i V MACAULAY'S ESSAY ON LORD CLIVE EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION NOTES etc. BY WILLIAM HENRY HUDSON Staff-Lecturer in Literature to the University Extension Board of the University of London Author of " An Introduction to the Study of Literature" etc. Editor of " The Elizabethan Shakespeare" etc. LONDON GEORGE G. HARRAP & COMPANY PORTSMOUTH STREET LINCOLN'S INN W.C. 1910 f-71 M2. THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH CONTENTS INTRODUCTION I. MACAULAY'S LIFE AND WORK . . vii II. MACAULAY AS AN ESSAYIST . . . xix III. THE ESSAY ON CLIVE . . xxx MAP OF INDIA xxxiv LORD CLIVE ... ! NOTES . .114 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE . . . .143 INTRODUCTION MACAULAY'S LIFE AND WORK Thomas Babington Macaulay, essayist and historian, was born on October 25, 1800, at Rothley Temple, Lincoln- shire, in the home of his father's brother-in-law, Thomas Babington, after whom he was named. His life, as we shall see, was destined to be a singularly prosperous one, and it has been well said that his good fortune began with the moment of his birth, since he came of a stock the sterling qualities of which were almost a guarantee of intellectual vigour and moral integrity in all who belonged to it. His father, Zachary Macaulay, a West India merchant, was of Scottish Presbyterian descent, and reckoned several ministers of the Church among his ancestors. Though a silent, unsociable man, of somewhat stern temper and un- attractive manners, he was a zealous philanthropist, and for many years devoted the best of his energies, even to the sacrifice of his business, to the one great cause he had most at heart that of the abolition of slavery in the British colonies. He had married in 1799 Selina Mills, the daughter of a Bristol quaker, an excellent woman in whom firmness of character and sound good sense were admirably blended with tenderness and sensibility. She had been the pupil and was still the friend of the then famous woman of letters, Hannah More, who in earlier life had known Johnson, Burke, Garrick, and Sir Joshua Reynolds, and through whom, therefore, the Macaulay family was, as it were, brought into vii viii INTRODUCTION personal touch with some of the greatest figures of the preceding generation. Next to his mother, it was Hannah More who exercised the most powerful influence over young Macaulay's mind. He visited her at her home at Barley Wood, near Bristol, and the formation of his library was begun with her help and advice. He was a marvellously precocious child, and early ex- hibited those intellectual qualities by which in manhood he was specially to be marked an insatiable and almost undiscriminating appetite for books, prodigious powers of memory, and an extraordinary facility of expression. He would lie for hours in front of the fire with a volume before him and a slice of bread and butter untasted in his hand. His nurse declared that he talked "quite printed words," and this we can readily believe on reading his reply, at the age of four, to Lady Waldegrave's anxious question as to his feelings when a servant at Strawberry Hill had spilt some hot coffee over his legs " Thank you, madam, the agony is abated." He had, we are told, " a little plot of ground at the back of the house, marked out as his own by a row of oyster shells, which a maid one day threw away as rubbish. He went straight to the drawing-room, where his mother was entertain- ing some visitors, walked into the circle, and said very solemnly, ' Cursed be Sally ; for it is written, Cursed is he that removeth his neighbour's land-mark.' " While still a mere boy he was already supplementing his school studies in Greek and Latin by wide readings in modern European litera- tures. Nor was he satisfied merely to absorb. He early began to produce as well. Before he was eight he had com- piled a Compendium of Universal History, in which, by the way, Cromwell figures as "an unjust and wicked man" a judgment which may well strike us as amusing in the light of its author's spirited vindication, some twenty years after- 1 Trevelyan's Life and Letters of Lord Macanlay (one volume edition), p. 21. INTRODUCTION ix wards, of the Protector's career and character. 1 He had also written three cantos of a romance in verse, The Battle of Cheviot, in imitation of Scott, whose Lay of the Last Minstrel and Marmion he knew by heart. A little later came other poems one in twelve books of blank verse called Fingal, and another, entitled Olaus Magnus, King of Norway. That the boy was a prodigy was of course clear to all who had anything to do with him. But his mother's wisdom was specially shown in the fact that while she encouraged him by judicious praise and criticism, nothing in the shape of flattery was allowed to reach his ear. "You will believe," she wrote to a friend, "that to him we never appear to regard anything he does as any- thing more than a school boy's amusement." The result was that he grew up altogether unspoilt a high-spirited, good-tempered lad, "as playful as a kitten," according to his mother's description, and devoted to his younger brothers and sisters. After six years of preparation at an excellent private school, Macaulay at eighteen entered Trinity College, Cambridge. His rooted dislike of mathematics prevented him from attaining the highest University honours ; but he carried off the prize for Latin declamation, and the Junior Bachelor's prize for an essay on William III., while in two successive years 1819 and 1820 he gained the Chancellor's medal for English verse. In 1824 he was elected to a Trinity Fellowship of .300 a year. These academic triumphs were not, however, the only successes which marked his college career. Already as an undergraduate he was fast winning his reputation as one of the most remarkable talkers of the day. The most brilliant member of a set of brilliant young men, he not only held his hearers spell-bound round the table, but also became a prominent figure in the Union Debating Society. By this time he had also begun to make a mark in literature. A year before he obtained his fellow- 1 See his essay on Hallam's Constitutional History of England. x INTRODUCTION ship he was among the contributors to Knight's Quarterly Magazine, in which he published his poems, Ivry, The Spanish Armada, and Naseby, his Fragments of a Roman Tale and Scenes from the Athenian Revels, critical essays on Dante and Petrarch, and, to please his father, an article on West Indian slavery. But this was hardly more than playing at authorship. His real opening came in 1825. Francis Jeffrey, the celebrated critic, was just then on the look-out for " some clever young man " who would help to give fresh life to The Edinburgh Review, which he was still editing, and which he felt to be sadly in need of new blood. This " clever young man " he found in Macaulay, the first of whose many contributions to the Edinburgh, an essay on Milton, appeared in the August of that year. By it his reputation as a writer was at once made. Though for the taste of most readers to-day it is damaged by a too evident straining after rhetorical effect (he himself afterwards said that it was " over-loaded with gaudy and ungraceful orna- ment "), it arrested the attention alike of the general public and of the critics by its wonderful vigour and the sweep and sparkle of its diction. " The more I think," wrote Jeffrey to him in acknowledging the manuscript, "the less I can conceive where you picked up that style." In the meantime he had been reading for the Bar, to which he was called in 1826. He did not, however, care for the law ; he made little or no attempt to establish a practice ; and the decisive success of his Milton naturally caused him to look rather to his pen than to his nominal profession for his means of support. It happened however that his work in literature led to practical results which he had not foreseen. He had been brought up a Tory, but at Cambridge had gone over to the Whigs. Some of his articles attracted the notice of the leaders of the Whig party, who were anxious to discover promising recruits. In 1828 Lord Lyndhurst appointed him a Commissioner in Bankruptcy. Two years later Lord Lansdowne invited him to enter the INTRODUCTION xi House of Commons as member for what was then, in the days before the Reform Bill, his lordship's pocket-borough of Calne. This invitation Macaulay had no hesitation in accepting, since from his youth up he had taken an interest in politics almost if not quite as great as he had taken in literature. Much light is thrown upon his character by the fact that in shaping his career during these critical years his first thought was not for himself but for his family. Troubles had fallen upon the Macaulay household. His father's neglected business had gone to pieces, and all the financial responsibility now rested upon the shoulders of Thomas as the eldest son. He met the emergency with a fortitude and cheerfulness worthy of the warmest admiration. So straitened were his circumstances for a time that he was even forced to sell his Cambridge gold medals. But he did not murmur. He set his own personal hopes and prospects altogether on one side. As his nephew and principal bio- grapher says of him, " he quietly took up the burden which his father was unable to bear ; and before many years had elapsed the fortunes of all for whose welfare he considered himself responsible were abundantly secured. In the course of the efforts which he expended on the accomplish- ment of this result, he unlearned the very notion of framing his method of life with a view to his own pleasure ; and such was his high and simple nature that it may well be doubted whether it ever crossed his mind that to live wholly for others was a sacrifice at all." ] Macaulay took his seat in the House of Commons in February, 1830, and on April 5 following, delivered his maiden speech, which was in favour of the removal of the civil disabilities under which the Jews then laboured. But his great opportunity came the next year. The Whigs had been returned to power pledged to carry a Reform Bill which should include both an extension of the franchise and 1 Trevelyan, p. 92. xii INTRODUCTION a complete redistribution of seats. Into the support of this bill Macaulay threw himself with characteristic ardour and energy. By his first speech on the subject he electrified the House and stepped at once into the front rank of parliament- ary orators. " Whenever he rose to speak," said Gladstone, " it was a summons like a trumpet call to fill the benches." Nor were his speeches regarded only as brilliant oratorical displays. They carried so much weight that the ablest debaters on the other side were put up to reply to him. Probably no one in the House counted more than he did in the reform cause, and when on June 4, 1832, the bill received the royal assent, his name as a statesman was made. He was thereupon appointed one of the Commis- sioners of the Board of Control which had general super- vision of legislation in India ; entered the new parliament of 1833 as member for the important borough of Leeds, which had been enfranchised by the Reform Bill ; and before the end of that year was offered the post of legal adviser to the Supreme Council of India. This position he accepted mainly because the large salary attached to it would enable him to give substantial help to his family and in the course of a few years to lay by enough to make him financially independent. At the same time it must not be forgotten that he had a deep interest in India, and was inspired by an earnest desire to do all that lay within his power to promote its welfare. Accompanied by his sister Hannah, he sailed for Madras on February 15, 1834. These four years of public life had been years of enormous and varied activity. His parliamentary duties had been heavy, but they had been conscientiously discharged. His official labours in connection with the Board of Control had made large demands upon him, but he had done his work faithfully and well. Meanwhile he had been caught up in the whirl of social life. He had become one of the lions of London's world of wit and fashion. Among the famous talkers of a time when conversation was cultivated as an art, INTRODUCTION xiii he easily held his own. Especially at Holland House, then the great metropolitan centre of intellectual society, 1 he was a frequent and favourite guest, and there he became intimate with Tom Moore, and Campbell, with Samuel Rogers, and Sydney Smith, and Sir James Mackintosh, and other men of note in the literary circles of that day. One might well have imagined that all these interests parliamentary, official, social the strain of late sittings in the House, the drudgery of routine work at his desk, the excitement of brilliant gather- ings in which he was always one of the most conspicuous figures would have been more than enough to tax even his marvellous strength and tireless energy. But all this time he was still writing steadily for The Edinburgh Review. When we now read his essays on Bunyan and Byron, on Johnson, Horace Walpole, Burleigh, Chatham, and the War of Succession in Spain, we are apt to think of them as the work of a man whose whole business was literature, and who was able to give undivided attention to the large subjects with which he dealt. They were, on the contrary, produced at a period when his life was so crowded with other interests that only the narrowest margin could be spared for literary undertakings. Most of them were in fact written between five o'clock in the morning and breakfast-time. When these circumstances are considered, it is certainly remarkable that they maintain on the whole so uniform a level of excellence, and that, whatever their defects may be, they exhibit so few traces of haste or negligence either in their matter or in their style. Macaulay remained nearly four years in India, and during the whole of that time he worked as hard as he had done in England. In addition to the duties of his position on the Supreme Council, which would have been enough to satisfy most men, he voluntarily undertook the chairmanship of two important committees the Committee of Public Instruction and the committee which had been appointed to prepare a 1 Compare the closing paragraph of his essay on Lord Holland. xiv INTRODUCTION Penal Code and a Code of Criminal Procedure. In both these capacities he rendered great and lasting service to the cause of civilisation in India. Two essays only one on Mackintosh's History of the Rebellion, the other on Bacon- stand to the credit of this period. Such leisure as he could find or make amid his multitudinous official labours he now gave almost entirely to reading. He had, as I have said, even as a child, an insatiable and almost undiscriminating appetite for books. In manhood this appetite remained as strong as ever. Reading was a positive passion with him. He wrote home to one of his sisters that, had circumstances permitted, he would have liked nothing so well as to bury himself in some great library and never to pass a waking hour without a book before him. He read everywhere in the train, on board ship, in London streets amid the rattle of the traffic, in the solitude of country lanes. He read everything he could lay his hands on, from the masterpieces of the world's literature down to the most worthless novels which he himself described as " trash." Malone, the Shake- speare scholar, once found Dr Johnson, confined to his room, immersed in a history of Birmingham. " Don't you find it rather dull ? "- he ventured to ask. " Yes," Johnson replied, "it is dull"; but dull as it was, it amused him because it was a book. Anything in the form of a book in like manner seemed to interest Macaulay. While his marvellous memory enabled him to recall any passage of importance even from a first perusal, he read the same volumes over and over again, apparently from sheer delight in the mere process of read- ing. The records of his omnivorous acquisitiveness fill us with amazement. But as Mr Cotter Morison has well pointed out, his love of reading was really " immoderate." He read so much, so rapidly, and so constantly, that he scarcely had time to assimilate or to reflect. Had he absorbed less and thought more, his writings would have possessed more originality and substance, and we should not have heard so much of that charge of shallowness which is now so fre- INTRODUCTION xv quently, and, speaking generally, so justly, made against him. His personal object in going to India was attained, for when in 1838 he returned to England, he brought with him, as savings from his salary, a modest fortune, which was suffi- cient to provide for his simple wants and tastes. Then, after a short holiday in Italy, during which he collected much topographical information which he put to use in his Lays of Ancient Rome, he re-entered public life. He was elected member of parliament for Edinburgh in 1839, and the following year was given a seat in Lord Melbourne's cabinet as Secretary for War. This position he held till the fall of the Melbourne government in 1841. He remained active in the House while his party was in opposition, speaking frequently on questions which specially interested him, and in 1846 again took office, under Lord John Russell, as Pay- master General of the Forces. Defeated at the general election of 1847, he was in 1852 once more returned for Edinburgh, which he continued to represent till 1857, though, for a reason which will become clear directly, he now ceased to take any prominent part in debate. He was then raised to the peerage under the title of Baron Macaulay of Rothley; but though he took his seat in the House of Lords, he never spoke there. His days of active politics were over. His retirement from the scene of such long-continued and memorable success caused him no regret. Ever since his return from India he had indeed felt a growing anxiety to escape from the strain of public affairs in order that he might devote himself entirely to literary work. To that work he had still given all the attention that his circum- stances allowed. In 1842 he published his Lays of Ancient Rome, a series of stirring ballads which, though they cannot be described as great poetry, fully deserved the immense popular vogue which they enjoyed by reason of their splendid rendering of the spirit of antique patriotism and the dash and vigour of their style. In 1843 he republished in volume xvi INTRODUCTION form the essays which he had thus far contributed to The Edinburgh Review. Shortly afterwards he severed his long connection with the Edinburgh that he might give the whole of his available energy to the prosecution of an enormous task which, first conceived before he left England for the East, and continually set aside for other matters, had now taken entire possession of his mind. The character and scope of this undertaking are indicated in the opening sentence : " I purpose to write the history of England from the accession of King James II. down to a time which is within the memory of men still living." The leisure afforded by his rejection at Edinburgh made rapid progress possible, and the first two volumes of the History appeared in 1848, instantly scoring a success far greater, it is said, than had ever before attended the production of any purely historical work. His re-election, which took place without any effort on his part, was unfortunate, for he once more became entangled in parliamentary affairs and many interruptions necessarily resulted. But the third and fourth volumes were ready by 1855, and were received with undiminished en- thusiasm. By this time, however, he had difficulties to contend with far more serious than those entailed by outside interests. A man of robust constitution and overflowing vitality, he had never dreamed of husbanding his strength, and for many years he had systematically overworked himself. A sudden collapse of health occurred in 1852, when he was seized with an illness which left him a victim of permanent heart-disease and asthma. In one week, he himself declared, he "became twenty years older." Henceforth life was completely changed for him. He had to "fly on broken wing," to accept the limitations of increasing invalidism, to economise his efforts, to think twice of what he might in prudence venture to do while formerly he had never had to think of himself at all. Yet, though fully aware of the nature of his malady, and of the constant danger of a fatal termination, he never lost his INTRODUCTION xvii cheerfulness or his courage, his keen interest in public questions, his tender solicitude for those about him. It was under such conditions that he now pushed on with his History "my task," as he calls it in his Diary; it was under such conditions that the whole of the fourth volume, and presently the fifth (published after his death) were written. His chief desire was to accomplish all that he could while sufficient strength remained. For some time he had, to quote his own words, looked forward " to the inevit- able close with perfect serenity"; conscious "that the last scene of the play was approaching"; anxious "to act it simply, but with fortitude and gentleness united." On his last birthday October 25, 1859 he wrote in his Diary: "Well, I have had a happy life." Two months later on December 28 he died suddenly and painlessly. On January 9, 1860, he was buried at the foot of the statue of the man he had so much loved Addison in the Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey. As even so brief a sketch of his life as we have here given will suffice to show, Macaulay's moral character was one which it is a pleasure and an inspiration to contemplate. He was indeed a piece of sound and sterling manhood. The complaint is made against him that as a writer he commonly moves too much upon the plane of ordinary worldly morality ; that he reveals little sympathy with those ideal aims and aspirations which did not seem to him to lead directly to practical results ; that his pages lack entirely the spiritual glow and earnestness of men like Carlyle and Ruskin. The charge is perfectly just. He is not for a moment to be placed among the great religious and ethical teachers of his generation. But whatever fault we may have to find with Macaulay the philosopher, of Macaulay the man we can only say with Mr Cotter Morison that "his action might put the very saints to shame." Upright, unselfish, generous, pure-minded, and courageous, he governed his conduct, alike in his private relationships and in his public career, by the xviii INTRODUCTION highest principles of honour and integrity. As for his private relationships, it is enough for us to remember that he was a good son and one of the best of brothers. As for his public career, two instances will suffice to prove his con- scientiousness and magnanimity. When he was a very young man, on the threshold of his political life, the Whig government brought in a bill for the reform of the Bank- ruptcy laws. Without hesitation, he voted for it though it suppressed his own commissionership, upon which he was then wholly dependent for the means of support. When in India he made himself extremely unpopular among the English residents in Calcutta by the introduction of what are now recognised to have been certain wise changes in the jurisdiction of the provincial courts of Bengal. At the very moment when the local newspapers were busy attacking him with the foulest abuse he stood out as the vigorous supporter of the freedom of the press against which protests were being made in other quarters. It is true that his life was so uniformly prosperous that he was rarely brought to the test of misfortune. We have, however, noted the cheerful courage with which he took upon his own shoulders the financial burden of his family, and the quiet fortitude with which he bore the infirmities of his closing years and faced the thought of death. Evidently Macaulay was a man who, had his life's circumstances been other than they were, would have been a hero in adversity. Nor must we ever forget that, quite as much as misfortune, continued prosperity is a searching trial of character. Few men have succeeded in all their under- takings as Macaulay did ; few men have enjoyed so wide a popularity. His fame, as Mr Morison puts it, "spread through all classes and countries like an epidemic," and at home and abroad he was the recipient of innumerable honours. Yet to the end of his life he remained what he was at the beginning simple, true-hearted, wholly unspoilt. INTRODUCTION xix II MACAULAY AS AN ESSAYIST Macaulay's literary work consists, as we have seen, of his unfinished History, the Lays of Ancient Rome and some other poems, and his essays. It is with the last-named only that we are here specially concerned. Including the five biographies which, after he had ceased writing for the Edinburgh, he contributed to the Encyclopedia Britannica, these number forty-one. Their variety of subject-matter is remarkable, for in them Macaulay ranges with easy con- fidence over a very wide field of history, biography, politics, and literature. Indeed, he had too much faith in his versa- tility, for occasionally he undertook to discourse at large on topics, like Bacon's philosophy, for the treatment of which he had no adequate preparation. It is generally admitted that he is on the whole at his best in the essays which deal with English history and literature (but especially history) during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. To this division, it will be noted, our own essay on Clive belongs. It is important to understand Macaulay's conception ot the essay, which as a form of literature underwent great expansion in his hands. Ostensibly, like other professional critics of the time who wrote for the great reviews, he sets out to adjudicate upon the merits of some particular book: In a few cases, as for example in his examination of Southey's Colloquies on Society and in his slashing onslaught on Robert Montgomery's poems, he does actually confine himself to the work in question. But his usual and characteristic method is to take his nominal subject only as a point of departure: He writes an introductory paragraph or two of general eulogy or disapproval, and then, dismissing the book before him, he proceeds at once to develop on his own account, often with- out the slightest further reference to his supposed text, his b xx INTRODUCTION own ideas on the matters suggested by it. Thus the essay on Clive contains, not as we might have anticipated, a criticism of Sir John Malcolm's volumes, the title of which is printed at the head, but a biographical sketch which, but for the few opening remarks, might just as well have stood by itself. With Macaulay, in fact, an essay is a little treatise or dis- sertation a compact study of some person, or period, or political problem. It is not to be supposed that he was alone and wholly responsible for this transformation of the old-fashioned, narrow, review-article. Carlyle, for instance, in such essays as those on Burns and Voltaire, was at the time of Macaulay's early writings independently breaking ground in the same direction. But the immense popularity of Macaulay made him the primary influence in the establish- ment of this new kind of essay-writing. Of such immense popularity the explanation is not far to seek. It depended, and still depends (for despite much adverse criticism it has undergone little abatement during the half-century since Macaulay's death) upon a combination of easily-recognised elements of which, while some are to be classed as excellences of the highest order, there are others of perhaps equal importance which have to be reckoned among his limitations and defects. From an examination of these we shall be able to learn something of the chief outstanding features of Macaulay's work. To begin with his positive qualities. Probably the first thing that strikes us in reading him is that he has a marvellous capacity for making everything he touches in- teresting. History and criticism have too often been couched in a dry and pedantic style, and when Macaulay began to write dryness and pedantry were regarded as almost inseparable from accuracy and thoroughness. No matter what may be the subject in hand, Macaulay rarely gives us a dull page. His animation is unbounded, his energy never flags. Before the publication of the first volumes of his History > he himself wrote of it : " I shall INTRODUCTION xxi not be satisfied unless I produce something which shall for a few days supersede the last fashionable novel on the tables of young ladies." Carlyle, with his extraordinary faculty for hitting the mark in a single incisive phrase, once wrote to an invalid friend advising him to read " the last volume of Macaulay's History or any other new novel." Whatever expert criticism may have to say about the value of the History as history, it cannot be denied that it possesses all, the vitality and all the fascination of a great work of fiction. The same genius for holding attention and sustaining in- terest is apparent also in the essays. When Macaulay has an argument to conduct, he shows himself a consummate master of all the arts of exposition, controversy, persuasion, appeal. As a mere story-teller he takes rank with our best? In pictorial power the power of vivid description he has few superiors even among the novelists themselves. The past seems to unroll itself before him as a vast, picturesque, moving panorama ; and under his graphic touch its scenes and persons spring into life Moreover, he is one of the clearest of writers. We never have to puzzle out his mean- ing. As Professor Saintsbury has put it, short of being in any degree an idiot, everyone can understand him without difficulty. In enumerating these various and striking merits we go far, it is evident, to account for Macaulay's hold upon the large, general reading public, which likes, beyond all things else, vigour, vivacity, picturesqueness, and lucidity. But like all writers, he has the defects of his qualities, and it is impossible not to perceive that, as I have said, his popularity was increased by some of his limitations and shortcomings. Save for his exceptional endowment of genius, he was a representative average Englishman of his generation, and he certainly owed his success in no small measure to the fact that he so well fitted in with and so eloquently expressed the average man's attitude to the world. He is the very in- carnation of the spirit of sound, sturdy common-sense. He xxii INTRODUCTION brings everything to the test of practical results: He is in- tolerant of the vague, the visionary, the mystical. For him " an acre in Middlesex is worth more than a principality in Utopia." He seldom meddles with abstruse problems, and treats philosophical speculation as a mere idle beating of the air. A prosperous man, he takes a thoroughly comfortable view of life. He is quite satisfied with the constitution of the world ; he has unbounded faith in the " happy material- ism " of his age ; he delights in its substantial conquests in the field of visible and tangible things, while he shows not the slightest interest in its scientific inquiries, its social theories, its religious unrest. His prevailing buoyancy and optimism, which we might at first feel inclined to set down to his credit, we have to place rather on the other side of the account, because they so manifestly arise from a certain narrowness of outlook and a deficient sense of the pain and evil of life: No troublesome question ever occurs to ruffle his com- placency ; he is never " arrested by an intellectual difficulty of any kind,'' 1 is never conscious of "the burden of the mystery, the heavy and the weary weight of all this unin- telligible world." He is confident, self-assertive, dogmatic as Lord Melbourne phrased it, he is " cock-sure of every- thing." He knows his own mind, and he knows that he is right ; and, as Mr Mark Pattison astutely remarked, " unin- structed readers like this assurance, as they like a physician who has no doubt of their case." Such men as Wordsworth and Shelley, Carlyle and Ruskin, perpetually disturb us in the midst of our preoccupation with material interests by their insistence upon spiritual realities and their appeal to standards which lie beyond the sphere of sense. Macaulay brings us no such challenge; He is manly, honest, and sane. But he leaves us on the whole too much contented with ourselves and with things as they are.- That we may read him with advantage it is necessary that, while laying the fullest stress upon the great positive qualities 1 Cotter Morison, Macaulay, p. 50. INTRODUCTION xxiii already noted, we should keep clearly in mind the points at which, as even his warmest admirers are now agreed, his writings are most seriously open to criticism. Brilliant as he always is, he is undeniably shallow. From the standpoint of the expert and the scholar, his work has little value. Laborious in preparation, painstaking in execution, he yet made no real contribution to our knowledge of history. He was a great populariser, not a great discoverer, nor in any sense of the word a great thinker. " No original opinion re- quiring patient consideration or delicate analysis," says one of his critics, " is associated with the name of Macaulay. He often generalised for himself with the utmost boldness^ but none of his original generalisations possess any import- ance." ' Another writer brings the charge against him that "he investigated no obscure questions, cleared up no diffi- culties, reversed the opinion of scholars upon no important point." 2 His field was the external and the obvious. He never takes us beneath the surface of things. His too positive mind sees men and movements under a clear, white light, and in describing them he knows nothing of those half-tints, those reservations and qualifications, by which alone it is often possible for us to approximate to the truth. His judgments are too sweeping and emphatic to be always sound. By his love of strong contrast, paradox, and rhetorical effect, he is often led unwittingly to sacrifice the finer shadings of character. He paints in black and white, and omits the neutral tones. As a delineator of human nature he therefore generally succeeds only when his subjects are of the simple and elementary kind. " Complex and involved characters, in which the good and evil were inter- woven in odd and original ways, in which vulgar and obvious faults and vices concealed deeper and rarer qualities beneath, were beyond his ken." 3 Hence his failure with men like 1 Minto, Manual of English Prose Literature, p. 84. 2 Cotter Morison, Macaulay, p. 53. 3 Ibid. p. 83. xxiv INTRODUCTION Rousseau, Walpole, Byron, Boswell. The case of Boswell is particularly interesting because we have here an opportunity of comparing his work with that of a great contemporary, Carlyle, who possessed in a pre-eminent degree that pene- trative power that ability to pierce through appearances to the very heart of a man which is precisely what Macaulay lacked. Macaulay starts with the statement that Boswell was " a man of the meanest and feeblest intellect," and then he proceeds to develop his surprising paradox that "if he had not been a great fool, he would never have been a great writer." His portrait of Boswell is amazingly brilliant and amusing. But it leaves us wholly unconvinced. It does not in the least help us to understand how it was that this " great fool " after all contrived to produce the acknowledged master- piece of biographical literature. In fact we feel that Macaulay has presented only Boswell's manifest weaknesses and ab- surdities the weaknesses and absurdities which it did not need the eye of genius to detect, but which anyone might see and laugh at and that he has never for one moment brought us into touch with the real Boswell at all. Then we turn to Carlyle's portrait, and instantly the real Boswell becomes apparent a man of countless weaknesses and absurdities, it is true, but with many characteristics of quite another sort curiously intertangled with them. Carlyle perceives, and by his searching yet sympathetic analysis he makes us perceive, those other qualities of the man which wholly escaped Macaulay's attention, and when we have carefully studied the few pages which he devotes to him, we feel that we know Boswell well enough to understand something at least of the powers of brain and heart which went to the making of his wonderful book. Having now considered some of the salient features of Macaulay's work on the side of matter and spirit, we must give a little attention to his style and method of composition. We have noted among his great merits his absolute lucidity. He is, we have said, one of the clearest of writers. INTRODUCTION xxv " Not an ambiguous sentence," it has been asserted, " is to be found throughout his work " ; and though this is, of course, something of an exaggeration, it is in fact very seldom that we have to read any passage of his a second time to make sure of its meaning. The question therefore arises how this remarkable clearness is attained ; and fortunately it does not require any elaborate analysis of his writings to provide an answer. It is attained, in the first place, by mere clearness of thinking. If he never fumbles with his material, if he is never vague or obscure in expres- sion, it is, to begin with, because he always knows exactly what he wants to say, and is a complete master of his facts and ideas. Then, secondly, his clearness may be largely traced to the structure of his sentences, which are generally models of skilful arrangement and simplicity. Anyone who studies a page out of any part of his works will soon realise for himself how careful Macaulay is to avoid inversions, cumbersome parentheses, entangling clauses, interjected qualifications. The result is that we are never in the slightest danger, as we read, of losing our grasp on his con- struction. In his reaction against complexity he often indeed goes to the other extreme, and his continual use of the very short sentence one of the most familiar of his character- istics sometimes degenerates into an irritating mannerism " Macaulay's snip-snap," as Brougham called it. At the same time this mannerism, however objectionable, helps the clearness and emphatic quality of his style. His vigilance in the use of pronouns is also a point worthy of special attention. Even the most painstaking writers are apt at times to confuse the reader by the injudicious use of " he " and " him," and " who " and " which " and " they." Macaulay rarely makes the mistake of employing a pronoun instead of a noun in places where the reference is in the least open to doubt. It will be found that he often repeats the names of persons ; but examination will show that this is not a trick, and that when he does so, it is because the substitution of a xxvi INTRODUCTION pronoun would have introduced uncertainty into his meaning. Finally, his clearness is in part due also to fulness of exposi- tion. He does not merely throw out hints, and leave the reader to work out an idea or draw a conclusion for himself. He undertakes a complete explanation of his thought, in which every important particular is dealt with explicitly and in detail. He thus often runs into diffuseness ; but even this diffuseness is an element in his lucidity. That every link in his chain of reasoning may be understood, that his entire meaning may be apprehended, he willingly takes the risk of over-elaboration. For the same reason he often repeats the same thought in various forms. In the essay on Clive, for example, he sets out to prove (pp. 60-62) that honesty is the best policy for nations as well as for individuals. The point involves no difficulty, and we feel that it could have been made very satisfactorily in half the space. But Macaulay is not contented until, by adding sentence to sentence, he has driven his argument well home upon the reader's mind. This tendency to amplification and repetition suggests another prominent characteristic of his work. It abounds in illustrations. His prodigious memory is so richly stored with facts that whatever may be the subject in hand it always reminds him of something else. He delights in indicating analogies and drawing parallels ; and such analogies and parallels sometimes take him far afield. In his essay on Addison, for instance, he has occasion, while dealing with that writer's Latin poems, to refer to Boileau's theory that " in the best modern Latin, a writer of the Augustan age would have detected ludicrous improprieties." This view he undertakes to support. And how does he do so? By citing no fewer than three other cases, taken from three different literatures, of somewhat similar improprieties occurring where they were not to have been anticipated. "What modern scholar can honestly declare that he sees the smallest impurity in the style of Livy ? Yet, is it not certain that, in the style 'of Livy, Pollio, whose taste had INTRODUCTION xxvii been formed on the banks of the Tiber, detected the in- elegant idiom of the Po ? Has any modern scholar under- stood Latin better than Frederick the Great understood French ? Yet, is it not notorious that Frederick the Great, after reading, speaking, writing French, and nothing but French, during more than half-a-century, after unlearning his mother tongue in order to learn French, after living familiarly during many years with French associates, could not, to the last, compose in French, without imminent risk of committing some mistake which would have moved a smile in the literary circles of Paris ? Do we believe that Erasmus and Fracastorius wrote Latin as well as Dr Robertson and Sir Walter Scott wrote English ? And are there not in the Dissertation on India, the last of Dr Robertson's works, in IVaverley, in Marmion, Scotticisms at which a London apprentice would laugh ? " Macaulay's pages, as we soon learn to our cost, are liberally sprinkled with the names of people often quite unfamiliar to most of us, and with allusions to incidents and books which only his own marvellously erudite schoolboy could be expected to under- stand ; for if he makes the smallest possible demand upon our intelligence, on the other hand he makes enormous demands upon our knowledge. From the essay on Clive, the reference to "the Tenth Legion of Caesar" and "the Old Guard of Napoleon" (p. 25) may be taken as one of various examples of his habit of illustrating a point by passing analogy ; while his sketch of the fall of the Carlo- vingians (pp. 13, 14) sufficiently shows how his fondness for instituting parallels occasionally tempts him into regular digressions. Another very noteworthy feature of Macaulay's method, and one which helps to explain the graphic force of his writings, is his love of the concrete. He has a wonderful power of clothing abstract ideas in material imagery. He is not satisfied to contend in general terms that " the smallest actual good is better than the most magnificent promise of xxviii INTRODUCTION impossibilities." He clinches his argument by putting it into the telling phrase, already quoted "An acre in Middlesex is worth a principality in Utopia." Even when he is dealing with generalities, his descriptions take the form of pictures to which substance and vividness are given by the ample use of detail. He wishes us to realise Burke's profound interest in everything connected with India, and he wr i tes: _All India was present to the eye of his mind, from the halls where suitors laid gold and perfumes at the feet of sovereigns to the wild moor where the gipsy camp was pitched, from the bazar, humming like a bee-hive with the crowd of buyers and sellers, to the jungle where the lonely courier shakes his bunch of iron rings to scare away the hyaenas. He had just as lively an idea of the insurrection at Benares as of Lord George Gordon's riots, and of the execution of Nuncomar as of the execution of Dr Dodd. Oppression in Bengal was to him the same thing as oppression in the streets of London." 1 In the essay on Clive we have an admirable example of the same concrete- ness and the same wealth of picturesque detail in the de- scription (pp. 94-96) of the Nabobs. Finally, we must mention among Macaulay's chief characteristics as a writer his prevailing tendency to ex- aggeration. In his constant desire to gain effect he is often guilty of over-loaded emphasis. He indulges freely in contrast, and frequently puts it to excellent use; but, as we see from the very first paragraph of the essay on Clive, his contrasts are sometimes obtained at the expense of strict accuracy. Moderation of statement is certainly not among his many virtues. At times he does not seem to weigh his words or measure his judgments, seeking rather for the strongest possible expression. He says of Clarendon that " no man ever laboured so hard to make himself despicable and ridiculous " ; but in somewhat different phraseology he says the same thing of Boswell, and evidently the statement 1 Essay on Warren Hastings. INTRODUCTION xxix cannot be true of both. His description of the massacre of the Black Hole, in our own essay, is manifestly extravagant. He is so afraid that we shall not realise the horror of the incident that he writes of it in the superlative degree. 1 His epigrams are often amazingly neat and effective, as when for example, he says of the Nabobs that " they raised the price of everything in their neighbourhood, from fresh eggs to rotten boroughs." But epigrammatic expression is not always compatible with sober truth, and sometimes he seems too willing to sacrifice the latter to the former. As an epigram, the famous remark "The Puritan hated bear- baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators," is undeniably clever and pungent: Qualification would have spoilt it ; but then, unfortunately for the epigram, it is only with a great deal of qualification that it can be accepted, as Macaulay intends that we shall accept it, as a description of the puritan attitude to life. It is a commonplace of criticism that "the style is of the man." Macaulay's style clear, animated, picturesque, incisive, but hard, over- rhetorical, and wholly wanting in the finer gradations of light and shade is the natural vehicle of his thought and an illuminating commentary upon his mental character. He had essentially an oratorical cast of mind, and both his merits and his defects are those of the oratorical order. The measures of his prose, it has been well aid, are " emphatically the measures of spoken deliverance." He writes as if he were addressing an audience whose attention he has to keep ; whom he has to interest, instruct, ersuade, arouse, at once and on the spot ; who will have no opportunity of going back to ponder on what he has said and to re-consider its value in the quiet of their own minds. Hence the uniform lucidity and sustained vigour of his writings; his diffuseness and tendency to the excessive elaboration even of the most ordinary ideas ; his love of 1 See note to p. 43, 11. 18-22. xxx INTRODUCTION contrast, paradox, and epigram ; and that habit of over- emphasis by which he throws everything he touches into the highest possible relief. Ill THE ESSAY ON CLIVE The essay on Clive (first published in 1840) is one of the best of Macaulay's writings. The biographical narrative is bold and clear ; the historical details which form its back- ground are managed with consummate skill ; and the dramatic interest of its sudden crises and extraordinary changes of fortune is brought out with wonderful effect. In the story of Clive's epoch-making work in India Macaulay had indeed a subject which appealed to him with peculiar force, and with which he was in every way thoroughly qualified to deal. It was a story of practical effort and achievement ; of thrilling scenes enacted in the council chamber and on the battle-field ; of brilliant success in the sphere of material things. In the personality of his hero, moreover, he found a combination of elements which it was easy for him to understand. Clive was not one of those complex and enigmatical characters for the full comprehension of which a faculty of psychological discernment is requisite, which, as we have seen, Macaulay did not possess. Both his virtues and his failings were of the quite obvious and intelligible kind. The picture which Macaulay paints of him is therefore singularly clear and convincing. There is much in him that he can admire and praise firmness of purpose, courage, promptitude, readiness in resource ; the qualities of a born soldier and leader of men. But his admiration does not mislead him, and his praise is marked by due discrimination. He holds that Clive was one of the greatest of Englishmen. But he frankly admits that he "committed great faults." The moral questions which INTRODUCTION xxxi arise in connection with certain incidents of Clive's career are not shirked by him, nor is anything said to minimise their importance. On the contrary, they are handled with much vigour and sagacity. On such plain ethical issues as are here involved Macaulay speaks out without fear and without favour. It is possible indeed that some readers may not altogether share his sympathy with men of this particular type. But, given his point of view, his characterisation of Clive impresses us as thoroughly sound, judicious, and satisfactory. Considered merely as a biographical sketch the essay therefore calls for little in the way of commentary or criticism. It is however important that, in reading it, we should bear in mind the fact that it is primarily a biographical sketch, and thatsuch historical matter as is introduced into it,is introduced only that Clive's career and exploits may be fully understood. In other words, Clive is throughout kept at the centre of the picture, and the great movements of Indian affairs are treated in entire subordination to him. We have of course no right to complain that, as he was writing biography and not history, Macaulay should have adopted the usual method of the biographer, and concentrated the interest upon his hero. But we have always to remember that the result of such method is to throw the historic picture a little bit out of perspective. As a chapter in the annals of the English conquest of India, our essay in fact needs to be supplemented at many points by information derived from other sources. Rather too much is ascribed directly to Clive's personal genius and influence, and insufficient note is taken of the various circumstances which co-operated with him, and helped to render his labours successful. Events which lie outside his story, but which none the less greatly favoured the growth of the English power in India during the period of his residence there like Munro's victory at Buxar, 1 and the overthrow of the Mahrattas by the Afghans four years 1 See note to p. I, 1. 9. xxxii INTRODUCTION after Plassey are passed over entirely ; while the larger political forces at work at the time, even when they are touched upon at all, are never presented in their full significance. Upon one point in particular, of the importance of which we get no glimpse in our essay, the utmost stress has to be laid. The struggle in India arose, as Macaulay clearly shows, from the rivalry between the English and French Companies in their attempts to obtain paramount influence at the courts of the native princes. But though the scene of struggle was thus localised and circumscribed, its issue largely depended upon the general political conditions and relationships of France and England, and especially upon the settlement of the great question as to which of them was to secure the command of the sea. The finances of France were in a state of almost hopeless confusion ; Louis XV. and his incompetent ministers were recklessly pursuing a war- policy on the continent of Europe which entailed, among other ruinous consequences, the sacrifice of French mercan- tile and colonial interests ; the French navy was badly administered, and as a result, the transmarine possessions of France were powerless against the overwhelming naval superiority of England. 1 In the irregular conflict between the English and French Companies, Dupleix had a tempor- ary advantage, because it was confined to land ; as the two nations were themselves at peace, "their fleets could not take any part in it." But three years later, national hostilities broke out, and then " the naval strength of England came into play with decisive effect." 2 The triumph of Clive at Plassey by no means assured the permanent success of the British. Immediately afterwards the French government determined to drive them out of Southern India, and to this 1 Sir Alfred Lyall, The Rise of the British Dominion in India, P- 95- 2 Ibid. p. 79. INTRODUCTION xxxiii end, Lally arrived at Pondicherry, in April 1758, with a land force of 1200 men. But in two naval engagements the French fleet received so much damage that the admiral had to retire to the Isle of France to refit, and this superiority at sea "proved for the English an effective set-off to the superi- ority of the French by land. It rendered difficult Lally's execution of the instructions of the French East India Company to uproot the British settlements on the coast," 1 and these settlements, by providing valuable gateways for both commercial and military use, practically provided the British with the key to the situation. Ultimately the victory was bound to go to the side which, by maintaining control of the sea, was able to keep open communication between India and the home-country, and thus on occasion to ensure all the reinforcements that might be required. This supreme advantage was now possessed by the English ; and with the gaining of it Clive himself had of course really nothing to do. Great, therefore, as was the work accomplished by him, the historian has still to acknowledge that it could never have been done save for many favouring circumstances which he indeed turned to the fullest service, but which he did not create. 1 Political History of England, Vol. IX. p. 474. LORD CLIVE (January 1840) The Life of Robert Lord Clive ; collected from the Family Papers^ coihmtmicatedby the Earl of Powis. By MAJOR-GENERAL SIR JOHN MALCOLM, K.C.B. 3 vols. 8vo. London: 1836. WE have always thought it strange that, while the history of the Spanish empire in America is familiarly known to all the nations of Europe, the great actions of our countrymen in the East should, even among ourselves, excite little interest. Every schoolboy 5 knows who imprisoned Montezuma, and who strangled Atahualpa. But we doubt whether one in ten, even among English gentlemen of highly cultivated minds, can tell who won the battle of Buxar, who perpetrated the massacre of Patna, whether Sujah Dowlah ruled in 10 Oude or in Travancore, or whether Holkar was a Hindoo or a Mussulman. Yet the victories of Cortes were gained over savages who had no letters, who were ignorant of the use of metals, who had not broken in a single animal to labour, who wielded no better weapons 15 than those which could be made out of sticks, flints, and fish-bones, who regarded a horse-soldier as a monster, half man and half beast, who took a harque- busier for a sorcerer, able to scatter the thunder and A I 2 ESSAY ON CLIVE lightning of the skies. The people of India, when we subdued them, were ten times as numerous as the Americans whom the Spaniards vanquished, and were at the same time quite as highly civilised as the victorious 5 Spaniards. They had reared cities larger and fairer than Saragossa or Toledo, and buildings more beautiful and costly than the cathedral of Seville. They could show bankers richer than the richest firms of Barcelona or Cadiz, viceroys whose splendour far surpassed that 10 of Ferdinand the Catholic, myriads of cavalry and long trains of artillery which would have astonished the Great Captain. It might have been expected, that every Englishman who takes any interest in any part of history would be curious to know how a handful of his 15 countrymen, separated from their home by an immense ocean, subjugated, in the course of a few years, one of the greatest empires in the world. Yet, unless we greatly err, this subject is, to most readers, not only insipid, but positively distasteful. 20 Perhaps the fault lies partly with the historians. Mr Mill's book, though it has undoubtedly great and rare merit, is not sufficiently animated and picturesque to attract those who read for amusement. Orme, inferior to no English historian in style and power of 25 painting, is minute even to tediousness. In one volume he allots, on an average, a closely printed quarto page to the events of every forty-eight hours. The con- sequence is, that his narrative, though one of the most authentic and one of the most finely written in our 30 language, has never been very popular, and is now scarcely ever read. ESSAY ON CLIVE 3 We fear that the volumes before us will not much attract those readers whom Orme and Mill have repelled. The materials placed at the disposal of Sir John Malcolm by the late Lord Powis were indeed of great value. But we cannot say that they have been very skilfully worked 5 up. It would, however, be unjust to criticise with severity a work which, if the author had lived to complete and revise it, would probably have been improved by condensation and by a better arrangement. We are more disposed to perform the pleasing duty of express- 10 ing our gratitude to the noble family to which the public owes so much useful and curious information. The effect of the book, even when we make the largest allowance for the partiality of those who have furnished and of those who have digested the materials, is, on the 15 whole, greatly to raise the character of Lord Clive. We are far indeed from sympathising with Sir John Malcolm, whose love passes the love of biographers, and who can see nothing but wisdom and justice in the actions of his idol. But we are at least equally far from 20 concurring in the severe judgment of Mr Mill, who seems to us to show less discriminatiQ n in his account of Clive than in any other part of his valuable work. Clive, like most men who are born with strong passions and tried by strong temptations, committed great faults. 25 But every person who takes a fair and enlightened view of his whole career must admit that our island, so fertile in heroes and statesmen, has scarcely ever produced a man more truly great either in arms or in council. The Clives had been settled, ever since the twelfth 30 century, on an estate of no great value, near Market- 4 ESSAY ON CLIVE Drayton, in Shropshire. In the reign of George the First this moderate but ancient inheritance was possessed by Mr Richard Clive, who seems to have been a plain man of no great tact or capacity. He had been bred to 5 the law, and divided his time between professional business and the avocations of a small proprietor. He married a lady frorrTManchester, of the name of Gaskill, and became the father of a very numerous family. His eldest son, Robert, the founder of the British empire 10 in India, was born at the old seat of his ancestors on the twenty-ninth of September, 1725. Some lineaments of the character of the man were early discerned in the child. There remain letters written by his relations when he was in his seventh year; and 15 from these letters it appears that, even at that early age, his strong will and his fiery passions, sustained by a con- stitutional intrepidity which sometimes seemed hardly compatible with soundness of mind, had begun to cause great uneasiness to his family. " Fighting," says one of 20 his uncles, "to which he is out of measure addicted, gives his temper such a fierceness and imperiousness, that he flies out on every trifling occasion." The old people of the neighbourhood still remember to have heard from their parents how Bob Clive climbed to the 25 top of the lofty steeple of Market-Dray ton, and with what terror the inhabitants saw him seated on a stone spout near the summit. They also relate how he formed all the idle lads of the town into a kind of predatory., army, and compelled the shopkeepers to submit to a 30 tribute of apples and half-pence, in consideration of which he guaranteed the security of their windows. He was ESSAY ON CLIVE 5 sent from school to school, making very little progress in his learning, and gaining for himself everywhere the character of an exceedingly naughty boy. One of his masters, it is said, was sagacious enough to prophesy that the idle lad would make a great figure in the world. 5 But the general opinion seems to have been that poor Robert was a dunce, if not a reprobate. His family ex- pected nothing good from such slender parts and such a headstrong temper. It is not strange therefore, that they gladly accepted for him, when he was in his 10 eighteenth year, a writership in the service of the East India Company, and shipped him off to make a fortune or to die of a fever at Madras. Far different were the prospects of Clive from those of the youths whom the East India College now annu- 15 ally sends to the Presidencies of our Asiatic empire. The Company was then purely a trading corporation. Its territory consisted of a few square miles, for which rent was paid to the native governments. Its troops were scarcely numerous enough to man the batteries of 20 three or four ill-constructed forts, which had been erected for the protection of the warehouses. The natives, who composed a considerable part of these little garrisons, had not yet been trained in the discipline of Europe, and were armed, some with swords and shields, some 25 with bows and arrows. The business of the servant of the Company was not, as now, to conduct the judicial, financial, and diplomatic business of a great country, but to take stock", to~rnake advances to weavers, to ship cargoes, and above all to keep an eye on private traders 30 who dared to infringe the monopoly. The younger 6 ESSAY ON CLIVE clerks were so miserably paid that they could scarcely subsist without incurring debt ; the elder enriched them- selves by trading on their own account ; and those who lived to rise to the top of the service often accumulated 5 considerable fortunes. Madras, to which Clive had been appointed, was, at this time, perhaps, the first in importance of the Com- pany's settlements. In the preceding century Fort St George had arisen on a barren spot beaten by a raging 10 surf; and in the neighbourhood a town, inhabited by many thousands of natives, had sprung up, as towns spring up in the East, with the rapidity of the prophet's gourd. There were already in the suburbs many white villas, each surrounded by its garden, whither the wealthy 15 agents of the Company retired, after the labours of the desk and the warehouse, to enjoy the cool breeze which springs up at sunset from the Bay of Bengal. The habits of these mercantile grandees appear to have been more profuse, luxurious, and ostentatious, than those of 20 the high judicial and political functionaries who have succeeded them. But comfort was far less under- stood. Many devices which now mitigate the heat of the climate, preserve health, and prolong life, were unknown. There was far less intercourse with Europe 25 than at present. The voyage by the Cape, which in our time has often been performed within three months, was then very seldom accomplished in six, and was sometimes protracted to more than a year. Con- sequently, the Anglo-Indian was then much more 30 estranged from his country, much more addicted to Oriental usages, and much less fitted to mix in society ESSAY ON CLIVE 7 after his return to Europe, than the Anglo-Indian of the present day. Within the fort and its precinct, the English exercised, by permission of the native government, an extensive authority, such as every great Indian landowner exercised 5 within his own domain. But they had never dreamed of claiming independent power. The surrounding country was ruled by the Nabob of the Carnatic, a deputy of the Viceroy of the Deccan commonly called the Nizam, who was himself only a deputy of the mighty 10 prince designated by our ancestors as the Great Mogul. Those names, once so august and formidable, still remain. There is still a Nabob of the Carnatic, who lives on a pension allowed to him by the English out of the revenues of the provinces which his ancestors ruled. 15 There is still a Nizam, whose capital is overawed by a British cajjjanjBant, and to whom a British resident gives, under the name of advice, commands which are not to be disputed. There is still a Mogul, who is per- mitted to play at holding courts and receiving petitions, 20 but who has less power to help or hurt than the youngest civil servant of the Company. dive's voyage was unusually tedious even for that age. The ship remained some months at the Brazils, where the young adventurer picked up some knowledge of 25 Portuguese, and spent all his pocket-money. He did not arrive in India till more than a year after he had left England. His situation at Madras was most painful. His funds were exhausted. His pay was small. He had contracted debts. He was wretchedly lodged, no small 30 calamity in a climate which can be made tolerable to an 8 ESSAY ON CLIVE European only by spacious and well-placed apartments. He had been furnished with letters of recommendation to a gentleman who might have assisted him ; but when he landed at Fort St George he found that this gentleman 5 had sailed for England. The lad's shy and haughty disposition withheld him from introducing himself to strangers. He was several months in India before he became acquainted with a single family. The climate affected his health and spirits. His duties were of a 10 kind ill-suited to his ardent and daring character. He pined for his home, and in his letters to his relations expressed his feelings in language softer and more pensive than we should have expected either from the waywardness of his boyhood, or from the inflexible 15 sternness of his later years. " I have not enjoyed," says he, "one happy day since I left my native country"; and again, " I must confess, at intervals, when I think of my dear native England, it affects me in a very peculiar manner. ... If I should be so far blest as to 20 revisit again my own country, but more especially Man- chester, the centre of all my wishes, all that I could hope or desire for would be presented before me in one view." One solace he found of the most respectable kind. 25 The Governor possessed a good library, and permitted Clive to have access to it. The young man devoted much of his leisure to reading, and acquired at this time almost all the knowledge of books that he ever possessed. As a boy he had been too idle, as a man he soon became 30 too busy, for literary pursuits. But neither climate nor poverty, neither study nor the ESSAY ON CLIVE 9 sorrows of a home-sick exile, could tame the desperate audacity of his spirit. He behaved to his official superiors as he had behaved to his schoolmasters, and he was several times in danger of losing his situation. Twice, while residing in the Writers' Buildings, he at- 5 tempted to destroy himself; and twice the pistol which he snapped at his own head failed to go off. This circumstance, it is said, affected him as a similar escape affected Wallenstein. After satisfying himself that the pistol was really well loaded, he burst forth into an 10 exclamation that surely he was reserved for something great. About this time an event which at first seemed likely to destroy all his hopes in life suddenly opened before him a new path to eminence. Europe had been, during 15 some years, distracted by the war of the Austrian succession. George the Second was the steady ally of Maria Theresa. The house of Bourbon took the opposite side. Though England was even then the first of maritime powers, she was not, as she has since 20 become, more than a match on the sea for all the nations of the world together ; and she found it difficult to maintain a contest against the united navies of France and Spain. In the eastern seas France obtained the ascendancy. Labourdonnais, governor of Mauritius, 25 a man of eminent talents and virtues, conducted an expedition to the continent of India in spite of the opposition of the British fleet, landed, assembled an army, appeared before Madras, and compelled the town and fort to capitulate. The keys were delivered up ; 30 the French colours were displayed on Fort St George ; io ESSAY ON CLIVE and the contents of the Company's warehouses were seized as prize of war by the conquerors. It was stipu- lated by the capitulation that the English inhabitants should be prisoners of war on parole, and that the town 5 should remain in the hands of the French till it should be ransomed. Labourdonnais pledged his honour that only a moderate ransom should be required. But the success of Labourdonnais had awakened the jealousy of his countryman, Dupleix, governor of Pondi- 10 cherry. Dupleix, moreover, had already begun to revolve gigantic schemes, with which the restoration of Madras to the English was by no means cojrrgatible. He declared that Labourdonnais had gone beyond his powers; that conquests made by the French arms on 15 the continent of India were at the disposal of the governor of Pondicherry alone ; and that Madras should be razed to the ground. Labourdonnais was compelled to yield. The anger which the breach of the capitula- tion excited among the English was increased by the 20 ungenerous manner in which Dupleix treated the principal servants of the Company. The Governor and several of the first gentlemen of Fort St George were carried under a guard to Pondicherry, and conducted through the town in a triumphal procession under the 25 eyes of fifty thousand spectators. It was with reason thought that this gross vjpjation^ of public faith absolved the inhabitants of Madras from the engagements into which they had entered with Labourdonnais. Clive fled from the town by night in the disguise of a Mussulman, 30 and took refuge at Fort St David, one of the small English settlements subordinate to Madras. ESSAY ON CLIVE n The circumstances in which he was now placed naturally led him to adopt a profession better suited to his restless and intrepijLspirit than the business of ex- amining packages and casting accounts. He solicited and obtained an ensign's commission in the service of 5 the Company, and at twenty-one entered on his military career. His personal courage, of which he had, while still a writer, given signal proof by a desperate duel with a military bully who was the terror of Fort St David, speedily made him conspicuous even among 10 hundreds of brave men. He soon began to show in his new calling other qualities which had not before been discerned in him, judgment, sagacity, deference to legitimate authority. He distinguished himself highly in several operations against the French, and was 15 particularly noticed by Major Lawrence, who was then considered as the ablest British officer in India. Clive had been only a few months in the army when intelligence arrived that peace had been concluded between Great Britain and France. Dupleix was in 20 consequence compelled to restore Madras to the English Company ; and the young ensign was at liberty to resume his former business. He did indeed return for a short time to his desk. He again quitted it in order to assist Major Lawrence in some petty hostilities 25 with the natives, and then again returned to it. While he was thus wavering between a military and a com- mercial life, events took place which decided his choice. The politics of India assumed a new aspect. There was peace between the English and French Crowns ; 30 but there arose between the English and French Com- 12 ESSAY ON CLIVE panics trading to the East a war most eventful and im- portant, a war in which the prize was nothing less than the magnificent inheritance of the house of Tamerlane. The empire which Baber and his Moguls reared in 5 the sixteenth century was long one of the most extensive and splendid in the world. In no European kingdom was so large a population subject to a single prince, or so large a revenue poured into the treasury. The beauty and magnificence of the buildings erected by 10 the sovereigns of Hindostan amazed even travellers who had seen St Peter's. The innumerable retinues and gorgeous decorations which surrounded the throne of Delhi dazzled even eyes which were accustomed to the pomp of Versailles. Some of the great viceroys 15 who held their posts by virtue of commissions from the Mogul ruled as many subjects as the King of France or the Emperor of Germany. Even the deputies of these deputies might well rank, as to extent of territory and amount of revenue, with the Grand Duke of Tuscany, 20 or the Elector of Saxony. There can be little doubt that this great empire, powerful and prosperous as it appears on a superficial view, was yet, even in its best days, far worse governed than the worst governed parts of Europe now are. 25 The administration was tainted with all the vices of Oriental despotism, and with all the vices inseparable from the domination of race over race. The conflict- ing pretensions of the princes of the royal house pro- duced a long series of crimes and public disasters. 30 Ambitious lieutenants of the sovereign sometimes aspired to independence. Fierce tribes of Hindoos, ESSAY ON CLIVE 13 impatient of a foreign yoke, frequently withheld tribute, repelled the armies of the government from the mountain fastnesseSj and poured down in arms on the cultivated plains. In spite, however, of much constant maladministration, in spite of occasional convulsions 5 which shook the whole frame of society, this great monarchy, on the whole, retained, during some genera- tions, an outward appearance of unity, majesty, and energy. But, throughout the long reign of Aurungzebe, the state, notwithstanding all that the vigour and policy 10 of the prince could effect, was hastening to dissolution. After his death, which took place in the year 1707, the" ruin was fearfully rapid. Violent shocks from without co-operated with an incurable decay which was fast proceeding within; and in a few years the empire had 15 undergone utter decomposition. The history of the successors of Theodosius bears no small analogy to that of the successors of Aurungzebe. But perhaps the fall of the Carlovingians furnishes the nearest parallel to the fall of the Moguls. Charlemagne 20 was scarcely interred when the imbecility^and the dis- putes of his descendants began to bring contempt on themselves and destruction on their subjects. The wide dominion of the Franks was severed into a thousand pieces. Nothing more than a nominal 25 dignity was left to the abject heirs of an illustrious name, Charles the Bald, and Charles the Fat, and Charles the Simple. Fierce invaders, differing from each other in race, language, and religion, flocked, as if by concert, from the farthest corners of the earth, to 30 plunder provinces which the government could no longer defend. The pirates of the Northern Sea ex- tended their ravages from the Elbe to the Pyrenees, and at length fixed their seat in the rich valley of the Seine. The Hungarian, in whom the trembling monks 5 fancied that they recognised the Gog or Magog of prophecy, carried back the plunder of the cities of Lombardy to the depths of the Pannonian forests. The Saracen ruled in Sicily, desolated the fertile plains of Campania, and spread terror even to the walls of 10 Rome. In the midst of these sufferings, a great internal change passed upon the empire. The corruption of death began to ferment into new forms of life. While the great body, as a whole, was torpid and passive, every separate member began to feel with a sense and 15 to move with an energy all its own. Just here, in the most barren and dreary tract of European history, all feudal privileges, all modern nobility, take their source. It is to this point, that we trace the power of those princes who, nominally vassals, but really independent, 20 long governed, with the titles of dukes, marquesses, and counts, almost every part of the dominions which had obeyed Charlemagne. Such or nearly such was the change which passed on the Mogul empire during the forty years which followed 25 the death of Aurungzebe. A succession of nominal sovereigns, sunk in indolence and debauchery, sauntered away life in secluded palaces, chewing bang, fondling concubines, and listening to buffoons. A~ "succession of ferocious invaders descended through the western 30 passes, to prey on the defenceless wealth of Hindostan. A Persian conqueror crossed the Indus, marched through ESSAY ON CLIVE 15 the gates of Delhi, and bore away in triumph those treasures of which the magnificence had astounded Roe and Bernier, the Peacock Throne, on which the richest jewels of Golconda had been disposed by the most skilful hands of Europe, and the inestimable 5 Mountain of Light, which, after many strange vicis- situdes, lately shone in the bracelet of Runjeet Sing, and is now destined to adorn the hideous idol of Orissa. The Afghan soon followed to complete the work of devastation which the Persian had begun. The warlike 10 tribes of Rajpootana threw off the Mussulman yoke. A band of mercenary soldiers occupied Rohilcund. The Seiks ruled on the Indus. The Jauts spread dismay along the Jumna. The highlands which border on the western sea-coast of India poured forth a yet 15 more formidable race, a race which was long the terror of every native power, and which, after many desperate and doubtful struggles, yielded only to the fortune and genius of England. It was under the reign of Aurung- zebe that this wild clan of plunderers first descended 20 from their mountains; and soon after his death, every corner of his wide empire learned to tremble at the mighty name of the Mahrattas. Many fertile vice- royalties were entirely subdued by them. Their dominions stretched across the peninsula from sea to 25 sea. Mahratta captains reigned at Poonah, at Gualior, in Guzerat, in Berar, and in Tanjore. Nor did they, though they had become great sovereigns, therefore cease to be freebooters. They still retained the predatory habits of their forefathers. Every region which"was not 30 subject to their rule was wasted by their incursions. 16 Wherever their kettle-drums were heard, the peasant threw his bag of rice on his shoulder, hid his small savings in his girdle, and fled with his wife and children to the mountains or the jungles, to the milder neighbourhood 5 of the hyaena and the tiger. Many provinces redeemed their harvests by the payment of an annual ransom. Even the wretched phantom who still bore the imperial title stooped to pay this ignominious, -blackmail. The camp-fires of one rapacious leader were seen from the 10 walls of the palace of Delhi. Another, at the head of his innumerable cavalry, descended year after year on the rice-fields of Bengal. Even the European factors trembled for their magazines. Less than a hundred years ago, it was thought necessary to fortify Calcutta 15 against the horsemen of Berar, and the name of the Mahratta ditch still preserves the memory of the danger. Wherever the viceroys of the Mogul retained authority they became sovereigns. They might still acknowledge in words the superiority of the house of Tamerlane ; as 20 a Count of Flanders or a Duke of Burgundy might have acknowledged the superiority of the most helpless driveller among the later Carlovingians. They might occasionally send to their titular sovereign a compli- mentary present, or solicit from him a title of honour. 25 In truth, however, they were no longer lieutenants re- movable at pleasure, but independent hereditary princes. In this way originated those great Mussulman houses which formerly ruled Bengal and the Carnatic, and those which still, though in a state of vassalage^, exercise some 30 of the powers of royalty at Lucknow and Hyderabad. In what was this confusion to end? Was the strife ESSAY ON CLIVE 17 to continue during centuries? Was it to terminate in the rise of another great monarchy ? Was the Mussul- man or the Mahratta to be the Lord of India ? Was another Baber to descend from the mountains, and to lead the hardy tribes of Cabul and Chorasan against 5 a wealthier and less warlike race ? None of these events seemed improbable. But scarcely any man, however sagacious, would have thought it possible that a trading company, separated from India by fifteen thousand miles of sea, and possessing in India only a few acres for 10 purposes of commerce, would, in less than a hundred years, spread its empire from Cape Comorin to the eternal snow of the Himalayas ; would compel Mahratta and Mahommedan to forget their mutual feuds in common subjection; would tame down even those wild 15 races which had resisted the most powerful of the Moguls ; and, having united under its laws a hundred millions of subjects, would carry its victorious arms far to the east of the Burrampooter, and far to the west of the Hydaspes, dictate terms of peace at the gates of 20 Ava, and seat its vassal on the throne of Candahar. The man who first saw that it was possible to found an European empire on the ruins of the Mogul monarchy was Dupleix. His restless, capacious, and inventive mind had formed this scheme, at a time when the ablest 25 servants of the English Company were busied only about invoices and bills of lading. Nor had he only proposed to himself the end. He had also a just and distinct view of the means by which it was to be attained. He clearly saw that the greatest force which the princes of 30 India could bring into the field would be no match for 1 8 ESSAY ON CLIVE a small body of men trained in the discipline, and guided by the tactics, of the West. He saw also that the natives of India might, under European commanders, be formed into armies, such as Saxe or Frederic would be proud to 5 command. He was perfectly aware that the most easy and convenient way in which an European adventurer could exercise sovereignty in India, was to govern the motions, and to speak through the mouth of some glitter- ing puppet dignified by the title of Nabob or Nizam. 10 The arts both of war and policy, which a few years later were employed with such signal success by the English, were first understood and practised by this ingenious and aspiring Frenchman. The situation of India was such that scarcely any 15 aggression could be without a pretext, either in old laws or in recent practice. All rights were in a state of utter uncertainty; and the Europeans who took part in the disputes of the natives confounded the confusion, by applying to Asiatic politics the public law of the West, 20 and analogies drawn from the feudal system. If it was convenient to treat a Nabob as an independent prince, there was an excellent plea for doing so. He was inde- pendent in fact. If it was convenient to treat him as a mere deputy of the Court of Delhi, there was no diffi- 25 culty ; for he was so in theory. If it was convenient to consider his office as an hereditary dignity, or as a dig- nity held during life only, or as a dignity held only during the good pleasure of the Mogul, arguments and precedents might be found for every one of those views. 30 The party who had the heir of Baber in their hands, represented him as the undoubted, the legitimate, the ESSAY ON CLIVE 19 absolute sovereign, whom all subordinate authorities were bound to obey. The party against whom his name was used did not want plausible pretexts for maintaining that the empire was in fact dissolved, and that though it might be decent to treat the Mogul with respect, as a 5 venerable relic of an order of things which has passed away, it was absurd to regard him as the real master of Hindostan. In the year 1748, died one of the most powerful of the new masters of India, the great Nizam al Mulk, 10 Viceroy of the Deccan. His authority descended to his son, Nazir Jung. Of the provinces subject to this high functionary, the Carnatic was the wealthiest and the most extensive. It was governed by an ancient Nabob, whose name the English corrupted into Anaverdy Khan. 15 But there were pretenders to the government both of the viceroyalty and of the subordinate province. Mirza- pha Jung, a grandson of Nizam al Mulk, appeared as the competitor of Nazir Jung. Chunda Sahib, son-in-law of a former Nabob of the Carnatic, disputed the title of 20 Anaverdy Khan. In the unsettled state of Indian law it was easy for both Mirzapha Jung and Chunda Sahib to make out something like a claim of right. In a society altogether disorganised, they had no difficulty in finding greedy advepturers to follow their standards. 25 They united their interests, invaded the Carnatic, and applied for assistance to the French, whose fame had been raised by their success against the English in the recent war on the coast of Coromandel. Nothing could have happened more pleasing to the 30 subtle and ambitious Dupleix. To make a Nabob of 20 ESSAY ON CLIVE the Carnatic, to make a Viceroy of the Deccan, to rule under their names the whole of Southern India; this was indeed an attractive prospect. He allied himself with the pretenders, and sent four hundred French 5 soldiers, and two thousand sepoys, disciplined after the European fashion, to the assistance of his confederates. A battle was fought. The French distinguished them- selves greatly. Anaverdy Khan was defeated and slain. His son, Mahommed Ali, who was afterwards well known 10 in England as the Nabob of Arcot, and who owes to the eloquence of Burke a most unenviable immortality, fled with a scanty remnant of his army to Trichinopoly ; and the conquerors became at once masters of almost every part of the Carnatic. 1 5 This was but the beginning of the greatness of Dupleix. After some months of fighting, negotiation and intrigue, his ability and good fortune seemed to have prevailed everywhere. Nazir Jung perished by the hands of his own followers ; Mirzapha Jung was master of the 20 Deccan ; and the triumph of French arms and French policy was complete. At Pondicherry all was exultation and festivity. Salutes were fired from the batteries, and Te Deum sung in the churches. The new Nizam came thither to visit his allies ; and the ceremony of his in- 25 stallation was performed there with great pomp. Dupleix, dressed in the garb worn by Mahommedans of the highest rank, entered the town in the same palanquin with the Nizam, and, in the pageant which followed, took precedence of all the court. He was declared 30 Governor of India from the river Kristna to Cape Comorin, a country about as large as France, with ESSAY ON CLIVE 21 authority superior even to that of Chunda Sahib. He was intrusted with the command of seven thousand cavalry. It was announced that no mint would be suffered to exist in the Carnatic except that at Pondi- cherry. A large portion of the treasures which former 5 Viceroys of the Deccan had accumulated had found its way into the coffers of the French governor. It was rumoured that he had received two hundred thousand pounds sterling in money, besides many valuable jewels. In fact, there could scarcely be any limit to his gains. 10 He now ruled thirty millions of people with almost absolute power. No honour or emolument could be obtained from the government but by his intervention. No petition, unless signed by him, was perused by the Nizam. 15 Mirzapha Jung survived his elevation only a few months. But another prince of the same house was raised to the throne by French influence, and ratified all the promises of his predecessor. Dupleix was now the greatest potentate in India. His countrymen 20 boasted that his name was mentioned with awe even in the chambers of the palace of Delhi. The native popu- lation looked with amazement on the progress which, in the short space of four years, an European adventurer had made towards dominion in Asia. Nor was the 25 vainglorious Frenchman content with the reality of power. He loved to display his greatness with arrogant ostentation before the eyes of his subjects and of his rivals. Near the spot where his policy had obtained its chief triumph, by the fall of Nazir Jung, and the eleva- 30 tion of Mirzapha, he determined to erect a column, on 22 ESSAY ON CLIVE the four sides of which four pompous inscriptions, in four languages, should proclaim his glory to all the nations of the East. Medals stamped with emblems of his successes were buried beneath the foundations of this 5 stately pillar, and round it arose a town bearing the haughty name of Dupleix Fatihabad, which is, being interpreted, the City of the Victory of Dupleix. The English had made some feeble and irresolute attempts to stop the rapid and brilliant career of the 10 rival Company, and continued to recognise Mahommed Ali as Nabob of the Carnatic. But the dominions of Mahommed Ali consisted of Trichinopoly alone : and Trichinopoly was now invested by Chunda Sahib and his French auxiliaries. To raise the siege seemed im- 15 possible. The small force which was then at Madras had no commander. Major Lawrence had returned to England ; and not a single officer of established char- acter remained in the settlement. The natives had learned to look with contempt on the mighty nation 20 which was soon to conquer and to rule them. They had seen the French colours flying on Fort St George ; they had seen the chiefs of the English factory led in triumph through the streets of Pondicherry ; they had seen the arms and counsels of Dupleix everywhere successful, 25 while the opposition which the authorities of Madras had made to his progress, had served only to expose their own weakness, and to heighten his glory. At this moment, the valour and genius of an obscure English youth suddenly turned the tide of fortune. 30 Clive was now twenty-five years old. After hesitating for some time between a military and a commercial life, ESSAY ON CLIVE 23 he had at length been placed in a post which partook of both characters, that of commissary to the troops, with the rank of captain. The present emergency called forth all his powers. He represented to his superiors that unless some vigorous effort were made, Trichinopoly 5 would fall, the house of Anaverdy Khan would perish, and the French would become the real masters of the whole peninsula of India. It was absolutely necessary to strike some daring blow. If an attack were made on Arcot, the capital of the Carnatic, and the favourite 10 residence of the Nabobs, it was not impossible that the siege of Trichinopoly would be raised. The heads of the English settlement, now thoroughly alarmed by the success of Dupleix, and apprehensive that, in the event of a new war between France and Great Britain, Madras 15 would be instantly taken and destroyed, approved of Clive's plan, and intrusted the execution of it to himself. The young captain was put at the head of two hundred English soldiers, and three hundred sepoys, armed and disciplined after the European fashion. Of the eight 20 officers who commanded this little force under him, only two had ever been in action, and four of the eight were factors of the Company, whom Clive's example had induced to offer their services. The weather was stormy ; but Clive pushed on, through thunder, light- 25 ning, and rain, to the gates of Arcot. The garrison, in a panic, evacuated the fort, and the English entered it without a blow. But Clive well knew that he should not be suffered to retain undisturbed possession of his conquest. He in- 30 stantly began to collect provisions, to throw up works, 24 ESSAY ON CLIVE and to make preparations for sustaining a siege. The garrison, which had fled at his approach, now had re- covered from its dismay, and, having been swelled by large reinforcements from the neighbourhood to a force 5 of three thousand men, encamped close to the town. At dead of night, Clive marched out of the fort, attacked the camp by surprise, slew great numbers, dispersed the rest, and returned to his quarters without having lost a single man. 10 The intelligence of these events was soon carried to Chunda Sahib, who, with his French allies, was be- sieging Trichinopoly. He immediately detached four thousand men from his camp, and sent them to Arcot. They were speedily joined by the remains of the force 15 which Clive had lately scattered. They 'were further strengthened by two thousand men from Vellore, and by a still more important reinforcement of a hundred and fifty French soldiers whom Dupleix despatched from Pondicherry. The whole of his army, amounting to 20 about ten thousand men, was under the command of Rajah Sahib, son of Chunda Sahib. Rajah Sahib proceeded to invest the fort of Arcot, which seemed quite incapable of sustaining a siege. The walls were ruinous, the ditches dry, the ramparts 25 too narrow to admit the guns, the battlements too low to protect the soldiers. The little garrison had been greatly reduced by casualties. It now consisted of a hundred and twenty Europeans and two hundred sepoys. Only four officers were left ; the stock of pro- 30 visions was scanty ; and the commander, who had to conduct the defence under circumstances so discourag- ESSAY ON CLIVE 25 ing, was a young man of five-and-twenty, who had been bred a book-keeper. During fifty days the siege went on. During fifty days the young captain maintained the defence, with a firmness, vigilance, and ability, which would have done 5 honour to the oldest marshal in Europe. The breach, however, increased day by day. The garrison began to feel the pressure of hunger. Under such circumstances, any troops so scantily provided with officers might have been expected to show signs of insubordination ; and 10 the danger was peculiarly great in a force composed of men differing widely from each other in extraction, colour, language, manners, and religion. But the de- votion of the little band to its chief surpassed anything that is related of the Tenth Legion of Csesar, or of the 15 Old Guard of Napoleon. The sepoys came to Clive, not to complain of their scanty fare, but to propose that all the grain should be given to the Europeans, who re- quired more nourishment than the natives of Asia. The thin gruel, they said, which was strained away from 20 the rice, would suffice for themselves. History contains no more touching instance of military fidelity, or of the influence of a commanding mind. An attempt made by the government of Madras to relieve the place had failed. But there was hope from 25 another quarter. A body of six thousand Mahrattas, half soldiers, half robbers, under the command of a chief named Morari Row, had been hired to assist Mahommed Ali; but thinking the French power ir- resistible, and the triumph of Chunda Sahib certain, they 30 had hitherto remained inactive on the frontiers of the 26 ESSAY ON CLIVE Carnatic. The fame of the defence of Arcot roused them from their torpor. Morari Row declared that he had never before believed that Englishmen could fight s but that he would willingly help them since he saw that S they had spirit to help themselves. Rajah Sahib learned that the Mahrattas were in motion. It was necessary for him to be expeditious. He first tried negotiation. He offered large bribes to Clive, which were rejected with scorn. He vowed that, if his pro- 10 posals were not accepted, he would instantly storm the fort, and put every man in it to the sword. Clive told him in reply, with characteristic haughtiness, that his father was an usurper,. that his army was a rabble, and that he would do well to think twice before he sent 15 such poltroons into a breach defended by English soldiers. Rajah Sahib determined to storm the fort. The day was well suited to a bold military enterprise. It was the great Mahommedan festival which is sacred to the 20 memory of Hosein, the son of Ali. The history of Islam contains nothing more touching than the event which gave rise to that solemnity. The mournful legend relates how the chief of the Fatimites, when all his brave followers had perished round him, drank his latest 25 draught of water, and uttered his latest prayer, how the assassins carried his head in triumph, how the tyrant smote the lifeless lips with his staff, and how a few old men recollected with tears that they had seen those lips pressed to the lips of the Prophet of God. After the 30 lapse of near twelve centuries, the recurrence of this solemn season excites the fiercest and saddest emotions ESSAY ON CLIVE 27 in the bosoms of the devout Moslems of India. They work themselves up to such agonies of rage and lamenta- tion that some, it is said, have given up the ghost from the mere effect of mental excitement. They believe that whoever, during this festival, falls in arms against 5 the infidels, atones by his death for all the sins of his life, and passes at once to the garden of the Houris. It was at this time that Rajah Sahib determined to assault Arcot. Stimulating drugs were employed to aid the effect of religious zeal, and the besiegers, drunk with 10 enthusiasm, drunk with bang, rushed furiously to the attack. Clive had received secret intelligence of the design, had made his arrangements, and, exhausted by fatigue, had thrown himself on his bed. He was awakened by 15 the alarm, and was instantly at his post. The enemy advanced, driving before them elephants whose foreheads were armed with iron plates. It was expected that the gates would yield to the shock of these living battering- rams. But the huge beasts no sooner felt the English 20 musket-balls than they turned round, and rushed furiously away, trampling on the multitude which had urged them forward. A raft was launched on the water which filled one part of the ditch. Clive, perceiving that his gunners at that post did not understand their 25 business, took the management of a piece of artillery himself, and cleared the raft in a few minutes. When the moat was dry the assailants mounted with great boldness; but they were received with a fire so heavy and so well directed, that it soon quelled the courage 30 even of fanaticism and of intoxication. The rear ranks 28 ESSAY ON CLIVE of the English kept the front ranks supplied with a constant succession of loaded muskets, and every shot told on the living mass below. After three desperate onsets, the besiegers retired behind the ditch. 5 The struggle lasted about an hour. Four hundred of the assailants fell. The garrison lost only five or six men. The besieged passed an anxious night, looking for a renewal of the attack. But when the day broke, the enemy were no more to be seen. They had retired, 10 leaving to the English several guns and a large quantity of ammunition. The news was received at Fort St George with transports of joy and pride. Clive was justly regarded as a man equal to any command. Two hundred English 15 soldiers and seven hundred sepoys were sent to him, and with this force he instantly commenced offensive operations. He took the Fort of Timery, effected a junction with a division of Morari Row's army, and hastened, by forced marches, to attack Rajah Sahib, 20 who was at the head of about five thousand men, of whom three hundred were French. The action was sharp; but Clive gained a complete victory. The military chest of Rajah Sahib fell into the hands of the conquerors. Six hundred sepoys, who had served in 25 the enemy's army, came over to Clive's quarters, and were taken into the British service. Conjeveram sur- rendered without a blow. The governor of Arnee deserted Chunda Sahib, and recognised the title of Mahommed Ali. 30 Had the entire direction of the war been intrusted to Clive, it would probably have been brought to a speedy ESSAY ON CLIVE 29 close. But the timidity and incapacity which appeared in all the movements of the English, except where he was personally present, protracted the struggle. The Mahrattas muttered that his soldiers were of a different race from the British whom they found elsewhere. The 5 effect of this languor was that in no long time Rajah Sahib, at the head of a considerable army, in which were four hundred French troops, appeared almost under the guns of Fort St George, and laid waste the villas and gardens of the gentlemen of the English 10 settlement. But he was again encountered and defeated by Clive. More than a hundred of the French were killed or taken, a loss more serious than that of thousands of natives. The victorious army marched from the field of battle to Fort St David. On the road 15 lay the City of the Victory of Dupleix, and the stately monument which was designed to commemorate the triumphs of France in the East. Clive ordered both the city and the monument to be razed to the ground. He was induced, we believe, to take this step, not by 20 personal or national malevolence, but by a just and profound policy. The town and its pompous name, the pillar and its vaunting inscriptions, were among the devices by which Dupleix had laid the public mind of India under a spell. This spell it was dive's business 25 to break. The natives had been taught that France was confessedly the first power in Europe, and that the English did not presume to dispute her supremacy. No measure could be more effectual for the removing of this delusion than the public and solemn demolition 30 of the French trophies. 30 ESSAY ON CLIVE The government of Madras, encouraged by these events, determined to send a strong detachment, under Clive, to reinforce the garrison of Trichinopoly. But just at this conjuncture, Major Lawrence arrived from 5 England, and assumed the chief command. From the waywardness and impatience of control which had char- acterised Clive, both at school and in the counting-house, it might have been expected that he would not, after such achievements, act with zeal and good humour in a 10 subordinate capacity. But Lawrence had early treated him with kindness ; and it is bare justice to Clive to say that, proud and overbearing as he was, kindness was never thrown away upon him. He cheerfully placed himself under the orders of his old friend, and exerted 15 himself as strenuously in the second post as he could have done in the first. Lawrence well knew the value of such assistance. Though himself gifted with no intel- lectual faculty higher than plain good sense, he fully appreciated the powers of his brilliant _coadjutor. 20 Though he had made a methodical study of military tactics, and, like all men regularly bred to a profession, was disposed to look with disdain on interlopers, he had yet liberality enough to acknowledge that Clive was an exception to common rules. "Some people," he wrote, 25 " are pleased to term Captain Clive fortunate and lucky ; but, in my opinion, from the knowledge I have of the gentleman, he deserved and might expect from his con- duct everything as it fell out ; a man of an undaunted resolution, of a cool temper, and of a presence of mind 30 which never left him in the greatest danger born a soldier ; for, without a military education of any sort, or ESSAY ON CLIVE 31 much conversing with any of the profession, from his judgment and good sense, he led on an army like an experienced officer and a brave soldier, with a prudence that certainly warranted success." The French had no commander to oppose to the two 5 friends. Dupleix, not inferior in talents for negotiation and intrigue to any European who has borne a part in the revolutions of India, was ill qualified to direct in person military operations. He had not been bred a soldier, and had no inclination to become one. His 10 enemies accused him of personal cowardice; and he defended himself in a strain worthy of Captain Bobadil. He kept away from shot, he said, because silence and tranquillity were propitious to his genius, and he found it difficult to pursue his meditations amidst the noise of 15 fire-arms. He was thus under the necessity of intrusting to others the execution of his great warlike designs; and he bitterly complained that he was ill served. He had indeed been assisted by one officer of eminent merit, the celebrated Bussy. But Bussy had marched north- 20 ward with the Nizam, and was fully employed in looking after his own interests, and those of France, at the court of that prince. Among the officers who remained with Dupleix, there was not a single man of capacity ; and many of them were boys, at whose ignorance and folly 25 the common soldiers laughed. The English triumphed everywhere. The besiegers of Trichinopoly were themselves besieged and compelled to capitulate. Chunda Sahib fell into the hands of the Mahrattas, and was put to death, at the instigation prob- 30 ably of his competitor, Mahommed Ali. The spirit of 32 ESSAY ON CLIVE Dupleix, however, was unconquerable, and his resources inexhaustible. From his employers in Europe he no longer received help or countenance. They condemned his policy. They gave him no pecuniary assistance. 5 They sent him for troops only the sweepings of the galleys. Yet still he persisted, intrigued, bribed, pro- mised, lavished his private fortune, strained his credit, procured new diplomas from Delhi, raised up new enemies to the government of Madras on every side, and 10 found tools even among the allies of the English Company. But all was in vain. Slowly, but steadily, the power of Britain continued to increase, and that of France to decline. The health of Clive had never been good during his 15 residence in India; and his constitution was now so much impaired that he determined to return to England. Before his departure he undertook a service of consider- able difficulty, and performed it with his usual vigour and dexterity. The forts of Covelong and Chingleput 20 were occupied by French garrisons. It was determined to send a force against them. But the only force avail- able for this purpose was of such a description that no officer but Clive would risk his reputation by command- ing it. It consisted of five hundred newly levied sepoys 25 and two hundred recruits who had just landed from England, and who were the worst and lowest wretches that the Company's crimps could pick up in the flash- houses of London. Clive, ill and exhausted as he was, undertook to make an army of this undisciplined rabble, 30 and marched with them to Covelong. A shot from the fort killed one of these extraordinary soldiers ; on which ESSAY ON CLIVE 33 all the rest faced about and ran away, and it was with the greatest difficulty that Clive rallied them. On another occasion, the noise of a gun terrified the sentinels so much that one of them was found, some hours later, at the bottom of a well. Clive gradually accustomed 5 them to danger, and, by exposing himself constantly in the most perilous situations, shamed them into courage. He at length succeeded in forming a respectable force out of his unpromising materials. Covelong fell. Clive learned that a strong detachment was marching to relieve 10 it from Chingleput. He took measures to prevent the enemy from learning that they were too late, laid an am- buscade for them on the road, killed a hundred of them with one fire, took three hundred prisoners, pursued the fugitives to the gates of Chingleput, laid siege instantly 15 to that fastness, reputed one of the strongest in India, made a breach, and was on the point of storming, when the French commandant capitulated and retired with his men. Clive returned to Madras victorious, but in a state of 20 health which rendered it impossible for him to remain there long. He married at this time a young lady of the name of Maskelyne, sister of the eminent mathe- matician, who long held the post of Astronomer Royal. She is described as handsome and accomplished ; and 25 her husband's letters, it is said, contain proofs that he was devotedly attached to her. Almost immediately after the marriage, Clive em- barked with his bride for England. He returned a very different person from the poor slighted boy who had 30 been sent out ten years before to seek his fortune. He 34 ESSAY ON CLIVE was only twenty-seven ; yet his country already respected him as one of her first soldiers. There was then general peace in Europe. The Carnatic was the only part of the world where the English and French were 5 in arms against each other. The vast schemes of Dupleix had excited no small uneasiness in the city of London ; and the rapid turn of fortune, which was chiefly owing to the courage and talents of Clive, had been hailed with great delight. The young captain was 10 known at the India House by the honourable nickname of General Clive, and was toasted by that appellation at the feasts of the Directors. On his arrival in England, he found himself an object of general interest and admiration. The East India Company thanked him 15 for his services in the warmest terms, and bestowed on him a sword set with diamonds. With rare delicacy, he refused to receive this token of gratitude, unless a similar compliment were paid to his friend and com- mander, Lawrence. 20 It may easily be supposed that Clive was most cordi- ally welcomed home by his family, who were delighted by his success, though they seem to have been hardly able to comprehend how their naughty idle Bobby had become so great a man. His father had been singularly 25 hard of belief. Not until the news of the defence of Arcot arrived in England was the old gentleman heard to growl out that, after all, the booby had something in him. His expressions of approbation became stronger and stronger as news arrived of one brilliant exploit 30 after another; and he was at length immoderately fond and proud of his son. ESSAY ON CLIVE 35 Olive's relations had very substantial reasons for rejoicing at his return. Considerable sums of prize money had fallen to his share; and he had brought home a moderate fortune, part of which he expended in extricating his father from pecuniary difficulties, and in 5 redeeming the family estate. The remainder he appears to have dissipated in the course of about two years. He lived splendidly, dressed gaily even for those times, kept a carriage and saddle-horses, and, not content with these ways of getting rid of his money, resorted to the 10 most speedy and effectual of all modes of evacuation, a contested election followed by a petition. At the time of the general election of 1754, the Government was in a very singular state. There was scarcely any formal opposition. The Jacobites had 15 been cowed by the issue of the last rebellion. The Tory party had fallen into utter contempt. It had been deserted by all the men of talents who had belonged to it, and had scarcely given a syjmptpmoj life during some years. The small faction which had been held together 20 by the influence and promises of Prince Frederic, had been dispersed by his death. Almost every public man of distinguished talents in the kingdom, whatever his early connections might have been, was in office, and called himself a Whig. But this extraordinary appear- 25 ance of concord was quite delusive. The administration itself was distracted by bitter enmities and conflicting pretensions. The chief object of its members was to depress and supplant each other. The Prime Minister, Newcastle, weak, timid, jealous, and p^tfidious^was at 30 once detested and despised by some of the most im- 36 ESSAY ON CLIVE portant members of his Government, and by none more than by Henry Fox, the Secretary-at-War. This able, daring, and ambitious man seized every opportunity of crossing the First Lord of the Treasury, 5 from whom he well knew that he had little to dread and little to hope ; for Newcastle was through life equally afraid of breaking with men of parts and of promoting them. Newcastle had set his heart on returning two members 10 for St Michael, one of those wretched Cornish boroughs which were swept away by the Reform Act of 1832. He was opposed by Lord Sandwich, whose influence had long been paramount there : and Fox exerted himself strenuously in Sandwich's behalf. Clive, who had been 15 introduced to Fox, and very kindly received by him, was brought forward on the Sandwich interest, and was returned. But a petition was presented against the return, and was backed by the whole influence of the Duke of Newcastle. 20 The case was heard, according to the usage of that time, before a committee of the whole House. Ques- tions respecting elections were then considered merely as party questions. Judicial impartiality was not even affected. Sir Robert Walpole was in the habit of saying 25 openly that, in election battles, there ought to be no quarter. On the present occasion the excitement was great. The matter really at issue was, not whether Give had been properly or improperly returned, but whether Newcastle or Fox was to be master of the new 30 House of Commons, and consequently first minister. The contest was long and obstinate, and success seemed ESSAY ON CLIVE 37 to lean sometimes to one side and sometimes to the other. Fox put forth all his rare powers of debate, beat half the lawyers in the House at their own weapons, and carried division after division against the whole influence of the Treasury. The committee decided in dive's 5 favour. But when the resolution was reported to the House, things took a different course. The remnant of the Tory Opposition, contemptible as it was, had yet sufficient weight to turn the scale between the nicely balanced parties of Newcastle and Fox. Newcastle, the 10 Tories could only despise. Fox they hated, as the boldest and most subtle politician and the ablest debater among the WhigspaVtlie steady friend of Walpole, as the devoted adherent of the Duke of Cumberland. After wavering till the last moment, they determined to 15 vote in a body with the Prime Minister's friends. The consequence was that the House, by a small majority, rescinded the decision of the committee, and Clive was unseated. Ejected from Parliament, and straitened in his means, 20 he naturally began to look again towards India. The Company and the Government were eager to avail themselves of his services. A treaty favourable to England had indeed been concluded in the Carnatic. Dupleix had been superseded, and had returned with 25 the wreck of his immense fortune to Europe, where calumny and chicanery soon hunted him to his grave. But many signs indicated that a war between France and Great Britain was at hand ; and it was therefore thought desirable to send an able commander to the Company's 30 settlements in India. The Directors appointed Clive 38 ESSAY ON CLIVE governor of Fort St David. The King gave him the commission of a lieutenant-colonel in the British army, and in 1755 he again sailed for Asia. The first service on which he was employed after his 5 return to the East was the reduction of the stronghold of Gheriah. This fortress, built on a craggy promontory, and almost surrounded by the ocean, was the den of a pirate named Angria, whose barks had long been the terror of the Arabian Gulf. Admiral Watson, who com- 10 manded the English squadron in the Eastern seas, burned Angria's fleet, while Clive attacked the fastness by land. The place soon fell, and a booty of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling was divided among the conquerors. 15 After this exploit, Clive proceeded to his government of Fort St David. Before he had been there two months, he received intelligence which called forth all the energy of his bold and active mind. Of the provinces which had been subject to the house 20 of Tamerlane, the wealthiest was Bengal. No part of India possessed such natural advantages both for agri- culture and for commerce. The Ganges, rushing through a hundred channels to the sea, has formed a vast plain of rich mould which, even under the tropical 25 sky, rivals the verdure of an English April. The rice- fields yield an increase such as is elsewhere unknown. Spices, sugar, vegetable oils, are produced with marvel- lous exuberance. The rivers afford an inexhaustible supply of fish. The desolate islands along the" sea-coast, 30 overgrown by uoxious vegetation, and swarming with deer and tigers, supply the cultivated districts with ESSAY ON CLIVE 39 abundance of salt. The great stream which fertilises the soil is, at the same time, the chief highway of Eastern commerce. On its banks, and on those of its tributary waters, are the wealthiest marts, the most splendid capitals, and the most sacred shrines of India. 5 The tyranny of man had for ages struggled in vain against the overflowing bounty of nature. In spite of the Mussulman despot and of the Mahratta freebooter, Bengal was known through the East as the garden of Eden, as the rich kingdom. Its population multiplied 10 exceedingly. Distant provinces were nourished from the overflowing of its granaries ; and the noble ladies of London and Paris were clothed in the delicate produce of its looms. The race by whom this rich tract was peopled, enervated by a soft climate and accustomed to 15 peaceful employments, bore the same relation to other Asiatics which the Asiatics generally bear to the bold and energetic children of Europe. The Castilians have a proverb, that in Valencia the earth is water and the men women ; and the description is at least equally 20 applicable to the vast plain of the Lower Ganges. Whatever the Bengalee does he does languidly. His favourite pursuits are sedentary. He shrinks from bodily exertion; and, though voluble in dispute, and singularly pertinacious in the war of chicane, he seldom 25 engages in a personal conflict, and scarcely ever enlists as a soldier. We doubt whether there be a hundred genuine Bengalees in the whole army of the East India Company. There never, perhaps, existed a people so thoroughly fitted by nature and by habit for a foreign 30 yoke. 40 ESSAY ON CLIVE The great commercial companies of Europe had long possessed factories in Bengal. The French were settled, as they still are, at Chandernagore on the Hoogley. Higher up the stream the Dutch held Chinsurah. 5 Nearer to the sea, the English had built Fort William. A church and ample warehouses rose in the vicinity. A row of spacious houses, belonging to the chief factors of the East India Company, lined the banks of the river ; and in the neighbourhood had sprung up a large and 10 busy native town, where some Hindoo merchants of great opulence had fixed their abode. But the tract now covered by the palaces of Chowringhee contained only a few miserable huts thatched with straw. A jungle, abandoned to water-fowl and alligators, covered the site 15 of the present Citadel, and the Course, which is now daily crowded at sunset with the gayest equipages of Calcutta. For the ground on which the settlement stood, the English, like other great landholders, paid rent to the (Government; and they were, like other great 20 landholders, permitted to exercise a certain jurisdiction within their domain. The great province of Bengal, together with Orissa and Bahar, had long been governed by a viceroy, whom the English called Aliverdy Khan, and who, like the 25 other viceroys of the Mogul, had become virtually independent. He died in 1756, and the sovereignty descended to his grandson, a youth under twenty years of age, who bore the name of Surajah Dowlah. Oriental despots are perhaps the worst class of human 30 beings ; and this unhappy boy was one of the worst specimens of his class. His understanding was naturally ESSAY ON CLIVE 41 feeble, and his temper naturally unamiable. His educa- tion had been such as would have enervated even a vigorous intellect, and perverted even a generous disposi- tion. He was unreasonable, because nobody ever dared to reason with him, and selfish, because he had never 5 been made to feel himself dependent on the good will of others. Early debauchery had unnerved his body and his mind. He indulged immoderately in the use of ardent spirits, which inflamed his weak brain almost to madness. His chosen companions were flatterers 10 sprung from the dregs of the people, and recommended by nothing but buffoonery and servility. It is said that he had arrived at the last stage of human depravity, when cruelty becomes pleasing for its own sake, when the sight of pain as pain, where no advantage is to be 15 gained, no offence punished, no danger averted, is an agreeable excitement. It had early been his amusement to torture beasts and birds ; and, when he grew up, he enjoyed with still keener relish the misery of hfs fellow- creatures. 20 From a child Surajah Dowlah had hated the English. It was his whim to do so ; and his whims were never opposed. He had also formed a very exaggerated notion of the wealth which might be obtained by plundering them ; and his feeble and uncultivated mind was incap- 25 able of perceiving that the riches of Calcutta, had they been even greater than he imagined, would not com- pensate him for what he must lose, if the European trade, of which Bengal was a chief seat, should be driven by his violence to some other quarter. Pretexts 30 for a quarrel were readily found. The English, in 42 ESSAY ON CLIVE expectation of a war with France, had begun to fortify their settlement without special permission from the Nabob. A rich native, whom he longed to plunder, had taken refuge at Calcutta, and had not been delivered 5 up. On such grounds as these Surajah Dowlah marched with a great army against Fort William. The servants of the Company at Madras had been forced by Dupleix to become statesmen and soldiers. Those in Bengal were still mere traders, and were 10 terrified and bewildered by the approaching danger. The governor, who had heard much of Surajah Dowlah's cruelty, was frightened out of his wits, jumped into a boat, and took refuge in the nearest ship. The military commandant thought that he could not do 15 better than follow so good an example. The fort was taken after a feeble resistance; and great numbers of the English fell into the hands of the conquerors. The Nabob seated himself with regal pomp in the principal hall of the factory, and ordered Mr Holwell, the first in 20 rank among the prisoners, to be brought before him. His Highness talked about the insolence of the English, and grumbled at the smallness of the treasure which he had found, but promised to spare their lives, and retired to rest. 25 Then was committed that great crime, memorable for its singular atrocity, memorable for the tremendous retribution by which it was followed. The English captives were left to the mercy of the guards, and the guards determined to secure them for the night in the 30 prison of the garrison, a chamber known by the fearful name of the Black Hole. Even for a single European ESSAY ON CLIVE 43 malefactor, that dungeon would, in such a climate, have been too close and narrow. The space was only twenty feet square. The air-holes were small and obstructed. It was the summer solstice, the season when the fierce heat of Bengal can scarcely be rendered tolerable to 5 natives of England by lofty halls and by the constant waving of fans. The number of the prisoners was one hundred and forty-six. When they were ordered to enter the cell, they imagined that the soldiers were joking ; and, being in high spirits on account of the 10 promise of the Nabob to spare their lives, they laughed and jested at the absurdity of the notion. They soon discovered their mistake. They expostulated; they entreated ; but in vain. The guards threatened to cut down all who hesitated. The captives were driven into 15 the cell at the point of the sword, and the door was instantly shut and locked upon them. Nothing in history or fiction, not even the story which Ugolino told in the sea of everlasting ice, after he had wiped his bloody lips on the scalp of his murderer, 20 approaches the horrors which were recounted by the few survivors of that night. They cried for mercy. They strove to burst the door. Holwell who, even in that extremity, retained some presence of mind, offered large bribes to the gaolers. But the answer was that 25 nothing could be done without the Nabob's orders, that the Nabob Was asleep, and that he would be angry if anybody woke him. Then the prisoners went mad with despair. They trampled each other down, fought for the places at the windows, fought for the pittance of 30 water with which the cruel mercy of the murderers 44 ESSAY ON CLIVE mocked their agonies, raved, prayed, blasphemed, im- plored the guards to fire among them. The gaolers in the meantime held lights to the bars, and shouted with laughter at the frantic struggles of their victims. At 5 length the tumult died away in low gaspingsand moanings. The day broke. The Nabob had slept off his debauch, and permitted the door to be opened. But it was some time before the soldiers could make a lane for the survivors, by piling up on each side the heaps of corpses on which 10 the burning climate had already begun to do its loath- some work. When at length a passage was made, twenty-three ghastly figures, such as their own mothers would not have known, staggered one by one out of the charnel-house. A pit was instantly dug. The dead 15 bodies, a hundred and twenty-three in number, were filing into it promiscuously and covered up. But these things which, after the lapse of more than eighty years, cannot be told or read without horror awakened neither remorse nor pity in the bosom of the 20 savage Nabob. He inflicted no punishment on the murderers. He showed no tenderness to the survivors. Some of them, indeed, from whom nothing was to be got, were suffered to depart; but those from whom it was thought that anything could be extorted were treated 25 with execrable cruelty. Holwell, unable to walk, was carried before the tyrant, who reproached him, threatened him, and sent him up the country in irons, together with some other gentlemen who were suspected of knowing more than they chose to tell about the 30 treasures of the Company. These persons, still bowed down by the sufferings of that great agony, were lodged ESSAY ON CLIVE 45 in miserable sheds, and fed only with grain and water, till at length the intercessions of the female relations of the Nabob procured their release. One Englishwoman had survived that night. She was placed in the harem of the Prince at Moorshedabad. 5 Surajah Dowlah, in the meantime, sent letters to his nominal sovereign at Delhi, describing the late conquest in the most pompous language. He placed a garrison in Fort William, forbade Englishmen to dwell in the neighbourhood, and directed that, in memory of his 10 great actions, Calcutta should thenceforward be called Alinagore, that is to say, the Port of God. In August the news of the fall of Calcutta reached Madras, and excited the fiercest and bitterest resent- ment. The cry of the whole settlement was for 15 vengeance. Within forty-eight hours after the arrival of the intelligence it was determined that an expedition should be sent to the Hoogley, and that Clive should be at the head of the land forces. The naval armament was under the command of Admiral Watson. Nine 20 hundred English infantry, fine troops and full of spirit, and fifteen hundred sepoys, composed the army which sailed to punish a Prince who had more subjects than Lewis the Fifteenth or the Empress Maria Theresa. In October the expedition sailed; but it had to make its 25 way against adverse winds and did not reach Bengal till December. The Nabob was revelling in fancied security at Moor- shedabad. He was so profoundly ignorant of the state of foreign countries that he often used to say that there 30 were not ten thousand men in all Europe ; and it had 46 ESSAY ON CLIVE never occurred to him as possible that the English would dare to invade his dominions. But, though undisturbed by any fear of their military power, he began to miss them greatly. His revenues fell off; and his ministers 5 succeeded in making him understand that a ruler may sometimes find it more profitable to protect traders in the open enjoyment of their gains than to put them to the torture for the purpose of discovering hidden chests of gold and jewels. He was already disposed to permit 10 the Company to resume its mercantile operations in his country, when he received the news that an English armament was in the Hoogley. He instantly ordered all his troops to assemble at Moorshedabad, and marched towards Calcutta. 15 Clive had commenced operations with his usual vigour. He took Budge-budge, routed the garrison of Fort William, recovered Calcutta, stormed and sacked Hoogley. The Nabob, already disposed to make some concessions to the English, was confirmed in his pacific 20 disposition by these proofs of their power and spirit. He accordingly made overtures to the chiefs of the invading armament, and offered to restore the factory, and to give compensation to those whom he had despoiled. Clive's profession was war ; and he felt that there was 25 something discreditable in an accommodation with Surajah Dowlah. But his power was limited. A com- mittee, chiefly composed of servants of the Company who had fled from Calcutta, had the principal direction of affairs ; and these persons were eager to be restored to 30 their posts and compensated for their losses. The government of Madras, apprised that war had commenced ESSAY ON CLIVE 47 in Europe, and apprehensive of an attack from the French, became impatient for the return of the armament. The promises of the Nabob were large, the chances of a con- test doubtful ; and Clive consented to treat, though he expressed his regret that things should not be concluded 5 in so glorious a manner as he could have wished. With this negotiation commences a new chapter in the life of Clive. Hitherto he had been merely a soldier carrying into effect, with eminent ability and valour, the plans of others. Henceforth he is to be chiefly regarded 10 as a statesman ; and his military movements are to be considered as subordinate to his political designs. That in his new capacity he displayed great ability, and obtained great success, is unquestionable. But it is also unquestionable that the transactions in which he now 15 began to take a part have left a stain on his moral char- acter. We can by no means agree with Sir John Malcolm, who is obstinately resolved to see nothing but honour and integrity in the conduct of his hero. But we can as 20 little agree with Mr Mill, who has gone so far as to say that Clive was a man "to whom deception, when it suited his purpose, never cost a pang." Clive seems to us to have been constitutionally the very opposite of a knave, bold even to temerity, sincere even to indiscretion, 25 hearty in friendship, open in enmity. Neither in his private life, nor in those parts of his public life in which he had to do with his countrymen, do we find any signs of a propensity to cunning. On the contrary, in all the disputes in which he was engaged as an Englishman 30 against Englishmen, from his boxing-matches at school 48 ESSAY ON CLIVE to those stormy altercations at the India House and in Parliament amidst which his later years were passed, his very faults were those of a high and magnanimous spirit. The truth seems to have been that he considered Oriental 5 politics as a game in which nothing was unfair. He knew that the standard of morality among the natives of India differed widely from that established in England. He knew that he had to deal with men destitute of what in Europe is called honour, with men who would give 10 any promise without hesitation, and break any promise without shame, with men who would unscrupulously em- ploy corruption, perjury, forgery, to compass their ends. His letters show that the great difference between Asiatic and European morality was constantly in his thoughts. 15 He seems to have imagined, most erroneously in our opinion, that he could effect nothing against such adver- saries, if he was content to be bound by ties from which they were free, if he went on telling truth, and hearing none, if he fulfilled, to his own hurt, all his engagements 20 with confederates who never kept an engagement that was not to their advantage. Accordingly this man, in the other parts of his life an honourable English gentle- man and a soldier, was no sooner matched against an Indian intriguer, than he became himself an Indian 25 intriguer, and descended, without scruple, to falsehood, to hypocritical caresses, to the substitution of documents, and to the counterfeiting of hands. The negotiations between the English and the Nabob were carried on chiefly by two agents, Mr Watts, a 30 servant of the Company, and a Bengalee of the name of Omichund. This Omichund had been one of the ESSAY ON CLIVE 49 wealthiest native merchants resident at Calcutta, and had sustained great losses in consequence of the Nabob's expedition against that place. In the course of his commercial transactions, he had seen much of the English, and was peculiarly qualified to serve as a 5 medium of communication between them and a native court. He possessed great influence with his own race, and had in large measure the Hindoo talents, quick observation, . tact, dexterity, perseverance, and the Hindoo vices, servility, greediness, and treachery. 10 The Nabob behaved with all the faithlessness of an Indian statesman, and with all the levity of a boy whose mind had been enfeebled by power and self-indulgence. He promised, retracted, hesitated, evaded. At one time he advanced with his army in a threaten ing manner 15 towards Calcutta; but when he saw the resolute front which the English presented, he fell back in alarm, and consented to make peace with them on their own terms. The treaty was no sooner concluded than he formed new designs against them. He intrigued with the French 20 authorities at Chandernagore. He invited Bussy to march from the Deccan to the Hoogley, and to drive the English out of Bengal. All this was well known to Clive and Watson. They determined accordingly to strike a decisive blow, and to attack Chandernagore, 25 before .the force there could be strengthened by new arrivals, either from the south of India, or from Europe. Watson directed the expedition by water, Clive by land. The success of the combined movements was rapid and complete. The fort, the garrison, the artillery, the 30 military stores, all fell into the hands of the English. So ESSAY ON CLIVE Near five hundred European troops were among the prisoners. The Nabob had feared and hated the English, even while he was still able to oppose to them their French 5 rivals. The French were now vanquished ; and he began to regard the English with still greater fear and still greater hatred. His weak and unprincipled mind oscillated between servility and insolence. One day he sent a large sum to Calcutta, as part of the compensation 10 due for the wrongs which he had committed. The next day he sent a present of jewels to Bussy, exhorting that distinguished officer to hasten to protect Bengal " against Clive, the daring in war, on whom," says his Highness, "may all bad fortune attend." He ordered his army 15 to march against the English. He countermanded his orders. He tore Clive's letters. He then sent answers in the most florid language of compliment. He ordered Watts out of his presence, and threatened to impale him. He again sent for Watts, and begged 20 pardon for the insult. In the meantime, his wretched maladministration, his folly, his dissolute manners, and his love of the lowest company, had disgusted all classes of his subjects, soldiers, traders, civil functionaries, the proud and ostentatious Mahommedans, the timid, supple, 25 and parsimonious Hindoos. A formidable confederacy was formed against him, in which were included Roy- dullub, the minister of finance, Meer Jaffier, the principal commander of the troops, and Jugget Seit, the richest banker in India. The plot was confided to the English 30 agents, and a communication was opened between the mal- contents at Moorshedabad and the committee at Calcutta. ESSAY ON CLIVE 51 In the committee there was much hesitation; but Clive's voice was given in favour of the conspirators, and his vigour and firmness bore down all opposition. It was determined that the English should lend their powerful assistance to depose Surajah Dowlah, and to 5 place Meer Jaffier on the throne of Bengal. In return, Meer Jaffier promised ample compensation to the Company and its servants, and a liberal donative to the army, the navy, and the committee. The odious vices of Surajah Dowlah, the wrongs which the English had 10 suffered at his hands, the dangers to which our trade must have been exposed, had he continued to reign, appear to us fully to justify the resolution of deposing him. But nothing can justify the dissimulation which Clive stooped to practise. He wrote to Surajah Dowlah 15 in terms so affectionate that they for a time lulled that weak prince into perfect security. The same courier who carried this "soothing letter," as Clive calls it, to the Nabob, carried to Mr Watts a letter in the following terms : " Tell Meer Jaffier to fear nothing. I will join 20 him with five thousand men who never turned their backs. Assure him I will march night and day to his assistance, and stand by him as long as I have a man left." It was impossible that a plot which had so many 25 ramifications should long remain entirely concealed. Enough reached the ears of the Nabob to arouse his suspicions. But he was soon quieted by the fictions and artifices which the inventive genius of Omichund pro- duced with miraculous readiness. All was going well ; 30 the plot was nearly ripe ; when Clive learned that Omi- 52 ESSAY ON CLIVE chund was likely to play false. The artful Bengalee had been promised a liberal compensation for all that he had lost at Calcutta. But this would not satisfy him. His services had been great. He held the thread of the 5 whole intrigue. By one word breathed in the ear of Surajah Dowlah, he could undo all that he had done. The lives of Watts, of Meer Jaffier, of all the conspira- tors, were at his mercy; and he determined to take advantage of his situation and to make his own terms. 10 He demanded three hundred thousand pounds sterling as the price of his secrecy and of his assistance. The committee, incensed by the treachery and appalled by the danger, knew not what course to take. But dive was more than Omichund's match in Omichund's own 15 arts. The man, he said, was a villain. Any artifice which would defeat such knavery was justifiable. The best course would be to promise what was asked. Omi- chund would soon be at their mercy ; and then they might punish him by withholding from him, not only the 20 bribe which he now demanded, but also the compensa- tion which all the other sufferers of Calcutta were to receive. His advice was taken. But how was the wary and sagacious Hindoo to be deceived ? He had demanded 25 that an article touching his claims should be inserted in the treaty between Meer Jaffier and the English, and he would not be satisfied unless he saw it with his own eyes. Clive had an expedient ready. Two treaties were drawn up, one on white paper, the other on red, 30 the former real, the latter fictitious. In the former Omichund's name was not mentioned; the latter, which ESSAY ON CLIVE 53 was to be shown to him, contained a stipulation in his favour. But another difficulty arose. Admiral Watson had scruples about signing the red treaty. Omichund's vigilance and acuteness were such that the absence of 5 so important a name would probably awaken his sus- picions. But Clive was not a man to do anything by halves. We almost blush to write it. He forged Admiral Watson's name. All was now ready for action. Mr Watts fled secretly 10 from Moorshedabad. Give put his troops in motion, and wrote to the Nabob in a tone very different from that of his previous letters. He set forth all the wrongs which the British had suffered, offered to submit the points in dispute to the arbitration of Meer Jaffier, and 15 concluded by announcing that, as the rains were about to set in, he and his men would do themselves the honour of waiting on his Highness for an answer. Surajah Dowlah instantly assembled his whole force, and marched to encounter the English. It had been 20 agreed that Meer Jaffier should separate himself from the Nabob, and carry over his division to Clive. But, as the decisive moment approached, the fears of the conspirator overpowered his ambition. Clive had advanced to Cossimbuzar; the Nabob lay with a mighty 25 power a few miles off at Plassey ; and still Meer Jaffier delayed to fulfil his engagements, and returned evasive answers to the earnest remonstrances of the English general. Clive was in a painfully anxious situation. He could 30 place no confidence in the sincerity or in the courage 54 ESSAY ON CLIVE of his confederate : and, whatever confidence he might place in his own military talents, and in the valour and discipline of his troops, it was no light thing to engage an army twenty times as numerous as his own. Before 5 him lay a river over which it was easy to advance, but over which, if things went ill, not one of his little band would ever return. On this occasion, for the first and for the last time, his dauntless spirit, during a few hours, shrank from the fearful responsibility of making a 10 decision. He called a council of war. The majority pronounced against fighting ; and Clive declared his concurrence with the majority. Long afterwards, he said that he had never called but one council of war, and that, if he had taken the advice of that council, the 15 British would never have been masters of Bengal. But scarcely had the meeting broken up when he was himself again. He retired alone under the shade of some trees, and passed near an hour there in thought. He came back determined to put everything to the hazard, and 20 gave orders that all should be in readiness for passing the river on the morrow. The river was passed ; and, at the close of a toilsome day's march, the army, long after sunset, took up its quarters in a grove of mango-trees near Plassey, within 25 a mile of the enemy. Clive was unable to sleep ; he heard, through the whole night, the sound of drums and cymbals from the vast camp of the Nabob. It is not strange that even his stout heart should now and then have sunk, when he reflected against what odds, and 30 for what a prize, he was in a few hours to contend. Nor was the rest of Surajah Dowlah more peaceful. ESSAY ON CLIVE 55 His mind, at once weak and stormy, was distracted by wild and horrible apprehensions. Appalled by the greatness and nearness of the crisis, distrusting his captains, dreading every one who approached him, dreading to be left alone, he sat gloomily in his tent, 5 haunted, a Greek poet would have said, by the furies of those who had cursed him with their last breath in the Black Hole. The day broke, the day which was to decide the fate of India. At sunrise the army of the Nabob, pouring 10 through many openings of the camp, began to move towards the groyne where the English lay. Forty thousand infantry, armed with firelocks, pikes, swords, bows and arrows, covered the plain. They were ac- companied by fifty pieces of ordnance of the largest 15 size, each tugged by a long team of white oxen, and each pushed on from behind by an elephant. Some smaller guns, under the direction of a few French auxiliaries, were perhaps more formidable. The cavalry were fifteen thousand, drawn, not from the effeminate 20 population of Bengal, but from the bolder race which inhabits the northern provinces ; and the practised eye of Clive could perceive that both the men and the horses were more powerful than those of the Carnatic. The force which he had to oppose to this great multitude 25 consisted of only three thousand men. But of these nearly a thousand were English; and all were led by English officers, and trained in the English discipline. Conspicuous in the ranks of the little army were the men of the Thirty-Ninth Regiment, which still bears on 30 its colours, amidst many honourable additions won 56 ESSAY ON CLIVE under Wellington in Spain and Gascony, the name of Plassey, and the proud motto, Primus in Indis. The battle commenced with a cannonade in which the artillery of the Nabob did scarcely any execution, while 5 the few field-pieces of the English produced great effect. Several of the most distinguished officers in Surajah Dowlah's service fell. Disorder began to spread through his ranks. His own terror increased every moment. One of the conspirators urged on him the expediency of 10 retreating. The , insidious advice, agreeing as it did with what his own terrors suggested, was readily received. He ordered his army to fall back, and this order decided his fate. Clive snatched the moment, and ordered his troops to advance. The confused and dispirited 15 multitude gave way before the onset of disciplined valour. No mob attacked by regular soldiers was ever more completely routed. The little band of French- men, who alone ventured to confront the English, were swept down the stream of fugitives. In an hour the 20 forces of Surajah Dowlah were dispersed, never to re- assemble. Only five hundred of the vanquished were slain. But their camp, their guns, their baggage, in- numerable waggons, innumerable cattle, remained in the power of the conquerors. With the loss of twenty- 25 two soldiers killed and fifty wounded, Clive had scattered an army of near sixty thousand men, and subdued an empire larger and more populous than Great Britain. Meer Jaffier had given no assistance to the English 30 during the action. But, as soon as he saw that the fate of the day was decided, he drew off his division of the ESSAY ON CLIVE 57 army, and, when the battle was over, sent his congratu- lations to his ally. The next morning he repaired to the English quarters, not a little uneasy as to the re- ception which awaited him there. He gave evident signs of alarm when a guard was drawn out to receive 5 him with the honours due to his rank. But his apprehensions were speedily removed, Clive came for- ward 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 10 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. 15 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, 20 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 25 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 30 sepoys. For his residence had been assigned a palace, 58 ESSAY ON CLIVE 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 5 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 10 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 ex- 15 press 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. 20 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 25 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 un- diminished kindness. The white treaty was produced and read. Clive then turned to Mr Scrafton, one of 30 the servants of the Company, and said in English, " It is now time to undeceive Omichund." "Omichund," ESSAY ON CLIVE 59 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 5 dealings with Indian politicans, 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, 10 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 15 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 20 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 25 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, 30 and that, if they had fulfilled their engagements with 60 ESSAY ON CLIVE the wily Bengalee, so signal an example of successful treason would have produced a crowd of imitators. Now, we will not discuss this point on any rigid principles of morality. Indeed, it is quite unnecessary 5 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 10 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, 15 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 20 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 25 course of years, the English rulers of India, surrounded by allies and enemies whom no engagement could bind, have generally acted with sincerity and upright- ness; and the event has proved that sincerity and uprightness are wisdom. English valour and English 30 intelligence have done less to extend and to preserve our Oriental empire than English veracity. All that ESSAY ON CLIVE 61 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 5 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 10 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 15 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 20 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 25 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 a government 30 can possess is to be the one trustworthy government 62 ESSAY ON CLIVE 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, 5 had we as often as we had to deal with people like Omichund, retaliated by lying and forging, and break- ing 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 10 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. 15 Surajah Dowlah was taken a few days after his flight, and was brought before Meer Jafner. There he flung him- self 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 20 youth of seventeen, who in feebleness of brain and savageness of nature greatly resembled 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 25 part ; and Meer Jaffier understood so much of their feelings that he thought it necessary to apologise to them for having avenged them on their most malignant enemy. The shower of wealth now fell copiously on the Com- 30 pany and its servants. A sum of eight hundred thousand pounds sterling, in coined silver, was sent down the ESSAY ON CLIVE 63 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 prosper- 5 ous than ever. Trade revived ; and the signs of afflu- ence appeared in every English house. As to Clive, there was no limit to his acquisitions but his own mode- ration. The treasury of Bengal was thrown open to him. There were piled up, after the usage of Indian princes, 10 immense masses of coin, among which might not seldom be 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, 15 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 20 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, 25 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 30 the East to give and receive presents ; and there was, as 64 ESSAY ON CLIVE 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 5 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 10 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 15 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 20 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 commonsense, that we arraign the conduct of Clive. 25 There is no Act that we know of prohibiting the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs from being in the pay of conti- nental 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 punish- 30 ment. Sir John Malcolm compares the conduct of Clive with that of the Duke of Wellington. Suppose, ESSAY ON CLIVE 65 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, 5 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. 10 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 15 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 stripter notions of his duty than were entertained by his masters. Though Clive did not distinctly acquaint his employers with 20 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, 25 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 30 to declaim in England against Clive's rapacity ; but not 66 ESSAY ON CLIVE 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, 5 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 10 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 inde- 15 pendent sovereign, menaced Bengal with invasion. No- thing 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 20 battle of Plassey had reached London. The Directors had determined to place the English settlements in Bengal under a government constituted in the most cumbjpus and absurd manner ; and to make the matter worse, no place in the arrangement was assigned to 25 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 30 of the Company had only anticipated the wishes of their employers. The Directors, on receiving news of Clive's ESSAY ON CLIVE 67 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 5 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 10 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 15 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 20 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 25 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 30 was rapid and splendid. 68 ESSAY ON CLIVE 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 5 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, 10 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, 15 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. 20 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 25 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 30 confines of your country, who will bully you out of money till you have none left in your treasury. I beg your ESSAY ON CLIVE 69 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 5 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 10 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 15 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 20 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 25 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, 30 sufficient to support with dignity the highest rank of 70 ESSAY ON CLIVE 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 5 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 10 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 15 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 20 communications passed between the court of Moorsheda- bad and the Dutch factory at Chinsurah; and urgent letters were sent from Chinsurah, exhorting the govern- ment of Batavia to fit out an expedition which might balance the power of the English in Bengal. The 25 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 30 from Java arrived unexpectedly in the Hoogley. The military force on board amounted to fifteen hundred ESSAY ON CLIVE 7l 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 Jaffler secretly favoured 5 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 10 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 15 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 20 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 25 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 30 Chinsurah; and the chiefs of that settlement, now 72 ESSAY ON CLIVE 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 5 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 10 such as, when his age, his rank in the army, and his original place in society are considered, must be pro- nounced 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, 15 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 un- bounded, was eager to mark his regard for one whose exploits had contributed so much to the lustre of that 20 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 dis- played a military genius which might excite the admira- tion of the King of Prussia. There were then no re- 25 porters 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 30 English general of whom his countrymen had much reason to be proud. The Duke of Cumberland had ESSAY ON CLIVE 73 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 5 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. 10 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 15 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 20 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 25 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 30 state it as low as possible, exceeded forty thousand 74 ESSAY ON CLIVE 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 5 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 10 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 15 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 20 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 ; 25 at a later period he was attracted by the genius and suc- cess 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 persecu- tion of that worthless demagogue Wilkes had strongly 30 excited the public mind, the town was amused by an anecdote, which we have seen in some unpublished ESSAY ON CLIVE 75 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 5 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 10 himself as a soldier and a statesman ; and it was by con- siderations 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 15 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 20 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 25 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 30 out a hundred thousand pounds in the purchase of stock, 76 ESSAY ON CLIVE 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 5 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- 10 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 func- tionary makes a very large fortune, and what is made is 15 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 20 the service of the Company ; nor can any talents how- ever 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 grada- tions. Seventy years ago, less money was brought home 25 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 30 good speech in Leadenhall Street, or published a clever pamphlet in defence of the chairman, he might be sent ESSAY ON CLIVE 77 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 5 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 10 British functionary for the asking, society began to exhibit all the symptoms of the South Sea year, a feverish excite- ment, an ungovernable impatience to be rich, a contempt for slow, sure, and moderate gains. At the head of the preponderating party in the India 15 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 bitter- ness the audacity with which the late governor of Bengal had repeatedly set at nought the authority of the distant 20 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 25 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, 30 valid. It had been made by exactly the same authority 78 ESSAY ON CLIVE from which the Company had received their chief possessions in Bengal, and the Company had long acquiesced in it. The Directors, however, most un- justly determined to confiscate it, and Clive was forced 5 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 10 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, 15 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 20 was carried to a point such as seems hardly compatible with the very existence of society. The Roman pro- consul, 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 25 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 30 outdone. Cruelty, indeed, properly so called, was not among the vices of the servants of the Company. But ESSAY ON CLIVE 79 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, 5 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 10 up Meer Jaffier again ; and Meer Cossim, after reveng- ing 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 15 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, 20 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 25 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 30 were thus rapidly accumulated at Calcutta, while thirty 8o ESSAY ON CLIVE 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 5 loins of Surajah Dowlah. Under their old masters they had at least one resource : when the evil became in- supportable, the people rose and pulled down the government. But the English government was not to be so shaken off. That government, oppressive as the 10 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 15 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. Some- times they fled from the .white man, as their fathers 20 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 25 hatred to all the neighbouring powers ; and to all the haughty race presented a dauntless front. The English armies, everywhere outnumbered, were everywhere vic- torious. A succession of commanders, formed in the school of Clive, still maintained the fame of their 30 country. "It must be acknowledged," says the Mussul- man historian of those times, " that this nation's presence ESSAY ON CLIVE 81 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 5 qualifications they knew how to join the arts of govern- ment, 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. 10 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 15 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 20 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 25 disorganised administration j the natives pillaged, yet the Company not enriched ; every fleet bringing back fortun- ate 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 ; 30 war on the frontiers ; disaffection in the army ; the F 82 ESSAY ON CLIVE 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, 5 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 10 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 15 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 20 tumult was violent. Sulivan could scarcely obtain a hearing. An overwhelming majority of the assembly was on dive'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 25 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. 30 But he adhered to his declaration, and refused to enter on his office till the event of the next election of Directors ESSAY ON CLIVE 83 should be known. The contest was obstinate ; but Give 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. 5 Such were the circumstances under which Lord dive 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 10 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 com- 15 mands 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 20 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 25 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 30 irrecoverably so, I fear. However, I do declare, by 84 ESSAY ON CLIVE 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 corrup- tion, and that I am determined to destroy these great 5 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. John- 10 stone, 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 15 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 20 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 25 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 30 applied himself in earnest to the work of reformation, he should raise every bad passiou in arms against him. ESSAY ON CLIVE 85 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 5 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 pre- sents from the natives was rigidly prohibited. The private 10 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 15 from Madras to assist him in carrying on the administra- tion. 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 20 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 25 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 30 the best years of life in exile, under a burning sun, for no 86 ESSAY ON CLIVE 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 5 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 10 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 15 to 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 20 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 25 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 30 regular pay was universally admitted to be insufficient. They were, by the ancient usage of the service, and by ESSAY ON CLIVE 87 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 5 require them to live in pepury. He justly concluded that no reform could be effectual which should not be coupled with a plan for liberally rejjuowerating the civil servants of the Company. The Directors, he knew, were not disposed to sanction any increase of the 10 salaries out of their own treasury. The only course which remained open to the governor was one which ex- posed 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 15 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 20 instructions, of violaUng 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 disceiping and impartial judge will admit, that there was really nothing in common between the 25 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 30 of the revenue ; and all that Clive did was to charge a 88 ESSAY ON CLIVE 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 5 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 10 reforms. He had quelled the opposition of the civil servants : that of the army was more formidable. Some of the re- trenchments which had been ordered by the Directors affected the interests of the military service ; and a storm 15 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 20 to resign their commissions on the same day, not doubt- ing 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 25 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 30 instantly brought up to Calcutta. The conspirators found that they had miscalculated. The governor was ESSAY ON CLIVE 89 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 5 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 in- flexibly severe ; but his severity was pure from all taint of private malevolence. While he sternly upheld the just 10 authority of his office, he passed by personal insults and injuries with magnanimous disdain. One of the conspi- rators 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." 15 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 20 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 25 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. 30 It was unknown to the ancient constitution of the empire, 90 ESSAY ON CLIVE 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 5 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 domi- nation which had been established by arms the sanction 10 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 15 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 20 was speedily struck ; and the titular sovereign of Hindo- stan 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 25 authorities in the same relation in which the last drivel- ling 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 30 altogether ; but he afterwards thought that it might be convenient still to use the name of the Nabob, parti- ESSAY ON CLIVE 91 cularly 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. 5 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 10 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 15 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 20 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 25 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 30 adhered to the rules which he had laid down for the 92 ESSAY ON CLIVE 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 5 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 10 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 15 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 20 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 25 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 30 an influence. His second return from Bengal was not, like his ESSAY ON CLIVE 93 first, greeted by the acclamations of his countrymen. Numerous causes were already at work which em- bittered 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 5 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 10 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, 15 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 20 whom their countrymen gave the name of Nabobs. These persons had generally sprung from families neither ancient nor oj3U>t; they had generally been sent at an early age to the East; and they had there acquired large fortunes, which they had brought back 25 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 tlreir^ojourn in Asia, they should have acquired 30 some tastes and habits surprising, if not disgusting, to 94 ESSAY ON CLIVE 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 5 high connection, it was natural that they should display a little obtrusively the single advantage which they possessed." *Wh^rever 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 10 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 15 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 20 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 25 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 30 households corrupted half the servants in the country, that some of them, with all their magnificence, could ESSAY ON CLIVE 95 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 5 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 10 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 15 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 ^jjllfr 5 - against which comedy has pointed the most merciless ridicule, 20 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 execra-^ tion and derision, such as can be compared only to that outbreak of public feeling against the Puritans 25 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 30 taste. The Maccaroni black-balled them as vulgar 96 ESSAY ON CLIVE 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 5 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, dissjQlute, ungenerous, and tyrannical, ashamed of the humble friends of his youth, hating the aristocracy, 10 yet childishly eager to be numbered among them, squandering his wealth on pandars and flatterers, trick- ing out his chairmen with th'e most costly hot-house flowers, and astounding the ignorant with jargon about rupees, lacs^ and jaghires. Mackenzie, with more 15 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 * t mimicry of the manners of the great. Cowper, m that lofty expostulation which glows with the very spirit 20 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 25 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, 30 and a worse heart. Such, as far as we can now judge, was the feeling of ESSAY ON CLIVE 97 the country respecting Nabobs in general. And Clive was eminently the Nabob, the ablest, the most cele- brated, 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 Qdityjj, He lived with 5 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 10 relations wealth and dignity seem to have sat as awk- wardly as on Mackenzie's Margery Mushroom. Nor was he himself, with all his great qualities, free from those weaknesses which the satirises of that age repre- sented as characteristic of his whole class. In the field, 15 indeed, his habits were remarkably simple. He was constantly on horseback, was never seen but in his uni- form, 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 20 Spartan temperance for the os_tentaJiQus 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 expres- sion, he was fond of rich and gay clothing, and replen- 25 ished 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, pro- 30 duced an unfavourable impression on the public mind. 9 8 ESSAY ON CLIVE But this was not the worst. Black stories, of which the greater part were pure inventions, were circulated touch- ing his conduct in the East. He had to bear the whole odium, not only of those bad acts to which he had once s 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 10 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 15 the prejudices conceived in their youth, talk of him as an inarjiate,eQd. 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 20 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 mys- terious horror on the stately house which was rising at 25 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 30 Hunt, since widely known as William Huntington, S.S. ; and the superstition which was strangely mingled with ESSAY ON CLIVE 99 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 5 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 govern- ment had eng^enjlered were aggravated by one of those fearful visitations which the best government cannot 10 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 15 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 20 the passers-by, and, with loud wailings, implored a hand- ful 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. 25 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 30 it was popularly reckoned by millions. This melancholy too ESSAY ON CLIVE intelligence added to the excitement which already pre- vailed 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 5 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 10 they had bought it ; and 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 15 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 aggra- vated an evil which physical causes sufficiently explain. 20 The outcry which was raised against them on this occa- sion was, we suspect, as absurd as the imputations which, in times of dearth at home, were once thrown by states- men and judges, and are still thrown by two or three old women, on the corn factors. It was, however, so loud 25 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 30 when the famine took place. None of his acts had the smallest tendency to produce such a calamity. If the ESSAY ON CLIVE 101 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 ; 5 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 10 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 15 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 20 Company. But his plans were rendered abortive by the strange malady which about that time began to over- cloud his splendid genius. At length, in 1772, it was generally felt that Parliament could no longer neglect the affairs of India. The 25 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 30 between two tempests. The excitement produced by 102 ESSAY ON CLIVE 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 5 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 10 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 15 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, 20 or with the large and respectable body of which Lord Rockingham was the acknowledged leader. George Grenville was now dead ; his followers were scattered j and Clive, unconnected with any of the powerful factions which divided the Parliament, could reckon only on the 25 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 30 expelled from Parliament, to see his spurs chopped off, to see his estate confiscated; and it may be doubted ESSAY ON CLIVE 103 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 5 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 10 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 15 under Clive's direction, and, when the fullest allowance has been made for the assistance which he may have ob- tained from literary friends, proves him to have pos- sessed, not merely strong sense and a manly spirit, but talents both for disquisition and declamation which 20 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 25 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 30 revolution which threw down Surajah Dowlah and io 4 ESSAY ON CLIVE raised Meer Jaffier was sifted with malignant care. Clive was subjected to the most unsparing examination and cross-examination, and afterwards bitterly com- plained that he, the Baron of Plassey, had been treated 5 like a sheep-stealer. The boldness and ingeniousness 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 10 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 15 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 20 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." 25 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 30 result. It was clear that Clive had been guilty of some acts which it is impossible to vindicate without attacking ESSAY ON CLIVE 105 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 ; 5 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. 10 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 15 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 tempta- tions, are entitled to a more than ordinary measure of 20 indulgence. Such men should be judged by their con- temporaries 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 25 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, 30 his great descendant the deliverer of England, Murray io6 ESSAY ON CLIVE 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 5 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 10 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 dis- posed to go to extremities against him. While the inquiry was still in progress, Give, who had some 15 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 20 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 25 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 30 members of the administration took different sides ; for in that age all questions were open questions, ESSAY ON CLIVE 107 except such as were brought forward by the Govern- ment, or such as implied censure on the Government. Thurlow, the Attorney-General, was among the assail- ants. Wedderburne, the Solicitor-General, strongly attached to Clive, defended his friend with extra- 5 ordinary 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 fault- 10 less 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 15 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 appropri- ate such acquisitions to themselves. They resolved 20 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 25 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 30 set an evil example to the servants of the public, the io8 ESSAY ON CLIVE 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 5 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 10 been very bad judges of an accusation brought against Jenkinson or against Wilkes. But the question respect- ing 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 15 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 20 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- 25 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 30 the dead. They laid down sound general principles ; they delicately pointed out where he had deviated from ESSAY ON CLIVE 109 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 5 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 10 would have produced a book containing much lively and picturesque narrative, many just and humane senti- ments poignantly expressed, many grotesque blunders, many sneers at the Mosaic chronology, much scandal about the Catholic missionaries, and much sublime 15 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 20 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 25 "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 30 England, while wealth and rank had still the charm of no ESSAY ON CLIVE 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. 5 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 country- 10 men 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 15 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 20 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 ; 2$ 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 30 would have been put down, and that the inevitable separation would have been deferred for a few years. ESSAY ON CLIVE in 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, 5 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 10 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 15 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. 20 From his first visit to India dates the renown of the English arms in the East. Till he appeared, his country- men were despised as mere pedlars, while the French were revered as a people formed for victory and com- mand. His courage and capacity dissolved the charm. 25 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 30 that Alexander, Conde, and Charles the Twelfth, won H2 ESSAY ON CLIVE 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 5 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 10 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 all the gorgeous visions which had floated 15 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, 20 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 25 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 30 a place to which Englishmen were sent only to get rich, by any means, in the shortest possible time. He first ESSAY ON CLIVE 113 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 5 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 10 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 15 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 20 to Clive. His name stands high on the roll of con- querors. 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 25 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. NOTES Page i, 11. 5, 6. Every schoolboy knows. In this passage Macaulay's schoolboy, who has long been proverbial for his encyclopsedic scholarship, makes his most important appearance. It would perhaps be invidious to inquire how many actual school- boys possess the knowledge here confidently ascribed to this prodigy of learning. P. i 1. 6. who imprisoned Montezuma. Montezuma II., the last' emperor of Mexico, succeeded to the throne in 1502, was taken prisoner by Cortes (see note to 1. 12), and died broken- hearted in 1520. P. i, 1. 7. Atahualpa. The last of the Incas, the rulers oi ancient' Peru from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. He was defeated and captured by the Spanish under Pizarro (the Spanish conqueror of Peru), and condemned to be burnt ; but on his con- senting to receive Christian baptism the sentence was commuted to death by strangulation. P. i, 1. 9. the battle of Buxar. Buxar is 60 miles E.N.E. of Benares. Here in 1764 a British force of 7000 under Major Hector Munro defeated a native army of 40,000. It will be noted that Macaulay does not mention this battle elsewhere in his essay. This omission may be accounted for by the fact that he wishes to keep attention fixed on Clive and his achievements. But it none the less leaves the reader with a wrong impression of the course of events and of dive's share in them. He implies that dive's third landing in 1765 was alone sufficient to quell the hostility of the native powers and to bring about immediate peace. But this hostility had in fact already been broken by Munro's decisive victory. See Introduction, III. P. i, 1. 10. the massacre of Patna. Patna, a city of Bengal, on the Ganges, 140 miles E. of Benares. It was the scene of a massacre of British prisoners by Mir Kasim, the nabob, in 1763. See p. 79, 11. 12, 13. 114 NOTES US P. I, 1. 10. Sujah Dowlah. More correctly, Siraj-iid-Daula, nabob of Oude. See pp. 40-62. P. I, 1. II. Oude. Or Oudh, a province of British India, lying between the Ganges on the S.W. and Nepal on the N.E. Formerly under various Mohammedan rulers, it was annexed by Great Britain in 1856, and was one of the principal scenes of the Indian Mutiny of 1857. P. I, 1. II. Travancore. A tributary native state of India, under British control, situated on the western coast at the extreme S. of the peninsula. P. I, 1. II. Holkar. One of the principal chiefs of the Mahrattas, the ruler of Indore, one of the five states which in the eighteenth century composed the Mahratta confederation. The Mahrattas are a race of Hindus inhabiting Western and Central India. Their power was at its height about the time when Clive went to India. See pp. 15, 16. P. I, 1. II. Hindoo. Or Hindu, properly, the native Aryan race of India, as distinguished from those of Parsee, Mussulman, or Christian descent. P. I, 1. 12. Mussulman. Mohammedan ; from musulman, the Persian form of muslim (whence our moslem}, a follower of Mohammed. P. I, 1. 12. Cortes. Hernando Cortes (1485-1547), a famous Spanish soldier, the conqueror of Mexico. For the story of his wonderful achievements, which, it has been well said, reads "more like a romantic fable than sober fact," see Prescott's History of the Conquest of Mexico and the Life by Sir Arthur Helps. P. i, 11. 13, 14. savages . . . ignorant of the use of metals. An illustration of Macaulay's occasional tendency to rhetorical over-statement. In order to emphasise, by contrast, the greatness of the British conquest of India, he depreciates the exploits and success of Cortes in the New World. The people conquered by Cortes cannot rightly be called savages. Prescott describes them as "semi-civilised." They had large cities, the population of their capital, Mexico, being estimated at 300,0x30; and though their religion was singularly barbaric, they had many of the arts and refinements of civilisation. Of horses they had no knowledge, but agriculture was well advanced among them ; they had great skill in architecture; they were acquainted with silver, lead, tI 6 ESSAY ON CLIVE copper, and tin, though not with iron ; their smith-work was very fine, and they employed a mineral of volcanic origin, called obsidian, for the making of knives, razors, and swords. See Prescott's History of the Conquest of Mexico, Book I. chap. iv. P. I, 11. 18, 19. harquebusier. Or arquebusier (French, arquebusier), a soldier armed with an arquebuse, an old hand- gun. P. 2, 11. 1-5. The people of India . . . Spaniards. These statements are open to question. In asserting that the people of India when we subdued them were ten times as numerous as the Americans vanquished by the Spanish, Macaulay is almost certainly guilty of serious exaggeration ; the matter, at anyrate, is one upon which so dogmatic an affirmation should not have been made. Moreover, while it is difficult to find a common standard by which to test Eastern and Western civilisations, we can scarcely hesitate to say that the Spaniards of the sixteenth century were more civilised than the Indians of the eighteenth. P. 2, Lio. Ferdinand the Catholic. Ferdinand V. (1452-1516), King of Castile. It was during his reign that the foundations of Spanish greatness were laid. P. 2, 1. 12. the Great Captain. The surname of Gonsalvo Hernandez de Cordova (HSS-IS'S). a celebrated Spanish general. P. 2, 1. 21. Mr Mill's book. The History of British India, by James Mill, father of the more famous John Stuart Mill. It is a masterly work, but, as Macaulay justly says, it is deficient in anima- tion and picturesqueness. P. 2, 1. 23. Orme. Robert Orme (1728-1801), the author of a History of the Military Transactions of the British Nation in Indostanfrom 1745- P. 3! 1- 3- Sir John Malcolm. A soldier and diplomatist (1769-1833). His Life of Clive, which is the nominal text of the present essay, was published three years after his death. It was from his History of Persia that Matthew Arnold took the story of his poem, Sohrab and Rtistwn. P. 3, 1. 4. the late Lord Powis. Edward Clive (1754-1839), eldest son of Robert Clive, created Earl of Powis in 1804. P. 3, 1. 31. an estate. The name of this was Styche. P. 5, 1. 8. parts. Natural gifts or qualities. This sense of the word was extremely common in the eighteenth century, but it has NOTES 117 now a rather old-fashioned flavour. It will be noted that Macaulay uses it several times in this essay. P. 5, 11. II, 12. East India Company. The English East India Company was originally composed of London merchants trading in the East, and was incorporated by Queen Elizabeth by a charter granted in 1600. In 1661 Charles II. gave the Company authority to make war and peace with infidel powers, acquire territory, build forts, and exercise civil and criminal jurisdiction within the limits of its settlements. It had three trading settle- ments, at or near the coast, at Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay. The history of its territorial acquisitions during the later eighteenth century, by which it laid the foundations of British India, is dealt with in this essay, from which it will also appear that during this period it had formidable rivals in the Dutch East India Company and the French East India Company. In 1858 it relinquished its functions to the Crown. P. 5, 1. 15. East India College. The college at Haileybury, which was founded in 1806 for the preparation of youths for the Indian civil service. In 1864 it was transformed into a public school, and as such it still exists. P. 5, 1. 17. purely a trading corporation. As the note to 11. II, 12 above will show, this is not quite correct. Macaulay is right in emphasising the military weakness of the Company, but he omits to mention the important fact that its ships were the largest British merchantmen then afloat and that they were heavily armed. P. 6, 11. 12, 13. the prophet's gourd. See Jonah, chap. iv. P. 6, 1. 18. grandees. Persons of high rank, dignity, or power. The special connotation of the word may best be obtained by remembering its derivation from the Spanish grande, a nobleman belonging to the highest rank and possessing the privilege of remaining covered in the royal presence. P. 7, 1. 8. Nabob. A corruption of the Indian word nawdb, deputy, the title of administrators of provinces under the Mogul empire. For the later colloquial use of the word, see p. 93, 11. 19-21. P. 7, 1. 8. the Carnatic. A name formerly given to a region on the east coast of India now part of the province of Madras. The reader of this essay will learn that it is memorable as the scene of the struggle between England and France for supremacy in India. n8 ESSAY ON CLIVE P. 7i ! 9- the Deccan. An unofficial name for a portion of India lying south of the river Nerbudda, and between the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea. P. 7, 1. 10. the Nizam. The Nizam's Dominions, or Hyderabad, form part of the Deccan. In 1687 they became a province of the Mogul empire, but after 1713, the viceroy of the Deccan, with the title of Nizam-iil-Mulk (regulator of the state) made himself practically independent. P. 7, 1. n. the Great Mogul. The ruler of the Mogul (or Mongol) empire in India. The first Great Mogul was the con- queror Baber, who founded the empire in 1526. He was a descendant of Timur the Tartar, more commonly known as Tamerlane (1335-1405). Hence the empire is described (p. 12, 1. 3) as the " inheritance of the house of Tamerlane." P. 9, 1. 9. Wallenstein. Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von Wallenstein, or more correctly Waldstein (1583-1634), the most famous of the imperial generals in the Thirty Years' War. When a youth he fell from a second-storey window, but escaped without injury. P. 9, 11. 16, 17. the war of the Austrian succession. In 1740 the Emperor Charles VI. died without male issue. By the Pragmatic Sanction he had secured his dominions in Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia to his daughter Maria Theresa. The Elector of Bavaria put in a rival claim. He was supported by France, Prussia, and Spain, while Britain and Holland took Maria Theresa's side. The war which resulted was terminated in 1748 by the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. P. 9, 1. 18. The house of Bourbon. The reigning dynasties , of France and Spain belonged to this family. P. 9, 1. 25. Labourdonnais. Bernard Francois Mahe de la Bourdonnais (1699-1753), entered the service of the French East India Company in 1719 ; became captain in the navy of the French Indies in 1723 ; and in 1734 was appointed governor of the isles of France (Mauritius) and Bourbon, which by wise administration he made into flourishing colonies. In 1740 he was given command of a squadron in Indian waters and greatly harassed the British fleet. He was accused by Dupleix of betraying the interests of the Company, and on his return to France in 1748 was imprisoned in the Bastille for three years. He was then liberated and pronounced NOTES "9 guiltless, but died the following year. See p. 108. He appears in Bernardin de Saint Pierre's famous story, Paul et Vtrgime. P. 10, 1. 9. Dupleix. Joseph Francis Dupleix (1697-1763) went to sea on an East Indiaman in 1715, and entered the service of the French Company in 1720. He amassed wealth in trade, was for ten years superintendent of the Company at Chandernagore in Bengal, and in 1741 was appointed governor-general of the French East Indies with the title of nabob. In 1754 he was recalled to France by Louis XV. The Company refused to repay him the immense sums he had privately spent in carrying on the war against England, and he died neglected and poor. See pp. 37 and 1 08. P 10, 11. 9, 10. Pondicherry. The chief French settlement in India,' situated on the east of the peninsula, on the Coromandel coast. It passed several times backwards and forwards between the French and the English, and was finally ceded to the former in 1816. P 10, 11. 16, 17. that Madras should be razed to the ground. An exaggeration. The order was for the destruction, not of the city, but of the fortifications, of Madras. P. II, 1. 8. a desperate duel. "He became involved in a duel with an officer whom he had accused of cheating at cards. . . . Clive fired and missed his antagonist, who came close up to him and held his pistol to his head, desiring him to ask for his life, which Clive did. His opponent then called upon him to retract his assertions regarding unfair play, and on his refusal threatened to shoot him. Fire and be d ' was Clive's answer. ' I said you cheated, and I say so still, and I will never pay you. astonished officer threw away his pistol, exclaiming that Clive was mad " (Article Clive in Dictionary of National Biography). incident forms the subject of a poem by Browning, who, however, has taken some liberties with the facts. P. II, 1. 16. Major Lawrence. Stringer Lawrence (1697- 1775), known as " the father of the Indian Army." P. n, 1. 19. peace had been concluded. The peace of Aix- la-Chapelle. See note to p. 9, 11. 16, 17. P. 12, 1. 3. the magnificent inheritance of the house ot Tamerlane. See note to p. 7, 1. n. P. 12, 1. 13. Delhi. The capital of the Mogul empire. 120 ESSAY ON CLIVE palace, built by Shah Jehan in the middle of the seventeenth century, has been described as the most magnificent of all Oriental palaces. The great mosque, the work of the same ruler, is equally celebrated. P. 12, 1. 20. Elector. The title formerly given to those German princes who had the right of electing the emperor. P. 13, 1. 9. Aurungzebe. Or Aureng-Zebe (1619-1707), usurped the throne in 1658, and virtually completed the Mogul conquest of India. He was the third son of the Shah Jehan mentioned in note to p. 12, 1. 13 above. P. 13, 1. 17. Theodosius. Theodosius I., called the Great (cir. 246-395). He was emperor of the Eastern empire, and for a short time before his death of the Western empire also. After his death the empire was rapidly over-run by barbarian hordes. P. 13, 11. 19, 20. Carlovingians . . . Charlemagne. Note the long digression here introduced for the purpose of drawing an historical parallel. The Carlovingians, or Carolingians, or Karlings, were the descendants of Charles the Great, or Charle- magne (742-814), King of the Franks and Emperor of the West. P. 13, 1. 22. his descendants. The Carlovingians continued to reign till 989, but they possessed little real power. P. 13, 11. 23, 24. the wide dominions of the Franks. The Prankish dominions, roughly speaking, included France and Germany, together with parts of Italy and Spain. P. 13, 11. 27, 28. Charles the Bald, Charles the Fat, and Charles the Simple. Fittingly described as "abject." Charles the Bald (823-877) was the grandson of Charlemagne. His nephew, Charles the Fat (832-888) was deposed by his subjects on account of his ineptitude, and died in a cloister. Charles the Simple (879-929) was grandson of Charles the Bald. He was dethroned in 922. P. 14, 11. 1-4. The pirates of the Northern Sea . . . Seine. The Northmen, or Norsemen, had long raided the French coast. In 912 they were allowed by Charles the Simple to settle in the valley of the Seine under their leader, Rollo. They there became known as Normans. P. 14, 1. 4. The Hungarian. The Hungarians are generally believed to be the descendants of the Scythians, and to have come NOTES 121 from the neighbourhood of the Caspian Sea. They entered Europe about 884. P. 14, 1. 5. Gog or Magog. See Revelation, xx. 8. P. 14, 1. 7. Pannonian forests. Pannonia was a Roman province, roughly corresponding with what is now known as Hungary. P. 14, 1. 8. Saracen. The name originally of a predatory Arab tribe ; afterwards used generally for the Arabian followers of Mohammed. They conquered Sicily in 827-878. P. 14, 1. 27. bang. More correctly bhang, a stupefying prepara- tion of the dried leaves of hemp. It is the same as the Turkish haschisch. P. 14, 1. 31. A Persian conqueror. Nadir Shah, or Kuli Khan, who in 1739 invaded India and sacked Delhi. P- I5> 1- 3- R e - Sir Thomas Roe, sent by James I. in 1615 on an embassy to the Great Mogul. See p. 86. P. 15, 1. 3. Bernier. Fra^ois Bernier, a French traveller, who for twelve years was physician at the court of Aurungzebe. P. 15, 1. 3. the Peacock Throne. A gorgeous throne covered with gold and magnificent jewels, and surmounted by a peacock of gold and jewels. It was erected by Shah Jehan (see note to p. 12, 1. 13). Tavernier, a French jeweller who saw it in 1665, estimated its value at six and a half millions of pounds sterling. P. 15, 1. 4. Golconda. A fortress and ruined city in the Nizam's Dominions, five miles from Hyderabad. " In English literature Golconda has given its name to the diamonds which were found in many places within the dominions of the Kutb Shahi dynasty. There are no diamond mines within the immediate neighbourhood of Golconda itself" (Imferial Gazetteer of India, xii. 309, 310) ; but the stones were cut and polished there. P. 15, 11. 6-8. Mountain of Light . . . Runjeet Sing . . . the hideous idol of Orissa. The Mountain of Light is the famous Koh-i-Noor diamond. It was acquired by Shah Jehan in 1656 and by Nadir Shah in 1739. Runjeet Sing, or Singh, who owned it at the time of his death in 1839, was ruler of the Punjab. He be- queathed it to the temple of Jugganath, or Juggernaut, at Puri in the Orissa division of Bengal. His bequest, however, was not carried out. On the conquest of the Punjab in 1849, the jewel passed into the possession of the East India Company, who 122 ESSAY ON CLIVE presented it to Queen Victoria. It is now one of the crown jewels. P. 15, 1. II. Rajpootana. A Hindu state in N.W. India. P. 15, 1. 12. Rohilcund. Or Rohilkhand, a division in the North-west Provinces of British India. P. 15, 1. 13. The Seiks. Now generally written Sikhs, the members of a politico-religious community founded by Nanak Shah about 1500. Their power was destroyed when the British annexed the Punjab in 1849. P. 15, 1. 13. The Jauts. Or Jats, a mysterious race, supposed to be Hinduised Scythians. Their power, which was at its height in the eighteenth century, was destroyed by Lord Combermere in 1826. The Jumna, or Jamuna river is the chief tributary of the Ganges. P. 15,1.23. Mahrattas. See note to p. i, 1. 11, vmder HOLKAR. P. 16, 1. 15. Berar. Part of the dominions of the rajah of Nagpur, one of the five states of the Mahratta confederation. See note to p. i, 1. n, under HOLKAR. P. 16, 1. 16. Mahratta ditch. A ditch dug round Calcutta during the time of the Berar raids, 1742-1751. It was never finished. P. 17, 1. 5. Cabul. The capital of Afghanistan. P. 17, 1. 5. Chorasan. A N.E. province of Persia. P. 17, 1. 19. Burrampooter. More correctly, Brahmaputra, one of the five rivers of the Punjab. 1 he name Punjab, or Panjab, means in Hindustani, five rivers. P. 17, 1. 20. Hydaspes. The Greek name of the Jhelum, another of the five rivers of the Punjab. P. 17, 1. 21. Ava. Formerly the capital of Burmah. P. 17, 1. 21. Candahar. A city of Afghanistan, S. of Cabul. P. 17, 11. 22-24. The man who first saw . . . Dupleix. This is not strictly correct, for the conception of a possible European domination in India had arisen before Dupleix began his career there. Bernier (see note to p. 15, 1. 3) had declared that 20,000 French troops under Conde or Turenne could conquer the Moguls; while the idea of "the foundation of a large, well- grounded, sure English dominion in India" had been thrown out by the directors of the Fast India Company as early as 1687. The special distinction of Dupleix at this point lies in the fact that he NOTES i 2 3 was the first, not, as Macaulay says, to entertain the theory of a European empire in India, but to attempt its practical realisation. P. 18, 1. 4. Saxe. Maurice, Comte de Saxe (1696-1750), Marshal of France, and the greatest French commander in the war of the Austrian succession. P. 18, 1. 4. Frederic. Frederick II., called "The Great" (1712-1786), King of Prussia from 1740, and the greatest military genius of his time. P. 19, 1. 10. Nizam al Mulk. See note to p. 7, 1. 10. P. 19, 1. 15. Anaverdy Khan. Properly, Anwar-iid-din. P. 20, 1. 5. sepoys. Sepoy, a corruption of the Hindustani sepdhi, a native soldier in a European army. P. 20, 11. 10, II. Nabob of Arcot . . . Burke. Mahommed AH afterwards became indebted in enormous sums to the East India Company, and extorted the money to pay the interest from the natives of the Carnatic. Burke's famous speech On the Nabob of Arcofs Debts was delivered in 1785. Arcot was formerly the capital of the Carnatic. P. 2O, 1. 12. Trichinopoiy. A district in Madras. P. 20, 1. 27. palanquin. An Indian litter, somewhat resembling the European sedan chair. It is composed of a large wooden box slung upon poles, the ends of which rest on the shoulders of the bearers. P. 21, 11. 25, 26. the vainglorious Frenchman. Macaulay is unjust to Dupleix. The actions here criticised were undoubtedly dictated more by considerations of policy than by mere personal vanity. This is in fact admitted by Macaulay himself later when (p. 29) he praises dive's "just and profound policy" in destroying " the devices by which Dupleix had laid the public mind of India under a spell." Taking policy with policy, if Clive were right Dupleix cannot have been wrong. That Macaulay signally fails to give the great Frenchman his due, the following passage will show : "He was a great administrator, a diplomatist of the highest order, a splendid organiser, a man who possessed supremely the power of influencing others. He had . . . an energy that nothing could abate ; a persistence, a determination, that were proof against every shock of fortune. He ... was endowed besides with that equanimity of temper that enabled him to bear the greatest reverses, the most cruel injustice towards himself, with resignation and com- I2 4 ESSAY ON CLIVE posure" (Major Malleson's History of the French in India, pp. 415, 416). For further illustration of Macaulay's unfairness to Dupleix, see note to p. 31, 1. n. P. 24, 1. 16. Vellore. A town in che North Arcot district of Madras. P. 25, 1. 15. the Tenth Legion of Caesar. This legion is frequently selected for special mention in Caesar's Commentaries ; on account of its courage and devotion. P. 25, 1. 16. Old Guard. A body of soldiers composed of the picked veterans of Napoleon's army. P. 26, 11. 18, 19. the great Mahommedan festival. Hosein was the younger son of Ali, first cousin of Mohammed, and Fatima, the Prophet's favourite daughter, whose descendants were known as Fatimites. Ali seems to have been the natural successor of Mohammed as Khalif, or ruler of Islam, but his reign was troubled by civil war, and both he and his elder son, Hassan, were presently assassinated. The Khalifate then passed to the dynasty of Ommeyah. The claim of Yezid, the second ruler of this house, was challenged by Hosein, who was however vanquished in battle, and murdered by Yezid's command. The Shiite sect of Moslems held that the descendants of Ali and Fatima were the only true Khalifs. The festival in question is called the " Muharram," from the name of the month in which it occurs, and is held on Sept. I4th. P. 26, 1. 21. Islam. A general name for Mohammedanism. P. 27, 1. 7. the garden of the Houris. The Mohammedan paradise. Houri (Persian, Hurt), a nymph of paradise. P. 27, 11. 10, ii. drunk with enthusiasm, drunk with bang. An imitation of Milton's "drunk with idolatry, drunk with wine" (Samson Agonistes, 1. 1670). P. 28, 1. 26. Conjeveram. A town in the Chingleput district of Madras, 45 miles W. S. W. of Madras city. Crowded with temples and shrines, it is accounted one of the seven sacred cities of India. P. 28, 1. 27. Arnee. Or Ami, a town in the North Arcot district of Madras. P. 31, 11. 10, ii. His enemies accused him of personal cowardice. For an historian to give currency to such a charge against a man on the mere authority of that man's " enemies," is not only unjustifiable, it is worse it is mean. Macaulay does not NOTES 125 indeed go so far as to uphold the accusation ; but as he does not condemn it, he gives it a tacit approval. As a matter of fact, the charge was quite unfounded. Dupleix " was not indeed a general. He did not possess the taste for leading armies into the field. Yet he showed on many occasions notably on the occasion of the siege of Pondicherry by Boscawen that he could not only stand fire, but could defeat by his unassisted and natural skill all the efforts of the enemy" (Malleson's History of the French in India, p. 416). P. 31, 1. 12. Captain Bobadil. A cowardly braggart in Ben Jonson's comedy, Every Man in his Humour. P. 31, 1. 20. Bussy. Charles Joseph Patissier, Marquis de Bu-sy-Castelnau (1718-1785), "the ablest French officer who ever served in India " (Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. Forde). Later he fought against the English in the American War of Independence. P. 32, 1. 19. Covelong. A town lying between Madras and Chingleput. P. 32, 1. 19. Chingleput. The chief town of the district of the same name. It is 35 miles S.W. of Madras. P. 32, 1. 27. the Company's crimps. Crimp is, strictly speaking, one who decoys men into the naval or military service. " It was the common practice of the London agents of the East India Company, without one jot or tittle of a legal right empower- ing them to do so, to organise bands, to entrap lusty youths . . . and to cause them to be detained in establishments scattered here and there in the capital . . . until they could be sold into the hands of Bengal ship captains, who employed them in the service of the company in Hindustan" (W. C. Sydney's England and the English in the Eighteenth Century, i. 353). P. 32, 11. 27, 28. flash-houses. Low public-houses. P. 33, 11. 22-24. He married . . . sister . . . Astronomer Royal. Clive married Margaret Maskelyne, the sister of Dr Nevil Maskelyne. Another brother, Edmund, was among his fellow-writers in the service of the East India Company. P. 35, 1. 12. a petition. A petition presented by the defeated side in an election to unseat the successful candidate. P- 35. I- Z S- the Jacobites. From Latin Jacobus, James ; the name given after the revolution of 1688 to the adherents of the 126 ESSAY ON CLIVE exiled Stuarts first James II., and afterwards his son, the Old Pretender, and his grandson, the Y oung Pretender. P. 35, 1. 16. the last rebellion. That of the party of Charles Edward, the Young Pretender, who was defeated at Culloden, 1746. See Scott's Waverley. P. 35, 11. 16, 17. The Tory party had fallen into utter con- tempt. This had come about during the long period of Whig ascendancy under Walpole (see note to p. 36, 1. 24). The marked Jacobite leanings of the more extreme Tories had also helped to bring them into disrepute. P. 35, 1. 21. Prince Frederic. The Prince of Wales, son of George II. and father of George III. He hated his father, and led a " small faction " of discontents of both parties in opposition to Walpole. For this reason he is described, under the name of "his imperial highness" in Swift's Gulliver's Travels (Part I. chap, iv.) as wearing boots with one heel higher than the other : the "high heels" and the "low heels" there representing re- spectively the Tories and the Whigs. He died in 1751. P- 35. 1- 30- Newcastle. The Duke of Newcastle (1693-1768) became Prime Minister in 1754, on the death of his brother, Henry Pelham. He was the head of the government till 1756, and again from 1757 to 1762. For his character, see further Macaulay's essays on Horace Walpole (closing paragraphs) and William Pitt t Earl of Chatham. P. 36, 1. 2. Henry Fox. (1705-1774), the first Lord Holland, and father of the more famous Charles James Fox. See further the character-study in the early part of Macaulay's essay on Lord Holland. P. 36, 1. 4. the First Lord of the Treasury. Newcastle. The Treasury is the highest financial department of the State. The commissioners consist of the First Lord, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and three junior lords, all of them members of the government. The First Lord is frequently the Prime Minister. P. 36, 1. II. the Reform Act of 1832. For Macaulay's share in the passing of this Act, see Introduction, I. P. 36, 1. 12. Lord Sandwich. John Montague, fourth Earl of Sandwich (1718-1792). P. 36, 1. 24. Sir Robert Walpole. (1676-1745), the great Whig statesman, who was Prime Minister from 1721 to 1742. He NOTES 127 was not only unscrupulous, but also cynically outspoken in his un- scrupulousness. He is the Flimnap of The Voyage to Lilliput in Swift's Gulliver's Travels. See further Macaulay's essays on Horace Walpole and War of the Succession in Spain. P. 37, 11. 6, 7. the resolution was reported to the House. The House of Commons, sitting as a committee and therefore with deliberative powers only, reported the resolution to the House as a legislative body, in which capacity alone it was competent to take action. P. 37, 1. 14. the Duke of Cumberland. The second son of George II. He had crushed out the Jacobite rebellion with such severity that he was called " The Butcher." His cruelties towards the Jacobites made him particularly hateful to the Tories. See also note to p. 72, 1. 31. P. 38, 1- 6. Gheriah. On the west coast of India, about 70 miles S. of Bombay. P. 38, 1. 9. Admiral Watson. Charles Watson (I7I4-I757) entered the navy in 1728, and was appointed chief commander in India in 1754- P. 38, 1. 20. Bengal. A lieutenant-governorship in British India, capital Calcutta. It comprises Bengal Proper, Behar, Chota-Nagpur, and Orissa. P. 39, 11. 18, 19. The Castilians have a proverb. As the proverb implies, the Castilians, who belong to the northern and central parts of Spain, are a hardier race than the Valencians, who inhabit the south-east. P. 40, 1. 4. the Dutch held Chinsurah. Chinsurah, a town on the right bank of the Hugh'. It was ceded to the British in 1825. P. 40, 1. 12. Chowringhee. The fashionable quarter of Cal- cutta. P. 40, 1. 15. the Course. A favourite drive in Calcutta. P. 40, 1. 22. Orissa. A province in the south-western part of Bengal. P. 40, 1. 23. Bahar. Or Behar, a province of Bengal in the basin of the Ganges. P. 42, 1. 19. Mr Holwell. John Zephaniah Holwell (1711- 1798) was a member of the council of the East India Company at the time when this incident occurred. 128 ESSAY ON CLIVE P. 43, 11. 18-22. Nothing in history or fiction . . . approaches the horrors ... of that night. A striking example of Macaulay's habit of rhetorical over-statement. No one would wish to minimise the tragedy of the Black Hole ; but in view of the countless tales of carnage, plague, earthquake, and shipwreck, of which history is full, to speak of it in this way is manifestly unwarrantable. How little Macaulay really weighed his words is shown by the fact that later in this very essay he describes the massacre of Patna as "sur- passing in atrocity that of the Black Hole " (p. 79). P. 43, 1. 19. Ugolino. Ugolino della Gheradesca (d. 1289), leader of the Guelph party in Pisa. In the Inferno, cantos xxxii. and xxxiii., Dante finds him in the region of everlasting ice (the second division of the ninth circle of Hell) gnawing the skull of Archbishop Ruggieri, through whose instrumentality he, with two sons and two grandsons, had been thrown into prison and left there to starve to death. He relates his story to Dante, and tells him how he had witnessed his four young companions perish one by one of hunger. P. 45, 1. 4. harem. Arabic, El harim, the "inviolable," the women's apartments of a Mohammedan house ; also, collectively, the women of the household. P. 45, 1. 5. Moorshedabad. Or Murshedabad, the capital of the district of Bengal of the same name, situated 112 miles N. of Calcutta. P. 46, 1. 16. Budge-budge. Or Baj-Baj, a town on the E. bank of the Hugh' river, 14 miles below Calcutta. "The remains of a fort which was captured ... by Clive in 1756, are still visible " (Imperial Gazetteer of India, ix. 45). P. 46, 1. 3I-P. 47, 1. I. war had commenced in Europe. This was the Seven Years' War, in which England and Prussia were united against France, Austria, Russia, Poland, and Sweden. It began in April 1756. It was now 1757. P. 48, 1. 31. Omichund. Properly, Amm Chand. P. 50, 1. 27. Meer Jaffier. Properly, Mir Jafar Khan. He had married Surajah Dowlah's aunt on his father's side. P. 53, 1. 25. Cossimbuzar. Or Cossim bazar, formerly the chief English agency in Bengal. It stood near Moorshedabad, but its site is now a swamp. P. 53, 1. 26. Plassey. On the Hugh', 85 miles N. of Calcutta. NOTES 129 P. 55, 1. 6. the furies. The furies, or erinyes, in Greek mythology, were originally the avenging spirits of the dead, and later, the goddesses of vengeance and the personification of the curses pronounced on an evil-doer. See particularly the Eumenides of ^schylus, of which play Macaulay is doubtless here specially thinking. P. 60, 1. 7. Machiavelli. Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), a Florentine statesman, diplomatist, and author. In his treatise // Principe (The Prince] he maintains that a ruler should be guided, not by considerations of morality, but wholly by those of expediency, and that in politics the end justifies the means. He early became proverbial as the supreme type of political subtlety and non-moral statesmanship. See further Macaulay's essay on Machiavelli, P. 60, 1. 8. Borgia. Cesare Borgia (1478-1507), the most infamous member of the infamous Borgia family. Machiavelli was at one time envoy from Florence to his court, and in The Prince holds him up as a model ruler. P. 63, 1. 12. florins. The florin was originally struck by the Florentines in 1252. P. 63, 1. 12, byzants. The byzant, or bezant, was a gold coin which took its name from Byzantium (see note to p. 90, 1. 1 1). P. 63, 1. 29, Marlborough. John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough (1659-1722), the most famous English general of his time. He was made Prince of I\Iendelheim by the Emperor Joseph I. in 1705. P. 63, 1. 29. Nelson. Horatio Nelson (1758-1805) received the estates and title of Duke of Bronte (in Sicily) from Ferdinand IV., King of Naples, in 1798. P. 63, 1. 30. Wellington. Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Welling- ton (1769-1852) was made Duke of Vittoria by Ferdinand VII., King of Spain, in 1813. P. 65, 11. 5-7. Lewis the Eighteenth . . . the House of Bourbon. On the overthrow of Napoleon at Waterloo, the Bourbons were restored to the throne of France in the person of Louis XVIII., the next younger brother of Louis XVI., who had perished on the scaffold in 1793- P. 65, 11. 28, 29. lacs of rupees. Lac (Hindustani, lak) is one hundred thousand. The rupee, a silver coin, has varied greatly in value. It is now nominally worth two shillings. 130 ESSAY ON CLIVE P. 66, 1. 6. born in the purple. Purple has long been the distinctive colour of the robes of royal and imperial persons. P. 67, 1. 28. Forde. Francis Forde (d. 1770). " Clive early perceived his great military abilities " (Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. Forde). His capture of Masulipatam, in April !759j won for the British the "tract lying to the north of the Carnatic " (known as the Northern Circars), which had been in the possession of the French since 1753. P. 68, 1. 15. Rohillas. An Afghan tribe who, about the middle of the eighteenth century, rose to power in Rohilcund (see note to p. 15, 1. 12). P. 69, 1. 26. quit-rent. Rent paid in discharge or lieu of other services. P. 70, 1. 25. Batavia. On the north coast of Java, still the capital of the Dutch East Indies. P- 70, 1. 30. Java. The most important island of the Dutch East Indies. It was taken by the British in 1811, but restored to the Dutch in 1816. P. 72, 1. 16. Pitt. William Pitt (1708-1778), the Whig states- man, whose influence at this moment was supreme in Parliament and the country. In 1766 he became Earl of Chatham. P. 72, 1. 24. the King of Prussia. See note to p. 18, 1. 4. P. 72, 1. 29. Wolfe. James Wolfe (1727-1759), killed in the hour of victory at the battle of Quebec. P. 72, 1. 31. The Duke of Cumberland. His "single victory " was that at Culloden (see note to p. 37, 1. 16). In his Continental campaigns he had been singularly unsuccessful. P. 73, 1. 4. Conway. Henry Seymour Conway (1720-1795) served in the Seven Years' War, and commanded the British forces in Germany under Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick. He was made commander-in-chief of the British army in 1778. P. 73, 1. 6. Granby. John Manners, Marquis of Granby (1721-1770), served with distinction in the Seven Years' War, and became commander in charge of the British forces under Prince Ferdinand in 1759, on the dismissal of Sackville. P. 73, 1. 8. Sackville. George, Viscount Sackville (1716-1785), commanded the British cavalry in the Seven Years' War, under Prince Ferdinand, but was dismissed for failing to execute the Prince's orders to charge the retreating French at the battle of NOTES 131 Minden. He was thus accused (apparently unjustly) of cowardice the imputation to which Macaulay here refers. P. 73, 1. 12. Minden. A city of Westphalia, Prussia. Near it, in 1759, the German and English forces under Ferdinand defeated the French. P. 73, 1. 12. Warburg. A town of Westphalia where, in 1760, Ferdinand defeated the French. P. 74, 1. 27. George Grenville (1712-1770) was Prime Minister from 1763 to 1765. The prosecution of Wilkes was one of the chief incidents of his administration ; another, of far greater moment, was the passing of the Stamp Act, which first stirred the American colonies to resistance. P. 74, 1. 29. Wilkes. John Wilkes (1727-1797), a publicist and political agitator. He was imprisoned for an attack on the king in the 45th number of his paper, The North Briton, and on his release became a popular hero. In 1764, he was prosecuted by Grenville's government, and, flying to France, was tried in his absence and outlawed. (See Macaulay's essay on the Earl of Chatham. ) He was afterwards thrice returned to Parliament, and each time the election was declared void. (See note to p. 102, 1. I.) In 1774 he became Lord Mayor of London, and the same year was allowed to take his seat in the House of Commons. P. 75, 11. 7, 8. your Majesty will have another vote. Con- stitutionally, the king belongs to no party; but George III., in the interests of the royal prerogative, made a determined effort to check the power of the great Whig families, who had been in control of the government during the reigns of his two pre- decessors, and a faction in Parliament grew up in his support, which was known as " the king's friends." See Macaulay's essay on the Earl of Chatham. P. 75, 1. 26. a Westminster election. Westminster, with 17,000 electors, was one of the largest, and also one of the most turbulent constituencies of that time. P. 75, 1. 27. a Grampound election. Grampound, a Cornish borough with only 25 voters, was notorious, even in those corrupt days, for its corruption. It was disenfranchised on this account in 1820. P. 76, 1. 18. the Sudder courts. Courts of both civil and criminal jurisdiction (Hindustani sadr, chief). 132 ESSAY ON CLIVE P. 76, 1. 30. Leadenhall Street. In which was situated the India House, the headquarters of the Company. P. 77, 1. 2. Pigot. George, Baron Pigot (1719-1777). He was appointed governor of Madras in 1775. During his forty years in India he is said to have amassed a fortune of some ^400,000. P. 77, 1. 12. the South Sea Year. 1720, the year of the collapse of the South Sea Bubble. The South Sea Company was originated in 1711 by Harley, Earl of Oxford, with a view to the restoration of public credit and the extinction of the floating national debt. It held a monopoly from the government for trading in Spanish South America, concerning the wealth of which fabulous stories were then current. In the spring of 1720 a gambling mania had seized the nation, and a hundred pounds of the Company's stock sold for as much as ,1100. The bursting of the bubble entailed widespread disaster, and thousands of people were ruined. P. 78, 11. 21, 22. The Roman pro-consul. The pro-consul, or deputy-consul, was an officer who exercised in a specified district outside the city the same military and judicial powers as the consuls (or chief magistrates), exercised in Rome itself. Probably Macaulay has no special individual here in mind. The pro-consuls had ample opportunity to enrich themselves by extortion and the abuse of their powers. P. 78, 1. 24. Campania. In ancient geography, a province on the west coast of Italy. It was noted for its genial climate and wonderful fertility. Many of the wealthy Romans had their country villas here. P. 78, 1. 26. the Spanish viceroy. Again, Macaulay does not seem to be referring to any particular individual, but simply to the general practice of Spanish viceroys. Cervantes satirises this practice in Don Quixote, for when Sancho Panza is made governor of the Island of Barataria, he writes to his wife: "A few days hence I start for the governorship, whither I go with a mighty desire to make money, and they tell me all new governors set out with this same desire." The satire is afterwards pointed by the fact that, despite this declaration, and unlike the majority of colonial governors, Sancho comes out of his experiences clean- handed. P. 79, 11. 12, 13. a massacre . . . Black Hole. A hundred NOTES X 33 and fifty persons were murdered on this occasion. The nabob's orders were carried out by a Swiss adventurer, whose name, Sombre, was corrupted into Sumroo. Cp. note to p. 43, 11. 18-22. P. 80, 11. 30, 31. the Mussulman historian of those times. Synd Gholam Hussein Khan, the author of a history of the fall of the Mogul empire. P. 82, 1. 2. Verres. Caius Verres (d. 43 B.C.). As prseto of Sicily,' 74-72 B.C., he plundered the island of property and art treasures. He was brought to trial in 70 B.C. The prosecution was conducted by Cicero. P. 82, 1. 2. Pizarro. Francisco Pizarro (1471-1541). l Spanish conqueror of Peru. He extorted a ransom of 4,605,670 ducats (about ,3,000,000) for the Inca Atahualpa, whom he after- wards treacherously put to death. See note to p. I, 1. 7- P. 86, 11. 6, 7. Sir Thomas Roe. See note to p. 15, 1. 3- P. 86, 1. 28. propraetor. A Roman officer who exercised powers very similar to those of the pro-consuls. Under the empire the title was also given to the governors of imperial provinces. P. 86, 1. 28. procurators. Managers of the imperial revenues in the provinces of the Roman empire. P. 90, 1. 4. the Ricimers. Ricimer (d. 472), the son of a Suevic chief, rose to great power in the Roman army, and from 457 to his death virtually ruled the Western empire. He did not, however, venture to assume the title of emperor on account of his barbaric origin. P. 90, 1. 4. the Odoacers. Odoacer (cir. 434-493), a cniet the Heruli and other tribes. In 476 he overthrew the Western empire and assumed the title of patrician, under which he ruled the West. He was in turn overthrown and slain by Theodonc the Goth. P 90, 1. 10. Theodoric. Called the Great (454-526). A king of the Goths. He invaded Italy in 488, and having defeated and killed Odoacer, became the sole ruler of Italy. P. 90, 1. II. Byzantium. A Greek city which occupied the eastern part of the site of Constantinople. In 330 Constantine the Great made it the capital of the Roman empire, and it was henceforth called Constantinople. P 90 11. 26-28. Chilperics and Childerics . . . Merovingian line ... Mayors of the Palace . . . Charles Martel . . . 134 ESSAY ON CLIVE Pepin. The Merovingian line was a dynasty of Frankish kings dating from Merwig or Merovseus in the fifth century. Its real founder was Clovis (cir. 465-511). Chilperic, who became King of the Franks in 715, was vanquished by Charles Martel (Charles the Hammer, 690-741), but was allowed to retain the name and show of royalty. The son of Charles Martel, Pepin the Short (d. 768), overthrew Childeric III., the last of the line, and assumed the title of king in 751. The Mayors of the Palace were at first simply the chief officers of the royal household ; but under the later Merovingians they wielded the real power, that of the kings being only nominal. P. 94, 1. 10. farmer-general. Fermiers-gtntraux was the name given in France before the Revolution to financiers who farmed, or leased, the public revenues of the nation. They formed a privileged association, and as they belonged to the bourgeoisie or middle classes, they were regarded with jealousy and hatred by the nobility, many of whom were poor. P. 94, 1. 13. Burke. Edmund Burke (1729-1797), a celebrated statesman, orator and writer. The quotation is from his Thoughts on French Affairs, Dec. 1791. P. 95, 1. 22. Turcaret. A foolish and unscrupulous financier, the hero of a comedy of the same name, produced in 1709, by Lesage, who is best known as the author of Gil Bias. P. 95, 1. 22. Nero (37-68), the Roman emperor whose name has become a by-word for cruelty. P. 95, 11. 22, 23. Monsieur Jourdain. The hero of Moliere's comedy, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. He is a plain, simple-minded citizen, who, having made money, is consumed with the desire to become a "gentleman." P- 95. 1- 23. Richard the Third. (1452-1485), noted for his cunning, hypocrisy, and cruelty. The popular conception of him as a supreme and unqualified villain is largely derived from Shakespeare's play. P- 95. ! 30- The Dilettante. A dilettante, or dilettant (Italian dilettante, from dilettare, to take a delight in) is a lover or amateur of the fine arts. The word is now frequently used with a certain suggestion of contempt. There was at the time in England a society of the name for the encouragement of the arts. Sir Joshua Reynolds and Garrick were among the members. NOTES 135 P- 95> ! 3 1 - The Maccaroni. Or macaroni, a current later eighteenth-century name for a fop or dandy. The Macaroni Club was "composed of all the travelled young men, who wear long curls and spying glasses" (Horace Walpole, letter to Lord Hertford, 6th Feb. 1764). P. 96, 1. 7. Foote brought on the stage an Anglo-Indian chief. Samuel Foote (1720-1777), actor and dramatist. The play in question is The Nabob, produced in 1772. P. 96, 1. 14. Mackenzie. Henry Mackenzie (1745-1831), a Scottish essayist and novelist, best known for his extremely senti- mental story, The Man of Feeling. He ridiculed the nabobs in The Lounger, Nos. 17 and 36. P. 96, 1. 18. Cowper. William Cowper (1731-1800), the poet, best known as the author of The Task. The reference is to some lines in his Expostulation : " Hast thou, though suckled at fair Freedom's breast, Exported slavery to the conquered East ? Pulled down the tyrants India served with dread, And raised thyself, a greater, in their stead ? Gone thither armed and hungry, returned full, Fed from the richest veins of the Mogul, A despot big with power obtained by wealth, And that obtained by rapine and by stealth ? With Asiatic vices stored thy mind, But left their virtues and thine own behind ; And, having trucked thy soul, brought home the fee, To tempt the poor to sell himself to thee." P. 97, 1. 12. Margery Mushroom. Mrs Mushroom (in Mackenzie's Lounger, No. 17). The wife of a nabob who has returned from India with 100,000, she makes herself ridiculous by her vulgar display and affectations. P. 97, 1. 22. Sybarite. A person given to pleasure and luxury. The inhabitants of Sybaris, an ancient city of southern Italy, were proverbial for their wealth and luxury. P. 97, 1. 27. Sir Matthew Mite. The hero of Foote's Nabob. P. 98, 1. 16. Johnson always held this language. On one occasion Johnson spoke of Clive as "a man who had acquired his fortune by such crimes, that his consciousness of them impelled 136 , ESSAY ON CLIVE him to cut his own throat " (Boswell's Life of Johnson, Globe edition, p. 493). P. 98, 1. 17. Brown. The anecdote in question was related by Johnson : ' ' The ingenious Mr Brown, distinguished by the name of Capability Brown, told me, that he was once at the seat of Lord Clive, who had returned from India with great wealth ; and that he had showed him at the door of his bedchamber a large chest, which he said he had once had full of gold ; upon which Brown observed, ' I am glad you can bear it so near your bed- chamber'" (Boswell's Life of Johnson, Globe edition, p. 511). P. 98, 1. 25. Claremont. In Surrey. P. 98, 1. 30. Hunt . . . William Huntington, S.S. (1745- 1813), an eccentric preacher, who for many years had a con- siderable following, and a voluminous writer on theology. On account of a disreputable incident in his early life, he changed his name to Huntington to escape identification. The letters S.S., which he always used after his name, stand for "sinner saved." P. 100, 1. 27. Adam Smith. (1723-1790), a Scottish political economist. Macaulay is probably referring to his discussion of monopolist companies in his great work, The Wealth of Nations, Book IV. chap. vii. P. 101, 11. 14, 15. insurrectionary movements in the American colonies. The early movements which heralded the American revolution. Cp. note to p. 74, 1. 27. P. 101, 1. 18. Lord Chatham. See note to p. 72, 1. 16. P. 102, 1. I. the Middlesex election. Wilkes (see note to p. 74, 1. 29) had been three times elected for Middlesex, and the election had three times been squashed. The government now assigned the seat to the candidate next on the pole. Great ex- citement followed, but by this time, as Macaulay says, it had died down. P. 102, 1. 21. Rockingham. Charles Watson Wentworth, second marquis of Rockingham (1730-1782). He was Prime Minister in 1765 and 1766. See Macaulay's essay on the Earl of Chatham. P. 105, 1. 29. Bruce. Robert Bruce (1274-1329), Robert I. of Scotland, one of the most famous of Scottish heroes. He murdered the rival claimant to the throne, the Red Comyn, in 1306. NOTES 137 P. 105, 1. 20. Maurice. (1521-1553), Duke, and afterwards Elector, of Saxony. Macaulay calls him the deliverer of Germ any because by the Treaty of Passau, which he compelled the emperor to sign in 1552, he obtained freedom for the German Protestants. His character has been much discussed. He was certainly one of the most enlightened rulers of his age, but he appears to have been guilty of duplicity and intrigue. P. 105, 1. 30. William. William I., surnamed the Silent (i 533. 1 584), Prince of Orange, the deliverer of the Netherlands from the Spanish yoke. He was throughout his life inspired by one noble ambition that of securing the liberty and welfare of his people. He was, however, accused of treachery to the Spaniards and the murder of his first wife. P. 105, 1. 31. his great descendant. William of Orange (1650-1702), William III. of England (1689-1702). In 1692 occurred the Massacre of Glencoe, in which, amid circumstances of peculiar atrocity, some forty members of the Macdonald clan were butchered by royalist troops. William's supposed complicity in this deed of infamy has left a stain on his name. For a discuss ion of this question, see Macaulay's History of England. P. 105, 1. 31. Murray. James Stuart, second earl of Murray, or Moray (1533-1570), called the "Good Regent." He was the head of the Protestant party in Scotland in opposition to Mary Queen of Scots. Very different estimates have been formed of his character, but it is generally admitted that he was ambitious and hard . P. 106, 1. I. Cosmo. Cosmo, or Cosimo, de' Medici (1389- 1464), a great Florentine statesman and patron of art and learning. He maintained his political powe r largely through the skill with which he contrived to secure for his own partisans the most im- portant places in the commonwealth. P. 106, 11. i, 2. Henry the Fourth. (1553-1610), King of France (1589-1610). He was surnamed both "the Great" and " the Good," and has been described by one French historian, Henri Martin, as "the greatest of all the kings of France." He was, however, guilty of unbridled licentiousness. P. 106, 1. 2. Peter the Great. Peter I. (1672-1725), Czar of Russia. He founded St Petersburg, introduced Western civilisation into Russia, and made it one of the great European powers. But he was coarse and brutal. I 3 8 ESSAY ON CLIVE P. io6,ll. n, 12. Lord North. Francis North (1732-1792), second earl of Guilford, better known by his courtesy title of Lord North, which he held till his father's death in 1790, and his own accession to the earldom. He was Prime Minister from 1770 to 1 782. See Macaulay's essays on Warren Hastings and The Earl of Chatham. P. 106, 1. 15. Knight of the Bath. The Order of the Bath is an order of knighthood, so called from the symbolic rite of bathing, which originally formed part of the ceremony of initiation. It was instituted by Henry IV. in 1399, and after a period of disuse revived by George I. in 1725. P. 106, 11. 16, 17. Henry the Seventh's Chapel. In West- minster Abbey. P. 106, 1. 25. Burgoyne. John Burgoyne (1722-1792), an English lieutenant-general. He distinguished himself in Portugal by the capture of Alcantara (1762). He afterwards commanded the British army which invaded New York in 1777, and surrendered with nearly 6000 troops to General Gates, at Saratoga, on October 17 of that year, thus forfeiting the reputation of which Macaulay speaks. In 1787 he was prominent in the impeachment of Warren Hastings. He holds a small position in English literature as a dramatist ; his comedy, The Heiress^ produced in 1786, was very successful. P. 107, 1. 3. Tharlow. Edward, Baron Thurlow (1732-1806), became Attorney-General in 1771, and was afterwards Lord Chancellor. He was a Tory leader in the House of Lords, and was a strong opponent of the cause of the American colonies. P. 107, 1. 4. Wedderburne. Alexander Wedderburne (1783- 1805), became Solicitor-General in 1771, and was afterwards Chief Justice (1780-1793), and Lord Chancellor (1793-1801). He was created Earl of Rosslyn in 1801. P. 107, 11. 8, 9. Warren Hastings. (1732-1818), went to Calcutta as writer in the service of the East India Company in 1750; became governor of Bengal in 1772, and first governor- general of India in 1774. Macaulay's essay gives a brilliant account of his achievements in India and of his trial ; but expert criticism has pronounced it in many ways untrustworthy. P. 108, 1. II. Jenkinson. Charles Jenkinson (1727-1808) was under-secretary of state in 1761, and joint-secretary to the NOTES 139 Treasury in 1763. He was one of " the king's friends " (see note to p. 75, 11. 7, 8) and was specially detested on account of his supposed secret influence over the king. He was created Earl of Liverpool in 1796. P. 108, 1. II. Wilkes. See note to p. 74, 1. 29 P. 108, 1. 25. Lally. Thomas Arthur, Comte de Lally (1702- 1766), a' French general of Irish descent. He was appointed commander-in-chief of the French army in the East Indies in 1756, and sustained a siege of ten months in Pondicherry before surrender- ing to Sir Eyre Coote in 1761. By order of the Parliament of Paris he was beheaded on an unjust charge of treachery and cowardice. P. 109, 1. 2. The contrast struck Voltaire. Voltaire was a sincere admirer of England and English institutions, and from the time of his early Lettres Philosophiques, or Lettres sur les Anglais (the fruit of his exile in this country) had frequently used them in the way of contrast in his many attacks upon the political and ecclesiastical despotism existing in France. Lally's son, " known in the days of the Revolution as Lally Tollendal, was joined by Voltaire in the honourable work of procuring revision of the pro- ceedings ; and one of the last crowning triumphs of Voltaire^s days was the news brought to him on his dying bed, that his long effort had availed" (Morley's Voltaire, p. 359). In the highly rhetorical passage which follows (11. 9- 1 8 ). Macaulay is by no means fair to Voltaire, whose magnificent work for humanity in many causes has, far more than even his brilliant literary successes, given lasting glory to his name. P. 109, 11. 6, 7. Dr Moore. John Moore (1730-1802), a miscellaneous writer, whose novel, Zeluco : Various Views of Human Nature, taken from Life and Manners, Foreign and Domestic (1786) was much read at the time. He visited Voltaire during his six years' travel on the Continent as medical attendant to the Duke of Hamilton. P. 109, 11. 26, 27. "which rejoiceth exceedingly ... the grave." Job iii. 22. P. ill, 1. 27. the fall of Ghizni. The capture of Ghizni, or Ghazni', on July 23, 1839, was one of the most brilliant British victories of the first Afghan war. P. iii. 1. 3I-P- 112, 1. 4. Alexander, Conde, and Charles I 4 o ESSAY ON CLIVE the Twelfth . . . Granicus . . . Rocroi . . . Narva. Alexander III. (B.C. 356-323),King of Macedon, called "the Great," gained his first victory over the Persians on the banks of the Granicus (a small river in Asia Minor) in 334 B.C., at the age of twenty-two. Louis II. de Bourbon, Prince de Conde (1621-1686), called "the Great Conde," defeated the Spaniards at Rocroi (a town in the French Ardennes) in 1643, at the age of twenty-two. Charles XII. (1682-1718), King of Sweden, defeated the Russians at Narva (a town in the government of St Petersburg) in ijoo, at the age of eighteen. P. 112, 1. 2O. the Sacred Way. Via Sacra, the first street in ancient Rome made on the low ground beneath the hills. Some of the oldest and most revered sanctuaries of Rome stood upon it. P. 1 12, 1. 2O. the crowded Forum. The Forum Romanorum, the political centre of ancient Rome. P. 112, 1. 21. the threshold of Tarpeian Jove. The temple of Jupiter on the Mons Capitolinus, the smallest but most famous of the seven hills on which Rome is built. The Tarpeian rock was at its southern extremity. P. 112, 11. 21, 22. The fame of those who subdued Anti- ochus and Tigranes. Antiochus XIII., surnamed Asiaticus, King of Syria, was defeated by Pompey in 65 B.C. Tigranes, King of Armenia, was defeated by Lucullus (see note to p. 113, 1. 25), at the battle of Tigranocerta, 69 B.C. P. 113, 1. 16. Munro. Sir Thomas Munro (1761-1827), governor of Madras from 1819 to his death. A wise administrator, he is perhaps best remembered for his reform of the Madras land system. P. 113, 1. 16. Elphinstone. Mountstuart Elphinstone (1779- 1846), governor of Bombay from 1819 to 1827, and the author of a History of India. P. 113, 1. 16. Metcalfe. Charles Theophilus, Baron Metcalfe (1785-1846). He was provisional governor of British India in 1835 and 1836, and lieutenant-governor of the North-west Pro- vinces from 1836 to 1838. P. 113, 1. 25. Lucullus. Lucius Lucinius Lucullus (cir. 1 10 B.C.- 57 B.C.), a Roman general. He was perhaps even more famous for his wealth and luxury than for his military achievements. P. 113, 1. 25. Trajan. Marcus Ulpius Trajanus (cir. 53-117), NOTES Roman emperor. Before ascending the throne in 98, he was famous as a warrior. He did much to develop and strengthen the defences of the empire. P. 113, 1. 27. Turgot. Anne Robert Turgot (i727-i7 I )> a wise French statesman and political economist. As controller- general he projected many reforms ; but all the privileged classes -courtiers, nobles, fanners-general, prelates, financiers-saw that their interests were threatened by them, and combined to compass his overthrow. Had he been allowed his way, the catastrophe c 1789 would probably have been averted. Pi 13 1. 29. Lord William Bentinck. William Cavendish Beniinck' ( 1774- 1*39) was appointed governor of Madras in 1803, governor-general of Bengal in 1827, and governor-general of Indu in i8 He abolished the suttee (the form of sacrifice in whici the widow was burnt on her dead husband's funeral pyre), and put down the Thugs (a fraternity of assassins, who lived by murdei and the plunder of their victims). The statue to Bentinck Calcutta, to which reference is here made, bears an mscnptu written by Macaulay. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF EVENTS IN THE LIFE OF CLIVE AND IN THE HISTORY OF INDIA 1707. Death of the Emperor Aurenzebe. 1725. Clive born (zgth Sept.). 1 739-4 Nadir Shah invades India. 1741. Dupleix becomes Gover- nor of Pondicherry. 1743. Leaves for India. 1744. War declared with France. 1746-49. War between English and French in the Coromandel Coast. 1746. Madras surrenders to Labourdonnais. 1748. Pondicherry besieged by the English. 1748-49. Peace of Aix-la-Chap- elleand restoration of Madras to the English. 1749. Beginning of the War of Succession in the Carnatic. 1750-54. War between the Eng- lish and French Companies. 1751. Clive's defence of Arcot. 142 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 1753. Marriage to Margaret Maskelyne. Returns to Eng- land . 1755. Returns to India. 1753. The French vacate Trich- inopoly. 1754. Recall of Dupleix to France. Peace between the English and French Com- panies. 1756. Rupture between the English and the French. Calcutta taken by the Nabob of Bengal. The massacre of the Black Hole. 1757. Clive recovers Calcutta (Jan.) ; and gains a great victory at Plassey (June). 1757. The English occupy Bengal. 1758. Lally reaches India ; 1758-59. lays siege to Madras ; 1760. and is defeated at Vande- wash . 1760-65. Misrule in Bengal. 1760. Returns to England. 1761. Enters parliament member for Shrewsbury. 1762. Raised to the Irish peer- age as Baron Clive of Plassey. 1764. Created Knight of the Bath; 1761. Pondicherry surrendered to the English. Defeat of the Mahrattas by Ahmed Shah at Parriput. 1763. Pondicherry restored to France. French rivalry in India closed by the Peace of Paris. Massacre of English at Patna. 144 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 1764. Hector Munro's victory at Buxar. 1765: Returns to India. 1765. Enters into treaty of alliance with Oudh and the Mogul emperor. 1766. Treaty with Nizam of Northern Circars. 1767. Returns to England. 1767-69. First war with Hyder Ali of Mysore. 1772. His proceedings in India debated in parliament. Ap- pointment of select parlia- mentary committee on Indian affairs. 1773. Report of committee con- demning his conduct rejected. 1774. Clive commits suicide (22nd Nov.). Date Due PRINTED IN U.S. CAT. NO. 24 161 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A 000 844 770 8