THE PURIFYING OF BENGAL
When Clive quitted England for Bengal (June 4, 1764) he knew only
that the war with Mir Kasim was raging, and that Mir Jafar had been
reinstated in his position. It was not until he reached Madras, the
10th of April following, that he learned that Mir Kasim had been
finally defeated, that his followers had submitted, that Mir Jafar
was dead, and that the Nawab-Wazir of Oudh had thrown himself on the
clemency of the English. In the interval of twenty-three days which
elapsed before his arrival in Calcutta (May 3), he had time, in
consultation with the two members of the Select Committee who
accompanied him, Messrs. Sykes and Sumner, to deliberate regarding
the course of action which it would behove him to adopt on his
arrival there.[1]
[Footnote 1: The other two were General Carnac and Mr. Verelst.]
One of his first acts on arrival was to remodel the army. He placed
General Carnac at its head, divided the European infantry into three
battalions, gave regimental commands to two officers who had
accompanied him from England, and regulated all the {160}superior
appointments in a manner the best adapted, in his opinion, to secure
efficiency.
He dealt likewise with the Civil Service. Nothing had impressed Clive
more than the evil effects of the predominance of venality and
corruption during the rule which had followed his first departure,
and he was resolved to put them down with a strong hand. He found, on
his landing, a subject which gave him the opportunity he desired for
showing publicly the bent of the line of conduct he intended to
pursue.
Four months before his return, Mir Jafar, worn out by anxiety and
trouble, had passed away. His position had become degraded, even in
his own eyes. From having been, as he was on the morrow of Plassey,
the lord of three rich provinces, he had become, to use the words of
a contemporary Englishman,[2] 'a banker for the Company's servants,
who could draw upon him as often and to as great an amount as they
pleased.'
[Footnote 2: Mr. Scrafton. See Scrafton's _Letters_.]
We have seen how the members of Council had benefited pecuniarily by
the elevation of Mir Jafar to the _masnad_ in 1757; by that of his
successor in 1763; by Mir Jafar's re-elevation the same year. The
opportunity of again selecting a successor was not to be passed over
without their once again plunging their hands in the treasury of
Murshidabad. They found that there were two candidates for the vacant
office, the son of Miran, and therefore grandson of Mir Jafar, and
the eldest surviving son of that {161}Nawab. The decision arrived at
by the Council, then reduced by vacancies to eight members, was to
sell the succession to the candidate who should bid the highest price
for it. They decided in favour of the son of Mir Jafar, for, although
illegitimate, he was of an age at which he could act on his own
authority; the other was a minor, whose revenues would have to be
accounted for. In return for their complaisance, it was agreed that
they should receive a sum of money, to be divided as they might
arrange, close upon ten lakhs of rupees; in addition, there was to be
paid another sum, just over ten lakhs, for secret services rendered
by one of their number, Mr. Gideon Johnstone, and by a Muhammadan,
Muhammad Riza Khan, who also, in pursuance of the arrangement, was
nominated Deputy-Nawab. This shameful bargain was signed, sealed, and
delivered on the 25th of February, little more than two months before
Lord Clive landed.
An order from the India Office, which reached Calcutta just thirteen
days before the death of Mir Jafar, and which prohibited--by a new
covenant, to be signed by all the Civil Servants in India--the
acceptance by such servants of presents of any kind from the natives
of India, greatly strengthened the hands of Clive in dealing with
this transaction. Finding that in the Council itself he would be
subjected to much cavilling, he at once superseded its action by
declaring (May 7) that the Select Committee[3] had been constituted.
He then, with that Committee, {162}assumed the whole powers of the
Government, took an oath of secrecy, and had a similar oath
administered to the only two of his colleagues who were present. He
then set himself to examine all the matters connected with the
succession to the office of Subahdar of the three provinces.
[Footnote 3: See Chapter XI.]
He had to deal with men whom a long course of corruption had rendered
absolutely shameless. Charged by Clive with having violated the
orders of their masters in accepting presents after such acceptance
had been prohibited, they replied that they had taken Clive himself
as their model, and referred to his dealings with Mir Jafar in 1757,
and afterwards at Patna, when he accepted the famous jagir. The reply
naturally was that such presents were then permitted, whereas now
they were forbidden. Clive added, among other reasoning, that then
there was a terrible crisis; that for the English and Mir Jafar it
was then victory or destruction, whereas now there was no crisis; the
times were peaceful, the succession required no interference. He
again charged the members of Council with having put up the Subahdar
for sale to the highest bidder, in order that they might put the
price of it into their own pockets, and with having used indecent
haste to complete the transaction before his arrival.
Clive could at the moment do no more than expose these men, now
practically powerless. He forced them, however, to sign the new
covenants. But his treatment of them rankled in their minds. They
{163}became his bitterest enemies, and from that time forward used
all the means at their disposal to harass, annoy, and thwart him.
When, finally, he drove them from the seats they had disgraced, in
the manner presently to be related, they carried their bitterness,
their reckless audacity, and their slanderous tongues to England,
there to vent their spleen on the great founder of British India.
Having silenced these corrupt men, Clive turned his attention to the
best means of regulating, on fair terms, commercial interests between
the native and the foreigner. He soon recognized that the task of
Hercules when he was set to cleanse the stables of King Augeas was
light in comparison with the task he had undertaken. In the first
place he was greatly hampered by the permission which the Court of
Directors had granted to their Civil Servants to engage in private
trade. So poorly paid were they, indeed, that private trade, or a
compensation for it, had become necessary to them to enable them to
live decently. The proposed compensation was afterwards adopted of
fixing their salaries on a scale which would take away all temptation
to indulge in other methods of obtaining money. Vainly did Clive
press upon the Court the adoption of this alternative. Amongst our
countrymen there is one class whose business it is to rule; but there
are often other classes which aspire to that privilege, and which
seize the opportunity afforded them to exercise power, but whose
members possess neither the education, the enlightenment, nor the
turn {164}of mind to do so with success. Of this latter class were
the men who had become the Directors of the East India Company. These
men possessed no prescience; they were quite unable to make a correct
forecast; they could consider only the present, and that dimly. They
could not realize that the world was not standing still, and they
would have denounced that man as a madman who should have told them
that the splendid daring of Clive had made them the inheritors of the
Mughal empire. Seeing only as far as the tips of their noses, these
men declined to increase the salaries of their servants or to
prohibit private trade.
Hercules could bend to his process of cleansing the stables of the
King of Elis, the rivers Alpheus and Peneus. Clive could not bend the
Court of Directors. The consequence was that his labour was great,
his success incomplete. The utmost he could do, and did do, was to
issue an order abrogating the privilege, used by the Civil Servants
to the ruin of the children of the soil, to grant passes for the
transit of merchandize free of duty; restricting such privilege to
certain authorities named and defined. Upon the private trade of the
civilians he imposed restrictions which minimized as far as was
possible, short of its abolition, the evils resulting from permission
to trade, bringing it in fact to a great extent under the control of
the Government. In both these respects his reforms were wider, and
went deeper, than those which Mir Kasim had vainly asked from Mr.
Vansittart and his Council.
With regard to the salt monopoly, Clive had made {165}investigations
which proved that the trade in that commodity had been conducted in a
manner which, whilst securing enormous profits for the few, had
pressed very hardly on the many. He endeavoured to reduce this evil
by placing the trade on a settled basis which, whilst it would secure
to the natives a supply of the article at a rate not in excess of
that which the poor man could afford, would secure to the servants of
the Company fixed incomes on a graduated scale. His scheme, he knew,
was far from being perfect, but it was the best he could devise in
the face of the refusal of the India Office to increase salaries, and
certainly it was a vast improvement on the system it superseded.
Whilst it secured to the Company's servants in all departments an
adequate, even a handsome, income, it reduced the price of salt to
the natives to an amount from ten to fifteen per cent. below the
average price to them of the preceding twenty years.
This accomplished, Clive proceeded to reconstitute the Calcutta
Council. According to the latest orders then in existence this
Council was composed of a president and sixteen members: but the fact
of a man being a member of Council did not prevent him from accepting
an agency in other parts of the Company's territories. The result was
that many of the members held at the same time executive and
supervising offices. They controlled, as councillors, the actions
which they had performed as agents. There had been in consequence
great laxity, much wrongdoing, complete failure of justice. Clive
remedied {166}this evil by ruling that a member of Council should be
that and nothing more. He encountered great opposition, even amongst
the members of the Select Committee, but he carried through his
scheme.
Of this Select Committee it may here be stated that Clive used its
members solely as a consultative committee. Those members had their
duties, not always in Calcutta. Thus, whilst Carnac was with the
army, Sykes acted at Murshidabad as the Governor's agent; Verelst
supervised the districts of Burdwan and Mednipur: Mr. Sumner alone
remained with Clive. This gentleman had been nominated to succeed
Clive in case of his death or resignation. But it had become evident
to Clive long before the period at which we have arrived that he was
in every way unfitted for such an office. Infirm of purpose,
sympathizing to a great extent with the corrupt party, wanting in
energy, Sumner had given Clive but a slack support. This was the case
especially in the matter of the reform of the Council just narrated.
Pursuing his inquiries Clive soon discovered that the administration
of the civil districts and divisions by the Company's officers had
been as faulty and corrupt as it well could be. The case, after
examination and report, was tersely put by the Court of Directors in
their summary of the state of Bengal on his arrival there. They
described the three provinces, Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, as 'a
_subah_'[4] disarmed, with {167}a revenue of almost two millions
sterling, at the mercy of our servants, who had adopted an unheard-of
ruinous principle, of an interest distinct from that of the Company.
This principle showed itself in laying their hands upon everything
they did not deem the Company's property. To reform the abuses so
described Clive invoked the assistance of those who ought to have
been immediately concerned in the introduction of juster
administration. He invited the young Nawab and his councillors to
Calcutta, and held with them long conferences. The disclosures which
followed more than confirmed the worst fears he had entertained
regarding the all but universal corruption of the members of the
Civil Service. It was in consequence of these disclosures that he
compelled the retirement from the Council, as he had found it
composed on his arrival, of five of its members, and suspended the
remaining three. He filled up the vacancies thus caused by indenting
on Madras for a sufficient number of civilians to raise the total
number of councillors to twelve.
[Footnote 4: The word 'Subah' is used here to mean one of the large
divisions of the Mughal empire.]
These sweeping reforms produced their natural effect. Clive became
hated. The civilians and their friends and accomplices acted
according as their natures were dominated by fear or by love of
revenge. Of the former, one, greatly inculpated, the chief agent of
Patna, committed suicide. Of the latter, many formed amongst
themselves an association, of which the following were some of the
principal articles:--'all visits to the Governor were forbidden; no
{168}invitations from him or from the members of the Select Committee
were to be accepted; the gentlemen coming from Madras were to be
treated with neglect and contempt; every member who should deviate
from these rules would be denounced and avoided.' At a later period
their hostility indicated itself in a more serious manner.
Of the young Subahdar Clive formed but a poor opinion. He seemed to
him a nullity. The one man of ability about him, the minister
Muhammad Riza Khan, the chief of those who had been bribed to raise
him to the _masnad_, was absolutely without scruple. Clive was most
unwilling to trust the political education of the Subahdar to such a
man, or to others about him who possessed his unscrupulousness but
did not share his ability. But it was difficult to discover a better
man; and Clive had ultimately to be content with the endeavour to
lessen his influence by associating with him Raja Dulab Ram--the
general who had conspired with Mir Jafar before Plassey--and with the
head of the great banking-house of the Set family. But the influence
of Riza was too deeply founded to be lightly shaken.
The introduction of the reforms I have noted caused a great strain on
the constitution of the illustrious man whose iron will carried them
through. He had to fight against a faction of interested men,
assailed by abuse, thwarted by opposition, and opposed secretly by at
least one of the colleagues sent to support him. He was absolutely
alone in the contest. {169}But his brave heart and his resolute will
carried him through. It was far more trying than fighting a battle,
or planning and carrying through a campaign. In those cases there is
always the excitement of constant action; the daily, often hourly,
survey of the positions; the _certaminis gaudia_ so eloquently
described by Attila; 'the holiday,' as that great conqueror called
it, 'of the battle-field.' In the daily examinations of deeds which
call a blush to the cheek, and of devising measures to repress them
in the future, Clive found none of these excitements. But though the
work was dreary and heartrending, though, by reason of the opposition
he encountered, it called into action all his mental vigour, all his
intelligence, all his determination, it was terribly exhausting. It
wore him out. Well might Sir John Malcolm write that it may be
questioned 'whether any of Clive's many and great achievements called
forth more of that active energy and calm firmness for which he was
distinguished than was evinced in effecting the reform of the Civil
Service of Bengal.'
There accompanied, moreover, in all his civil contests, another
mental trial. From causes which have been stated none of the reforms,
he constantly felt, could be stamped as 'thorough.' They were none of
them complete. He did much; he broke down corruption; he laid the
foundation for a permanent and perfect reform; he checked an enormous
evil; he infused a healthier tone into the younger members of the
service; he aided largely towards {170}the rehabilitation of the
British name, then sunk deep in the mire. But the want of intuition,
of foresight, of the Court of Directors rendered it impossible for
him to do more. That ultimate aim was to come after him; his
principles were to triumph; his harassing work had not been done in
vain. It was by adopting in their entirety the principles of Lord
Clive that the Civil Service of India became one of the noblest
services the world has ever seen; pure in its honour; devoted in the
performance of its duties; conspicuous for its integrity and ability.
It has produced men whose names would have given lustre to any
administration in the world, and it continues to produce them still.
The work of a great man lives after him. There is not a member of the
Civil Service of India who does not realize that for them Clive did
not live in vain.
Our admiration for him at this epoch of his career will be the
greater when we realize that the administrative reforms I have
mentioned were only a part of the duties which devolved upon him.
Simultaneously with the dealing with them he had to devote his time
and attention to other matters of the first importance. To the
consideration of these I shall ask the reader's attention in the next
chapter.
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