mass of ready money, he had his Indian estate, valued by himself at

twenty-seven thousand a year. His whole annual income, in the opinion

of Sir John Malcolm, who is desirous to state it as low as possible,

exceeded forty thousand pounds; and incomes of forty thousand pounds at

the time of the accession of George the Third were at least as rare as

incomes of a hundred thousand pounds now. We may safely affirm that

no Englishman who started with nothing has ever, in any line of life,

created such a fortune at the early age of thirty-four.

It would be unjust not to add that Clive made a creditable use of his

riches. As soon as the battle of Plassey had laid the foundation of his

fortune, he sent ten thousand pounds to his sisters, bestowed as much

more on other poor friends and relations, ordered his agent to pay eight

hundred a year to his parents, and to insist that they should keep a

carriage, and settled five hundred a year on his old commander Lawrence,

whose means were very slender. The whole sum which Clive expended in

this manner may be calculated at fifty thousand pounds.

He now set himself to cultivate Parliamentary interest. His purchases

of land seem to have been made in a great measure with that view, and,

after the general election of 1761, he found himself in the House of

Commons, at the head of a body of dependants whose support must have

been important to any administration. In English politics, however, he

did not take a prominent part. His first attachments, as we have seen,

were to Mr. Fox; at a later period he was attracted by the genius and

success of Mr. Pitt; but finally he connected himself in the closest

manner with George Grenville. Early in the session Of 1764, when the

illegal and impolitic persecution of that worthless demagogue Wilkes had

strongly excited the public mind, the town was amused by an anecdote,

which we have seen in some unpublished memoirs of Horace Walpole. Old

Mr. Richard Clive, who, since his son’s elevation, had been introduced

into society for which his former habits had not well fitted him,

presented himself at the levee. The King asked him where Lord Clive was.

“He will be in town very soon,” said the old gentleman, loud enough to

be heard by the whole circle, “and then your Majesty will have another

vote.”

But in truth all Clive’s views were directed towards the country in

which he had so eminently distinguished himself as a soldier and a

statesman; and it was by considerations relating to India that his

conduct as a public man in England was regulated. The power of the

Company, though an anomaly, is in our time, we are firmly persuaded, a

beneficial anomaly. In the time of Clive, it was not merely an anomaly,

but a nuisance. There was no Board of Control. The Directors were for

the most part mere traders, ignorant of general politics, ignorant of

the peculiarities of the empire which had strangely become subject to

them. The Court of Proprietors, wherever it chose to interfere, was able

to have its way. That Court was more numerous, as well as more powerful,

than at present; for then every share of five hundred pounds conferred

a vote. The meetings were large, stormy, even riotous, the debates

indecently virulent. All the turbulence of a Westminster election,

all the trickery and corruption of a Grampound election, disgraced the

proceedings of this assembly on questions of the most solemn importance.

Fictitious votes were manufactured on a gigantic scale. Clive himself

laid out a hundred thousand pounds in the purchase of stock, which he

then divided among nominal proprietors on whom he could depend, and

whom he brought down in his train to every discussion and every ballot.

Others did the same, though not to quite so enormous an extent.

The interest taken by the public of England in Indian questions was then

far greater than at present, and the reason is obvious. At present a

writer enters the service young; he climbs slowly; he is fortunate

if, at forty-five, he can return to his country with an annuity of a

thousand a year, and with savings amounting to thirty thousand pounds. A

great quantity of wealth is made by English functionaries in India; but

no single functionary makes a very large fortune, and what is made is

slowly, hardly, and honestly earned. Only four or five high political

offices are reserved for public men from England. The residencies, the

secretaryships, the seats in the boards of revenue and in the Sudder

courts are all filled by men who have given the best years of life to

the service of the Company; nor can any talents however splendid or any

connections however powerful obtain those lucrative posts for any person

who has not entered by the regular door, and mounted by the regular

gradations. Seventy years ago, less money was brought home from the East

than in our time. But it was divided among a very much smaller number

of persons, and immense sums were often accumulated in a few months. Any

Englishman, whatever his age might be, might hope to be one of the lucky

emigrants. If he made a good speech in Leadenhall Street, or published a

clever pamphlet in defence of the chairman, he might be sent out in the

Company’s service, and might return in three or four years as rich as

Pigot or as Clive. Thus the India House was a lottery-office, which

invited everybody to take a chance, and held out ducal fortunes as the

prizes destined for the lucky few. As soon as it was known that there

was a part of the world where a lieutenant-colonel had one morning

received as a present an estate as large as that of the Earl of Bath or

the Marquess of Rockingham, and where it seemed that such a trifle as

ten or twenty thousand pounds was to be had by any British functionary

for the asking, society began to exhibit all the symptoms of the South

Sea year, a feverish excitement, an ungovernable impatience to be rich,

a contempt for slow, sure, and moderate gains.

At the head of the preponderating party in the India House, had long

stood a powerful, able, and ambitious director of the name of Sulivan.

He had conceived a strong jealousy of Clive, and remembered with

bitterness the audacity with which the late governor of Bengal had

repeatedly set at nought the authority of the distant Directors of the

Company. An apparent reconciliation took place after Clive’s arrival;

but enmity remained deeply rooted in the hearts of both. The whole body

of Directors was then chosen annually. At the election of 1763, Clive

attempted to break down the power of the dominant faction. The contest

was carried on with a violence which he describes as tremendous. Sulivan

was victorious, and hastened to take his revenge. The grant of rent

which Clive had received from Meer Jaffier was, in the opinion of

the best English lawyers, valid. It had been made by exactly the same

authority from which the Company had received their chief possessions

in Bengal, and the Company had long acquiesced in it. The Directors,

however, most unjustly determined to confiscate it, and Clive was forced

to file a bill in chancery against them.

But a great and sudden turn in affairs was at hand. Every ship from

Bengal had for some time brought alarming tidings. The internal

misgovernment of the province had reached such a point that it could

go no further. What, indeed, was to be expected from a body of public

servants exposed to temptation such that, as Clive once said, flesh and

blood could not bear it, armed with irresistible power, and responsible

only to the corrupt, turbulent, distracted, ill-informed Company,

situated at such a distance that the average interval between the

sending of a despatch and the receipt of an answer was above a year and

a half? Accordingly, during the five years which followed the departure

of Clive from Bengal, the misgovernment of the English was carried to

a point such as seems hardly compatible with the very existence of

society. The Roman proconsul, who, in a year or two, squeezed out of a

province the means of rearing marble palaces and baths on the shores

of Campania, of drinking from amber, of feasting on singing birds, of

exhibiting armies of gladiators and flocks of camelopards; the Spanish

viceroy, who, leaving behind him the curses of Mexico or Lima, entered

Madrid with a long train of gilded coaches, and of sumpter-horses

trapped and shod with silver, were now outdone. Cruelty, indeed,

properly so called, was not among the vices of the servants of the

Company. But cruelty itself could hardly have produced greater evils

than sprang from their unprincipled eagerness to be rich. They pulled

down their creature, Meer Jaffier. They set up in his place another

Nabob, named Meer Cossim. But Meer Cossim had parts and a will; and,

though sufficiently inclined to oppress his subjects himself, he could

not bear to see them ground to the dust by oppressions which yielded

him no profit, nay, which destroyed his revenue in the very source. The

English accordingly pulled down Meer Cossim, and set up Meer Jaffier

again; and Meer Cossim, after revenging himself by a massacre surpassing

in atrocity that of the Black Hole, fled to the dominions of the Nabob

of Oude. At every one of these revolutions, the new prince divided among

his foreign masters whatever could be scraped together in the treasury

of his fallen predecessor. The immense population of his dominions was

given up as a prey to those who had made him a sovereign, and who

could unmake him. The servants of the Company obtained, not for their

employers, but for themselves, a monopoly of almost the whole internal

trade. They forced the natives to buy dear and to sell cheap. They

insulted with impunity the tribunals, the police, and the fiscal

authorities of the country. They covered with their protection a set of

native dependants who ranged through the provinces, spreading desolation

and terror wherever they appeared. Every servant of a British factor was

armed with all the power of his master; and his master was armed with

all the power of the Company. Enormous fortunes were thus rapidly

accumulated at Calcutta, while thirty millions of human beings were

reduced to the extremity of wretchedness. They had been accustomed to

live under tyranny, but never under tyranny like this. They found the

little finger of the Company thicker than the loins of Surajah Dowlah.

Under their old masters they had at least one resource: when the evil

became insupportable, the people rose and pulled down the government.

But the English government was not to be so shaken off. That government,

oppressive as the most oppressive form of barbarian despotism,

was strong with all the strength of civilisation. It resembled the

government of evil Genii, rather than the government of human tyrants.

Even despair could not inspire the soft Bengalee with courage to

confront men of English breed, the hereditary nobility of mankind, whose

skill and valour had so often triumphed in spite of tenfold odds. The

unhappy race never attempted resistance. Sometimes they submitted in

patient misery. Sometimes they fled from the white man, as their fathers

had been used to fly from the Mahratta; and the palanquin of the English

traveller was often carried through silent villages and towns, which the

report of his approach had made desolate.

The foreign lords of Bengal were naturally objects of hatred to all the

neighbouring powers; and to all the haughty race presented a dauntless

front. The English armies, everywhere outnumbered, were everywhere

victorious. A succession of commanders, formed in the school of Clive,

still maintained the fame of their country. “It must be acknowledged,”

says the Mussulman historian of those times, “that this nation’s

presence of mind, firmness of temper, and undaunted bravery, are past

all question. They join the most resolute courage to the most cautious

prudence; nor have they their equals in the art of ranging themselves

in battle array and fighting in order. If to so many military

qualifications they knew how to join the arts of government, if they

exerted as much ingenuity and solicitude in relieving the people of God,

as they do in whatever concerns their military affairs, no nation in

the world would be preferable to them, or worthier of command. But the

people under their dominion groan everywhere, and are reduced to

poverty and distress. Oh God! come to the assistance of thine afflicted

servants, and deliver them from the oppressions which they suffer.”

It was impossible, however, that even the military establishment should

long continue exempt from the vices which pervaded every other part

of the government. Rapacity, luxury, and the spirit of insubordination

spread from the civil service to the officers of the army, and from the

officers to the soldiers. The evil continued to grow till every

mess-room became the seat of conspiracy and cabal, and till the sepoys

could be kept in order only by wholesale executions.

At length the state of things in Bengal began to excite uneasiness at

home. A succession of revolutions; a disorganised administration; the

natives pillaged, yet the Company not enriched; every fleet bringing

back fortunate adventurers who were able to purchase manors and to

build stately dwellings, yet bringing back also alarming accounts of

the financial prospects of the government; war on the frontiers;

disaffection in the army; the national character disgraced by excesses

resembling those of Verres and Pizarro; such was the spectacle which

dismayed those who were conversant with Indian affairs. The general

cry was that Clive, and Clive alone, could save the empire which he had

founded.

This feeling manifested itself in the strongest manner at a very full

General Court of Proprietors. Men of all parties, forgetting their feuds

and trembling for their dividends, exclaimed that Clive was the man

whom the crisis required, that the oppressive proceedings which had been

adopted respecting his estate ought to be dropped, and that he ought to

be entreated to return to India.

Clive rose. As to his estate, he said, he would make such propositions

to the Directors, as would, he trusted, lead to an amicable settlement.

But there was a still greater difficulty. It was proper to tell them

that he never would undertake the government of Bengal while his enemy

Sulivan was chairman of the Company. The tumult was violent. Sulivan

could scarcely obtain a hearing. An overwhelming majority of the

assembly was on Clive’s side. Sulivan wished to try the result of a

ballot. But, according to the bye-laws of the Company, there can be no

ballot except on a requisition signed by nine proprietors; and, though

hundreds were present, nine persons could not be found to set their

hands to such a requisition.

Clive was in consequence nominated Governor and Commander-in-chief of

the British possessions in Bengal. But he adhered to his declaration,

and refused to enter on his office till the event of the next election

of Directors should be known. The contest was obstinate; but Clive

triumphed. Sulivan, lately absolute master of the India House, was

within a vote of losing his own seat; and both the chairman and the

deputy-chairman were friends of the new governor.

Such were the circumstances under which Lord Clive sailed for the third

and last time to India. In May 1765, he reached Calcutta; and he found

the whole machine of government even more fearfully disorganised than he

had anticipated. Meer Jaffier, who had some time before lost his eldest

son Meeran, had died while Clive was on his voyage out. The English

functionaries at Calcutta had already received from home strict orders

not to accept presents from the native princes. But, eager for gain,

and unaccustomed to respect the commands of their distant, ignorant, and

negligent masters, they again set up the throne of Bengal to sale. About

one hundred and forty thousand pounds sterling was distributed among

nine of the most powerful servants of the Company; and, in consideration

of this bribe, an infant son of the deceased Nabob was placed on the

seat of his father. The news of the ignominious bargain met Clive on his

arrival. In a private letter, written immediately after his landing,

to an intimate friend, he poured out his feelings in language, which,

proceeding from a man so daring, so resolute, and so little given

to theatrical display of sentiment, seems to us singularly touching.

“Alas!” he says, “how is the English name sunk! I could not avoid paying

the tribute of a few tears to the departed and lost fame of the British

nation--irrecoverably so, I fear. However, I do declare, by that

great Being who is the searcher of all hearts, and to whom we must be

accountable if there be a hereafter, that I am come out with a mind

superior to all corruption, and that I am determined to destroy these

great and growing evils, or perish in the attempt.”

The Council met, and Clive stated to them his full determination to make

a thorough reform, and to use for that purpose the whole of the

ample authority, civil and military, which had been confided to him.

Johnstone, one of the boldest and worst men in the assembly, made

some show of opposition. Clive interrupted him, and haughtily demanded

whether he meant to question the power of the new government. Johnstone

was cowed, and disclaimed any such intention. All the faces round

the board grew long and pale; and not another syllable of dissent was

uttered.

Clive redeemed his pledge. He remained in India about a year and a half;

and in that short time effected one of the most extensive, difficult,

and salutary reforms that ever was accomplished by any statesman. This

was the part of his life on which he afterwards looked back with most

pride. He had it in his power to triple his already splendid fortune;

to connive at abuses while pretending to remove them; to conciliate the

goodwill of all the English in Bengal, by giving up to their rapacity

a helpless and timid race, who knew not where lay the island which sent

forth their oppressors, and whose complaints had little chance of being

heard across fifteen thousand miles of ocean. He knew that if he applied

himself in earnest to the work of reformation, he should raise every bad

passion in arms against him. He knew how unscrupulous, how implacable,

would be the hatred of those ravenous adventurers who, having counted

on accumulating in a few months fortunes sufficient to support peerages,

should find all their hopes frustrated. But he had chosen the good part;

and he called up all the force of his mind for a battle far harder

than that of Plassey. At first success seemed hopeless; but soon all

obstacles began to bend before that iron courage and that vehement will.

The receiving of presents from the natives was rigidly prohibited. The

private trade of the servants of the Company was put down. The whole

settlement seemed to be set, as one man, against these measures. But the

inexorable governor declared that, if he could not find support at Fort

William, he would procure it elsewhere, and sent for some civil servants

from Madras to assist him in carrying on the administration. The most

factious of his opponents he turned out of their offices. The rest

submitted to what was inevitable; and in a very short time all

resistance was quelled.

But Clive was far too wise a man not to see that the recent abuses were

partly to be ascribed to a cause which could not fail to produce similar

abuses, as soon as the pressure of his strong hand was withdrawn. The

Company had followed a mistaken policy with respect to the remuneration

of its servants. The salaries were too low to afford even those

indulgences which are necessary to the health and comfort of Europeans

in a tropical climate. To lay by a rupee from such scanty pay was

impossible. It could not be supposed that men of even average abilities

would consent to pass the best years of life in exile, under a burning

sun, for no other consideration than these stinted wages. It had

accordingly been understood, from a very early period, that the

Company’s agents were at liberty to enrich themselves by their private

trade. This practice had been seriously injurious to the commercial

interests of the corporation. That very intelligent observer, Sir Thomas

Roe, in the reign of James the First, strongly urged the Directors to

apply a remedy to the abuse. “Absolutely prohibit the private trade,”

said he; “for your business will be better done. I know this is harsh.

Men profess they come not for bare wages. But you will take away this

plea if you give great wages to their content; and then you know what

you part from.”

In spite of this excellent advice, the Company adhered the old system,

paid low salaries, and connived at the indirect gains of the agents. The

pay of a member of Council was only three hundred pounds a year. Yet it

was notorious that such a functionary could not live in India for less

than ten times that sum; and it could not be expected that he would be

content to live even handsomely in India without laying up something

against the time of his return to England. This system, before the

conquest of Bengal, might affect the amount of the dividends payable

to the proprietors, but could do little harm in any other way. But

the Company was now a ruling body. Its servants might still be called

factors, junior merchants, senior merchants. But they were in truth

proconsuls, propraetors, procurators, of extensive regions. They

had immense power. Their regular pay was universally admitted to be

insufficient. They were, by the ancient usage of the service, and by the

implied permission of their employers, warranted in enriching themselves

by indirect means; and this had been the origin of the frightful

oppression and corruption which had desolated Bengal. Clive saw clearly

that it was absurd to give men power, and to require them to live in

penury. He justly concluded that no reform could be effectual which

should not be coupled with a plan for liberally remunerating the civil

servants of the Company. The Directors, he knew, were not disposed to

sanction any increase of the salaries out of their own treasury. The

only course which remained open to the governor was one which exposed

him to much misrepresentation, but which we think him fully justified in

adopting. He appropriated to the support of the service the monopoly of

salt, which has formed, down to our own time, a principal head of Indian

revenue; and he divided the proceeds according to a scale which seems to

have been not unreasonably fixed. He was in consequence accused by

his enemies, and has been accused by historians, of disobeying his

instructions, of violating his promises, of authorising that very abuse

which it was his special mission to destroy, namely, the trade of the

Company’s servants. But every discerning and impartial judge will admit,

that there was really nothing in common between the system which he set

up and that which he was sent to destroy. The monopoly of salt had been

a source of revenue to the Government of India before Clive was born. It

continued to be so long after his death. The civil servants were clearly

entitled to a maintenance out of the revenue; and all that Clive did was

to charge a particular portion of the revenue with their maintenance.

He thus, while he put an end to the practices by which gigantic fortunes

had been rapidly accumulated, gave to every British functionary employed

in the East the means of slowly, but surely, acquiring a competence.

Yet, such is the injustice of mankind, that none of those acts which

are the real stains of his life has drawn on him so much obloquy as this

measure, which was in truth a reform necessary to the success of all his

other reforms.

He had quelled the opposition of the civil servants: that of the army

was more formidable. Some of the retrenchments which had been ordered

by the Directors affected the interests of the military service; and a

storm arose, such as even Caesar would not willingly have faced. It was

no light thing to encounter the resistance of those who held the power

of the sword, in a country governed only by the sword. Two hundred

English officers engaged in a conspiracy against the government, and

determined to resign their commissions on the same day, not doubting

that Clive would grant any terms, rather than see the army, on which

alone the British empire in the East rested, left without commanders.

They little knew the unconquerable spirit with which they had to deal.

Clive had still a few officers round his person on whom he could rely.

He sent to Fort St George for a fresh supply. He gave commissions even

to mercantile agents who were disposed to support him at this crisis;

and he sent orders that every officer who resigned should be

instantly brought up to Calcutta. The conspirators found that they had

miscalculated. The governor was inexorable. The troops were steady. The

sepoys, over whom Clive had always possessed extraordinary influence,

stood by him with unshaken fidelity. The leaders in the plot were

arrested, tried, and cashiered. The rest, humbled and dispirited, begged

to be permitted to withdraw their resignations. Many of them declared

their repentance even with tears. The younger offenders Clive treated

with lenity. To the ringleaders he was inflexibly severe; but his

severity was pure from all taint of private malevolence. While he

sternly upheld the just authority of his office, he passed by personal

insults and injuries with magnanimous disdain. One of the conspirators

was accused of having planned the assassination of the governor; but

Clive would not listen to the charge. “The officers,” he said, “are

Englishmen, not assassins.”

While he reformed the civil service and established his authority over

the army, he was equally successful in his foreign policy. His landing

on Indian ground was the signal for immediate peace. The Nabob of Oude,

with a large army, lay at that time on the frontier of Bahar. He had

been joined by many Afghans and Mahrattas, and there was no small reason

to expect a general coalition of all the native powers against the

English. But the name of Clive quelled in an instant all opposition.

The enemy implored peace in the humblest language, and submitted to such

terms as the new governor chose to dictate.

At the same time, the Government of Bengal was placed on a new footing.

The power of the English in that province had hitherto been altogether

undefined. It was unknown to the ancient constitution of the empire, and

it had been ascertained by no compact. It resembled the power which, in

the last decrepitude of the Western Empire, was exercised over Italy by

the great chiefs of foreign mercenaries, the Ricimers and the

Odoacers, who put up and pulled down at their pleasure a succession of

insignificant princes, dignified with the names of Caesar and Augustus.

But as in Italy, so in India, the warlike strangers at length found it

expedient to give to a domination which had been established by arms the

sanction of law and ancient prescription. Theodoric thought it politic

to obtain from the distant Court of Byzantium a commission appointing

him ruler of Italy; and Clive, in the same manner, applied to the Court

of Delhi for a formal grant of the powers of which he already possessed

the reality. The Mogul was absolutely helpless; and, though he murmured,

had reason to be well pleased that the English were disposed to give

solid rupees, which he never could have extorted from them, in exchange

for a few Persian characters which cost him nothing. A bargain was

speedily struck; and the titular sovereign of Hindostan issued a

warrant, empowering the Company to collect and administer the revenues

of Bengal, Orissa, and Bahar.

There was still a Nabob, who stood to the British authorities in the

same relation in which the last drivelling Chilperics and Childerics

of the Merovingian line stood to their able and vigorous Mayors of the

Palace, to Charles Martel, and to Pepin. At one time Clive had almost

made up his mind to discard this phantom altogether; but he afterwards

thought that it might be convenient still to use the name of the Nabob,

particularly in dealings with other European nations. The French, the

Dutch, and the Danes, would, he conceived, submit far more readily to

the authority of the native Prince, whom they had always been accustomed

to respect, than to that of a rival trading corporation. This policy

may, at that time, have been judicious. But the pretence was soon found

to be too flimsy to impose on anybody; and it was altogether laid aside.

The heir of Meer Jaffier still resides at Moorshedabad, the ancient

capital of his house, still bears the title of Nabob, is still accosted

by the English as “Your Highness,” and is still suffered to retain a

portion of the regal state which surrounded his ancestors. A pension of

a hundred and sixty thousand pounds a year is annually paid to him by

the government. His carriage is surrounded by guards, and preceded by

attendants with silver maces. His person and his dwelling are exempted

from the ordinary authority of the ministers of justice. But he has not

the smallest share of political power, and is, in fact, only a noble and

wealthy subject of the Company.

It would have been easy for Clive, during his second administration in

Bengal, to accumulate riches such as no subject in Europe possessed. He

might indeed, without subjecting the rich inhabitants of the province

to any pressure beyond that to which their mildest rulers had accustomed

them, have received presents to the amount of three hundred thousand

pounds a year. The neighbouring princes would gladly have paid any price

for his favour. But he appears to have strictly adhered to the rules

which he had laid down for the guidance of others. The Rajah of Benares

offered him diamonds of great value. The Nabob of Oude pressed him

to accept a large sum of money and a casket of costly jewels. Clive

courteously, but peremptorily refused; and it should be observed that he

made no merit of his refusal, and that the facts did not come to light

till after his death. He kept an exact account of his salary, of his

share of the profits accruing from the trade in salt, and of those

presents which, according to the fashion of the East, it would be

churlish to refuse. Out of the sum arising from these resources, he

defrayed the expenses of his situation. The surplus he divided among

a few attached friends who had accompanied him to India. He always

boasted, and as far as we can judge, he boasted with truth, that this

last administration diminished instead of increasing his fortune.

One large sum indeed he accepted. Meer Jaffier had left him by will

above sixty thousand pounds sterling in specie and jewels: and the rules

which had been recently laid down extended only to presents from the

living, and did not affect legacies from the dead. Clive took the money,

but not for himself. He made the whole over to the Company, in trust for

officers and soldiers invalided in their service. The fund which still

bears his name owes its origin to this princely donation.

After a stay of eighteen months, the state of his health made it

necessary for him to return to Europe. At the close of January 1767,

he quitted for the last time the country, on whose destinies he had

exercised so mighty an influence.

His second return from Bengal was not, like his first, greeted by the

acclamations of his countrymen. Numerous causes were already at work

which embittered the remaining years of his life, and hurried him to an

untimely grave. His old enemies at the India House were still powerful

and active; and they had been reinforced by a large band of allies

whose violence far exceeded their own. The whole crew of pilferers

and oppressors from whom he had rescued Bengal persecuted him with the

implacable rancour which belongs to such abject natures. Many of them

even invested their property in India stock, merely that they might

be better able to annoy the man whose firmness had set bounds to their

rapacity. Lying newspapers were set up for no purpose but to abuse him;

and the temper of the public mind was then such, that these arts, which

under ordinary circumstances would have been ineffectual against truth

and merit produced an extraordinary impression.

The great events which had taken place in India had called into

existence a new class of Englishmen, to whom their countrymen gave the

name of Nabobs. These persons had generally sprung from families neither

ancient nor opulent; they had generally been sent at an early age to the

East; and they had there acquired large fortunes, which they had brought

back to their native land. It was natural that, not having had much

opportunity of mixing with the best society, they should exhibit some

of the awkwardness and some of the pomposity of upstarts. It was natural

that, during their sojourn in Asia, they should have acquired some

tastes and habits surprising, if not disgusting, to persons who

never had quitted Europe. It was natural that, having enjoyed great

consideration in the East, they should not be disposed to sink into

obscurity at home; and as they had money, and had not birth or high

connection, it was natural that they should display a little obtrusively

the single advantage which they possessed. Wherever they settled there

was a kind of feud between them and the old nobility and gentry,

similar to that which raged in France between the farmer-general and the

marquess. This enmity to the aristocracy long continued to distinguish

the servants of the Company. More than twenty years after the time of

which we are now speaking, Burke pronounced that among the Jacobins

might be reckoned “the East Indians almost to a man, who cannot bear to

find that their present importance does not bear a proportion to their

wealth.”

The Nabobs soon became a most unpopular class of men. Some of them had

in the East displayed eminent talents, and rendered great services to

the state; but at home their talents were not shown to advantage, and

their services were little known. That they had sprung from obscurity,

that they had acquired great wealth, that they exhibited it insolently,

that they spent it extravagantly, that they raised the price of

everything in their neighbourhood, from fresh eggs to rotten boroughs,

that their liveries outshone those of dukes, that their coaches were

finer than that of the Lord Mayor, that the examples of their large and

ill-governed households corrupted half the servants in the country, that

some of them, with all their magnificence, could not catch the tone of

good society, but, in spite of the stud and the crowd of menials, of the

plate and the Dresden china, of the venison and the Burgundy, were still

low men; these were things which excited, both in the class from which

they had sprung and in the class into which they attempted to force

themselves, the bitter aversion which is the effect of mingled envy

and contempt. But when it was also rumoured that the fortune which had

enabled its possessor to eclipse the Lord Lieutenant on the race-ground,

or to carry the county against the head of a house as old as Domesday

Book, had been accumulated by violating public faith, by deposing

legitimate princes, by reducing whole provinces to beggary, all the

higher and better as well as all the low and evil parts of human nature

were stirred against the wretch who had obtained by guilt and dishonour

the riches which he now lavished with arrogant and inelegant profusion.

The unfortunate Nabob seemed to be made up of those foibles against

which comedy has pointed the most merciless ridicule, and of those

crimes which have thrown the deepest gloom over tragedy, of Turcaret

and Nero, of Monsieur Jourdain and Richard the Third. A tempest of

execration and derision, such as can be compared only to that outbreak

of public feeling against the Puritans which took place at the time of

the Restoration, burst on the servants of the Company. The humane man

was horror-struck at the way in which they had got their money, the

thrifty man at the way in which they spent it. The Dilettante sneered at

their want of taste. The Maccaroni black-balled them as vulgar

fellows. Writers the most unlike in sentiment and style, Methodists and

libertines, philosophers and buffoons, were for once on the same side.

It is hardly too much to say that, during a space of about thirty years,

the whole lighter literature of England was coloured by the feelings

which we have described. Foote brought on the stage an Anglo-Indian

chief, dissolute, ungenerous, and tyrannical, ashamed of the humble

friends of his youth, hating the aristocracy, yet childishly eager to be

numbered among them, squandering his wealth on pandars and flatterers,

tricking out his chairmen with the most costly hot-house flowers, and

astounding the ignorant with jargon about rupees, lacs, and jaghires.

Mackenzie, with more delicate humour, depicted a plain country family

raised by the Indian acquisitions of one of its members to sudden

opulence, and exciting derision by an awkward mimicry of the manners of

the great. Cowper, in that lofty expostulation which glows with the very

spirit of the Hebrew poets, placed the oppression of India foremost in

the list of those national crimes for which God had punished England

with years of disastrous war, with discomfiture in her own seas, and

with the loss of her transatlantic empire. If any of our readers

will take the trouble to search in the dusty recesses of circulating

libraries for some novel published sixty years ago, the chance is that

the villain or sub-villain of the story will prove to be a savage old

Nabob, with an immense fortune, a tawny complexion, a bad liver, and a

worse heart.

Such, as far as we can now judge, was the feeling of the country

respecting Nabobs in general. And Clive was eminently the Nabob,

the ablest, the most celebrated, the highest in rank, the highest in

fortune, of all the fraternity. His wealth was exhibited in a manner

which could not fail to excite odium. He lived with great magnificence

in Berkeley Square. He reared one palace in Shropshire and another

at Claremont. His parliamentary influence might vie with that of the

greatest families. But in all this splendour and power envy found

something to sneer at. On some of his relations wealth and dignity seem

to have sat as awkwardly as on Mackenzie’s Margery Mushroom. Nor was he

himself, with all his great qualities, free from those weaknesses which

the satirists of that age represented as characteristic of his whole

class. In the field, indeed, his habits were remarkably simple. He was

constantly on horseback, was never seen but in his uniform, never wore

silk, never entered a palanquin, and was content with the plainest fare.

But when he was no longer at the head of an army, he laid aside this

Spartan temperance for the ostentatious luxury of a Sybarite. Though his

person was ungraceful, and though his harsh features were redeemed

from vulgar ugliness only by their stern, dauntless, and commanding

expression, he was fond of rich and gay clothing, and replenished his

wardrobe with absurd profusion. Sir John Malcolm gives us a letter

worthy of Sir Matthew Mite, in which Clive orders “two hundred shirts,

the best and finest that can be got for love or money.” A few follies

of this description, grossly exaggerated by report, produced an

unfavourable impression on the public mind. But this was not the worst.

Black stories, of which the greater part were pure inventions, were

circulated touching his conduct in the East. He had to bear the whole

odium, not only of those bad acts to which he had once or twice stooped,

but of all the bad acts of all the English in India, of bad acts

committed when he was absent, nay, of bad acts which he had manfully

opposed and severely punished. The very abuses against which he had

waged an honest, resolute, and successful war were laid to his account.

He was, in fact, regarded as the personification of all the vices and

weaknesses which the public, with or without reason, ascribed to the

English adventurers in Asia. We have ourselves heard old men, who knew

nothing of his history, but who still retained the prejudices conceived

in their youth, talk of him as an incarnate fiend. Johnson always

held this language. Brown, whom Clive employed to lay out his pleasure

grounds, was amazed to see in the house of his noble employer a chest

which had once been filled with gold from the treasury of Moorshedabad,

and could not understand how the conscience of the criminal could

suffer him to sleep with such an object so near to his bedchamber. The

peasantry of Surrey looked with mysterious horror on the stately house

which was rising at Claremont, and whispered that the great wicked

lord had ordered the walls to be made so thick in order to keep out the

devil, who would one day carry him away bodily. Among the gaping clowns

who drank in this frightful story was a worthless ugly lad of the

name of Hunt, since widely known as William Huntington, S.S.; and

the superstition which was strangely mingled with the knavery of that

remarkable impostor seems to have derived no small nutriment from the

tales which he heard of the life and character of Clive.

In the meantime, the impulse which Clive had given to the administration

of Bengal was constantly becoming fainter and fainter. His policy was

to a great extent abandoned; the abuses which he had suppressed began

to revive; and at length the evils which a bad government had engendered

were aggravated by one of those fearful visitations which the best

government cannot avert. In the summer of 1770, the rains failed; the

earth was parched up; the tanks were empty; the rivers shrank within

their beds; and a famine, such as is known only in countries where every

household depends for support on its own little patch of cultivation,

filled the whole valley of the Ganges with misery and death. Tender

and delicate women, whose veils had never been lifted before the public

gaze, came forth from the inner chambers in which Eastern jealousy had

kept watch over their beauty, threw themselves on the earth before the

passers-by, and, with loud wailings, implored a handful of rice for

their children. The Hoogley every day rolled down thousands of corpses

close to the porticoes and gardens of the English conquerors. The very

streets of Calcutta were blocked up by the dying and the dead. The lean

and feeble survivors had not energy enough to bear the bodies of their

kindred to the funeral pile or to the holy river, or even to scare away

the jackals and vultures, who fed on human remains in the face of day.

The extent of the mortality was never ascertained; but it was popularly

reckoned by millions. This melancholy intelligence added to the

excitement which already prevailed in England on Indian subjects. The

proprietors of East India stock were uneasy about their dividends. All

men of common humanity were touched by the calamities of our unhappy

subjects; and indignation soon began to mingle itself with pity. It

was rumoured that the Company’s servants had created the famine by

engrossing all the rice of the country; that they had sold grain for

eight, ten, twelve times the price at which they had bought it; that

one English functionary who, the year before, was not worth a hundred

guineas, had, during that season of misery, remitted sixty thousand

pounds to London. These charges we believe to have been unfounded. That

servants of the Company had ventured, since Clive’s departure, to deal

in rice, is probable. That, if they dealt in rice, they must have gained

by the scarcity, is certain. But there is no reason for thinking

that they either produced or aggravated an evil which physical causes

sufficiently explain. The outcry which was raised against them on this

occasion was, we suspect, as absurd as the imputations which, in times

of dearth at home, were once thrown by statesmen and judges, and are

still thrown by two or three old women, on the corn factors. It was,

however, so loud and so general that it appears to have imposed even

on an intellect raised so high above vulgar prejudices as that of Adam

Smith. What was still more extraordinary, these unhappy events greatly

increased the unpopularity of Lord Clive. He had been some years in

England when the famine took place. None of his acts had the smallest

tendency to produce such a calamity. If the servants of the Company had

traded in rice, they had done so in direct contravention of the rule

which he had laid down, and, while in power, had resolutely enforced.

But, in the eyes of his countrymen, he was, as we have said, the Nabob,

the Anglo-Indian character personified; and, while he was building and

planting in Surrey, he was held responsible for all the effects of a dry

season in Bengal.

Parliament had hitherto bestowed very little attention on our Eastern

possessions. Since the death of George the Second, a rapid succession of

weak administrations, each of which was in turn flattered and betrayed

by the Court, had held the semblance of power. Intrigues in the palace,

riots in the capital, and insurrectionary movements in the American

colonies, had left the advisers of the Crown little leisure to study

Indian politics. When they did interfere, their interference was feeble

and irresolute. Lord Chatham, indeed, during the short period of his

ascendency in the councils of George the Third, had meditated a bold

attack on the Company. But his plans were rendered abortive by the

strange malady which about that time began to overcloud his splendid

genius.

At length, in 1772, it was generally felt that Parliament could no

longer neglect the affairs of India. The Government was stronger than

any which had held power since the breach between Mr. Pitt and the great

Whig connection in 1761. No pressing question of domestic or European

policy required the attention of public men. There was a short and

delusive lull between two tempests. The excitement produced by the

Middlesex election was over; the discontents of America did not yet

threaten civil war; the financial difficulties of the Company brought

on a crisis; the Ministers were forced to take up the subject; and the

whole storm, which had long been gathering, now broke at once on the

head of Clive.

His situation was indeed singularly unfortunate. He was hated throughout

the country, hated at the India House, hated, above all, by those

wealthy and powerful servants of the Company, whose rapacity and tyranny

he had withstood. He had to bear the double odium of his bad and of

his good actions, of every Indian abuse and of every Indian reform. The

state of the political world was such that he could count on the support

of no powerful connection. The party to which he had belonged, that of

George Grenville, had been hostile to the Government, and yet had never

cordially united with the other sections of the Opposition, with the

little band which still followed the fortunes of Lord Chatham, or

with the large and respectable body of which Lord Rockingham was the

acknowledged leader. George Grenville was now dead: his followers were

scattered; and Clive, unconnected with any of the powerful factions

which divided the Parliament, could reckon only on the votes of those

members who were returned by himself.

His enemies, particularly those who were the enemies of his virtues,

were unscrupulous, ferocious, implacable. Their malevolence aimed at

nothing less than the utter ruin of his fame and fortune. They wished to

see him expelled from Parliament, to see his spurs chopped off, to see

his estate confiscated; and it may be doubted whether even such a result

as this would have quenched their thirst for revenge.

Clive’s parliamentary tactics resembled his military tactics. Deserted,

surrounded, outnumbered, and with everything at stake, he did not

even deign to stand on the defensive, but pushed boldly forward to the

attack. At an early stage of the discussions on Indian affairs he rose,

and in a long and elaborate speech vindicated himself from a large part

of the accusations which had been brought against him. He is said to

have produced a great impression on his audience. Lord Chatham, who, now

the ghost of his former self, loved to haunt the scene of his glory, was

that night under the gallery of the House of Commons, and declared that

he had never heard a finer speech. It was subsequently printed under

Clive’s direction, and, when the fullest allowance has been made for the

assistance which he may have obtained from literary friends, proves

him to have possessed, not merely strong sense and a manly spirit, but

talents both for disquisition and declamation which assiduous culture

might have improved into the highest excellence. He confined his

defence on this occasion to the measures of his last administration, and

succeeded so far that his enemies thenceforth thought it expedient to

direct their attacks chiefly against the earlier part of his life.

The earlier part of his life unfortunately presented some assailable

points to their hostility. A committee was chosen by ballot to inquire

into the affairs of India; and by this committee the whole history of

that great revolution which threw down Surajah Dowlah and raised Meer

Jaffier was sifted with malignant care. Clive was subjected to the most

unsparing examination and cross-examination, and afterwards bitterly

complained that he, the Baron of Plassey, had been treated like a

sheep-stealer. The boldness and ingenuousness of his replies would alone

suffice to show how alien from his nature were the frauds to which, in

the course of his Eastern negotiations, he had sometimes descended.

He avowed the arts which he had employed to deceive Omichund, and

resolutely said that he was not ashamed of them, and that, in the same

circumstances, he would again act in the same manner. He admitted that

he had received immense sums from Meer Jaffier; but he denied that, in

doing so, he had violated any obligation of morality or honour. He laid

claim, on the contrary, and not without some reason, to the praise of

eminent disinterestedness. He described in vivid language the situation

in which his victory had placed him: great princes dependent on his

pleasure; an opulent city afraid of being given up to plunder; wealthy

bankers bidding against each other for his smiles; vaults piled with

gold and jewels thrown open to him alone. “By God, Mr. Chairman,” he

exclaimed, “at this moment I stand astonished at my own moderation.”

The inquiry was so extensive that the Houses rose before it had been

completed. It was continued in the following session. When at length the

committee had concluded its labours, enlightened and impartial men had

little difficulty in making up their minds as to the result. It was

clear that Clive had been guilty of some acts which it is impossible to

vindicate without attacking the authority of all the most sacred laws

which regulate the intercourse of individuals and of states. But it

was equally clear that he had displayed great talents, and even great

virtues; that he had rendered eminent services both to his country and

to the people of India; and that it was in truth not for his dealings

with Meer Jaffier, nor for the fraud which he had practised on Omichund,

but for his determined resistance to avarice and tyranny, that he was

now called in question.

Ordinary criminal justice knows nothing of set-off. The greatest desert

cannot be pleaded in answer to a charge of the slightest transgression.

If a man has sold beer on a Sunday morning, it is no defence that he has

saved the life of a fellow-creature at the risk of his own. If he has

harnessed a Newfoundland dog to his little child’s carriage, it is no

defence that he was wounded at Waterloo. But it is not in this way that

we ought to deal with men who, raised far above ordinary restraints, and

tried by far more than ordinary temptations, are entitled to a more

than ordinary measure of indulgence. Such men should be judged by their

contemporaries as they will be judged by posterity. Their bad actions

ought not indeed to be called good; but their good and bad actions ought

to be fairly weighed; and if on the whole the good preponderate, the

sentence ought to be one, not merely of acquittal, but of approbation.

Not a single great ruler in history can be absolved by a judge who fixes

his eye inexorably on one or two unjustifiable acts. Bruce the deliverer

of Scotland, Maurice the deliverer of Germany, William the deliverer of

Holland, his great descendant the deliverer of England, Murray the good

regent, Cosmo the father of his country, Henry the Fourth of France,

Peter the Great of Russia, how would the best of them pass such a

scrutiny? History takes wider views; and the best tribunal for great

political cases is the tribunal which anticipates the verdict of

history.

Reasonable and moderate men of all parties felt this in Clive’s case.

They could not pronounce him blameless; but they were not disposed to

abandon him to that low-minded and rancorous pack who had run him

down and were eager to worry him to death. Lord North, though not very

friendly to him, was not disposed to go to extremities against him.

While the inquiry was still in progress, Clive, who had some years

before been created a Knight of the Bath, was installed with great

pomp in Henry the Seventh’s Chapel. He was soon after appointed Lord

Lieutenant of Shropshire. When he kissed hands, George the Third, who

had always been partial to him, admitted him to a private audience,

talked to him half an hour on Indian politics, and was visibly affected

when the persecuted general spoke of his services and of the way in

which they had been requited.

At length the charges came in a definite form before the House of

Commons. Burgoyne, chairman of the committee, a man of wit, fashion, and

honour, an agreeable dramatic writer, an officer whose courage was never

questioned, and whose skill was at that time highly esteemed, appeared

as the accuser. The members of the administration took different sides;

for in that age all questions were open questions, except such as were

brought forward by the Government, or such as implied censure on the

Government. Thurlow, the Attorney-General, was among the assailants.

Wedderburne, the Solicitor-General, strongly attached to Clive, defended

his friend with extraordinary force of argument and language. It is

a curious circumstance that, some years later, Thurlow was the most

conspicuous champion of Warren Hastings, while Wedderburne was among

the most unrelenting persecutors of that great though not faultless

statesman. Clive spoke in his own defence at less length and with less

art than in the preceding year, but with much energy and pathos. He

recounted his great actions and his wrongs; and, after bidding his

hearers remember, that they were about to decide not only on his honour

but on their own, he retired from the House.

The Commons resolved that acquisitions made by the arms of the State

belong to the State alone, and that it is illegal in the servants of the

State to appropriate such acquisitions to themselves. They resolved that

this wholesome rule appeared to have been systematically violated by the

English functionaries in Bengal. On a subsequent day they went a step

further, and resolved that Clive had, by means of the power which he

possessed as commander of the British forces in India, obtained large

sums from Meer Jaffier. Here the Commons stopped. They had voted the

major and minor of Burgoyne’s syllogism; but they shrank from drawing

the logical conclusion. When it was moved that Lord Clive had abused

his powers, and set an evil example to the servants of the public, the

previous question was put and carried. At length, long after the sun had

risen on an animated debate, Wedderburne moved that Lord Clive had at

the same time rendered great and meritorious services to his country;

and this motion passed without a division.

The result of this memorable inquiry appears to us, on the whole,

honourable to the justice, moderation, and discernment of the Commons.

They had indeed no great temptation to do wrong. They would have been

very bad judges of an accusation brought against Jenkinson or against

Wilkes. But the question respecting Clive was not a party question; and

the House accordingly acted with the good sense and good feeling which

may always be expected from an assembly of English gentlemen, not

blinded by faction.

The equitable and temperate proceedings of the British Parliament were

set off to the greatest advantage by a foil. The wretched government of

Lewis the Fifteenth had murdered, directly or indirectly, almost every

Frenchman who had served his country with distinction in the East.

Labourdonnais was flung into the Bastile, and, after years of suffering,

left it only to die. Dupleix, stripped of his immense fortune, and

broken-hearted by humiliating attendance in ante-chambers, sank into an

obscure grave. Lally was dragged to the common place of execution with a

gag between his lips. The Commons of England, on the other hand, treated

their living captain with that discriminating justice which is seldom

shown except to the dead. They laid down sound general principles; they

delicately pointed out where he had deviated from those principles;

and they tempered the gentle censure with liberal eulogy. The contrast

struck Voltaire, always partial to England, and always eager to expose

the abuses of the Parliaments of France. Indeed he seems, at this time,

to have meditated a history of the conquest of Bengal. He mentioned his

design to Dr. Moore, when that amusing writer visited him at Ferney.

Wedderburne took great interest in the matter, and pressed Clive to

furnish materials. Had the plan been carried into execution, we have no

doubt that Voltaire would have produced a book containing much lively

and picturesque narrative, many just and humane sentiments poignantly

expressed, many grotesque blunders, many sneers at the Mosaic

chronology, much scandal about the Catholic missionaries, and much

sublime theo-philanthropy, stolen from the New Testament, and put into

the mouths of virtuous and philosophical Brahmins.

Clive was now secure in the enjoyment of his fortune and his honours.

He was surrounded by attached friends and relations; and he had not yet

passed the season of vigorous bodily and mental exertion. But clouds

had long been gathering over his mind, and now settled on it in thick

darkness. From early youth he had been subject to fits of that strange

melancholy “which rejoiceth exceedingly and is glad when it can find

the grave.” While still a writer at Madras, he had twice attempted to

destroy himself. Business and prosperity had produced a salutary effect

on his spirits. In India, while he was occupied by great affairs, in

England, while wealth and rank had still the charm of novelty, he had

borne up against his constitutional misery. But he had now nothing to

do, and nothing to wish for. His active spirit in an inactive situation

drooped and withered like a plant in an uncongenial air. The malignity

with which his enemies had pursued him, the indignity with which he had

been treated by the committee, the censure, lenient as it was, which the

House of Commons had pronounced, the knowledge that he was regarded by

a large portion of his countrymen as a cruel and perfidious tyrant, all

concurred to irritate and depress him. In the meantime, his temper was

tried by acute physical suffering. During his long residence in tropical

climates, he had contracted several painful distempers. In order

to obtain ease he called in the help of opium; and he was gradually

enslaved by this treacherous ally. To the last, however, his genius

occasionally flashed through the gloom. It was said that he would

sometimes, after sitting silent and torpid for hours, rouse himself to

the discussion of some great question, would display in full vigour all

the talents of the soldier and the statesman, and would then sink back

into his melancholy repose.

The disputes with America had now become so serious that an appeal to

the sword seemed inevitable; and the Ministers were desirous to avail

themselves of the services of Clive. Had he still been what he was when

he raised the siege of Patna and annihilated the Dutch army and navy at

the mouth of the Ganges, it is not improbable that the resistance of the

colonists would have been put down, and that the inevitable separation

would have been deferred for a few years. But it was too late. His

strong mind was fast sinking under many kinds of suffering. On the

twenty-second of November, 1774, he died by his own hand. He had just

completed his forty-ninth year.

In the awful close of so much prosperity and glory, the vulgar saw only

a confirmation of all their prejudices; and some men of real piety and

genius so far forgot the maxims both of religion and of philosophy as

confidently to ascribe the mournful event to the just vengeance of God,

and to the horrors of an evil conscience. It is with very different

feelings that we contemplate the spectacle of a great mind ruined by the

weariness of satiety, by the pangs of wounded honour, by fatal diseases,

and more fatal remedies.

Clive committed great faults; and we have not attempted to disguise

them. But his faults, when weighed against his merits, and viewed in

connection with his temptations, do not appear to us to deprive him of

his right to an honourable place in the estimation of posterity.

From his first visit to India dates the renown of the English arms

in the East. Till he appeared, his countrymen were despised as mere

pedlars, while the French were revered as a people formed for victory

and command. His courage and capacity dissolved the charm. With the

defence of Arcot commences that long series of Oriental triumphs which

closes with the fall of Ghizni. Nor must we forget that he was only

twenty-five years old when he approved himself ripe for military

command. This is a rare if not a singular distinction. It is true that

Alexander, Conde, and Charles the Twelfth, won great battles at a still

earlier age--but those princes were surrounded by veteran generals

of distinguished skill, to whose suggestions must be attributed

the victories of the Granicus, of Rocroi and of Narva. Clive, an

inexperienced youth, had yet more experience than any of those who

served under him. He had to form himself, to form his officers, and to

form his army. The only man, as far as we recollect, who at an equally

early age ever gave equal proof of talents for war, was Napoleon

Bonaparte.

From Clive’s second visit to India dates the political ascendency of the

English in that country. His dexterity and resolution realised, in the

course of a few months, more than an the gorgeous visions which had

floated before the imagination of Dupleix. Such an extent of cultivated

territory, such an amount of revenue, such a multitude of subjects, was

never added to the dominion of Rome by the most successful proconsul.

Nor were such wealthy spoils ever borne under arches of triumph, down

the Sacred Way, and through the crowded Forum, to the threshold of

Tarpeian Jove. The fame of those who subdued Antiochus and Tigranes

grows dim when compared with the splendour of the exploits which the

young English adventurer achieved at the head of an army not equal in

numbers to one half of a Roman legion.

From Clive’s third visit to India dates the purity of the administration

of our Eastern empire. When he landed in Calcutta in 1765, Bengal was

regarded as a place to which Englishmen were sent only to get rich, by

any means, in the shortest possible time. He first made dauntless and

unsparing war on that gigantic system of oppression, extortion, and

corruption. In that war he manfully put to hazard his ease, his fame,

and his splendid fortune. The same sense of justice which forbids us to

conceal or extenuate the faults of his earlier days compels us to admit

that those faults were nobly repaired. If the reproach of the Company

and of its servants has been taken away, if in India the yoke of foreign

masters, elsewhere the heaviest of all yokes, has been found lighter

than that of any native dynasty, if to that gang of public robbers,

which formerly spread terror through the whole plain of Bengal, has

succeeded a body of functionaries not more highly distinguished by

ability and diligence than by integrity, disinterestedness, and public

spirit, if we now see such men as Munro, Elphinstone, and Metcalfe,

after leading victorious armies, after making and deposing kings,

return, proud of their honourable poverty, from a land which once held

out to every greedy factor the hope of boundless wealth, the praise is

in no small measure due to Clive. His name stands high on the roll of

conquerors. But it is found in a better list, in the list of those

who have done and suffered much for the happiness of mankind. To the

warrior, history will assign a place in the same rank with Lucullus and

Trajan. Nor will she deny to the reformer a share of that veneration

with which France cherishes the memory of Turgot, and with which the

latest generations of Hindoos will contemplate the statue of Lord

William Bentinck.